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What’s going on in the repo market? Rates on repurchase agreements (“repo”) should be around 2%, in line with the fed funds rate. But they shot up to over 5% on September 16 and got as high as 10% on September 17. Yet banks were refusing to lend to each other, evidently passing up big profits to hold onto their cash – just as they did in the housing market crash and Great Recession of 2008-09.

Since banks weren’t lending, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York jumped in, increasing its overnight repo operations to $75 billion; and on October 23 it upped the ante to $120 billion in overnight operations and $45 billion in longer-term operations.

Why are banks no longer lending to each other? Are they afraid that collapse is imminent somewhere in the system, as with the Lehman collapse in 2008?

Perhaps, and if so the likely suspect is Deutsche Bank. But it looks to be just another case of Wall Street fattening itself at the public trough, using the funds of mom and pop depositors to maximize bank profits and line the pockets of bank executives while depriving small businesses of affordable loans.

Why the Repo Market Is a Big Deal   [Repo = Repurchase agreements, “transactions that amount to collateralized short-term loans, often made overnight.”]

The repo market allows banks and other financial institutions to borrow and lend to each another, usually overnight. More than $1 trillion in overnight repo transactions collateralized with U.S. government debt occur every day. Banks lacking available deposits frequently go to these markets to fund their loans and finance their trades.

Legally, repos are sales and repurchases; but they function like secured overnight or short-term loans. They work like a pawn shop: the lender takes an asset (usually a federal security) in exchange for cash, with an agreement to return the asset for the cash plus interest the next day unless the loan is rolled over. The New York Fed currently engages in two types of repo operations: overnight repurchase agreements that unwind the next business day, and 14 day repurchase agreements that unwind after 14 days.

The Fed re-started its large-scale repo operations in September, when borrowing rates shot up due to an unexpectedly high demand for dollars. The Fed said the unusual demand was due largely to quarterly tax payments and Treasury debt settlements. Other factors proposed as contributing to the cash strains include regulatory change and, a decline in bank reserves due to “quantitative tightening” (in which the Fed shrunk its balance sheet by selling some of its QE acquisitions back into the market), as well as unusually high government debt issuance over the last four years and a flight into U.S. currency and securities to avoid the negative interest rate policies of central banks abroad.

Panic or Calculated Self-interest?

The Fed’s stated objective in boosting the liquidity available to financial markets was simply to maintain its “target rate” for the interest charged by banks to each other in the fed funds market. But critics were not convinced. Why were private capital markets once again in need of public support if there was no financial crisis in sight? Was the Fed engaged in a stealth “QE4,” restarting its quantitative easing program?

The Fed insisted that it wasn’t, and financial analyst Wolf Richter agreed. Writing on Wolfstreet.com on October 10, he said the banks and particularly the primary dealers were hoarding their long-term securities in anticipation of higher profits. The primary dealers are the 24 U.S. and foreign broker-dealers and banks authorized to deal directly with the U.S. Treasury and the New York Fed. They were funding their horde of long-term securities in the repo market, putting pressure on that market, as the Fed said in the minutes for its July meeting even before repo rates blew out in mid-September. Richter contended:

They’d expected a massive bout of QE, and perhaps some of the players had gleefully contributed to, or even instigated the turmoil in the repo market to make sure they would get that massive bout of QE as the Fed would be forced to calm the waters with QE, the theory went. This QE would include big purchases of long-term securities to push down long-term yields, and drive up the prices of those bonds ….

Prices were high and yields were low, a sign that there was heavy demand. But the dealers were holding out for even higher prices and even lower yields. … Massive QE, where the Fed buys these types of Treasury securities, would accomplish that.

But that’s exactly what the Fed said it wouldn’t do.

What the Fed was doing instead, it said, was to revive its “standing repo facility” – the facility it had used before September 2008, when it abandoned that device in favor of QE and zero interest rate policy. But it insisted that this was not QE, expanding the money supply. Overnight repos are just an advance of credit, which must be repaid the next day. While $165 billion per month sounds like a lot, repo loans don’t accumulate; the Fed is just making short-term advances, available as needed up to a limit of $165 billion.

In Wall Street on Parade on October 28, Pam and Russ Martens pointed to another greed-driven trigger to the recent run on repo. The perpetrator was JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the U.S., with $1.6 trillion in deposits. Quoting David Henry on Reuters:

Publicly-filed data shows JPMorgan reduced the cash it has on deposit at the Federal Reserve, from which it might have lent, by $158 billion in the year through June, a 57% decline. … [T]he data shows its switch accounted for about a third of the drop in all banking reserves at the Fed during the period.

This $158 billion drawdown in JPMorgan’s reserve account is evidently what necessitated the Fed’s $165 billion in new repo offerings. But why the large drawdown?

Henry attributed it to regulatory changes the increased the bank’s required reserves, but according to the Martens, something more was involved. “The shocking news,” they write, is that “According to its SEC filings, JPMorgan Chase is partly using Federally insured deposits made by moms and pops across the country in its more than 5,000 branches to prop up its share price with buybacks.” Small businesses are being deprived of affordable loans because the liquidity necessary to back the loans is being used to prop up bank stock prices. Bank shares constitute a substantial portion of the pay of bank executives.

According to Thomas Hoenig, then Vice Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in a July 2017 letter to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee:

[If] the 10 largest U.S. Bank Holding Companies [BHCs] were to retain a greater share of their earnings earmarked for dividends and share buybacks in 2017 they would be able to increase loans by more than $1 trillion, which is greater than 5 percent of annual U.S. GDP.

Four of the 10 BHCs will distribute more than 100 percent of their current year’s earnings, which alone could support approximately $537 billion in new loans to Main Street.

If share buybacks of $83 billion, representing 72 percent of total payouts for these 10 BHCs in 2017, were instead retained, they could, under current capital rules, increase small business loans by three quarters of a trillion dollars or mortgage loans by almost one and a half trillion dollars.

Hoenig was referring to the banks’ own capital rather than to their deposits, but the damage to local credit markets is even worse if deposits are also being diverted to fund share buybacks. Banks are not serving the real economy. They are using public credit backed by public funds to feed their own private bottom lines.

The whole repo rigmarole underscores the sleight of hand on which our money and banking systems are built, and why it is time to change them. Banks do not really have the money they lend. To back their loans, they rely on their ability to borrow from the reserves of other banks, generated from their customers’ deposits; and if those banks withhold their deposits in the insatiable pursuit of higher profits, the borrowing banks must turn to the public purse for liquidity. The banks could not function without public support. They should be turned into public utilities, mandated to serve the interests of the people and the productive economy on which the public depends.

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This article was first posted on Truthdig.com.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. 

The political solution to the Syrian conflict is the task at hand for the constitutional committee that has been meeting in Geneva since October 30.  The co-chairs are Ahmad Kuzbari from the Syrian government and Hadi Albahra from the opposition.  The Mini-Committee continued activities on Wednesday for the fourth successive day at the UN headquarters in Geneva while working towards amending the constitution for Syria, which is seen as the roadmap to recovery. The 45-member committee equally divided between the Syrian government, the opposition and civil society will hold a four-hour session per day. The full committee consists of 150 members: 50 each representing the Syrian government, the opposition, and civil society. The political solution is necessary before the US and EU sanctions against Syria are lifted, western embassies reopen in Damascus, and reconstruction funds are pledged to rebuild Syria. 

Those representing the Syrian government are a cohesive and unified group; however, the group representing the Syrian opposition is extremely varied in their ideology and it is difficult for them to speak with one voice. Some of those opposed to the Syrian government from the outset of the conflict were secular, liberal dissidents living abroad in western countries; however, the Syrian Islamists, especially the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, established close relationships early-on with the US State Department, and the Americans preferred supporting the faction following Radical Islamic political ideology rather than the secular, liberal dissidents.

The current opposition has been overrun by radicals aspiring to a Syrian Sunni State, and the groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham, which left the non-radicals feeling marginalized.  It was the Obama administration that gave its full support to the Islamists, but it was the Trump administration that shut off that support; however, the US insisted the Syrian Islamists be represented in the Geneva talks while excluding the Kurds at the request of Turkey.

Last week, UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen delivered the Code of Conduct approved by the Syrian opposition and the Syrian government which stipulates that the negotiating parties “show respect and tact toward members and refrain from inflammatory speeches and personal attacks”.  In his opening remarks, he said, “I know that it is not easy for all of you to be here together in this room.”  Despite the opposing side’s deep divisions of ideologies, they all have a similar goal to amend the constitution which can begin the healing process.

Opposition sources said their delegation has submitted a working paper of the proposals presented last week, adding that the civil society representatives presented a range of proposals orally during Wednesday’s meeting.  The Committee will attempt to arrive at its decisions by consensus; however, if that fails they may resort to a majority of 75 percent of votes.

There is no Kurdish representation in the constitution committee.  In a recent interview with the Kurdish General Mazloum Abdi, he said,

“Definitely, the Kurdish issue is an essential one and the rights of Kurds have to be ensured in the Syrian constitution.” He added, “We are here and will stay until there is a solution in Syria, and all [ethnic and religious] groups in Syria reach a deal and agree on a constitution and establishment.”

The Syrian Democratic Forces and allied militias, composed of mainly Kurds, have more than 100,000 soldiers and had been US allies previously in the fight to defeat ISIS which occurred in Syria.

The diplomatic gymnastics among Presidents Assad, Putin, Erdogan, and the Kurds are in high gear. The Turkish foreign minister has said Turkey would retreat from all occupied areas if the Syrian government would assure the Kurdish self-administration project was dismantled, and the Kurdish militias were dissolved and integrated into the Syrian Arab Army.  Talks could begin on the eventual return of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to their original communities, thus avoiding a ‘safe-zone’ in northeast Syria, which Erdogan had planned as a Sunni non-Kurdish plantation.  President Putin’s backchannel diplomacy between Damascus and Ankara is ongoing.

In last week’s interview, President Assad said he did not expect the Kurds “to hand over their weapons immediately,” adding that while the Syrian state would exert control in the northeast,

“Our policy should be gradual and rational and should take the facts into account.”

The current military maneuvers and confrontations in northeast Syria are the beginning of the end of the Syrian conflict, as each of the various players involved on the ground will make deals based on negotiated settlements.  To keep one foot in the door, Trump ordered his military to re-invade Syria from Iraq, to occupy the oil well at Deir Ez Zor. General Mazloum Abdi believes the US move has nothing whatsoever to do with oil or profits from oil.  He said,

“There was a new [power] balance here. The Americans want to stay here to take part in the balance.”

Idlib and the northeast may be returned to the control of the central government in Damascus, and with a possible new constitution in place, and future elections scheduled under UN observation, Syria may once again return to the peace and security that has been missing since 2011.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

How do we know that the War on Syria was pre-planned by imperial powers? Consider the following:

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.

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Still not convinced? Check out this admission from the former Minister of Foreign Affairs for President Mitterand.

General Flynn admitted that arming terrorists and the creation of a “Salafist Principality” was a “willful decision”.

The willful decision was outlined in this 2012 DIA document:

General Wesley Clark admitted that it was all pre-planned.

All sorts of Establishment figures have admitted that the West’s allies finance ISIS.

John Kerry admitted that the West was using ISIS.

Former U.S Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, worked closely with the terrorists.

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

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

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

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Syrian and Russian warplanes carried out more than 40 airstrikes on militants’ positions in southern Idlib, northern Lattakia and southwestern Aleppo. According to pro-government sources, the resumed airstrikes were a response to the recent offensive actions by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its Turkish-backed allies near the town of Kbani. Pro-militant media outlets as always claimed that the strikes hit civilian targets only.

Local sources report that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radical groups are currently deploying additional artillery pieces and military equipment in northern Lattakia. So, a new round of escalation could be expected in the area soon.

The Russian military reinforced its positions near the town of Ayn Issa, where a coordination center with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had been established. The deployed reinforcements included several military vehicles and dozens of trucks loaded with ammunition and equipment.

Watch the video here.

Meanwhile, reports appeared that Russian forces established a military garrison near the Qamishli airport. Pro-militant sources claimed that this is a part of ongoing efforts to use the facility as an airbase for operations in northeastern Syria. Nonetheless, this is unlikely. Apparently, the Russians were there in the framework of the efforts to propel a reconciliation process between the SDF and the Damascus government.

US President Donald Trump has approved an expanded military mission to ‘secure’ Syrian oil, the Associated Press reported on November 6 citing “US officials”. The decision allegedly came after a last Friday meeting between Trump and his defense officials. The details of the plan is still being worked out. Nonetheless, even without this decision, the US is already building up forces in oil-rich areas in eastern Syria. So, the key question is how many US personnel and how many US-linked private military contractors will be deployed there.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping six years ago launched New Silk Roads, now better known as the Belt and Road Initiative, the largest, most ambitious, pan-Eurasian infrastructure project of the 21^st century.

Under the Trump administration, Belt and Road has been utterly demonized 24/7: a toxic cocktail of fear and doubt, with Beijing blamed for everything from plunging poor nations into a “debt trap” to evil designs of world domination.

Now finally comes what might be described as the institutional American response to Belt and Road: the Blue Dot Network.

Blue Dot is described, officially, as promoting global, multi-stakeholder “sustainable infrastructure development in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.”

It is a joint project of the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation, in partnership with Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

Now compare it with what just happened this same week at the inauguration of the China International Import Expo in Shanghai.

As Xi stressed:

“To date, China has signed 197 documents on Belt and Road cooperation with 137 countries and 30 international organizations.”

This is what Blue Dot is up against – especially across the Global South. Well, not really. Global South diplomats, informally contacted, are not exactly impressed. They might see Blue Dot as an aspiring competitor to BRI, but one that’s moved by private finance – mostly, in theory, American.

They scoff at the prospect that Blue Dot will include some sort of ratings mechanism that will be positioned to vet and downgrade Belt and Road projects. Washington will spin it as a “certification” process setting “international standards” – implying Belt and Road is sub-standard. Whether Global South nations will pay attention to these new ratings is an open question.

The Japanese example

Blue Dot should also be understood in direct comparison with what just happened at the summit-fest in Thailand centered on the meetings of East Asia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

The advent of Blue Dot explains why the US sent only a junior delegation to Thailand, and also, to a great extent, why India missed the RCEP train as it left the pan-Asian station.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is still between a rock – Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy – and a hard place – Eurasia integration. They are mutually incompatible.

Blue Dot is a de facto business extension of Indo-Pacific, which congregates the US, Japan, Australia – and India: the Quad members. It’s a mirror image of the – defunct – Obama administration Trans-Pacific Partnership in relation to the – also defunct – “pivot to Asia.”

It’s unclear whether New Delhi will join Blue Dot. It has rejected Belt and Road, but not, finally and irrevocably, RCEP. ASEAN has tried to put on a brave face and insist differences will be smoothed out and all 16 RCEP members will sign a deal in Vietnam in 2020.

Yet the bottom line remains: Washington will continue to manipulate India by all means deemed necessary to torpedo – at least in the South Asian theater – the potential of Belt and Road as well as larger Eurasia integration.

And still, after all these years of non-stop demonization, the best thing Washington could come up with was to steal Belt and Road’s idea and dress it up in private bank financing.

Now compare it, for instance, with the work of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia. They privilege the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, an original Indonesian idea, instead of the American version. The institute’s president, Hidetoshi Nishimura, describes it as “a guideline for dialogue partners” and stresses that “Japan’s own vision of the Indo-Pacific fits very well with that of ASEAN.”

As much as Nishimura notes how “it is well known that Japan has been the key donor and a real partner in the economic development of Southeast Asia throughout the past five decades,” he also extols RCEP as “the symbol of free trade.” Both China and Japan are firmly behind RCEP. And Beijing is also firmly stressing the direct connection between RCEP and Belt and Road projects.

In the end, Blue Dot may be no more than a PR exercise, too little, too late. It won’t stop Belt and Road expansion. It won’t prevent China-Japan investment partnerships. It won’t stop awareness all across the Global South about the weaponization of the US dollar for geopolitical purposes.

And it won’t bury prevailing skepticism about the development project skills of a hyperpower engaged on a mission to steal other nation’s oil reserves as part of an illegal Syrian occupation.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The 2019 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit held in Thailand earlier this week has given a signal of how the regional order is beginning to change. The ASEAN platform serves as a biannual conference between 10 Southeast countries, with Papua New Guinea and East Timor having observer status. ASEAN focusses on issues of the economy, politics and security. China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the United States all have a kind of status as partners of ASEAN, but are not formally members.

ASEAN has proven to be a powerful platform that represents collectively over 650 million people and trillions of dollars. Therefore, it was extremely curious that the U.S. did not participate in the summit in a serious manner. Washington had only sent low ranking representative to Thailand, leading to criticisms from ASEAN members. The dissatisfaction expressed by the ASEAN countries is a symmetrical reaction to Washington’s attitude that is likely to continue to exist in the future.

ASEAN felt offended that Washington had only dispatched Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien‘s to Thailand when considering that other countries sent their top officials. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang were all in attendance.

Although the summit hosted an ASEAN-U.S. meeting, only the leaders of host Thailand, Laos and Vietnam attended it. The leaders of the other seven member states decided to ignore the meeting as this was the second year in a row Trump decided to not attend the summit, a far cry from when former U.S. President Barack Obama upgraded ties with the organization in 2011.

The ASEAN-U.S. meeting expectedly ended in a complete failure despite Thailand, Vietnam and Laos committing to this platform by sending their leaders. However, why did these three countries represent themselves with their leaders despite being snubbed by Trump? It is not for any pro-U.S. reasons, but rather to maintain diplomatic professionalism as Thailand hosted the summit, Vietnam will assume the presidency of ASEAN next year, and Laos is currently responsible for ASEAN-U.S. relations.

Ross attempted to alleviate ASEAN anger by stating that:

“The Trump administration is extremely engaged in and fully committed to this region.”

This sounds exactly as it does – unconvincing, and more like an excuse. Most of the ASEAN leaders, through their actual actions, hinted that they would not accept such a disdainful attitude towards their summit.

The Obama administration upgraded Washington’s relationship with ASEAN to a strategic partnership and had a very clear set of guidelines and measures. The relations were very close at the time between Washington and ASEAN, something that has been reversed since Trump took office. This can spell bad news for Trump as ASEAN countries have clearly stated that they do not choose to stand idly by and maintain a neutral attitude in the strategic game between China and the U.S. This is crucial as Southeast Asian countries have in recent decades carefully balanced diplomacy between China and the U.S. and gained major benefits from this.

If Trump has suffered a diplomatic defeat in Thailand, then China has certainly made a breakthrough in a priority area of ​​its foreign economic diplomacy. The Chinese Premier highlighted during ASEAN that his country is “willing to work with all parties to continue to negotiate and resolve problems.” This is unsurprising as China continue to prove itself to be an initiator of Asian integration, especially through the Belt and Road Initiative.

ASEAN members occupy a special position because of its geographical location, making it not only the starting point of the BRI, but also an important military bridgehead for various maritime tactical missions in China to ensure the safety of domestic merchant ships, tankers, overseas property and citizens.

China has built seaports in Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and Brunei, and billions of dollars in railway paving projects in Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia and Thailand, along with a deep-water port project with a special economic zone, that is to be built in Myanmar. This new network attracts a large amount of capital, but it requires flexible and modern state management.

Despite differing opinions on the BRI within ASEAN, China’s total investment in Southeast Asia continues to grow as it did in the past: in the first half of 2019, China’s total investment had reached $11 billion. This is especially crucial for undeveloped countries in the region like Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, while for more developed countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, the BRI is accelerating industrialization. Effectively this means that China wields great economic influence in the region at a time that Southeast Asians believe that Trump snubbed them.

By significantly developing Southeast Asia and actively attending ASEAN summits with high-level representation, China will only improve its image in the region. This is especially crucial as Trump has proven that Washington has no active desire to engage in platforms aimed at planning and developing Southeast Asia’s future, unless it is conducted through platforms organized and initiated by the U.S. This will prove not to be popular as Southeast Asians would prefer to engage in platforms created by them and for them, with active participation of growing global and regional powers like China, Russia, India and Japan. The Southeast Asian snub will undoubtably impact negatively on Washington’s Indo-Pacific Strategy as it loses favour with states that are more-or-less neutral in the Great Power struggles between the U.S. and China.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies and a frequent contributor to Global Research

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Who coined the term anti-vaccine or anti-vaxx? The derogatory term “anti-vaxxer,” which has been championed by the media and the medical industry’s experts who function as the media’s talking heads, are merely people who question the efficacy and safety of a heavy-loaded vaccination schedule for children. And this does not represent a small group of dissident individuals and parents. Rather it represents hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, of people in the US alone.

We might consider mainstream news sources, such as the New York Times, once a highly respected newspaper, now becoming a propaganda vehicle for “manufacturing consent”.  In his book Public Opinion, political journalist Walter Lippmann, coined the expression “the manufacture of consent,” which was later further elaborated upon by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their critically acclaimed book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media published in 1988. They define the mass corporate media as “effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions and self-censorship, and without overt coercion.” Herman and Chomsky’s insights remain every bit as relevant today for understanding the hidden motivations in today’s media to promulgate the official medical establishment’s vaccine doctrine and to demonize its opponents as they were over three decades ago for manufacturing consent to get Americans’ support behind the Cold War.

The media refuses to accept that those who have been vaccine damaged, or who have children who will suffer for the remainder of their lives from adverse vaccine events, have a legitimate right to speak their truth rather than being labeled as hysterical or crazy. All of these individuals and parents were pro-vaccine until they or their child became vaccine-injured. Similarly we saw the New York Times manufacturing consent for accepting falsehoods that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. And this was true across the mainstream outlets including the Washington Post, Fox, MSNBC, CNN and others.  The Times fabricated that rationale to the public on behalf of the neo-cons in the Bush administration who were determined to have a war. None of the journalists publishing these lies have taken responsibility nor lost a night’s sleep because their fakery led to the death of millions.

Similarly the CDC and the media, which has drunk the vaccine regime’s Kool Aid, is attempting to cast a net around those who oppose their authority by labeling them anti-vaxxers.  It is not unlike being opposed to our invasions in Iraq, Libya and Syria and then being accused of being undemocratic and opposed to freedom because that is the moniker the government promoted to initiate its wars and foment regime change.  The logic is completely reversed in order to generate and execute a faux public consensus.

Unlike the theatrical charade of America’s political discourse, when narrative directly impacts government-supported private financial interests, such as the pharmaceutical industry sales, then open freedom of speech and debate are smothered. According to Herman-Chomsky,

“the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow a very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views.”

This strategy works, according to Herman-Chomsky, when people believe they are actively engaged in the democratic process. However, for controversial issues that directly discredit industries that economically rely upon science, such as genetically modified crops, agricultural pesticides, and pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, the public has no voice. Rather opposition is ridiculed and consent is manufactured in the shadows and through a wide network of media and internet resources to reach the public’s ears.

There is perhaps no other area of so-called scientific progress that has relied upon more deceptive and misleading research and a distortion of facts and statistics than in modern medicine’s religious belief in vaccines as a miracle to protect the world’s population from infectious diseases.  The distortion and exclusion of scientific evidence, the reliance upon cherry-picked studies and blatant corruption behind the vaccine research to further vaccination campaigns and compliance inquisitorial assaults on the medical voices of reason who demand honest and open dialogue about vaccine safety and efficacy has turned into a media war.

Popular scientific consensus has yet to tackle the growing uncertainty gap to identify the most probable causes of childhood neurological disorders and increasing rates in asthma, allergies and autoimmune conditions, including the role that toxic vaccine ingredients such as adjuvant aluminum compounds may play in these epidemics. According to Dr. Stephanie Seneff at MIT, the autism rate can be projected to reach 1 in 2 boys in the next five years.  Unfortunately the Vaccine Deep State is silent over this urgent debate. And even with all the scientific evidence, the mass media continues to parrot the CDC’s mantra that there is no further debate to be pursued as to whether vaccines contribute to neuro-developmental disorders.

If you have read the opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post or listen to television commentators, you will be left with the impression that there are no evidence-based facts to offer a legitimate challenge to the assumption that all vaccines are effective and safe. Nevertheless there is a large group of board certified pediatricians, immunologists, toxicologists and research scientists who have reviewed volumes of peer-reviewed literature to support their criticisms of what the media wants us to believe. But you will never see anyone from this group cited in mainstream publications or invited on multimedia.  Rather, the media has created the illusion that only a small group of activist parents and renegade physicians oppose vaccines. In turn, they are attacked with the unfounded charge that they put society’s health at risk.

One recent example occurred in Israel. Prof. Yehuda Shoenfeld is one of the most respected immunologists in Israel who now heads a center for autoimmune diseases at Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest hospital. He is also a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and serves on the editorial board of dozens of medical journals.  Some regard him as “one of the most prominent world experts in autoimmunity.” But now he is being viciously attacked by a group of Israeli doctors who accuse him of being a danger to public health because he has questioned vaccine safety.  This group wants Dr. Shoenfeld silenced because he has written extensively on the role of aluminum adjuvants leading to a condition he has called “autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants” or ASIA. Not surprisingly, much of the assault against Dr. Shoenfeld is being fueled by the Vaccine Deep State in the US, primarily by two of the media’s pro-vaccine poster children, Dr. Paul Offit at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and his partner in vaccine propaganda law professor Dorit Reiss at the University of California. Reiss also blogs her opinions to discredit anti-vaccine voices for the Times of Israel and has contributed to fomenting opposition to Dr. Shoenfeld.  She is also one of the leading legal supporters for California’s regressive vaccine mandates.  Both Offit and Reiss are advocating for Dr. Shoenfeld’s removal from his hospital position and his sitting on medical journal boards.

Dr. Shoenfeld is an example of what happens to any scientist, physician and even journalist who questions vaccination. Therefore, how can we trust anything written about vaccines in the mainstream media? That is the conundrum.

We can ask journalists six basic questions to determine their journalist integrity and honesty.

1) Have you interviewed the leading vaccines critics within the medical community?

2) Have you honestly investigated the scientific literature to review the toxicological evidence about vaccines’ harmful effects?

3) Have you reviewed the actual transcripts of the CDC’s senior immunologist Dr. William Thompson who provided evidence that the MMR is associated with autism yet this was systematically covered up by the agency.

4) Have you reviewed Robert Kennedy Jr’s release of the Simpsonwood meeting transcripts that provided conclusive evidence that the CDC’s own research showed a vaccine mercury-autism connection and this too was intentionally concealed from Congress and the public

5) Have you reviewed the politics behind the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and the subsequent Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to understand how the pharmaceutical industry received a pass to avoid being held legally accountable for vaccine injuries.

6) Have you interviewed and sought documentation from any of the following medical doctors and researchers Drs. Suzanne Humphries, Nancy Banks, Brian Hooker, Lucija Tomljenovic, Lawrence Palevsky, Christopher Exley, Tetyana Obukhanych, among many others  Each of these individuals were pro-vaccine before that found reason to explore the actual published science.

This is only the beginning of what needs to be done before citing or interviewing any the most ardent pro-vaccine advocates such as Paul Offit, Senator Richard Pen or Dorit Reiss. And we have yet to find any mainstream journalist whatsoever who has made an effort to investigate any of the above.

To sustain the nation’s vaccination rates, to preserve corporate profits, and to keep Americans convinced that vaccines will protect their children from infectious illnesses, the CDC requires a dynamic marketing and public relations apparatus.

The tentacles of the government’s health agencies are not only wrapped around the mainstream media but also the entertainment industry.

Unknown to the general public and many in the medical profession is the existence of the CDC’s sophisticated public relations operations. Tax dollars are spent to train journalists to defend  the federal agencies’ and pharmaceutical industry’s national and state vaccine agendas.

This broad network of journalists are employed by mainstream media companies, magazines and newspapers, and freelancers and provide the CDC with a virtual army of publicists to propagandize its message. Threats, fear mongering, and outright hatred written towards vaccine opponents are commonplace in the mainstream journalism’s narratives. What they all share in common is a glaring ignorance or denial of an enormous body of scientific literature that calls the CDC’s lies and deception about vaccine safety into question.

One vehicle for manufacturing consent is the CDC-Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) joint fellowship program. Scores of health editors, writers and reporters throughout the nation’s leading media corporations and publications—MSNBC, NPR, New York Times, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle to name a few on the fellowship’s webpage—have passed through the CDC’s Atlanta campus for a week’s worth of intense instruction in national public health policy. According to the AHCJ’s fellowship information, journalists are indoctrinated in conventional federal health policies regarding epidemiology, global disease prevention, pandemic flu preparedness, vaccine safety and autism. They also receive training in “navigating databases such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey and CDC publications” to assist their research and writing. Afterwards journalists return to their publications to propagandize the CDC’s ideological talking points to increase vaccination compliance and receive notices and pre-written scripts about stories to report for their news outlets.

The CDC’s close relationship with the media has been in place for at least two decades. For example, during the 2004 National Influenza Vaccine Summit, then director of Media Relations at the CDC and spokesperson for the National Immunization Program, Glen Nowak, presented the agency’s “Seven Step Recipe for Generating Interest In and Demand for Flu Vaccination.” His Powerpoint presentation outlines a concise public relations campaign, along a timeline covering the flu season, for journalists and media agencies to follow for the sole purpose of increasing flu vaccination rates. The outline includes specific periods during the flu season when the media is recommended to induce and increase public fears about the pending dangers of influenza and even possible death.

In defense of the CDC’s PR efforts, Nowak publicly stated on National Public Radio that the vaccine

“manufacturers were telling us [CDC] that they weren’t receiving a lot of orders of vaccine for use… It really did look like we needed to do something to encourage people to get a flu shot.”

Five years later, during the H1N1 swine flu non-epidemic, we observed and reported how the CDC’s flu propaganda storyline recommendations continue to be put into practice to the letter by the New York Times, Washington Post and almost every large television news network.[1]

These operations are not limited to news firms. There is another organization that has remained relatively hidden from the public’s eye that targets the entertainment world: Hollywood Health and Society (HHS). HHS is headquartered at the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications. According to its website, HHS “provides entertainment industry professionals with accurate timely information on health storylines.”  It delivers consultation, writers and scripts for television, Hollywood films and documentaries. And who offers this expert consultation? HHS’ top funders, including the CDC, the National Cancer Institute, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the world’s largest private financial source for vaccine development and propaganda the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

HHS’s mission states:

In partnership with our funding agencies, we offer several resources, including quick facts, briefings and consultations with experts, case examples, panel discussions about timely health issues, a quarterly newsletter with health updates called “Real to Reel,” and an expanding list of tip sheets written specifically for writers and producers. Tip sheets are available on the CDC website, as well as the NCI website. The broad range of topics includes influenza, toxic mold, smallpox, cancer, autism, motor vehicle crashes, obesity, adolescent health issues, antibiotic resistance, clinical trials and much more.

Unbeknownst to many, even the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) has publicly come to the defense of the vaccine manufacturers and continues to publish articles that denigrate vaccine hesitancy. During the misperceived Swine Flu threat in 2009, the Council took an active role to breed public fear about the epidemic that never happened in order to push more flu vaccines. The organization’s Global Health program has worked closely with Bill Gates’ Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).  More recently CFR member Claire Felter has taken the World Health Organization’s talking points to charge the “anti-vaccination movement” with “threaten[ing] to undo years of progress made against a range of preventable diseases.”

As with the major players in any Deep State, hypocrisy often runs rampant. Embracing a strong anti-China position regarding that nation’s Communist government, the CFR has challenged the Chinese government’s legitimacy after riots over the administration of “substandard” vaccines that turned violent. Yet, at no time do we find the CFR raising questions about the exponential rise in autism and childhood neurological disorders in the US and our government’s utter neglect and failure to honestly investigate the causes behind this epidemic that is destroying more families than recent measles outbreaks ever could.

This undoubtedly raises the question, why in the world is the CFR involved in the vaccine business? Besides the CFR’s commitment to the WHO’s global health agenda, among the Council’s corporate members are three of the five largest pharmaceutical companies, each a major force in the vaccine industry.

Over the years, the CFR has functioned as an effective incubator for forging alliances between large multinational corporations and governmental and multilateral agencies.  Obama’s cabinet, for example, was packed with CFR members, who contributed to the signing of the DARK Act to squash states’ efforts to label Genetically Modified foods.

For those who are vaccine-hesitant, one of the most frustrating concerns is legislative complacency at every level of the government — the White House, Congress, and throughout the nation’s federal health agencies — to make concerted efforts to invest in the most serious questions of the vaccine safety debate.  Although many Trump supporters believed that once president he would address the plight of parents with vaccine-injured children, it came as no surprise that he would back-peddle 180 degrees.  In the aftermath of the measles outbreak, Trump adopted the Vaccine Deep State’s agenda when he told CNN,

“They [children] have to get the shots. The vaccinations are so important. This is really going around now. They have to get their shots.”

There is utter silence in Washington about the long-term consequences of where the American population is headed as more and more vaccines get added to the CDC’s vaccine schedule. Scientific denialism is rampant and  the nation’s vaccination policies are criminally medieval, based upon faith rather than reason. This includes efforts to fund independent studies to confirm or negate many of the more disturbing conclusions found in much of the peer-reviewed literature. Among them are:

1)  The role of rising toxic levels of aluminum adjuvants in fully vaccinated children with neuro-development disorders compared to unvaccinated children. The Vaccine Deep State categorically denies that aluminum in vaccines has any role. More disturbing, our federal health officials have been fully warned by experts in this field. In his How to End the Autism Epidemic, attorney JB Handley provides excerpts of letters sent by three of the top researchers in aluminum toxicity to the CDC, FDA and National Institutes of Health:

Prof. Christopher Exley (Keele University in the UK): “I am an expert in the field of aluminum adjuvants and aluminum toxicity. I have been working in this field for more than 30 years during which time I have written in excess of 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications on this subject… I solemnly declare that more research on the role of aluminum adjuvant in vaccines and neurological disorders, including ASD, is essential and urgently required.”

Dr. Romain Gherardi (University of Paris): “I am an expert in the field of aluminum adjuvant toxicity in humans and animal models. I have been working in this field since the initial description of aluminum vaccine-induced macrophagic myofascitis in 1998. Since that time I have written 40 peer-reviewed scientific publications and one book on this subject. I strongly support the contention that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines may have a role in the etiology of autism spectrum disorder.”

Dr. Christopher Shaw (University of British Columbia): “We have studied the impact of aluminum adjuvants in animal models of neurological disease, including autism spectrum disorder… These studies and the broader existing literature regarding aluminum toxicity lead almost invariably to the conclusion that aluminum in any chemical form is always neurotoxic when administered in humans. Further I am convinced that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines may contribute to neurological disorders across the lifespan… it is my belief that the CDC’s claim on its website that “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism” is wholly unsupported.”

2) The CDC and FDA do not require vaccine makers to test vaccines against scientifically viable placebo controls with an inert substance such as saline solution. Rather all clinical trials test the vaccine against a false-placebo that includes toxic ingredients such as aluminum adjuvant, polysorbate 80, genetically modified yeast that had never been tested separately for safety, etc, minus the viral component. The exception is Gardasil which tested the vaccine against 2 placebos, one being saline. However, their final results provided to the FDA for licensure combined the two placebos to mask the increase in adverse effects.

3) After many petitions, and even recommendations from Congressional subcommittees convening to study the autism epidemic, the CDC continues to refuse to fund independent studies comparing the quality of health between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. Clearly, if there was nothing to hide and vaccines are perfectly safe, this would be a slam dunk study to silence vaccine opposition. Such studies have been done independently and outside the Vaccine Deep State.  The non-profit group Generation Rescue in collaboration with the notable opinion poll organization, SurveyUSA, completed a survey of 11,817 households, representing over 17,600 children to compare the rates of various neurological disorders, as well as asthma and childhood diabetes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children.  For all vaccinated boys from 4-17 years, there were increases of 155 percent for neurological disorders, 224 percent for ADHD, and 61 percent for autism among the vaccinated. For all boys and girls, there was a 120 percent increase in asthma among those vaccinated.

4)  An entire reevaluation of the herd immunity theory is urgent. The herd theory, the belief that if a sufficient percent of a population is vaccinated then a given infectious disease can be eradicated, has never been scientifically confirmed to be valid.

Swedish television reported that in 2014 the Council of Foreign Relations accidentally released a report identifying those developed countries with the highest rates of disease outbreaks. The Council’s report found that the most highly vaccinated populations are also those with the greatest number of outbreaks for those same infectious diseases.  This was especially the case for measles, mumps, rubella, polio and pertussis outbreaks.  The US, Canada, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand, and Japan—each with the highest number of mandated vaccines—led the list of nations. The Office of Medical and Scientific Justice, which analyzed the report, concluded that the Council’s report clearly suggests the theory of “herd immunity” is failing or was flawed to begin with.  Given the repeated incidences of infectious outbreaks in populations with 94% or more vaccine compliance, and the emergence of new viral strains, the concept of herd immunity should be forgotten. The Office offers several possibilities to explain the report: 1) vaccines are increasingly becoming ineffective and causing “immune dysfunction,” and 2) “vaccine antigen responses” may be reprogramming viruses while weakening the immune systems of the most vaccinated individuals.

Earlier, a far greater blow against the efficacy of the measles vaccine came when Dr. Gregory Poland, Editor in Chief of the journal Vaccine and founder of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group, published a surprising statement that the measles vaccine has a poor record of efficacy. Despite the high 95-plus percent measles vaccination compliance of children entering kindergarten, and the CDC’s propaganda that the vaccine has defeated the virus, measles outbreaks are rising. Dr. Poland does not believe this is due to unvaccinated individuals but rather the failure of the vaccine.

Another example is in Mississippi, with the highest vaccination rate in the country. The state has shown significant increases in whooping cough cases, with only 9% of those infected being unvaccinated.  Across the nation, the most highly infected are those who have received three or more pertussis shots and boosters. Several years ago the Australian government’s National Center for Immunization and Research of Vaccine Preventable Diseases found that the pertussis vaccine’s effectiveness is waning far more rapidly than expected.

5) The life-threatening failures of the FDA fast-tracking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. The pharmaceutical industry loves fast-tracked approvals because the necessary clinical trials do not require any long-term clinical effects from human trials. Only studies on “surrogate markers” are reviewed; these are short-term observations on whether there is any sign of a drug or vaccine being effective. Besides, such trials are invariably far cheaper than larger long-term studies so there is considerable cost savings. Last year set a record with 73 percent of newly approved drugs having been fast-tracked. There are many dozens of examples of these drugs eventually being removed from the market or being given black box warnings for severe risks noted only after the products’ release.

The National Women’s Health Network conducted a study to record the rates of drug makers completing the necessary efficacy and safety trials following their drugs being fast-tracked through the regulatory system. The study’s conclusions were that 58 percent of fast-tracked products only had a follow up clinical trial(s) after five or more years delay. Some didn’t have any follow up studies performed.

The worst case of a vaccine being fast-tracked is Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil. Rushing this vaccine through the regulatory hurdles is an example of gross neglect. During the clinical trials 2.3 percent of the girl enrollees came down with autoimmune illnesses up to seven months after receiving the vaccine. Seventeen girls died; nevertheless without any compelling evidence the CDC states none of these deaths were due to the vaccine. Gardasil was fast-tracked nonetheless without further investigations. According to Robert Kennedy Jr’s calculations, one hundred times more Gardasil recipients are “more likely to suffer serious adverse events from the vaccine than they are to be protected from cervical cancer.” In addition, Kennedy observed,

“Many of these diseases were serious diseases—blood lymphatic diseases, anemia, endocrine diseases, autoimmune diseases, G.I., Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, vaginal infections musculoskeletal injuries, arthritis, neoplasm, Hodgkin’s disease, neurological diseases, psychiatric diseases, depression, reproductive and breast disorders, menstrual irregularities, and pain. Over 3 percent of the girls—1 in 30—in both groups required surgical and medical procedures.”

6)  The epidemic of industry conflicts of interest in studies relied upon by the CDC’s vaccine advisory bodies for setting its vaccination schedule and policies. The pharmaceutical industry spent its largest amount in a single year on lobbying in 2018, $228 million. There are over 1,400 Big Pharma lobbyists in Washington and over 64 percent of these are former government employees.

The CDC is essentially being controlled by the drug industry. Health Impact News reported that former CDC head Julie Gerberding, who was in charge of the agency between 2002 to 2009 when the thimerosal-autism controversy was at its height and during the period Merck’s Gardasil was fast-tracked for approval, started to systematically overhaul the entire agency upon her arrival. During her tenure many of the CDC’s senior scientists resigned. The opened positions were promptly filled with people holding close ties to the vaccine industry.  After Obama fired Gerberding, she shortly thereafter found herself as president of Merck’s vaccine division.  Merck manufactures 14 of the 17 vaccines on the childhood vaccination schedule and 9 of the 10 vaccines recommended for adults.

7)  The CDC is essentially a corporation profiting from the vaccine business. Robert Kennedy Jr has called the CDC “a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical industry.” According to Dr. Frank Anders, former Command Surgeon of the US Army Special Operations Command in Africa, “the power and money these pharmaceutical companies wield [on the FDA and CDC] is awesome.”[2]

It is estimated the agency earns over $4 billion from vaccines. According to the website Law Firms, the members on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices cumulatively own 56 vaccine-related patents; the CDC itself owns over 20 patents that are licensed out to private companies. Kennedy notes that “Congressman Dave Weldon has pointed out that the primary metric for success across the CDC is how many vaccines the agency sells and how successfully the agency expands its vaccine program—regardless of any negative effects on human health.”

The push to mandate the HPV vaccine ignores the statistics in other nations that clearly show an increase in cervical cancer since the introduction of the vaccine. The vaccine was introduced in Australia and the UK in 2006 and 2008 respectively; in both nations, cancer rates have increased substantially. Back in 2006, the Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee warned that the vaccine might increase the risk of cervical lesions and cancer. That warning has come true; a VARBPAC report estimates a 44 percent greater likelihood of cervical lesions among Gardasil recipients.

Efforts to legislate bills for implementing the HPV vaccine started almost immediately after the vaccine was approved, according to a University of Virginia study on the history of HPV legislation. This included a large publicity campaign to make parents fearful of the risks of cervical cancer, public financing, and attempts through the American Legislation Exchange Council (ALEC) to get the vaccine admitted into state’s required vaccination schedules. Similarly, a Harvard investigation into the Gardasil vaccine’s maker Merck’s role in immunization policy-making uncovered that the company was in fact drafting the legislation to mandate the vaccine. It also made special efforts to target women legislators and physicians to assist in consumer marketing campaigns. Merck’s lobbying activities in Washington have always been among the most aggressive on K Street.  Virginia was one of the first states to enact a statewide school entry mandate for the HPV vaccine; yet five years later, a Medical University of South Carolina analysis found that the mandate had no impact whatsoever on overall compliance.

8) Gross malfeasance and potential crimes committed by the CDC to cover-up and destroy documentation showing an autism-vaccine association. The most egregious example was exposed by the CDC’s senior immunologist Dr. William Thompson who released thousands of pages of confidential documents to Congress proving that the agency concealed and shredded research data showing that the MMR vaccine increased rates of autism among African American boys. The CDC’s influence and power over the Congress has prevented this case from reaching a congressional investigation.

Recently the US’s National Vaccine Program has released a new strategic report to initiate a National Adult Immunization Plan as part of its Healthy People 2020 objectives. One of the barriers the Program faces is overcoming legal barriers at the state levels and the growing skepticism about vaccine safety and effectiveness. If implemented, this would be a national policy that would override the individual state laws, for example laws for medical, religious and philosophical exemption. The ramifications of such a Plan at the federal level could be catastrophic and have an enormous adverse economic impact. It has the potential to enforce vaccination compliance through applying for a drivers license or a passport, receiving welfare benefits or Medicare/Medicaid, etc. Supporters of the Plan are a literal who’s who of the Vaccine Deep State, including 20 federal health agencies, the Department of Defense, Homeland Securities, the Department of Justice, Veterans Affairs, and a multitude of non-government stakeholders in the vaccine industry, academic institutions, professional medical associations, community and patient advocacy organizations, insurance providers, and the mainstream media.  In other words, if this become law at the federal level every American adult will be subjected to a series of mandatory vaccines.

Google, as well as its co-collaborator Wikipedia — a primary source of medical misinformation — will inevitably play a critical role in Vaccine Deep State’s efforts to implement the CDC’s immunization strategy. This includes employing Google’s Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) to manufacture consent through behavior modification. This would be parallel to the mainstream media that is already controlled by the Vaccine Deep State. In fact, this effort, according to Sayer Ji at GreenMedInfo, is already underway. Google’s manipulation of search terms generates “suggestions” to users that “anti-vaxxers are burdening the economy” and “HPV vaccines are safe for your child.”

For an investigative journalist, who may sincerely care about exposing truthful stories on important health issues, Wikipedia’s treatment of vaccination is also engaged in manufacturing consent. Jimmy Wales deludes himself into believing he and his organizations represent truth in the war against fake news. Contrary to all of the science and facts presented above in this article, none of which can be successfully edited into Wikipedia’s pages, the encyclopedia is another player in the Vaccine Deep State. At this moment, California, New York and other states are aggressively stripping away our Constitutional freedoms in order to mandate vaccines under the ruse that it serves the public good. The science supporting the evidence that vaccine efficacy is waning, that many of the infectious outbreaks being reported include a high percentage of fully or partially vaccinated persons, and that vaccines are contributing to many of the epidemics ravaging American children is categorically ignored. We expect our politicians, public health officials and the media to be deeply concerned about whether something we put into our body may be potentially lethal. Since according to the Supreme Court’s own terminology, every vaccine is “unavoidably unsafe,” should we not be demanding a moratorium on all future vaccine mandate proposals and repeal those already in effect, until such time that independent gold standard clinical trials are conducted. In effect we are demanding that the cautionary principle be applied to vaccines. As we have shown above, such trials have never been performed on any vaccine currently in the CDC’s immunization schedule. Nor have any comprehensive studies been conducted to compare the overall health between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. Of course, for the Vaccine Deep State to reach its goals, efforts for truth-finding are anathema because it will inevitably prove its propaganda erroneous and very likely illegal.

Deep states are in effect totalitarian. Totalitarian regimes are more than structures of governance ruled over by narcissistic, psychopathic despots. These states appoint very bright and charismatic people into high positions of authority in order to keep the regimes’ propaganda and lies alive for an uninformed public.  They also require an obedient mass media apparatus of indoctrinated or crony journalists and writers who can counter and discredit oppositional voices and groups on rapid notice in order to manufacture consent. Sadly this is the state of today’s American medical establishment that no longer tolerates vaccination dissention and alternative science that challenges its cherished dogma.  And this is most clearly observed in   federal protection of bad vaccine science. This suppressive edifice that shares all the characteristics of an institutional deep state is unlikely to disappear anytime in the near future.  Only an informed and better educated citizenry motivated to express public indignation will lead to efforts to hold every federal health official accountable.

The Vaccine Deep State poses very serious threats because its serves private interests instead of the public. It is irrational and bases its agenda more on wishful-thinking than sound evidence-based medicine. Dr. Emmett Miller is one of the original pioneers in Mind-Body Medicine. In his book, Our Culture on the Couch, he writes, “One of the remarkable facts about the human brain, is that when it finds itself faced with two equally varied but seemingly incompatible interpretations or perceptions it tends to suppress one of the interpretations to make it invisible — then take the other interpretation as the ‘truth’. Then, rather than deal with cognitive dissonance,” Dr. Miller says, “it will rationalize and defend its position to the point of absurdity.” Hence the entire concept of vaccine effectiveness and safety as the first course of disease prevention is itself an example of Dr. Miller’s cognitive dissonance. They suppress the truth and fully support the lie.

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

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

Notes

 [1]  Richard Gale and Gary Null. “The Public Relations Machine for the Vaccine Complex.” Progressive Radio Network, October 7, 2009

 [2] see Gale R, Null G “Vaccination: Federal Health Agencies Continue to Deceive Americans” Global Research. November 13, 2009

In these unprecedented economic times, the world is experiencing as a whole what most of the so-called “developing” countries have experienced over the past several decades. For a nuanced examination of the intricacies of the global political-economic landscape and the power players within it, pick up your copy of:

The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order
by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky takes the reader through an examination of how the World Bank and IMF have been the greatest purveyors of poverty around the world, despite their rhetorical claims to the opposite. These institutions, representing the powerful Western nations and the financial interests that dominate them, spread social apartheid around the world, exploiting both the people and the resources of the vast majority of the world’s population.

As Chossudovsky examines in this updated edition, often the programs of these international financial institutions go hand-in-hand with covert military and intelligence operations undertaken by powerful Western nations with an objective to destabilize, control, destroy and dominate nations and people, such as in the cases of Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

To understand what role these international organizations play today, being pushed to the front lines and given unprecedented power and scope as ever before to manage the global economic crisis, one must understand from whence they came. This book provides a detailed, exploratory, readable and multi-faceted examination of these institutions and actors as agents of the ‘New World Order,’ for which they advance the ‘Globalization of Poverty.’

The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order

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CLICK HERE FOR A SPECIAL INSIDE LOOK AT THE PREFACE

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca. He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

I’m in Homs on my sixth visit to this vibrant city since May 2016 as an independent, self-funded activist and social media amateur journalist.

Since peace and stability have been restored and life is returning, the “professional news media” is absent. As usual, they miss the real story.

But they were here en masse when the US and allies were sponsoring numerous “rebel” armed groups – you know the headchopping mercenary jihadis that the “professional” journalists proclaimed as “freedom fighters”.

Like the Omar Farouk Brigade whose commander cannibalized a Syrian soldier killed defending his homeland from the terrorist hordes armed and funded by the “leaders of the free world.”

Like the US created and supported Free Syrian Army that US Ambassador Robert Ford made sure got American money, advanced weapons, and intelligence that was just a front to get the money, weapons and intelligence to al Qaeda here (called al Nusra in Syria).

Like the terrorist group’s Marie Colvin was sent to white wash as “heroic resisters” who kidnapped and butchered thousands of civilians. Colvin was killed here. Many thousands of people in Homs were slaughtered by those armed groups Colvin was a propagandist for.

Ah, but those days are gone. The bombs – mortars, suicide bombers, car bombs etc by the “rebels” ripping school children, shoppers, all the people apart, as well as the shelling by the legitimate army of the legitimate government of the sovereign nation of Syria in their efforts to defeat the terrorist proxies paid to destroy their country – are gone.

The kidnappings have gone. Gone are the days when you could be grabbed off the street and held for ransom. And while your family struggled to sell everything they had to pay the ransom, the “freedom fighters” would be torturing you. If your family couldn’t raise the money, well you’d be carved up and the pieces of your body left in the main roads.

Gone are the snipers, the “freedom and democracy” sharp shooters stationed in tall buildings who targeted people on the roads in cars and buses or trying to walk to work.

All gone. And so are the “real” journalists.

But the real story those real journalists are missing is here, right now, in Homs. That’s the story of what happened after the Syrian Army liberated this place.

Half the city’s buildings are gone and so are many of its people.

The ones who remain though, who have returned, who have worked so hard while suffering so much to revive their futures are the ones I’ve come to learn from in my beloved Homs.

To paraphrase the old antiwar song, “Where have all the flowers gone” here is my version:

Where have all the journos gone
Long time passing
Gone to sell the next war every one
When will they ever learn
When will they ever learn?

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Featured image is from Eva Bartlett

The global Sikh community is celebrating the opening of the Kartarpur Corridor on 9 November that will create an international pilgrimage route from India to the nearby Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur in Pakistan where the founder of the world’s fifth-largest religion passed away, which will open just in time to commemorate the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak’s death and is occurring in the context of this community’s rising political consciousness that’s increasingly taking the form of peaceful Khalistani separatism from Indian Punjab through the Sikhs For Justice’s planned referendum on this issue next year.

“[T]here is no friendship when nations are not equal, when one has to obey another and when one only dominates another.” Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India Closing Speech at the Asian-African Conference, Bandung, 1955

Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA), the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and Millennium Challenge Compact (MCC) are agreements integral to US national security and self-defense strategies, whose goal is “American Self-Preservation,” an ideology incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations and international law. 

MCC, crude and dogmatic alignment with US National Security Strategy

A clarification of MCC’s role in America’s national security and ‘self-defense’ strategies is required. The alignment is crude and dogmatic, designed to advance US influence globally and secure allies and partners by imposing upon developing countries, mostly those branded “failed states,” fundamental political, legal and economic reform of the state apparatus and a ‘rule of law’ that benefits US interests in the long-term.

MCC’s central role was ‘codified’ in the 2002 NationalSecurity Strategy of US President George W. Bush, which for the first time contained the controversial doctrine of ‘pre-emptive’ war. It elevated development aid to the level of defense and diplomacy as one of the three pillars of the global “War on Terror.” The current President’s 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) links US military strategies to the imperative of political and economic reform, claiming consolidation of its “military victories” were made possible only by “political and economic triumphs built on market economies and fair trade, democratic principles, and shared security partnerships”.

One of the most novel and coercive features of MCC is the ‘pre-emptive’ method used to administer aid – it “will reward countries that have demonstrated real policy change and challenge those that have not to implement reform.” Before receiving aid, the country must successfully pass 16 eligibility criteria devised by the Bush Administration ranging from civil liberties to ‘days to start a business.’ In a March 2018 speech on US-Africa relations, the then US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, described the coercive essence of MCC that goes far above and beyond the particular project targeted. Referring to a $524 million compact signed with Cote d’Ivoire to improve its education and transportation sectors, Tillerson declared,

“This was only possible after the country had implemented policies to strengthen economic freedom, democratic principles, human rights, and to fight corruption. Spurring reforms before a dollar of U.S. taxpayer money is even spent is the MCC’s model.”

The 2017 National Security Strategy reaffirms MCC as a coercive tool to bring “fragile” and developing countries under America’s influence to counter Russia and China, by achieving radical transformation of the recipient State, based on free-market principles, privatization, and good governance: “We already do this through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which selects countries that are committed to reform and then monitors and evaluates their projects.” MCC is “a model to achieve greater connectivity” in the so-called Indo-Pacific. 

It is notable that unlike the MCC of the Bush era, the Trump Administration will no longer provide MCC “assistance” in the form of “grants,” but “loans.”

American self-preservation and the right of self-defense

The US-Sri Lanka ‘defense’ agreements, which logically flow from the infamous US-led Human Rights Council resolution 30/1, are explicit recognition by the Ranil Wickramasinghe regime of America’s global leadership and its hegemonic status, which commit the country to a global unilateral system for America’s ‘self defense’.

The US view of ‘self-defense’ is rooted in ‘self-preservation’ and not on some reciprocal relationship between equal subjects of international law, but on combatting a threat to its own interests. It is based on the ideology of ‘American Exceptionalism’ that arrogates to itself exclusive prerogatives and special responsibilities for global governance, which continue to guide US national security and defense strategies. The US President’s 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) and the 2019 Indo-Pacific Strategy Report (IPSR), both affirm US global leadership “is grounded in the realization that American principles are a lasting force for good in the world.”

The notion of American Exceptionalism was best expressed by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright,

“If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.“

In May 2015, the then US Secretary of State, John Kerry, claimed America’s leadership of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ “because we have a strong economy and an ability to be able to project”. It is the worldview of a global hegemon that sees itself destined by divine providence for full-spectrum domination – air, maritime, land, outer space, and cyberspace, and full-spectrum force (2017 NSS).

Historically, “self-preservation” and “self-defense” was used by Nazi Germany to occupy neutral Belgium, neutral Norway, neutral Netherlands, neutral Denmark, neutral Luxembourg, and Poland.

Doctrine of pre-emptive, preventive wars

The 2002 US National Security Strategy (NSS) under President Bush introduced the controversial doctrine of pre-emptive and preventive war, using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a pretext, which provided the new enemy in the form of terrorism. The existence of terrorists, described as “the unknown unknown,” by the then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, served to justify a unilateral right to pre-emptive and preventive use of force in ‘self-defense’ against states even before an “armed attack” occur. The US argument was an act of violence by the terrorists amounted to an “armed attack.”

In Afghanistan, for 18 years, the US continues to claim self-defense, extending the right to preventing the return to power of the Taliban. Such unilateral intervention is expressly forbidden by the UN Charter and unequivocally rejected by both the International Court of Justice and the Security Council.

The US justifies the illegal act by an abusive interpretation of “the right of self-defense” in Art. 51 of the UN Charter, the only exception in the Charter to the use of unilateral force. Contrary to US claims, however, self-defense under the Art. 51 is permitted only under narrowly defined conditions: (a) it is an “armed attack”; (b) the armed attack actually “occurs,” and is not just an imminent or potential “threat”; (c) the state using force was the object of an attack on its own territory, not elsewhere, as a sine qua non; (d) it is a temporary right “until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security”; (e) it is proportional; (f) it does not affect the authority and primary responsibility of the Security Council; (g) it must be at the request of the victim; (h) the victim must request assistance from the state claiming to act in collective self-defense.

Committing Sri Lanka to the logic of war, not the logic of peace

The 2018 US National Defense Strategy that translates into military terms the strategic objectives outlined in the US President’s 2017 National Security Strategy is based on the indefensible illogical logic that “the surest way to prevent war is to be prepared to win one,” which is antipodal to the logic that drives the UN collective security system – that war must be prevented at all costs to achieve international peace and security. The documents are replete with bellicosity –enhancing  “joint lethality,” “credible combat-forward posture,” “forward force manoeuvre,” “forward deployment”… It is a clarion call to war, but not to any kind of war. It will be a more lethal war – more deadliness, more carnage and more destruction, to be fought together “with a robust constellation of allies and partners.”

It must be recalled that ACSA, SOFA, and MCC are part and parcel of the US concept of a “Free and Open Indo Pacific” (FOIP), a sinister security system whose objective is to impose on countries of two distinct regions and Oceans, a single US-led geographic and geopolitical order founded on rules determined by Washington. The concept not only excludes China from the region as a hostile existential threat to US interests, but is aimed at putting in place “a networked security architecture” under US leadership “to fight and win” a war against China. China as principal adversary is named in the 2017 National Security Strategy, the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, and 2019 Indo-Pacific Strategy Report.

By entering into such US ‘self-defense’ agreements in the context of big power rivalry and the threat of war, the Ranil Wickramasinghe regime is committing Sri Lanka to the logic of war, not the logic of peace, a partner in crime that poses a grave threat to regional and international peace and security and drags Sri Lanka into a war not of its own making.

This warmongering vision of the ‘global’ order is shared by the ruling UNF Presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa as reflected in his 2 October exchange with foreign diplomats at which he outlined his foreign policy objectives not in terms of Sri Lanka’s national interests, but in terms of Washington’s FOIP strategy:“open trade,” “freedom of navigation,” “air and maritime connectivity,” “rules-based world order,” and “violent extremism”.

However, it was unequivocally rejected by Sri Lanka’s opposition party leaders, by letter of 9 August 2019 addressed to the Secretary General of Indian Ocean Rim Association, demanding that the UN Charter-based rule of law be restored in the Indian Ocean by, inter alia, implementing the UN Declaration of the Indian Ocean as Zone of Peace, which designates the Indian Ocean, for all time, as a zone of Peace, together with the airspace above and the ocean floor subjacent thereto.

The Declaration, it must be recalled, was adopted at the initiative of Sri Lanka, joined by Tanzania, backed by the Non-Aligned Movement. While preserving free and unimpeded use of the zone by the vessels, whether military or not, for all nations in accordance with international law, it called on the “great powers” to eliminate from the Indian Ocean “all bases, military installations and logistical supply facilities, the disposition of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction and any manifestation of great power military presence… conceived in the context of great power rivalry,” and halt “further escalation and expansion of their military presence in the Indian Ocean.” The Declaration also calls on littoral and hinterland States, the Permanent Members of the Security Council and other major maritime users of the Indian Ocean to enter into consultations to ensure that, inter alia, “warships and military aircraft would not use the Indian Ocean for any threat or use of force against any littoral or hinterland State.”

Threat to peace and security

Sri Lanka is committing itself not to defending its own national interests, its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, but to combatting threats to “US prosperity and security,” which are named in NSS and NDS as the “revisionist powers” China and Russia, the “rogue regimes” North Korea and Iran, and ‘transnational terrorism.’ None of the countries mentioned pose a threat to Sri Lanka’s national interests. On the contrary, Sri Lanka has excellent relations with all four countries within the framework of the United Nations and close bilateral ties with China, Russia and Iran.

However, the ‘defense’ agreements involve the use of Sri Lanka’s territory, airports, harbours, defense installations, and infrastructure, for transport of military equipment, training and joint operations with Sri Lankan forces, and other activities, known and unknown, to “enhance joint lethality” in preparation for an act of aggression against one or more friendly states in the ‘Indo-Pacific’. In doing so, Sri Lanka will find itself a partner in crime and potential target of reprisal or retaliation, posing a grave threat to Sri Lanka’s security.

It was not so long ago that British occupied Ceylon was targeted by Japanese bombs, during World War II, characterized by the independence movement as an imperialist war, which resulted in the panicked fleeing of civilian population to India by boat. The Japanese military raids also took place on an Easter Sunday, in 1942.

The threat to Sri Lanka’s security will not only come from outside. When US forces are permitted to freely roam the land, in their vehicles, without permission, armed, in uniform and with impunity, Easter Sunday type carnage or protests against US occupation could result in Sri Lanka itself becoming America’s military target in the name of “self-defense”.

Bilateral agreements, inherently unequal 

The so-called “partnership” entered into with Washington is not between equals.

Bilateral agreements between a global hegemonic power and a small developing country heavily indebted to international capital markets dominated by the power and highly dependent on its market for exports, are inherently unequal.

Since the Bush Administration’s ‘War on Terror,’ which coincided with emerging powers challenging US hegemony, it has increasingly resorted to preventive and pre-emptive unilateral interventions imposing decisions on weaker states or to bilateralism with significantly weaker states to establish US-led collective defense systems (or “collective self-defense” systems), which allow Washington to modify international norms and rules or impose decisions not in accordance with international law, thus, retaining its hegemonic status.

ACSA, SOFA and MCC are pre-existing institutional arrangements that are an integral part of the US national security and national defense strategies designed for ‘American Self-Preservation’ to achieve strategic US goals and objectives“grounded in the realization that American principles are a lasting force for good in the world” (US National Security Strategy, 2017). ‘American Self-Preservation’ is rooted not on reciprocal relationships between equal subjects of international law, but on combatting a threat to its own interests. Its sheer hegemonic power makes the principle of reciprocity impracticable in bilateral negotiations with weaker states such as ours, and it is illusory to believe that ACSA, SOFA and MCC can be “re-negotiated” or “amended” for “mutual benefit.”

Historically, bilateralism is associated with the commercial policies of Hitler’s Germany; it is inherently discriminatory in contrast to the system of collective security based on the UN Charter. The US shift to bilateralism is also reflected in its free trade and economic agreements as an important tool to coerce or reward potential allies and partners to support its geopolitical agenda.

International collective security v. US-led collective ‘self-defense’

Washington’s unilateral vision of a US-led global order for ‘American Self-Preservation,’ justified by a divine mission, is diametrically opposed to the universally recognised international order under the UN Charter, based on sovereign equality and international cooperation, respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of states.

Contrary to the US-led collective system for America’s self-defense, the universally recognised collective security system under the UN Charter seeks to prevent war – not make war – to achieve permanent universal peace based on equal rights and justice for all, in accordance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

The UN collective security system is a system without military alliances. It is based on multilateralism, the duty to cooperate, and respect for the principle of sovereign equality of States. It expressly prohibits war, as it does the use of force or the threat of use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state and all forms of foreign interference and intervention in its internal affairs, including by the United Nations. The Charter expressly prohibits any unilateral or preventive action outside of the UN framework.

The primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security lies with the Security Council, with member States agreeing that it acts on their behalf in carrying out its duties. Despite being at the highest level of the international legal hierarchy, the Security Council is required to act in accordance with the Charter, and not violate fundamental norms of international law, customary international law, and treaties, in the accordance with the UN Charter.

The generally binding international law obliges states to resolve any dispute that may endanger international peace and security through peaceful means, firstly by parties seeking a solution through “negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice”. Any member State or non-member may bring such a dispute to the attention of the Security Council or the General Assembly. Legal matters should be brought before the International Court of Justice of which all UN members are ipso facto parties.

The role of regional arrangements is strictly limited to efforts toward pacific settlement of local disputes before referring them to the Security Council. Regional arrangements are forbidden from taking enforcement measures unless authorised by the Security Council.

The use of armed force in the case of collective action is only permitted under the authority and supervision of UN Security Council, and only once it has determined the existence of  “threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression” and that other measures would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate to “maintain or restore international peace and security“.

Non-Aligned Movement and Friendly Relations

The Non-Aligned Movement, of which Sri Lanka is a founder member, has contributed in no small measure to developing the universally recognised principles on which friendly relations and cooperation among states must be based, including the landmark UN Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, which is viewed as an authentic interpretation of the Charter.

The Movement recognised that State sovereignty, sovereign equality and international cooperation are fundamental features of an international order that would permit weaker states to exercise greater leverage over their former colonial masters, and, toward this end, focused every effort to enhancing the role of multilateralism, promoting a new international economic order based on justice and equality, and strengthening the collective security system based on the UN Charter.

The identity of the Non Aligned Movement is not determined by the existence of Great Power rivalry. It reflects the aspirations of newly independent states for an independent stand, based on a shared history and a positive perception of their own identity and views. It is essentially an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist alliance to defend their collective interests, protect their freedom and dignity, prevent the restoration of Western domination, support the struggles of peoples still under foreign domination and occupation, promote the right to development, and advance universal peace.

Their experience had shown that wars and alien domination result only in exploitation, oppression, death and destruction, not peace nor development nor social progress. At all cost, a return to Western domination, recolonisation, and war had to be prevented, and the ambitions of the most influential founders of the Movement was to unite the newly independent states to bring their collective weight to bear on the side of international peace, against war. The Movement opposed military alliances and collective ‘defense’ pacts with Great Powers, especially in the context of rivalry between them, since they would be designed to serve Great Powers interests and allow them to intervene in their internal affairs. Such pacts would only bring them closer to war and destruction, and strengthen the forces of war, not peace.

India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking at the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, energetically opposed US-led collective defence pacts in Asia and the Middle East, including the short-lived anti-Communist Southeast Asia Treaty Organization(SEATO), primarily aimed against China. He argued membership in such pacts would only result in demeaning oneself to a role of “camp-follower of others” and “hangers on,” and lead to the loss of “freedom and individuality”: “It is most degrading and humiliating to any self-respecting people or nation. It is an intolerable thought to me that the great countries of Asia and Africa should come out of bondage into freedom only to degrade themselves or humiliate themselves in this way.” 

The Non-Aligned Movement and the principles on which it is based remain valid in a world that continues to be dominated by wars of aggression, foreign occupation and domination, unilateralism, coercion, intervention and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, and in which the victims are from the global south and the perpetrators, the US and its Western allies.

Sri Lanka’s decision to go to war if necessary for the preservation of America against an emerging power identified with the developing world, and the threat this poses to the interests of friendly nations and to the multilateral collective security system that the Movement is committed to strengthening, will result in the loss of Sri Lanka’s credibility and its increasing isolation from the majority in the United Nations.

An isolated country is more vulnerable and easy prey to a global hegemon.

International agreements incompatible with UN Charter are null and void

International agreements that are incompatible with the international obligations of the State under the Charter of the United Nations and impede the fulfilment of the purposes and principles of the United Nations, in accordance with the Charter, are null and void under international law. Besides, secret treaties are incompatible with the UN Charter and unenforceable.

ACSA, SOFA, and MCC violate Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and undermine its ability to fulfil its international obligation to protect its population and ensure respect for a broad range of their individual and collective rights: the right to determine the system best suited for their needs and aspirations; the right to exercise permanent sovereignty over their wealth and resources, including maritime resources; their economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights; the right to development; the right to a clean and safe environment; and, the fundamental right to peace and to be free from war.

Sovereignty and its international corollary, sovereign equality of states, are non-derogable peremptory norms of general international law that form the basis of the United Nations Charter, which is akin to a world Constitution. An international treaty that violates sovereignty is null and void and, hence, non-negotiable.

In the event of conflict between a State’s obligations under the Charter, which it is duty bound to fulfil in “good faith,” and its obligations under any other international agreement, Article 103 of the Charter, the supremacy clause, stipulates that it is their obligations under the present Charter that prevail. Subsequent treaties must conform to the Charter and are invalid if they impede the achievement of its purposes and principles, including its provisions concerning international peace and security, friendly relations among states, international cooperation, promotion of human rights and development.

Under Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, “A treaty is void if, at the time of its conclusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law.” The Vienna Convention is a restatement of pre-existing law that the International Court of Justice applies as generally applicable international law having reached the level of customary international law.

Toward a new era of peace and prosperity in Sri Lanka and internationally

MCC, ACSA, and SOFA are incompatible with the purposes and principles of the United Nations, as developed in the landmark UN Friendly Relations Declarationand in other international instruments, in accordance with the Charter. If Sri Lanka is to pursue an independent foreign policy that is in conformity with its international obligations, it cannot ignore those principles.

There can be no benefit to Sri Lanka from a bogus “partnership” that involves surrender of territory, institutions, infrastructure and resources to a foreign power to perpetrate acts of aggression against third states, thus also becoming a partner in crime and a potential target for reprisals. There can be no benefit to Sri Lanka from its armed forces’ involvement in hostile acts against friendly nations for ‘American Preservation’ There can be no benefit to Sri Lanka from fanning existing bilateral hostilities that may lead to regional conflagration and pose a threat to international peace and security. There can be no benefit to Sri Lanka if another terrorist attack in Sri Lanka with alleged international links turns the US forces against our own people.

If there is to be change rather than continuity, every effort must be made to restore Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and promote peace, development, and social justice, unequivocally rejecting externally imposed agendas to transform Sri Lanka into a permanent aircraft carrier for Washington’s hegemonic wars in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Western dominance must not be allowed to re-enter through the back door, taking the country and the region into war, not peace, and into “full spectrum domination”.

TheUN Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas, in his full report based on six years of work on the mandate, underlined the importance of international efforts to peace:

“In a context of increasing confrontation and competition among world powers, we must re-centre peace as a unifying multilateral objective, and we must ensure that propaganda for war and sabre-rattling are banned.”

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Featured image is from National Review

Somehow I’d ended up on a plastic mattress in a tiny prison cell wearing the infamous orange jump suit. I’d been arrested once before in Egypt during the revolution as a journalist, but now I was in Wisconsin, America, where freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution. I’d considered myself safe there.  

I had been arrested whilst filming a small, peaceful protest by mainly Indigenous Ojibwe people against the construction of a new oil pipeline. I was working on a documentary film on America’s struggle for clean water.

Controversial pipelines

Enbridge’s Line 3 will carry 760,000 barrels per day of tar sands oil from Canada, across the American border to a refinery on Lake Superior, Wisconsin.  Almost as much oil as the controversial Keystone XL.

The oil will then flow through the ageing Line 5 pipeline that sits on the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac – a volatile water way connecting two of America’s Great Lakes – Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, a fifth of the world’s fresh surface water. Line 5 was built to last fifty years.  It is now sixty-six years old.

Experts say that if the pipeline ruptures, spewing oil into the fresh waters of the Great Lakes, the results will be catastrophic.  Worst-case-scenario modelling undertaken by the Graham Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan predicts an oil spill could impact over one-thousand kilometres of shoreline and create an oil patch on the lake two hundred kilometres squared in just five days. If it happens in winter when the lake is frozen over, little is known how that would affect a spill nor how a clean-up operation would or even could take place.  Enbridge state this is purely hypothetical since it’s so unlikely.  But with statistics like these it’s no wonder that Enbridge wanted to stamp out any opposition to their new pipeline.

The protest came on the heels of the movement for clean water against the Dakota Access Pipeline, in which Enbridge are investors. At the height of that movement ten thousand people had camped out in the proposed oil pipeline pathway in Standing Rock for almost a year.

So, despite the fact that on that chilly morning in Wisconsin there were only fifteen peaceful protestors holding placards and one man chained to a digger machine, six were arrested and charged.  Five protesters and myself, a journalist filming the protest.  I had become one of a growing number of journalists to be arrested and harassed in America, which has slumped to 48th in the Press Freedom Index, below Botswana and Romania.

Disease and genocide 

My journey here began on the Navajo Native American reservation, which spans the states of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

I had heard that this First Nations’ community were also dealing with water contamination. Almost 40 percent of people here live below the poverty line and have no running water.

Nothing prepared me for what I saw. Whole communities were living amidst piles of radioactive waste from the historic uranium mining that fuelled the Cold War arms race from the 1940s to the 1980s.

When the bottom fell out of the uranium market, the mining companies declared bankruptcy and left behind open pit mines, which filled with rainwater. Children swam in them and the sheep – the food staple of the Navajo – drank the water.  So did the people.

The first signs were in the livestock. Helen Nez, now an elderly lady, told me that her sheep were born with deformities, some without eyes.  Not knowing the reason, she continued to water her flock at the open pit.

Tragically Nez drank there herself while she was pregnant and two of her children were born with a DNA depleting disease.  “I told the doctors over and over again that we live in the midst of a uranium mine, but nobody listened to me” says Nez wiping tears from her eyes.

Instead the white doctors at the local clinic told her it was because Indians practice inbreeding and chased her and her sick child out of the hospital.  The disease – labelled Navajo Neuropathy – has since been shown to be the result of exposure to uranium. Nez’s daughter Euphemia was later taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital where Dr Russell Snyder confirmed the illness was related to exposure to uranium, but that she had no chance of survival. Her two children died painful deaths prematurely.

Nez believes this is part of the genocide the Navajo and other Indigenous Americans have been subjected to by the US government. “My vision is that one day someone will be held responsible”, says Nez.

Uranium exposure

There has been some clean up on the Navajo Nation. Most recently the Tronox Inc. bankruptcy settlement has provided almost $1 billion to clean up about 50 abandoned uranium mines in and around the Navajo Nation.

But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) say there’s 523 abandoned mine sites and with more than one mine at each site, perhaps over 1000 abandoned mines and additional piles of waste, left blowing in the wind.  For the wells and springs contaminated with uranium, there’s no cleanup.

Armed with a geiger counter to measure radiation, and some training in using it from Nuclear Engineering Professor Kim Kearfott, I set out to take my own readings in and around the reservation.

At a number of sites I detected extremely high levels.  But it was at one of the main entrances to the Grand Canyon National Park, at an abandoned uranium mill in Cameron Arizona, where I shocked Professor Kearfott – maxing out her geiger counter at over 5000 mR/hr – levels she said are much higher than those recorded in evacuated areas around Chernobyl.

Back at her Michigan lab Professor Kearfott explained:

 “When uranium is mined it is brought up to the surface and poses a cancer risk. At the levels we’re talking about here you’ll start to see kidney disease before you would likely see the effects of radiation.  Also lung cancer, bone cancers and leukemias.  If you ingest uranium you have internal exposure. We become more radioactive when we inhale it, eat it or drink it in water.”

Abandoned mines

Professor Kearfott explained that, in 24 hours spent at that one site, I had been exposed to the equivalent of a year’s maximum dose of radiation for a nuclear worker.

But when I met Jon Indall from the Uranium Producers of America, he told me the mine waste left on the reservation wasn’t very radioactive. In fact, he went further and told me, with a chuckle, that even with enriched uranium “you could eat it, we wouldn’t really advise you to do that, but it’s not terribly dangerous.”

As a uranium industry spokesman, he must have known what he was saying was nonsense but perhaps, if I were an ordinary citizen or legislator ruling on allowing more uranium mining, I might not know any better.

There is an estimated ten to fifteen thousand abandoned uranium mines across the Western United States and no one knows what condition they are in.  Professor Kearfott spoke of one such abandoned mine that she had located in a school yard on the Lakota reservation in South Dakota. It has dangerously high radiation levels. She tells me that it’s situations like that that keep her up at night.

There’s been no comprehensive investigation or health assessment on the Navajo reservation. “We don’t even have cancer screening”, declares Janene Yazzie, a young Navajo woman from the town of Sanders. It took a Tommy Rock, a Navajo PhD student who undertook his own water tests in 2015 as part of his final paper, to prove what Sanders’ residents had long suspected – their water was contaminated with uranium at twice the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.

Janene helped Tommy mobilise the community for water testing, but she is no bystander. Janene and her family live in Sanders. Her little boy, Solaris, has drunk contaminated water from the school fountains.

Janene attended that same school and is left wondering whether the ovarian cancer she had in her early twenties was caused by the water.  Tests undertaken by Dr Cheryl Dyer, an expert in reproductive physiology, found that uranium contaminated water, at levels similar to that found on the Navajo reservation, acted like estrogen.

Reading my blank face Dyer explained:

“What that means is it gave the rats gynecological cancers, like uterine and ovarian cancer. Given some of the health problems that are well-known on the reservation – young high school age girls having hysterectomies and so forth – it makes you think is there a link between this exposure to uranium in your drinking water to health problems that result maybe decades later”.

Contaminated water

In that spring of 2015, around the same time residents in Sanders, Arizona proved that their water was contaminated, so did residents in Flint, Michigan, on the other side of the country.

In her little office in a church basement, Flint community organiser Nayyirah Sharrif told me:

 “Immediately after the switch the water changed. It would come out looking like chicken broth or dark liquor. Sometimes it would smell like poop.”

It’s a cold snowy day in 2016, but the church is busy and a line of people are waiting outside. This is not a scene of the faithful, but rather of the desperate. The church gives out free bottled water, which is precious because residents’ tap water is contaminated with lead and bacteria.

The City of Flint had been put under a financial manager by Michigan’s State Governor Rick Snyder, who decided to take Flint off the Detroit water system, which draws water from Lake Huron, and instead hook them up to the Flint river.

Water was now treated at the local Flint plant, despite independent engineering reports saying the plant would not be able to adequately treat the water without a multi-million-dollar upgrade.

Elin Betanzo, a former EPA water quality expert instrumental in uncovering the Flint water crisis, said:

 “The last time the Flint water treatment plant was operated for providing the community with drinking water on a full time basis was either in the late 50s or early 60s. The Safe Drinking Water Act came after that in 1991. So the Flint water treatment plant was never operated up to today’s standards.”

Socioeconomic status

The foreman at the water plant warned that people would die if the switch in water systems went ahead. But it April 2014 they did it anyway.

The river water was corrosive and began to dissolve the lead in the water pipes, contaminating the water with lead.  Lead stunts children’s brain development, leading to lower IQs.

Flint doctor Laura Carravallah tells me:

 “I’m encouraged that all of the kids have Medicaid, but it only lasts for five years. This is not a five-year problem. People who have brain damage due to lead are going to have ongoing challenges.”

As a doctor, she says she feels ashamed of what happened on her watch, and her powerlessness to stop it.

Carravallah continued:

“We know that socioeconomic status is the most important indicator of health, with education coming right along behind, and yet we don’t attend to those things in this country. This is a big problem and I think that the Flint water crisis has highlighted for people just a flavour of the result of that might be if we let this inequality continue”.

Unchecked power

The effects of chronic low level lead exposure on adults are less well studied. Numerous Flint residents complained to me about seizures, black outs, foggy thinking, joint ache and lethargy since the water switch.  The fertility rate dropped in Flint and there was an increase in foetal deaths and miscarriages, over the same period.  Deadly bacteria called legionella is known to have killed twelve people, but doctors think the actual numbers could be closer to one hundred and ninety – numbers of pneumonia deaths doubled during the water switch and some of these victims may have had legionella.

Diane Young and her family are holding a birthday celebration at the grave of her daughter, who would have been thirty today.  In between hushing her two grandchildren, whom she now cares for, she tells me how her daughter, Shyonda Robertson, was at first misdiagnosed with pneumonia: “By the time doctors realised she had Legionnaires she was in a coma. She was having 150 seizures a day.” Diane’s daughter died shortly after contracting the disease, when the doctors could not revive her and turned the ventilators off.

How could this have happened in one of the richest democracies in the world?

Curt Guyette, an investigative journalist who broke the story of the water contamination, said:

 “Michigan’s emergency manager is what’s technically known as a receivership law and it is the most extreme law of its type in the United States. This law allows the state to take over financially struggling cities, stripping all the authority of duly elected local officials.

“They have ultimate unchecked power. One thing that the law specifies that they cannot do is miss a bond payment, which I think is crucial to the real purpose of the law. So, they can take away healthcare from retirees and whatever is necessary to balance the books.”

Racist policy 

In the midst of the crisis, the General Motors plant complained to the state that the river water was corroding their car parts. They were switched back onto the Detroit water system – no more corrosion.

But when people marched down to city hall with jugs of brown water and bags filled with their hair that was falling out they were ignored. Guyette said: “If anyone wants to know what running government like a business looks like, I tell them to come to Flint.”

The emergency manager law has only ever been enacted in majority black cities. For Nayyirah Sharrif, this is a clear indication that the law is a racist policy tool:

“There hasn’t been in a poor white city that’s received an emergency manager yet. And we have a bunch of them. That’s very disheartening and it just feels like some areas aren’t deserving of full democracy. Now we pay the highest rates in the country for water, that now we can’t use and it’s poisoned people and it’s killed people”.

Flint residents would often angrily question why no officials had been jailed for the Flint water crisis.  So I went to meet water lawyer Noah Hall, an expert adviser to Michigan’s now former Attorney General, Bill Schuette, on the state’s criminal investigation.

Wasn’t it is a crime to have known the water was contaminated and was harming people?

“That’s not necessarily a crime, no.  The environmental laws in the United States do not prohibit pollution, poisoning, and the loss of human life due to unsafe water. Quite the opposite.  It’s an accepted cost of doing business.”

Hall went on to explain how the law works:

“The amount of pollution that is allowed under the environmental laws is determined through a methodology that begins fundamentally with valuing a human life in dollars. And if in doing that math the result is that the cost of preventing the pollution is more than the system values the human life, then the pollution is permitted”.

Naively I thought that children must be highly valued in this equation. I was wrong.

“Children are undervalued. It works in reverse, so that the child’s life that’s going to be lost in 20 years is worth far less than a life that day, according to the system”.

Profits over people

What ties these stories together is poverty, environmental racism and a system that prioritises profits over people.

Academic studies have shown that African Americans are more likely to live near landfills and industrial plants. More than half of the nine million people living near hazardous waste sites are people of colour and a quarter of the most toxic waste dumps are on Native land.

But what also unites the Flint and Navajo stories is how the communities organised, worked with independent scientists to conduct their own water tests and prove the authorities wrong.

Overuse, contamination and climate change are posing an existential threat to clean water across the world. According to the United Nations, by 2030 demand for clean water will outstrip supply by 40 percent. As Maud Barlow of Food and Water Watch states: “There simply will not be enough drinking water for everyone and it will be segregated to those who can afford it.”

Chemicals

It’s not only heavy metals that pose a danger to water quality.

Former EPA water quality expert Elin Betanzo explained: “Lead and copper are the only regulated contaminants that we sample for in customers’ homes. And it’s actually more straightforward because you know it’s in the pipe, compared to a whole variety of contaminants that might be in the source water.

“Any chemical that is produced anywhere either goes into our air emissions and deposits in our surface water bodies or it runs off the pavement or land, such as fertiliser run off. So literally any chemical in the world could be in our source water.”

What might be the impact of this exposure to our health and that of future generations? Dana Dolinoy, the NSF International Chair of Environmental Sciences at the Michigan School of Public Health, answered:

 “When you’re exposed to chemicals via what we eat or the air we breathe or the water that we drink then they can affect our biology. But if you go on to become pregnant or a male who goes on to become a dad later in life, those cells can be transmitted to the next generation our children and potentially to the following generations. And there’s various different molecular ways that these exposures can be inherited across generations.”

This is why I was far from my home in London making a film about water contamination and the fight for water rights in America, because, like climate change, it matters to all of us.

Social responsibility? 

So what happened to my charges?  The oil pipeline company demanded $85,000 in compensation from a protest of fifteen people.

Enbridge are the biggest oil pipeline company in North America and bring a lot of money into the state of Wisconsin. They say they’ve paid $42.8 million in 2018 in tax revenues and employed 279 Wisconsin-based workers.

The company also take on responsibilities of cash strapped states, providing equipment and vehicles to the emergency services in the states where they operate. Whilst this could be seen as corporate social responsibility, does it also give them undue influence?

Eventually I was fortunate enough that a high profile First Amendment lawyer, Henry Kaufman, was willing to take on my case. As soon as he got involved, the Wisconsin District Attorney, who, until then, wouldn’t return any of my previous lawyer’s phone calls, was promising to sort out my case.

The criminal charges were dropped and I accepted a civil trespass charge, so my nightmare went away.  But journalists are facing an unprecedented crackdown, especially when covering civil dissent of state or corporate policies.

My documentary ‘Thirst For Justice’ is an exploration of the fight for safe drinking water for everyone, is nominated for Best Feature Documentary and Best UK Feature at London’s Raindance Film Festival.  If you would like to organise a screening in your community please get in touch or keep in touch via facebook.

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Leana Hosea is a multimedia investigative journalist for the BBC and director of the documentary ‘Thirst For Justice’.

Featured image is from The Ecologist

2012 was a big year for black holes. Or, rather, for our understanding of them. First, Scientific American published a moderately terrifying paper titled “Black Holes are Everywhere” and then a team of researchers at Princeton University numerically solved the Einstein-hydrodynamic equations in order to determine that black holes are, in fact, way easier to create than previously thought.

Their findings showed that the formation of a black hole requires considerably less energy than previous calculations suggested. Meanwhile, perhaps at least partly because of these revelations, concern over the world-destroying possibility–no matter how unlikely–of a man-made particle collider opening up an Earth-swallowing black hole has remained omnipresent in the larger conversation around atomic research.

The “Ultrarelativistic Black Hole Formation” study from Princeton University, published in 2013, developed new computer models which they utilized to show that the formation of a black hole would actually require less than half the energy — 2.4 times less, to be precise — than previous research had determined. The study reports that the researchers found that “the threshold for black hole formation is lower (by a factor of a few) than simple hoop conjecture estimates, and, moreover, near this threshold two distinct apparent horizons first form postcollision and then merge.”

Credit: W. E. East and F. Pretorius, Phys. Rev. Lett. (2013)

As a report at Phys.org explains,

“Researchers know that it is theoretically possible to create black holes because of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity—particularly the part describing the relationship between energy and mass—increasing the speed of a particle causes its mass to increase as well.”

This is what drove the Princeton researchers to form a computer model based on Einstein’s original hydrodynamic equations. The model “provides a virtual window for viewing what happens when two particles collide—they focus their energies on each other and together create a combined mass that pushes gravity to its limit and as a result spawns a very tiny black hole. That result was expected—what was surprising was that the team found that their model showed that such a collision and result would require 2.4 times less energy than has been previously calculated to produce such a tiny black hole.”

And our galaxy is positively chock-full of them. It’s not just the famous supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, but scores of smaller black holes as well. Scientific American’s “Black Holes are Everywhere” tells readers that “most of the holes in our galaxy are perhaps 4 or 5 solar masses, and they’re teeny, with horizons of only about 12 km in radius. But there have to be tens of thousands of them, the inevitable remnants of the short lives of huge stars.”

This news fed into fears that “Mad Scientists Performing Universe-Breaking Experiments” were flying a bit too close to the sun (so to speak) by conducting experiments at the European Organization for Nuclear Research’s (CERN) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with the potential to open up microscopic black holes with potentially disastrous consequences. These concerns surfaced before the LHC — an underground accelerator which forms a ring with a diameter of 5 miles near Geneva, Switzerland — was ever switched on. A 2008 report from NASA succinctly titled “The Day the World Didn’t End” tells readers that bringing the accelerator online “did not trigger the creation of a microscopic black hole. And that black hole did not start rapidly sucking in surrounding matter faster and faster until it devoured the Earth, as sensationalist news reports had suggested it might.”

The fear around these larger-than-life experiments was so potent and widespread that CERN has an entire page on their website dedicated to the Frequently Asked Question “Will CERN generate a black hole?“ and even the Princeton scientists addressed it in their academic report, noting that even with the new calculations finding that black holes require much less energy to open up than previously thought, opening up a black hole big enough to collapse the earth would still require billions of times more energy than the LHC is capable of generating. What’s more, even if and when a black hole did open up in the collider, it would disappear just as quickly thanks to an effect called Hawking radiation.

Source: https://science.nasa.gov/ 

While fears of the Armageddon-causing potential of these microscopic black holes may have been overblown, however, the fact that the particle can open up these tiny black holes was then and remains now an absolute truth. Even CERN’s FAQ page concedes that “The LHC will not generate black holes in the cosmological sense. However, some theories suggest that the formation of tiny ‘quantum’ black holes may be possible.” Of course, the page goes on to reassure concerned readers that “the observation of such an event would be thrilling in terms of our understanding of the Universe; and would be perfectly safe.”

Nevertheless, there are still some scientists who think we are right to be worried about these experiments that are probing the boundaries of physics. Just last year the well-respected (not to mention knighted) British scientist Sir Martin Rees published a warning to take fears around the LHC seriously in his book “On the Future.” As paraphrased by NBC’s science news site MACH, “the particles crashing about inside an accelerator could unleash bits of ‘strange matter’ that shrink Earth into a ball 300 feet across. In another [scenario], the experiments could create a microscopic black hole that would inexorably gnaw away at our planet from the inside. In the most extreme scenario Rees describes, a physics mishap could cause space itself to decay into a new form that wipes out everything from here to the farthest star.” Rees himself recognizes that these scenarios are extremely unlikely, but in the author’s own words, “given the stakes, they should not be ignored.”

And now that the Event Horizon Telescope has successfully captured the first-ever image of a black hole, scientists are dreaming up ever more radical future experiments. Let’s just hope that as scientists continue to push against the limitations of human knowledge and ability the headlines continue to read “The Day the World Didn’t End.” Or that we continue to have headlines at all.

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Haley Zaremba is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City.

The Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on November 6 amidst a string of events that have complicated relations between the two countries. Following official visits to Cyprus, Israel and the United States, Dendias has now visited Russia in an effort to re-energize Greek-Russian relations after many years of difficulty. 

Angering Moscow, the Foreign Minister of the former Syriza administration, Nikos Kotzias, had expelled Russian diplomats in July 2018 on the allegations they were interfering in Greek affairs, and another two diplomats were barred from entering Greece on the allegation they were trying to undermine the Macedonian name negotiations between Greece and North Macedonia. Athens-Moscow relations also became stagnant because of the Greek recognition of the schismatic Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephalous in October 2018, the announcement of opening new U.S. military bases in Greece only weeks ago, and because of the recognition of Juan Guaidó as the Venezuelan President after the previous Greek government backed Nicolás Maduro.

From the Greek perspective, Moscow’s insistence on supporting North Macedonia in the Macedonian name dispute was a major source of animosity since the Slavic Balkan country gained its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. However, an even more important fact is Moscow’s expanding and growing military relations with Turkey. The growing relations between the two Eurasian countries come as it was revealed days ago that Turkey has violated Greek air space 3,950 times from January 1 to October 29 of this year, with violations continuing daily. This is the highest number of Turkish air violations since 1985, outnumbering the 3,705 violations in 2018 and 3,317 violations in 2017.  In addition to the daily military violations, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan makes continued threats to invade the rest of Cyprus, a few months ago made a speech in front of a map that shows Greece’s eastern Mediterranean islands occupied by Turkey, and continues to threaten to flood Greece again with illegal immigrants.

Despite the continued Turkish aggression against not only Greece, but also Syria and Iraq, the Russian sale of the powerful S-400 missile defense system to Turkey coupled with offers to sell other advanced military hardware like the Su-35 fighter jet, has been a reason why Athens was pushed closer towards Washington to their drive to ensure their own security.

Although the growth of Russo-Turkish relations is not aimed against Greece from Moscow’s perspective, it is undeniable that the strengthening of the Turkish military also weakens Greek security, the country’s primary security concern amidst real and continued aggression. Greece has become Washington’s Plan B to contain Russia in the Black Sea if Turkey is insubordinate in any hypothetical war between the Eurasian Giant and NATO.

The Greek perspective is that with the opening of U.S. military bases in its territory, it can better secure itself from any Turkish aggression. The Greek perspective is that the military bases are not aimed against Russia but rather Turkey. This is an incredibly naïve argument to make as it surely would have been known to political and military planners in Athens that the U.S. military bases, in Washington’s perspective, are aimed against both Turkey and Russia.

It is this very search for security that Greece and Russia have unintentionally weakened and undermined each other for their own respective reasons and interests. Greece has effectively become an American puppet, despite its insistence that it is not, while Moscow has strengthened Greece’s primary adversary in Russia’s search for security, trade and regional coordination.

However, with the new Greek administration prioritizing a visit to Moscow, this confused and unintentional adversarial relationship between the two Christian Orthodox countries may lead to a change in the political course of Greece, especially with the Dendias describing Wednesday’s meeting with Lavrov as “very friendly.” The meeting emphasized on two points according to the Greek minister: the promotion of bilateral ties and fostering closer cooperation and mutual understanding on regional and international issues.

It is this emphasis on cooperating and understanding each other better in regional issues that Dendias announced “a new chapter” in Greek-Russian relations has been made. A 2013 study found Greece was the only European Union country where favorable views towards Russia prevailed (63% favorable vs. 33% unfavorable). A 2018 Pew poll also found that only 36% of Greeks view the U.S. favourably. A 25-country December 2018 Pew poll found that Greece was only one of four countries surveyed where majority of opinions on Russian President Vladimir Putin was positive, accounting for 52% of people polled. Although this is a significant decrease from the 2013 poll, it does not factor in how the Russian sale of the S-400 to Turkey affected Greek opinions towards Russia and its president.  This demonstrates that Moscow could have a real ally within the NATO bloc where the majority of civilians look at Russia favourably. Although Russia is increasing its relations with Ankara, Turkey is a volatile and unreliable partner, especially as a souring of relations can rapidly diminish Russian popularity in Turkey. A November 2018 poll found that only 51% of Turks view Russia favourably. This figure comes despite relations being at their best ever level in Russian-Turkish history.

So not only does Russia have a good reputation in Greece, even when they are arming Turkey with weapons that can easily be turned against Greece according to the Greek perspective, the U.S. has a bad reputation in Greek history. Washington, for example, backed and supported Nazi sympathizers during the Greek Civil War in the post-World War II period, as well as the Greek military junta and all its negative consequences. Russia however is linked to Greece’s independence from the Ottoman Empire, and is a country that inherited much from Greek culture and religion.

As Greece has recently submitted itself entirely to U.S. hegemony, Washington is actively working with Greece because they do not want to let it get out of their influence. Although Greece accepted three new U.S. military bases in the country, Russia has proven to be masters at patience and diplomacy. Despite the intense situation Ankara and Moscow found themselves in after Turkey downed a Russian jet in Syria in 2015, leading to the murder of the pilot by Turkish-backed terrorists, Russia has successfully emboldened and encouraged Turkey to defy NATO. Although Greek and Russian relations have a long way to go to be fully normalized, Moscow has demonstrated that it has the ambitions of making new friends, especially if they can turn them against NATO.

Given this, it is very critical for Moscow to begin slowly pulling Athens towards cooperation with other Eurasian countries within Russia’s zone of influence to help reduce Greece’s dependency on Globalist powers, like the U.S. and European Union. With the majority of Greeks viewing the U.S. negatively, and Germany having destroyed Greece economically through the EU platform, Russia has ample opportunities to make headway in the Aegean country.

The serious economic dependence on which Greece found itself because of so-called European integration should be slowly overcome by expanding economic, business, cultural, religious and political relations with Russia. This is in order for Greece to end its dependency on the West and to truly become sovereign and independent. It is for this reason that the Greek Foreign Minister emphasized to Lavrov that because Greece is one of the oldest NATO and EU members, it will do what it can within its power to convince its European counterparts to lift the sanctions on Russia.

To help alleviate the unintended hostilities between Athens and Moscow, the two foreign ministers on Wednesday also created the Greece-Russia 2020-22 Consultation Program, which provides for regular contacts at both the official and the political level between the two countries. The Greek Foreign Minister also promised to convey the invitation to the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, to attend the 75th anniversary of victory in World War II in Moscow. This led Dendias to enthusiastically invite Putin to attend the 200th anniversary of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire in 2021.

It appears that Wednesday’s meeting between Greece and Russia was highly successful in creating new means of dialogue, particularly around issues of economy and regional security. Whether this will be the beginning of Moscow pulling Athens away from NATO like it has successfully done with Turkey, remains to be seen. But at the very minimum, the improvement of relations between the two countries will also undermine Washington’s newfound position in Greece while also finding a new EU member to represent some of Russia’s frustrations.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Time and again, Israel’s high court upholds human and civil rights abuses committed by the state.

In 2006, the court upheld its targeted assassinations policy, claiming they’re OK when no other choices exist to protect against dangers to national security — that don’t exist it failed to say.

The policy contravenes Israeli law, the laws of war, and human rights law. Time and again, Israel falsely calls legitimate self-defense by Palestinians “terrorism,” unjustifiably justifying its lawless actions, most often upheld by its high court.

In Public Committee against Torture in Israel et al v. the Government of Israel et al (1999), Israel’s Supreme Court banned the practice it earlier OK’d, ruling “psychological pressure (and) a moderate degree of physical pressure” are permissible.

Israel’s 1987 Landau Commission condemned harsh interrogations amounting to torture, but approved the practice to obtain evidence for convictions in criminal proceedings, saying these tactics are necessary against “hostile (threats or acts of) terrorist activity and all expressions of Palestinian nationalism.”

Despite calling the 1984 UN Convention against Torture “absolute (with) no exceptions and no balances,” Israel’s high court OK’d coercive interrogations in three cases.

It permitted violent shaking, painful shackling, hooding, playing deafeningly loud music, sleep deprivation, and lengthly detainments.

Loopholes in the high court’s 1999 ruling OK’d abusive practices amounting to torture despite banning the practice.

It notably allowed physical force in so-called “ticking bomb” cases, giving Israeli interrogators and others wide latitude on their actions.

The court effectively ruled both ways, approving torture and other abusive practices despite banning it.

International law is clear and unequivocal on this issue, banning it at all times, under all circumstances with no allowed exceptions.

In 2015, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition by human rights groups and political movements that called for overturning the Anti-Boycott Law.

At the time, the Global BDS Movement and Coalition for Women for Peace called the bill “one of the most dangerous anti-democratic laws promoted” by Knesset members, adding:

“Boycott is a nonviolent, legal and legitimate means to promote social and political aims that are protected in civil rights of freedom of expression, opinion and assembly. The bill constitutes a fatal blow to all these civil rights.”

The police state law punishes entities or individuals that call for boycotting Israel, or an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of its illegal settlements.

According to the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Israel’s Supreme Court “ignored the chilling effect of this law, and missed the opportunity to tell legislators that there are limits to their anti-human rights actions. This law encourages discrimination against the Arabs in Israel.”

The 2012 Nakba Law “harms both the freedom of expression and the civil rights of Arab citizens, even before its implementation.”

“Because the law’s formulation is so broad and vague, many institutions have already begun and will self-censor in order not to risk incurring penalties.”

Israel’s high court upheld the law, falsely claiming it “does not raise difficult and complex questions.”

It violates Arab history, culture, heritage, and the right to express, teach, or disseminate it freely.

Arab intellectual Constantin Zureiq earlier called the Nakba “the worst catastrophe in the deepest sense of the word, to have befallen the Arabs in their long and disaster-ridden history.”

Compromising their ability to publicly denounce what happened compounds the high crime against them.

Speech, press, and academic freedoms in Israel are gravely endangered. In 2017, legislation was enacted that banned foreign nationals who support BDS from entering the country.

Last April, Israel’s Jerusalem district court ruled against Human Rights Watch’s Israeli office director Omar Shakir, a US citizen, ordering him deported for supporting the global BDS movement, his lawful free expression right.

HRW appealed the ruling, petitioning Israel’s Supreme Court to overturn the injustice. It got an injunction to let Shakir stay in the country until the high court heard his case.

On Tuesday, the court ruled against him, Shakir tweeting:

“Breaking: Israeli Supreme Court upholds my deportation over my rights advocacy. Decision now shifts back to Israeli gov; if it proceeds, I have 20 days to leave…(W)e won’t be the last.”

Critic of Israeli human rights abuses Amnesty International said

“the court has made it explicitly clear that those who dare to speak out about human rights violations by the Israeli authorities will be treated as enemies of the state.”

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled against free expression. Without it, all other rights are jeopardized.

Compromising speech, press, and academic freedoms is the hallmark of totalitarian rule — the new normal in the US, other Western societies and Israel, affirmed by its high court.

Is is just a matter of time before Western ones rule the same way?

Is digital democracy in the West and Israel endangered?

Are abuses against Chelsea Manning, other whistleblowers, Julian Assange, and other independent journalists prelude for much more severe crackdowns against fundamental freedoms ahead?

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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 IMEMC

The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) stands in solidarity with the long-suffering people of Syria.  We oppose all foreign occupation of Syrian territory.  Syria belongs to the Syrians.

The current Turkish incursion into northern Syria is in violation of Syrian sovereignty. So is the continued U.S. intervention.

Turkey has been an ally of the U.S. in its regime change program in Syria.  Both countries are in Syria against the wishes of the Syria government and have caused great destruction in the region.

The U.S. claim that it is in Syria to fight ISIS, is fiction. Recent U.S. involvement started in 2011 with the CIA program called “Timber Sycamore,” which was geared to overthrow the Syrian government and replace it with a government friendlier to Washington and Wall Street. This program supplied money, weapons and training to internal and external forces fighting the Assad government.  ISIS wasn’t formed in Syria till around 2014, years after the U.S. regime change program started.  Washington used ISIS as their reason to expand U.S. bombing and destruction.

Syria requested assistance from Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, then from Iran and Russia to aid their resistance to the U.S. orchestrated destruction. This determination defeated U.S. plans.

President Trump in early October tweeted that he would be withdrawing U.S. forces from Northern Syria where they have been working with the Kurdish SDF (Syrian Defense Forces) to maintain the occupation of the northeastern region of Syria, the home of most of Syria’s oil and grain production.  Trump claimed to have come to an accommodation with Turkish President Erdogan.  Immediately thereafter, Turkish soldiers crossed the border and began to attack the Kurds,

These actions caused a great debate in the U.S. Many politicians, who wanted the U.S. to stay in Syria, claimed that Trump had abandoned the Kurds.

The U.S. is no friend of the Kurds and has betrayed their interests over and over again throughout the last century and was never a protector of their interests.

Syria’s population of 22 million includes Arab, Kurdish, Assyrian, Armenian, Turkoman and Circassian nationalities as well as Sunni, Alawi, Shia, Druze, Yazidi, and Christian religious sects. Based on decades of past U.S. military intervention in the region there are 1.5 million Palestinian and Iraqi refugees in Syria and 5 million Syrian refugees outside of Syria.

The Syrian government is determined to maintain and rebuild Syria as a secular, multi-ethnic, multinational, multi-religious country that respects the identity and culture of every group, free of foreign interference.

U.S. strategists have always tried to maintain dominance in the Middle East by divide and conquer tactics of inflaming sectarian, national, ethnic and religious differences.

We oppose Turkish aggression in the region and demand that Turkish and U.S. forces leave Syrian territory where they never were invited by the Syrian government.  As Turkish forces move into Syria, the Kurds have opened negotiations with the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army moved todefend the border towns where Kurds live.

It is in the interest of the Kurdish and non-Kurdish Syrian people for the US, Turkey and their supported mercenaries from around the world to leave the country.  It is only under these circumstances that the Kurdish people and the Syrian government can work to solve the problems of the Kurds in Syria.

As the Syrian government wins back more and more of their territory from foreign aggressors, it is calling for refugees to come home.  They are offering amnesty and assistance for all those returning.

In numerous recent tweets, President Trump confirmed that U.S. will not actually leave Syria. They will refocus on the oil producing area of Syria to supposedly “protect the oil.”  “We’re keeping the oil,” “I’ve always said that — keep the oil. We want to keep the oil, $45 million a month. Keep the oil. We’ve secured the oil.” Trump asserts that the U.S. will decide what to do with Syria’s oil in the future. He has implied that maybe Exxon should be given the oil

Clearly the theft of oil is for U.S. corporate profit and to deprive Syria of the means to rebuild.

U.S. and EU Sanctions keep Syria from importing essential supplies to repair and re-build Syria.  Sanctions also prevent Syrians from importing or exporting oil.  Without oil, the country cannot re-build.

The plan for U.S. troops to occupy the oil fields is to prevent Syria from being energy sufficient, as they were before 2011.

The theft of Syrian oil and the continued sanctions on Syria must be condemned by our movement and by the entire world.

We demand:

U.S., NATO, Turkey, Israel and all foreign invading forces leave Syria!

End the sanctions against Syria!

U.S. stop the theft of Syrian oil!

Let the Syrian people go home!

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Featured image is from Liberty Nation

Ontario’s environment minister, Jeff Yurek, plans to announce the provincial government’s decision on water bottling permits by mid-December. The announcement comes after the government’s extension of a moratorium on new and expanded permits, put in place by the Liberal government in 2017. Doug Ford‘s government extended the moratorium until January 1, 2020.

Activist groups like Guelph-based Wellington Water Watchers (WWW) want Yurek to require all permits to take water for bottling to undergo an environmental assessment process. According to WWW, the current review process for water bottling permits is inadequate.

WWW also believes the scope of the current review process utilized by the Ministry of the Environment is too narrow and fails to recognize water as a public trust; does not guarantee Indigenous consent consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP); disregards the increasing threat of climate change; inadequately assesses the cumulative impact of water taking on groundwater; ignores the environmental impact of discarded plastic bottles; and neglects the health risks of microplastics in drinking water.

In addition, the Environmental Registry of Ontario limits public participation to a 90-day online consultation. This process prevents face-to-face discussion between members of the public and political representatives.

WWW is calling on the Ontario government to suspend the current review process for applications to renew water bottling permits to allow for a full public debate on the social and environmental impacts of water bottling and to ensure the government requires environmental assessments of all applications to renew permits to take water for bottling.

WWW is hosting four information sessions in November to focus “all eyes on Nestlé” and its corporate mandate. Representatives from groups affected by Nestlé water extraction in France, Brazil and the United States will speak about their experience protecting water from bottling in their communities.

Speakers at all four events include Bernhard and Renee-Lise Schmitt, founders of Collectif Eau 88 in Vittel, France, and Franklin Frederick, Brazilian political and environmental activist now living in Switzerland.

Collectif Eau 88 has been fighting for the agricultural life of Vittel since Nestlé corporation began purchasing land surrounding the town’s wells to establish rights to the water. The price of land increased to levels that put it out of reach for young farming families.

Nestlé eventually offered the land back to farmers free of charge, but required farmers to follow complex rules that prevented their accessing water beneath the land. Farmers were expected to truck in water to irrigate their crops and keep livestock alive.

Lax local laws in Vittel meant Nestlé has been able to draw 800 million litres of water annually for the past 30 years. The aquifer has been unable to replace the 3.5 centimetres of water removed annually, and both locals and Nestlé agree that the groundwater will be drained from Vittel’s aquifer within the next 20 years.

Source: SumOfUs/Flickr

Initially, the French government considered building a pipeline from a neighbouring community to bring water to the citizens of Vittel. That plan would have allowed Nestlé to continue draining the aquifer. However, on October 1, the French government announced it would limit Nestlé’s water extraction in Vittel and plans to cancel the water pipeline. The French government also imposed a moratorium on all pending applications by Nestlé.

The persistent opposition of Collectif Eau 88 is responsible for this partial victory. The government has signalled it will prioritize drinking water for residents. Water currently withdrawn from the aquifer will be reduced by at least one trillion litres per year, which means Nestlé will have to reduce its water mining. Ongoing consultations between the French government and Collectif Eau 88 will result in a strategy to ensure the aquifer remains sustainable.

Nestlé’s global plan involves buying land and building bottling plants in economically depressed areas. These are typically rural communities where the potential for jobs incentivizes communities to overlook environmental consequences. In the end, many of the jobs created are temporary, as the extraction process is mechanized.

Brazilian water activist Franklin Frederick arrived in Switzerland several years ago as part of an assignment by the Catholic Church in Sao Paulo to secure the support of Catholic and Protestant churches in Switzerland in a campaign against Nestlé water bottling operations back home. Frederick discovered Nestlé and the Swiss government were collaborating and working against non-profits opposed to Nestlé’s water extraction and bottling operations.

To learn more about the impacts of Nestlé’s privatization of water attend one of the following WWW information sessions:

• Monday, November 11, Waterloo, The Atrium, Renison University College, 240 Westmount Rd. N., 7 to 9 p.m. (RSVP here)
• Tuesday, November 12, Toronto, Wilson Hall Lounge, 2nd Floor Wilson Hall at New College, 40 Willcocks St., Toronto, 7 to 9 p.m. (RSVP here)
• Wednesday November 13, Hamilton, St. Joseph’s Church Hall, 280 Herkimer St., 7 to 9 p.m.  (RSVP here)
• Thursday, November 14, Guelph, Trinity United Church, 400 Stevenson St. N., 7 to 9 p.m. Additional international speakers will present at this event only. (RSVP Here)

All four events will be live-streamed on Facebook. For more information email: [email protected]

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Doreen Nicoll is a freelance writer, teacher, social activist and member of several community organizations working diligently to end poverty, hunger and gendered violence.

According to US and Chinese media, negotiators of both countries agreed to partially roll back tariffs.

Spokesman for China’s Commerce Ministry Gao Feng said the following:

“If the phase-one deal is signed, China and the US should remove the same proportion of tariffs simultaneously based on the content of the deal,” adding:

“This is what (both sides) agreed on following careful and constructive negotiations over the past two weeks.”

“Economic and trade teams from both sides have been in constant communication. We hope to resolve our issues of core concern in an equal and mutually respectful manner.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, “the White House and US trade representative had yet to respond to the Chinese side’s announcement” — as of Thursday morning.

Until Washington officially comments on what’s going on and details of what’s reportedly agreed on are explained, it’s unclear precisely what tariffs will be rolled back, when, and under what conditions.

On Friday, the Journal said “there were conflicting reports from within the Trump administration as to whether there was a firm commitment to reduce tariffs,” adding:

“One US official concurred that the two sides plan to roll back tariffs as part of an initial trade pact…Others disputed that a formal rollback plan had been agreed on.”

The Journal said there are no details as to whether the US would reduce the tariff rate, or remove tariffs entirely.”

On Fox News Business, senior Trump regime trade advisor Peter Navarro said:

“There is no agreement at this time to remove any of the existing tariffs as a condition of the phase one deal.”

According to Gao, it’s unclear where or when an agreement will be signed. Positive signals from representatives of both countries unraveled before.

On Thursday, the South China Morning Post reported that a Sino-US deal signing is “missing from (President) Xi Jinping’s itinerary” — creating uncertainty about what’s agreed on.

Whatever it may be leaves irreconcilable differences between both countries unchanged — with scant prospect ahead of resolving what’s been unresolvable.

Beijing has many issues with unacceptable US policies, including Trump regime initiated trade war with tariffs up to 25% on $360 billion worth of Chinese imports its ruling authorities want removed entirely.

The Wall Street Journal cited international studies Professor Shi Yinhong stressing that whatever is agreed on can only work if terms are clear and both sides fulfill their obligations. There’s nothing simple about accomplishing it.

The Journal: Shi “expressed skepticism that negotiators had completed terms for a phase-one deal: US deliberations on rolling back existing tariffs, for example, are probably an effort to extract additional concessions from Beijing,” adding:

Major bilateral differences are expected to continue unresolved “for decades, whatever the prospects for a near-term agreement.”

According to China’s central bank advisor Liu Shijin, bilateral “frictions are not just about trade.” Many key disagreements “haven’t yet” been addressed.

Reportedly there’s no timeline for rolling back tariffs, no information on how things will proceed other than rescinding is supposed to happen in phases.

Given longstanding strained bilateral relations, the only certainty ahead is continued friction and uncertainly on how events will play out.

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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.

China’s vision for the future is “Give Peace a Chance”. It is also the title of one of John Lennon’s most prominent songs. It became the anthem for the anti-war movement, at the time of the US-waged war against Vietnam. John Lennon was a peace activist. No wonder he was ostracized, considered enemy number one by the US establishment, was followed and surveyed by the FBI – and was eventually assassinated. October 9, 1940 is his birthday.

“Give Peace a Chance” is the key motto for China’s peace philosophy throughout her 70-years Revolution, often against challenging situations, especially in the last decade with almost permanent aggressions of one kind or another by the United States and their coopted allies in Europe. China is a tremendous challenge for the west, not only because of her sheer size and economic and technological advances, but also because China seeks peaceful cooperation and development around the globe.

The West does not seek Peace. Peace is bad for business. War is good and profitable, as such renown mainstream journals as the Washington Post have openly propagated in their op-ed columns time and again. Anecdotally, both world wars were initiated in the west. This is the premise under which the permanent western aggressions against the east, especially the leadership of the east, China and Russia, are being waged.

The motto of non-aggression and Peace – a Tao doctrine – prevails in China’s foreign policy as the top principle, as of this date. And there is no indication that China will depart from this Peace dogma which has brought her internal stability, international recognition – and has made China over the last decades to one of the world’s foremost economies, as well as a leader in technological and environmental advances. This, despite constant western castigating for pirating western technology and destroying the environment. The demonization is like a propaganda tool to deviate the world’s attention from western capitalist disasters around the world. But China moves on, undisturbed, generously, with a vision for a common future for mankind all mankind, not just China.

On 1 October, China celebrated the 70^th Anniversary of her Revolution. China’s vision began with the Chinese Revolution,when China’s leader of the Communist Party, Mao Zedong, declared the Independent People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949, succeeding the Republic of China (1912). In fact, China’s Revolution already began just after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), at the end of WWII, with the Chinese Civil war (1945 – 1949), also called the War of Liberation.

The International Forum on “China’s 70-Year Development and the Construction of the Community with a Shared Future for Mankind”– 5-6 November in Shanghai, is part of the celebration. It is a forward-looking event with a Chinese vision for the future. To better grasp that vision for the future, here is a quick look at the past.

History with Foresight

Visionary Chairman Mao Zedong wanted to finally free the people of China from hundreds of years of western colonization and oppression, from the calamities of Opium Wars I and II (British imposed 1839-1842, and 1856-1860) and engaged the Chinese Communist Party (CPC – Communist Party of China) in an all-out confrontation with the Kuomintang (KMT), or the second phase of the Civil War (1945 – 1949).  The KMT, also called the Nationalist Party, was led by General Chiang Kai-shek, who succeeded KMT’s founder, Sun Yat-sen, after his death in 1925.

Chiang Kai-shek had the support of the United States, whose main objectives were stopping the “spread” of communism and maintaining continuous access to China’s riches, mostly in the form of natural resources, but also by exploiting the Chinese labor force. Washington ordered Chiang to break all relations with the Soviet Union – and to eliminate the threat of a communist leadership in China. This led to a lingering on and off conflict from the 1920s onwards between KMT and the CPC (also considered the first phase of the Civil War).

Hostilities began shortly after the foundation of the KMT in 1919 which was ‘helped’ by the United States. While Mao and his Communist Party emerged as the winner of the Civil War in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his followers took over the Chinese Province of Taiwan, where Kuomintang is still the ruling party. China’s non-aggression against the occupation of Taiwan is one of the many demonstrations of China’s peaceful diplomatic approach to conflict.

The current President of the Republic of China, as Taiwan calls itself, although it is a part of China, is Tsai Ing-wen, a politician and professor, in office since 2016. He caters entirely to the interests of Washington and the west in general, even vying to buy independently – and totally illegally – weapons from the US. While part of the PRC, Taiwan enjoys a certain autonomy, again compliments of China’s non-belligerent approach to conflicts.

Today, Taiwan is still recognized by 14 countries out of 193 UN members as the official representative of China. This, despite the fact that the UN declared the People’s Republic of China already in 1971 as the official representative of China with one of the five permanent seats in the UN Security Council (UNSC). Countries recognizing Taiwan as official China, still bending over to please Washington, are becoming fewer and fewer, as China is emerging as the number one economy of the world; call it socioeconomy, because China’s advancements are not just measured by the western standards of linear economic growth, but promote distributive growth, encompassing also vast improvements of people’s quality of life.

Mao’s victory brought a new era to the Chinese people. With what he called the Great Leap Forward (1958 – 1962), Mao and the CPC led a social and economic campaign converting the rural agrarian areas into a socialist industrialized economy through communal farming or agricultural cooperatives. This 4-year effort was constantly attacked and disrupted by infiltrated anticommunist saboteurs at a high social and monetary cost for China. But it served as a learning phase. China’s flamboyant rise to the second (by some accounts the first) world economy, proved that the lessons helped defeat US interference then and today.

The ten-year Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976) was Mao’s sociopolitical movement aiming at cleaning socialist China from infiltrated capitalist elements and influences. Then, and to some extent still today, China was full with so-called Fifth Columnists, a term coined during the Spanish Civil war, when General Franco’s Nazi-party, the “Falange”, were able to defeat the legitimately elected Republicans, because the “Falange” had what they called a “Fifth Column” clandestinely embedded among the Republican defense forces in Madrid. Today Fifth Columnists are everywhere. They come in all shapes and forms, including disguised as western NGOs, in every country that Washington and its western allies want to dominate and provoke ‘regime change’.  It was clear that the west, predominantly the emerging US empire, wanted to disrupt Mao’s revolution; they would not let China flourish under her own political, communist values and believes.

Foreign meddling in China’s Revolution came at a huge cost for China. As a consequence, Mao’s revolutions are often portrayed by the west as failures, the usual western tarnishing the success of other nations, of other socioeconomic systems, in order to hide the west’s own disastrous failures. From a Chinese and humanitarian perspective, Mao’s Revolutions have drastically improved the public education and health system, have eradicated endemic deadly diseases inherited from the western dominated colonial and KMT times – and, foremost, poverty was largely eradicated. As of these days, about 750 million people have been lifted out poverty. Alleviation of poverty was an emphasis under both of Mao’s Revolutions. These Revolutions also taught valuable lessons to Chinese scholars and future leaders – and have drastically advanced China towards food self-sufficiency which she reached by 2018.

It is thanks to these lessons that, after Mao’s death in 1976, his successor, Deng Xiaoping, led China through a far-reaching economic reform, including elements of a market economy, however always under central government control – a principle that is maintained as of today. Deng called the new Chinese economic model “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, a principal that continues today. He helped develop China into the world’s fastest-growing economy, improving the lives of hundreds of millions of citizens. Deng also masterminded the return of Hong Kong from a UK colony to China in 1997, and Macau from Portugal in 1999. The transition was completed by Deng’s successor, Jian Zemin.

Deng retired in 1992. His successor, Jian Zemin, had several high-ranking positions in previous governments and was President of the PRC from 1993 – 2003. Jian opened China further for foreign investments and trade. He visited the US in 1997, where he met with President Clinton. Jian followed a non-confrontational foreign policy, like his predecessors, strengthened relations with western partners, especially the United States – and maintained at home an economic annual growth of at least 8%. This led to an explosion of wealth, but also initially to a less than optimal distribution of wealth, most of which concentrated along China’s eastern shores, risking conflicts with the lesser developed Chinese “hinterland”.

Hu Jintao followed Juan Zemin as China’s Paramount Leader from 2002 to 2012. Hu, as a rather modest leader, along with his Premier, Wen Jiabao, and his Vice-President, Xi Jinping, continued the policy of economic growth and development, achieving more than a decade of double-digit growth, however shifting the economy gradually more to non-consumption growth, fostering, instead, socioeconomic equality, aiming at building a “Harmonious Socialist Society”.

Hu was seeking a prosperous China, free of internal social conflicts and pursued internally and externally a “peaceful development policy” – with ‘soft power’ meaning a diplomatic approach to foreign policy issues, that was never confrontational. During Hu’s rule China increased its influence in Africa and Latin America, laying the groundwork for future closer relationships with these regions. Hu was also known for shared and consensus-based leadership. Hu was succeeded in 2013 by Xi Jinping.

The Vision

Enter the era of President Xi Jinping. He is a lawyer, chemical engineer, philosopher – and visionary. On 7 September 2013, President Xi Jinping gave a speech at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University, in which he spoke about ‘People-to-People Friendship and Creating a better Future”. He referred to the Ancient Silk Road of more than 2,100 years ago, that flourished during China’s Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).

Referring to this epoch of more than 2,000 years back, Xi Jinping pointed to the history of exchanges under the Ancient Silk Road, saying,

“they had proven that countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes.”

Xi’s vision may be shaping the world of the 21^st Century. He designed and engineered the Belt and Road Initiative, loosely modeled according to the Ancient Silk Road, soon after assuming the Presidency in 2013. He launched this ground-breaking “project”, a fabulous idea to connect the world with transport routes, infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, teaching and research institutions, cultural exchange and much more. Enshrined in China’s Constitution, BRI has become the flagship for China’s foreign policy.

BRI is literally building bridges and connecting people of different continents and nations. The purpose of the New Silk Road is “to construct a unified large market and make full use of both international and domestic markets, through cultural exchange and integration, to enhance mutual understanding and trust of member nations, ending up in an innovative pattern with capital inflows, talent pool, and technology database”.

During the 19^th National Congress in 2017, BRI was included in the Chinese (CPC) Constitution as an amendment to promote the BRI’s objective of “shared interests” and “shared growth” which are major political objectives for China. This amendment to the Constitution for raising international cooperation through a multifaceted socioeconomic development endeavor is unique in China’s history. It fits precisely the theme of the present Forum, “The Construction of the Community with a shared Future for Mankind”.

The BRI is a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese Government, eventually with investments in more than 150 countries and international organizations – and growing – in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. BRI is a multi-trillion investment scheme, for transport routes on land and sea, as well as construction of industrial and energy infrastructure, energy exploration, cultural exchange and integration facilities, education and research institutions – as well as trade among connected countries; and, unlike WTO (World Trade Organization), BRI is allowing nations to benefit from their comparative advantages, creating win-win situation. In essence, BRI is to develop mutual understanding and trust among member nations, allowing for free capital flows, a pool of experts and access to a BRI-based technology data base.

At present, BRI’s closing date is foreseen for 2049 which coincides with new China’s 100^th Anniversary. The size and probable success of the program indicates, however, already today that it will most likely be extended way beyond that date. It is worth noting, though, that only in 2019, six years after its inception, BRI has become a news item in the West. Remarkably, for six years BRI was denied, or ignored by the western media, in the hope it may go away. But away it didn’t go. To the contrary, many European Union members have already subscribed to BRI, including Greece, Italy, France, Portugal – and more will follow, as the temptation to participate in this projected socioeconomic boom is overwhelming.

Germany is mulling over the benefits and contras of participating in BRI. The German business community, like business throughout Europe, is strongly in favor of lifting US-imposed sanctions and reconnecting with the East, in particular with China and Russia. But the official Berlin is still with one foot in the White House – and with the other trying to appease the German – and European – world of business. This balancing act is in the long run not sustainable and certainly not desirable. At present BRI is already actively involved in over 80 countries, of which at least half of the EU membership.

To counteract the pressure to join BRI, the European Union, basically run by NATO and intimately linked to Washington, has initiated their own ‘Silk Road’, to connect Asia with Europe through Japan. In that sense, the EU and Japan have signed a “free trade agreement” which includes a compact to build infrastructure, in sectors such as energy, transport and digital devices. The purpose is to strengthen economic and cultural ties between the two regions, boosting business relations between Asia and Europa. It is an obvious attempt to compete with or even sideline China’s BRI. But it is equally obvious that this response will fail. Usually initiatives taken in ill-fate are not successful. And China, non-belligerent China, is unlikely to challenge this EU-Japan competitive approach.

China’s New Silk Road is creating a multipolar world, where all participants will benefit. The idea is to encourage economic growth, distributed in a balanced way, so as to prioritize development opportunities for those most in need. That means the under-developed areas of western China, eastern Russia, Central Asia, Central Europe – reaching out to Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, as well as to South East Asia and the Pacific. BRI is already actively building and planning some six to ten land and maritime routes, connecting Africa, the Middle East, Europe and South America (see map, above).

The expected multi-trillion-dollar equivalent dynamic budget is expected to be funded by China, largely, but not exclusively, by the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), by Russia – and by all the countries that are part of BRI and involved in singular or multi-country projects.

Implementing BRI, or the New Silk Road, is itself the realization of a vision of nations: Peaceful interconnectivity, joint infrastructure and industrial development, as well as joint management of natural resources. For example, BRI may help with infrastructure and management advice resolving or preventing conflicts on transboundary water resources. There are some 263 transboundary lake and river basins, covering almost half the earth’s surface and involving some 150 countries. In addition, there are about 300 transboundary aquifers serving about 2 billion people who depend on groundwater.

Water resources, life depends on them. If these resources are not properly managed, by, say, one or several parties taking advantage of the other users, a conflict is born. Often such conflicts can become violent. BRI may turn this source of potential hostilities around into a source for peace. Water is among the most shared resources on earth, and as such it may serve as an instrument for peaceful connectivity.

The Chinese government calls the Silk Road Initiative “a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future”. With freshwater resources rapidly diminishing for ready use in the public domain, because of industrial and human pollution and privatization, management of water resources and transboundary water in particular, may be constructed into a “Shared Future for Mankind.” The Belt and Road Initiative may provide the guiding principles for this shared future of life’s essential resource – water.

Today, “Give Peace a Chance” is more relevant than ever. And China is a vanguard in promoting peaceful development across the globe. During the Cuban Conference “For a World in Equilibrium” of January 2019, one of the Chinese representatives said very unequivocally in his presentation, “we are building bridges between people and nations to connect the world peacefully”. Undoubtedly, he is right and was referring to President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, or the New Silk Road.

The same can unfortunately not be said about the West which is, instead, building walls, predominantly the US, followed by her European vassals, either physical walls, or walls by conflicts, wars and – walls by “economic sanction”, by which they strangle and kill people en masse. Whenever a government does not share the US neoliberal doctrines, or refuses to bend to their dictate and efforts to plunder a country of natural resources, it is first subject to atrocious sanctions, then to military intervention with the goal of regime change. All that is possible, because the western world is run by the fiat dollar system, under which all international transactions have to transit through an American bank, foremost a Wall Street bank. That’s how they block transfers, confiscate and steal money in banks all over the world.

In Venezuela sanctions started soon after President Hugo Chavez was elected as President in 1998. They were severely enhanced under Obama in 2014, and President Trump squeezed the country even more in 2017. In August 2019 Trump tightened the noose of economic strangulation to the maximum, “the most that any country has been sanctioned”, he proudly proclaimed, blocking and confiscating government accounts, including national reserve accounts and gold all around the western world. They are seizing Venezuelan assets in the US and internationally, intercepting ships and otherwise interrupting trade, for example blocking crucial medication and food stock from entering the country, while also threatening sanctions on countries that are trading with Venezuela.

According to Venezuelan officials, the financial losses since 2017 amount to at least 130 billion dollars. These funds represent goods and services, the absence of which compromises not only wellbeing but real lives of Venezuelans. The 130 billion dollars could amply supply food and medication for Venezuelans to live well and for hospitals to function with the necessary medication and equipment. In addition, the US was directing mercenaries and members of the government opposition to sabotage the countries electric system, which caused days, in some regions weeks of black-outs, a disaster for hospitals depending on electricity for refrigeration and lighting of operating theaters. Indeed, a recent study by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), in Washington, concluded that sanctions of the US and their European allies may have cost the lives of up to 40,000 Venezuelans. But Venezuela will not cave in and will survive, largely thanks to the support from China and Russia.

At this time could also be mentioned the 60 years blockade of Cuba, the US instigated wars on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Vietnam, the civil wars in Central America, Central Africa, the hostilities towards North Korea – and of course the constant aggressions vis-à-vis China and Russia – and much more. All for eradicating any “threat” of socialism that might spread as a positive alternative to boundless turbo-capitalism which is currently running the western world.

But enough about the west and its drive for world hegemony in flagrant disrespect of international law and Human Rights. It just goes to illustrate a few examples to juxtapose the west and the east, foremost China in alliance with Russia, whose approach is a multipolar socioeconomic development scheme, generous and peaceful, connecting people through trade and through BRI.

“The future is in the East” – so goes a progressive axiom. It is also my strong believe. By the East is meant China, Russia, most of Central Asia; now all represented by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or the Shanghai Pact. SCO is a Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance, the creation of which was announced on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai, China by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The Pact was signed in June 2002 and entered into force in September 2013. SCO’s headquarters are in Beijing

Today, the SCO counts 8 members, including the member India and Pakistan. Iran and Mongolia are on a “waiting list”, on the verge of becoming members. Turkey, already a dialogue partner, is increasingly vying gaining SCO access, either through association or full membership. And this, despite the conflict it may create with Turkey’s NATO partners, mainly the US. Clearly, were Turkey to join the SCO, exit from NATO would be imminent – and disastrous for NATO, perhaps he stumbling block that would bring NATO down. Especially, since popular anti-NATO pressure from Italy to Germany, Greece, Spain and Portugal is steadily growing. Turkey is also the most strategically located NATO partner between East and West; between Europe and Asia, controlling the Bosporus, access to the Black Sea.

The SCO has also several observer and dialogue partners which eventually, it is assumed, may become full-fledged SCO members. The SCO is also called the alliance of the east and is considered a security pillar in more ways than one: SCO members account for almost half of the world population and for about one third of the world’s economic output. In other words, this eastern alliance is politically and economically autonomous and to a large extent detached from the western dollar based “sanction-prone” economy.

The SCO, a visionary Chinese initiative of the early 2000s, was overlaid and expanded in 2013 by another brilliant Chinese Initiative, the BRI. May also be added to this powerhouse another association of countries, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), primarily a trading partnership. The members are located in central and northern Asia, and include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The treaty was formally established in January 2015.

This block of eastern countries and associations is seeking against all odds, a multi-polar world, a world of Peace and Prosperity for All – a big challenge given the current socioeconomic disequilibrium – but feasible with mutual respect and a will to cooperate, to apply the forces of synergy and solidarity, as is inherent in the Belt and Road approach. The stakes are high. As Russia’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Lavrov pointed out during the 74^th UN General Assembly, in September 2019: “The West ignores reality by trying to prevent the formation of a multi-polar world by imposing its narrow “liberal” rules on others.” But, he added, “Western dominance is on the wane, ‘we’re liberals, so everything’s allowed’ just isn’t working anymore.” These words are the basis for a strong pillar and union of eastern associations.

Outlook and Vision

Economy

China has registered during the past decades a phenomenal economic growth rate, at times exceeding 12% per year. Today it has been on purpose reduced to about 6%, so as to allow a better distribution of the growth benefits, and also spread wealth more horizontally to create greater equality of wellbeing.

In figures and facts:

China’s GDP measured in US-dollars amounts to $14.2 trillion (nominal; 2019 est.), which corresponds to $27.3 trillion in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP; 2019 est.). This corresponds to US$ 10,153 / capita, in nominal term (2019 est.), to US$ 19,520 / capita measured by PPP.

Compare this with the US GDP of US$ 21.345 trillion in nominal terms (2019 est.) and $64,767 / per capita (2019 est.) This makes China the world’s second largest economy in nominal terms, expected to exceed the US by 2026. However, when comparing the two GDPs by their PPP values, China is number one; having surpassed the United States in 2016.

Measured by PPP, China is already today de facto the world’s largest economy, because the only figures that have any significance in economic production and consumption, are those that reflect the output’s purchasing power.

Examples of Economic Efficiency

New Airport in Beijing: In only 4 years China built by far the world’s largest airport in Beijing, Daxin International Airport. It was ready for China’s 70^th Birthday on 1 October 2019, when it was inaugurated by President Xi Jinping. It has been operational the week after inauguration. This airport, an architectural wonder, covers some 700,000 m2 (almost 100 football fields) and carries passengers by fast train in 20 minutes to the center of Beijing. It is expected to accommodate in 2021 already 45 million passengers and can easily be expanded to receive and serve 100 million passengers as the need requires. This airport is a sign that China is capable of realizing extraordinary achievements – it signals a visionary future.

China’s Rapid Urbanization: When in 2017, Beijing was faced with a housing shortage for low-wage migrant workers, they built 100,000 low-rent apartments in twelve months. The speed of China’s infrastructure development, the rapid urbanization, providing millions of new subsidized housing for migrant workers, is a model that has worked and is being replicated throughout China. In fact, pays off socially and economically. People who do not have to worry about shelter, are healthier and live and work better. China has been building homes for a million people–the entire housing stock of San Francisco – every month since 1950. This policy aims at and creates wellbeing among the workers, among the people – and is at the same time a solid tool for China’s economic development – and people’s happiness. China’s successful and rapid housing development is being closely watched by Australia, as her major cities, Sydney and Melbourne face similar problems.

Trade

China has been the world’s largest exporter of goods since 2009. Official estimates suggest Chinese exports amounted to about $2.1 trillion in 2017. The total annual value of the country’s exports equates to approximately $1,500 for every Chinese resident. Since 2013, China has as well become the world’s largest trading nation.China is also a significant importer and accounts for about 10% of total global imports, i.e., about US$ 1.7 trillion, leaving China as a net exporter with a trade surplus of about US$ 400 billion. – Trade war with the US– see below.

Monetary Policy

China’s Yuan, is a solid currency, backed by China’s economy and by gold. In 2017 the Yuan was admitted into the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) basket of reserve currencies, which constitute the SDR – or Special Drawing Rights. The SDR basket consists of five currencies and their respective weights are: US-Dollar $41.73%, Euro 30.93%, Renminbi (Chinese Yuan) 10.92%, Japanese Yen 8.33%, British Pound 8.09%. The Yuan is clearly undervalued in the SDR basket, as it is rapidly replacing the dollar as reserve currency. Treasurers around the globe realize that the US-dollar is fiat money, backed by nothing, whereas the Yuan is a solid currency, based on a solid economy, plus backed by gold.

The decline of the US dollar as a world reserve currency means that the US dollar hegemony is fading. This is inadmissible for the US. Therefore, Washington along with the major western allies are considering to abandon the key reserve role of the dollar and replacing it with some kind of an SDR, in which the dollar would maintain a prominent role, but its Ponzi-scheme characteristics would no longer be openly visible.

The current US debt to GDP ratio is about 105%. However, what the General Accounting Office calls “unmet obligations” amounts to about 700% of GDP (net present value – total outstanding obligations discounted to today’s value). According to former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, responding to a journalist’s question, “we will never pay back our debt; we will just print new money”. This is a dangerous pyramid, or Ponzi-scheme, of which most governments are aware, and yet many of them hold on to the dollar as key reserve currency. With the yuan rising, this may change rapidly. In fact, the conversion from dollar to yuan as reserve currency has already started.

Regarding the western foreseen reserve basket to “save” the dollar, it is not clear yet what the other currencies and their respective weight in the new “Reserve SDR” would be, but let’s assume the same five currencies. The Yuan, if still in the reserve basket would probably still be under-valued. If so, this might be a good reason for China to exit the Reserve SDR and continue with the Yuan by its own economic and monetary value as a reserve currency. The Yuan has made its reputation of stability and does no longer need the backing of a (western coined) SDR to prove its strength as a reserve currency.

The War on Tariffs

In June 2018, US President Trump started an unprovoked Trade War with China, then expanded it to other countries, including his European allies. But it is most ferocious with China. As usual, China’s response was not hostile. Retaliation, yes; but still an approach of seeking negotiations and compromise. In reality, the US market for China may be important, but not that important to be humiliated as was the case with the American bulldozer approach to impose not just tariffs, but tariffs that were nothing but a new form of economic sanctions.

The real meaning and purpose behind these tariffs was not reducing China’s exports in the first place, but harming the Yuan, as it was gaining strength and, as mentioned before, gradually taking over the US-dollar’s role as world reserve currency. Some 20 years ago the US dollar accounted for more than 90% of all reserve assets in nations’ treasuries around the globe. Today, that percentage has shrunk to less than 60% and is fading rapidly. Much of the lost territories by the US dollar was made up by the Chinese Yuan. And as the importance of the Yuan rises, the US hegemony of the world’s economy, resources and people will fade. This does not go down in Washington without a fight.

Future Economic Growth

China, in the near future, will most likely keep to a “modest” growth rate, around 5% to 7%, concentrating on horizontal distributive growth, with a focus on improved public wellbeing for all, universal access to affordable housing, basic infrastructure, water supply, sanitation, public transportation, rural higher education, as well as internal cultural exchange and harmonization. Two areas of economic development, ”horizontal growth”, may be singled out; (i) Artificial Intelligence (AI), and (ii) Environmental Improvement.

Technological Innovation

China is a Power House of new technologies and no doubt the world’s number one in Technological Innovation. Just to mention a few, not in order of priority:

• Rapidly progressing robotization of construction and manufacturing, as well as of medical interventions, like surgeries and localized cancer treatment;
• 3-D construction of serving a myriad of sectors, including manufacturing in the medical sector, medical equipment, human body replacement parts, production of construction materials – and more. China predicts in 20 to 30 years everybody (in China) will have access to individualized 3D building capacity;
• Face recognition technology, making traditional ID and bank account access cards obsolete and identity protection more secure;
• High-speed train systems, a domain where China has bypassed Japan and is the world’s number one; i.e. the high-speed railways Shanghai Maglev and Fuxing Hao CR400AF/BF;
• A new generation of garbage recycling – into building material, fertilizers, fuel as a source of energy – and more;
• Architecture and building efficiency, only two examples, (i) the new Beijing Daxin International Airport, the world’s largest, built in just 4 years, with a capacity of more than 100 million passengers per year – and a superb architecture; (ii) the “Birds Nest” – the stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics which will also be used for the 2022 Winter Olympics; it was built in less than 5 years and is an architectural masterpiece, and
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) – see below.

China’s ambition: Everything is possible – and China has already proven that it can be done.

Artificial Intelligence (AI).China is also moving rapidly towards leadership in Technical Innovation for Artificial Intelligence, with plans to invest considerable resources into research. In 2017, the State Council (CCP) issued a “Next Generation Intelligence Development Plan”, including a US$ (equivalent) 2.1 billion AI industrial park. By 2025 the State Council predicts China to be a leader in AI research and predicts that China’s AI core industry will be worth some US$ 60 billion, amounting to about US$ 700 billion equivalent, when accounting for related industries. By 2030, the State Council expects China to be the global leader in development of AI.

Environmental Improvement. China has made leaps in improving her environment, by far exceeding efforts of western countries. China’s environmental policies are developing BRI at home and abroad in shades of green. New parks with trees and areas for recreation are emerging in every major city in China. According to an expert at the School of Regulation and Global Governance of the Australian National University, Beijing has improved its air quality by 30% in the last five years.

A study of the University of Chicago demonstrates that Chinese cities have reduced the concentrations of fine particulates in the air on average by 32 % between 2014 and 2018.

The Chinese people and government are putting utmost importance to protecting the environment and ecosystems. Green development makes for improved public health, but is also attractive for investments.

China has a three-year “green” plan to improve air quality and tighten regulations. Air quality is one of the key environmental issue besetting China. In that sense, the government is accelerating the electrification of vehicles and has pledged that by 2030 all new cars will be powered by electricity.The government is also tackling drinking water quality and shortages, as well as improving urban and rural sanitation. These are longer-term propositions. Cost estimates for China’s overall environmental programs are not readily available but may easily reach into hundreds of billions of US-dollar equivalents over a ten-year period.

Conclusion

A few years ago, China, Russia and other SCO countries have started trading among themselves in their local currencies with a non-western monetary transfer system, using mostly the Chinese Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS). It is out of control of the western SWIFT transfer system, thereby escapes the sanctions regime of the US. Gradually, the SCO and associated countries are detaching themselves from the western dollar-based fiat system.

In terms of trading, the SCO countries, mainly China, control most of the Asian markets, even making rapid inroads into Japan and Australia, and are evermore present in Latin America and Africa. Before long Europe will see the light and turn eastwards. It would be a wise decision. Dealing first within the confines of the huge Eurasian landmass, including the Middle East and parts of Africa – has been the logical way of trading since the Ancient Silk Road, more than 2,000 years ago.

China has a great visionary future that had already begun 70 years ago, and was enhanced six years ago with President Xi Jinping’s launching of the Belt and Road Initiative. BRI will continue spanning the globe for the next at least 50 to 100 years, spreading development in a multi-polar world, stressing equality and wellbeing for all. BRI investments may be counted in the multi-multi trillions and will be funded by China and the participating countries, with a socio-economic return that cannot be expressed in sheer monetary terms, as investments will also bring unfathomable social benefits, poverty reduction, improved health, higher and better education and, generally improving people’s wellbeing.

The bright side of this initiative, is the Chinese philosophy of non-aggression, of diplomacy to resolve conflicts and of promoting peaceful economic coexistence and development around the globe.

China’s determination to develop with a “green” economy, a “green” BRI and a horizontal distributive growth that emphasizes equality and inclusion is a landmark model for the world to embrace. It is a model to construct a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

This week, Iran’s atomic energy authority confirmed it would commence enriching uranium past the 3.67 percent cap to 5 percent at its Fordow plant starting Wednesday. This is Tehran’s fourth step in scaling back its commitments under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in response to the US’s unilateral withdrawal last year, and consequently imposing crippling sanctions, as well as Europe’s inability to offer relief, as was promised.

Tehran plans on continuing to scale back its commitments every sixty days till the United States returns to the deal or European nations can provide adequate sanctions relief. Iranian officials have stated that these steps are entirely reversible. The United States loves to harp on these symbolic moves meant to pressure the United States into returning to the JCPOA, as being grave steps in the wrong direction, when ultimately the first and most serious offense was taken by the Trump administration when they withdrew and started to impose sanctions on Iran.

Although the European members that are part of the deal are still committed to its implementation and have suggested measures to help ease suffering under the sanctions, not enough is being done to pressure the United States into lifting sanctions which is Iran’s requirement prior to negotiations.

The JCPOA is flawed in its inadequate dispute settlement process, when a party leaves the deal (as did the United States) Iran’s only option is to return to the pre-deal situation. Hoping that a better solution would present itself Iran stayed in compliance for an entire year after President Trump unilaterally withdrew.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in his usual hysterical manner is accusing Iran of preparing for a “rapid nuclear breakout”. Completely dismissing how and why we got to his point. The United States set the stage for this downhill escalation by withdrawing from the multinational deal and applying crippling sanctions made to destroy the country’s oil industry and reduce exports to zero.

What did the Trump administration expect to happen by making conditions unbearable, and by trying to collapse Iran’s economy, government, and society and unsuccessfully force “regime change”? Brutal compounded sanctions have been affecting the most vulnerable members of society, with even food and medicine feeling the harsh effects of Washington’s “maximum pressure campaign”.

With tensions high and frustration looming, each scale back raises concern that the European signatories might see it as crossing the red line and therefore killing the deal, which only the United States is in favor of.

President Trump recently signed sanctions waivers for China and Russia and Europe to continue to assist Iran in its peaceful nuclear development. These periodic waivers grant exemptions from US sanctions against Iran and allow foreign companies to collaborate on civilian nuclear programs with Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization. Some believe that this might be a sign that President Trump wants to negotiate a deal with Iran, which he certainly can, if he lifts sanctions first.

On Thursday, Iran claimed that an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspector was prohibited from entering the Natanz facility after a detector for explosive nitrates went off. While officials were looking for a female to search her, the inspector went into the bathroom and when she returned, she no longer tested positive, sparking concerns of foul play.

In response to failure by European signatories (Britain, France, and Germany) to fulfill their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and countering crippling sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, some influential Iranian figures are advocating for Iran’s departure from NPT. They are stating that these nations have failed to establish an adequate financial structure to enable companies to trade with Iran while US imposes harsh sanctions.

There’s a difference of opinion between Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and other Iranian figures about whether Iran should remain in the NPT. President Rouhani and the government of Iran are of the opinion that it would not be in Iran’s best interest to withdrawal whereas others say that Iran is not benefiting from its membership in the NPT and point out that India, Pakistan, and Israel are not part of the NPT and North Korea is continuing on a path of acquiring a nuclear arsenal.

It’s worth mentioning that Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa or religious order against the country having nuclear weapons. Iranian figures have also stated numerous times that it is not Iran’s intentions to develop nuclear weapons. Little trust or interest remains in having dialogue with the United States, especially with the open hostility that’s become the norm in Washington towards Iran.

Europe and specifically France has proposed options to help with sanctions relief such as a $15 billion dollar line of credit and INSTEX but neither has been implemented. INSTEX was set up as a payment channel by the UK, Germany and France to help Iran continue to trade and circumvent US sanctions. Without proper implantation, Iran will be taking its fifth step away from the JCPOA commitments, and this is all meant to pressure these nations to resolve the current situation. Each measure that Iran takes is calculated and reversible, but of course with each step comes the risk that other members will follow the US’s move and withdrawal from the deal.

The decision to inject uranium gas into centrifuges in the underground Fordow facility along with the previous three steps taken by Iran are meant as a wakeup call to the signatories. Iran can’t be expected to unilaterally fulfill its obligations while other parties renege on theirs. By taking these measures Iran hopes to send a strong and serious message that all other parties must come back to the deal, before it’s too late.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and political commentator. Focused on exposing the lies and propaganda in mainstream media news, as it relates to domestic and foreign policy with an emphasis on the Middle East. Contributed to various radio shows, news publications and spoken at forums. For media inquiries please email [email protected].

Featured image is from InfoBrics

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

The toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS have been detected in more than 500 New Jersey drinking water systems and groundwater sources, according to the latest state and federal data compiled and mapped by EWG.

The 470 new detections reported as of August by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, bring the total number of PFAS-contaminated water systems and sources in the state to 517 – more than 11 times as many as the 47 locations in EWG’s previous count.

The new detections include PFAS in both treated tap water and untreated groundwater, mostly from DEP-mandated tests this year. Details of the new detections – locations, people served by the water systems, sources sampled and PFAS compounds detected – are here.

The total of 517 New Jersey locations includes 221 community water systems serving more than 3.6 million people, and 296 systems serving single sites without permanent residents. Besides the DEP’s recent tests, the total includes PFAS detections reported under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Third Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule and in its Safe Drinking Water Information System, in Department of Defense reports, in DOD data obtained by EWG under the Freedom of Information Act, and additional sites tracked by the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University.

Nationwide, PFAS contamination has now been reported in 1,361 locations in 49 states, including community water systems, groundwater sources, military bases, airports and industrial sites. All contamination locations are plotted on EWG’s newly updated interactive PFAS map. EWG’s analysis of unreleased EPA data estimates that more than 100 million Americans may have PFAS in their drinking water.

Very low doses of PFAS chemicals in drinking water have been linked to an increased risk of cancer, reproductive and immune system harm, liver and thyroid disease, and other health problems.

All but five of the total detections in New Jersey water exceeded 1 part per trillion, or ppt, the safe level recommended by the best independent studies and endorsed by EWG. More than 65 of the detections exceeded the legal limits for three PFAS chemicals proposed or adopted by the state.

In the absence of a federal drinking water standard, in April the New Jersey DEP proposed drinking water limits of 13 ppt for PFOA and 14 ppt for PFOS, the two most notorious and well-studied fluorinated compounds. Those proposals are pending public review and comment. In the meantime, the DEP has set an interim standard of 10 ppt for either chemical alone or in combination. The state earlier adopted a legal limit of 13 ppt for PFNA, one of four other PFAS compounds detected besides PFOA and PFOS.

The highest detection in New Jersey was 264,000 ppt of combined PFOA and PFOS in a groundwater monitoring well at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, in Burlington County. Several other detections – in community water systems serving Camden, Paulsboro, South Orange, Mahwah, Waldwick, Raritan and Atlantic City – were above 70 ppt, the inadequate lifetime health advisory level set by the EPA for PFOA and PFOS.

Over a hundred of the New Jersey water systems with new detections serve schools and daycare centers with their own water supplies not connected to the local community water system, with many exceeding the state’s proposed or adopted legal limits for PFOA, PFOS or PFNA. Other new detection sites include hospitals, mobile home parks, churches and shopping centers with their own systems.

More detections are likely coming soon. The DEP will require systems using surface water and all larger systems serving more than 10,000 people to test for PFAS in the first quarter of next year.

EWG’s nationwide PFAS map shows not the current level of contamination in tap water but rather the extent of contaminated locations identified since 2013. Maximum detection levels shown on the map are a snapshot of the water source when it was tested, not necessarily what is coming out of taps now. Water systems may have taken contaminated wells offline, blended water from contaminated wells with cleaner sources, or installed water treatment to reduce PFAS levels.

PFAS are “forever chemicals” that never break down once released into the environment, and they build up in our blood and organs. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, virtually all Americans have PFAS in their blood.

Major sources of contamination are PFAS-based firefighting foams, industrial discharges into air and water, and PFAS in food packaging and other consumer products. Once released to the environment, PFAS enter our bodies through food, drinking water and other routes.

Military and civilian firefighters continue to use PFAS firefighting foams that seep into drinking water supplies, contaminating hundreds of military installations. In May, New Jersey’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against 3M, DuPont and other companies for making and selling PFAS-based firefighting foams.

Manufacturers also continue to discharge PFAS into the air and water. Nearly 500 facilities nationwide are suspected of releases of PFAS chemicals, including at least eight suspected facilities in New Jersey.

PFAS manufacturers are not required to clean up past contamination, even though companies like 3M and DuPont knowingly released PFAS chemicals for decades. Internal company documents show that the companies knew the risks PFAS posed to their workers and neighboring communities but didn’t tell regulators.

Congress may soon adopt PFAS reforms included in the House and Senate versions of a must-pass defense spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act. Provisions in the bill would quickly end military uses of PFAS in firefighting foam and food packaging, reduce industrial discharges into drinking water supplies, remediate sites with the worst contamination, set a national drinking water standard and expand PFAS monitoring and reporting.

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Jared Hayes is a Policy Analyst and David Andrews Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist.

Chicago teachers and staff returned to the classrooms Friday after more than two weeks on strike. Their walkout lasted longer than the city’s landmark 2012 strike, as well as those in Los Angeles and Oakland earlier this year.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike also lasted long enough for the season’s first snowstorm to blanket thousands of teachers and staff who surrounded City Hall Thursday morning to demand Mayor Lori Lightfoot agree to restore missed instructional days as a final condition of their returning to work. After a few hours, the union and the mayor arrived at a compromise of five make-up days—a move Lightfoot had resisted until the eleventh hour, despite the fact that it’s a standard conclusion to teacher strikes.

Over the course of an often-bitter battle, CTU and its sister union, SEIU 73, overcame a series of such ultimatums from the recently elected mayor. Before the strike, Lightfoot had refused to write issues such as staffing increases or class size caps into a contract at all. Following a budget address last week, Lightfoot vowed that there was no more money left for a “bailout” of the school district. But a tentative agreement approved by CTU delegates Wednesday night requires the school district to put a nurse and social worker in every school within five years and allocates $35 million more annually to reduce overcrowded classrooms. Both unions also won pay bumps for support staff who have made poverty wages.

Yet these substantial gains still fell short of what many members had hoped to achieve, given that they were fighting for basic investments already enjoyed by most suburban school districts—investments that Lightfoot herself had campaigned on this spring.

“It took our members 10 days to bring these promises home,” CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates told reporters after an agreement was reached over instructional days. “But I want to tell my members: They have changed Chicago.”

Members of SEIU 73 ratified their contract this week, and CTU members will now have 10 days to do so. But the impact of the two-week walkout is likely to extend far beyond the contracts themselves.

During daily rallies that drew tens of thousands of teachers, staff and supporters, the unions repeatedly made the argument that there was plenty of wealth in the city to invest in schools and public services—it was just concentrated in the wrong hands. They also touched on what’s often a third-rail for public-sector unions, criticizing the resources lavished on police at their expense. The strike’s momentum will carry over most immediately into a budget battle with Lightfoot, with the teachers’ union partnering with a larger coalition fighting to tax corporations and luxury real-estate at a higher rate in order to fund affordable housing, public mental health clinics and other services.

The teachers union also shone a light on an opaque financing tool known as Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, that’s intended to funnel additional property tax dollars to “blighted” areas, but that critics say is akin to a “corporate slush fund.” On Tuesday, nine CTU members were arrested at the headquarters of Sterling Bay to protest the city’s decision to award the Wall-Street backed developer more than $1 billion of TIF subsidies earlier this year.

“That day in and of itself was huge because we were able to call out the city’s hypocrisy,” says Roxana González, an 8th-grade teacher at Dr. Jorge Prieto Math and Science Academy who was among those arrested. “The fight to fund what our communities need is a much longer one than our contract fight, and teachers across the city are going to continue to be a part of it.”

The two-week walkout will also likely have reverberations for teachers and other union members outside of Chicago. The CTU’s 2012 strike helped inspire a national network called “Bargaining for the Common Good” that has brought together unions seeking to expand the scope of contract bargaining beyond pay and benefits.

“In many ways this was both the toughest and most visionary strike fought yet on the principals of Bargaining for the Common Good,” says Joseph McCartin, the director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.

“The union engaged in some effective popular education about the structural issues of school underfunding that it can follow up on in the future. Although it was a difficult fight, the CTU has come away with gains that will make the schools better and encourage teachers elsewhere to fight for similar things.”

One of CTU’s boldest “common good” demands was for affordable housing—a move that captured national headlines and became a centerpiece of the mayor’s narrative that the union was stalling negotiations through an overly political agenda.

While the union didn’t win on housing assistance for new teachers or gain the school district’s support for rent control, one of CTU’s earliest and clearest victories was an agreement to hire staff specifically to support the more than 17,000 homeless students in Chicago Public Schools—an approach that could be a model for other school districts.

Other key wins on social justice issues include new guarantees for bilingual education, including more dedicated teachers for English language learners, and a declaration that Chicago schools are sanctuary spaces.

These are vital issues in a school district where nearly half of students are Latinx and nearly one-fifth are English language learners, says González, who also helped push for these changes as a member of the CTU’s Latinx caucus. She has previously faced a lack of resources and the potential for discipline when she tried to aid a former student who reached out to her for help with a pending deportation case. As part of the new agreement on sanctuary schools, the school district will create a training program for staff on how to respond to ICE presence in schools and assist immigrant students. It will also allocate up to $200,000 annually to help employees navigate immigration issues.

The victories are less clear-cut when it comes to the key issue of support staffing. The district will begin hiring more nurses and social workers in the highest-need schools this year, but it will take five years before they’re guaranteed for every school. And while the CTU has highlighted that nine out of 10 majority-black schools in Chicago do not have a librarian, the agreement creates a joint union-school district committee on “staffing equity” that will provide a path—but not a guarantee—for high-need schools to hire additional librarians, counselors or restorative justice coordinators.

Some teachers say they were prepared to continue striking until more progress was made on staffing, smaller caps on class sizes and regaining teacher prep time eliminated under previous Mayor Rahm Emanuel. But facing an intransigent mayor, worsening weather and a November 1 deadline for the suspension of their employer health insurance, CTU delegates ultimately voted on Wednesday night to approve the tentative agreement by a margin of 60%.

Class size remains a particular concern for instructors like Jeni Crone, an art teacher at Lindbloom Math and Science Academy. While CTU won for the first time an avenue to enforce hard caps on class sizes, the recommended limits themselves remain the same: Up to 31 in high school classes, depending on the subject, which can reach 38 students before an automatic remedy is triggered.

Crone previously taught at Kelvyn Park High School, but lost her job there in 2017 amidst a round of budget cuts that led to the loss of 11 positions at the school. She says she repeatedly saw high class-size caps used as justification to merge two smaller classes into one larger one. Before her position was cut, her three art classes were combined into two, with 34 and 35 students, respectively.

“It’s one of the easiest ways for CPS to save money,” she says. “But we should be normalizing smaller class sizes.”

Still, Crone says she is “cautiously optimistic” about the contract’s wins, and is determined above all to make sure that union members remain united with students and parents to continue demanding more.

“I am not totally content, but the way I see it, it’s OK for us not to be content,” Crone says. “That means I still want better for my students, and we should always want better for them.”

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Rebecca Burns is an award-winning investigative reporter whose work has appeared in The Baffler, the Chicago Reader, The Intercept and other outlets. She is a contributing editor at In These Times. Follow her on Twitter @rejburns.

Featured image is from The Bullet

Ukraine is a US client state, established by the Obama regime’s 2014 coup — replacing democratic governance with a government integrated by Nazi elements. .

The US FY 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes $250 million in military aid for Ukraine to wage war on its own people in Donbass, homeland repression, and targeting Russia.

US and UK special forces are involved in training Ukraine’s military for endless aggression.

The so-called Ukraine Freedom Support Act (UFSA) of 2014 authorized US lethal and non-lethal aid to Kiev.

A state of US orchestrated war has existed in Ukraine since spring 2014 between Pentagon/CIA armed, trained, and directed Ukrainian forces and Donbass freedom fighters — breaking from Kiev over wanting democratic governance over illegitimate (US controlled) fascist rule.

In late October, the Kharkov, Ukraine new agency reported the following:

“Despite peacekeeping statements by President Vladimir Zelensky, units of the Ukrainian army continue to strengthen their positions at the Donbass front line,” adding: Dozens of tanks and artillery pieces are concentrated there.

A state of war persists with no near-term resolution in prospect because of US opposition to restoration of peace and stability in Ukraine’s southwest.

A press release by the Lugansk People’s Republic said Ukraine’s military positioned armored vehicles near residential areas in Donbass, endangering the safety of civilians in harm’s way.

In late October, the OSCE’s Joint Center for the Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire regime said

“Ukrainian security forces violated the ceasefire regime by firing about 200 mines and shells of various calibers into” Donbass.

The Dems-initiated Ukrainegate scam is all about wanting Trump impeached for allegedly pressuring Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, claiming he conditioned US military aid on compliance.

As vice president, Biden forced Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin from office over an investigation of his son Hunter’s dubious dealings as a board member of Ukraine’s Bursima Holdings gas company, paying him at least $50,000 monthly, money spent on buying influence.

Shokin issued a statement, explaining that Biden “directly manipulated the political leadership of Ukraine on false pretexts…”

The NYT and other establishment media buried the story, concealing Biden’s dirty linen.

Unmentioned by Dems and supportive anti-Trump media is what US military aid to Ukraine goes for.

Unrelated to national security, it’s for waging endless war on Donbass and their people.

It’s for using Ukraine as a dagger aimed at Russia’s heartland. It’s for maintaining fascist rule and perpetual war in central Europe.

Aid to Ukraine for these reasons should be an impeachable offense. What Obama initiated, Trump continues, both culpable for what’s going on.

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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 difficult to win a debate on ethics when you are pitted against a crowd of tech-acolytes. I was taking the position that a more vital consideration in developing cities are ethical ones rather than the smartness of the technology utilised in the infrastructure and running of facilities or services in cities. The organisers of the Maxis Innovation Dialogue invited me to debate the motion that building Ethical Cities is far more important than Smart Cities (held on 30 September 2019 at Found8, KL Sentral).

The ethicists were pitted against the techists at polarized ends. External to the debate setting, the most prudent position to take is the middle ground which suggests that we can build Smart Cities that have altruistic outcomes and serve the communities that reside in them. The concern here lies in the question as to whether we are being too hasty in turning to technology to resolve all the problems that plague city-dwellers. Phrases such as “Smart Cities” seem to appeal to the modern sensibilities of progressiveness, especially in raising our quality of life, but are we saying that urban problems can only be resolved with technology and therefore the responsibility to develop Smart Cities to a certain extent is to be placed on the shoulders of tech companies?

Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad alerted us to the stumbling blocks in developing Smart Cities which lies in involved parties working in silos. At the launch of the Malaysia Smart City Framework on 23 September, Tun alluded to the need for cooperation between various tiers of government and the private sector as well as reminding us that whilst developing Smart Cities may integrate our cities with technological solutions, the prosperity and well-being of the rakyat was the ultimate goal (The Star, Smart city players working in silos hindering development as a whole, says Dr M, 23 September 2019). Hence, it cannot be a case of using technology for technology sake.

In re-calibrating our debate of Smart Cities vs Ethical Cities, I referenced the contents of an astute opinion written by Badrul Hisham Ismail (The Star, Smart city dumb people?, 29 September 2019) in making my case. The author raises a multitude of concerns that perambulate the building of Smart Cities. One of these concerns is that vulnerable sections of communities may be further marginalised where technological solutions may be inaccessible, such as in the case of adopting cashless payment systems. When adopting such systems, one has to bear in mind sections of our society who have no information or access to connectivity, devices or base knowledge and skills to handle the technology.

Ethical Cities can incorporate “smart” initiatives where use of technology is absolutely essential such as waste management through artificial sensors, reusing grey water, alleviating traffic congestion, and efficient use of resources such as electricity to illuminate community spaces. However, in most cities that require attention, poverty is the greatest concern. Cities are not effectively dealing with rising property prices, the lack of public transportation that is affordable and intelligently connected, congestion, pollution, lack of accessible healthcare, quality education, and most importantly, safe spaces for our children to grow and become well-developed adults.

With everything else, we tend to be convinced with the use of gimmickry and gadgetry pandered to us by tech companies without real qualification or substantial justification. One example that has faced much resistance is the development of the waterfront in Toronto, Canada – a disused part of the Quayside area – by Sidewalk Labs, which is owned by Alphabet (the company that owns Google). The project has just obtained its initial approval in October, subject to conditions and restrictions, for instance, data collected will be treated as a public asset. It faced a barrage of criticisms and questions, in particular the motives of big tech giants becoming involved in urban development. One expert critique called the initiative as “surveillance capitalism”. Other questioned the experience of the tech giant’s experience in urban planning. Are residents within these Smart Cities to end up being subjects of a larger experiment controlled by algorithms and AI tools cloaked as magic potions which are miraculously able to resolve the ailments of our cities?

There exists a need to ensure that our Smart Cities are indeed Ethical Cities. We have to ask the right questions to elicit the answers that will allow us to make well informed decisions. There must be public consultation where details of the development which is open to scrutiny in town hall meetings with residents. At every phase of the development, there must be continued monitoring by city council officials as they are accountable to the residents who pay their assessment taxes. There must be an altruistic end to any integration of innovation, clearly researched and rationalised as a vital need or resolution to the problems that blights a city. Planning experts, environmentalists, social scientists, educators, and experts from any sector for that matter who deliver services to the community, must be engaged. There must be clear compliance of procurement laws. There must be a clear framework of how any use of AI which harvest’s rich data from residents and users of the city’s facilities is managed. Finally, there must be an independent panel of experts representing all parties, but mostly the community, must be established as part of the monitoring system.

Cities need to be sustainable, resilient, economically vibrant, inclusive and democratic. Keeping in mind that technology is the mere scaffolding that lifts the structures of our society, cities cannot be built from technology up; they are built from the needs of the humans who reside within them.

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Dr. Jaspal Kaur Sadhu Singh is an Executive Committee member of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, HELP University, Kuala Lumpur.

On Tuesday, Iranian President Rouhani announced his nation’s  4th JCPOA pullback — permitted under the deal’s Articles 26 and 36 when other signatories breach their obligations.

That’s precisely what happened. The Trump regime illegally abandoned the internationally binding agreement.

Europe followed suit by breaching its JCPOA obligations. At the same time, the US and Brussels slammed Iran’s legitimate rollbacks while continuing to ignore their own obligations.

Double standards define Western and Israeli policies, a do as we demand, not as we do agenda.

For well over half a century, Israel has been nuclear armed and dangerous — its well-known open secret the official narrative conceals.

Israel’s Dimona Nuclear Research Center and other nuclear facilities are involved in developing and producing “bombs.”

Pursuit of them began under David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, ordering future MK Ehud Avriel to recruit East European Jewish scientists who could “either increase the capacity to kill masses or to cure masses. Both are important,” he stressed.

Ben-Gurion was determined to have a nuclear option against Arab nations. Noting what was accomplished in his farewell address, he said:

“I am confident…that our science can provide us with the weapons that are needed to deter our enemies from waging war against us.”

He and former prime minister Shimon Peres were the driving forces behind Israel’s development of nuclear, chemical, biological, and other banned weapons.

Secretly completed in 1964, Israel’s Dimona nuclear site was built exclusively for making nuclear weapons, not electricity generation.

By the early 1970s, Israel had advanced nuclear technology, world class scientists, and several dozen bombs in its arsenal — today likely hundreds of thermonukes with delivery capability to strike anywhere regionally.

France, South Africa, and the US were Israel’s main bomb-making collaborators.

Notably in the 1950s, the US launched Israel’s program by supplying the country with a five-megawatt/highly enriched uranium research reactor as part of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program.

Israeli scientists were trained at US universities. They had access to domestic weapons labs. Since the early 1970s, advanced US technology transfers were made to the Jewish state, including supercomputers able to design sophisticated nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

Mordechai Vanunu’s mid-1980s documented revelations provided proof of its nuclear weapons program, published by the London Sunday Times on October 5, 1986, headlined:

“Revealed – the secrets of Israel’s nuclear arsenal/Atomic technician Mordechai Vanunu reveals secret weapons production,” saying:

“THE SECRETS of a subterranean factory engaged in the manufacture of Israeli nuclear weapons have been uncovered by the Sunday Times Insight team.”

“Hidden beneath the Negev desert, the factory has been producing nuclear atomic warheads for the last 20 years.”

“Now it has almost certainly begun manufacturing thermo-nuclear weapons, with yields big enough to destroy entire cities.”

Nuclear experts at the time called Vanunu’s documents genuine. Israel arrested, mistreated and imprisoned him longterm for revealing the country’s dirty secret.

In April 1987, the Pentagon released a previously kept secret Institute for Defense Analysis report titled “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations.”

It was the first official US confirmation of Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

Western and Israeli officials, along with establishment media, repeatedly slam Iran’s peaceful nuclear program — well known to have no military component.

At the same time, available information on Israel’s nuclear weapons program is willfully suppressed.

Major media ignore what’s considered taboo to openly discuss, including US involvement in aiding Israel’s nuclear weapons development.

The Jewish state is one of only a handful of nations that refuse to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran one of its original signatories on July 1, 1968.

The 1961 US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits aiding nations involved in developing nuclear weapons — Israel secretly exempted.

Its nuclear infrastructure includes numerous facilities — “equivalent to (America’s) Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories,” the Pentagon report explained, adding:

It’s “an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories” — including extensive R&D facilities, factories, private companies, and government research centers devoted to developing, upgrading, producing and maintaining Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

In the 1980s, Israel was able to produce thermonukes, its capabilities likely much more sophisticated today — constituting a regional and global menace that’s systematically suppressed.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu threatened Iran, what he’s done many times before, roaring:

His regime will “never let Iran develop nuclear weapons (sic). Iran expands its aggression everywhere (sic).

“It seeks to envelop Israel (sic). It seeks to threaten Israel (sic). It seeks to destroy Israel (sic). We fight back.”

“(G)iven Iran’s efforts to expand its nuclear weapons program, expand its enrichment of uranium for making atomic bombs (sic), I repeat here once again: We will never let Iran develop nuclear weapons (sic). This is not only for our security and our future. It’s for the future of the Middle East and the world (sic).”

Fact: Annual US intelligence community reports on Iran include no evidence of a nuclear weapons program — because it doesn’t exist and never did.

Fact: Its nuclear activities fully comply with its international obligations. They have no military component.

Fact: The Islamic Republic abhors these weapons, wanting them eliminated everywhere.

Fact: The US, other NATO nations, Israel, and their imperial allies are aggressor states — not Iran, the region’s leading proponent of peace, stability, and mutual cooperation with other nations, threatening none except in self-defense if attacked.

On Tuesday in response to Rouhani’s announcement, a Trump regime statement falsely said:

“Iran has no credible reason to expand its uranium enrichment program, at the Fordo facility or elsewhere, other than a clear attempt at nuclear extortion that will only deepen its political and economic isolation (sic),” adding:

“We will continue to impose maximum pressure on (Iran) until it abandons its destabilizing behavior (sic), including proliferation-sensitive work (sic).”

The US, NATO, Israel and their imperial partners consistently and repeatedly breach international law.

Iran fully complies with its international obligations. It’s unacceptably vilified by the US and Israel for its sovereign independence and criticism of the imperial menace these countries pose.

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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.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez accused the United States of exerting pressure on Latin American countries to oppose the United Nations draft resolution against the US-imposed economic blockade on Cuba.

“The US authorities have been carrying out different actions of pressures and blackmail to erode the voting pattern in support to the draft resolution that Cuba has been presenting to the United Nations General Assembly which calls for an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade against my country”, Rodriguez said on Monday, according to RIA Novosti.

“These pressures have been particularly targeted against the Latin American countries,” he added.

Rodriguez also stated that US embassies in six countries in the region applied intense pressure on governments to vote against the draft resolution.

“The crude way in which President [Donald] Trump’s administration resorts to a whole range of preconditions and blackmail to meet its foreign policy goals is only well too known,” Rodriguez noted.

Cuba counts on the support of Latin American countries and expects that the governments will not find themselves swayed by US pressure, Rodriguez underscored. Rodriguez underlined last month that the United States Department of State summoned representatives from four Latin American countries to persuade them to vote against the draft resolution.

The United States first imposed an arms embargo on Cuba in 1958. The embargo was complemented by the introduction of restrictions in various other sectors, including sanctions on financial transactions, trade and travel. Former US President Barack Obama relaxed US policy toward Cuba, introducing regulations to ease people-to-people contacts.

However, Trump toughened the policy once he came to power in 2016, restricting travel, boosting the economic embargo and imposing sanctions on Raul Castro over alleged human rights violations and for supporting the Venezuelan leadership.

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“Cause how many times can you wake up in this comic book and plant flowers?” – Rodriguez, “Cause”

It’s not funny, that’s for sure.

When I went to see Joker, the new Todd Philips’ film, there were five other people in the theater in the liberal, up-scale tourist town populated by wealthy second-home owners, exiles for the most part from Gotham City (NYC). When the cave’s wall lit up, there was a string of shadows projected onto it, advertisements looping repetitively for the town’s “advantages,” specifically “living and working in the same community,” something next to impossible in the town except for the affluent people who didn’t want to see Joker, the story of a guy in New York City whose penurious and fragile existence belies the false innocence of the wealthy elites who deny succor to the suffering poor, as the obscene gap between them grows apace.

It occurred to me that Joker, with his keen eye for the ironic hypocrisies of all that surrounds him, would get a laugh out of these preliminary promotions, for he himself has a bit of a problem and no advantages living and working in NYC. And he would understand why the rich would shun his story, having no doubt heard that it was violent, since they are squeamish about violence directed toward their kind, but great supporters of violence directed toward the poor around the world by the American military and at home by the police, both of whom work for them.  Such official violence, of course, is something that they never have to see because they live in doll houses constructed out of a vast tapestry of lies and illusions, where the windows don’t open out onto the wider suffering world but reflect inward their self-absorbed lives where people like Joker are invisible.

The repetitive shadows on the wall in the theater were advertising local services. Real estate, landscaping, high-end jewelry and furniture, life style companies, architects – all the amenities of the rich and famous.  Like those who absented themselves from the theater so as to avoid a painful confrontation with truth, I knew violence was on the horizon and had to laugh at the services being offered before Joker made his first appearance.  It was my last laugh.  I imagined him laughing also.

Then he was there, big as life, Joker, a man emaciated like a Giacometti sculpture portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, who from the moment he appears, brilliantly makes you realize that a poor and suffering thin man exists and attention must be paid. The viewer is mesmerized from the start as Joker, aka Arthur Fleck – fleck: a small particle, a stain – tells us that “I just don’t want to feel so bad anymore,” despite the seven medications he takes to ease his pain. This “stain” on the social illusion of fairness and decency is a guy with no money or jewels to believe in, no real estate, no amenities, a guy who has no grass to be cut or beautiful plants to be tended to in his sad concrete apartment where he barely exists with his ill and deeply depressed mother whom he cares for. “I don’t believe in anything,” he tells us, ironically echoing the unacknowledged nihilism of the upper classes.  But he has good reasons, while theirs are rooted in their worship of power and money that undergirds the capitalist system of exploitation that creates suffering souls like Arthur, whose mental illness reflects a social system that is insane and violent to its core.  It is no joke.

As I watched his story unfold, I recalled the time frame of the movie, the late 1970s or early 1980s, when my wife and I lived in NYC, subletting various apartments.  When we first arrived in our old car, friends put us up at their apartment.  We had little money, and the first night when we stayed with our friends, we parked on the street and left most of our suitcases with all our belongings in the car overnight. In the morning, all the suitcases had been stolen.  Welcome to Gotham City.  While it felt like a liberation to me, as if now I could start a new life, my wife felt otherwise, as might you.  But it was our introduction to NYC.

And while we were young and educated and had the wherewithal to get jobs to pay the rent and live reasonably well, unlike Arthur Fleck, our time there was a wearing one. The city seemed dirty, unsafe, depressed, depressing, and teetering on the edge of some sort of death.  Hope seemed to have died along with the radical dreams of the 1960s when I lived there.  After moving from one apartment to another all around Manhattan and Brooklyn, we had our sublet on West 103^rdstreet broken into in broad daylight.  We were worn down by it all, and when we took a walk one day along the Hudson River in Riverside Park, we saw ahead of us three very large cats cross the walkway and a woman scream in terror at the sight.  As we got closer, we realized the cats were rats, and we took it as a sign to make our exit, as if Camus’ plague were encroaching. So we did so shortly thereafter, borrowing a tent and heading to the country, never to return.

Poor Joker had no such option.  He was trapped.  Fired from his day job as a clown at children’s parties and store closings, ridiculed and bullied by co-workers, friendless, he continues to dream of being a stand-up celebrity comic as he and his mother laugh at a late-night television talk show they are addicted to.  They revere the host, and Arthur dreams of appearing on his show and making his breakthrough in comedy.  Laugh or cringe as we may, their reverence for the host, played by Robert DeNiro, reflects American’s dirty open secret: the adoration of celebrities and the wealthy.

Life goes from bad to worse for the two of them, becoming a total nightmare, and the viewer is drawn into its dream-like confusion, never being sure what is real and what are Arthur’s hallucinations.  Fact and fiction meld in a transmogrification that is film’s specialty.  Like life today in a screen culture, one’s mind vacillates and one wanders through it – or is it Arthur’s mind – wondering if what is happening in society is actual or virtual.  The viewer feels like he is Arthur/Joker while observing him, a perfect experience of the schizophrenic state of American life today.

The suffering Arthur Fleck is abandoned by a cruel American society whose political 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 relativistic dark night that has descended on our world since Nietzsche issued his warning about the encroaching nihilism. 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.

This is the void that frames the film, the nihilistic void that so many wish to avoid. To question. To ask themselves where their culpability lies and what is it, beyond creature comforts and social acceptance, that they truly believe.  To understand why jokers like Arthur pop up everywhere.

But people like Arthur get pushed and pushed to the brink, and they look over and see nothing, not even their own reflections in the water, and conclude that their only hope is to strike back at the people who personify the systemic violence that reduces them to non-entities.

After being tormented by three Wall St. types on the subway while in his clown costume, he finally strikes back and kills them. This gains him anonymous notoriety which he starts to relish.  “For my whole life I didn’t know I even really existed,” he says, “but I do.  People are starting to notice.”

Of course they aren’t noticing Arthur, but the masked clown whom they now fear. For Joker is the ultimate ironist, a man without a face, the faceless modern, just as all those who hide behind their wealth and public performances are masked actors in a bad play, one they try to control but which sometimes gets out of hand.

For those who say the film encourages violence, I say no; it holds a mirror up to the violence that undergirds the system of economic and political exploitation that already exists. Of course this too is ironic for a Hollywood movie.  Like the films that it echoes – Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, Network– Joker, like all good works of art, is open to polysemous interpretations. It encourages introspection and extrospection.  It asks viewers to question themselves and their part in the social charade that passes for a just and equitable society. It asks viewers to contemplate Dr. Martin Luther King’s statement that is as true now as when he uttered it: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: My own government.  I cannot be silent.”

The joker’s joke is no joke at all.  It is deadly serious.

When Arthur Fleck says, “I used to think my life was a tragedy, but now I realize it’s a comedy,” and unleashes his murderous violent rage with a Joker’s smile, he was turning into those he condemned as his oppressors.  Their nihilism became his own; their violence his.

The film asks us to contemplate such a marriage of seeming opposites, its dialectic, and not turn away from the faces in the mirror.

“Have you ever noticed that it is the most civilized gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to whom the Attilas and the Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply because they are so often met with, are so ordinary and have become so familiar to us,” says Dostoevsky’s Underground man.

But where are the rats?

Quick, send in the rats.

Don’t bother, they’re here.

They have taken complete ownership of Gotham City.

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Visit the author’s website here.

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Nicolas J S Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Featured image is from Public Reading Rooms

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) continues its deployment north and east to secure as many Syrian people and as much Syrian land it can in a race with NATO and their terrorists.

The importance of the SAA and Syrian Border Guard units deployment at the northeastern border areas with Turkey in Hasakah province is highlighted in this report by Lebanese Al-Mayadeen news station:

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Following is the transcript of the English translation of the above video report

Border Guard units of the Syrian Army were deployed from Qamishli to Qahtaniyah and Jawadiyah to the outskirts of Rumilan oil fields at 9 points and locations along 60 kilometers of the borderline of these towns.

This deployment is of great importance in the field, it is the first entry of the army to these areas in seven years, in addition, it is expanding its deployment at the northern border by more than 150 kilometers from the countryside of Darbasiyah to the outskirts of Rumailan.

It also carries economic significance, most areas have hundreds of oil and gas wells, this means restarting these wells after the agreement between the Syrian government with the Kurdish autonomous administration.

Observers believe that the entry of the army into areas that were a place for US military patrols a few days ago that the Kurds block the road to any US attempt to impede the agreement with Damascus, they also show confidence in the Russian guarantor to remove the Turkish pretexts to carry out an attack on these important and densely populated areas.

In addition, the army’s entry to a depth of 60 kilometers east of Qamishli will open the door to the final phase of deployment at the borders with the distribution of additional units from Jawadiyah to Yarubiyah through Rumailan and Malikiyah, this will pave the way for the deployment of the army on most of the border strip of Hasakah province, which will bring the northern border with Turkey and the eastern border with Iraq back to Syrian sovereignty.

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Upon the declaration of the Erdogan – Trump agreement to allow the Turkish invasion of north and northeast Syria, the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad gave his orders to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to move to the north and northeast at all costs, the move that further convinced the Kurdish separatist militias to strike an agreement with the advancing SAA instead of getting crushed by all the parties. It was the acts of the separatist Kurds and their dream to Israelize large parts of the country they occupied with the help fo their NATO and Israel sponsors that allowed the current state of destabilization and chaos. They kept refusing to drop their separatist dreams and turned their back to the Syrian people hoping the US will protect them forever.

In a recent trip the frontlines with NATO terrorists in Idlib, President Assad told the SAA units they’re ready to resume their operation to clean the province of Idlib from al-Qaeda and its affiliates in addition to the deployment to the north and northeast, and that the current attempts by NATO to disperse the SAA forces on multiple fronts should not succeed and to clean Idlib remains a priority.

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China and India have made a name for themselves in the world of trade and power and speculations are that both the countries will surpass the US in a short time but experts neglect some basic things while making the assumptions. Both countries have problems of their own that give the US an edge over both countries.

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Media accounts highlighting China’s impressive economic figures have created a number of ongoing illusions. It is being reported that years or even months from now, China and also India will surpass America “as the world’s largest economy”.

These accounts deal largely in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which in the manner so often used is an ideologically-driven format relating to “production”, “goods”, with living conditions in a nation’s populace overlooked or avoided. The reality is that, although hundreds of millions in China have been relieved of extreme poverty since the 1970s, it remains a decidedly poor country.

The proof of this lies in figures revealed by Gross National Income (GNI) per capita (per person), which is seldom ever reported. Gross National Income relates mainly to a country’s population, unlike GDP. As GNI numbers demonstrate, the mean annual wage for a citizen in China ($15,270) is below a third that of a typical American ($54,941).

The average Chinese yearly salary is also much smaller by comparison to other major countries like Japan ($38,986), the United Kingdom ($39,116), France ($39,254) and Canada ($43,433).

The mean yearly income in India consists of $6,353, less than an eighth of what an American can expect to take home. Yet the World Economic Forum, based in Switzerland, outlines in serious tones that “India will overtake the US economy by 2030” which heralds “A new world economic order” – with India possessing an economy which is like “an elephant starting to run”, as the IMF insisted.

The World Economic Forum, an elitist corporate-centered organization, almost inevitably lists GDP statistics to support its argument. By dispelling these myths, we can see that India is, of course, a poverty-stricken nation, as revealed by its lowly position of 130th on the UN Human Development Index (HDI). India is moreover dogged by inequality rates making it “one of the most unequal countries” in the world, according to Oxfam.

Inequity in India “has been rising sharply for the last three decades”, as Oxfam reports note, and the country’s richest “have cornered a huge part of the wealth created through crony capitalism and inheritance” while “the poor are still struggling to earn a minimum wage”. In 2017, the wealthiest 1% among the 1.3 billion people in India took home a staggering 73% of total national income.

Herein lies much of the reality behind India’s “booming economy”. It is really booming for the top 1% in its society, with growing numbers now present in India of billionaires (over 100) and millionaires (over 700,000). India’s populace also suffers under the country’s dismal health and education systems. The average life expectancy in India is 69 years, over a decade less than the lifespan in Cuba (80 years).

A person from India also has a shorter life expectancy rate than those residing in Guatemala (73 years), Honduras (73 years), Tajikistan (71 years) and Iraq (70 years). In the field of education, an average youngster in India has just over six “mean years of schooling” before them, almost half that of a Cuban child, who enjoys nearly 12 years of average schooling.

A decade from now, China’s GDP will reportedly be twice that of the United States, with India also moving past the US. Further illusions are cast here. The respective populations in China and India will continue earning salaries, and experience living conditions, far below the US along with other wealthy countries.

India is confronted too with other huge challenges, from environmental issues and water shortages to potential nuclear conflict with neighboring Pakistan. On its present course, India has an uphill battle merely to survive this century, and it is hardly the only nation facing such struggles.

Regarding China, in per capita terms a Chinese citizen earns slightly less than the average person residing in other poor nations like Turkmenistan, Botswana, Thailand, and Panama. Little of this receives passing comment (or is even known) in news stories forecasting that China will soon oust America as the planet’s “top economy”.

The economy in the way it is reported has little to do with 90% of the population. This we can assume is an ingrained ideological factor, steeped in the neoliberal doctrine which took off about 40 years ago. The battered terms “economy” and “GDP” relate largely to the amount of money accumulated in the top 10% of a country’s society, or increasingly the top 1% – that is, the centers of power and its wealthy business communities.

In China, the bottom 50% of her society earns around 15% of the entire income amassed by the state; which is just slightly more by comparison to the top 1% of Chinese earners, who take home about 14% of national income. This is explained by the number of millionaires in China: over four million of them altogether now, and it is rising. There are also close to 500 billionaires in the country. China ceased being a communist or socialist state long ago.

By the end of Mao Zedong’s reign in the mid-1970s, the bottom 50% of Chinese earners had the same income share as the top 10%. This did not constitute a communist system even then, but China has marched closer towards capitalism during the past four decades; borne out by rising inequality rates, privatization, and so on. Inequality levels in China are greater than in Europe and approaching that of the United States.

There has been much debate on China’s rise, and its supposed threat to America’s place as the world’s dominant power. Gleeful forecasts heralding “the end of the American empire” are much overstated, as too are predictions that China will somehow usurp America’s position.

Despite the stagnation in American society, offshoring of production, along with her governments’ disastrous foreign interventions, the United States remains the world’s strongest country by far – and it will continue to be so into the foreseeable future. Unlike other nations, America enjoys largely unbroken access to vast areas of the globe, which dates to her victories gained against the Japanese and Nazi empires in World War II.

America retains a military apparatus that is much larger and more formidable than any rival state, including China. The US also enjoys strategic superiority over China, while Beijing is further faced with severe domestic issues. China’s population is one of the most rapidly ageing on earth. By 2050, it is estimated that 330 million Chinese will be over 65, which can only have ramifications for a country with an already shrinking workforce.

Both alternative media and even mainstream outlets have for years been predicting the “fall of America’s empire”. Foreign Affairs, a prestigious American establishment journal, outlined recently that “Sometime in the last two years, American hegemony died” and that “the beginning of the end was another collapse, that of Iraq in 2003, and the slow unraveling since”.

The “slow unraveling”, and beginning of US decline can actually be traced to over half a century before the invasion of Iraq: to the “loss” of China in October 1949. China’s exit from the sphere of US power was perhaps the heaviest blow to strike postwar American domination – which reached its high point not following the Soviet Union’s collapse, but in the mid-1940s when Washington possessed about 50% of the world’s wealth.

US regression has been gradual since 1949; and the consequences of the Iraq invasion was merely a step in that decline, which has largely stabilized since the 1970s when the US share of world wealth had dropped to about 25%. It is inaccurate to suggest that American hegemony has “died”, or anything resembling it. Today, for example, China is almost encircled by over 400 US military bases, in what has constituted the largest build-up of forces seen since 1944.

By comparison, China has erected just one foreign military base, in Djibouti, east Africa. The United States has built at least 800 military bases around the world, which are located in approximately 80 countries. US warships regularly sail within a few miles off China’s south-eastern coastline.

The US holds a significant stake in the island of Taiwan, situated a few hundred miles from the coast of Hong Kong. Further north and adjacent to China’s eastern coast, America retains important allies in the form of South Korea and Japan, in which there are tens of thousands of American troops stationed, along with advanced arms equipment and bases.

Meanwhile, there are no foreign military vessels or bases within thousands of miles of American shorelines. China has been put in “a noose” by the US Armed Forces, and as the experienced journalist John Pilger outlines, America has placed “missiles, bombers, warships – all the way from Australia through the Pacific to Asia and beyond”, so as to “contain” China.

If the above cannot be classed as hegemony, then it may be difficult to know what does. The Pacific Ocean, which covers 30% of the planet’s surface, continues to be held dominion over by Washington – and so is living up to its old nickname of the “American lake”. US naval fleets enjoy near unrestricted access over these high seas, much more so than any other nation on earth. US military outlay dwarfs all other countries, with China in a distant second place.

Despite its defeats in Iraq and Syria, America still comprises the strongest power in the Middle East, assisted by key ally Israel. The US has largely surrounded its nemesis, Iran, with dozens of military bases. There are tens of thousands of US soldiers permanently stationed in Persian Gulf states – such as Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE – with Iran mostly in mind, areas in which also lie most of the world’s oil reserves.

Washington maintains strong relations with the world’s biggest oil producer, the Saudi Arabian dictatorship, a country described by America’s State Department in 1945 as “one of the greatest material prizes in world history”. This view prevails in the US capital, and tellingly Donald Trump’s first trip abroad was to Saudi Arabia. Dire human rights abuses there, considerably worse than Iran, are of little consequence.

Since 1945, America has managed to tame Europe and prevent it from taking the much-feared independent path – mostly by the creation of US-led NATO in 1949, and also through Washington’s financial organizations, like the IMF and World Bank. Control of Germany is crucial to control of Europe. West Germany acceded to NATO in May 1955, and the reunified Germany was absorbed by NATO, in breach of promises, following her reunification in 1990.

Though today a financially powerful and wealthy country, Germany is diminished and a pale shadow of the confident, swaggering nation which was the pre-eminent power in mainland Europe during the mid-to-late 19th century – under the durable leadership of Otto von Bismarck.

Later, following the Nazi defeat in 1945, much of Germany’s previous territories, such as Danzig and East Prussia, were lost forever to states like Poland and Russia. US leaders, from George Bush Senior to Trump, have continually expanded Washington’s reach all the way to the frontiers of Russia, with nations like Estonia and Latvia joining NATO in 2004.

Although earlier this century US control was weakening over its traditional “backyard”, Latin America, the failure of left-leaning governments such as in Brazil and Ecuador – and the re-emergence of right-wing administrations – has allowed Washington to restore some of its hold over regions once taken for granted in the annals of US hegemony.

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This article was originally published on Global Village Space.

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.

Featured image is from Global Village Space

The popular observation that India’s refusal to join RCEP amounts to a geopolitical blunder overlooks the very distinct possibility that this probably wasn’t a mistake at all, but a preplanned move to justify the country’s ongoing pro-American pivot, albeit at the expense of its regional influence though with the added “benefit” of becoming the US’ strategic beachhead in the South Eurasian Rimland.

During a 3-day visit to Russia (November 5th – 7th), Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh discussed his government’s desire for the delivery-schedule for Russia’s sale of the S-400 air defence system to India to be sped up. This desire was expressed while speaking to his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu at the 19th meeting of the India-Russia Intergovernmental Commission on Military and Technical Cooperation (IRIGC-M&MTC) held in Moscow on November 6th.

With the capability to intercept and destroy aircraft at a range of 380 kilometers and hypersonic targets travelling at anything less than 17,000 kph from a range of 60 kilometers, the S-400 is envisaged to greatly strengthen India’s air-defence systems. Signed last year, the deal stipulated that 5 S-400 systems would be delivered to the Indian Ministry for Defence by the end of 2020, at a combined price of $5.4 billion. So far, 15% of the contract’s total price has been paid by the Indian government through channels set up to circumvent sanctions, with the remaining payments to be linked to the delivery-schedule. Today (November 7th), Minister Singh will visit a military-industrial concern in St. Petersburg which is involved in S-400 production.

The upgrade of India’s 10-year lease of a Russian Akula-class submarine to the newer generation Akula-1 sub was also discussed at the intergovernmental commission.

The Indian government has attached special priority to the S-400 deal, as it sees the S-400 as a more strategically efficient and cost-efficient alternative to replacing an aging fleet of fighter-planes. India is currently invested in weapons-procurement deals with Russia totaling $10 billion in value.

However, India’s plan to acquire the S-400 has met the strong objections of the United States, whose counter-offer of the Patriot missile-system was declined last year. The S-400 issue was one of the main points of contention when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Dehli in June. This compounded tensions which had already arisen following the Indian government’s decision to increase tariffs on 28 product-categories imported from the US. The Trump administration retaliated by ending India’s preferential trade status.

In spite of this, the US clearly still has ambitions to deputize India in an effort to further its interests in what American policy-makers refer to as the “Indo-Pacific” zone, a theoretical “mega-region” spanning from the west coast of India to the west coast of the United States. The United States’ geo-strategic logic in this case is that India has every bit as much motivation to hinder Chinese economic (and territorial) ambitions in the Pacific as the US does, and that this point combined with China’s gradually solidifying strategic partnership with Russia means by implication that India’s own sense of geo-political self-interest might also make her a useful US supra-regional proxy in geo-strategic competition against Russia.

The United States Air Force is currently in possession of the S-400’s generational predecessor, the S-300 system. In April, it was reported that the US had acquired the S-300 system from an unknown source, and used it to train pilots at the Tonopah test range in Nevada. Furthermore, American pilots train against the S-300 system when carrying out joint military exercises with the Greek armed forces within the framework of NATO.

Deals such as these always involve a certain level of strategic risk, but even more so when the government buying a technologically advanced Russian weapons system is not ideologically or geo-strategically reliable, or is otherwise too easily pressurized. We might take note that, in spite of the fiscal and economic inadvisability of such a move, Greece inexplicably joined the Eurozone in 2001, only a few years after it had first acquired the S-300 system. If we were cynical (and why would we not be cynical?), then we might vaguely suspect that one purpose for which Greece’s debt-crisis was deliberately created was in order to pressurize the Greek state into becoming an instrument of subterfuge against Russia.

Regarding Russian-Indian relations as they translate into military-technical cooperation, there are those who will counter-argue that, while relationships between nation-states are never in principle based upon trust, Russia still has certain practical semi-assurances. For a start, India is a superpower, far less easily pressurized than a country such as Greece. Furthermore, India’s extremely long-standing relationship with Russia regarding weapons-sales and military-technical cooperation, stretching well back into the Soviet period, means that both governments already have a lot invested in the maintenance of their relationship.

However, those counter-arguments can only be weighed as factors rather than treated as guarantees. Is it totally inconceivable that, if some juicy carrot were dangled in front of it, the Indian government might one day agree to American requests for access to its S-400 systems, so that the system could be reverse-engineered?

Over the past few years, since Modi came to power, India has not been the most reliable BRICS-partner.

Partially owing to its inevitable regional rivalry with China, India (like Turkey) can be relied upon to always play both sides.

So with all that considered, the question arises as to what extent the Russian government should consider the S-400 deal with India a security-risk. The S-400 is an extremely valuable cash-cow, and its export indirectly confers a range of geo-political benefits (which I have discussed previously), but those benefits still come with risks attached.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Padraig McGrath is a political analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Turkey’s state-run media is reporting the United States is planning two new military bases in Syria’s oil-rich Deir ez-Zor province,which are currently under construction, after US special forces convoys were seen patrolling the area in the past days. 

Anadolu Agency, citing local sources, said the bases were under construction as evidenced by the influx of heavy equipment:

While the footage captured by Anadolu Agency showed that much construction equipment is being put into action, it was learnt the U.S. has sent 250 to 300 additional soldiers, armored vehicles, heavy weapons and ammunition to the region.

The reported added: “The military bases are being built in the 113th Brigade area and near al-Sur region,” according to the sources.

Syria’s largest oil fields, which historically account for most of its domestic energy needs, are located in Deir Ezzor, including Al-Omar, Conoco, and Rumeilan.

A US coalition statement confirmed last week that American forces are being “repositioned” in Syria’s oil rich region just east of the Euphrates to “protect critical infrastructure” – following Trump’s roll out of his controversial “secure the oil” plan.

Days ago Russia accused the United States of stealing what rightfully belongs to the Syrian government and people, with Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov alleging earlier that US government agencies received over $30 million a month in oil production in Syria.

According to various reports in last several days US forces were spotted in the following locations in Syria, either patrolling near oil (Rmelan), deploying Bradleys (Deir Ezzor region) or on the road with trucks (i.e to Sarrin and back) pic.twitter.com/FJgQ6HoLNo

— Seth Frantzman (@sfrantzman) November 4, 2019

In response to Tuesday’s Turkish media reports on the establishment of two new American military bases east of the Euphrates, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said, “Any actions whatsoever – we are not talking about anything in particular now – that the United States undertake to keep themselves militarily present in Syria are unacceptable and illegal from our point of view and under international law.”

Multiple images have surfaced in the past days confirming that the Pentagon has indeed launched a “secure the oil” policy, though not every of Syria’s oil and gas fields east of the Euphrates have witnessed US forces enter.

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Today is the fourth anniversary of the Fundão tailings (mine waste) dam disaster in Mariana, a town in the South-eastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The Fundão dam and the associated iron ore mine, called Samarco, is operated by a mining company of the same name – owned by British-Australian company BHP and Brazilian mining giant Vale.

The collapse of the dam which held back toxic waste from the mine on November 5, 2015, killed 19 people and devastated everything in its wake with the release of 48.7 million cubic metres of toxic sludge into the 530-mile long Rio Doce, affecting an area of the Atlantic Ocean over 370 miles away from the dam.

Widely referred to as Brazil’s worst environmental disaster, the Samarco disaster also displaced as many as 1.4 million people who lived in villages next to the river. Four years later, the devastating impacts are still being felt, and Samarco hasn’t rebuilt one house.

In January this year, another tailings dam collapsed near the town of Brumadinho. It was just 75 miles away from the Fundao dam collapse, also in Minas Gerais. The Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine and dam were solely owned by Vale this time. Some 270 people were killed, mostly workers who were in the canteen upstream of the dam when the collapse happened.

What happened in both Samarco and Brumadinho were not tragedies, but were the consequences of violent extractivism – the colonial and destructive manner in which common ecological goods are exploited. In both cases, affected communities are deeply traumatised. They are seeking justice, accountability and reparations.

Open for business

In October, I travelled to Geneva for negotiations on the UN Binding Treaty; this proposal calls on governments to develop legally-binding rules which would hold transnational corporations for corporate abuses across the globe, under international human rights law.

From Geneva, I attended BHP’s annual general meeting in London, to make plain what is happening in communities four years on from the dam collapse in Mariana. But everything about this space was violent, and the board had already prepared to dispute the community demands which I voiced, such as for affected people to participate fully in the reparations process, and for research to be done on the environmental impact of the collapse.

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro believes that the companies themselves are solving the problems, and in turn has not placed any government ministers in roles to oversee the repair effort, but has instead appointed people with no real influence or power. His government is leaving all the power to the companies, so, in Brazil, the state has no oversight over such operations.

The extractivist model

Brazil is now advancing other types of extraction, including deforestation, agro-industry and mega-dams. Bolsonaro’s aim to ‘open up the Amazon’ in a violent expansion of agribusiness and mining is leading to deforestation and massively impacting the Amazon’s rivers, which are being damned to provide energy for mega-projects. What is happening in the Amazon, with the fires and ecological destruction, is entirely connected to the arrival of corporate power in the region. Bolsonaro’s government is trying to expel the indigenous communities who live there so that it can impose other forms of control and appropriation of the resources of the Amazon.

Lots of different minerals have been discovered in Brazil and new technologies have been developed to take advantage of iron deposits and other minerals. So companies are making mines deeper and that leads to more toxic waste, greater amounts of water to wash the minerals, and more manual labour to exploit. This model of mining and storing the waste in dams has been used for many years in Brazil, but it is a technology that is no longer used in many countries. It is based on high energy and water consumption, and these are also imposed in regions that are of low social indexes.

Mining companies often do not often sufficiently assess where to locate the tailings dams geographically so that they are safer for everyone. Instead they put the dams where construction is easier and cheaper. But these options are not cheap when the dams collapse because companies do not carry out seismic control studies of the region. In the case of Samarco, inadequate drainage and mistakes in depositing the mining waste left the dam so unstable that just three minor seismic shocks led to its collapse.

A time bomb

Bolsanaro’s government has made environmental legislation more flexible to boost the economy and shrink the size of the state. This freedom is allowing companies to exploit land and workers more easily, boosting their profit margins.

More than nine tailings dams have already collapsed in Brazil. Since 2002, every two years a mining dam has collapsed. Despite this, there are few officials carrying out risk control to prevent these collapses, and when they do, there is little investment in sustainable technologies which could increase public safety. All of these highly polluting tailings dams are riskily positioned above towns with large populations.

For communities affected by these crimes, the most important demand is access to justice. There is a large asymmetry of powers between communities vis-à-vis corporations. The second is reparations in line with international frameworks or standards of human rights.

The organisation I work for, Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), is lobbying to change the legislative frameworks for those affected, to recognize communities’ needs for social development and for access to their rights. These points need to be recognised before the construction of mega-projects.

Eliene Almeida, head teacher at the municipal school in Bento Rodrigues district which was covered with mud after a dam (owned by Vale SA and BHP Billiton Ltd) burst. She is pictured carrying her child at a hotel housing displaced villagers, in Mariana, Brazil. November 9, 2015.

Women are leading the struggle

At MAB we work a lot with women, the main struggle in these cases is that people need to be recognized as affected, and in the case of women it is more difficult because they have many informal jobs and are under patriarchal control.

Mining companies always award reparations to the head of the family, usually men, thus limiting women’s financial autonomy. At the same time, women look at reparation policies far beyond monetary compensation; they consider all of the other impacts, such as health and contaminated water, and how the community can manage these problems to guarantee the well-being of everybody affected.

In general, Brazilian society opposes women leaders more. In recent years, the defenders in MAB who have suffered the most attacks have been women. Dam disasters generate increased social vulnerability; including higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse and domestic violence – often following displacement, loss of livelihoods, land grabbing and ecological impacts.

This year on March 22, World Water Day, comrade Dilma Ferreira Silva was killed by a large landowner, who according to the police, was involved in illegal logging. She lived in a rural, isolated settlement in Tucuruí, Pará state, which was affected by a mega-dam many years ago, with 32,000 Brazilians displaced. Dilma was fighting to improve access to public services in her community.

We must protect human and land rights defenders and develop binding legislation to ensure that Samarco and Brumadinho disasters, which have been repeated the world over – most recently in Siberia when a tailings dam collapsed at a gold mine on October 19 – are never permitted to happen again.

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Tchenna Maso is a community lawyer and a member of the coordination of Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB). As a grassroots movement made up of affected communities, including indigenous communities, Afro-Brazilian communities and agricultural workers.

In recent remarks to a Pennsylvania shale oil producers’ convention, US President Donald Trump, noting the spectacular growth in shale gas as well as shale oil over the past decade, remarked that unconventional shale energy had made “America the greatest energy superpower in the history of the world.” On first look the achievement has indeed been impressive. Since 2011 the USA surpassed Russia to become the world’s largest producer of natural gas. By 2018 USA had passed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world leading oil producer. It is all because of US unconventional shale oil and gas. But the success may be short-lived.

The rise of shale energy and the favorable geological conditions in West Texas, North Dakota and elsewhere have given the US a clear geopolitical lever in world politics, not only in the Middle East or Venezuela policies. Also in the EU, where Russian gas remains the major supplier. Can the US continue to base policy on its leading role in gas and oil, or is this merely a blip due to end as suddenly as it appeared?

Just as a triumphant Trump was speaking in Pittsburg to the shale industry, Russian Energy Minister Novak pointed to recent slowing of shale oil output growth in key areas of the USA: “In the near future, if forecasts turn out correct, we will see a plateau in production.” He pointed to the significant reduction in shale oil drilling in recent months and predictions by Wall Street of a significant slowing of oil increases from shale in 2020. Prospects for US shale gas are far from positive as well, despite a current supply glut domestically. The LNG gas export terminal infrastructure, while it is increasing, is far from adequate to make the US a major supplier to the EU in competition to Russian gas. And money from Wall Street is drying up as well.

EU Defeat for Trump

The Trump Administration has staked much political effort on trying to convince the EU and other parts of the world to buy US shale gas instead of Russian conventional natural gas, arguing diversity of supply. That now looks unlikely to happen. Despite strong US pressure to cancel Europe’s NordStream2 gas pipeline from Russia across the Baltic Sea to Germany, which will double capacity and reduce Ukraine pipeline dependency significantly, the last EU barrier, Denmark, just announced it would approve the Gazprom route through its waters. The Danish decision, following months of Washington pressure, is a clear defeat for the Trump energy geopolitics strategy of substituting US shale gas as liquefied LNG for the Russian pipeline gas. Gazprom projects completion of the second line of the NordStream, doubling capacity, with gas deliveries to begin by early 2020.

As recently as July 2018 at a meeting with EU Commission President Juncker in Washington, Trump had announced that the European Union (EU) would soon be a “massive buyer” of US liquefied natural gas (LNG). That is yet to happen, though exports are up from a minimum level two years ago. US failure to block Russian gas deals a major blow to those hopes.

Aside from limited contracts between US LNG suppliers and Poland to date, there are few prospects now with EU approval of NordStream2 for major US LNG exports to EU markets in the next years.

Poland Turns to Norway

Even the one success for US shale Liquified Natural Gas export to the EU, namely Poland, is looking elsewhere for its non-Russian gas. Following signing of a gas contract with a US shale gas company in 2018, Poland has turned to Norwegian gas. The head of the Polish state gas company, Piotr Woźniak, just announced, “From 2022, via the Baltic Pipe, with a planned capacity of 10 billion cubic meters, we will import around 2.5 million cubic meters natural gas from our own extraction on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. We will buy the rest of the fuel from the Norwegian market.” So much for dreams of huge Polish gas purchases from the more costly US suppliers.

Export of US LNG depends on construction of costly infrastructure to liquefy the gas as well as special port facilities and tankers to load and ship the gas. Here the recent very low US domestic gas prices and high cost of investment have delayed completion of major export capacities. In 2018 production of natural gas in the US, much from shale fracking, had created a gas glut that is driving US gas prices to 25-year lows. This year gas production is 10% higher than last year.

The second largest US gas producer, Chesapeake Energy, is sharply curtaining investment in more gas and trying to sell assets and reduce debt. It discovered the prolific Haynesville field in 2008, but now is letting production in the northern Louisiana and east Texas field, once dubbed “the most revenue generative gas play in the US” decline because of low prices. They borrowed massively after 2010 when the Fed held interest rates at zero, to capitalize on the shale gas boom. Now with gas in abundance and Fed policies tighter, they and others are left with huge debts and falling gas prices.

They can go bankrupt and larger rivals like ExxonMobil can buy their gas reserves cheaply, but the economics of huge future investments in US LNG export to the EU or China are not bright. Washington’s trade war with China has led China to turn to Russia, Australia, Qatar and others for secure LNG imports just when US LNG exporters were expanding infrastructure. To retaliate against US tariffs, China imposed a 25% import tariff on US LNG, effectively killing US gas prospects. The reality is that US gas must face tough competition from several other producers in both the EU and Asia.

US Shale Oil Decline?

While the prospects for US shale gas to be a global dominant player are presently not great, the outlook for shale oil, by far the major focus of US shale drilling in recent years, is facing quite different problems. There has been a sharp cut in investment for shale oil projects as more Wall Street firms reduce risks in face of fears of a global economic downturn.

The output of US unconventional shale oil has been surprising to many over the past decade or so. US crude-oil production reached a record of 10.96 million barrels a day in 2018, according to the US Energy Information Administration. About 6.5 million barrels a day of crude oil, almost 60% of that total, came from shale resources and mostly from West Texas shale in the vast Permian Basin. But the pace of increase has been slowing significantly with some predicting a shale oil death spiral could ensue.

From the peak growth of late 2018 when oil from US shale increased by an annual rate of 1.8 million barrels, Rystad Energy estimates it will drop to half that this quarter. They note that the “significant expansion in well activity during 2017-2018,” came at the “cost of a steeper base decline.” So-called young wells produce large amounts of oil in their first few quarters, then see output rapidly decline.

With world oil prices stuck in the $50 range, despite geopolitical shocks in Venezuela, Iran, even Saudi Arabia, the economics of shale oil are facing stress. As most smaller shale companies still operate at a loss, if this does not change soon the rate of US shale oil bankruptcies could snowball.

The problem is that much of the US shale oil economics are opaque. Much investment into shale oil companies in recent years has been based on company estimates of increasing oil reserves. However the numbers are subject to a major conflict of interest. Since 2008 the Securities and Exchange Commission has allowed oil companies to use “proprietary methods” to determine reserves, that are not subject to disclosure. So long as production was booming and money plentiful, nobody minded much. Now that is changing. Recently the CEO of one of the largest companies in the Permian Basin, Scott Sheffield of Pioneer Natural Resources admitted that the oil industry is running out of Tier 1 acreage for shale oil. That is what are called “sweet spots,” where costs are low enough to be profitable. That is a major shift for Sheffield who only two years ago compared the Permian Basin shale reserves to Saudi Arabia.

What is likely at this juncture is further decline in production rates in the US shale oil sector and thus, US oil overall. The shale boom was known to be dependent on wells that reached peak output then depleted far faster than conventional wells. Technology helped mitigate the effects but only so far as money was cheap and oil prices rising. Since 2018 oil prices have fallen. In October 2018 West Texas Intermediate oil sold for over $75 a barrel. Today it is about $56 or dangerously near breakeven for most shale oil companies.

Shin Kim, at S&P Global Platts sees “the potential for shale to disappoint faster than the industry thinks.” She says, “Nothing else out there that can match US shale’s production growth rate of a million or a million and a half barrels of oil a day, and it’s a consistent level of growth.”

The geopolitical consequences of a rapid decline in US shale oil would have serious impact on US foreign policy options and, as US oilfield investment declines, also on the US economy, not good news for a Trump re-election. One ominous sign is the fact that while in earlier shale downturns shale oil frackers parked unused equipment waiting for a revival in demand, this time the equipment is being stripped down for parts or sold for scrap.

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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

It seems a tall, ambitious and very authoritarian order: imposing bans on persons under the age of 18 from playing online games between 22:00 and 08:00; rationing gaming on weekdays to 90 minutes and three hours on holidays and weekends.  This is the response of the People’s Republic of China to fears that video game addiction must be combated, less with modest treatment regimes than the curfew method.  Perhaps more importantly, the aim here, as with other systems of state surveillance, is to create a system of verification matching a user’s identity with government data. 

The guidelines also seek to restrict the money minors can spend on online games – those between 8 and 16 are permitted additions of $29 in digital gaming outlay each month.  Those between 16 and 18 can add $57.  Teachers, parents and the good authorities are also encouraged to influence the gaming habits of the young.  Onward principled instructors.    

Video gaming, with its virtual communities, has created worlds of isolation.  As John Lanchester would observe in 2009,

“There is no other medium that produces so pure a cultural segregation as video games, so clean-cut a division between the audience and the non-audience.” 

When the video-gamer has made an appearance in cultural discourses, it has usually been as a spectacular horror story, violence on screen begetting violence off screen. This nexus remains forced but no less convincing for the morally concerned.   

The concern now is less that minors will rush off and gun down their peers than dissipate themselves in cerebral sludge and apathy.  In November 1982, the US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared his personal war on video games, which offered “nothing constructive” and consumed the “body and soul” of their users.  While having no evidence at the time about the effect of such games on children, he, according to the New York Times, “predicted statistical evidence would be forthcoming soon from the health care fields.”

The current literature is peppered with warnings that the Internet has ceased being the rosy frontier of freedom and very much the hostage taker of controls and desires.  Freedom has become vegetate and dulled; users have become narcotised.  In 2012, Daria J. Kuss and Mark D. Griffiths in Brain Sciences observed that, over “the past decade, research has accumulated suggesting that excessive Internet use can lead to the development of a behavioural addiction.”  Such an addiction “had been considered a serious threat to mental health and the excessive use of the Internet has been linked to a variety of negative psychosocial consequences.”

The review of 18 studies by Kuss and Griffiths makes for despairing reading.  Neural circuitry is adjusted via internet and gaming addiction (“neuroadaptation and structural changes”); behaviourally, gaming addicts suggest constriction “with regards to their cognitive functioning in various domains.”  But as with everything else such studies on claimed influence and corruption face the usual sceptical rebukes; research is criticised, if not ignored altogether, for being heavy with biases and distortions.

 We are left with such non-committal observations as those of Pete Etchells, who makes the rather dull point in Lost in a Good Game that,

“There are as yet no universal or conclusive truths about what researches do or do not know about the effects that video games have on us.” 

Etchells certainly does his best in underscoring the good effects, claiming that “video game play is one of the most fundamentally important activities we can take part in”.  Consider, for instance, escapism when facing the death of a parent.

Such views have not impressed the World Health Organisation, which has come down firmly on the side of the anti-gaming puritans. The body has added its voice to the debate, describing such addiction rather discouragingly as “gaming disorder”.  It is “defined in the 11^th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a pattern of gaming behaviour (‘digital-gaming’ or ‘video-gaming’) characterised by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.”

Such a view was bound to cause a flutter of irritation in the gaming industry.  As Ferris Jabr noted last month in The New York Times Magazine, the word addiction is an uncomfortable combine involving religious scolding, scientific disapproval, and colloquial use describing “almost any fixation.”

With such opinions circulating, state regulators have decided to come out swinging.  In 2018, a game-obsessed China, with the then world’s largest market, unearthed a new gaming regulator: the State Administration of Press and Publications, operating under the auspices of the publicity department of the Chinese Communist Party.  The GAPP, as outlined in a document published on the website of the education ministry, would “implement controls on the total number of online video games, control the number of new video games operated online, explore an age-appropriate reminder system in line with China’s national conditions, and take measures to limit the amount of time minors [spend on games].”   

But the rationale for having such a body is not exactly one of enlightenment.  Fine to wean the young off their addictive devices and platforms, encouraging healthier living, but supplanting it with the guidance of the all-powerful President Xi Jinping?  Much equivalent is this to the idea of replacing a symptom with a cult, a questionable solution at best.

Video game companies have made modest efforts to rein in times of use for those of certain age.  The world’s largest gaming company, Tencent, took the plunge by limiting game time to one hour a day for those under the age of 12, and two for those between 12 and 18.  Such moves seem ineffectual given the sheer variety of games users can expect to sample. 

Having such regulators, whatever the noble purpose, is an incitement to capriciousness.  Times of use can be adjusted in accordance with whim. The genres of games can be pulled from the market at any given moment for stretched political and social reasons.  The Chinese case is rich with examples, including the designation that mah-jong and poker be removed the approval list over concerns regarding illegal gambling. 

The effort to restrict those of a certain age from immersing themselves in virtual reality for fear of contaminating the world of flesh and feeling remains current and, in many circles, popular.  The Chinese experiment is bound to be catching, but going behind the regulations, weaknesses are evident.  The PRC gaming restrictions do not, for instance, cover offline experiences or single-player forms.  The addict need merely modify the habit.  The true purpose of such moves remain conventional and oppressive: the assertion of state power and surveillance over individual choice.

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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]

Not reported by ANY corporate media was the October 2 London protest to protect Julian Assange, led by Pink Floyd’s world famous co-founder, Roger Waters and award-winning journalist John Pilger, in front of Britain’s Home Office.  About 1,000 people attended.

On Monday, October 28th  Roger Waters, one of the top UK performers of all time (“Dark Side of the Moon”), described the media blackout:

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This is incredible, given that Assange was interviewed in 2010 by Sir David Frost (the only person to have interviewed all US presidents and UK prime ministers for many decades) on Al Jazeera.

There are no charges against Assange. At the Westminster magistrate’s extradition hearing October 21, John Pilger was present and reported that Assange could barely speak or think. Assange was not permitted to see his defence documents while in this “court”. John’s description is utterly appalling.

The truth about Julian’s character was recently reported by the Ecuadorian diplomat at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, who was with Julian for six years. See this.

The media is now entirely complicit as the UK bows to US dominance, while turning its back on its own laws in an atrocious violation of human rights.

Julian needs a network of people to co-ordinate a grass-roots movement to press for his freedom – but most people as of 2019 have never heard of Assange, thanks to the presstitute media.  Paul Craig Roberts has recently mounted a petition to support Assange on his website.

Julian himself has made some suggestions on how to help him in his replies to people who have written to him in prison: “Letters from Belmarsh: What Julian Assange says we should do to save his life”

Until something major gets organized, it is possible to write words of encouragement to Julian. His prisoner number must be included on the envelop or the letter will not be delivered to him in Belmarsh maximum security prison, where he is not permitted to speak to other prisoners.  Here is what is recommended for writing to him:

Apparently, because he gets a lot of mail, it should be a short letter, telling him anything you have done, or want to do, to try to help him.

Mr. Julian Assange
Prisoner # A9379AY
HMP Belmarsh
Western Way
London SE28 0EB UK

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Many people have requested that the Appeal should still remain open for signatures. Therefore, both the individual signature form and the organization signature form will remain on the Appeal’s website even after the initial delivery of the Appeal to the world’s governments.

Within the next few days, I will be directly contacting everyone who has volunteered to deliver the Appeal in person to their governments.

SpaceX Has Applied for 30,000 More Satellites

The emergency in the sky just became even more terrifying: on October 7, 2019, the International Telecommunication Union posted new applications by SpaceX for 30,000 more satellites, in addition to the 12,000 that have already been approved, for a planned total of 42,000 5G satellites in low and very low orbit in the Earth’s ionosphere.

SpaceX has also announced a speeded up schedule of launches: it plans to launch as many as 240 more satellites by the end of 2019 and as many as 1,440 satellites during 2020, i.e. 120 satellites per month. Beginning in 2021 Space X expects to be able to launch 400 satellites at a time, or 4,800 satellites per year, on its Super Heavy rocket, now under development. SpaceX now states that it intends to begin providing 5G from space to most of the world’s population some time in the second half of 2020.

The initial satellites will be distributed in 72 orbital planes, inclined at 53 degrees to the equator. This means that when service begins in 2020 from about 1,000 satellites, their signals (and radiation) will reach all populated places on Earth except Alaska, northern Canada, far northern Europe, most of Russia, and Tierra del Fuego.

But the greatest damage the satellites will do, which could end life on Earth when they go into service next year, comes from their location in the most vulnerable part of the Earth’s environment: the ionosphere. The ionosphere is a layer of atmosphere that begins at an altitude of about 50 miles above our heads. It is charged to an average of 300,000 volts at all times and it provides the power for the global electrical circuit. The global electrical circuit provides the energy for all living things: it is why we are alive, and it is the source of all health and healing. All doctors of oriental medicine know this, except they call that energy “qi” or “chi.” It flows between sky and Earth and it circulates through our meridians and gives us life. It is electricity. You cannot contaminate the global electrical circuit with millions of pulsed, modulated radio signals without destroying all life.

When the 66 satellites of the Iridium Corporation began providing cell phone service on Wednesday, September 23, 1998, people all over this planet reported headaches, dizziness, nausea, insomnia, nosebleeds, heart palpitations, asthma attacks, and ringing in the ears that began that morning. One person I spoke with said it felt like a knife went through the back of her head early Wednesday morning. Another had stabbing pains in the chest. Birds were not out flying, not even sparrows. Hawks were not out hunting. Thousands of homing pigeons lost their way. The death rate in the United States rose by four to five percent, immediately, and for the next two weeks.

That is what 66 satellites did. What will 41,000, or even 1,000, much more powerful satellites do? The beams from each SpaceX satellite will be about one thousand times as powerful as the beams from each Iridium satellite. We cannot afford to find out what they will do. This needs massive protests, all over this planet. It must not happen. Please contact me if you want to help.

Planned Global Day of Protest

A 5G Global Protest Day is being planned for Saturday, January 25, 2020. In the days leading up to the global event, beginning January 12, various activities are being planned in many nations to raise public awareness about 5G and attract media attention. For example, it has been proposed that the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space should be read at the United Nations, in public, with the media present. It has been proposed by activists in Brussels that there should be an International 5G Moratorium Conference held in Brussels. Brussels should be the host of this conference because Brussels, since March 31, 2019, has stood up for the people and for the Earth and has refused 5G.

To organize such a conference, and such a global day of protest, and to mount a media campaign, will require people, and skills, and funds.  All donations are tax deductible for US residents.* The money will be used where most needed.

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Featured image is from End of the American Dream

On October 30^th, there was a panel discussion broadcast live on C-Span from the National Press Club and the Michael V. Hayden Center. The discussants were John Brennan, Michael McCabe, John McGlaughlin, and Michael Morrell. They all agreed with the statement by McLaughlin (former Deputy CIA Director) “Thank God for the ‘Deep State’”, and the large audience there also applauded it — nobody booed it. John Brennan amplified upon the thought, and there was yet more applause. However, that thought hadn’t been invented by McLaughlin; it instead had evolved recently in the pages of the New York Times. Perhaps the discussants had read it there. Instead of America’s ‘news’-media uncritically trumpeting what government officials assert to be facts (as they traditionally do), we now have former spooks uncritically trumpeting what a mainstream ‘news’-medium has recently concocted to be the case — about themselves. They’ve come out of the closet, about being the Deep State. However, even in that, they are lying, because they aren’t it; they are only agents for it.

In America, the Deep State ‘justifies’ itself in the ‘news’-media that it owns, and does so by falsely ‘defining’ what the “Deep State” is (which is actually the nation’s 607 billionaires, whose hired agents number in the millions). They mis-‘define’ it, as being, instead, the taxpayer-salaried career Government employees, known professionally as “the Civil Service.” (Although some Civil Servants — especially at the upper levels — are agents for America’s billionaires and retire to cushy board seats, most of them actually are not and do not. And the “revolving door” between “the public sector” and “the private sector” is where the Deep State operations become concentrated. That’s the core of the networking, by which the billionaires get served. And, of course, those former spooks at the National Press Club said nothing about it. Are they authentically so stupid that they don’t know about it, or is that just pretense from them?)

How the Deep State’s operatives perpetrate this deception about the meaning of “Deep State” was well exemplified in the nine links that were supplied on October 28th by the extraordinarily honest anonymous German intelligence analyst who blogs as “Moon of Alabama” and who condemned there (and linked to) 9 recent articles in the New York Times, as posing a threat against democracy in America. As I intend to argue here, the 9 articles are, indeed, aimed at deceiving the American public, about what the true meaning of the phrase “the Deep State” is. He headlined “Endorsing The Deep State Endangers Democracy”. (And that’s what the October 30th panel discussion was actually doing — endorsing the Deep State.) However, he didn’t explain the tactic the NYT’s editors (and those former spooks) use to deceive the public about the Deep State, and this is what I aim to do here, by showing the transformation, over time, in the way that that propaganda-organization, the New York Times, has been employing the phrase “Deep State” — a remarkable transformation, which started, on 16 February 2017, by the newspaper’s denying that any Deep State exists in America but that it exists only in corrupt nations; and which gradually transitioned into an upside-down, by asserting that a Deep State does exist in the United States, and that it fights against corruption in this country. As always, only fools (such as that applauding audience on October 30th) would believe it, but propagandists depend upon fools and cannot thrive without them. In this case, the Times, in those 9 articles, was evolving quickly from a blanket denial, to an American-exceptionalist proud affirmation, that a Deep State rules this country and ought to rule it. I agree with the statement that “Endorsing The Deep State Endangers Democracy”, but I am more concerned here to explain how that endorsement — that deceit — is being done.

The first of these NYT articles was published on 16 February 2017, and it denied that the US has any “Deep State” whatsoever.

The second, published on 6 March 2017, blamed President Trump (since the NYT represents mainly Democratic Party billionaires) for mainstreaming the phrase “the Deep State” into American political discourse, and it alleged that that phrase actually refers only to “countries like Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, where authoritarian elements band together to undercut democratically elected leaders.”

The third, published on 10 March 2017, repeated this allegation, that this phrase applies only to “the powerful deep states of countries like Egypt or Pakistan, experts say.”

The fourth, published on 5 September 2018, was an anonymous op-ed from a Government employee who condemned Trump and “vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” “This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.” So: still the NYT’s editors were hewing to their propaganda-line, that no “Deep State” exists in America — there are just whistleblowers, here.

The fifth, on 18 December 2018, said, for example, that “Adam Lovinger, a Pentagon analyst, was one of the first to wrap himself in the deep state defense” — namely, that they consist of “people who have been targeted for political reasons.” So, the NYT’s editors were now reinforcing their new false ‘definition’ of “Deep State,” as consisting just of Government whistleblowers.

The sixth, on 6 October 2019, said, “President Trump and some of his allies have asserted without evidence that a cabal of American officials — the so-called deep state — embarked on a broad operation to thwart Mr. Trump’s campaign. The conspiracy theory remains unsubstantiated.” So: the NYT’s editors were back, again, to denying that there is any “Deep State” in America. This was a signal, from them, that they were starting to recognize that they’d need to jiggle their ‘definition’ of “Deep State,” at least a bit.

The seventh, on 20 October 2019, was by a member of the Editorial Board, and it boldly proclaimed, about “the deep state,” “Let us now praise these not-silent heroes.” The propagandists now had settled firmly upon their new (and previously merely exploratory) ‘definition’ of “Deep State,” as consisting of whistleblowers in the US Government’s Civil Services, “individuals willing to step up and protest the administration’s war on science, expertise and facts.”

The eighth, on 23 October 2019, equated “the deep state” even more boldly with the impeachment of President Trump: “Over the last three weeks, the deep state has emerged from the shadows in the form of real live government officials, past and present, who have defied a White House attempt to block cooperation with House impeachment investigators and provided evidence that largely backs up the still-anonymous whistle-blower.”

The ninth, on 26 October 2019, which came from “a contributing opinion writer and professor of history,” alleged that the origins of “the deep state” are to be found with Teddy Roosevelt in the 1880s, when “A healthy dose of elitism drove Roosevelt’s crusade, as the spoils system had been the path to power for immigrant-driven political machines in big cities like New York. Yet the Civil Service laws he and others created marked the beginning of a shift toward a fairer, less corrupt public realm.”

In other words: the Deep State, in America, are not perpetrators of corrupt government (such as in “countries like Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, where authoritarian elements band together to undercut democratically elected leaders”), but are instead courageous enemies of corrupt government; and they are instituted by the aristocracy here (today’s American billionaires), in order to reduce, if not eliminate, corruption in government (which, the Times now alleges, originates amongst, or serves, the lower classes).

The lessons about Big Brother, which were taught by George Orwell in his merely metaphorical masterpiece 1984, were apparently never learned, because even now — as his “Newspeak” is being further refined so that black is white, and good is bad, and truth is falsehood — there still are people who subscribe to the propagandists and cannot get enough of their ridiculous con-games. Though in some poor countries, a corrupt Deep State rules; a Deep State rules in America so as to reduce if not prevent corruption, the New York Times now concludes.

You can see how it’s done, in those nine NYT articles. Isn’t it simply amazing there?!

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Forces loyal to Erdogan in the Turkish Army and accompanying terrorist groups looted electricity power generators and transformers from a number of villages and towns they infested in the Hasakah countryside. A car blew up with the invaders while they were preparing it to blow up civilians in a market.

Among the towns infested with Erdogan forces that witnessed the robberies were Shallah and Amirt in the countryside of Ras Al-Ain in the northern Hasakah province.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Army and its al-Qaeda affiliates are preventing the residents from returning to their homes in the villages infested.

This is not new for the Turkish Army, since the early days of the US-led War of Terror waged against Syria, Erdogan forces have stolen oil drilling and extracting heavy machinery, factories, and its production machines, especially in Aleppo stripping it to the walls and most of the times destroying that as well, wheat and burning what they can’t steal, and the oil first looted by the FSA then by Nusra Front to be replaced by ISIS followed by the Kurds and now the Trump forces, all robbed items go through Turkey.

Syrians call the Turkish pariah Erdogan ‘the thief of Aleppo’. Syrian President Bashar Al Assad reiterated that in his latest interview by saying: ‘When I called Erdogan a thief (during the visit to the SAA troops in Idlib last month) I wasn’t calling him bad names, I was just describing him, he’s a thief.’

While Erdogan forces were looting cities, others were preparing more killing tools but tasted the poison themselves when a car they were booby-trapping to detonate in yet another market blew up prematurely.

The explosion killed scores of the terrorists in the village of al-Ahras in the countryside of Ras Al-Ain, another number of the terrorists were injured and severe damage to the properties was caused.

Some local sources reported seeing Turkish army officers among the terrorists when they were preparing the vehicle.

Syria has declared the Turkish incursion in northern parts of the country as an illegal invasion despite any Putin – Erdogan agreements and the ‘Syrian state is determined to fight this invasion and all other invasions by all means until liberating the last inch of the Syrian territories’ numerous official statements by all Syrian officials.

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Featured image is from Syria News

Russia’s Far East Investment and Export Support Agency investment manager Vasily Libo revealed on November 1 that China’s foreign investment in the Far East advanced development zone accounted for about 59.1% of foreign investments in the region. This massive investment into the Far East is a strategic move by China as it aims to fully exploit the riches and benefits that this region of Russia can bring.

As the Russian Far East has a huge investment potential, especially with materials, natural resources, fisheries, and tourism, China aims to take advantage of the mostly underdeveloped region. The region is not only resource rich, but is strategically located as it borders China Mongolia and North Korea, and has a maritime border with Japan.

This is undoubtably Russia’s gateway to Asia.

Many commentators and experts have claimed the 21st Century is the “Asian Century” as China, India, Japan, Indonesia and Russia will be some of the world’s biggest economies by 2030. It is precisely for this reason that Russian President Vladimir Putin has prioritized the rapid development of the Russian Far East and has encouraged foreign investments into the region. Putin in May 2016 offered free land handouts in the Far East to Russians and naturalized citizens, demonstrating that Russia wishes to gain from Asia’s rapid economic development in the 21st century. This can be achieved from the port city of Vladivostok, close to the Chinese and North Korean borders.

The official website of the Far East and the Arctic Development Department explained that China is one of the major investment partners in the Far East and that Chinese investors have participated in 49 projects in advanced development zones and the Vladivostok. Another 40 investment projects with a total value of more than $23 billion US dollars are in the preparatory stage.

The largest projects using Chinese capital include the gold mining project involving China Gold Group, the coal project participated by China Energy, the Nakhodka Mineral Fertilizer Plant, and also the Zhongding United Animal Husbandry Co., Ltd., who are involved in milk production. According to data from the Russian Far East and Arctic Development Department, trade between the Far East and China grew by 26% in 2018, reaching $9.7 billion. In the first half of 2019 it increased by 21% to $4.9 billion. These initiatives are aimed at not only developing the sparsely populated region that has only 7 million people, in which tens of thousands are Chinese citizens who have now migrated to the region in search of opportunities and establish themselves as merchants and entrepreneurs.

For China, the region is just another economic opportunity, while for Russia it plays a critical role in economically engaging with Asia. It is for this reason that the port city of Vladivostok, located conveniently close to China and North Korea, has hosted the Eastern Economic Forum annually ever since its establishment 2015. This is in part to attract and diversify the type of foreign investment in the Far East. However, with China contributing nearly 60% of foreign investment into the region, it would suggest that it has failed in this goal so far.

Although Indian Prime Minister Modi on the eve of Vladivostok’s 5th Eastern Economic Forum this year proposed a trilateral engagement between Moscow, New Delhi and Tokyo by collectively developing the Far East, it appears that China’s economic influence in the region will not be significantly challenged in the near future.

Japan’s investments in the Far East’s economy exceeds $15 billion after many years and will continue to develop, but this is still insignificant compared to the Chinese investment. Rather, the insignificant amount of foreign investment from sources other than China demonstrates that if Moscow wishes to economically engage with Asia through the Far East, it may only be able to do so through the nexus of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Because China controls a host of ports throughout Asia, including in Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and even Australia, Russia’s growing engagement with Asia through Vladivostok has to be done through the BRI network. This port network however can create a corridor that stretches from Vladivostok to Darwin, and all the emerging markets in between like the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. This has also caught the attention of Western Europe.

French President Emmanuel Macron made a Facebook post in August where he said “progress on many political and economic issues is evident, for we’re trying to develop Franco-Russian relations. I’m convinced that, in this multilateral restructuring, we must develop a security and trust architecture between the European Union and Russia.” This is a curious choice of words since France has maintained hostile relations with Moscow over Russia’s reunification with Crimea, blaming Russia for the MH17 airline tragedy, and for Russia militarily defending Syria and economically supporting Venezuela.

However, Macron has proven to be a pragmatist and identifies that if the European Union wants to remain relevant in the 21st Century, it must grow its economic relations with Asia. It is for this reason that Macron also expanded on General de Gaulle’s famous phrase that Europe stretches “from Lisbon to the Urals” by saying Europe’s territory stretches to Vladivostok, the port city that is closer to Beijing, Tokyo, and even Darwin, then it is to Moscow, let alone Paris.

Coupled with the Trans-Siberian railway, products from Asia can reach Europe much faster than shipping to Europe, making the development of Vladivostok an interest for Western Europe too. Europe will probably not be enticed enough to develop the Far East, knowing full well that Asian powerhouses like China, India and Japan are already involved in the region. However, it is likely that Europe will be enticed enough to enjoy the benefits of having an open Eurasian corridor that must transvers Russia in its entirety from Vladivostok or other eastern cities to the European side of Russia.

Therefore, China’s development of the Russia’s Far East could push Europe to improving its relations with Russia. The European Union maintains a sanctions regime against Russia, mostly because of pressure from Washington. However, in recent months, there has been continued questions against the necessity to maintain sanctions against Russia from European Union officials and Members of European Parliament. It is likely that as we continue to venture into the “Asian Century,” the Russian Far East will become a thriving area. It remains to be seen whether the inevitability of the “Asian Century” will be recognized by the entirety of the European Union in the near future, but it would be in their own economic interests to recognize this reality quickly. And to recognize this would mean an eventual normalization of relations between the European Union and Russia.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

In an effort to rapidly modernize before the next large-scale military conflict, the US Army has purchased 624 robotic mules from General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS), a deal worth more than $162 million, reported Defense Blog.

GDLS’ MUTT (Multi-Utility Tactical Transport) is designed to reduce a soldier’s load by carrying gear on an 8×8 unmanned ATV. 

According to Army officials, MUTT can haul up to 1,000 pounds of gear and is designed to follow infantry soldiers on the battlefield, through some of the harshest terrains.

Infantry soldiers carry between 60-120 pounds of gear, and MUTT can alleviate nearly 80% of the weight, which allows soldiers to move swiftly across the battlefield.

MUTT comes in several sizes: tracked, 6×6, and 8×8. It measures 9 feet long by 5 feet wide, can carry 1,000 pounds of gear, and also provide 3,000 watts of power, in addition to a 60-mile range.

Besides hauling soldiers’ heavy gear packs, MUTT can hold anti-tank missiles and or spare ammunition.

Several other uses include evacuating wounded soldiers from frontlines, surveillance missions with high-tech sensors, and it can even be outfitted with machine guns, anti-tank missiles, and or grenade launchers to conduct attack missions.

In 2H18, soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York, were given several MUTTs for a field training exercise that simulated warzone like conditions.

“It’s a huge upgrade for the dismounted reconnaissance troop. I picked up five casualties in one night at different locations with this vehicle [MUTT] that I wouldn’t have been able to do. I’d have been able to make it to maybe two,” said 1st Sgt. Joshua Richards, 1st Brigade Combat Team.

The next big push with the Army are robots for the modern battlefield. Before you know it, these artificially intelligent machines will be making war decessions without any or limited input from humans. The rise of the terminator is happening. 

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All images in this article are from the author

In 2012, I wrote an article about Lebanon that still rings true today. It ended with a quote from one of my favourite pieces written by Kahlil Gibran: “You Have Your Lebanon, I Have My Lebanon.”

I am including below an extract from my July 2012 article, followed by a few comments on current developments:

“With neighbouring Syria imploding, tensions with Iran mounting and Israel ever threatening, Lebanon appears to be on the brink of conflict. But then that has been the story of Lebanon for decades now. This remarkably beautiful country filled with extraordinary people has long been a victim of its history, its own leaders and the machinations of outsiders. This may be Lebanon’s past and present, but if we listen to the Lebanese people, it need not be the country’s future.

“It was the French who created Lebanon and its patchwork quilt, sect-driven system of governance, designing it to serve France’s imperial interests. During the past 80 years, operating within this imposed framework, Lebanon’s sectarian elites have jockeyed for advantage, seeking the support of external “partners” to buttress their position. Only too obliging, these foreign “partners” all too often had their own interests to promote or scores to settle. As a result, Lebanon was time and again transformed into a battlefield where sects clashed and regional power struggles were fought.

“And so it is today.

“Two generations ago, Lebanon was an East-West Cold War battleground. Today it is an arena in which the conflict between the West and its allies versus Iran and its surrogates plays out, with fragile Lebanon hanging in the balance, and its security, stability and prosperity at risk.

‘Some may shrug dismissively and say ‘this is Lebanon’ or point to the country’s warlords and armed gangs and say, ‘they bring it on themselves.” But this recurring precarious state of affairs need not be Lebanon’s fate. If we listen to Lebanon’s people, it is possible to imagine a very different country, based on a common identity and sense of purpose.

“If polling has taught me anything, it is that people almost always know more than the politicians who lead them. In this regard, Lebanon’s people have a great deal to say — and deserve to be heard.

“There are, to be sure, issues that divide the Lebanese. For example, two recent polls found Lebanese holding discordant views with regard to Syria and Iran… In all cases, these attitudes of various Lebanese groups, while reflecting the positions of their leaders, only tell part of the story of what the Lebanese really think. On most issues, however, there is a strong domestic consensus, and it would be wise for leaders in Lebanon, and the rest of us, to pay attention and focus on the issues and policies that could bring most Lebanese together, not those that divide them.

“There are many places where the Lebanese find common ground. They agree on the country’s sorry state of affairs, the political priorities that must be addressed, the importance of national identity, unity and fundamental political reforms that should be enacted.

“When, for example, we ask the Lebanese whether they are better off or worse off than they were five years ago, all agree that they are worse off. Similarly, when we ask them if the country is currently on the right track or the wrong track, all groups agree that Lebanon is on the wrong track. And when we ask Lebanese to identify their top political concerns, once again there is a remarkable convergence in attitudes. All Lebanese, across the board, rank ‘expanding employment opportunities’ as their number one concern, followed by ‘ending corruption and nepotism’, ‘political reform’, and “protecting personal freedoms and civil rights’.

“What is also striking is that when we ask the Lebanese for their principle source of identity, they do not name their religion or sect, nor do they say their family or ‘being Arab’. Instead, people in all groups say that it is ‘being Lebanese’.

“When we ask Lebanese whether they prefer to maintain the sect-based apportionment system of the past or replace it with a ‘one man/one vote’ political structure, there is broad agreement that it is time to implement the latter. They all agree that national unity is a must for the country. And they reject the notion that any one group should dominate over the others.

“Almost a century ago, Lebanon’s internationally renowned poet, Kahlil Gibran, wrote a marvelous piece, ‘You have your Lebanon, I have my Lebanon’, in which he contrasted the country’s self-centered, plundering, bickering elites with the common folk who are Lebanon’s heart and soul. Gibran was right then, and his observations hold true today. Lebanon’s leaders and those who care about the future of the country ought take note, listen to Lebanon’s people, and help pull the country back from the brink, before it’s too late.”

That was what I wrote seven years ago.

For the past two weeks, the two Lebanons have been at a dramatic stand-off as sustained mass demonstrations have called for an end to old regime. They no longer want feudal dynasties governing and looting the country, nor do they want to be held hostage to an armed militia that uses threats to protect its position in this dysfunctional system. Their simple, yet eloquent, slogan has been “All of them, means all of them”.

The protests have been pan-sectarian, creative (a human chain of demonstrators holding hands connecting Lebanese from the north to the south, over 120 miles), and massive (at one point there were one and one-half million demonstrators in the streets, over one-third of Lebanon’s population).

Why were they demonstrating? Our most recent polling shows Lebanese public opinion fed up and unified, with a greater consensus than seven years ago. Today, across the board, Lebanese are even more dissatisfied with the state of their economy and more pessimistic about the country’s future. Like seven years ago, they overwhelmingly say that “creating employment opportunities” is their number one priority, but they have little confidence that their governing institutions can deliver. There is also a growing concern about Iran’s involvement in their country. All segments of Lebanese society retain a deep animus toward Israel, recalling its long occupation of the south and its repeated brutal bombardments. And they are deeply concerned about their country’s inability to cope with the economic and social strains resulting from the presence of over one million Syrian refugees.

Given the depth and intensity of their dissatisfaction and frustration, no one should have been surprised when the protests began, not even Lebanon’s decayed and corrupt political elite. If they had been listening to the people, they would have known that their time was up.

In response to sustained protests, the government finally resigned, despite Hizbollah’s threats. But significant challenges remain if the aspirations of the protesters are to be fulfilled. To replace one sectarian/dynastic cabinet with another will not bring change. Neither will new elections based on the same sect-apportioned system.

Lebanon needs a real democratic transformation; that is what the people want. One place to start would be to implement a provision from the old 1926 constitution, which called for the creation of a one-man, one vote, non-sectarian lower house of parliament, while reserving sect representation for an upper house with limited powers. This might give the country an elected government that puts Lebanon and all of its people first.

This kind of change will not come quickly. And the old elites will not easily surrender their privileges. For Lebanon’s protesters to get to where they want to be, they will need to organise a strong representative leadership, sustain their energy, design new tactics to protect the momentum of their movement and put forth a comprehensive programme for change. It will not be easy, but from what I have seen over the past few weeks, I would listen to the Lebanese people and I would not bet against them coming out on top. For the sake of Lebanon’s future, I hope they do.

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James J. Zogby is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.

It is today reported that Boris Johnson, in an act of arrogance, had ordered the Royal Mint to produce one million 50p coins to commemorate Brexit on October 31st last in the misplaced hope that he would succeed in his plan for leaving Europe on that date.   Now, with his face covered in egg, he has ordered the coins to be melted down and recycled.

The total cost of this expensive fiasco to the tax-payer has not been disclosed as the Government claims it is ‘commercially sensitive’.  In fact, what is sensitive, is whether this temporary Prime Minister will himself defray the cost of this expensive misjudgement, which is estimated to be in the region of some hundreds of thousands of pounds.

I suppose we are fortunate that he didn’t also order a customised Rolls Royce to take him to Heathrow there to board a brand new, executive-jet to fly him to have dinner in the White House with the 45th POTUS, Donald  J Trump, who is currently facing the prospect of impeachment in office. Once there, no doubt Johnson was expecting to finalise a new, comprehensive, UK-US TRADE deal – except for one small detail I.e. the U.K. Government is powerless to negotiate any trade deal until Brexit is an accomplished fact.

This then is the story of an inexperienced prime minister with big ideas that are sadly not commensurate with his innate abilities.  Boris Johnson has always been an inveterate loser and lacking in judgement – even as Foreign Secretary, as evidenced by a British mother still languishing in Prison in Iran.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

India’s refusal to join the RCEP mega-bloc endangers the viability of Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership supercontinental integration vision, which not even next week’s BRICS Summit might be able to save after Modi crossed the Rubicon of self-imposed regional economic isolation and thus imposed very clear limits on just how how much Moscow’s ambitious plans can realistically achieve, unless Russia decides to compensate for India’s lack of participation in regional economic integration processes by replacing it with Pakistan.

India’s RCEP Refusal Rocks Eurasia

Eurasia was rocked by a geopolitical earthquake after India refused to join the RCEP mega-bloc at the very last minute following seven years of negotiations that were supposed to successfully conclude earlier this week, which finally put to rest the long-running speculation about whether or not it’s been groomed by the US this entire time to spoil the process of Eurasian integration at its most pivotal moment. There should be no doubt at this point that India has been co-opted by the US in a Kissingerian fashion to turn it against China in the New Cold War in a similar manner as the US did with China vis-a-vis the USSR in the Old Cold War through the skillful exploitation of the preexisting security dilemmas between them, meaning that the nascent Sino-Indo split will probably end up being just as an impactful of a geopolitical force as the Sino-Soviet one was. This has enormous implications for Russia’s dual grand strategic visions of building the Greater Eurasian Partnership and then “balancing” between its Chinese and Indian pillars in order to indefinitely stabilize this supercontinental integration structure that was planned to bring together its Eurasian Union (EAU), China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), ASEAN, the SCO, and possibly even one day the EU and other members as well.

The Sino-Indo Split: Economic Dimensions

Next week’s BRICS Summit in Brazil will probably fail to make any progress in fixing the rapidly developing Sino-Indo split despite whatever predictable photo-ops might emerge from that mostly symbolic event. It’s the height of taboo to talk about in the Alt-Media Community and even the more formal think tank one, but the fact of the matter is that China and India’s many differences with one another appear to be irreconcilable. Although China is India’s second-largest trading partner, New Delhi regularly complains about not having what it believes is fair market access to the People’s Republic that would help balance the enormous trade deficit between the two. On top of that, India has been reluctant to enter into strategic technical cooperation with China by delaying its decision on Huawei’s bid to construct the country’s future telecommunications network. India and China do indeed cooperate on some international financial matters such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS Bank, but Indian voices have expressed concern in the past that these two are dominated by China, hence why their country doesn’t contribute more than it already is.

The Sino-Indo Split: Military Dimensions

Their competition is even more acute when one considers the military dimension of their security dilemma after the 2017 Donglang/”Doklam” Drama. China is adamantly opposed to India’s de-facto annexation of Kashmir because it believes that it infringes on its territorial integrity seeing as how Beijing administers the region of Aksai Chin, to say nothing of New Delhi blatantly violating international law with impunity in a similar manner as its new American patron has been known to do as well. South Tibet, which India administers as “Arunachal Pradesh”, is another bone of territorial contention between the two too, and it doesn’t help any that the Indian military has recently been conducting drills in these two disputed regions over the years as well. Even more disturbing, India signed several so-called “foundational agreements” with the US including logisticsand communications pacts to improve its military “interoperability” with American forces, and it’s also envisaged as one of the two anchors of the Pentagon’s “Indo-Pacific” strategy for “containing” China. Taken together, no amount of friendly photos, humble handshakes, or annual meetings between their leaders will change the economic and military dimensions of the ever-growing security dilemma between China and India.

Moscow’s Dilemma

Russia, for its part, has sought to “balance” between its two nominal BRICS and SCO partners, though it has in recent months leaned a lot closer towards India following the announcement that they’re now “global partners“, the establishment of the Vladivostok-Chennai Maritime Corridor(VCMC) between them, and the planned signing of a military logistics pact similar to the one that India has with the US, all of which is occurring against a backdrop of Russia procrastinating on making any tangible progress fulfilling President Putin’s publicly professed plans from earlier this year to integrate the EAU with BRI. After refusing to join RCEP at the very last minute and almost exactly a month after Modi hosted President Xi in Malappuram for their “Chennai Connect“, India lost the trust that it used to have from China, and the People’s Republic is beginning to change its perception of the increasingly strategic and especially military nature of Russian-Indian relations in this developing context. Moscow will thus need to “recalibrate” its “balancing” strategy through more sustained and tangible outreaches to Beijing lest it risk inadvertently provoking a security dilemma with the East Asian Great Power as well (which might actually be what New Delhi hopes ends up happening to “isolate” its rival).

The Neo-NAM

In reality, however, it would be Russia that ends up “isolated” just like the rogue state of India is rapidly becoming by none other than its own choice because its growing relations with India cannot compare to the ones that it currently has, and prospectively could have in the future, with China. This holds true even if Russia tries to lead a new Non-Aligned Movement (Neo-NAM) like Valdai Club expert Oleg Barabanov proposed in May and his colleagues Alexey Kupriyanov and Alexander Korolev then suggested in September could even be jointly led together with India since that move would almost certainly be perceived by China as a major indirect strategic hostility aimed at unofficially “containing” it given the current context of the Sino-Indo split unless Moscow first “recalibrates” its “balancing” strategy by improving relations with Beijing in parallel with any progress that might be made on the Neo-NAM (with or without New Delhi) so as to avoid inadvertently provoking a security dilemma. It should be said that the Neo-NAM itself is a theoretically sound idea supposing that the authors are correct in their presumption that the world is actually more bipolar than multipolar, and it would indeed be comparatively beneficial in that scenario for China-friendly Russia to play a leading role in it in order to “balance” out the influence of China’s unofficial Indian rival, but the utmost geostrategic care must be taken in order to prevent this from becoming the straw that breaks Russia’s delicate “balancing” act.

“Recalibrating” The “Balancing” Act

As such, it is of the utmost importance that Russia urgently considers how it can “recalibrate” its “balancing” act in order to accommodate for the recent developments of India’s refusal to economically participate in Eurasian integration processes such as RCEP, the unofficial ackwnoledgement of the Sino-Indo split because of it, and the nascent security dilemma that’s forming between Russia and China due to Moscow’s perceived preference for New Delhi in recent months over Beijing, all of which are collectively undermining the ultimate viability of the Greater Eurasian Partnership. It should be taken for granted after the latest developments that India will only play a bilateral role in this Russian-led and Chinese-backed vision instead of the comprehensive multilateral one that was originally envisaged for it, but Russia must seriously consider replacing India’s initially intended role with the global pivot state of Pakistan in order to both “balance” out New Delhi’s pro-American pivot and also assuage any of Beijing’s concerns that Moscow can no longer be trusted like before. No third party is adversely affected through Russia’s possible prioritization of the apolitical and purely economic N-CPEC+ corridor connecting itself with Pakistan via Central Asia and post-war Afghanistan, and progress on that front would kill the two aforementioned birds with one stone and also cultivate the trust-based conditions where China probably wouldn’t mind all that much if Russia then decided to lead the prospective Neo-NAM.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s “politically incorrect” to publicly say and will likely be dismissed as “senseless fearmongering” by reactionary critics, but it convincingly appears to be the case that Russia’s “balancing” act is becoming increasingly unbalanced in light of recent events in the Sino-Indo relationship beyond its direct control, meaning that a “recalibration” is absolutely necessary if Russia is to retain its middle ground strategic position vis-a-vis both of its nominal BRICS and SCO partners with an aim to promote the grand strategic goal of the Greater Eurasian Partnership. India can still play a role in this vision, albeit likely only a bilateral one after signaling its reluctance to commit to multilateral economic integration, but Russia can prospectively replace it with Pakistan through N-CPEC+ in order to simultaneously strengthen trust with China and reinforce its renewed presence in South Asia. Without the inclusion of Pakistan as a leading player in Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership through N-CPEC+, the vision itself will always remain incomplete in principle, but in the current context of the evolving Sino-Indo split, it might not even succeed at all if Russia doesn’t use it as a means to prove the sincerity of its commitment to integrate the EAU and BRI. At risk of being called “alarmist”, the author feels obligated to conclude by saying that the situation is currently very critical and that the moves that Russia makes across the next year will determine the trajectory of Eurasian geopolitics for years to come, for better or for worse.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Online independent analysis of US-led wars, rampant corruption, corporate greed, civil rights and fraudulent monetary transactions is invariably relegated to the bottom rung of search engine results.

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The New Cold War: Russia’s “Stealth Capable” 955 Borei-class Submarines. US-NATO’s Aegis Ashore Missile Defense

By Padraig McGrath, November 06, 2019

On October 29th, the Norwegian news-outlet NRK broke the story that between 8 and 10 Russian submarines, including Sierra II class submarines, had begun naval exercises in the North Atlantic. This is one of the largest Russian naval exercises focused on submarine-warfare since the end of the cold war. It is likely that one of the core purposes of this exercise is to test the stealth-capability of the Russian subs, and of NATO forces’ abilities to track them as they push through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap (abbreviated “GUIK-gap”), a closely monitored strategic bottleneck. The Sierra II class sub has a titanium hull, enabling it to submerge to greater depths than steel-hulled submarines, and it is also much quieter than most other submarines.

Syria: OPCW Whistleblowers Confirm What We Already Knew. The OPCW Suppressed Evidence Regarding alleged Chemical Weapons Attack

By Tony Cartalucci, November 06, 2019

Despite information within their own reports either indisputably disproving claims of Syria’s government using chemical weapons, or admissions that no fact-based claims could even be made with investigators often never even visiting sites where alleged attacks took place, the OPCW would release several politically-motivated conclusions that fed directly into US war propaganda at the time.

The alleged 2018 Douma chemical attack was perhaps the most pertinent example of this, with details of the alleged attack sparse and unconvincing and with the final OPCW report even including a picture taken at a militant weapon’s factory where a cylinder similar to those allegedly used in the attack was found among ordnance being prepared for use.

UN Security Council Sanctions against North Korea Responsible for Deaths of 3,193 Children Under Age 5 in 2018 Alone!

By Carla Stea, November 06, 2019

On Monday, October 28, a brilliant panel discussion revealing the atrocities resulting from the UN Security Council sanctions (in particular, Resolution 2397) forced upon the DPRK was held at 777 United Nations Plaza.  This panel discussion should have been held on the premises of the United Nations, in one of the conspicuous press briefing rooms, and announced by the secretariat, so that the numerous media outlets and resident correspondents  at UN Headquarters would have been alerted to it, and learned of the horrific consequences of UN policies causing deaths of innocent children, pregnant women, disabled and elderly.  To its credit, The Wall Street Journal, on October 31 published a small report, by Courtney McBride at the top if its “World Watch” column, page A9.

Asia’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP): The RCEP Train Left the Station, and India, Behind

By Pepe Escobar, November 06, 2019

A pan-Asia high-speed train has left the station – and India – behind. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which would have been the largest free trade deal in the world, was not signed in Bangkok. It will probably be signed next year in Vietnam, assuming New Delhi goes beyond what ASEAN, with diplomatic finesse barely concealing frustration, described as “outstanding issues, which remain unresolved.”

The partnership uniting 16 nations – the ASEAN 10 plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and, in theory, India – would have congregated 3.56 billion people and 29% of world trade.

From Canada’s Election to Public Action: Beyond the Moral Tumor of Alberta Tar-Sands

By Prof. John McMurtry, November 06, 2019

For months during and after Canada’s 2019 federal election campaign, corporate media provided daily frontline news space for non-stop Alberta demands for more tar-sands export infrastructure through British Columbia, as well as discrediting stories on the Trudeau government for questionable legal protection of a Quebec big business to his playing blackface in a youthful costume.

No-one joined the dots or mentioned the words ‘Big Oil’.

When Is a Whistleblower, Not a Whistleblower? From Russiagate to Ukrainegate

By Renee Parsons, November 06, 2019

It is a fact that most whistleblowers bring the transgression proudly forward into the public light for the specific purpose of exposing the deeds that deserve to be exposed.  At great personal cost, they then provide a credible case for why this offense is illegal or a violation of the public trust and deserves to be made public. This alleged WB, however, defies the traditional definition of a WB who most often experiences the wrong-doing first hand and from a personal vantage while revealing said wrong-doing as a function within an agency of their employment.

Iran Nuclear Deal and the Attack on Abqaiq Oil Facility

By Nauman Sadiq, November 06, 2019

Donald Trump has repeatedly said during the last three years that the Iran nuclear deal signed by the Obama administration in 2015 was an “unfair deal” that gave concessions to Iran without giving anything in return to the US. Unfortunately, there is a grain of truth in Trump’s statements because the Obama administration signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in July 2015 under pressure, as Washington had bungled in its Middle East policy and it wanted Iran’s cooperation in Syria and Iraq to get a face-saving.

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Let me paint a picture of the near future. Drones, some weighing a few pounds and others a few tons, will flow endlessly back and forth from rural distribution centers to inner-city delivery hubs. Day in and day out, they will drop off our weekly shopping, last-minute presents, and important medicines. Drones might even pick us up from work (or the bar) and take us home in automated airborne Ubers. They will transform our lives. Hundreds, if not thousands, of drones will fly high above towns and cities, bypassing the congested highways and streets currently plagued by traffic.

Put simply, the drone revolution will change the way in which we conceive and comprehend logistics and transportation. Yet not all the changes we see from the global spread of drones will be positive. Drones bring with them a novel set of risks and challenges—and these need to be confronted.

Some of the issues are self-evident and have already begun to cause problems as drone technologies expose unforeseen vulnerabilities within vital national infrastructure. Drones made headlines last month when they were flown at low level alongside cruise missiles to evade Saudi Arabia’s air defenses and knock nearly 6 percent of the world’s oil supply offline. It’s still not clear who committed these attacks, with some suspecting Yemen’s Houthi rebels and others pointing the finger at Iran, but this is the point. Uncertainty is a core part of the drone’s allure. The combination of ever-longer range and remote control allows for a distancing and a deniability when it comes to aggressive drone use. A drone can be above us, next to us, or, horrifyingly, outside our airplane window as we land at an international airport. It is unclear who is controlling any given drone, and there are currently few measures that can effectively trace, track, and disable the eclectic mix of drone systems that populate our skies.

“Drone” has, of course, become a somewhat amorphous term, used to describe a vast array of systems. Yet in all forms, from fixed-wing systems to quadcopters, drones present novel risks to security. These are unlikely to be resolved quickly, if at all.

The warning signs. Even if Yemen’s Houthi rebels did not conduct the September 14 attack, as they claimed, they have been successfully using fixed-wing drones for a while. They began with state support, allegedly from Iran, but soon turned to commercial drone supplies to bolster their arsenal. High-definition cameras, industrial motors, and long-range transmitters all added to the Houthis’ capabilities. Their attacks on oil pipelines in Saudi Arabia in May 2019, assassination of high profile military leaders in Yemen in January 2019, and alleged strikes on national airports in Abu Dhabi in July 2018 and Dubai the following month highlighted the protentional for hostile actors, bolstered by commercially available technology, to cause death and destruction by remote control. Even the most innocuous commercial system can be misused.

The chaos at Gatwick airport, where the alleged sighting in December 2018 of two quadcopter drones—or perhaps just one, several, or no drones at all (depending who you ask)—highlighted both this threat and its deniability. The United Kingdom’s second largest airport was brought to a standstill, but no one was brought to justice. Not only this, but the 125 near-misses and dangerous encounters that occurred between planes and slow, low-flying, off-the-shelf drones in that country last year occupied the time, capacity, and resources of police forces, airport officials, and parliamentary committees as the drone threat loomed.

The press has capitalized on the climate of fear, gleefully warning of quadcopter drones fitted with “machine guns,” “flamethrowers,” and payloads of radioactive waste—novel inventions that highlight the disturbing versatility of simple-to-acquire, and easy-to-adapt, remote systems. In fact, we need only look at the Japanese “atomic drones,” ISIS “Trojan Horse drones,” and Venezuelan “assassination drones” for pertinent reminders of how these toys can be transformed into weapons capable of violating secure governmental and military sites.

Still, this is just the start. Think of today’s nefarious drones as the Model T of dangerous drones. As drone technologies grow ever more sophisticated, proliferating in an unchecked and under-regulated manner, “hostile drone” incidents will increase in impact and number.

Evolving technology. Let’s focus on the future of the quadcopter drone threat. These drones, including systems consumers can already buy from mainstream manufacturers like DJI or Parrot, are now able to go faster, transmit images further, and fly for much longer than they could just a few years ago. Some are now “fast and furious,” rather than “low and slow.” The latest DJI Mavik 2, a relatively basic drone from a Chinese technology company, has a maximum speed of 72 kilometers per hour, an 8-kilometer video transmission distance, and can fly for up to 31 minutes. The recent use of drones to fly over the many thousands of protesters and security forces in Hong Kong highlights the pace, agility, versatility, and access of the current drone generation.

DJI, to be fair, has introduced a number of measures to encourage responsible use, particularly around airports. But as drones increase in numbers and capabilities, they are becoming more difficult to confine and counter. Readily available “add-ons”—such as the latest motors, transmitters, apps, and cameras—exacerbate the dangers.

Swarms of drones, sometimes more than a thousand strong, have kept us enthralled and entertained—be it at the Olympics or on New Year’s Eve—as Intel, one of the world’s largest computer technology companies, has shown off its multi-drone control software. Nevertheless, there is a troubling side to this captivating capability. For the princely sum of zero dollars, drone operators can download software and online tutorials that make it possible to fly multiple drones, simultaneously, toward a chosen target. When this capability is combined with ever-more-sophisticated smartphone apps that allow drone pilots to pre-set their drones’ final destination, it is easy to see how free, open-access, autonomous drone swarms are born. Of course, there is no need for these apps, tutorials, or software if a maliciously minded group has multiple operators, with multiple drones, flying all at once at a target. But the software and apps make it easier for an individual to achieve this once remarkable feat.

A window into the future. A terrorist attack by swarming drones may seem farfetched, and it is important not to engage in hyperbole. However, scenarios similar to this are playing out around the world, often in a hostile manner. Once again, the recent attacks on Saudi Arabia should give pause for concern. At least 18 drones and seven cruise missiles were reportedly used to break through national defenses and strike the designated targets in Abqaiq and Khurais. The use of these systems in swarms makes tactical sense, as it increases the likelihood of a successful strike, by overwhelming and saturating defenses. Drones may also be used to help identify targets, allowing secondary systems to strike with precision. In a different, but not unfamiliar manner, swarms have been used for saturation, spotting, and strike purposes by both criminal gangs and terrorists.

Last year, the FBI was operationally blinded when a criminal gang, embroiled in a hostage situation, made “high-speed low passes” at FBI agents with a rudimentary quadcopter drone swarm. Joe Mazel, who heads the FBI’s Operational Technology Law Unit, told Defense One that the gang buzzed the hostage rescue team and even “had people fly their own drones up and put the footage to YouTube.”

The incident was headline-grabbing, yet not a wholly new use of drones by criminal gangs. Previously, drones have been used to intimidate officers, stalk witnesses, smuggle drugs and contraband into prisons, spy on homes and industrial sites to see when occupants leave, and search for vulnerable and valuable assets. In Mexico, a drug cartel used quadcopter drones to spy on, identify, and attack a high-ranking official. The drones were fitted with grenades and sent to the residence of Gerardo Sosa Olachea, the public safety secretary for the Mexican state of Baja California. Fortunately, the grenades did not detonate. However, events like this provide a glimpse into the future.

What will the next drone attack look like? We can gain insight from the case of Basil Hassan in Denmark. Born in 1987 in a small town 20 kilometers from Copenhagen, Hassan would become known as one of the most dangerous individuals on the US list of foreign terrorists. He had a passion (and a talent) for engineering and flight. These were skills he chose to apply helping ISIS establish a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Specifically, he saw how drone systems could be easily acquired in Denmark or ordered online, sent to Turkey, and then smuggled across the border to help ISIS units that had emerged from captured resources at the University of Mosul in Iraq. By 2014, the units were experimenting with chemical agents and explosives in attempts to create deadly weapons. They were also testing and developing both fixed-wing and quadcopter drone systems. In time, Hassan played a major role in harnessing simple commercial technologies and using them to create effective weapons of war for ISIS’s new drone squadrons across Syria and Iraq.

The Danish authorities had known about Hassan since a friend was convicted of terror-related offenses in 2007. Hassan still managed to flee the country in the spring of 2014, turning up in Turkey, where he was arrested and jailed. By the fall of 2014, however, he was suddenly released from Turkish prison in a prisoner exchange between ISIS and Turkey. Hassan then used his engineering knowledge, training, and contacts from his previous life in Denmark to smuggle advanced drone technologies into ISIS-held territory. He was able to obtain the technology he needed from a hobbyist shop in Copenhagen—using his connections in the region to order five drone computers worth a total of around $6,000, and 20 thermal imaging cameras at $4,000 each. The Danish authorities noticed, tracked, and infiltrated his activities—but over a five-year period he had managed to bolster the ISIS drone arsenal.

It’s hard to attribute specific drone attacks to Hassan, but what is clear is that the ISIS drone program grew in impact and lethality after his arrival in the terror group, and the arrival of the high-tech drone parts. What has often been overlooked is the extent to which, since 2014, ISIS has used such drone systems en masse and in coordinated, highly tactical attacks. The group has used 10 or 20 drones at a time, alongside thermal imaging systems, long-range transmitters, high-definition cameras, onboard computers, and high-speed motors to attack coalition forces in Iraq and Syria.

According to my own interviews with coalition special-operations forces and journalists, in one series of attacks that occurred within a 24-hour period, there were no less than 82 drones of all shapes and sizes lobbing bombs at Iraqi, Kurdish, US, and French forces. During these attacks, ISIS was adept at coordinating its drone attacks with suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices, and sniper fire, to cause maximum damage and chaos for coalition forces.

ISIS was able to upgrade its drone systems by fitting them with better motors and thermal imaging cameras, making it possible to conduct high-speed night attacks. As one member of the Kurdish forces recalled, the drones were so effective that some soldiers began to “fear the noise and flee from the front line.”

The upshot is that drone technologies, supplied from the European continent, made their way to war zones with devastating impact. As drone technologies become more sophisticated and available in Europe, a pertinent question for security authorities should be: What could happen in Europe if these systems got into the wrong hands?

Systems already available in Europe include agricultural drones and their chemical spraying systems, high-speed motors that can propel drones faster and farther than ever before (while carrying heavier payloads), long-distance transmitters and batteries that allow an operator to be far from the drone in use (improving deniability), thermal-imaging cameras that allow an operator to effectively see in the dark, commercially developed (or even improvised) object-release devices that allow for the deployment of mortars and grenades, data theft/transmission software to capture sensitive metadata or send misinformation messages, and the aforementioned swarming and autonomous drones. When these technologies are combined, it is easy to see how a drone could be manipulated in creative ways.

In the future, population centers will become increasingly reliant on drones to provide the vital goods and services that keep a nation functioning commercially and socially. Amazon deliveries and Uber autonomous taxis are just the beginning. Emergency medical services, police forces, and fire and rescue responders will increasingly use drones. So will postal services, communications conglomerates, and social media giants. Each will seek to harness the speed and cost-effectiveness of drones, leaving society increasingly vulnerable.

A future vulnerability. In this future, drones are not only a threat to vital national infrastructure, but also a vital national infrastructure themselves. This is troubling for a variety of reasons, not least because one rogue drone incident could mean the grounding of a whole regional or national drone fleet, bringing critical and lifesaving services to a grinding halt. If hacked, drones could be put to insidious uses by criminal gangs, or even other nations, that wish to gather data or spread misinformation.

In August 2019, for example, hackers attending the annual Defcon conference in Las Vegas managed to demonstrate how a simple off-the-shelf quadcopter drone, fitted with a radio transmitter, could hover above a home and take control of its smart TV. The drone transmitted a signal “more powerful than the one broadcast by legitimate TV networks, overriding the legitimate signal.” This may seem harmless, but such a technical capability could allow a hacker to “display phishing messages that ask for the viewer’s passwords, inject keyloggers that capture the user’s remote button presses, and run cryptomining software.” The drone could even broadcast its own material.

In Ukraine, Russian-backed forces have already used fixed-wing drones, alongside ground-based systems, “to conduct electromagnetic reconnaissance and jamming against satellite, cellular and radio communication systems along with GPS spoofing and electronic warfare attacks.” One of the tactics in Ukraine was to send menacing messages to Ukrainian troops on the ground, urging retreat.

Drones are useful for information capture, as well as disinformation. As the New York Times reported two years ago, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have raised concerns that Chinese drones manufactured by DJI “may be sending sensitive information about American infrastructure back to China.” Broader worries soon surfaced, leading the US Army to ban the use of all drones made by DJI. As Foreign Policy reported in August, the Army “may soon ban all Chinese-built drones and Chinese-manufactured components from military use.”

As the drone future approaches, policy makers, industry leaders, security forces, and technology innovators must prioritize key questions: How will national governments secure emerging drone infrastructures as they grow exponentially over the next few years? How will data be kept secure? Can the hacking of drones and spread of disinformation be prevented? And, in the face of the most advanced drones, how will counter-drone systems react?

As one counter-drone expert recently warned, “’very few airports have any countermeasures or even processes in place to detect and defeat drones,” and many existing technologies are underperforming or too risky to use. It will take a lot of work, and focused investment from authorities and industry, to create a safe and vibrant drone future—one that can harness the benefits of drones while keeping out the darker sides of the technology.

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James Rogers is DIAS Assistant Professor in War Studies within the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, and Visiting Research Fellow within the Department of International Security Studies at Yale University.

Featured image is from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

On October 29th, the Norwegian news-outlet NRK broke the story that between 8 and 10 Russian submarines, including Sierra II class submarines, had begun naval exercises in the North Atlantic. This is one of the largest Russian naval exercises focused on submarine-warfare since the end of the cold war. It is likely that one of the core purposes of this exercise is to test the stealth-capability of the Russian subs, and of NATO forces’ abilities to track them as they push through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap (abbreviated “GUIK-gap”), a closely monitored strategic bottleneck. The Sierra II class sub has a titanium hull, enabling it to submerge to greater depths than steel-hulled submarines, and it is also much quieter than most other submarines.

In the event of a conflict, these submarines could be deployed to adopt a defensive posture, in order to protect Russian ports on the Barents Sea or Russia’s strategic holdings in the Arctic, or to threaten the American eastern seaboard. Since activating its 2nd Fleet, the US Navy has significantly increased patrols in the North Atlantic and in the area of the GUIK gap. The United States Navy also operates a detachment of P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft out of the Keflavik base in Iceland.

The following day, October 30th, the Borei-A-class submarine Prince Vladimir test-fired the Bulava ballistic missile from the White Sea to a target in the Kura missile-range in Kamchatka. This is the first ever test of a Bulava missile. The Bulava has a range of about 8,000 kilometres, and each of its independently targeted warheads delivers a payload the equivalent of 150 kilotons of TNT.

Northern Fleet Commander Vice-Admiral Alexander Moiseyev stated that the submarine Prince Vladimir is completing its state trials this year, during which all its armaments will be tested, before it is scheduled to enter service in December. The submarine will be operational in the Northern Fleet.

So far, the Sevmash shipyard has delivered 3 Borei-class submarines to the Russian navy, serving in the Northern and Pacific Fleets, with 4 more Project 955 Borei-class submarines under construction. Project 955 Borei-class submarines are designed for improved acoustic stealth, and each of them will carry 16 RSM-56 Bulava missiles as standard, with each missile carrying between 4 and 6 nuclear warheads.

The day after that, October 31st, President Putin was in Kaliningrad, inspecting the Yantar naval shipyard and the corvette “Gremyashchy,” launched in 2017.

In addition, 5 tests of the MIRV-equipped RS-28 Sarmat missile are planned for early 2020, with the Sarmat scheduled to enter service in 2021. This intercontinental ballistic missile is reportedly equipped with multiple hypersonic MIRV’s (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles), designed to evade missile defense systems. According to Russian government sources, the Sarmat can carry up to 15 warheads, has a range of 10,000 kilometres, and is capable of destroying an area the size of Texas.

All of this has been necessitated by the Aegis Ashore missile defence system, operated by the United States in Poland and Romania. However, let’s set the intercontinental ballistic missile issue aside for the purpose of our discussion here, and focus on the submarine issue, which is an underemphasized aspect of very many geo-strategic bones of contention.

This hardly needs to be explained with regard to Crimea – losing the naval base in Sevastopol would have been detrimental to Russian geo-strategic interests. At present, there is still a standing agreement between Russia and the western alliance that no submarines carrying nuclear weapons are deployed in the Black Sea.

From Crimea, let’s move on to Syria. Tartus is a small base, used by the Russian navy primary for provisioning, but it would suddenly become a radically more valuable strategic asset in the Mediterranean if the Bosphorus were ever blockaded. The western alliance had many, many reasons for prosecuting its proxy-war in Syria, and Tartus is certainly not the first item in that long list, but it is nonetheless one reason among many. The question arises as to what responses might be provoked from the United States if the Russian Defence Ministry ever decided to expand the Tartus base’s operational capabilities. Even if the defence ministry’s military planners were imprudent enough to consider such a move, President Assad would be unlikely to consent, given the resulting risk of re-igniting the Syrian conflict.

One of the problems common to many of the Russian navy’s most strategically important bases is the narrow sea-corridors to which they have access. Submarine-hunting is easier in small and easily monitored bodies of water such as the Baltic (Kaliningrad), the Black Sea (Sevastopol) and the Sea of Japan (Vladivostok). Even the Mediterranean is not expansive enough to allow Russian subs to disappear. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Russian Defence Ministry is commissioning considerable numbers of new generation, stealthier subs in response to the Aegis game-changer.

This also makes the Northern Fleet in Murmansk particularly key to the effectiveness of Russia’s nuclear deterrent, with no American fleet in immediate proximity. Furthermore, the point cannot be over-emphasized that with 17 million square kilometres of resource-rich territory but a population-density of only 8 persons per square kilometre, maintaining the effectiveness of Russia’s nuclear deterrent is an existential necessity.

In this regard, the strategic role of the Aegis Ashore missile defence system deployed by the United States in central Europe is essentially aggressive. There are many economic and geo-political factors feeding into the current lamentable state of Russia’s relationship with its western partners. However, it is very highly arguable that the deployment of Aegis Ashore in central Europe is singularly the biggest driver of the current geo-political and geo-strategic impasse, and consequently also the most influential driver of new Russian weapons-development.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Padraig McGrath is a political analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Whistleblowers have come forward revealing what many had known all along – that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had deliberately altered various reports and suppressed evidence regarding alleged chemical weapon attacks in Syria to help bolster US war propaganda.

The Courage Foundation – comprised of various whistleblowers and investigative journalists – in a statement titled, “Panel Criticizes ‘Unacceptable Practices’ in the OPCW’s investigation of the Alleged Chemical Attack in Douma, Syria on April 7th 2018,” would conclude (emphasis added):

Based on the whistleblower’s extensive presentation, including internal emails, text exchanges and suppressed draft reports, we are unanimous in expressing our alarm over unacceptable practices in the investigation of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, near the Syrian capital of Damascus on 7 April 2018. We became convinced by the testimony that key information about chemical analyses, toxicology consultations, ballistics studies, and witness testimonies was suppressed, ostensibly to favor a preordained conclusion.

The panel called on the OPCW to revisit its investigation of the alleged 2018 Douma attack, stating:

This would help to restore the credibility of the OPCW and work towards demonstrating its legally mandated commitment to transparency, impartiality and independence. It is of utmost importance to restore trust in the verification procedures relied upon to implement the prohibitions of the CWC [Chemical Weapons Convention].

The panel included a member of the OPCW itself – José Bustani – who in fact served as the first Director General of the OPCW. He would conclude:

“The convincing evidence of irregular behaviour in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had. I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing.”

A detailed breakdown on precisely what evidence was suppressed can be found here.

Confirming the Obvious

From the beginning, the OPCW’s role in Syria was clearly to buttress a US pretext for direct military intervention.

Despite this obvious goal, because many of OPCW staff are professionals and as clearly seen through the actions of whistleblowers coming forward – are principled – the OPCW resorted to very subtle methods to skew the outcomes of its reports and word its conclusions in such a way that media spin could fill in gaps and ambiguity the OPCW itself did not want to directly and overtly lie about.

Despite information within their own reports either indisputably disproving claims of Syria’s government using chemical weapons, or admissions that no fact-based claims could even be made with investigators often never even visiting sites where alleged attacks took place, the OPCW would release several politically-motivated conclusions that fed directly into US war propaganda at the time.

The alleged 2018 Douma chemical attack was perhaps the most pertinent example of this, with details of the alleged attack sparse and unconvincing and with the final OPCW report even including a picture taken at a militant weapon’s factory where a cylinder similar to those allegedly used in the attack was found among ordnance being prepared for use.

The report also included photographs of the alleged holes made on rooftops from what were claimed to be chemical munitions – but noted that adjacent buildings had similar craters and holes that clearly were not the result of chemical munitions. In other words, evidence suggests the canisters were likely placed into position, taking advantage of holes and craters created by conventional weapons.

Despite evidence suggesting the attack was staged, the OPCW chose to suppress or downplay evidence and use ambiguous language to allow Western media sources to spin the report and “confirm” that not only an attack take place, but that the Syrian government was allegedly behind it.

Only upon reading the actual OPCW report would anyone know just how flimsy accusations against the Syrian government were and that despite Western media headlines accusing the Syrian government, evidence within the report pointed the finger instead at US-backed militants operating in the area at the time.

WMDs 2.0 

Having engineered a proxy conflict in Syria in 2011 that would later stall, the US sought to replicate its “successes” in Libya and neighboring Iraq by searching for a justification for direct military intervention. The US used the pretext of fighting militants it itself had armed and unleashed across Syria including the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) to stage military forces within Syrian territory.

From there, it repeatedly cited alleged chemical attacks in an effort to build international consensus for military intervention against Damascus.

However, it appears that the world was aware that the US was – in essence – repeating nearly identical lies it used regarding Iraq – literally the next nation over from Syria – centered around “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs) for the purpose of intervening in and destroying yet another Middle Eastern nation.

Between growing global distrust and Russia’s own military intervention in Syria in 2015 – US military aggression was checked. The growing global alternative media – both state-sponsored and independent networks and organizations – helped confront this WMD 2.0 narrative.

Today – the momentum has continued – bringing the OPCW back into the spotlight through the Courage Foundation’s recent panel in order to finally expose and perhaps even hold accountable those within the OPCW who attempted to use the organization to facilitate war propaganda rather than fulfil its mandate. The panel and the alternative media promoting it is also a celebration of those within the OPCW with the courage to speak out against impropriety.

With the Syrian conflict drawing to a close in favor of Damascus and its allies – and with the US and its axis of collaborators exposed as having organized the premeditated attempted destruction of a nation and its people – a panel exposing OPCW impropriety and how it fit into Western war propaganda might seem irrelevant.

But fully exposing what was done in Syria regardless of whether or not the war is over and no matter how favorably it ended for Damascus and the Syrian people – is absolutely essential in preventing similar impropriety from being used against the next nation that finds itself in Washington’s sights.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

On Monday, October 28, a brilliant panel discussion revealing the atrocities resulting from the UN Security Council sanctions (in particular, Resolution 2397) forced upon the DPRK was held at 777 United Nations Plaza.  This panel discussion should have been held on the premises of the United Nations, in one of the conspicuous press briefing rooms, and announced by the secretariat, so that the numerous media outlets and resident correspondents  at UN Headquarters would have been alerted to it, and learned of the horrific consequences of UN policies causing deaths of innocent children, pregnant women, disabled and elderly.  To its credit, The Wall Street Journal, on October 31 published a small report, by Courtney McBride at the top if its “World Watch” column, page A9.

Instead, hidden away from United Nations headquarters, the panel discussion, led by Yifat Susskind, Executive Director of MADRE, introduced by Liz Bernstein, of the  Nobel Women’s Initiative, and featuring Dr. Kee B. Park, MD, MPH and lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine, and Director, Korea Policy Project at Harvard Medical School,  Ms Joy E. Yoon, Special Educator and Educational Therapist at IGNIS Humanitarian Community, and Dr. Henri Feron, Senior Fellow and Legal expert at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. presented a discussion so devastating in its documentation of the suffering of civilians of the DPRK as a consequence of Security Council sanctions that the facts virtually demand legal action against the UN Security Council to condemn and hold accountable the viciously irresponsible architects of the genocidal sanctions being inflicted on North Korea. As Legal scholar Dr. Feron emphasized, the Security Council is not above the law.

Reparation to the people of the DPRK must be mandated, and the members of the UN Security Council refusing to  abolish these criminal sanctions which violate the UN Charter, violate international laws prohibiting collective punishment, and violate every other legal instrument protecting human rights, should be charged with crimes against humanity, and subjected to the same Nuremberg Tribunal Laws that condemned as guilty those criminals who attempted to evade responsibility for their crimes by claiming they were only “obeying orders.”  Yes the governments wielding these sanctions are guilty beyond doubt, but the very diplomats obediently “following instructions” are no less guilty.

The audience on October 28, including various humanitarian aid organizations, representatives of the UN Security Council and various UN Missions listened, aghast, as Dr. Park described his effort to perform spinal surgery on a crippled North Korean patient: he was unable to begin the surgery making an incision with the scalpel available. The scalpel did not cut. Dr. Park examined the scalpel more closely and discovered that it was rusted. This was the beginning of the hour’s disclosures. Korea Peace Now’s publication entitled: “The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea” states, on page 9:

“It is particularly concerning that the list of banned humanitarian-sensitive items includes sterilizers, UV lamps for disinfection,ambulances, carriages and orthopaedic appliances for disabled persons, medical appliances such as ultrasound and cardiograph machines, syringes, needles, catheters, dental and ophthalmic equipment, artificial respiration machines, X-ray machines, medical furniture, microscopes, pumps, water heaters, machinery for filtering or purifying water, and machinery for water well drilling.”….”In an analysis of 25 exemption requests before the 1718 Committee, the UN Panel observed months of delays for cases such as water systems, ambulance vehicles, and medical equipment for maternal and neonatal emergencies.”

This is a miniscule example of a list so extensive it is annihilating the health of the North Koreans, and is extinguishing the hope of life for very many of the people of the DPRK.

The United Nations boasts, incessantly, about its Sustainable Development Goals, a boast which is ludicrous, and given the lie by the fact that the UN Security Council Sanctions are “impeding the economic development of North Korea. UN and unilateral sanctions have resulted in the collapse of the country’s trade and engagement with the rest of the world, thereby undermining and reversing the progress that North Korea had made in overcoming the economic crisis and famine of the 1990s.”

It has been known, now for more than four years that the so-called “unintended consequences” of Security Council sanctions against the DPRK are the agonized deaths by starvation of children and other groups of the most vulnerable, or deaths from preventable diseases, and the destruction of the infrastructure necessary to support human life in the DPRK. “Alarm” was expressed about this by Special Rapporteur Tomas Quintana several years ago. Numerous humanitarian organizations have been prevented by the sanctions from carrying out their work in the DPRK, and UN agencies responsible for helping the people of the DPRK are actually obstructed from their work by these criminal sanctions. Joy Yoon described being forced to wait three years for authorization to continue her humanitarian work in the DPRK.

It has been shown again and again that these so-called “unintended consequences” are being suffered again and again, and as the expert moderator of this panel, Ms. Susskind pointed out, when the policies causing these “unintended consequences” are repeated despite knowledge that these brutal consequences are inevitable, these consequences can no longer be characterized as “unintended.” Indeed, these policies, whose consequences are deadly, are genocidal in their intent. Just as knowledge of the nazi concentration camps was available to both the German people and the rest of the world, who looked the other way, so, now knowledge that the UN Security Council has turned the DPRK into a concentration camp dictated by the Gestapo of the UN Security Council can no longer be denied, nor diplomatically sanitized.

The Singapore Summit required reciprocal actions by the US and the DPRK.  The DPRK has required that these sanctions be removed. The United Nations has not removed one single murderous sanction, and now the DPRK has launched another missile.  They cannot be faulted for this. The US, together with  cowardly and obsequious UN Security Council complicity totally obliterated North Korea and much of South Korea between 1950-1953. This war has never officially ended. Though it is imperative that global nuclear disarmament immediately be enacted, in accordance with the recent treaty prohibiting the possession or use of nuclear weapons, as long as the US and the major, and indeed some smaller members of the UN Security Council refuse to abandon their own nuclear weapons, in violation of Article 6 of the NPT, flagrantly flaunting their double standards, the DPRK is morally and legally justified in protecting themselves from another holocaust, such as they suffered in 1950-1953. Further attempts to inflict Security Council sanctions upon that tragic and heroic country must be punished according to the Nuremberg Tribunal. The members of the Security Council cannot say they did not know of the consequences of their sanctions,  or do not know about these intentional “unintended consequences.” The world now knows. The UN Secretary-General must exercise the weight of his office and condemn these barbaric sanctions against the DPRK. Otherwise his office is impotent and useless. The Security Council, in betrayal of the intent of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has become one of the most dangerous instruments on the planet.

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y. she is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

A pan-Asia high-speed train has left the station – and India – behind. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which would have been the largest free trade deal in the world, was not signed in Bangkok. It will probably be signed next year in Vietnam, assuming New Delhi goes beyond what ASEAN, with diplomatic finesse barely concealing frustration, described as “outstanding issues, which remain unresolved.”

The partnership uniting 16 nations – the ASEAN 10 plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and, in theory, India – would have congregated 3.56 billion people and 29% of world trade.

Predictably, it was billed as the big story among the slew of high-profile meetings linked to the 35th ASEAN summit in Thailand, as RCEP de facto further integrates Asian economies with China just as the Trump administration is engaged in a full spectrum battle against everything from the Belt and Road Initiative to Made in China 2025.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng was blunt:

“It’s the 15 nations that have decided to move forward first.” And he added “there won’t be any problem for the 15 nations to sign RCEP next year,” when Vietnam takes over as the chair of ASEAN.

It’s not hard to figure out where the “problem” lies.

Mahathir ‘disappointed’

Diplomats confirmed that New Delhi came up with a string of last-minute demands in Thailand, forcing many to work deep into the night with no success. Thailand’s Commerce Minister, Jurin Laksanawisit, tried to put on a brave face:

“The negotiation last night was conclusive.”

It was not. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad – whose facial expression in the family photo was priceless, as he shook hands with Aung San Suu Kyi on his left and nobody on his right – had already given away the game.

“We’re very disappointed,” he said, adding: “One country is making demands we cannot accept.”

ASEAN, that elaborate monument to punctilious protocol and face-saving, insists the few outstanding issues “will be resolved by February 2020,” with the text of all 20 RCEP chapters complete “pending the resolution of one” member.

RCEP dwells across a large territory, covering trade in goods and services, investment, intellectual property and dispute resolution. The Indian “problem” is extremely complex. India in fact already has a free trade agreement with ASEAN.

RCEP, in practice, would extend this agreement to the other big boys, including China, Japan and South Korea.

New Delhi insists it is defending farmers, dairy owners, the services industry, sectors of the automobile industry – especially hybrid and electric cars, and very popular three-wheelers – and mostly small businesses all across the nation, which would be devastated by an augmented tsunami of Chinese merchandise.

Agriculture, textile, steel and mining interests in India are totally against RCEP.

Yet New Delhi never mentions quality Japanese or South Korean products. It’s all about China. New Delhi argues that signing what is widely interpreted as a free trade agreement with China would explode its already significant US$57 billion a year trade deficit.

The barely disguised secret is that India’s economy, as the historical record shows, is inherently protectionist. There’s no way a possible removal of agricultural tariffs protecting farmers would not provoke a social cataclysm.

Modi, who is not exactly a bold statesman with a global vision, is between a heavy rock and a very hard place. President Xi Jinping offered him a “100-year plan” for China-India partnership at their last informal, bilateral summit.

India is a fellow BRICS member, it’s part of the Russia-India-China troika that is actually at the center of BRICS and is also a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Geopolitically as well as geoeconomically, it hardly makes sense for India to be out of RCEP – which means excluded from East Asia and Southeast Asia integration. The only feasible solution might be an elaborate bilateral India-China deal within RCEP.

Questions remain whether both players would be able to work that out before the Vietnam summit in 2020.

Putting it all together

India was only part of the story of the summit fest in Thailand. At the important East Asia Summit, everyone was actively discussing multiple paths towards multilateralism.

The Trump administration is touting what it calls the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy – which is yet another de facto China containment strategy, congregating the US, India, Japan and Australia. Indo-Pacific is very much on Modi’s mind. The problem is “Indo-Pacific,” as the US conceives of it, and RCEP are incompatible.

ASEAN, instead, came up with its own strategy: ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) – which incorporates all the usual transparency, good governance, sustainable development and rules-based tenets plus details on connectivity and maritime disputes.

All the ASEAN 10 are behind AOIP, which is, in fact, an original Indonesian idea. It’s fascinating to know that Bangkok and Jakarta worked together behind closed doors for no fewer than 18 months to reach a full consensus among the ASEAN 10.

The biggest story in Thailand was, in fact, the convergence of myriad moves towards Asia integration. Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang was lavishly praising the prospects of integrating Belt and Road with something called the Master Plan of ASEAN Activity, which is the connectivity part of AOIP.

South Korea’s Moon Jae-in jumped in extolling the merits of his Southern Policy, which is essentially northeast-southeast Asia integration. And don’t forget Russia.

At the ASEAN business and investment summit, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev put it all together; the blossoming of the Greater Eurasian Partnership, uniting the Eurasia Economic Union, ASEAN and Shanghai Cooperation Organization, not to mention, in his words, “other possible structures,” which is code for Belt and Road.

Belt and Road is powerfully advancing its links to RCEP, Eurasia Economic Union and even South America’s Mercosur – when Brazil finally kicks Jair Bolsonaro out of power.

Medvedev noted that this merging of interests was unanimously supported at the Russia-ASEAN summit in Sochi in 2016. Vietnam and Singapore have already clinched free trade deals with Eurasia Economic Union, and Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia are on their way.

Medvedev also noted that a trade and economic cooperation deal between China and Eurasia Economic Union was signed in late October. Next is India, and a preferential trade agreement between the union and Iran has also been signed.

In Thailand, the Chinese delegation did not directly address the United States’ Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy. But Medvedev did, forcefully:

“We are in favor of maintaining the effective system of state-to-state relations which was formed on the basis of ASEAN and has shown a good track record over the years.

“In this regard, we believe the US initiative is a serious challenge for ASEAN countries, since it can weaken the association’s position and strip it of its status as a key player in addressing regional security problems.”

Summits come and go. But what just happened in Thailand will remain as another graphic illustration of myriad, concerted moves leading towards progressive, irreversible Asia – and Eurasia – integration. It’s up to Modi to decide when and if to hop on the train.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Radio Education Network of Bolivia (Erbol) leaked 16 audios involving opposition leaders who are calling for a coup d’etat against the government of President Evo Morales, a political action which would have been coordinated from the U.S. embassy in the Andean country.

Among those mentioned in the audios are the U.S. senators Marco Rubio, Bob Menendez and Ted Cruz, who have would maintained contact with the Bolivian opposition in order to achieve a possible regime change in the South American country.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The audios also reveal participation in the political conspiracy of the former prefect of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes Villa, who was accused of corruption in 2009 and fled Bolivia to seek asylum in the U.S., where he is currently living.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

In their conspiracy talks, Bolivian politicians also mention​​​​​​​ a former Bolivian president whose name is not explicitly mentioned, former New Republican Force lawmaker Mauricio Muñoz and former Army officers Oscar Pacello, Remberto Siles, Julio Maldonado and Teobaldo Cardozo.​​​​​​​

Alertas todos contra golpe de Estado en Bolivia, posible sabotaje al helicóptero que trasladaba a nuestro querido Evo, no es la primera vez que Presidentes progresistas mueren en "accidentes". Protección para Evo,cuidemos a Evo.#SomosCuba. pic.twitter.com/YzVm41QcNA

— Karel53 (@Karel537) November 5, 2019

“We must all be alert against the coup in Bolivia. Possible sabotage of the helicopter which transported our beloved Evo. It is not the first time that progressive presidents die in “accidents.” Protection for Evo. Let’s take care of Evo.”

The Erbol leaked information audios also mention calls from opposition leaders to burn government party structures and to put together a general strike across the country.

All these ​​​​​​​actions, which were expected to be advertised as based on social unrest​​​​​​​, would be part of the response to the triumph of Evo Morales in the last presidential elections​​​​​​​.

The opposition plans would also include an eventual attack against the Cuban Embassy, very similar to what happened in the coup against Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chavez in 2002.

So far, none of the opposition leaders in Bolivia has said anything about the leaked audios.​​​​​​​

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For months during and after Canada’s 2019 federal election campaign, corporate media provided daily frontline news space for non-stop Alberta demands for more tar-sands export infrastructure through British Columbia, as well as discrediting stories on the Trudeau government for questionable legal protection of a Quebec big business to his playing blackface in a youthful costume.

No-one joined the dots or mentioned the words ‘Big Oil’.

Throughout fury was daily reported from provincial Alberta coinciding with federal environmental reviews, court proceedings and limits on planned massive transportation of Alberta’s US-dominated tar-sand crude through Canada and First Nations’ territories.

Media Scrubbed

The critical spotlight on Trudeau was never associated with the powerful oil lobby across borders or the Koch brothers and the US Republican far right.

Although all the signs were all there, they were media-scrubbed for ‘Western alienation’ into November after the federal election. What ruling-party politics and media see instead is a fabled Canada resource going under without more expansion and exports for needy Alberta to export it.

At the front of the dominant narrative is the Conservative Party. No longer ‘Progressive Conservative’ as in the historic centrist days, this century’s Conservative rulers are essentially US Republicans North with the same hate of central government. They are alike blind to the Big-Oil cause of the climate crisis even as the wild-fires rage from Alberta to California.

What all especially blinker out is that tar-sand crude is the dirtiest and most toxic fossil-fuel on the planet, multiplies carbon pollution against international commitment, and is increasingly unacceptable to the public and investors.

In the face of the growing climate and pollution crisis of industrial civilization, Canada’s right log ago attached themselves to an unnamed backroom plan for a  right-wing tsunami over Canada’s then governing Liberals.

Canada’s Strategic Vote for Public Action against Conservative Social Reverse

With falling provincial governments, media scandals and Trudeau government  inability to keep public-action promises, the planned Conservative regime change across America to Canada seemed a sure thing.

But it was defeated in the federal election by a cross-country campaign and voter shift to a non-establishment mass move for the common good which, beneath notice, distinguishes multicultural Canada.

Programs for progressive public action from all other parties – the NDP (New Democratic Party), the Green Party and the Quebec Bloc – combined with the Liberals against the publicly known Conservative wrecking balls on the public sector, health and social security programs, and environmental regulations.

Yet the corporate media continued to run the campaign of ‘Alberta fury, ‘Western alienation’, and even a Conservative-rump Senate ‘Wexit’ to force Trudeau to appease them after their defeat and blanket-Conservative Alberta-Saskatchewan votes.

Alberta’s Big-Oil Premier Kenney (image on the right) continued to provide red meat with calls for an immediate pipeline over BC, a provincial referendum for separation from Canada, and an end to the historic federal equalization program as his ‘very reasonable’ positions.

That Liberal carbon-pricing and regulations are backed by two-thirds of Canadians in polls and electoral seats, and that all other parties and programs oppose the TMX (trans-mountain BC) pipeline, while the Liberals have in fact over-supported it throughout but within the rule of law, are facts which do not compute to ‘Western alienation’.

‘Canada has never been so divided’ mourn Conservatives across the land.

Yet the tar-sand crude fount of free money to Alberta and US Big-Oil refinement-management-export coffers is on the ropes for reasons their value system cannot comprehend – public action on all fronts to ground in life on Earth against pervasive fossil-fuel pollution, corporate deregulation, and collective life capital destruction.

The Long-Kept Secret: The Koch Driver of the Tar-Sands Juggernaut

What has been above all whited out of Canada’s corporate culture is the long Koch-brother domination of the US-driven tar-sand juggernaut siphoning and mass-polluting the once pristine Athabaska River valley to export the most toxic fossil-fuel raw crude in existence.

The Koch brothers have, in repressed public fact, made most of their Big Oil fortune from refining tar-sands crude in the US which has, in turn, produced the tides of hidden ‘dark money’ to finance right wing-extremism in the US (and Canada without any media investigating it).

At the same time, they have bought licenses for up to two million hectares of the tar-sands upstream to control the gargantuan carbon-polluting cycle with silent Alberta support.  Yet as far as the Canadian public and commentators are concerned, these monstrous facts do not exist, and are even now never mentioned in the media or public discourse as the Kochs have sold off their licenses once exposed.

Instead, the virulent realities of Alberta’s wealth are buried behind a pervasive promotion of the “necessity of Alberta to get its oil to market”.

Stampeded by the multi-media campaign of ‘Western alienation’ and the absurd claim that the fall of Alberta tar-sands “is a deliberate policy of the Trudeau government”, the Trudeau Liberals have been rushing to provide representation to it.

No-one in public translates ‘Alberta’s oil seeking outlet to market’ into what it is in fact for Canada– a massive pipe-line of treated sludge crude through the unspoiled Rocky Mountains of BC to the world’s most beautiful inland-ocean waterways for multiplied monster tankers ploughing the majestic habitats of the non-Albertan West coast to unnamed buyers – now across the Pacific Ocean-to buy a toxic, globally carbon-flooding crude that has slid towards cost-profit obsolescence.

In fact, months before the much publicized Decana head-office move to the US, , the Big Oil players have already sold off their Alberta licenses to extract the vast tar-sands in a race away from the financial as well as ecological black hole that is Alberta’s tar-sand crude.

As for the tar-sand crude still wanted for the Beast, Big Oil may soon be able to go back to Venezuela if US-led ‘regime change’ succeeds with the internationally lawless support of Canada Foreign Affairs – the Ottawa end of the mindless branch-plant avarice around natural resources for global corporate empire.

Alberta’s Cover Story Still Not Exposed

Alberta’s favorite cover story of anger against Ottawa still holds the political commentators of official culture in thrall – with every resistance or review of Alberta’s long Koch-led ecocidal project denounced as ‘an attack on Alberta’.

Throughout, the covert Koch master-control and rich processing profits have been so kept out of sight that not even the ever-rising opposition to the Trans-Mountain Pipeline have named it.

As I write, the Keystone Pipeline carrying Alberta’s toxic crude is found to have leaked 383,000 gallons in North Dakota on the very day Trump state department’s one-day hearing is pushed through against prolonged fierce resistance from indigenous people (the Squamish, Tsleil Waututh, Colwater and Secwemepec Nations,) as well as multiple environmental groups.

From 2011 to 2018, this Keystone pipeline of toxic Canadian crude has multiplied its pipeline flood by over 30-times from 14,000 barrels to 480,000 gallons through 8 US states.  At the same time, less known Enbridge’s Line 67 carries tar sands crude from Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin and the Koch refineries there. The Trump administration just approved a permit to nearly double its flow at the US border.

The Trans-Mountain Pipeline across BCis solely to super-tanker far more tar-sands crude beyond the US to unnamed buyers and refineries across the Pacific Ocean with all the further tides of carbon pollution entailed by planned multiplied extraction, global transportation, end-use emissions, and inevitable leaks and spills of the heavy-weight tar-oil impossible to clean up in deep water.

The Liberals and Trudeau have more or less complied with the whole ecocidal project except at the legal margins. In truth, the only thing stopping ever more of this ecocidal tra-sand cycle widening across the world against Canada’s public commitment to the Paris Agreement is that the expected super-profits have been reversed by cheaper competition.

Alberta-raw crude is now close to costing more to extract than it can sell for in a fallen market while at the same time being forced out by the shale-oil revolution, Saudi-to-Iran underselling of far higher quality oil, a public increasingly waking up to the climate crisis, and non-carbon energy exponentially rising in scale volume and lower unit pricing.

Yet the cover story of ‘Western alienation’ is still featured by the mainstream media with interminable public-relations commentators lazing past the physical facts in role-playing perspectives and wringing hands on Canada’s divides.

The Silenced Facts of Conservative Misrule Ready to Explode?

In Canada and the US, extreme-right lies, misrule and demands may have reached their breaking point.

The unspoken realities of Conservative misrule in Alberta go back a long way. The moral of the story begins with Conservative Alberta – “let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark” – hitching itself entirely to a US Big-Oil driven commodity boom as a bottomless resource-revenue pork-barrel and pissing away all the revenues.

A few decades down the road, Conservative Party rule has squandered away its potentially multi-hundred billion-dollar Alberta Heritage Fund in such policies as foreign corporate giveaways and zero sales tax (compared to 20% in social-democrat Norway whose public capitalOil Fund, now worth over $1000-billion because it has been protected from the political raids as in Conservative Alberta).

Conservative policies to get re-elected have boasted by far the lowest taxes in Canada, giveaways at all levels to foreign corporations including the world’s lowest royalties, populist cash-bribes to voters to stay in power, and big-mouth boasting of how other provinces and the government of Canada must get in line with its free-royalties rule and a population less than two-thirds of greater Toronto.

Even now, the main public problem with pipelines out of Alberta is tar-sands crude not refined in Alberta. Refinement in Alberta of the over-60% going to the US could have produced far more jobs than export of the monster-extraction tar-sand crude could ever do. It could have made the oil far safer with spills recoverable. It could have brought in far greater revenues than the exiting Kochs and oil barons have been enriched by instead.

It hates public capital and action as ‘socialist’ as much as Republicans depend on it in the US. Throughout its fall, its raw tar-sands resource (once  sparingly used for indigenous canoes) has been privatized and mainly for foreign Big Oil.

Passive royalty reception and spending it away with nothing to show for it are the financial story. Extreme right-wing politics and a culture of bullying what public economy Canada has managed to develop are the untold political story.

Alberta has militantly opposed federal taxation for public investment and social programs, provincial equalization payments to sustain a secure and unified country, a once-leading Petro-Canada public corporation from which all citizens could buy their fuel, and environmental regulation of pollution across provincial and international borders.

Alberta Conservatives have all the while continuously insulted the rest of Canada with non-stop rightist rhetoric against federal public action in all forms except subsidizing Big Oil. Ignoring every reality of its wastrel management and dependency on free foreign money for its unearned natural resources, Conservative Premier Jason Kenney now fills corporate-media news and commentary with accusations of Canada’s government for its loss of wealth.

In fact, the world has changed around the ‘alienated West’ narrative.  The global market fossil-fuel industry has radically changed in new sources of oil and gas, in OPEC glut, in climate change emergency, in non-carbon alternatives, in falling price for tar-oil most of all.

The standby Republican-Conservative scapegoat of “federal government” has no control over these, or whatever else it is blamed for by the Ameri-Canadian right.

With no saved oil revenues for public capital baselike Norway and even Alaska, right-wing Alberta and US karmically choose their own fate.

But will anyone in public affairs wake up to the depredatory reality going fatal for the world?

Or will they join in the fear and hatred of public capital and action as ‘socialist’-  as is being used as I write by the Republicans to win Kentucky for a corrupt governor, and is Trump’s only card against the Democrat Party for Sanders?

New Government for Public Action

Canada voters have already decided beneath the dog-whistle politics.

More deeply than the old spectacles and fights diverting public attention, the greatest crisis of all life support systems in history still grows, and the public action it demands across borders has remained blocked by parties in power.

None of this computes within the private money-multiplication robotics still ruling the world.

The common cause of the ecological and social death spiral across borders rules as a meta program that is unseen.

It is the master form behind the ever-changing image reality of the global corporate Cave whose shadows dance in incoherent distractions.

In terms of Canada politics, the past Liberal majority regime has remained inside the Cave.

It has already gone too far in favoring Alberta’s Koch-led schemes, and has in the main offered only false promises against Conservative public-economy demolition.

It has bent over backwards in enabling the whole tars-sands-to-trans-oceanic markets which multiplies carbon pollution further, another unspeakable topic in the corporate media.

The Liberal majority even spent 4.5 billion dollars of Canada taxpayers’ money to buy an old and degraded pipeline to ensure this toxic result, more than on the Pharmacare it promised. BothLiberal and Conservative governments have threatened armed force to force the pipeline across BC sworn to stop it.

While the Conservatives have turned a blind eye to the ecological and climate crisis and are as hostile to social policy and the public economy as US Republicans, the Liberals talk nice. Yet Canada’s Paris objective has been more pretense than reality in fact, and the carbon tax for ‘polluters to pay a price’ for carbon pollution has avoided taxing the giant corporate polluters themselves.

But the fatal spiral has been seamlessly broken by the October federal election. Can a similar shift occur in the US and Britain?

Canada’s Parliament is now enabled to stand for the common life interest of Canada and Canadians in place of Liberal public relations alone and Conservative-Republican predation of collective life support systems.

In Canada after the federal election, tar-sand Alberta and the corporate Conservative Party are now powerless in the context of a great majority of the House of Commons seeking carbon reduction and progressive public policy at once.

Trudeau’s government has already made a major move in this direction which incensed the US-led, Alberta-fronted tar-sand lobby, but has the overwhelming support of Canadians outside the Western Conservative rump. It actually drew a line on the ever-widening tar-sand ecocide. A federal ban was instituted on heavy-tanker traffic on the Norther BC Coast up to Alaska – Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, a few months before the election on June 21, 2019.

The line of clean-up can now follow back to the economically collapsing US-driven tar-sands themselves now that Big Oil is deserting there.

The Canadian Public has Repudiated the Right-Wing Wave

Former Liberal leader and avowed environmentalist Stephane Dion long ago admitted the Alberta tar-sands had “too much money” in them to regulate, and Conservative party rulers tried to show why.

Federal Conservative policies promised Alberta Big Oil everything it wanted – no more delays, no more carbon tax, no more court challenges, no ban on tankers on the North BC coast, and even an East-West pipeline opposed by Quebec.

Yet US-style destabilization by attack-dog politics never letting up for months on end before elections has failed. The planned government destruction on the agenda from before the October federal campaign has come a cropper.

Conservative backrooms in response have shown they have no comprehension of the situation now in place. In perpetual regression to ad-homineminsults and derogatory buzz phrases, the old failed leader of the Party, Peter MacKay, has said that the current leader, Andrew Scheer, “failed to score on an empty net”.  They will roil around in their unrealities for the indefinite future.

While they still oppose carbon pricing in ostentatious concern for the poor working families having to pay a tax, the public has not been duped. The carbon tax is rebated to the families, and the very people and families in need are, in any case, those whom Republican-like Conservative rule invariably dispossesses by slashing social services on which they most of all depend.

Without any levers left, only media-trumped ‘threats to Canada’s unity’ from ‘Western separatist sentiments’ ramp on into the has-been-Tory Senate.

Alberta’s Premier Kenney even promoted the unrefined raw toxic crude extracted by and diluted with more water daily polluted than used by the people of Alberta as “Canada’s primary source of wealth” and “the golden goose that lays the golden egg“ (in fact, an estimated 1.7% of GDP).

The Silenced Meaning: Towards Recovery of a Public Economy

The scare stories and regime change of Canada have failed.  The planned right-wing tide over a scandal-weakened Trudeau government has been voted down.

Meanwhile beneath any official notice, the minority Liberal government is now far more progressively stabilized and policy-oriented than before the election.

With the Conservatives now isolated and defeated, it has New Democratic Party (NDP) seats and social democratic Bloc Quebecois support for a whopping majority to enact the real program of public action it has promised.

What has been missing until this federal election has been a parliamentary force to hold the Liberals to their promises – not only for sovereign reduction of carbon pollution, but for the collectively life-enabling programs Liberals have falsely promised without action and Conservatives have slashed wherever in office.

NDP policies provide explicit support for all such progressive public actions, and a social-democratic Bloc program compounds the balance of power to get it substantially done.

In the background are the illustrious Red Tories of the Progressive Conservative years of good government now condemned as ‘Liberals’.

The Life-Sustaining Policies of Public Action Crossing Regional Borders

‘Cutting climate pollution to create new jobs’ with new funds to do so from ‘making big polluters pay rather than profit’ is along the same lines as the Green New Deal led by Bernie Sanders in the US.

So too more advanced than the US Green New Deal, the NDP promises to enact what the Liberals have promised but failed to do – ‘Pharmacare for all’ as well as  ‘dental care, eye care, mental health care’ and ‘child care when needed’.

‘Upholding indigenous rights’, ‘making higher education affordable without mounting debt’, ‘stopping speculators in housing’, and ‘minimum wage’ and ‘sustainable jobs’ are further policy advances with majority support, and all connect in a unifying direction of Canada’s history of civil commons evolution.

They are also all supported by the progressive wing of the US Democrat Party and the Green New Deal.

Together they form a common life-value ground which has been increasingly divided and devoured since private financialization usurped the public economy with the Reagan-Thatcher turn, followed rapidly by the destruction of the mixed socialist world, and then the Wall-Street 2007-08 crash and austerity crippling of social states across the globe.

What unites all of the resurgent public policies in Canada, the UK and the Sanders-Democrat US is the moral logic of protecting and enabling human and ecological life capacitieswhich are systematically selected against by a life-blindly self-maximizing, private money-value program across borders miscalled ‘freedom’.

Public revenues for implementation of these public capital policies and actions include the hundreds of billions of unnecessary tax giveaways and public subsidies in numberless forms to ‘multi-millionaires and mega corporations’ under such wholly disproven fantasies as ‘trickle-down economics’ and ‘Laffer’s curve’.

The Ultimate Choice Space   

The ultimate imperative of evolved planetary life is to prevent cumulative ruin by competitively life-blind money-sequencing to ever more as an end-in-itself.

This borderless fanaticism of instituted avarice without limit or regulation has cumulatively destabilized and collapsed organic, social and ecological life support systems across the planet as ‘freedom’.

Life security at all levels is now in more extreme systemic danger than any time before in history, or indeed mammalian evolution.

Every step of the public action program defined in Canada’s election, and in formation under the Green New Deal of the US for its federal election a year from now, is a step in a unifying project to recover civil and ecological life support systems to sustain rather than reverse life organization and evolution on the planet.

All private-money-to-more-money forces and their current captive-state formations are structured to eliminate any such public life capital and action.

The dots of human choice for and against evolved life on the planet are not yet fully joined. But they are more understood towards public policy and action after Canada’s 2019 election than before. A history-deciding cycle of English-speaking elections is in motion.

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Prof. John McMurtry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada whose work is translated across the world. He is the author of the three-volume Philosophy and World Problems published by UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), and his most recent book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: from Crisis to Cure. 

For those readers who care more about Donald Trump, Obama’s legacy or the Republican/Democrat parties rather than the Rule of Law and what remains of the US Constitution, the following scenario should be a Giant Wake up Call.

As the result of an anonymous “whistleblower” Complaint filed against President Trump on August 12, the House Intel Committee conducted a series of closed door hearings that violated Sixth Amendment protections while relying on an anonymous W.B. Right away, those hearings morphed into an impeachment inquiry that took on the spectacle of a clumsy kerfuffle not to be taken seriously – except they were.

There is an essential Ukraine backstory which began with the US initiating the overthrow of its democratically elected President Yanukovych in 2014.  Fast forward to Russiagate followed by Ukrainegate and an impeachment inquiry with Trump telling newly elected Ukraine President Zelensky in their now infamous July 25^th conversation:

“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation in Ukraine; they say Crowdstrike.  The server they say, Ukraine has it.”

In a nutshell, possession of the CrowdStrike server is crucial to revealing the Democratic hierarchy’s role in initiating Russiagate as the Democrats are having a major snit-fit that now threatens the constitutional foundation of the country.

On October 31^st the House voted to initiate a formal impeachment inquiry based on  still mysterious Whistleblower’s allegations.  At the time, there was still no confirmation of who the shadowy Whistleblower was or whether a Whistleblower even existed.

It is a fact that most whistleblowers bring the transgression proudly forward into the public light for the specific purpose of exposing the deeds that deserve to be exposed.  At great personal cost, they then provide a credible case for why this offense is illegal or a violation of the public trust and deserves to be made public. This alleged WB, however, defies the traditional definition of a WB who most often experiences the wrong-doing first hand and from a personal vantage while revealing said wrong-doing as a function within an agency of their employment.

This WB’s identity has been protected from public disclosure by TPTB, shrouded in mystery and suspicion as if fearful of public scrutiny or that his ‘truth’ would crumble under interrogation and not be greeted with unanimity. What is clear is that this WB had no direct experience but only second-hand knowledge of events which is defined as ‘hear say’ evidence. While inadmissible in a Court of law, why should ‘hear say’ be allowed when the subject is as profound as impeachment of a President?

Real-life CIA whistleblower Jon Kiriakou who served 22 months in prison, suggested this “whistleblower is not a whistleblower but an anonymous CIA analyst within the Democratic House staff.” When was the last time a real whistleblower was ‘protected’ by the government from public exposure.

There has been no explanation as to why this informant’s identity is necessarily been kept secret – and not just from the public but from Members of Congress especially as Republican Members have been unable to question him.  There has been no further information regarding a second “Whistleblower” who allegedly came forward to corroborate the first WB although why it is necessary to corroborate that which has already been publicly revealed remains questionable.

In a once unimaginable example of CIA – Democratic collusion, it turns out that the identity of the alleged WB is not such a secret after all. Far from the public eyes of Americans, there has been a coordinated effort to stifle any exposure of his identity; presumably to prevent any revelation of the underpinnings of exactly how this convoluted scheme of malfeasance was organized. And as his name and political history within the Obama Administration and Democratic party are publicly scrutinized, it makes perfect sense why the TPTB would prefer to prevent public hearings or keep the WB’s identity under wraps.

His identity should have been public knowledge weeks ago and yet it took Real Clear Investigations, an alt-news website to publicly reveal what has been well known within the DC bubble for some weeks. The answer to the title question is that this WB is instead a very well connectedpartisan lackey and CIA operative.

The alleged WB is said to be a 33 year old CIA analyst by the name of Eric Ciaramella who was an Obama White House holdover at the National Security Council until mid 2017.  Consequently, he has deep partisan ties to former VP Joe Biden, former CIA Director John Brennan and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice as well as the DNC establishment.  And here’s where it gets especially interesting; Ciaramella specializes in Russia and Ukraine, is fluent in both languages, ran the Ukraine desk at the Obama NSC and had close association with  Ukrainian DNC hyper-activist Alexandra Chalupa.

Ciaramella’s bio reads like a litany of the political turmoil that has consumed the nation for the last three years as it is reported that he had a role in initiating the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy while at the Obama White House and worked with Biden who was the Obama point-person on Ukraine issues in 2015 and 2016 when  $3 billion USAID funding was being embezzled.  Clearly, Ciaramella has a wealth of information to share regarding the Biden Quid pro Quo scandal which is currently being muzzled by the corporate media.

With Ciaramella’s identity revealed,  a former NSC staffer who was present during the Trump-Zelensky July 25^thconversation testified that he saw nothing illegal in the talk.  Tim Morrison told the House Intel Committee that “I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed“and that the transcript of the call which was declassified and released by the White House  “accurately and completely reflects the substance of the call.” As a result, Ciaramella is now refusing to publicly testify before the House or Senate Intel Committees.

More recently, Mark Zaid, attorney for Ciaramella has said that his client would accept written questions from Republicans on the House Intel Committee and that his client “wants to be as bipartisan as possible throughout this process while remaining anonymous.” Seriously? He’s got to be kidding.

Did the reality of being required to testify in public just recently dawn on Ciaramella or was he not expecting that his every word and utterance would be scrutinized before the entire world? Is he so unfamiliar with the Sixth Amendment that he believes a Defendant’s right to confront his accuser should not apply to him or in a Presidential impeachment inquiry? Did he actually believe he could make anonymous impeachment accusations against the President of the US without a ripple or without having to directly face questions from House and Senate Republicans? Who did he think would protect him from public scrutiny?

Given Ciaramella’s extensive partisan history since 2015 and his national security experience with Susan Rice in the Obama White House, it will be interesting if he receives a mention in the IG report on the abuse of FISA warrants and whether Ciaramella’s name has moved to the top of the Durham interviewee list.

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

In response to Washington unilaterally cancelling the Iran nuclear deal and imposing sanctions on Iran, Tehran has announced on Tuesday that it will begin injecting uranium gas into 1,044 centrifuges at Fordow nuclear facility. Though like the previous retaliatory measures taken by the Hassan Rouhani government, this step too is reversible.

Donald Trump has repeatedly said during the last three years that the Iran nuclear deal signed by the Obama administration in 2015 was an “unfair deal” that gave concessions to Iran without giving anything in return to the US. Unfortunately, there is a grain of truth in Trump’s statements because the Obama administration signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in July 2015 under pressure, as Washington had bungled in its Middle East policy and it wanted Iran’s cooperation in Syria and Iraq to get a face-saving.

In order to understand how the Obama administration bungled in Syria and Iraq, we should bear the background of Washington’s Middle East policy during the recent years in mind. The eight-year proxy war in Syria that gave birth to scores of militant groups, including the Islamic State, was directly responsible for the spate of Islamic State-inspired terror attacks in Europe from 2015 to 2017.

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in August 2011 to June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq, an informal pact existed between the Western powers, their regional allies and jihadists of the Middle East against the Iran-led alliance comprising Syria and Hezbollah based in Lebanon. In accordance with the pact, militants were funded, trained and armed in the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan to wage a proxy war against the Syrian government.

This arrangement of an informal pact between the Western powers and the jihadists of the Middle East against the Iran-led alliance worked well up to August 2014, when the Obama Administration made a volte-face on its previous regime change policy in Syria and began conducting airstrikes against one group of jihadists battling the Syrian government, the Islamic State, after the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq from where the US had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

After this reversal of policy in Syria by the Western powers and the subsequent Russian military intervention on the side of the Syrian government in September 2015, the momentum of jihadists’ expansion in Syria and Iraq stalled, and they felt that their Western patrons had committed a treachery against the jihadists’ cause, hence they were infuriated and rose up in arms to exact revenge for this betrayal.

If we look at the chain of events, the timing of the spate of terror attacks against the West was critical: the Islamic State overran Mosul in June 2014, the Obama Administration began conducting air strikes against the Islamic State’s targets in Iraq and Syria in August 2014, and after a lull of almost a decade since the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005, respectively, the first such incident of terrorism occurred on the Western soil at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, and then the Islamic State carried out the audacious November 2015 Paris attacks, the March 2016 Brussels bombings, the June 2016 truck-ramming incident in Nice, and then three horrific terror attacks took place in the United Kingdom in 2017, and after that the Islamic State carried out the Barcelona attack in August 2017, and then another truck-ramming atrocity occurred in Lower Manhattan in October 2017 that was also claimed by the Islamic State.

Keeping this background of the quagmire created by the Obama administration in Syria and Iraq in mind, it becomes amply clear that the Obama administration desperately needed Iran’s cooperation in Syria and Iraq to salvage its failed policy of training and arming jihadists to topple the government in Syria that backfired and gave birth to the Islamic State that carried out some of the most audacious terror attacks in Europe from 2015 to 2017.

Thus, Washington signed JCPOA in July 2015 that gave some concessions to Iran, and in return, former hardliner Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki was forced out of power in September 2014 with Iran’s tacit approval and moderate former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was appointed in his stead who gave permission to the US Air Force and ground troops to assist the Iraqi Armed Forces and allied militias to beat back the Islamic State from Mosul and Anbar.

However, Iran nuclear deal was neither an international treaty under the American laws nor even an executive agreement. It was simply categorized as a “political commitment.” Due to the influence of Zionist lobbies, the opposition to JCPOA in American political discourse was so vehement that forget about having it passed through the US Congress, the task the Obama administration faced was to muster enough votes of dissident Democrats to defeat a resolution of disapproval so that it couldn’t override a presidential veto.

The Trump administration, however, is not hampered by the legacy of the Obama administration, and since the objective of defeating the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq has already been achieved, therefore Washington felt safe to annul the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and the crippling “third party” sanctions have once again been put in place on Iran at Benjamin Netanyahu’s behest.

The sense of betrayal in Iran, however, is so fierce that recent subversive events in the Persian Gulf, including the September 14 attack on Abqaiq petroleum facility in Saudi Arabia, can also be explained if we bear in mind how Washington treacherously used the Iran nuclear deal to get a face-saving in Syria and Iraq without giving anything in return to Tehran.

Although Houthi rebels based in Yemen claimed the responsibility for the complex attack involving drones and cruise missiles on the oil facility in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia, and they have UAV-X drones having a range of 1,500 kilometers, Washington dismissed the possibility. Instead it accused Tehran of mounting the attack from Iran’s territory which is unlikely. The most likely suspects were Iran-backed militias in Iraq, as 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles were launched from the north.

The attack was an Armageddon for the global oil industry because Abqaiq petroleum facility in eastern Saudi Arabia processes five million barrels of oil per day. The entire industrialized world is running on the Gulf’s oil, and a subversive incident like the attack on Abqaiq petroleum facility would send jitters across the global markets, because the littoral states of Persian Gulf hold more than half of world’s proven oil reserves, 800 billion barrels out of world’s total 1,500 billion barrels of crude oil reserves.

Besides planting limpet mines on the UAE’s oil tankers and shooting down an American Global Hawk surveillance drone, September 14 attack on Abqaiq oil facility was the third major attack against the US and its regional allies. Even though Washington has deployed several thousand American troops and additional Patriot missiles batteries in Saudi Arabia after the attack, unless the root cause of the conflict is resolved: waiving arbitrary sanctions on Iran, the likelihood of further such attacks targeting the global energy supply cannot be overruled, as unilateral sanctions begin to bite into Iran’s economy.

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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. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: A fire boke out at the Saudi Aramco facility in the eastern city of Abqaiq on Saturday after a drone attack by Houthi rebels from Yemen. | Reuters

India officially refused to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) following several days of heated negotiations on the issue during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Bangkok. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is reported to have said,

“The present form of the RCEP Agreement does not fully reflect the basic spirit and the agreed guiding principles of RCEP.”

“When I measure the RCEP Agreement with respect to the interests of all Indians, I do not get a positive answer. Therefore, neither the Talisman of Gandhiji nor my own conscience permits me to join RCEP,” he said.

This strongly implies that the Indian leader has fallen under the influence of the American information warfare narrative that clinching a free trade deal with China would harm his country’s domestic industries.

It’s very telling that much smaller economies than his country don’t give any credence to those claims, with even tiny Cambodia and Laos having no problem with the final terms that were agreed to. The joint statement released after the event noted the situation with India.

“We noted 15 RCEP Participating Countries have concluded text-based negotiations for all 20 chapters and essentially all their market access issues,” the statement said. “India has significant outstanding issues, which remain unresolved…India’s final decision will depend on the satisfactory resolution of these issues.”

This makes it seem like there’s still a faint glimmer of hope that India might eventually join, pending a revision of the agreement’s terms, though that outcome appears to be very unlikely.

Going by Prime Minister Modi’s own words, domestic considerations played the largest role in his decision. India’s economy has been slowing over the past year despite overly optimistic forecasts about its supposedly inevitable growth, proving that there are indeed some fundamental issues at home that he needs to be mindful of.

They aren’t, however, connected to China or even any of India’s other economic partners, but could arguably be the result of irresponsible financial actions and the country’s historic protectionist measures which eerily resemble some of America’s in recent years. That might not be a coincidence either since the two countries have grown incredibly close over the past decade to the point of becoming strategic partners nowadays.

(From L to R) Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi react during a photo session of the 3rd Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Summit in Bangkok, Thailand, November 4, 2019. /Xinhua Photo

The visible bonhomie on display between Prime Minister Modi and President Trump during their “Howdy, Modi” event in Houston in September and the very profound praise that they publicly showered on one another at that time confirm that the interpersonal relations between these two countries’ leaders are just as excellent as the international ones between their governments. It’s therefore not inconceivable that Prime Minister Modi might have been very receptive to Trump’s trade war rhetoric and his anti-Chinese fearmongering. After all, both leaders were brought to power by a base of supporters who are commonly characterized as extremely nationalistic and suspicious of multilateral trade deals.

What’s so surprising about Prime Minister Modi’s decision, however, is that he also appears to have a pretty positive relationship with President Xi, which was proudly displayed during what Indian media has since called their “Chennai Connect” from October. Moreover, India is a member of BRICS – a grouping of emerging economies that also includes Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa – and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), both organizations of which are committed to increasing integration between their participants in different spheres. But now New Delhi has suddenly decided to signal that there are certain limits to how far it’s willing to go with the economic dimension of this shared vision. This is really troubling because it could eventually pose problems for the planned Eurasian integration processes of its partners and the future of multipolarity more broadly.

Russia is openly pursuing the Greater Eurasian Partnership that it envisages as uniting the Eurasian Economic Union, the Belt and Road Initiative – which India is staunchly against, the SCO, and ASEAN. But with India refusing to go along with the economic component of this through RCEP, which entails free trade with China, questions now arise about the viability of this ambitious vision that was previously taken for granted.

Even more concerning is that it’s only natural that questions also begin to arise about India’s long-term strategic intentions in general and its newfound relations with the U.S. in particular, meaning that this single decision by Prime Minister Modi could have far-reaching geopolitical implications if he doesn’t win back his partners’ trust.

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This article was originally published on CGTN.

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: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi attends the 3rd Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Summit in Bangkok, Thailand, November 4, 2019. /VCG Photo

“Ask students to read for more than a couple of sentences and many will protest that they can’t do it. The most frequent complaint that teachers hear that it’s boring. It is not so much the content of the written material that is at issues here; it is the act of reading itself that is deemed to be boring.

What we are facing here is not just time-honored teenage torpor, but the mismatch between a post-literate New Flesh that is too wired to concentrate and the confining concentrational logics of decaying disciplinary systems. To be bored means simply to be removed from the communicative sensation-stimulus matrix of texting, You Tube and fast food; to be denied, for a moment, the constant flow of sugary gratification on demand. Some students want Nietzsche in the same way they want a hamburger; the fail to grasp—and the logic of the consumer system encourages this misapprehension—the indigestibility, the difficult is Nietzsche.” Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

I am a substitute teacher (grades K-12) in a public school system located in Virginia, a state on the eastern seaboard of the United States. For many years prior to becoming a substitute teacher, I also taught at a private school in Virginia. Tuition and fees at the private school are approximately $42,000 (USD), the public schools are, of course, tuition free.

To be sure, there are highly motivated students in both educational settings that call into question Mark Fisher’s observation above. But in the main, both organization’s struggle with figuring out if they are working with their subjects as students or as consumers of services provided by teachers and administrators.

From what I have observed in the tiny microcosm in which I’ve worked, adults have not figured out how to teach Generation Z. It is as if K-12 students are; well, lab rats, in a messy experiment that reflects adult confusion about how to facilitate learning in an era when all the “book learning” education seeks to impart is largely available on the World Wide Web (WWW). Reality hits video screens before adults can interpret it for their children; that is, assuming the adults are up to the task. Twitter, a modern-day ticker-tape, dumbs down the American populace. Attention spans for students and adults are measured in 10 minute increments, if that.

Teachers are little more than circuits in America’s educational network and, as such, transmit surface information to the students and little more. The kids know a lot, for sure, but they, like the adults that school them and lead them, have no intellectual depth, something required for critical thinking. It is fitting, I suppose, that in these times when the United States is a polarized nation of cynics who believe in nothing, it’s not surprising that its educators teach the young to be cynics. But as Oscar Wilde noted through one of his characters, a cynic is “one who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.”

And yet the very adults (academics, corporate leaders, politicians) that created this cynical, digitized short attention span world whine about students not being able to read and write, think critically or master math. There is a reason for that: They are not being taught effectively to do those things. All of which reaffirms something I wrote in 2013: The American Education System is creating Ignorant Adults.

The leaders of Boeing and Lockheed Martin worry out loud about the absence of US school aged students who can excel at science, technology, engineering and math disciplines (STEM). But they have no problem funding initiatives for Chinese students and aviation professionals in China.

Hocus Pocus

Back in the USA, school classrooms are a mishmash of technology, new wave/repackaged learning techniques and revisionist history. Apple I-Pads and Smart Boards are located in each classroom for student/teacher use. They are all connected to software that provides music, cartoons and learning platforms like Canvas for most grade levels. The latest teaching fads like Maker Learning with its “Digital Promise” backed by Google and Pixar, among others, competes with concepts like the Flipped Classroom, Blended Learning and other pedagogies that come in and out of vogue. And yet, along side all the technology are crayons, magic markers, pencils, paper and cardboard for writing and drawing.

It’s no stretch to say that I-Phones, Android and other hand-held devices may cause epigenetic changes. Students, teachers/coaches and administrators are constantly staring head down at their computing-communications devices. It is tough to get a face-to-face conversation going with most anyone in these groups as their eyes and heads are in the down position while sitting, walking or standing. Even if you are having a meatspace meeting, participants will incessantly dart their eyes to the handheld safely nearby the hand, in the hand, or on the lap (looking down again).

America’s past, woeful in many respects, is being revised again by adults to suit the agenda of those who seek to promote a narrative that seeks to change the political/cultural narrative of US society and its history, and it is aimed at young students in particular. The New York Times (NYT) 1619 Project is an example of this. According to the World Socialist Website,

“The 1619 Project, launched by the Times in August, presents American history in a purely racial lens and blames all white people for the enslavement of 4 million black people as chattel property. “

The NYT has provided teaching materials that are being used by colleges, universities and high schools across the United States. Who is willing or capable of debating the claims of the New York Times; or should we say, who is willing to be labeled a racist for disagreeing with The revisionist authors of the 1619 Project? At the collegiate level, at least, there may be debate on the matter but at the high school level, what teacher is going to argue against using 1619 teaching materials. After all it isthe New York Times.

What is very troubling about the NYT revisionism is that it makes the preposterous claim that racism is part of the DNA of all white people. The World Socialist Website claims that: “This is dangerous politics, and very bad history…[it] mixes anti-historical metaphors pertaining to biological determinism (that racism is printed in a “national DNA”) and to religious obscurantism (that slavery is the uniquely American “original sin”). But whether ordained by God or genetic code, racism by whites against blacks serves, for the 1619 Project, as history’s deus ex machina. There is no need to consider questions long placed at the center of historical inquiry: cause and effect, contingency and conflict, human agency and change over time. History is simply a morality tale written backwards from 2019.”

Sharpen My Pencils, Fool!

I have often winced at some of the practices I observed in classrooms. On a typical day as a substitute, I arrive at a school, pick up instructions left by the teacher who is absent (or has a meeting), and head to the classroom. Substitute teachers, or Subs, are a lower class of species, members of the gig economy, and treated as such by the “real” teachers and students. I remember one teacher I subbed for was headed off to a meeting and as she left said, “Sharpen my pencils for me.” I dutifully did. A majority of the teachers and administrators don’t ask for your name, you’re just known as “The Sub.”

Once students complete their work (if they even choose to do it), which for most does not take much class time, they are free to play video games, stick ear buds in and listen to music or hang out with friends via the handheld device. One of the popular video games with male 6th to 12th graders is Krunker, a first person shooter game. Is US society really that concerned about active shooters in schools?

The State and corporations can be found in some form in the public school system. One elementary school has Lockheed Martin as a sponsor of a science program. In another elementary school, a class is learning about Virginia’s geography: The students print and video work product will ultimately be used by a tourism association in the State.

In both institutions learning is calibrated to the SAT, ACT and various Advanced Placement tests. Student test scores serve as one metric for teacher performance reviews along with standards set by school boards, the State, or independent audits in the private school case.

Students are not required to stand or even pay attention to the United States Pledge of Allegiance that is carried via intercom into the classrooms each morning. Some schools don’t even bother with it. Yet, during sporting events like American contact football, students/athletes and fans are required, or let’s say by the pressure of custom are compelled, to stand for the playing of the United States’ National Anthem. American flags are stitched into football jerseys and prior to games one football player is selected to run the American flag onto the field amidst the adrenaline fueled shouts and growls of fellow teammates following close behind. A color guard  from a high school’s junior reserve officer training corps (JROTC) sometimes is present. They present in strict marching formation the American flag along with the flags of the US Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force.

To stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance in a classroom takes one minute. To be upright for the National Anthem takes, perhaps, five minutes. The school band normally plays the latter and on occasion high school Madrigals will sing the National Anthem.

Yes, the militarization of US society and the deification of military personnel, even if they are accountants in uniform working at the Pentagon, is something to be concerned about. But saying the Pledge, and standing for the National Anthem, should be a requirement for students. There has to be some measure or display of loyalty to one’s country and the young must learn that. Still many want to wipe away any sense of citizenship, patriotism. Well, they are doing a fine job of that.

Mind the Inmates!

Students at both institutions are the beneficiaries of some serious force protection measures normally associated with protecting military personnel stationed at installations around the globe. The public schools in which I worked have armed police officers on site with a phalanx of civilian security/disciplinarians roaming the halls. Security cameras are everywhere indoors (hallways) and outside (entry and exit) recording movements. Public school buses are also outfitted with cameras and tracking systems.

The private school where I was once employed uses a less blunt force approach opting for a more subtle presence: security personnel are a bit less obvious and do not carry firearms. The school does employ a corporate style full-time director of security and safety with some serious emergency management credentials.

It is the same security scene at public and private schools across the United States which raises an interesting question: Are students really captive minds in minimum security enclosures subjected daily to social, emotional learning techniques or socialization/habilitation for entry into society? Or are they “free” learners allowed to be creative and explore beyond the confines of the pedagogy that seeks to “standardize” them.

No Student Untracked

There is a functioning big data brother at work tracking students as they make their way through K-12 known as the Common Core of Data (CCD). CCD is described by Marc Gardner in a presentation for the US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) as “the annual collection of the universe of United States public elementary, secondary education agencies and schools. Data include enrollment by grade, race/ethnicity and sex, special education, english learners, school lunch programs, teachers, dropouts and completers.” The CCD also gathers information from state justice, health and labor departments. The NCES also collects data from private schools.

It doesn’t end there. Colleges and universities are tracking high school seniors as they begin their searches for schools they’d like to attend.  The Washington Post recently reported that many colleges and universities have hired data capture firms to track prospective students as they explore websites. “Records and interviews show that colleges are building vast repositories of data on prospective students — scanning test scores, zip codes, high school transcripts, academic interests, web browsing histories, ethnic backgrounds and household incomes…”

The owner of Canvas, referenced above, is Instructure. Their mission, according to their investor website is to “grow [the young] from the first day of school to the last day of work [retirement].” One of the capabilities that Instructure provides its clients is Canvas Folio Management. According to the investor webpage, it “delivers an institutional homepage and deep, real-time analytics on student engagement, skills and competencies, network connections, and interactions across various cohorts. Allows institutions to generate custom reports tied directly to student success initiatives and export accreditation-ready reports on learning outcomes at the student, cohort, course, program, or institutional level.”

Ah, yes, the thrill of being hunted for a life time by big data brother. Anyway, there is no escape.

Don’t try this in a Classroom

“Learning is an active process, not simply a matter of banking information in a recipient passive mind. Teaching therefore has to be a transactional process rather than just the transmission of information. The transactional aspect is essential to enabling students to challenge their situations in life, which they must learn to do if they are to play their parts as active citizens of a better world…teaching must be approached as an intellectually disruptive and subversive activity if it is to instill inquiry skills in learners and encourage them to think for themselves rather than mindlessly accept received ideas. We believe it is more important in the digital age than ever before.” (Ingenious: The Unintended Consequences of Human Innovation by Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson, Harvard, 2019)

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John Stanton can be reached at [email protected]. The article title is courtesy of Oscar Wilde. See inline link, paragraph 5 for more.

Akwasi Afrifa, military officer and political leader of Ghana, is a man whose legacy still polarises his countrymen to this day. Should he be remembered as a principled believer in democratic values who helped rescue Ghana from a “dictator” leading his nation to ruin? Or was he an unscrupulous and ambitious opportunist whose participation in Ghana’s first military coup set a precedent for political instability and corruption?

Akwasi Amankwa Afrifa was born into humble origins in the Ashanti region to a cobbler father he referred to as “a cowardly man” who was “short, bulky and ugly”, and a mother he remembered as a “tall, black and extremely beautiful woman.” He often wondered why his mother had married his father. A bright student, he received a scholarship to attend Adisadel College, an Anglican boys boarding school in the Cape Coast. He excelled academically, and in 1955, collected seven prizes in Latin, Greek, Religious Knowledge, History, English Language and Geography. On hand to present the tall, gangling 19-year-old with his prizes was none other than Kwame Nkrumah, the Prime Minister of the then Gold Coast (as pre-independent Ghana was named), the man who he would help overthrow in a military coup eleven years later.

Afrifa’s choice of a career in the military was not his first. He had intended to be trained in the law, but his expulsion from Adisadel put paid to those aspirations. In The Ghana Coup: 24th February 1966, a part memoir that served as his justification for the anti-Nkrumah coup, Afrifa claimed that his expulsion was for failing to take Religious Knowledge among the minimum six academic subjects in his final examinations. But the true reason was that Afrifa had led a student protest which had led to riotous acts including vandalism.

Afrifa entered the military and received training at Sandhurst Military Academy in England where the Adisadel website records that “he was listed among the best three of those cadets (drawn from various parts of the Commonwealth and other countries) who graduated and passed out as Second-Lieutenant(s) after the course.”

Afrifa was undoubtedly a bright and engaging individual, but at Sandhurst, as had occurred at Adisadel, there was a dark side to his personality; one which revealed his tendency to arrogance and resistance to authority. In The Ghana Coup, he candidly revealed his time at Sandhurst was consistently punctuated by punishment drills for various disciplinary infractions. He wrote:

I was always in trouble for breach of discipline. Almost every Wednesday I had an extra drill. Because I had so many punishment drills, I made my study timetable larger than usual in order to enter my defaulter drills into blank spaces. My punishment parades thus became a normal routine every morning.

His last punishment drill as a senior cadet was, he admitted “a very unusual occurrence.”

These brief glimpses into his formative years provide clues as to how Afrifa was able to rise to the pinnacle of political power, as well as offer some explanation as to why his life was prematurely ended on a military firing range.

A brief summary of his life and career after Sandhurst goes like this: As a young officer, he served several tours of duty as part of the Ghanaian Army’s peacekeeping contribution to the Congo. He grew disenchanted with the left-wing policies of the Nkrumah government, which he posited as being antithetical to the (British) values with which he had been inculcated.

As a major, he was a key participant in the anti-Nkrumah putsch of 1966 which was led by Colonel Emmanuel Kotoka. He consolidated his positions in both the military and the National Liberation Council (NLC) as the ruling junta styled itself, after the assassination of Kotoka in April 1967 during an abortive coup, and after the resignation of Lt. General Joseph Ankrah in April 1969, he became the Head of State.

He completed the NLC’s programme of transferring power to an elected civilian government led by Dr. Kofi Busia, during which for about a year, he served as one of a three-man Presidential Commission in lieu of a civilian president before the commission’s dissolution and his retirement from the military a year later. On his retirement he received the title of Okatakyie, a rarely bestowed award to a member of the Ashanti people who has demonstrated an exceptional level of bravery from the Ashantehene, Opoku Ware II.

In the days following Busia’s overthrow in January 1972 by Lt. Colonel Ignatius Acheampong, Afrifa attempted to mount a counter-coup to restore Busia, but was foiled and jailed by Acheampong.

Afrifa was subsequently released by Acheampong in December 1972, but appears to have been restricted to the vicinity of his hometown of Mampong-Ashanti where he farmed and involved himself in rural development projects. At some point his army pension appears to have been suspended by the Acheampong regime and in an article in the Tampa Bay Times of July 1st 1979, his brother-in-law, John Addaquay, claimed that Afrifa, together with his family, had gone into exile in London.  Afrifa, Addaqay continued, returned after Acheampong’s overthrow in July 1978 by a palace coup led by Lt. General Frederick Akuffo. Afrifa contested a seat and won it in parliamentary elections held in June 1979, but was executed along with two other Heads of State, Acheampong and Akuffo that month by edict of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) which had come to power after an uprising by junior personnel within the Ghanaian military. Each had been found guilty of “corruption, embezzlement and using their positions to amass wealth.”

In a letter written to Acheampong while Acheampong was campaigning for UNIGOV, a form of government involving a combination of military and civilian rule, Afrifa had prophesied his own demise when in a letter to Acheampong, he had remarked on the levels of indiscipline and corruption among Ghana’s military rulers, and expressed a fear that he and other military rulers would be lined up and shot as a warning to others not to stage coups. “I feel greatly disturbed about the future,” Afrifa wrote. “In order to discourage the military from staging coups in the future, how about if they line all of us up and shot us one by one?”

What then to make of the legacy of this man whose life and eventual fate serves as a point of polarising contention?

After his death, the New York Times reported that he was “highly regarded among Western diplomats for his dynamism, his political skills, and his democratic views”. A good case can be made for Afrifa as a “democrat”, if one is prepared to accept his argument that he only helped to overthrow the government led by Kwame Nkrumah as a last resort. Here Afrifa could point to a drift towards authoritarianism by Dr. Nkrumah by referring to a series of developments such as the passage of the Preventative Detention Act, the One-Party State referendum, the dismissal of Ghana’s Chief Justice and other judges, as well as the apparent interference with judicial decisions. There were also issues to do with academic freedom in the universities.

Moreover, Afrifa presided over the return to civilian rule after spearheading a nationwide campaign to inform Ghanaians of their rights as citizens. Even the failed counter-coup he mounted against Acheampong could be interpreted as a measure attempting to restore democratic rule and not to usurp power for himself.

But the negative side is worth noting. To some he appears to have been an inveterate schemer from his youth and a manipulator whose machinations came to haunt him. He was undoubtedly an ambitious man, although some are keen to invest him with Machiavellian-like powers for intrigue that lack proof in a number of events. For instance, the frequently bandied allegation that he was the author of the abortive coup led by Lt. Samuel Arthur deliberately set up to fail after the elimination of his NLC colleagues, Kotoka and Ankrah seems rather fanciful. While Kotoka was assassinated by Lt. Moses Yeboah, Ankrah succeeded in escaping death at Castle Osu by jumping into the Atlantic Ocean. But even if the case can be made that Afrifa consolidated his power base and profited from Kotoka’s death and Ankrah’s later resignation, hard evidence available in the public domain is lacking which points to his having engineered both outcomes.

The contention that Afrifa was personally corrupt is not conclusive. He was after all cleared by the Sowah Assets Commission which reported in April 1979 prior to the parliamentary elections in which he was a contestant. But uncertainty as to whether he enriched himself while in power does not diminish what Afrifa’s critics claim to be his cardinal sin; that of participating in the overthrow of the constitutional government of Ghana, an action which established a dangerous precedent which was followed by other coups including those that led to an extended period of incompetent military rule in the 1970s which created unbearable living conditions for many Ghanaians.

John Stockwell, the CIA Station Chief in Accra at the time of the anti-Nkrumah coup specifically stated that the leaders of the coup were not only given “encouragement” once their plot was discovered by the Americans, but that they were paid in compensation for their efforts.

While his execution may have had much to do with the fear or apprehension junior officers had of him, Afrifa’s detractors hold that it was legally justified on the grounds that overthrowing a government, an act of high treason, was a capital offence by virtue of the Ghana Criminal Code of 1960. The Armed Forces Act of 1962, which was in operation at the time of the coup, also provided the basis for punishing by death those who acted treasonably. In his aforementioned book on the coup, Afrifa acknowledged this by writing that he would have been prepared to hang by the neck if the putsch had failed.

Apart from this legal rationale, Afrifa’s execution, some contend, was also morally justifiable because it served as a precedent for establishing or attempting to establish illegal, unconstitutional regimes. The abortive coup led by Lt. Arthur, who resented the profligacy of the senior officers after they overthrew Nkrumah, was an enterprise of emulation backed by the rationale of “If it is proper for you to seize power by the gun, why is it wrong for me, with my gun to overthrow you?” Afrifa was certainly conscious of the precedent that he had helped set when in the chapter of his book entitled “The Ghana Condition”, he asserted that “a corporal with the necessary courage and belief and love of his country can topple corrupt leaders and lead a coup in a just cause.” But he failed to acknowledge or even comprehend that corporals, subalterns and officers could have amoral reasons for staging a coup. Arthur’s coup, which Arthur dubbed “Operation Guitar Boy” appears to have been bereft of any ideological motivation, (it did not aim to bring Dr. Nkrumah back to power or establish a particular form of governance) instead it was an ego-driven enterprise that aimed not only to settle his grievance against the senior officers, but also to earn the accolade of being the first subaltern to successfully lead a coup.

And even where the soldier with a gun perceives his moral right to seize power, there is an inherent contradiction. Thus, Afrifa’s simultaneous acknowledgement of the coup d’état as a bad thing, while considering it as an effective mechanism for restoring the constitutional rights of citizens can be viewed as fundamentally flawed.

While Afrifa’s role in steering Ghana back to a constitutional democracy is rightly lauded, the argument that the NLC put the country back on a solid economic footing is a hugely contentious one. A key aspect toward remedying what they asserted was the economic mess into which Nkrumah had plunged Ghana was to seek closer relations with the United States and the rest of the Western world.

Afrifa was key to this strategy. His book, which the journalist R.Y. Adu-Asare claimed was ghost-written by Kofi Awoonor, the author, who started it, and Kofi Busia who completed it, was an exercise in unrestrained pro-Western sentiment. Afrifa’s strategy of consistently waxing lyrical about his love of British values alongside his constant ridiculing and demonising of Nkrumah, for whom the West had no love, arguably strays into the obsequious.

While it is understandable that a person like Afrifa by virtue of his Anglican education, British military training and circumstances of living in a British colony would, for better or for worse, be inculcated with a good measure of British culture (his love of Magna Carta and British notions of “fair play”), his assertion that he and other Ghanaians would be minded to fight alongside Britain “as Canadians and Australians have” is striking. One of the grievances members of the Ghanaian Army had against Nkrumah was claimed to be his decision to put them on standby to fight in Rhodesia. Afrifa expressed this view, but conveniently ignored the fact that Britain was operating a “Kith and Kin” policy in relation to the white minority in that country. UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) was after all a rebellion against the authority of the crown. Instead, Afrifa naively expressed his confidence that Britain would find a solution to the issue.

The pivot towards the West thus appeared to be as extreme as Nkrumah’s detractors claimed was his gravitation towards China and the Eastern Communist bloc of nations. As early as March 1966, Robert W. Komer of the United States National Security Council informed President Lyndon Johnson that the NLC was “extremely pro-Western”. This was of course no surprise given the fact that the anti-Nkrumah conspirators who included Afrifa had given the CIA Station in Accra regular updates as to the progress of their enterprise.

But this treasonous conduct (as their critics often point out) and the close relations pursued after their assumption of power, paid little dividend. The NLC slavishly backed the United States in the United Nations over unpopular adventures such as the Vietnam war and received some aid and loans, but was disappointed at the scope of aid requested, particularly that to do with military assistance. Relations with the United States deteriorated because of the differences that materialised over the issue of decolonisation in Portuguese Africa and policy towards Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. Further, it failed to reach a cocoa agreement with Ghana. Ever dependent on the volatile cocoa market, the Ghanaian economy continued in its parlous state at the time Afrifa handed power over to the civilian government headed by Kofi Busia. Thus, Afrifa and his colleagues arguably only made themselves as subservient to the United States and the West as they claimed Nkrumah made himself subservient to the communist world with little reward.

Afrifa, who pronounced himself as a man committed to social order and who submitted himself to a career that mandated obedience to authority, was also a man with a capacity for rebellion. His expulsion from college, his disciplinary issues at Sandhurst, his facing a court-martial at the time of the February coup, his participation in that coup and his involvement in the attempted counter-coup of 1972 all attest to this. A bright and charismatic man, he also accommodated a healthy ego. Were his rapid promotions from major to colonel and then brigadier merely maintaining a rank in proportion to his burgeoning responsibilities? Or were they an exercise in hubris? He appears to have been a brigadier at the time of the hand over to civilian power, but in retirement was referred to as a lieutenant general – all before he had reached his 35th birthday.

The swiftness by which Afrifa and the others were executed suggests that he was not granted natural justice, albeit that military commissions even when properly constituted are inherently weighted against the defendant. His relative Addaquay recalled in 1979 that he “was arrested on Friday, jailed and shot at dawn on Tuesday morning.”

It has also been suggested that the legal justification for Afrifa’s execution trumpeted by Major Kofi Boakye-Gyan at the National Reconciliation hearings in the early 2000s were merely an afterthought, given that the bulletins issued to the press by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council in 1979 made no explicit references to the Criminal Code (1960), the Armed Forces Act(1962) and the Superior Order Rule attendant to the Armed Forces regulation which Boakye-Gyan insisted were brought to his attention at the time after consulting widely with figures such as Colonel Peter Agbeko, the head of the Armed Forces Legal Services Directorate; Justice Mills Odoi, the Advocate-General of the Armed Forces; and Justice Austin Amissah, an eminent jurist.

Among his admirers, and the critics of the AFRC’s decision to execute him, are those who suspect a tribal motive in targeting Afrifa. Aside from considering Afrifa’s elimination as an insult to the Ashanti nation which had given him one of its highest titles, they see the half-Ewe Jerry Rawlings as being the instrument of vengeance for periodic episodes in Ghana’s history where Ewe power and influence has ebbed. Although Afrifa did not strike many as a man who was overtly tribally motivated -an accusation often leveled at the late Kotoka who was an Ewe- the aftermath of Kotoka’s death during which time Afrifa expanded his power base is perceived by many Ewes as a time when Ewe influence diminished. There had been a resurgence of Ewe’s within the corridors of power while Kotoka was alive after complaints of their marginalisation during the Nkrumah era.

Divisions among the members of the NLC during the transition to civilian government was noted by analysts who observed that Afrifa’s favoured politician was Kofi Busia, like him an Ashanti, while John Harlley, the NLC’s Vice Chairman favoured Komla Gbedemah, a fellow Ewe. The hand of Afrifa in helping engineer the decision to disqualify Gbedemah cannot be dismissed given the assessment of objective analysts that the use of the clause to effect the disqualification (on the grounds that he had misused public funds) was a device employed to neutralise a potential rival to Busia, Afrifa’s preferred candidate.

Akwasi Afrifa died a villain’s death, executed like a common criminal at a firing range and buried unceremoniously in a prison cemetery. But while his detractors view him with disdain as a consummate operator in the dark arts of political subterfuge and manipulation, he was clearly not a bloodthirsty Machiavellian who insisted on preserving his power as a head of state by murder and instituting a reign of terror as did Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia and Moussa Traore of Mali.

Claims that Afrifa was a coup-plotter who was essential a democrat do not ring as hollow as those made by the widow of the Chilean Air Force General, Gustavo Leigh Guzman who was a member of the junta which staged the violent overthrow of the Marxist-orientated government of Salvador Allende before inaugurating an era of widespread human rights abuse. But Afrifa did not have ‘clean hands’ in so far as the abuse of human rights is concerned: evidence was given at the National Reconciliation hearings of his supervision of the torture of members of President Nkrumah’s Presidential Detail Department (PDD). Afrifa “could not have been my hero” wrote R.Y. Adu-Asare in 2002 because, Adu-Asare charged, he had sanctioned to killing of one Brigadier Bawah, the commander of Nkrumah’s presidential guard, and, allegedly, members of Bawah’s household.

Moreover, the background to Afrifa’s execution, dominated by a groundswell of public anger and disgust at Ghana’s military rulers cannot be ignored. The executions, which were part of what the AFRC termed a ‘House Cleaning’ operation, were met with popular approval by the media, public organisations and individuals. For instance, the June 24th editorial of the Catholic Standard, which was titled “The Great Lesson” approved of the first batch of executions which it applauded as “a means of instilling discipline and justice” in the country.

Earlier, an editorial in the June 4tb edition of the Ghanaian Times urged the AFRC not to limit the scope of its House Cleaning to 1972, the year in which Colonel Acheampong seized power, but to hold to account what it described as “the many rogues who have committed economic crimes against the nation” to an earlier time frame. The editorial made it clear that “in looking behind 1972, we are not interested in picking on any individual or group.”

The AFRC did cast its net further back, and as a compromise between the opposing views of whether civilian collaborators (and police personnel) should be included among those against whom serious measures should be taken, those senior members who served in Ghana’s first military government came into its crosshairs. Kotoka was dead, General Albert Ocran had fled into exile and Ankrah was excused for not having been a participant in the 1966 coup (he had been invited to head the government before being forced to resign), so Afrifa alone from that era was made to pay the price.

Afrifa’s participation in the coup against Dr. Nkrumah had opened up a can of worms, and his justifications, no matter how well-meaning and seemingly well-reasoned, essentially posited a counter-intuitive logic that treason could prosper by ceasing to be treason.

It is worth bearing all of this in mind when assessing the legacy of Akwasi Amankwa Afrifa. The truth, as in most cases, lies somewhere in-between the extreme narratives of demonisation and hagiography.

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

Adeyinka Makinde is based in London, England. He has a keen interest in history and geo-politics and writes on his blog, Adeyinka Makinde.

Featured image: Brigadier Akwasi Afrifa (1936-1979), Chairman of the National Liberation Council (NLC) of Ghana, seated in Osu Castle, Accra, during the swearing-in ceremony of government ministers of the in-coming civilian administration headed by Dr. Kofi Busia on Friday, September 12th 1969. Source of Photo Still: Reuters News.