China’s Move towards Digital Cryptocurrency

October 23rd, 2019 by Paul Antonopoulos

The participants of last week’s “Block Chain Life” forum held in Moscow concluded that digital cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is an inevitable reality of the future that must be developed and harnessed. The event held on October 16-17 had over 4,800 participants, more than half of them Chinese and Russian.

It is not surprising considering China is becoming a center for digital cryptocurrency, especially when considering that over 80% of bitcoin mining activities occur in China. This of course was done with close Russian assistance who provided the necessary programming skills. However, it was a long time in the making as China initially expressed scepticism towards cryptocurrencies and blockchains before moving towards endorsement and support. National digital cryptocurrencies have the potential to become competitors with the traditionally decentralized digital cryptocurrencies and conventional payment method.

As the price of digital cryptocurrencies is very volatile and has even recently declined, China announced in 2017 that any digital cryptocurrency transaction, including the initial token offer (ICO), is illegal, with even reports that the government intends to ban mining. Beijing now appears to have a different outlook towards cryptocurrencies, especially as a vehicle to continue to the de-Dollarization of their economy.

Xu Haoyang, the founder of China’s largest mining pool, ViaBTC, explained that in 2017, China ordered mining companies to dismantle their equipment as at the time they understood that the situation was unstable. This did not mean that they cannot operate there, and rather, miners just returned to Sichuan and Yunnan provinces again to continue their activities shortly after. There is no news recently that digital cryptocurrency mining is still be banned and the difference now is that the Chinese government is now beginning to understand what digital cryptocurrencies are, and they even intend to issue its own digital coins, the “renminbi.” Haoyang believes that China will not ban digital mining and rather that if you consume too much electricity, access to electricity resources may be subject to certain restrictions.

China’s attitude towards digital cryptocurrency has changed, especially with Wang Xin, director of the Central Bank Research Bureau, saying this summer that the State Council of China has approved plans to develop the digital renminbi. Mu Changchun, director of the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China, later said that the digital renminbi is actually ready for distribution. The digital renminbi will replace cash in circulation and the payment system can process up to 300,000 transactions per second.

After Facebook announced the establishment of the international digital cryptocurrency Libra, China immediately stepped up its efforts to issue its own digital cryptocurrency. China’s Global Times published an article entitled “China cannot be absent from the era of global digital currency competition” suggesting that China cannot ignore the inevitable rise of digital currency. The Chinese government seems to conclude that digital cryptocurrency has become an objective phenomenon.

Although digital currency was initially decentralized and dominated by companies like Bitcoin, large institutions and states are starting to issue their own digital cryptocurrencies. This also comes as the U.S., as revealed by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, said that they are far from issuing digital currency because the technology is still in its infancy, but it is still a stated goal.

But China’s current idea has been decided. Mu Changchun, a Deputy Director at the People’s Bank of China, said that unlike the Libra crypto, a digital cryptocurrency that will be issued by private companies, the digital renminbi will have all the marks of China’s national sovereign currency. Because there is always a risk of a private company going bankrupt which can threaten the existence of the Libra, then the digital renminbi must be much more reliable. There is reason to believe that China will use the short pauses issued by Libra to launch its digital cryptocurrency.

Rather, it can be suggested that the move to digital currencies is a natural course for China to take to de-Dollarize their economies. Although only a catastrophic market change will end the Dollar’s hegemony over the global economy in the short term, China is now playing the long game to achieve 100% financial sovereignty. China has added almost 100 tonnes of gold to its reserves over the last ten months, an increase of nearly 5.4 tonnes of gold to China’s holdings — bringing the total additions since December to about 96 tonnes, according to the Financial Times. This includes efforts to trade in local currencies and selling its holdings in U.S. bonds.

Although it is unlikely that these efforts will topple the Dollar as the de facto currency of the world anytime soon, the long-term effects of these moves by China cannot be overlooked. Whether the Chinese Yuan will replace the Dollar remains to be seen, it is likely that in the medium-term we will begin to see a much more equitable balance in the financial markets and sectors between the Great Powers. With China pushing ahead with cryptocurrencies, it is not known yet how Washington will respond to this latest move by Beijing to liberate itself from the Dollar hegemony. There is definitely every possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump will want to consider options on how to counter Beijing’s move as a wider part of his trade war against China.

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

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On Tuesday, Johnson won one Brexit vote, lost another, Britain’s status of leaving the EU uncertain.

By a 329 – 299 majority, MPs approved legislation, supporting Brexit in principle, short of final approval.

Its status is “paused (in) limbo” because MPs rejected Johnson’s fast-track demand for adopting the measure by a 322 – 308 margin.

On Tuesday, he and Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn met, his spokesman saying:

“Jeremy Corbyn reiterated Labor’s offer to the prime minister to agree (on) a reasonable timetable to debate, scrutinize, and amend the withdrawal agreement bill, and restated that Labor will support a general election when the threat of a no-deal crash-out is off the table.”

Johnson said if Brussels agrees to a three-month delay, requested in a letter he sent the bloc unsigned late Saturday as mandated, he’ll ask MPs to support a snap election.

Brussels is currently deciding on whether to grant Britain another extension until January 31.

European Council President Donald Tusk said he’ll recommend it. Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said the UK won’t leave the EU on October 31, Johnson’s demand.

Since majority Brits voted by national referendum to leave the EU in June 2016, majority MPs approved any Brexit legislation Tuesday for the first time.

Johnson’s loss of control over the timetable gives opposition MPs time to pick apart what he and Brussels agreed on, perhaps changing it enough for a later vote to defeat it.

It’s status remains very much uncertain. Corbyn called Johnson the “author of his own misfortune,” adding:

“Tonight the House (of Commons) refused to be bounced into debating a hugely significant bill with barely any notice.”

“Work with us to agree a reasonable timetable, and I suspect this House will vote to debate this bill. That would be the sensible way forward.”

Johnson “express(ed) disappointment that the House has voted for delay rather than a timetable that would have guaranteed the UK could leave on 31 October with a deal,” adding:

“The EU must now make up their mind over how to answer parliament’s request for a delay…Until they have reached a decision, we will pause this legislation. Let me be clear, our policy remains that we should not delay.”

The so-called “Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB)” is around 115 pages, MPs needing time to examine, debate, and change what’s disagreed with by majority vote.

Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Sammy Wilson said his party rejects Johnson’s (no-deal) deal as it proposed “a border in the Irish Sea,” adding:

“The prime minister has lost my respect. Instead of owning his decision to capitulate on Northern Ireland to get his deal through in a hurry, he is implying that none of us can read the detail.”

An EU extension is uncertain, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, saying “we consider that there is no justification for a new extension.” It requires approval by all other 27 EU member-states.

While Johnson’s no-Brexit/Brexit deal is alive, its fate remains uncertain following Tuesday’s parliamentary votes.

As things now stand, it’s highly unlikely that Britain will leave the EU in one form or other on October 31 as Johnson demanded.

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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.

On October 22, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached an agreement to settle the situation in northeastern Syria.

According to the agreement, Turkey’s Operation ‘Peace Spring’ will continue in a limited area between Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ayn with a depth of 32km. Starting from 12:00 October 23, units of the Russian Military Police and the Syrian Army will be deployed along the rest of the Turkish border to the east of the Euphrates.

Syria and Russia should facilitate the removal of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and their weapons from to the depth of 30km from the Turkish-Syrian border. After this, joint Russian-Turkish patrols will start to the east and the west of the area of Operation Peace Spring.

Watch the video here.

A joint monitoring and verification mechanism to oversee these processes will be established.

Both sides reiterated their commitment to the territorial integrity of Syria and protection of the national security of Turkey, and vowed to combat terrorism in all forms and disrupt separatist agendas in the Syrian territory.

Turkey and Russia emphasized the importance of the 1998 Adana accord, a security pact between Syria and Turkey. Among other things, it allows Turkish to carry out cross-border operations against terrorists in Syria, while Damascus promises not to harbor members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

Other points of the agreement include the need to facilitate return of refugees to Syria and find a long-standing political solution of the conflict in Syria.

On October 22, Syrian government forces completed deployment along the Hasakah-Aleppo highway. On the same day, President Bashar al-Assad inspected frontlines in southern Idlib. During the visit, he called Turkish President Erdogan a “thief” stealing Syrian land. Nevertheless, such statements are typical for the Damascus government, when it comments on Turkish military actions in Syria.

Developments on the ground and actions of the Syrian government demonstrate that Damascus supports the settlement of the situation in northeastern Syria through cooperation with Turkey.

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Where Are the Influentials Who Find Trump Despicable?

October 23rd, 2019 by Ralph Nader

The British political philosopher, John Stuart Mill, was a man of many pithy phrases. Possibly his most widely quoted assertion is that “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

This quote fits the Trump age perfectly. Where are you, Barack Obama? Obama is still polling higher than any other politician, active or retired. Instead of speaking out, he is making movies, maybe writing another book, and otherwise really enjoying himself.

Where are you Condoleezza Rice? She encouraged Rex Tillerson to be Trump’s Secretary of State, but Tillerson was cast aside in 2018 by a sneering Trump, who pronounced him “dumb as a rock.” Condoleezza is collecting honors and large speech fees and teaching at Stanford University (keep in mind that Rice was on the inside during the criminal Bush/Cheney war in Iraq, which she supported and defended).

Where are you General Colin Powell? Powell is another former disgusted high official still high in the polls. He thinks he is hated by the White House. He needs to speak up, as his formidable former Chief of Staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, has repeatedly done.

The list could go on and on. The former high officials or elected politicians, now retired, who do want to speak up, complain that they can’t get any media attention. If that is true, they should organize into a collective force, with some staff, to help push for media attention. I’m sure they will be able to attract some enlightened large donors.

Not all former officials are AWOL. Some former officials write prominent op-eds in newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Some former Obama-era public servants started a podcast called Pod Save America. These efforts are, sadly, not enough to compete with Trump’s onslaught.

It is imperative that these political figures speak out, stand tall, and push back against Trump’s worsening outrages. Trump’s brazen lies obscure his administration’s secrecy and cover-ups; for his abysmal betrayals of workers, patients, consumers, communities; and for Trump’s false pledges that he would help create a safe, healthy environment. Remember his nonsensical rhetoric about clean air, clean water, and beautiful, clean coal.

He still thinks evidence about climate disruption is a “Chinese hoax.”

In his mass rallies – that screen out critical citizens – Trump knowingly lies with reckless abandon. For example, at his recent Dallas rally, Trump said that he has brought the “largest decline in drug prices in over 51 years.” Actually, drug prices are soaring as deprived patients, insurance company executives, and Medicare officials know so well. So what does Trump add? He tells his believers that the reason they don’t know about lower drug prices is that the media, which he calls “crooked,” “corrupt,” and “fake,” isn’t telling Americans the truth.

That Trump has lied over ten thousand times to the American people is itself, given their many ramifications, a “violation of the public trust,” which Alexander Hamilton described as an impeachable offense.  Trump lies more in a month than other presidents do during their entire four year term.

Many of the influential people who are silent about Trump’s abuses have no economic worries. They are sufficiently or extravagantly well-off. They have no concerns over the need for future jobs, being in their sixties or seventies. Retired lawyers who see Trump trampling on our constitutional and legal frameworks should be particularly incensed.

If some billionaire would fund the creation of a Secretariat to promote the views of Trump’s critics, a small experienced staff and these influential people together could create a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

Former lawmakers and executive officials, when acting together and assisted by a support staff, can multiply their efforts. Former Senators Lowell Wiecker and Gary Hart; former EPA chiefs, such as William Ruckelshaus; and former governors of New Jersey, Thomas Keane and Christine Todd Whitman are all critical of Trump’s misbehavior. Trump ravages people and lies about a variety of serious matters without rebuttal. As we know from history, an unchallenged lie, repeated over and over again begins to sink in. It is imperative that accomplished people who challenge Trump’s lies gain public credibility. Just consider the “nicknames” Trump assigns to his adversaries, without any nicknames being successfully applied to him. “Crooked Donald,” “Decadent Donald,” “Draft-dodging Donald,” “Disgraceful Donald,” “Lying Donald,” and so forth. He has used such monikers, and worse, to slander opponents and these insults have been repeated by the mass media. Trump’s victims are not afforded a chance to respond to his invectives.

A few media critics, notably Margaret Sullivan from The Washington Post, have chided their editors for allowing such defamatory Trumpian soliloquies. To avoid being his bullhorn, Sullivan argues, the media should not report such abuses. At a minimum, those who are attacked by Trump should be offered the chance to respond. Rebutting bullies is the first step in balancing the public stage. This would be particularly effective for a nasty, thin-skinned bully like Donald Trump.

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Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest books include: To the Ramparts: How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse CourseHow the Rats Re-Formed the Congress, Breaking Through Power: It’s easier than we think, and Animal Envy: A Fable

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What else can we call it when a publisher does what the New York Times did when it published the Pentagon Papers and was ruled by the Supreme Court in 1971 (New York Times Co. v. United States) to have been protected by the First Amendment.

But the publisher this time has been kept for years in various types of imprisonment without trial, and by now has been so destroyed that, in this, his first court appearance to defend himself, he seems to have been drugged, but for whatever reason “When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both.” “It was a real struggle for him to articulate the words and focus his train of thought.” The event occurred on October 21st.

Here (with boldface being used by me only to highlight especially the names of the principal persons at the hearing) are more highlights from the account that was provided on October 22nd by the whistleblowing former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, under the headline “Assange in Court”:

“Having attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that yesterday changed my mind entirely and Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness.”

“Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of our times is being tortured to death by the state, before our eyes. To see my friend, the most articulate man, the fastest thinker, I have ever known, reduced to that shambling and incoherent wreck, was unbearable. Yet the agents of the state, particularly the callous magistrate Vanessa Baraitser, were not just prepared but eager to be a part of this bloodsport.”

“The charge against Julian is very specific: conspiring with Chelsea Manning to publish the Iraq War logs, the Afghanistan war logs and the State Department cables.”

“The key points at issue were that Julian’s defence was requesting more time to prepare their evidence; and arguing that political offences were specifically excluded from the extradition treaty. There should, they argued, therefore be a preliminary hearing to determine whether the extradition treaty applied at all. The reasons given by Assange’s defence team for more time to prepare were both compelling and startling.”

“The evidence to the Spanish court also included a CIA plot to kidnap Assange, which went to the US authorities’ attitude to lawfulness in his case and the treatment he might expect in the United States. Julian’s team explained that the Spanish legal process was happening now and the evidence from it would be extremely important, but it might not be finished and thus the evidence not fully validated and available in time for the current proposed timetable for the Assange extradition hearings. For the prosecution, James Lewis QC [Queen’s Counsel] stated that the government strongly opposed any delay being given for the defence to prepare.”

“There were five representatives of the US government present.”

“Lewis actually told the judge he was ‘taking instructions from those behind’.”

“The US government was dictating its instructions to Lewis, who was relaying those instructions to Baraitser, who was ruling them as her legal decision.”

“Baraitser then capped it all by saying the February hearing will be held, not at the comparatively open and accessible Westminster Magistrates Court where we were, but at Belmarsh Magistrates Court, the grim high security facility used for preliminary legal processing of terrorists, attached to the maximum security prison where Assange is being held. There are only six seats for the public in even the largest court at Belmarsh, and the object is plainly to evade public scrutiny.”

“Assange’s defence team objected strenuously to the move to Belmarsh, in particular on the grounds that there are no conference rooms available there to consult their client.”

“Finally, Baraitser turned to Julian and ordered him to stand, and asked him if he had understood the proceedings. He replied in the negative, said that he could not think, and gave every appearance of disorientation. … He became increasingly confused and incoherent.”

“I have been both cataloguing and protesting for years the increasingly authoritarian powers of the UK state, but that the most gross abuse could be so open and undisguised is still a shock.”

“Unless Julian is released shortly he will be destroyed. If the state can do this, then who is next?”

There’s yet more that’s in Murray’s account which would shock any intelligent reader, but those excerpts constitute what I consider its main points.

As regards whether the U.S. Government is a dictatorship: there have, by now, even been some rigorous quantitative social-scientific analyses of that question, and all of the evidence points clearly to a “Yes” answer to it, concerning at least that particular Government.

We thus clearly have come to live in a totalitarian state: the U.S.-and-allied Deep State. To call this a ‘democracy’ is to insult that magnificent word. Some authentic revolutions have been sparked by tyrannies that aren’t as vile as this one.

The military-industrial complex (MIC) didn’t entirely control the U.S. Government back in 1971 when the MIC’s absolute right of censorship was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Pentagon Papers case; but, now, after 9/11, it finally does, and thus democracy has become totally eliminated in today’s America.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

The Russian-Turkish Deal on Syria: Who Won and Who Lost?

October 23rd, 2019 by Andrew Korybko

Presidents Putin and Erdogan reached a deal on Syria that represents a decisive victory for Turkey while being a drastic climbdown for Damascus after President Assad vowed earlier that day that the Syrian Arab Army was “prepared to support any group carrying out popular resistance against the Turkish aggression” only to later “fully support” the Russian-brokered agreement to give Ankara practically all of what it wants once he was informed about the details by his counterpart in Moscow.

Practically everyone in the Alt-Media Community has an opinion about the latest Russian-Turkish deal on Syria that was reached after hours of negotiations between Presidents Putin and Erdogan during their summit in Sochi, with most portraying it as a victory for Damascus and a defeat for Ankara, though the reality is close (key word) to the polar opposite. Turkey received practically all of what it wanted by being given its long-sought “safe zone” in Northern Syria, albeit in a “modified” format. According to the Memorandum of Understanding published on the official Kremlin website, the two leaders agreed to the following ten points:

“1. The two sides reiterate their commitment to the preservation of the political unity and territorial integrity of Syria and the protection of national security of Turkey.

2. They emphasize their determination to combat terrorism in all forms and manifestations and to disrupt separatist agendas in the Syrian territory.

3. In this framework, the established status quo in the current Operation Peace Spring area covering Tel Abyad and Ras Al Ayn with a depth of 32 km will be preserved.

4. Both sides reaffirm the importance of the Adana Agreement. The Russian Federation will facilitate the implementation of the Adana Agreement in the current circumstances.

5. Starting 12.00 noon of October 23, 2019, Russian military police and Syrian border guards will enter the Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border, outside the area of Operation Peace Spring, to facilitate the removal of YPG elements and their weapons to the depth of 30 km from the Turkish-Syrian border, which should be finalized in 150 hours. At that moment, joint Russian-Turkish patrols will start in the west and the east of the area of Operation Peace Spring with a depth of 10 km, except Qamishli city.

6. All YPG elements and their weapons will be removed from Manbij and Tal Rifat.

7. Both sides will take necessary measures to prevent infiltrations of terrorist elements.

8. Joint efforts will be launched to facilitate the return of refugees in a safe and voluntary manner.

9. A joint monitoring and verification mechanism will be established to oversee and coordinate the implementation of this memorandum.

10. The two sides will continue to work to find a lasting political solution to the Syrian conflict within Astana Mechanism and will support the activity of the Constitutional Committee.”

Here’s a point-by-point interpretation of them:

1. Turkey reassured Russia that it isn’t interested in annexing any Syrian territory unlike what Alt-Media has repeatedly alleged, so Russia reconfirmed its support of Ankara’s anti-terrorist operation.

2. Not only does Russia support Turkey’s anti-terrorist actions, but it’s also on the same side as Ankara when it comes to its opposition to Kurdish separatist ambitions.

3. The “established status quo” talked about in this point is simply a euphemism for legitimizing the indefinite presence of Turkish military forces in the current area of operations.

4. Russia doesn’t agree with Syria’s repeated claims that the Adana Agreement is invalid until Turkey withdraws its military from the country, and is actually basing the following points on this international agreement.

5. Per the above, Russia committed Syria to assisting it with the disarmament and removal of Damascus’ new Kurdish “allies”, after which it’ll jointly patrol a 10-kilometer-deep “safe zone” with Turkey to enforce this.

6. Syria’s new Kurdish “allies” will be forced to surrender the doubly strategic and symbolic city of Manbij, further weakening their military position in the country.

7. This vague point doesn’t mention what exactly is supposed to be protected from terrorist infiltration, though it’s assumed to refer to the “safe zone”, in which case it simply reaffirms Russia’s support for Turkey’s plans.

8. This is yet another vague point because it doesn’t specify whether the repatriated refugees will be concentrated in the “safe zone” like Turkey wants or scattered throughout all of Syria.

9. Both sides will ensure that the other keeps its word, which for the Russians refers to the promises that they made on Syria and the Kurds’ behalf, while for the Turks this concerns the return of refugees.

10. Russia and Turkey reaffirm that they’re on the same side when it comes to promoting a political solution to the Hybrid War of Terror on Syria.

To summarize the Sochi Agreement, Russia is giving Turkey its “safe zone” and committing Syria to assist it with this by having Damascus disarm and remove its new Kurdish “allies” from Ankara’s envisaged sphere of influence, though the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the country’s border guards will reportedly be allowed to control parts of the international frontier from “from Kobani to Tell Abyad and from Ras al-Ayn to the Iraqi border…supported by Russian military police” according to RT. It’s unclear, however, whether that’s temporary or will remain in force when Russia and Turkey patrol up to 10 kilometers deep in those regions next week.

What’s so surprising about all of this is that President Assad “gave his full support” to it after being informed about the details by President Putin after the summit ended since the Syrian leader had vowed earlier that day that the SAA is “prepared to support any group carrying out popular resistance against the Turkish aggression“, which would of course also imply the YPG Kurdish militia that Ankara regards as terrorists and which Russia agreed to sweep out of the “safe zone” per President Erdogan’s wishes. The SAA’s possible support of this group’s anti-Turkish attacks would violate the Adana Agreement that Moscow said it will implement.

In fact, it can even be reasonably speculated that President Assad’s vague vow might have been the reason behind Russia so strongly declaring that it “will facilitate the implementation of the Adana Agreement in the current circumstances” and even speak on Syria’s behalf to commit the SAA to helping it with this in order to teach its leader a “lesson” about how dangerous it is to use such rhetoric during as sensitive of a time as this one when the delicate peace process is at stake. Even so, this unexpected twist can’t exactly be characterized as a “loss” since it nevertheless preserves international peace and pushes the conflict resolution process forward.

Therefore, an assessment of the Sochi Agreement reveals that while it’s a huge victory for Turkey, it’s not necessarily a “loss” for Syria even if it does indeed represent a dramatic climbdown from what President Assad had vowed to do earlier that day. Ankara “compromised” by receiving the breadth of what it wanted but only one-third the depth, while Damascus’ “compromise” was to “fully support” President Putin’s promise that it would actively facilitate the disarmament and removal of its new Kurdish “allies” in exchange for being allowed to jointly patrol part of the international frontier together with the Russian military police.

The militant Kurds, however, are definitely the losers after having their fate decided for them by Moscow and Ankara. While their separatist dreams are shattered and they’ll be unable to pose a credible terrorist threat to Turkey following the successful implementation of the Sochi Agreement, Russia might proverbially throw them a bone by “encouraging” Syria to “seriously consider” granting them some level of “autonomy” in the Northeast in exchange for all the concessions they were forced to undertake after being abandoned by the US earlier this month. If that happens, then this scenario could possibly stop them from being “sore losers” and spoiling the complex peace process.

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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.

As Trump Aids and Abets Turkey’s War Crimes, the UN Must Act

October 23rd, 2019 by Prof. Marjorie Cohn

Nearly two weeks have passed since Turkey launched its ground and air attack on Rojava, the autonomous region of northeast Syria, following Trump’s sudden removal of 1,000 U.S. troops from the area.

While the United States and Turkey reached a “ceasefire” agreement on October 17, there are ongoing reports of violations of the deal. A U.S. official told CNN that Turkish-backed forces broke the ceasefire on its first day, saying that they were either acting beyond the scope of Turkish control or Turkey “didn’t care what they did.” Two U.S. officials said the ceasefire “is not holding.”

The agreement calls for a five-day ceasefire and requires Kurdish fighters to leave an area of Syria along the Turkish border, in essence, relinquishing control of their territory. The United States would lift the threat of further sanctions on Turkey, and once a “permanent cease-fire” occurs, would remove the sanctions that Trump imposed in the wake of criticism of his abrupt withdrawal from the region.

Turkish airstrikes have killed at least 20 civilians and 14 Kurdish fighters since the “ceasefire” was announced, according to the Kurds.

“The so-called cease-fire is not what we expected,” European Union Council President Donald Tusk told reporters. “In fact, it’s a demand of capitulation of the Kurds.” Turkey concurs. Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said the deal was not a ceasefire but only a “pause for our operation,” adding, “We got what we wanted.”

Indeed, U.S. military officials told The New York Times “they were stunned that the agreement essentially allowed Turkey to annex a portion of Syria, displace tens of thousands of Kurdish residents and wipe away years of counterterrorism gains against the Islamic State.”

From Illegal U.S. Occupation to Turkish Aggression

Turkey’s invasion of Syria is a war of aggression. It is incumbent upon the UN Security Council or General Assembly to take measures to restore international peace and security, as mandated by the UN Charter.

The United States has no right to occupy Syria in the first place. Yet intermittently for 50 years, the U.S. government has been trying to engineer regime change there, in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Since 2015, the U.S., France, Britain and other countries have supplied weapons to the Syrian Democratic Forces, consisting largely of Syrian Kurds, to overthrow the Islamic State (ISIS).

As of 2011, the Kurds comprised between 5 and 10 percent of the Syrian population of 21 million. The largest ethnic minority in Syria, the Kurds live primarily near the northeast border.

Last year, at the behest of the Turkish government, the U.S. State Department blocked a Kurdish attempt to reconcile with the Syrian government.

“Donald Trump has the blood of the Kurds on his hand, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties who have supported this ongoing ‘regime change’ war in Syria that started in 2011, along with many in the mainstream media, who have been championing and cheerleading this regime change war,” Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard accurately noted.

Now Turkey is mounting a war of aggression in Syria and committing war crimes against the Kurds, aided and abetted by the United States.

“Turkish military forces and a coalition of Turkey-backed Syrian armed groups have displayed a shameful disregard for civilian life, carrying out serious violations and war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful attacks that have killed and injured civilians, during the offensive into northeast Syria,” Amnesty International reported on October 18.

This report documents indiscriminate bombardment, summary killings and abductions. It discusses “gruesome details of a summary killing in cold blood” of the prominent Syrian-Kurdish female politician Hevrin Khalaf by a coalition of armed Syrian groups that Turkey supports and equips. Her injuries included “multiple gunshot wounds to the head, face and back as well as fractures to her legs, face and skull, detachment of skin from her skull and loss of hair as a result of being dragged by the hair.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group, reports that the Turkish military has killed at least 436 people since its offensive began on October 9. The Kurdish Red Crescent puts the number of civilians killed at a minimum of 235 and Kurdish forces say 22 children have been killed. Between 160,000 and 300,000 people have fled from their homes.

“In one of the most horrific attacks documented, a Kurdish Red Crescent worker described how he pulled bodies from the wreckage of a Turkish air strike … in which two munitions landed near to a school in Salhiye, where civilians displaced by the fighting had sought shelter,” according to the report.

Additionally, there are numerous accounts of Turkey using illegal white phosphorus-loaded munitions, which burn to the bone and cannot be extinguished by water.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that deliveries of humanitarian assistance have been prevented from entering Ras al-Ain, a border town where most of the ceasefire violations have occurred.

Trump Greenlighted Turkey’s Invasion

Turkey’s October 9 invasion of Rojava was greenlighted by Trump’s abrupt October 6 removal of U.S. troops from the region after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Trump and Erdoğandiscussed the forthcoming Turkish invasion during the call.

“Today, President Donald J. Trump spoke with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey by telephone,” the White House press statement said. “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria. The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘Caliphate,’ will no longer be in the immediate area.”

Trump knew that Turkey would attack the Kurds and he sanctioned it.

Before Trump withdrew the U.S. troops, the Kurds had been suppressing ISIS in the region. City University of New York professor Ozlem Goner told Democracy Now! that after the U.S. withdrawal, “Turkey actually bombed the ISIS prison so that [ISIS prisoners] can escape.”

Turkey intends to transfer many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey over the border into Syria, which would violate the Geneva Conventions.

On October 10, in the wake of a storm of criticism from both Democrats and Republicans of Trump’s precipitous withdrawal from Rojava, the White House denounced the Turkish invasion, issuing a statement that said,

“This morning, Turkey, a [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] member, invaded Syria. The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea.”

The U.S. Is Aiding and Abetting Turkey’s War Crimes Against the Kurds

But for Trump’s sudden pullout of U.S. troops, Turkey would not have invaded Rojava. The United States is aiding and abetting Turkey’s war crimes.

Aiding and abetting a war crime requires three elements: 1.) a person or entity committed a war crime; 2.) another actor committed an act that had a substantial effect on the commission of the war crime; and 3.) the other actor knew that the act would assist, or have a substantial likelihood of assisting, the commission of the war crime.

First, Turkey is committing war crimes. Willful killing, targeting civilians, and willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The U.S. War Crimes Act defines grave breaches of Geneva as war crimes.

Second, U.S. officials provided the means to commit war crimes. The United States is the primary exporter of weapons to Turkey. In 2017, the U.S. gave $154 million in aid to Turkey, the fourth highest amount provided to any country in Europe and Asia. And The New York Times reported that the U.S. furnished intelligence, including surveillance data, to Turkey that may have enabled its assault on the Syrian Kurds..

Third, Trump knew that once the U.S. troops left Rojava, the Turkish military would invade it.

Moreover, Trump threatened genocide on October 17 when he said that the Kurds near the Turkish border had to be “cleaned out” by Turkey. He lauded the “ceasefire” because now Turkey was “not going to have to kill millions of people.”

But Mazlum Kobani, commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, told The New York Times,

“There will be ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish people from Syria and the American administration will be responsible for it.”

The Genocide Convention defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”: “Killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

On October 15, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that Turkey could be held responsible for war crimes.

If the Security Council Doesn’t Act, the General Assembly Should

Turkey’s war of aggression in Syria is illegal.

“Aggression is the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations,” according to General Assembly Resolution 3314.

The UN Charter allows the use of military force against another state only in self-defense or when sanctioned by the Security Council. Turkey was not acting in self-defense and the council did not approve its invasion of northeast Syria.

Under the UN Charter, the Security Council has primary responsibility to maintain and restore international peace and security. The Security Council should convene immediately, condemn Turkey’s aggression, order a real ceasefire and a no-fly-zone over Rojava, send peacekeeping troops to enforce the ceasefire, require that countries immediately suspend weapons transfers to Turkey, and mandate that all parties provide unfettered access to humanitarian assistance, including to those displaced by the conflict. It should also urge the parties to pursue a diplomatic solution to the conflict and call on all countries to open their borders to refugees from the region.

But the United States and Russia would likely veto such a resolution. When the council is unable to act because the five permanent members cannot agree, there is a procedure for the General Assembly to fulfill that role. It is contained in the “Uniting for Peace Resolution.”

Within 24 hours of a stalemate in the Security Council, the General Assembly can meet to consider the matter. Either seven members of the Security Council or a majority of the members of the General Assembly can invoke the Uniting for Peace Resolution.

Once the Resolution is invoked, the General Assembly can recommend collective measures to “maintain or restore international peace and security.”

House of Representatives Condemns Trump’s Pullout

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad concluded a deal, brokered by Russia, to protect the Kurds from Turkey’s onslaught. In return, the Kurds agreed to allow the Syrian government to enter two border towns, although the Kurds intend to retain their military structure and control of local government.

On October 16, the House of Representatives, by a bipartisan vote of 354-60, adopted H.J. Res. 77, opposing “the decision to end certain United States efforts to prevent Turkish military operations against Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria.” It calls on Turkey to end its military incursion, protect the Kurds and “present a clear and specific plan for the enduring defeat of ISIS.”

Meanwhile all 28 countries of the European Union and Britain had agreed to suspend arms sales to Turkey.

Veterans for Peace issued a statement in which it “condemns the Turkish invasion of Syrian Kurdistan and calls on the United States government to withdraw any support for the incursion.” It also calls on the U.S. “to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the current crisis and to reopen our borders to allow in more refugees from this war torn region.”

It is essential that the Security Council or the General Assembly act immediately to stop the carnage and allow humanitarian relief into the war-torn region.

*

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.

China’s Hidden Economic Time Bomb

October 23rd, 2019 by F. William Engdahl

The China government statistical agency just released economic data showing the poorest GDP growth in almost 30 years for China. The problem goes far deeper than recent effects of the US-China trade war or the impact of calamities such as African Swine Fever that have decimated the nation’s pig herds. The underlying far more serious problem is an emerging disaster that few are willing to discuss openly.

Since about 2017 China’s population has begun to feel the real impact of the ill-conceived One Child Policy imposed by the Communist Party in 1979, some 40 years ago. This slow-growing problem, once seen as benefit, is undermining the entire basis of the China Economic Miracle. The question is whether Beijing can make the transition to an ageing population without major social and economic dislocation.

On October 18 the China State Statistics bureau released Third Quarter GDP which came in at 6.0% compared with 6.2% the previous quarter. While there is great skepticism as to how honest the reporting is, the fact the government must announce a slowing growth at all suggests the situation in reality could be far worse.

The true data on China’s economy remain opaque. In December 2018 the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics published its annual transparency survey on the 31 provincial-level regions. The average score was just above 53%. The study concluded, “[Unfortunately,] the general level of transparency in China’s local governments remains poor.”

A more direct indicator of the health of the economy comes from actual trade data. Bloomberg reports that auto sales in China have fallen for the 15th month out of 16 months in September. It’s the “worst slump in a generation”, according to Bloomberg. As well, sales of new homes and apartments in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities fell dramatically to lows of 2014.

The deeper issue is not the transparency of official economic data. The deeper issue is whether the China Miracle, the remarkable rise from a Third World level backwardness in less than three decades, is entering a structural crisis that will impact not only China’s economy. The recent data on new car sales and new home buying could be an ominous indicator that the China boom years are coming into a drastic slowing with huge consequences not only for China but also for the world.

Golden Era Peaks

Like no other economy in modern history, China’s remarkable economic rise has been facilitated by an extraordinary short-term demographic blessing. That blessing has begun to turn into a curse.

In the 1980’s as China officially opened its economy to Western factories and investment, China had what seemed to be an endless pool of low wage labor power from the countryside to build its roads, new cities and assemble its goods in factories of the likes of Nike or VW or Apple to be shipped to the world. In 1987, the early days of China’s economic miracle, 64 percent of the population were of working age, and only 4 percent were aged above 65. That meant a huge surplus of workers to feed China’s low-cost manufacturing boom. This drove the average 10-11 percent annual GDP growth seen between 1987 and 2007.

So long as globalization with the rules of the newly-created World Trade Organization encouraged the outsourcing of manufacture to China with its huge work force and ultra-low wages, China was booming like no other.

In 1979, alarmed at a population that had been increasing from 1950 to 1978, at a 20 percent annual natural population growth rate, the Communist Party imposed a draconian One Child Policy. Deng Xiaoping as part of the Four Modernizations, set a goal to keep the population at 1.2 billion by 2000 as part of the formula for quadrupling China’s GDP within the same period.

The longer term economic consequences of that policy were not to emerge until some three decades, roughly a generation later, around the time, significantly, of the 2008-9 world economic crisis. A case can be made that the rising wages in China’s manufacturing sector, occasioned by the first shortages of manpower beginning around 2007-10, were more a factor for the severity of the world financial crisis at that time than was merely the US real estate market.

China’s turn to what Deng Xiaoping called “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” after 1979 was in fact a state-controlled turn to western companies and investment to take advantage of China’s seemingly unlimited low cost labor. That labor mostly came from those born prior to 1979, before the One Child Policy. A worker in his mid-20s in 1980 was in his 50s by the time of the 2008-9 crisis in the West. Demographic change is a slow process and could be overlooked in the boom years before 2008. Now, in the past decade, manufacturing wages across China are rising and the population born under the One Child era are notably fewer, adding to recent rising wage pressures.

As China’s manufacturing has moved up the value-added chain as part of its development strategy of Made in China, wages have risen significantly. The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that from 2013-2020 average manufacturing labor costs have risen on average 12% a year. Today average factory wage costs in China are some three times that of India and far higher than in Indonesia or Vietnam.

At the same time as higher skilled labor is needed for China’s fast-developing manufacturing base, especially under the mandates of the Made in China2025 transformation to a world high-tech economy, the size of the overall workforce, once considered nearly limitless, has begun to decline. China’s labor force peaked in 2015 and has begun shrinking, albeit slowly at first. That decline now is pre-programmed to accelerate as the pre-1979 workforce reaches retirement age and is not replaced in equal numbers after 1979 due to the drastic decline in births. According to Deutsche Bank estimates, the work force will shrink from 911 million in 2015, to 849 million in 2020, and to 782 million in 2030. Barring a dramatic change in birth rates, beginning about 2025 China’s overall population will begin a slow but accelerating decline as well.

In 2017 China had a fertility rate well below population replacement levels of 2.1 needed to sustain population size. Slowly realizing the long-term implications, in 2013 the Communist Party moved to slightly lift the limit to two children for some families, and by 2016 to 2 children for all. Even if the result had been as hoped, it would take at least a generation to change the dynamics. However, the policy has yet to produce any major increase in birth rates for a complex of reasons.

Ageing Shift

Not only is China’s labor force declining and wages rising, China’s overall population is ageing faster than any comparable country, owing to the combination of rapid economic growth and the limits on children over the past four decades. With improving living standards in rural areas the longevity of the population has improved significantly. Life expectancy in China increased from 43 years in 1960 to 75 years in 2013. 

China is ageing faster than almost any other country because the number of new births has been blocked while those born are living far longer. By 2016 China had the lowest fertility rate in the world—1.05 according to China’s 2016 State Statistical Bureau data. Social changes encourage young women to postpone marriage and pursue careers, while rural practice encourages male over female births, all of which drive fertility rates lower.

China’s elderly population (over sixty), 14 percent in 2016, will grow to 24 percent of the population by 2030, and will reach 39 percent of the population by 2050. At that time, China’s dependency ratio–the number of people below 15 and above 65 divided by the total working population–is projected to increase to 70 percent, up from 37 percent in 2015. This means a dramatically smaller working-age population with the responsibility of providing for both the young and old. In other words a shrinking relative number of working age taxpayers is facing the growing number of elderly retirees. To avert social unrest the government must somehow undertake huge costs to provide for the elderly.

Traditionally, younger Chinese have taken care of their elderly parents but now, with significantly fewer working children to care for the older retirees, the government will be forced to secure some improved form of social benefits, health care and income support at a time trade surpluses are declining and state debt soaring. At the same time young families are under pressure to increase family size which increases family costs as well. An estimated 23 percent of the elderly in China today cannot take care of themselves, while in 2010 only 43 percent of elderly males and 13 percent of elderly females received any financial pension. While Japan became rich before its population aged, China will not. Ageing of China is a social ticking time bomb.

While all this might sound similar to problems faced by many countries such as Italy or Germany, given the scale of China’s role in the world economy and the dramatic shift in just a few years from what was called a “demographic dividend” —acceleration of economic growth following a decline in birth and death rates—to what might be now called a “demographic disaster,” China is unique.

It becomes clear that the urgency with which Xi Jinping and the Party leadership is promoting its Belt, Road Initiative, as well as Made in China 2025, as an attempt to achieve a near impossible economic feat. Yet the demographic shift is here, while the hoped-for dividends from the BRI and Made in China2025 look far remote at this point. The sharp declines in recent months in domestic consumption for cars and housing could in fact be far more alarming than a mere cyclical downturn. It could well be the first signs of the negative global economics of the huge China demographic shift now unfolding.

*

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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 Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) .

Featured image is from NEO


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People attacked and bleeding, public institutions burning. A government official hanging on the window not to die burned fell from the third floor of the Electoral Court. Carlos Mesa, President Evo Morales opponent, has been inciting violence. Shocking images all over Bolivia after Morales’ re-election, for the fourth time. The opposition across the country is promising much more. Increasing and frightful hate has taken the South American country in the last months, fueled by the mainstream media and obscure powers. Where does Bolivia go toward?

In Bolivia, truth does not matter so much, it does not come first especially to President Evo Morales’s opposition, the Washington regime-backed right-wing. Emotion comes first. Deep hate, in many cases an open sentiment by those who condemn in others, in many cases without proof, exactly what their leaders did once in power, and even does as opposition leaders.

Discrimination, manipulation, and corruption: their hallmark in the South American country. As elites everywhere in the now too effervescent region.

Currently in Santa Cruz de la Sierra city, this Brazilian reporter feels like being in the too hateful Brazil on the eve of the coup against then-President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and during Michel Temer’s black years (2016-2018) which paved the way for fascist Jair Bolsonaro. Dialogue has been impossible in Bolivia, stuck in a hateful social division.

Lies are heard everywhere in Bolivia. Too intensively. One cannot trust anyone here when politics is the subject, much worse performance from the local opposition about it. But in general, both sides are lying.

What has been achieved under Morales

Bolivia has until recently achieved a relatively stable economy and politics, a more respected country all over the world; the current president has taken millions out of poverty and extreme poverty. All this, as the nation never lived before.

The Morales administration has pursued Latin American integration, Evo Morales has given minorities and indigenous people (historically forgotten and massacred) more rights, his administration has strongly opposed U.S. imperialism.

If there is hope for Bolivia, that means having Evo Morales in the Presidency.

The Historian and Journalist Carlos Mesa from the Citizen Community, Morales’ principal opponent, was vice-president during Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada‘s dark years: a pro-IMF President from 2002 to 2004 who massacred more than 70 peasants, simply paid Mesa to be his vice. After Lozada’s escape, Mesa took power until he resigned six months later.

So the Bolivian historian and journalist, now losing the presidential election to Morales in the first round, means that political retrocession to the once poorest country in the region under Gonny’s former Vice president has been foreclosed

The election process was peaceful last Sunday. But on the following day, a foreseen terror started. No matter the election results. Mesa incited street mobilizations, leading to violence at vote-counting stations: opposition protesters have burned ballots, buildings where counting was taking place, and Electoral Courts across the country.

As the Organization of the American States (OAS) and the Washington regime have questioned the legitimacy of the election results leading to the reelection of Evo Morales, several international observers have praised the legitimacy and transparency of the Bolivian electoral process.

Shortly after Evo Morales was re-elected with 46.86 percent of the votes against 36.73 percent to Carlos de Mesa, considered 95.03 percent of votes counted from within Bolivia and across the world, violence is spreading all over the country since Monday evening: people attacked and bleeding, public institutions burning…

The opposition promises much more violence: from Wednesday’s midnight, Mesa voters who supposedly advocate for democracy has prevented people from leaving their homes, and has blocked retail trade outlets from opening their doors under the threat of aggression and destruction, for an indefinite time all over Bolivia.

This reporter talked to both sides last Tuesday. An opposition leader in the afternoon at Santa Cruz de la Sierra’s central square called 24 de Septiembre, said:

“There will surely be dead people [in the curfew], but we are not going to cede, this is the only way [to ensure a runoff].”

At the back of the square, a group of young people carefully watching what as occurring, said the same thing: violence so to speak is heralded as the solution. What they require is that President Evo Morales accept a runoff or resign.

A few hours later in that Tuesday afternoon, talking to a Morales voter who owns a store in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, he answered when asked about how the current deadlock situation could end: “Only through a conflict,” he said. Not because that Morales’ supporters want it, but conflict really seems the only way in Bolivia now. Another dead-end South American nation?

As mentioned above, a lie and hate campaign by the right-wing had started in the country much before the electoral process. That campaign included many religious leaders, recalling the military coups in Latin American which relied on the dominant and domineering religion which manipulates people’s minds.

So what is happening now was predictable months ago, when this reporter, as a voice in the desert, announced it. From a year ago, Bolivia strongly smells violence. It smells a coup in Bolivia, for a long time.

What comes in Morales’s favor is that unlike Brazil he has not rogue “Sergio Moro” character in his way. Nor does Bolivia have a Public Ministry as Brazil has, capable of orchestrating a “legal” coup against the first indigenous president in  Bolivian history: the Movement towards Socialism (the official party) controls the Bolivian Justice system, unlike former Brazilian President Lula who provided Brazil’s Judiciary more independence. What does not favor Morales,  the current Bolivian government has not politicized the grassroots.

The unspoken truth is that there is an invisible ‘foreign hand” working in (and against) Bolivia’s weakened democracy. The near future is completely uncertain here. Edu Montesanti *reporting from Bolivia. .

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Featured image: Protestas en Bolivia por resultado electoral favorable a Evo Morales. (Source: Redes)

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Assange in Court

October 23rd, 2019 by Craig Murray

I was deeply shaken while witnessing yesterday’s events in Westminster Magistrates Court. Every decision was railroaded through over the scarcely heard arguments and objections of Assange’s legal team, by a magistrate who barely pretended to be listening.

Before I get on to the blatant lack of fair process, the first thing I must note was Julian’s condition. I was badly shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated ageing. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he has lost over 15 kg in weight.

But his physical appearance was not as shocking as his mental deterioration. When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both. I will come to the important content of his statement at the end of proceedings in due course, but his difficulty in making it was very evident; it was a real struggle for him to articulate the words and focus his train of thought.

Until yesterday I had always been quietly sceptical of those who claimed that Julian’s treatment amounted to torture – even of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture – and sceptical of those who suggested he may be subject to debilitating drug treatments. But having attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that yesterday changed my mind entirely and Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness.

I had been even more sceptical of those who claimed, as a senior member of his legal team did to me on Sunday night, that they were worried that Julian might not live to the end of the extradition process. I now find myself not only believing it, but haunted by the thought. Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of our times is being tortured to death by the state, before our eyes. To see my friend, the most articulate man, the fastest thinker, I have ever known, reduced to that shambling and incoherent wreck, was unbearable. Yet the agents of the state, particularly the callous magistrate Vanessa Baraitser, were not just prepared but eager to be a part of this bloodsport. She actually told him that if he were incapable of following proceedings, then his lawyers could explain what had happened to him later. The question of why a man who, by the very charges against him, was acknowledged to be highly intelligent and competent, had been reduced by the state to somebody incapable of following court proceedings, gave her not a millisecond of concern.

The charge against Julian is very specific; conspiring with Chelsea Manning to publish the Iraq War logs, the Afghanistan war logs and the State Department cables. The charges are nothing to do with Sweden, nothing to do with sex, and nothing to do with the 2016 US election; a simple clarification the mainstream media appears incapable of understanding.

The purpose of yesterday’s hearing was case management; to determine the timetable for the extradition proceedings. The key points at issue were that Julian’s defence was requesting more time to prepare their evidence; and arguing that political offences were specifically excluded from the extradition treaty. There should, they argued, therefore be a preliminary hearing to determine whether the extradition treaty applied at all.

The reasons given by Assange’s defence team for more time to prepare were both compelling and startling. They had very limited access to their client in jail and had not been permitted to hand him any documents about the case until one week ago. He had also only just been given limited computer access, and all his relevant records and materials had been seized from the Ecuadorean Embassy by the US Government; he had no access to his own materials for the purpose of preparing his defence.

Furthermore, the defence argued, they were in touch with the Spanish courts about a very important and relevant legal case in Madrid which would provide vital evidence. It showed that the CIA had been directly ordering spying on Julian in the Embassy through a Spanish company, UC Global, contracted to provide security there. Crucially this included spying on privileged conversations between Assange and his lawyers discussing his defence against these extradition proceedings, which had been in train in the USA since 2010. In any normal process, that fact would in itself be sufficient to have the extradition proceedings dismissed. Incidentally I learnt on Sunday that the Spanish material produced in court, which had been commissioned by the CIA, specifically includes high resolution video coverage of Julian and I discussing various matters.

The evidence to the Spanish court also included a CIA plot to kidnap Assange, which went to the US authorities’ attitude to lawfulness in his case and the treatment he might expect in the United States. Julian’s team explained that the Spanish legal process was happening now and the evidence from it would be extremely important, but it might not be finished and thus the evidence not fully validated and available in time for the current proposed timetable for the Assange extradition hearings.

For the prosecution, James Lewis QC stated that the government strongly opposed any delay being given for the defence to prepare, and strongly opposed any separate consideration of the question of whether the charge was a political offence excluded by the extradition treaty. Baraitser took her cue from Lewis and stated categorically that the date for the extradition hearing, 25 February, could not be changed. She was open to changes in dates for submission of evidence and responses before this, and called a ten minute recess for the prosecution and defence to agree these steps.

What happened next was very instructive. There were five representatives of the US government present (initially three, and two more arrived in the course of the hearing), seated at desks behind the lawyers in court. The prosecution lawyers immediately went into huddle with the US representatives, then went outside the courtroom with them, to decide how to respond on the dates.

After the recess the defence team stated they could not, in their professional opinion, adequately prepare if the hearing date were kept to February, but within Baraitser’s instruction to do so they nevertheless outlined a proposed timetable on delivery of evidence. In responding to this, Lewis’ junior counsel scurried to the back of the court to consult the Americans again while Lewis actually told the judge he was “taking instructions from those behind”. It is important to note that as he said this, it was not the UK Attorney-General’s office who were being consulted but the US Embassy. Lewis received his American instructions and agreed that the defence might have two months to prepare their evidence (they had said they needed an absolute minimum of three) but the February hearing date may not be moved. Baraitser gave a ruling agreeing everything Lewis had said.

At this stage it was unclear why we were sitting through this farce. The US government was dictating its instructions to Lewis, who was relaying those instructions to Baraitser, who was ruling them as her legal decision. The charade might as well have been cut and the US government simply sat on the bench to control the whole process. Nobody could sit there and believe they were in any part of a genuine legal process or that Baraitser was giving a moment’s consideration to the arguments of the defence. Her facial expressions on the few occasions she looked at the defence ranged from contempt through boredom to sarcasm. When she looked at Lewis she was attentive, open and warm.

The extradition is plainly being rushed through in accordance with a Washington dictated timetable. Apart from a desire to pre-empt the Spanish court providing evidence on CIA activity in sabotaging the defence, what makes the February date so important to the USA? I would welcome any thoughts.

Baraitser dismissed the defence’s request for a separate prior hearing to consider whether the extradition treaty applied at all, without bothering to give any reason why (possibly she had not properly memorised what Lewis had been instructing her to agree with). Yet this is Article 4 of the UK/US Extradition Treaty 2007 in full:

On the face of it, what Assange is accused of is the very definition of a political offence – if this is not, then what is? It is not covered by any of the exceptions from that listed. There is every reason to consider whether this charge is excluded by the extradition treaty, and to do so before the long and very costly process of considering all the evidence should the treaty apply. But Baraitser simply dismissed the argument out of hand.

Just in case anybody was left in any doubt as to what was happening here, Lewis then stood up and suggested that the defence should not be allowed to waste the court’s time with a lot of arguments. All arguments for the substantive hearing should be given in writing in advance and a “guillotine should be applied” (his exact words) to arguments and witnesses in court, perhaps of five hours for the defence. The defence had suggested they would need more than the scheduled five days to present their case. Lewis countered that the entire hearing should be over in two days. Baraitser said this was not procedurally the correct moment to agree this but she will consider it once she had received the evidence bundles.

(SPOILER: Baraitser is going to do as Lewis instructs and cut the substantive hearing short).

Baraitser then capped it all by saying the February hearing will be held, not at the comparatively open and accessible Westminster Magistrates Court where we were, but at Belmarsh Magistrates Court, the grim high security facility used for preliminary legal processing of terrorists, attached to the maximum security prison where Assange is being held. There are only six seats for the public in even the largest court at Belmarsh, and the object is plainly to evade public scrutiny and make sure that Baraitser is not exposed in public again to a genuine account of her proceedings, like this one you are reading. I will probably be unable to get in to the substantive hearing at Belmarsh.

Plainly the authorities were disconcerted by the hundreds of good people who had turned up to support Julian. They hope that far fewer will get to the much less accessible Belmarsh. I am fairly certain (and recall I had a long career as a diplomat) that the two extra American government officials who arrived halfway through proceedings were armed security personnel, brought in because of alarm at the number of protestors around a hearing in which were present senior US officials. The move to Belmarsh may be an American initiative.

Assange’s defence team objected strenuously to the move to Belmarsh, in particular on the grounds that there are no conference rooms available there to consult their client and they have very inadequate access to him in the jail. Baraitser dismissed their objection offhand and with a very definite smirk.

Finally, Baraitser turned to Julian and ordered him to stand, and asked him if he had understood the proceedings. He replied in the negative, said that he could not think, and gave every appearance of disorientation. Then he seemed to find an inner strength, drew himself up a little, and said:

I do not understand how this process is equitable. This superpower had 10 years to prepare for this case and I can’t even access my writings. It is very difficult, where I am, to do anything. These people have unlimited resources.

The effort then seemed to become too much, his voice dropped and he became increasingly confused and incoherent. He spoke of whistleblowers and publishers being labeled enemies of the people, then spoke about his children’s DNA being stolen and of being spied on in his meetings with his psychologist. I am not suggesting at all that Julian was wrong about these points, but he could not properly frame nor articulate them. He was plainly not himself, very ill and it was just horribly painful to watch. Baraitser showed neither sympathy nor the least concern. She tartly observed that if he could not understand what had happened, his lawyers could explain it to him, and she swept out of court.

The whole experience was profoundly upsetting. It was very plain that there was no genuine process of legal consideration happening here. What we had was a naked demonstration of the power of the state, and a naked dictation of proceedings by the Americans. Julian was in a box behind bulletproof glass, and I and the thirty odd other members of the public who had squeezed in were in a different box behind more bulletproof glass. I do not know if he could see me or his other friends in the court, or if he was capable of recognising anybody. He gave no indication that he did.

In Belmarsh he is kept in complete isolation for 23 hours a day. He is permitted 45 minutes exercise. If he has to be moved, they clear the corridors before he walks down them and they lock all cell doors to ensure he has no contact with any other prisoner outside the short and strictly supervised exercise period. There is no possible justification for this inhuman regime, used on major terrorists, being imposed on a publisher who is a remand prisoner.

I have been both cataloguing and protesting for years the increasingly authoritarian powers of the UK state, but that the most gross abuse could be so open and undisguised is still a shock. The campaign of demonisation and dehumanisation against Julian, based on government and media lie after government and media lie, has led to a situation where he can be slowly killed in public sight, and arraigned on a charge of publishing the truth about government wrongdoing, while receiving no assistance from “liberal” society.

Unless Julian is released shortly he will be destroyed. If the state can do this, then who is next?

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The US is planning to keep control of oil fields on the eastern bank of the Euphrates despite the ongoing troops withdrawal. On October 21, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters that Washington wants to be sure that ensure oil fields do not fall into the hands of ISIS or other militants.

According to media reports, the number of US troops remaining in the Omar oil fields area will be 200. 400 more US-linked private military contractors are also expected to remain. This number, backed up by the US Air Force, will be enough to remain in the area. However, it remains unclear how Washington is planning to exploit the seized oilfields when forces of the ‘bloody Assad regime’ deploy all around the US garrison. Most likely, the oil fields will become another bargaining chip in Washington’s Syrian strategy.

Northeastern Syria remains the hottest part of the country despite the temporary ceasefire in the region. According to the Turkish Defense Ministry, a total of 765 ‘terrorists’ have been neutralized since the start of Operation Peace Spring.

Watch the video here.

Speaking at TRT World Forum, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey has “never sat at a table with the terror groups” during the government’s 17-year term, and “will never do so.” Additionally Erdogan slammed the West, including EU and NATO states, for standing by ‘terrorists’ against Turkey during its operation in northern Syria. Erdogan further recalled his upcoming visit to Russia to discuss the processes ongoing in northeastern Syria.

During the October 17 press briefing, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mariya Zakharova, said that Russia “has always recognized Turkey’s legitimate interests in the security of its borders” and stands “for practical cooperation between Damascus and Ankara on the basis of the 1998 Adana Agreement.”

Remarks by the Russian side became another demonstration of the ongoing cooperation of Turkey, the US and the Syrian-Russian bloc over the situation in northeastern Syria. In this situation versions that describe the current situation in northeastern Syria as a pre-agreed scenario that plays into the hand of Damascus, Moscow, Washington and Ankara look even more reliable.

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Hashtag Politics: “Brand Trudeau” Wins a Second Term

October 23rd, 2019 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

“Brand Trudeau is: ‘Welcome to the new politics, just like the old politics.’” – Shachi Kurl, Angus Reid Institute, The Guardian, Aug 22, 2019

Few politicians come across more as products of hashtag committee management than Justin Trudeau.  His image has been doctored, massaged and spruced, and even then, the Instagram-Twitter committee did not quite see those corrupt influences that are bound to tarnish someone who believes in endless, indestructible parliamentary majorities.  The image can do much, but not that much.

After being elected in October, 2015, Trudeaumania became something of a syndrome, helped along by a persistent dedication to being in the permanent social media cycle.  The photo-op became staple, as is a certain shallowness that lends itself to it.  In picking Canada’s first gender-balanced federal cabinet, he was mindful of the optical moment.  Change was coming, and his revolution would be tweeted.   

In a fast spinning, whirling age of disseminated images, lacking substance helps and acts as a powerful propulsion.  The Internet, observed Eric Andrew-Gee in 2016, “has given still photos a pride of place in our media culture that they haven’t enjoyed since the rise of television.  Mr Trudeau has used that power, and that technology, to the hilt.  He is the first prime minister of the Instagram age.”

In July 2016, it was noted that Trudeau “has had about one official photo-op for every weekday he has been in the business of governing.”  Marie-Danielle Smith of the National Post considered him “the most visible Canadian leader since his father, Pierre” having “participated in at least 168 public events since swearing in his cabinet last November.” 

Trudeau the Brand has been in business for some time.  It came to the fore in the now famed charity boxing match in March 2012 against Patrick “Brass Knuckles” Brazeau, second-degree black belt in karate and former navy reservist.  The Liberal MP for Papineau seemingly did not stand a chance.  Nor did the Liberal Party, having been wiped by the Conservatives.  Trudeau, after absorbing the initial barrage of punches, won.

In a film on the encounter by Eric Ruel and Guylaine Maroist, Trudeau suggested that “the power of symbols in today’s world” should never been underestimated.  The Liberals were weak in parliament.  “We’ve never had so few MPs.  The Conservatives have all the money and the support.  So… wouldn’t it be fun to see Justin Trudeau win?  A triumph over the all-powerful Conservatives?” 

In 2017, Trudeau would tell Rolling Stone that the choice of opponent in the boxing bout was entirely conscious, giving the impression that the whole affair, from start to finish, had been an exercise of eager manipulation.  “I wanted someone who would be a good foil, and we stumbled across the scrappy, tough-guy senator from an Indigenous community… I saw it as the right kind of narrative, the right story to tell.” Very British New Labour; very Old Third Way. 

The Canadian elections have returned Trudeau to Ottawa, but with a reduced vote.  The sheen has come off, and the coat seems somewhat tattered.  Trudeau was found by Canada’s ethics watchdog to have violated conflict of interest laws in pressuring his attorney general to avoid a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin for bribes made to Libyan officials between 2001 and 2011.  As the ethics commissioner, Mario Dion, found, Trudeau “contravened section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act”, being the only public official “able to exert influence over the attorney-general in her decision whether to intervene in a matter relating to a criminal prosecution”.  

Then came the other side of branding and e-marketing political candidates.  What goes around in image terms will come around.  If you pontificate about the evils of toxic masculinity, be wary of what skeletal remains the historical cupboard is stocked with.  And so it transpired that a younger Trudeau was prone to don “blackface” and “brownface” pose, less in terms of toxicity than being intoxicated by moment and situation.  (Those few mishaps included singing Harry Belafonte’s Day-O at a high school revue, and sporting an Afro wig, black face and body paint in the company of fellow white water rafters.)  A public apology followed: “It was something that I didn’t think was racist at the time, but now I recognise it was something racist to do, and I am deeply sorry.”

As it wore on, the nodding suggestion of Trudeau’s time in office was a return to what had been dubbed in Canadian political circles the Laurentian Consensus, the elite self-absorbed view of those in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and cities along the St. Lawrence River.  As John Ibbitson of The Globe and Mail described it in 2011, “On all the great issues of the day, this Laurentian elite debated among themselves, reached a consensus and implemented that consensus.  In short, they governed the country.” 

Nor could Trudeau claim to be vastly different from his 2015 conservative opponent, Stephen Harper, certainly on the subjects of Canada-US ties, free trade and the Keystone XL pipeline.  Trudeau might have excited millennials on the subject of legalising cannabis, or opening doors to Syrian refugees, but he caused suitable irritation, even fury, over breaking a campaign promise to end “first-past-the-post” federal voting.  The Afghan Canadian Liberal MP, Maryam Monsef, was saddled with the task of gradually strangling electoral reform in the crib. 

Trudeau also revealed, in his government’s purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline for some $3.4 billion from Kinder Morgan, that he was more than willing to back fossil-fuel infrastructure while proclaiming green credentials.  As Martin Lukacs noted with devastating precision, despite Trudeau signing the Paris Climate Accords in 2016, “the gap between Canada’s official carbon reduction targets and its spiralling emissions has grown wider.” 

The record, then, is not only patchy, but abysmal for this particular cardboard progressive.  Oil companies have been guaranteed continuing subsidies, organised labour has been confronted with attempts to outlaw strike action, notably in the postal sector, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been assured arms sales even as Trudeau celebrates Womankind. 

Fighting an Instagram prime minister might have required some marrow, but the Conservatives’ Andrew Scheer was not going to provide it.  He did win more votes than the Liberals and dominated in Alberta and Saskatchewan, but this merely served to eliminate Trudeau’s majority and highlight a chronic sense of Western alienation.  Nor did Jagmeet Singh’s NDP, whose caucus was reduced by half, roar with any success. The Bloc Québécois buzzed, the Greens were a preserving stutter and the People’s Party barely registered. 

Scheer decided to play the card of ordinariness, and stayed, for the most part, ordinary.  When supporters chanted the old Donald Trump expression of locking up the opponent – in this case, Trudeau – he doused the flames, favouring the chant of “Vote him out.”  A judicial inquiry would be preferable.  The politics of blandness.   

Canadian political strategists were even noting a certain similarity between Scheer’s views and those of the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, whose tactics he is said to have embraced.  But Canadians were left with the spectre of considerable vacuity.  As Jonathan Kay argued this month in Foreign Policy, the big issues had been settled if not avoided altogether, leaving the ground on hashtag wars to be fought with mind numbing emptiness.

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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]

Russia and Clinton’s Election Plan B

October 23rd, 2019 by Kurt Nimmo

America is an insular nation, exceptional only in its willful ignorance of the rest of the world. Many Americans, undoubtedly a majority, know very little about what is really going on in the world. 

Millions of Americans are unable to see Hillary Clinton for what she is—a “pay-to-play” corrupt psychopath and warmonger. It is entirely fair to say she is responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people in Libya and Syria. But, like most Americans, if you get your information from establishment sources, you’re not going to know about this. Only Benghazi briefly scraped away the patina and whitewash to provide a glimpse of the real Hillary Clinton, a glimpse long ago faded in the rearview mirror of controlled corporate media politics.  

Social media meme-izes a conspiracy theory so weak, so transparently bogus and manufactured it is sincerely shocking anybody beyond a six-year-old believes it. 

Meanwhile, if the idea Tulsi Gabbard is some kind of Russian subversion agent is too much for you to wrap your head around, there is a more believable lie to destroy the only antiwar candidate: insist she’s merely a “useful idiot” for Putin and the perfidious Russians. Evidence? She was favorably covered by Russian media.

Democrat zombies, mouthing fantasy talking points, actually believe “Tulski” Gabbard and the other mostly forgettable candidates are in the race simply to prevent “Wonder Woman”—I prefer the Iron Maiden of Creative Destruction—from grabbing her due. Anything less than ushering Hillary to the executive throne is “Putin’s Plan” to destroy democracy. All third party candidates are traitors. Jill Stein works directly with the Russians. 

How dizzy are Democrats? Check out the next tweet. 

Both ISIS and al-Qaeda were manufactured by the national security state as an excuse to stretch out the war on terror for long as possible—gifting the military industrial complex with never-ending death merchandise contracts—while putting finishing touches on the surveillance and police state at home. The latter will make sure another Trump doesn’t rock the boat. 

Meanwhile, we should not underestimate how the Trump Derangement Syndrome is capable of creating sectarian violence, or at least fairy-tale level frenzied delusions that may result in real-world—or world-ending—violence. 

For the indoctrinated, it’s not Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad blackmailing representatives of the corporate state, it’s Putin. 

Clinton’s Plan B to finally capture the throne—where she can do more damage than a Tiberius or Domitian to her rivals and enemies—relies on the outrageous Russian Lie. It is, of course, an entirely illogical and dangerous lie, but it’s all Hillary and the war party Democrats have to wage battle in the upcoming race (minus impeachment) of the regrettable Trump. 

Clinton’s attacks on rivals both inside and outside of the one-party state will intensify prior to her reentry into presidential politics. Like Trump, Clinton understands the power of invective—and the Big Lie as perfected by Hitler—and this will be her weapon of choice. Lies and conspiracy theories about Russia and Ukraine will propel her into summer of next and undermine what is already a rickety ship taking on water: the new “left” side of the one party state touting identity authoritarianism at home and a continuation of neocon wars and occupations in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. 

The other Democrat candidates—with the exclusion of Tulsi Gabbard—will jump at the chance to be Hillary’s running mate in the upcoming battle to get rid of Trump and put down the deplorables. Not Biden. He’s been there, done that. 

Of course, I could be totally wrong on all of this. Trump may defeat the latest national security state coup (FBI, CIA) against a sitting president, following Kennedy and Nixon. He might follow through on his half-ass promise to drain the swamp and close down US military bases around the world and bring the troops home. 

Then again, he might not. 

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

Featured image is from the author

Western Insanity and 5G Electromagnetic Radiation

October 23rd, 2019 by Claire Edwards

  1. Western insanity: the materialist-reductionist paradigm

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction E.F. Schumacher

The Western world is insane. It suffers from a persistent delusion called the materialist-reductionist paradigm. We learned this from the Greek philosophers who preferred to look at objects in isolation: nature, for example, was defined as the universe minus human beings and their culture.[i] They divided the world into parts assumed to be static and unchanging, and categorized the parts according to their attributes (solidity, whiteness, etc.). We are socialized as children to learn the names and categories of things and psychologists have confirmed that Westerners tend to focus on discrete objects (a left-brain emphasis), while Easterners tend to focus on relationships (a right-brain emphasis).[ii]

The intellectual approach to perception was alien to Chinese philosophers, who perceived the world as a mass of substances rather than a collection of discrete objects.[iii] Their universe was a continuous medium or matrix within which interactions of things took place, not by the clash of atoms, but by radiating influences.[iv] Quantum physics tends to confirm this view of the universe, suggesting, for example, that particles can behave like waves and can remain connected even when separated over large distances.[v]

Taoism exemplifies the holistic view: objects and events are embedded in a meaningful whole in which yin contains yang and yang contains yin in an ongoing cycle of change, giving rise to a “both/and” orientation.[vi] By contrast, the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction favoured in the West gives rise to an “either/or” orientation.[vii] Quantum physics and fuzzy or multivalent logic challenge Aristotelian binary logic and imply that the view of the universe expounded by Eastern mystics may be a more accurate representation of reality.[viii]

The difference is illustrated by contrasting the ideas of traditional Chinese medicine with those of Western medicine. The latter focuses on the parts of the body and treats problems in isolation, whereas traditional Chinese medicine considers the body to be influenced by its context (lifestyle, current activities, food intake, environment and seasons) and all its parts to be interrelated. While Westerners readily see themselves as a machine, Japanese see themselves as deriving from nature, analogous to a plant.[ix]

Notions of an organic, living and spiritual universe were largely eradicated in the 17th century by Newton’s conception of a mechanistic universe. Europeans welcomed the Scientific Revolution as evidence of progress, a concept that arises from the Christian notion of rectilinear time. In Christianity, time appears to run in a straight line from the Creation, by way of the Fall of Man and the Revelation, to the Last Judgment.[x] Since time was seen as a line moving forward towards salvation, it entailed a belief in progress being made over the course of time.

Spirituality in the West was finally extinguished by René Descartes, who pronounced that mind and body are separate, which was readily accepted by Christians already primed with dualistic notions of the Bible such as heaven and hell, good and evil, God and Satan. Descartes’ famous dictum of “I think, therefore I am” completed the schism in the West between the head and the heart and made the individual ascendant. The Bible having already granted him dominion over the animals, Western man could now believe that he was separate from his environment. He saw himself as contributing to human progress and acting both rationally and morally in exploiting his environment for his own individual profit, heedless of the consequences for others who shared it. He was as cut off from his environment as he was from the emotions that informed his thoughts. As a result, interest in spirituality was largely extinguished for several centuries in the West, while rationality reigned supreme, such that labelling an idea “Illogical” was to condemn it out of hand. The way of thinking about the world that developed between 1500 and 1700 has dominated Western culture for the past 300 years.[xi]

Physicist Wallace Thornhill is challenging the left-brain view. He believes that we don’t understand the world by putting it together bit by bit, suggesting that the method used at the Large Hadron Collider is like smashing countless jumbo jets into mountains and picking over the debris to see how they fly. The machine metaphor reduces things to isolated bits and loses sight of the connected whole: stars and galaxies are isolated objects; we are isolated individuals. Thornhill compares the modern academy to the universities of the 16th and 17th centuries that conformed to the Church and to Aristotle’s text. He accuses modern science of ignoring or suppressing counter-arguments and sanitizing the history of science to give the impression of progress.[xii]

The materialist-reductionist paradigm has run its course. The world is undergoing a new period of enlightenment that is changing our understanding of everything and vindicating what Chinese mysticism has taught for thousands of years. Everything isconnected and we are not isolated from nature but are a part of, and interact with it. Modern scientific gatekeepers are like King Canute, struggling to turn back the tide, which has definitively turned against their scientific orthodoxy to threaten their dominance, prestige and power.

It is a dangerous time to be alive, for those who wield power remain wedded to the fear-generating paranoia of the materialist-reductionist paradigm: everything is material, scarce, perishable and limited. Life is inevitably nasty, brutal and short, and only the fittest, i.e. the most ruthless, survive. Neoliberal economics is the apotheosis of this thinking. Heavily influenced by Plato, the University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss taught his students to go out and rule the world using any means necessary, chiefly deception.[xiii] They promptly did so, authoring the Project for the New American Century and orchestrating the post-9/11 collapse of the rule of law. Like Nietzsche, Strauss believed that the history of Western civilization had led to the triumph of the inferior, the rabble. Strauss’s sick mind is largely responsible for the banalization of evil over the last 18 years.[xiv]

Physicist David Bohm believed that our almost universal tendency to fragment the world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible for many of our problems. He argued passionately that our current way of fragmenting the world into parts not only doesn’t work, but may even lead to our extinction.[xv] How prescient he was! Just a few decades later here we are, standing at the brink of our own destruction by 5G technologies.

  1. Is Western insanity exacerbated by electromagnetic radiation? 

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence  Nikola Tesla

Modern science blindly continues to prop up an increasingly indefensible Newtonian model of a material universe and demeans the efforts of open-minded scientists who are providing ever more data to support Nikola Tesla’s assertion that the universe can be understood only in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

While materialists continue to assert that consciousness is a function of the brain, a consensus is building that the ancient worldviewof consciousness beingactually the source rather than an epiphenomenon of matter was correct. “The ‘hard problem’ of consciousness is the result of a category mistake. We have been trying to reduce consciousness to physical properties when it is consciousness that is the more comprehensive category, and it is only in terms of consciousness that physical properties themselves can be understood.”[xvi] Bruce Lipton compares the brain to a television set: whether or not the set is functional and can pick it up, the signal is always there.[xvii] For Anthony Peake, that signal is the real reality around us – what he calls the “Bohmian IMAX” – and the brain is an attenuator that reduces and processes this fizzing and buzzing mass of electromagnetic energy to enable us to make sense of it. People who believe that what they perceive through their senses is exactly what is happening “out there” he calls “literalists”. Certain individuals have a malfunctioning attenuator that causes them to perceive the Bohmian IMAX in all its glory, resulting in a diagnosis of schizophrenia, severe autism or Asperger’s syndrome.[xviii]

We are all taught that everything is made of atoms and molecules, which we know are not solid. We should by now all understand that when we think we touch something, we are simply meeting the electromagnetic field created by electron repulsion. However, because we are nevertheless browbeaten into believing that everything is matter, we live in an inverted world. It is not “material objects” that produce electromagnetic fields, but electromagnetic fields that organize matter, as proposed by Harold Saxton Burr in 1973 (in other words, matter is an epiphenomenon of energy). Both cymatics and Masaru Emoto’s experiments with water crystals appear to confirm that this is the case. These experiments chime with biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesis of morphic fields, which connect together members of the group even when they are many miles apart. The HeartMath Institute has shown experimentally that aspects of the DNA molecule can be altered through intentionality. When individuals are in a heart-focused, loving state and in a more coherent mode of physiological functioning, they have a greater ability to alter the conformation of DNA.[xix]

Resolving the question of whether it is a material or an energy universe is not an interesting philosophical dilemma but involves our very survival as a species. For those who are trapped in the materialist paradigm fail to see the existential threat of 5G technologies.

The different worldviews of West and East may be a result of emphasis on one or other of the hemispheres of the brain. The world of the left hemisphere yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualized, explicit, general in nature, but ultimately lifeless. The right hemisphere, by contrast, yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world, but in the nature of things never fully graspable, never perfectly known.[xx] In other words, the right brain has a marked disposition for the living rather than the mechanical. The knowledge that is mediated by the left hemisphere is, however, within a closed system. It has the advantage of perfection, but the perfection is bought ultimately at the price of emptiness. This is typical of the scientific approach, says Wallace Thornhill: you isolate the small part of something and then try to analyse that.[xxi]

Since our perception of reality is mediated by the brain and we in the West are already having difficulties in terms of left-right hemisphere balance, it might seem unwise to do anything that might exacerbate these, such as permanently exposing the brain – including the brains of foetuses and children – to high levels of pulsed and modulated electromagnetic radiation. Yuri Grigoriev, the doyen of electromagnetic research in Russia, has observed that this is the first time in the history of humanity that people’s brains are being openly exposed to microwaves.[xxii] Do we have any evidence of effects on the brain after 25 years of cell phone use and ubiquitous wireless technology? The answer is, yes, very definitely, we do. The Oscillatorium sets out all these EMF effects on the brain in full, but here are some highlights from recent reports:

Could these devastating findings have anything to do with cell phone manufacturers irradiating adults, children and foetuses way over even the already astronomically high permitted limits? French NGO Alert Phonegate has established that for years “smart” phones have been irradiating users at levels far above the limits and the Chicago Tribune has established that the same has been happening in the US. Australian barrister Ray Broomhall has revealed that children are being exposed to magnetic fields from cell phones that breach WHO’s recommended 0.3μT safety limit by a factor of 20,000(slide show). Meanwhile, a new European directive (2014/53/EU) relaxes controls by allowing manufacturers to self-certify their products.

Writer and brain-tumour-survivor Olga Sheean, who is acutely affected by electromagnetic radiation, describes feeling “ill, confused, lethargic and many other things that you can’t even articulate because this radiation scrambles the brain and dulls the senses—and I have experienced this when exposed to strong microwaves in WiFi zones”.[xxxiii]

Professor Neil Cherry’s research persuaded him that electromagnetic fields and radiation damage DNA and enhance cell death rates and that they are therefore a ubiquitous universal genotoxic carcinogen that enhances the rates of cancer, cardiac, reproductive and neurological disease and mortality in human populations. Therefore there is no safe threshold level. The only safe exposure level is zero, a position confirmed by dose-response trends in epidemiological studies.

  1. Proof of insanity: rolling out 5G is the action of disturbed minds

The global electric circuit

The International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space explains the global electric circuit on which we depend for our well-being:

The Earth, the ionosphere and the lower atmosphere form the global electric circuit[xxxiv]in which we live. It is well established that biological rhythms—of humans,[xxxv],[xxxvi] birds,[xxxvii] hamsters,[xxxviii] and spiders[xxxix],[xl]—are controlled by the Earth’s natural electromagnetic environment and that the well-being of all organisms depends on the stability of this environment, including the electrical properties of the atmosphere.[xli],[xlii],[xliii],[xliv] Cherry, in a groundbreaking paper,[xlv] explained the importance of the Schumann resonances[xlvi] and why ionospheric disturbances can alter blood pressure and melatonin and cause “cancer, reproductive, cardiac and neurological disease and death”.

These elements of our electromagnetic environment have already been altered by radiation from power lines. Power line harmonic radiation[xlvii] reaches the Earth’s ionosphere and magnetosphere, where it is amplified by wave-particle interactions.[xlviii],[xlix] In 1985, Dr. Robert O. Becker warned that power line harmonic radiation had already changed the structure of the magnetosphere, and that the continued expansion of this effect “threatens the viability of all life on Earth”.[l] The placement of tens of thousands of satellites directly in both the ionosphere and magnetosphere, emitting modulated signals at millions of watts and millions of frequencies, is likely to alter our electromagnetic environment beyond our ability to adapt.[li]

Informal monitoring has already provided evidence indicating serious effects on humans and animals from the approximately 100 satellites that have provided 2G and 3G phone service from low orbit since 1998. Such effects cannot be understood only from consideration of the low levels of radiation on the ground. Knowledge from other relevant scientific disciplines must be taken into account, including the fields of atmospheric physics and acupuncture.[lii],[liii],[liv],[lv] Adding 20,000 5G satellites will further pollute the global electric circuit[lvi],[lvii] and could alter the Schumann resonances,[lviii] with which all life on Earth has evolved. The effects will be universal and may be profoundly damaging.

Are decision-makers fit to make decisions permitting 5G on Earth and in space?

Having established that the left-brain imbalance in the West is undoubtedly greatly exacerbated by massive exposure to electromagnetic radiation, it is pertinent to ask if under these circumstances our decision-makers possess the mental capacity to permit the rollout of 5G, including in space, especially given that they are aware that not a single test of health or safety has been carried out prior to this planned blanket coverage of the Earth with 5G.

It is intended to “blanket” the Earth with artificial electromagnetic radiation ostensibly for the purpose of providing Internet access to all. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has already given permission for 23,000 5G satellites to be put into space, with SpaceX now having submitted paperwork for 30,000 more. These will operate in low-Earth orbit (1,200 miles (2,000 kms)) and very low Earth orbit (between 208 and 215 miles (335 to 346 kms)). In addition to these 53,000 satellites, it is planned to place High Altitude Pseudo Satellites (HAPS; solar-powered giant wings, airships or balloons)in the stratosphere, and to network civil aviation to provide Internet access on the ground. According to the UN’s Online Index of Objects Launched into Outer Space, there are currently 5,294 satellites in Earth orbit (as of 21 October 2019). The proposed satellites would increase that number by a factor of 10.

SpaceX has also requested permission to operate 1 million Earth stations. These will transmit in the range of 14.0-14.5 GHz (part of the ‘Ku band’) and receive in the range of 10.7-12.7 GHz (part of the ‘X band’). For comparison, current LTE networks operate at 600MHz to 2.5GHz.

Existing threats in space: space debris and weaponization

A major long-term concern among all space-faring nations and the UN is orbital congestion, which currently includes more than 500,000 pieces of debris and is projected to reach over 2 billion by 2025.[lix] The Kessler syndrome posits a cascade of space debris collisions that could make the Earth orbits unusable for many generations.[lx] Some satellites are nuclear-powered, and there have been accidents that have allowed nuclear material to reach Earth (both land and sea) and to load radionuclides in the upper atmosphere, which can in time spiral down to sea-level. With radioistopes having a half-life of thousands of years, it is possible that eventual harm was caused to the public and environment.[lxi]

Project West Ford in 1961 involved placing in orbit 480 million copper dipole antennas (needles) in orbit to facilitate global radio communication during the Cold War. These needles continue to contribute to the space debris problem. In November 2018, the FCC initiated a comprehensive review of its orbital-debris mitigation rules – after granting permission for several thousand satellites.  We are told that more technology to combat technology is being tested, such as ion beams or harpoon nets to capture space debris.

In March this year, India destroyed its own satellite and created debris that was considered a threat to the International space station.

The second major issue of long-term concern is the weaponization of space. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 enshrined the principle of outer space being preserved as a common heritage of humankind, forbids the stationing of weapons in outer space (art. IV) and binds States parties to conducting all their activities in outer space with due regard for the interests of all other States.[lxii] It also bans the use of nuclear weapons, but was not signed by the US or North Korea. It has long been recognized that the weaponization of outer space for any purpose—whether offensive or defensive, against any space/celestial body or against an Earth-bound target—would effectively turn space objects into potential targets and turn outer space into a potential conflict zone.”[lxiii] Conflict in space is particularly dangerous because the cause of anomalies would be unclear.

Despite this, in February this year, President Trump determined to create a military space force. NATO intends to declare space a “war-fighting domain” this December. France has just announced its own space command to protect French satellites, which will be equipped with machine guns and laser weapons. Sabotage and warfare would target the satellites of other countries.[lxiv] One attack technique would involve deliberately directing broadband radio transmissions to disrupt the communications of the target satellite.

Has the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) system morphed into 5G?

The capabilities of the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) system bear a remarkable resemblance to those of 5G. HAARP is an ionospheric heater that uses banks of antennas arranged in phased arrays with a beam-forming ability. Like 5G, HAARP can be used as a communications system; it has mental-disruption possibilities; it can seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations; it can do voice to skull; it can heat the skin; it can change people’s emotional state, and perhaps even change and manipulate thought and behaviour; and it can create a lethargic or highly energized response as described in the interview below with Dr. Nick Begich, who has written several books on HAARP.[lxv]

Begich is the eldest son of the late United States Congressman from Alaska, Nick Begich Sr. and political activist Pegge Begich. He was twice elected President of both the Alaska Federation of Teachers and the Anchorage Council of Education. He is the author of Angels don’t play this HAARP: Advances in Tesla technology and other books.

A European Union report published on 14 January 1999 refers to the Alaska-based High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) system as a weapon involving environmental manipulation and asked for information from the US on its risk to public health. HAARP was described as a research project using a ground-based apparatus, an array of antennae each powered by its own transmitter, to heat up portions of the ionosphere with powerful radio beams. The energy generated heats up parts of, and makes holes in, the ionosphere, which is what protects us from incoming cosmic radiation. It had links with 50 years of intensive space research for military purposes, including the Star Wars project, to control the upper atmosphere and communications. The report described HAARP as a serious threat to the environment, with an incalculable impact on human life. It described HAARP as being in breach of Convention on the prohibition of military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques, the Antarctic Treaty, the Outer Space Treaty, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.[lxvi] (Documentary on HAARP with Dr. Nick Begich.Documentary on HAARP from the History Channel.)

Highlights of interview with Dr. Nick Begich about HAARP, 10 June 2016

Interviewer: [Zbigniew] Brzezinski: his book which he wrote in the 1970s for Columbia University when he was a professor there at Columbia, with regard to the research on the brain and human behaviour. And I’ll just begin with that. “Political strategists are tempted to exploit research on the brain and human behaviour. Geophysicist Gordon McDonald, specialist in problems of warfare, says accurately timed artificially excited electronic strokes could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the Earth. in this way one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations in selected regions over an extended period. No matter how deeply disturbing the thought of using the environment to manipulate behaviour for national advantages to some, the technology permitting such use will very probably develop within the next few decades.

06:55

Begich: Brzezinski was really working for the big guys on the planet. His book called Between Two Ageswritten in the early 1970s, really gets into — if you read it and if you can find it. It really reads as a forecast of what would happen technologically and economically to every major country in the world and that forecast actually became the reality. What he was talking about was the idea of manipulating human behaviour for government advantage, In other words, changing people’s emotional state, maybe even changing and manipulating thought. And so HAARP is where kind of some of this started coming out. When we initially published back in the mid 90s, since that time we’ve done a lot of work on the mind effects side of this technology. And I can say is this: HAARP is just one system that could deliver on an altering emotional states.

07:59

And it gets right back to what J F Gordon MacDonald was saying, and that was the quote by Brzezinski, that if we can ever figure out how to electronically stroke the ionosphere in just the right way — and I’m paraphrasing a bit — we could return a signal to the Earth that would manipulate the behaviour of the people within the reach of that signal. That is exactly what HAARP does. HAARP is a high-frequency transmitter that, if you pulse it or send the energy up in such a way as — you could think about that high-energy signal as a hammer. And then you’re literally slamming that hammer down. With each hammer slam, you get a pulse and the ionosphere then begins to mirror that pulse. And the consequence is an ELF – an extremely low frequency signal then comes back to the Earth. And this is used for a number of different military applications, but it also just so happens to cross the threshold for predominant brain activity between 1 and 20 Hertz or pulses per second for simplicity. So that kind of signal, according to J F Gordon McDonald and later research done at Laurentian University by Persinger, that if you could ever electronically stroke the ionosphere in just the right way, which is what HAARP can do now, you can create an emotional change in a vast segment of the population, creating a lethargic sort of response or a highly energized, riotous kind of response. And it would affect a large number, maybe as many as 70 per cent of the population within the region where that signal was being generated.

11.35

Begich: it doesn’t matter whether it’s radio, TV, the Internet, the power grid itself can be modulated in such a way to affect people in this way. In fact, there’s an excellent article published by the US Army War College called The Mind Has No Firewall, which gets into all of the various forms of delivery on these kinds of technologies and that was actually taken originally from a Russian military journal discussing the very same technologies. And the fact is HAARP is just one delivery system, but any electromagnetic system, including just a radio broadcast, where you’re listening to your normal broadcast, you can piggyback a signal on that. You won’t even detect on that can influence behaviour. In fact, during the first Gulf War back during Bush senior’s time in the White House, there were Scottish press reports after the war trying to explain the mass surrenderings of Iraqis, where a few people were able to get hundreds to surrender and they couldn’t figure it out. And the Iraqis were just gripped with fear and panic. And what we found out was the US military, through a project called Project Solo, actually embedded signals on the broadcasts taking in the normal Moslem music and prayers that our adversaries were listening to, and creating that environment where they actually felt the emotions of fear and panic. So when asked to surrender, the inclination was to do so. And that’s the kind of thing that’s intended with theselarge systems is to sort of push the crowd or push the herd in a certain way and then everyone else kind of falls in line.

13:23

Interviewer: It’s so evil. It’s just so evil. So you mentioned, besides HAARP, that there were other technologies that you just talked about — radio and various other things that could be piggybacked. But there are other large-scale technologies that we don’t know about like HAARP that are doing the same thing. Or were you just referring to what you just explained — well – the ones in plain view?

Begich: I mean from cell towers and cell systems to landline phone systems, to standard AM/FM radio broadcasts, to Internet traffic, and just being on the Internet. All of these things can be utilized in that way you can also utilize visual effects and this is done often through television, where you don’t really have it embedded so much in the sound carrier, but you do in the light, and by flickering the light at a specific flicker rate, you can create a frequency following response that the brain will mirror and then fall into the state. And that one gets into some really needy material when you think about how people are when they come home from work at the end of the day. They turn on the news or watch TV, and their spouse is yelling “Come on, it’s dinnertime, it’s dinnertime.” And they’re totally oblivious — they don’t hear it because they’re actually in a light trance-like state while watching the programme. That is actually programming you — it’s the same state you would be in, in sort of a light hypnotic trance where information is being fed in and not very well discriminated as it feeds into the subconscious. And this is where the risk comes in and most advertisers and most people who study psychology understand frequency following responses and when applied to mass media can make for very effective propaganda or very effective advertising.

50:00

Interviewer: Why would the barium be in the patent, the chemtails? Are these two phenomena [HAARP & chemtrails] deeply enmeshed and connected or not? And it sounds like you’re saying maybe they’re not.

Begich: Well, barium is used. What they do is, they launch it up into where the magnetic field lines of the Earth are expected to be. And the magnetic field lines — if you can imagine them — if you remember in high school they had the old bar magnets that show you how the magnetic field lines kind of surround it. You throw some little metal filings you can see those lines of magnetic force. Well, the Earth has very defined magnetic field lines that flow from the South Pole to the North Pole and intersect at the poles. And so by injecting barium into the upper atmosphere and into the lower ionosphere where these magnetic field lines are, they literally light up. And then when you turn on HAARP, one of the things that you try and do is accelerate electrons, create an energetic effect within the magnetic field lines that, if you could see it, it would look like kind of a corkscrewing motion surrounding those magnetic field lines. And the bariumcreates what’s called “air glow” so that when you throw the HAARP system on top of the magnetic field lines and the barium is present, you can actually see if you’re creating those accelerated electrons that are surrounding the magnetic field lines. So it gives them a way to visually see what otherwise theoretically they’re trying to model. And they’ve done that here in Alaska. In fact, I believe they’ve done that also at Tromsø, Norway, although this is speculation on my part. You’ll remember a number of years ago this very weird corkscrewing kind of glow perceived in northern Norway and they said it was a Russian missile that went bad or some crazy nonsense, but actually that would be pretty much what you would expect to see during a barium-HAARP/magnetic-field-line interaction. And the reason they wanted to accelerate those electrons is — if the magnetic field lines a natural part of the Earth acts as a waveguide. So the energy pumped up from HAARP encircles that waveguide and in the corkscrewing kind of motion goes from the North Pole to the South Pole and then any object passing through that has electronics on board, like an ICBM missile or satellite, their electronics become disrupted and they crash. So it was originally designed for the purpose of an anti-satellite/anti-missile technology. And that’s where that barium comes in.

65:28

Caller: … the weather modification aspect was to microwave the moisture right. Could HAARP do that as well?

Begich: Yes, Absolutely. And you know where that satellite-based system technology came from was actually a paper that Dr. Eastland had written for the European Space Agency. And it was dealing with utilizing microwave energy for knocking out tornados. And what they envisioned was either satellite-based or potentially ground-based. You could actually – when a cold front and a warm front come together is where you get the shearing action that forms the twister. If you could heat up the cold front to some degree so that, when they came together, you would not create that energy differential, you could effectively knock out the potential of a tornado forming. And so Eastland took that theme and went a little further with it. And certainly, the idea of heating up certain areas for specific effect is there, whether it’s for tornado mitigation or, in another instance, just above HAARP or in the direction which you slew the beam, you can literally push the ionosphere out several hundred kilometers from its normal position. And what happens then is the lower atmosphere moves in to fill that space. And as a consequence local pressure systems are changed or the flow of jet stream directionally is altered. Andso that’s another way to manipulate huge weather fronts on a mass scale utilizing the heating components of HAARP.

80:30

Begich: Short wavelengths like microwaves can’t penetrate the Earth and see very deep so you need these long wavelengths to signal submarines at depth. And we create those signals — at least as far as the public knows — through antennas that are up to 26 miles long buried in the Aleutian chain, buried in Michigan and other places around the world that are used for signal generation. What we have with HAARP is the ability to take an instrument on the ground locate it in Alaska, create a pulse in the ionosphere that makes the ionosphere that big antenna system. In other words, it changes it from DC, which is what it normally is, to an AC alternating current acting as a giant broadcast antenna in the sky manipulated by the HAARP signal on the ground. So think about it as plug-and-play. You’re plugging HAARP into the ionosphere — now the ionosphere is acting as your antenna system.

81:46

Begich: We cover directed energy weapons in two books, Controlling The Human Mind and and more particularly in Earth Rising: The Revolution, vol. 2. This idea of directed-energy weapons, it’s getting away from the idea of bullets, bombs, and ordnance and drifting towards utilizing energy in its raw form and manipulating energy for weapons applications. Things like American Technology Corporation developed through a guy named Woody Norris — you could look up Woody Norris — he won the Lemelson prize at MIT for this technology — but using acoustic heterodyning — two invisible signals bouncing towards an individual. You can actually transmit voice information and people hear this proverbial voice in their head. That technology was contracted and sold to the military for, supposedly, security applications. Some of the other directed-energy kind of weapons: some of you might remember the microwave dish mounted on a Humvee that they were bragging about about a decade ago. And this creates a energy direct about an individual for riot control purposes that create the sensation of heat of up to 130 degrees on the surface of the skin, and as a consequence, you kind of run away from that source! But that’s a directed-energy weapon as well. But directed energy is really on three levels: (1) to disrupt on board avionics or computers that control equipment. So by creating energy surges that disrupt the flow of information through circuitry, you can cause equipment to malfunction. At a higher energy level, directed energy weapons can be used to literally burn circuits or cause things to melt and at other energy levels, in a more directed way, can be targeting the individual operator, causing mental confusion and disorientation, which means that the weapons system that individual’s controlling is essentially worthless if it can’t be controlled by the operator. So those kinds of directed energy systems have been developed, they are available and they are well documented within the literature.

87:02

Begich: When you get resonance or harmony between the transmitter and the receiver is when you get the nice clear signal and you can hear our voice over radio. The same is true with everything. There are resonant frequencies that correspond to everything: every cell in your body, every element, every organ. And so, if you can manipulate very specific frequencies like tuning a radio, where you get nothing but static between the stations, but when you hit the right signal frequency, waveform, pulse rate, then you get all the action. And I think that’s what JJ Thompson was really referring to — was this kind of fine-tuning, where you could discover where the instabilities occur, which is a lot of what HAARP and other systems have been about, so that you could then trigger those instabilities, not so much with a big hammer of energy but with just the right frequency to tune that radio to get just the right effect. And that would be the analogy I would use and I believe that’s probably what JJ Thompson was talking about. Around the same time, Nikola Tesla was talking about huge weapon systems being designed, utilizing energy as the root — alternating energy particularly. And he viewed the earth as a big giant dynamo, a big alternating motor spinning and creating current and field. And this is where the action is and so what we’re doing now in the 21st century is learning how to tune.

88:43

Caller: I was reading something from a guy called David Sarnoff who was the director of RCA labs, which is a sister company of General Electric. And in 1946, he was stating that they would be able to control the weather with radio waves. Which I feel must be related. And one of his co-directors was a man called Vladimir Zworykin. And he was tasked by the United States Air Force to develop a program for weather control. The weird thing was about this particular man Vladimir Zworykin was that he was an expert in telecommunications. He was one of the people behind television so he was an expert in was sending energy through the atmosphere.

89:37

Begich: When you look at the whole revolution military affairs, the RMA that the military is talking about, is a recognition that energy manipulation of energy allows you a vastly a larger array of capability. And weather modification, earthquake generation. All of these things become possible. As we gain thishigher understanding of how to literally interfere with the global electric circuit and that’s what these systems are about.

90:10

Caller: I’m so glad you mentioned that because JJ Thompson was overseeing the work of CTR Wilson. And that’s what he was working on — understanding the global electric circuit. And he was using cloud chambers, looking at cosmic rays and how they were forming clouds in his cloud chamber. And that was in the 1890s! So they have a very long-term understanding — or at least a scientific premise to develop further, to get to the stage where we are all this time later, to modify and control the weather and climate.

Begich: And what we’re talking about today is what’s in the open literature. It’s the tip of the iceberg. I can assure everyone that our government and other governments do not just release things until they’re compelled to or when they, sort of discovered independently.

92:10

Begich: Three years ago, the Air Force announced HAARP was shutting down and everyone interviewed me and I said they’re never going to shut it down. The next year, DARPA was funding it and then a year later, DARPA said we’re all done. We’re shutting it down. I was again hit by media and I said no it’s not going to shut down and this year, the Congress a week ago transferred back over the University of Alaska, and now all those federal agencies and other governmental agencies can contract with the university to get the same thing done, which is exactly what they’re doing. All they’ve done is shuffle the deck and throw it under somebody else’s funding and then funded it under other line items. And this is so typical of bureaucracy so the public they think, okay, we finally shut down all the debate on this thing. When all they’ve done is change the players on the front end of the project and this is very traditional in all military projects across the world.

95:19

Begich: One of the other systems is operated in Europe is EISCAT (European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association) system which is operated through Norway and Tromsø and this is again an ionospheric heater that was developed for this type of experimental purpose. And they use it in conjunction with HAARP. You can see it in the original planning documents on HAARP and it shows up throughout the literature.

96:03

Caller: I’ve looked at the EISCAT (European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association) ionospheric heater and realized that in 2014 they had a 16 million pound upgrade to make it a digital system with omnidirectional antennas so that they can do multiple experiments in milliseconds.

Begich: That happened a few years ago. Some new patents got released and now they’re applying them to ionospheric heaters, which made them much more potent within a smaller footprint. So the old idea that you needed kilometre by kilometre arrays – you don’t need that anymore. The digital technology and the new antenna technologies means you can do it in a very compact way. So HAARP and Tromsø today can do all of those things that were speculated on by Eastland in his original patents that required kilometres of arrays. That is not necessary. What is on the planet today will realize all of the things that Eastland projected back in the 90s when he first originated these patents.

Caller: Would it be feasible to use mobile phone or cell towers in coordination to create fields of energy in the lower atmosphere or the ionosphere for weather modification?

Begich: It may be but I just don’t have specific information to comment on it.

Further information about HAARP is available here.

  1. Further proof of insanity: rolling out 5G is catastrophic for public health

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology ― Carl Sagan

So many different fields of science are required to understand the global electric circuit that its workings remain a mystery. But never mind, let’s ignore the warning of Olle Johansson that these rollouts may stand in opposition to life on this planet and his advice that we should proceed with the utmost caution. Let’s not bother with any health or safety testing of 5G technologies.

Let’s just throw caution to the winds. Let’s forget all the space law such as the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which enshrined the principle of outer space being preserved as a common heritage of humankind.After all, it “lacks any provisions that would regulate the methods of the settlement of eventual disputes, which usually appear in law-making treaties, such as the 1959 Antarctic Treaty”.2

Let’s go right ahead and place 53,000 5G satellites in the Earth orbits to join the hundreds of millions of bits of space debris and the nuclear power sources we have already put up there. Let’s put thousands of pseudosatellites in the stratosphere. Let’s network civil aircraft to transmit broadband to the ground. And let’s hope for the best. We might just get lucky and avoid a Kessler syndrome. If not, we could always jump ship and shoot off to trash another planet somewhere else.

The MadFest knows no bounds:

  1. Liability: the 5G chickens are coming home to roost

You can ignore reality but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality― Ayn Rand

The law that should be protecting us from 5G but isn’t because it’s being ignored

A legal opinion given by a Danish law firm states that rolling out 5G is illegal under EU and international law (75 pages):

It is the conclusion of this legal opinion that establishing and activating a 5G-network, as it is currently described, would be in contravention of current human and environmental laws enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, EU regulations, and the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats and the Convention on Migratory Species (Bern- and Bonn-conventions. … This also applies when the radiation remains within the limits recommended by ICNIRP and currently used in Denmark as well as broadly within the EU.

A renowned Swiss law firm provides legal opinion stating that the Swiss Federal government’s modification of its ordinance to privilege directional antennas is not legally admissible because it would undermine health protection.

The International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space provides a full list of international instruments breached by the illegal rollout of 5G technologies.

Warnings about the 5G rollout

In an impassioned speech before the United Nations General Assembly on 24 September 2019, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated that digital authoritarianism is not the stuff of dystopian fantasy but of an emerging reality. He described the Internet of Things, “smart” cities and AI as a giant, dark thundercloud lowering ever more oppressively over the human race, a gathering force reshaping the future of humanity over which the human race has no control and from which, in future, there may be nowhere to hide.

He asked if algorithms could be trusted with our lives and hopes and whether machines should be allowed to doom us to a cold and heartless future in an Orwellian world designed for censorship, repression and control. He recalled the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and endorsed its ideals of upholding freedom of opinion and expression, the privacy of home and correspondence, and the right to seek and impart information and ideas.

He exhorted the academic committees, company boards and industry standards groups who are writing the rulebooks of the future, making ethical judgements, and choosing what will or will not be rendered possible to find the right balance between freedom and control, between innovation and regulation, between private enterprise and government oversight. He insisted that the ethical judgements inherent in the design of new technology must be made transparent to all and that joint efforts must be made to agree a common set of global principles to shape the norms and standards that will guide the development of emerging technology.

Prof. Em. Martin L. Pall believes that 5G effects will take months, not years, and he expects a breakdown in mental function, sterility, damaged heart function and societal collapse.

In July 2019, President Putin emphasized the environmental risks of new technologies, saying “Hopes that the new technologies themselves will save the planet from the growing anthropogenic influence turned out to be illusions. Nature and climate degradation continues.”

An EU report published in April 2019 admitted that 5G is a massive experiment, lamenting that “it is not possible to accurately simulate or measure 5G emissions in the real world” and stating that “complex interference effects … may result, especially in dense urban areas.”

In April 2019, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA clashed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which oversees US wireless networks, saying that next-generation mobile technology could interfere with crucial satellite-based Earth observations. In May, Meteorologists warned that the introduction of 5G mobile phone networks could seriously affect weather forecasters’ ability to predict major storms by disrupting the delicate satellite instruments they use to monitor changes in the atmosphere. They said that the result would be impaired forecasts, poorer warnings about major storms, and loss of life.

The French National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES) warned in a 400-page report that LED lights in your house can cause irreversible damage to the eyes and lead to a vision-robbing condition. In October 2019, ANSES called upon the public authorities and industry to take their responsibilities for public health seriously.

Let us never forget that a minimum of 5 per cent of the world’s population are already tortured by microwave sickness through involuntary exposure to the environmental toxin that is artificial electromagnetic radiation emitted by wireless technologies. They are called “electro-hypersensitive”, as if it is their fault that they are sick, when in fact it is the fault of the companies and cell phone users choosing to irradiate them. If 5G were to be fully rolled out, they would have nowhere to hide. And 5G is likely to make everyone “electro-hypersensitive”, i.e. torture them. They have been abandoned by the authorities in almost every country but Sweden. After the rollout of 5G in Switzerland, a courageous Swiss mainstream magazine, L’Illustré, reported on the injuries of Geneva’s first 5G victims: “With 5G, we feel like guinea pigs“.

In August 2019, the Oregon state legislative assembly declared a health emergency in Senate Bill 283 and directed the state health authority to review studies of the health effects of exposure to RF-radiation in schools and to recommend how to reduce children’s exposure in schools and to report back not later than 2 January 2021.

The precautionary principle must be invoked

Austria, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland have all called for health reports or recommended that testing of 5G be carried out for health and safety. These actions provide grounds for the invocation of the precautionary principle. “Weight of evidence” is not required, as even a single scientific showing adverse health effects is enough to show doubt and trigger the invocation of precautionary principle.

Regulatory agencies: the fox is guarding the hen-house

Eric Van Rongen, Chair of ICNIRP [self-proclaimed international commission on non-ionizing radiation protection, but actually just a German NGO], the organization whose non-transparent pronouncements on the international limits at which phones can emit radiofrequency are strangely adopted by UN bodies, called 5G “a public health experiment”, stating that “It will be necessary to gain more information about the exposure and any health problems that might come from an effect of that exposure”. In September 2019, when asked in an interview, “Why does everyone takes icnirp’s position on EMF as a gold standard?”, he replied “Er, I don’t know. They choose to do so“.

In January 2019, journalist group Investigate Europe published “The ICNIRP Cartel: Who’s Who in the EMF Research World, an interactive graphic”, exposing conflicts of interest among ICNIRP members. Another article explains how icnirp and other agencies and a 30-year-old political decision created and then covered up a global public health scandal.

In March 2019, US New Jersey Congressman Andy Kim sent a letter, noting that, “Current regulations governing radiofrequency (RF) safety were put in place in 1996 and have not yet been reassessed for newer generation technologies.”

Based on data from a 2017 survey of a 6th floor apartment in Östermalm in Stockholm with a GSM/3G/4G LTE base station just 12 metres away, it was extrapolated that 666,000 such base stations would be needed before ICNIRP’s ludicrously high so-called safety guidelines were breached.

The Sept-Oct 2019 issue of the journal Municipal Lawyer published an article entitled Putting the Cart Before the Horse – The FCC’s ‘5G First, Safety Second’ Policy, which stated that the FCC should have completed the review of its RF standards before opening the floodgates for the deployment of hundreds of thousands of small cell transmitters for 5G. The rules adopted by the FCC in 1996 were designed to protect only against the thermal effects of RF exposure and not against biological effects, which icnirp dismisses wholesale.

The authors of 5G Wireless Communication and Health Effects—A Pragmatic Review Based on Available Studies Regarding 6 to 100 GHz, funded by Deutsche Telekom, stated that “The available studies do not provide adequate and sufficient information for a meaningful safety assessment, or for the question about non-thermal effects and conclude that, “In summary, the majority of studies with MMW exposures show biological responses”.

In June 2019, EMFOff! published an exposé of corruption at the World Health Organization: The WHO Cover-Up That is Costing Us the Earth. Video and PDF document. Children are being exposed to magnetic fields from cell phones that breach WHO’s recommended 0.3μT safety limit by a factor of 20,000. (Slide show.)

Legal cases against the 5G rollout or cell phones have been launched in various countries

Liability actions are now multiplying

Revisions to a Portuguese decree regarding liability insurance clearly demonstrates that the Portuguese government has no intention of requiring satellite companies to obtain sufficient insurance to meet their obligations under the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects (Liability Convention), which elaborates on Article 7 of the Outer Space Treaty and provides that a launching State shall be absolutely liable to pay compensation for damage caused by its space objects on the surface of the Earth or to aircraft, and liable for damage due to its faults in space. The Convention also provides for procedures for the settlement of claims for damages.

The definition of the term “launching State” under the Liability Convention is:

  • A State which launches or procures the launching of a space object;
  • A State from whose territory or facility a space object is launched.

Given that space objects, especially 5G satellites which may devastate public health and the environment, could prompt gigantic compensation claims involving large territories and populations, valuable property on Earth or in space, and damage to the environment, launching states and commercial companies must be required to take out sufficient liability insurance. It is noted that many small spaceports are being rapidly constructed to cater to the planned rollout of in excess of 50,000 5G satellites.

The Portuguese Space Agency will be legally created at the beginning of 2020 and will be based in the Azores, on the island of Santa Maria, where it intends to install a base to launch small satellites. It is noted that Portugal is not a party to the Liability Convention. If it intends to profit from this at the expense of the rest of the world, the individuals involved will be identified and held individually liable. Diplomatic immunity provides no immunity against prosecution for attempted crimes against humanity.

It is further noted that commercial companies have no business launching satellites without adequate insurance. The Earth is not for sale to the lowest bidder or eager start-up.

We must also note that the insurance companies and reinsurers will not insure against electromagnetic radiation. They are clearly invoking their own version of the precautionary principle to protect their profits. Who, then, must take the risk? We, the people, do not accept this risk. We do not agree with this insane 5G rollout and we do not consent to it. We require all commercial companies launching satellites to take out adequate insurance, which means in the billions of dollars at least, given what is at stake and given the laws requiring responsibility and accountability. How would you expect a commercial company to take care about causing more space debris, for example? A company is by law required to make a profit for its shareholders. Companies do not have a moral compass and even if they did, their fiduciary duty would forbid actions that resulted in reduced profits motivated by ethical reasoning.

Portuguese fines for infractions to its decree regarding satellite operations are set at between only €250 and €2.2 million. Under article 19 of Portugal’s Decree-Law 16/2019 of 22 January 2019, satellite operators are required to have a liability insurance, which must be shown each January, but this requirement may be waived in the case of space objects of small dimensions, and spatial operations pursued exclusively for scientific purposes, research and development, or education and training. This action by the government of Portugal is illegal under the Liability Convention.

A number of groups have launched liability actions against the parties rolling out 5G. Below is a selection.

Companies should take note that the tide is turning and people are beginning to win very big lawsuits against major criminality. Bayer was ordered to pay $2 billion in damages in a third Roundup-cancer trial and may be facing bankruptcy. Having taken over Monsanto, Bayer discovered a Monsanto “black ops” division that had been engaged in building and maintaining “hit lists” of journalists, lawmakers and regulators to be taken out if they opposed the evil agenda of GMOs and toxic glyphosate weed killer chemicals that now inundate the world food supply.

In part because of liability claims from victims of past fires, $8.4 billion worth, California electric utility PG&E is in the midst of bankruptcy.

A group known as the Irregulators is challenging an FCC decision that has facilitated one of the largest accounting scandals in American history. They are accusing the FCC of allowing the nation’s telecommunications companies to engage in a book-keeping sleight-of-hand scam that cost telecom users, states and taxpayers an estimated $50-$60 billion a year over the last decade.

Telecommunications companies are warning their shareholders about liability arising from injuries from cell phones. Liability is companies’ and organizations’ Achilles heel.

  1. Stand up! Take action!

To be, or not to be: that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles ― Shakespeare

The Earth is our home. It nurtures us and all our fellow creatures who live here with us. If you are like me, you may often stand before a tree feeling desolated at the idea of its senseless destruction for someone else’s monetary profit. It is hard for most of us to believe that the psychopaths who think it is possible to own this planet feel nothing as yet another majestic tree that has sheltered generations of people is chainsawed to the ground.

Our Earth is not for sale

It is time for every single one of us individually to stand up and say a resounding “No!” to the demented plan to fill the Earth orbits with many tens of thousands of satellites intended to irradiate every square centimetre of our beautiful planet.  Say it now, out loud: “No!”  Say it again: “No!”And again: “No!”

Say it every day, all day until we have seen off the danger that now faces all of us. It is all right to be outraged. It is normal to be angry. Feel those emotions. Let them rise. Embrace them. Let them fire you up with righteous anger. Let them fill you with the energy you need to protect the Earth from this madness. But please fill your heart with love and not hatred or fear because Mother Earth needs you this day, and every day until she – and we – are safe again.

Take up your pen or keyboard and write!

At this website you will find steps to prepare evidence for litigation and potential remedies to protect yourself from manmade non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation, whether in the form of mobile phone base station, communications tower, 5G (4G) small cell, “smart” meter, WiFi router, HAPS drone, satellite or any other device: EMR Legal Education.

From 28 October to 22 November 2019, the International Telecommunication Union will hold its World Radio Conferencein Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, where delegates will make decisions about regulating the 5G satellites. All of this takes place behind closed doors, where you cannot participate in decisions that affect your life.

I invite you to write to the ITU delegates and tell them to refuse to allow the 5G satellites because you believe that they put all life on Earth at risk. Below you will find a link to a documentwhere you can pick up all the addresses and write to the delegates. You may wish to send them the evidence provided in this article, or you may wish to send them the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space. Please write and tell them to stop the madness of 5G in space.

You may want to tell them that the Vienna Convention provides no immunity for crimes against humanity and that their families are put at risk by 5G as well. If they do not listen to us, we may have to consider new Nuremberg trials to prosecute 5G crimes against humanity.

Message to the ITU delegates and others

Maria Sargent killed herself on 12 March 2019 because she was “electro-hypersensitive”. She left a message to humanity where she said that she hoped that her death would help to usher in a new era on Earth. Please read it to understand what it is like to be tortured by electromagnetic radiation. This might happen to all of us if these 5G satellites are allowed to go into operation.

On March 12, I chose to end my Earth Walk and reunite with the Mother of All Things. I wanted to free myself from the straightjacket of electrifying and neurological debilitation of Electro-Hypersensitivity (EHS) and Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV). These hidden modern-day epidemics humbled me and connected me to the great sufferings of others. Yet, they also shattered and dehumanized me. The constant tension of strange symptoms and crushing pain left me cut off from a life of embodied prayer and active altruism; I felt alienated from my true nature and impotent to be of service. I decided the greater good was to give my life with the aspiration to raise awareness and help others. As Thomas Merton said, “Man has no greater love than that he lay down his life for his friend.”

If anyone asks, you can say I ended my own life. But it would be more accurate to say I died from Electromagnetic Field (EMF) poisoning. I am not ashamed of my actions. They were based on compassion for my own suffering and the desire to prevent more people from becoming sick.

I’m not the first person with Electro-Hypersensitivity (EHS) to die by their own hand, but perhaps the first to publicize it. And that’s my whole intention. Let me be the poster child for this 21st century plague. Let me be the impetus for positive change. What sends a stronger message than death? The message is: seek the truth and learn how to protect yourselves. The message is: create housing opportunities for people with EHS. I chose to die so you would know the importance of reducing your exposure to toxic EMFs. I chose to die so the world would see that safe camps for EMF refugees are urgently needed.

I do not want a funeral, memorial service, or life celebration. Instead, please help the living by honoring my three final wishes. Thank you and may you be well.

  1. Take simple steps to lower your EMF exposure and stay healthy. Organize housing for people sick with EHS. Everyone deserves a safe home. Resources for this are: the fantastic book The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs and the Safe Haven tab at www.HeartMind.info.
  2. Cleanse your body of radiation, viruses, heavy metals, and pesticides, which cause EHS and other chronic illnesses including Lupus, Lyme, MS, RA, and Cancer. It’s fun and yummy! Read the beautiful book Life Changing Foods by Anthony William.
  3. Take extra good care of each other. Spend time each week in loving service to a sick, injured, or housebound person. Let them know they are not forgotten. This is the true purpose of being human. Resources for the are: the books Everybody Always by Goff, Peace Pilgrim, and the TLC tab at www.HeartMind.info
    May my death usher in a new era, an era in which EHS and EBV are taken seriously, diagnosed correctly, treated immediately, and prevented widely. May this be an era of permaculture eco-villages, bountiful food forests, abundant altruism and safe technologies. I gladly sacrifice my life for that purpose. May it be so!

Visit my blog www.HeartMind.info for more information and continued updates from friends. Look for me in the sun, the moon, and the stars. Pray that I’ve melted into Mother Luminosity and am helping all beings, in all worlds, in all ways. May the bodhichitta flourish!

I call on all those who know what a terrible mistake these satellites are to stand up and condemn Musk and the other companies launching satellites.

I call on the ITU World Radio Conference delegates to take note of what UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at the United Nations General Assembly about responsibly regulating this technology.

The Earth is not for sale.

Click here to send emails to the ITU delegates.

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Claire Edwards, BA Hons, MA, worked for the United Nations as Editor and Trainer in Intercultural Writing from 1999 to 2017. Claire warned the Secretary-General about the dangers of 5G during a meeting with UN staff in May 2018, calling for a halt to its rollout at UN duty stations.  She part-authored, designed, administered the 30 language versions, and edited the entirety of the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space (www.5gspaceappeal.org) and vigorously campaigned to promote it throughout 2019. In January 2020, she severed connection with the Appeal when its administrator, Arthur Firstenberg, joined forces with a third-party group, stop5ginternational, which brought itself into disrepute at its foundation by associating with the Club of Rome/Club of Budapest eugenicist movement. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[i] R E Nisbett. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why. London, Boston: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. 2005.  P. 20.

[ii]  Nisbett. P. 221.

[iii]Nisbett. P. 17.

[iv] J Needham. Science and civilisation in China, Physics and Physical Technology, vol. 4. Cambridge, U.K. Cambridge University Press. 1962. Cited in Nisbett. 2005. P. 18.

[v] F Capra. The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, 5th edn. Boston: Shambhala Publications. 2010. P. 152.

[vi] Nisbett. P. 27.

[vii] Nisbett. P. 9-10.

[viii] Capra 1982. P. 18. The Turning Point. New York: Bantam Books. Cited in Kim. 2002.

[ix] M-S Kim. 2002. Non-Western Perspectives on Human Communication: Implications for Theory and Practice. London, New Delhi: Sage Publications. P. 82.

[x] L Abegg. 1952. The Mind of East Asia (translated from the German Ostasien Denkt  Anders, by A. J. Crick and E. E. Thomas). London and New York: Thames and Hudson. P. 325. Available from the Universal Library at http://archive.org/details/mindofeastasia030168mbp. Accessed 22 October 2019.

[xi] Capra. 1982. Cited in Kim 2002. P. 10.

[xii] Wallace Thornhill. The Elegant Simplicity of the Electric Universe. Electric Universe Conference, 2016. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mINsiT70OHE. Accessed 17 October 2019.

[xiii] BBC. The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (parts 1, 2 & 3). Adam Curtis. First broadcast 2004. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyvx5qcn4Rc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHSsX-_6i9Aand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuNxKDVG1Uk. Accessed 19 October 2019.

[xiv] Straussism: The Philosophy Directing The Age Of Tyranny. 2006. Age Of Tyranny News. http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewcommentary.php?storyid=136. Accessed 19 October 2019.

[xv] Quoted in M Talbot. The Holographic Universe.

[xvi] Sharon Hewitt Rawlette. What If Consciousness Comes First? Bridging the mind-body gap will require a fundamental shift in perspective. Psychology Today. 22 July 2019. Available at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/201907/what-if-consciousness-comes-first. Accessed 19 October 2019.

[xvii] Bruce Lipton interviewed by Iain McNay. Conscious TV. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYYXq1Ox4sk. Accessed 19 October 2019.

[xviii] Anthony Peake. Cheating the Ferryman Blog Page. How your senses “matrix” you. Available at https://cheatingtheferryman.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-your-senses-matrix-you.html. Accessed 19 October 2019.

[xix] Lipton, Bruce (2008). The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles. Hay House.

[xx] Iain McGilchrist. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (e-book). RSA Animation. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI. Accessed 15 October 2019.

[xxi] Wallace Thornhill. The Elegant Simplicity of the Electric Universe. Electric Universe Conference, 2016. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mINsiT70OHE. Accessed 15 October 2019.

[xxii] Arthur Firstenberg. The invisible rainbow: a history of electricity and life. AGB Press. Available at https://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/buy-the-invisible-rainbow/. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[xxiii] Arthur Firstenberg. Killing Fields: Electromagnetic Radiation. 1 June 2004. Available at https://theecologist.org/2004/jun/01/killing-fields-electromagnetic-radiation. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[xxiv] Surgical Neurology International. Neurological deaths of American adults (55–74) and the over 75’s by sex compared with 20 Western countries 1989–2010: Cause for concern. Colin Pritchard and Emily Rosenorn-Lanng. Available at http://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint-articles/neurological-deaths-of-american-adults-55-74-and-the-over-75s-by-sex-compared-with-20-western-countries-1989-2010-cause-for-concern/. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[xxv] Arthur Firstenberg. Killing Fields: Electromagnetic Radiation. 1 June 2004. Available at https://theecologist.org/2004/jun/01/killing-fields-electromagnetic-radiation. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[xxvi] Firstenberg. The invisible rainbow. P. 260. See ref. 23.

[xxvii] Arthur Firstenberg. Killing Fields: Electromagnetic Radiation. 1 June 2004. Available at https://theecologist.org/2004/jun/01/killing-fields-electromagnetic-radiation. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[xxviii] Olle Johansson. To bee, or not to bee, that is the five “G” question. Newsvoice. 28 May 2019. Available at https://newsvoice.se/2019/05/5g-question-olle-johansson/. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[xxix] Arthur Firstenberg. Killing Fields: Electromagnetic Radiation. 1 June 2004. Available at https://theecologist.org/2004/jun/01/killing-fields-electromagnetic-radiation. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[xxx] Groundbreaking Study Examines Effects of Screen Time on Kids – They are presenting with the brains of senility-prone senior citizens. 29 March 2019. https://emfrefugee.blogspot.com/2019/03/you-can-dump-your-apple-stocks-where.html.

[xxxi] K H Kim. The Creativity Crisis In America! 10 July 2012. Available at https://www.creativitypost.com/education/yes_there_is_a_creativity_crisis. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[xxxii] B N Frank. CDC: Suicide at crisis level, environment plays role. What about cell phone, WiFi and 5G radiation? 14 July 2019. Available at

https://www.activistpost.com/2019/07/cdc-suicide-at-crisis-level-environment-plays-role-what-about-cell-phone-wifi-and-5g-radiation.html. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[xxxiii] Olga Sheean. The WHO cover-up that is costing us the Earth. Video & PDF: https://www.emfoff.com/cover-up/?fbclid=IwAR0x-VNP6A4UTpCgwasElSJOG_GyuswK3vED7piTY4RWDmAFPq-rlDwNckE. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[xxxiv] Williams ER. The global electrical circuit: a review. Atmos Res. 2009;91(2):140-152. doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2008.05.018.

[xxxv] Wever R. Human circadian rhythms under the influence of weak electric fields and the different aspects of these studies. Int J Biometeorol. 1973;17(3):227-232. www.vitatec.com/docs/referenz-umgebungsstrahlung/wever-1973.pdf. Accessed June 10, 2018.

[xxxvi] Wever R. ELF-effects on human circadian rhythms. In: ELF and VLF Electromagnetic Field Effects. (Persinger M, ed.) New York: Plenum; 1974:101-144.

[xxxvii] Engels S, Schneider N-L, Lefeldt N,  et al. Anthropogenic electromagnetic noise disrupts magnetic compass orientation in a migratory bird. Nature. 2014;509:353-356. doi:10.1038/nature13290.

[xxxviii] Ludwig W, Mecke R. Wirkung künstlicher Atmospherics auf Säuger. Archiv für Meteorologie, Geophysik und Bioklimatologie Serie B (Archives for Meteorology Geophysics and Bioclimatology Series B Theoretical and Applied Climatology). 1968;16(2-3):251-261. doi:10.1007/BF02243273.

[xxxix] Morley EL, Robert D. Electric fields elicit ballooning in spiders.Current Biology.2018;28:1-7. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(18)30693-6.pdf. Accessed July 14, 2018.

[xl] Weber J. Die Spinnen sind Deuter des kommenden Wetters (Spiders Are Predictors of the Coming Weather).1800; Landshut, Germany. “The electrical material works always in the atmosphere; no season can retard its action. Its effects on the weather are almost undisputed; spiders sense it, and alter their behaviour accordingly.”

[xli] König H. Biological effects of extremely low frequency electrical phenomena in the atmosphere. J Interdiscipl Cycle Res. 2(3):317-323. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09291017109359276. Accessed June 10, 2018.

[xlii] Sulman F. The Effect of Air Ionization, Electric Fields, Atmospherics, and Other Electric Phenomena On Man and Animal. American lecture series. Vol 1029. Springfield, Ill: Thomas; 1980.

[xliii] König HL, Krüger, AP, Lang S, Sönning, W. Biologic Effects of Environmental Electromagnetism. New York: Springer-Verlag; 1981.  doi: 10.1007/978-1-4612-5859-9.

[xliv] Sazanova E, Sazanov A, Sergeenko N, Ionova V, Varakin Y. Influence of near earth electromagnetic resonances on human cerebrovascular system in time of heliogeophysical disturbances. Progress in

Electromagnetics Research Symposium. August 2013:1661-1665.

[xlv] Cherry N. Schumann resonances, a plausible biophysical mechanism for the human health effects of solar/geomagnetic activity. Natural Hazards. 2002;26(3):279-331. doi:10.1023/A:1015637127504.

[xlvi] Polk C. Schumann resonances. In Volland H, ed. CRC Handbook of Atmospherics. Vol. 1. Boca Raton, Fla: CRC Press; 1982:111-178. https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.132044/2015.132044.Crc-Handbook-Of-Atmospherics-Vol-1#page/n115/mode/2up/search/polk.Accessed June 18, 2018.

[xlvii] Park C, Helliwell R. Magnetospheric effects of power line radiation. Science. 1978;200(4343):727-730. doi:10.1126/science.200.4343.727.

[xlviii] Bullough K, Kaiser TR, Strangeways HJ. Unintentional man-made modification effects in the magnetosphere. J Atm Terr Phys. 1985;47(12):1211-1223.

[xlix] Luette JP, Park CG, Helliwell RA. The control of the magnetosphere by power line radiation. J Geophys Res. 1979;84:2657-2660.

[l] Becker RO, Selden G. The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life. New York: Morrow; 1985:325-326.

[li] Firstenberg A. Planetary Emergency. Cellular Phone Task Force website. www.cellphonetaskforce.org/planetary-emergency. Published 2018. Accessed June 10, 2018.

[lii] Becker RO. The basic biological data transmission and control system influenced by electrical forces. Ann NY Acad Sci.1974;238:236-241. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1974.tb26793.x.

[liii] Maxey ES, Beal JB. The electrophysiology of acupuncture; How terrestrial electric and magnetic fields influence air ion energy exchanges through acupuncture points. International Journal of Biometeorology.1975;19(Supp. 1):124. doi:10.1007/BF01737335.

[liv] Ćosić I, Cvetković D, Fang Q, Jovanov E, Lazoura H. Human electrophysiological signal responses to ELF Schumann resonance and artificial electromagnetic fields. FME Transactions. 2006;34:93-103.http://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/1450-8230/2006/1450-82300602093C.pdf. Accessed July 18, 2018.

[lv] Cohen M, Behrenbruch C, Ćosić I. Is there a link between acupuncture meridians, earth-ionosphere resonances and cerebral activity? Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Bioelectromagnetism, Melbourne, Australia. 1998:173-174. doi: 10.1109/ICBEM.1998.666451.

[lvi] Chevalier G, Mori K, Oschman JL. The effect of earthing (grounding) on human physiology. European Biology and Bioelectromagnetics. January 2006:600-621. http://162.214.7.219/~earthio0/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Effects-of-Earthing-on-Human-Physiology-Part-1.pdf. Accessed June 10, 2018.“Highly significant EEG, EMG and BVP results demonstrate that restoring the natural electrical potential of the earth to the human body (earthing) rapidly affects human electrophysiological and physiological parameters. The extreme rapidity of these changes indicates a physical/bioelectrical mechanism rather than a biochemical change.”

[lvii] Firstenberg A. Earth’s Electric Envelope. In: The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life. Santa Fe, NM: AGB Press; 2017: 113-131.

[lviii] Cannon PS, Rycroft MJ. Schumann resonance frequency variations during sudden ionospheric disturbances. J Atmos Sol Terr Phys. 1982;44(2):201-206. doi:10.1016/0021-9169(82)90124-6.

[lix] United Nations. Debating proposals on common principles to ensure outer space security, First Committee delegates call for adoption of legally binding treaty. Press release GA/DIS/3557. October 2016. Available at https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/gadis3557.doc.htm. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[lx] What if we trashed earth’s orbit with space junk? Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyQiWEqPZh0. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[lxi] United Nations. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. 2-13 February 2015. National research on space debris, safety of space objects with nuclear power sources on board and problems relating to their collision with space debris (A/AC.105/C.1/2015/CRP.8). Available at http://www.unoosa.org/pdf/limited/c1/AC105_C1_2015_CRP08E.pdf. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[lxii] United Nations. Treaty Series. 610:8843. Treaty on principles governing the activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies: Art. 1.

http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html.

[lxiii] V P Kozin. Militarization of outer space and its impacts on global security environment. Pakistan National University of Sciences and Technology, Global Think Tank Network.  2015.

http://www.space4peace.org/articles/Militarization%20of%20Outer%20Space%20and%20its%20Impacts%20on%20Global%20Security.pdf. Accessed21 October 2019.

[lxiv] G Dorrian and I Whittaker. Space may soon become a war zone – here’s how that would work. The Conversation. 18 October 2019. Available at https://theconversation.com/space-may-soon-become-a-war-zone-heres-how-that-would-work-125460. Accessed 21 October 2019.

[lxv] N. Begich. Angels don’t play this HAARP: advances in Tesla technology. Earthpulse 1995.

[lxvi] European Union. Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defence Policy. Report on the environment, security and foreign policy. PE 227.710/fin. 14 January 1999. Available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A4-1999-0005+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN. Accessed 21 October 2019.

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Displaying a stroke of genius, Russia has once again played the role of a peace-maker in Syria by concluding an agreement with Turkey to enforce a safe zone in northern Syria. According to the terms of the agreement, Turkish forces would have exclusive control over 120 kms. stretch between Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn to the depth of 32 kms. in northern Syria.

To the west and east of the aforementioned area of the Turkish Operation Peace Spring, Turkish troops and Russian military police would conduct joint patrols to the depth of 10 kms. and the remaining 20 kms. safe zone would be under the control of the Syrian government which would ensure that the Kurdish forces and weapons are evacuated from Manbij and Tal Rifat to the west and the Kurdish areas to the east excluding the city of Qamishli.

In return for the generous favor of establishing a safe zone along Turkey’s southern border to address its security concerns regarding the Kurds, Turkey would probably allow the Syrian government with the backing of Russia to occupy a few strategic areas in northwestern Idlib Governorate – particularly near the Alawite heartland Latakia, such as Khan Sheikhoun, which the Syrian government has recently liberated from al-Nusra Front, and Marat al-Numan and Jisr al-Shughour – though this hasn’t been stipulated in the agreement and was most likely informally discussed in the Erdogan-Putin meeting.

In order to understand the reason why Donald Trump acquiesced in the face of Turkish onslaught against the Kurds in northern Syria, a Syria analyst Hassan Hassan came up with an intriguing theory in his recent article [1] for The Guardian.

He writes:

“Turkey received a clearance from Russia before intervention, framed by Russia as part of the agreement between Ankara, Moscow and Tehran about the Syrian conflict. According to a well-placed Syrian source, the intervention in the Kurdish areas was part of a Russian-Turkish understanding about the fate of Idlib in the north-west, the last stronghold of the rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

“Idlib is dominated by the group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra and various stakeholders in the Syrian conflict have struggled to agree on how to deal with the challenge of having jihadists in charge of a significant swath of the country. The source claims that Turkey also reassured the Americans that the intervention would be followed by serious steps to deal with the dilemma in Idlib, by enabling a Russia-led incursion and that any expected mass displacement from Idlib will move to the Turkish zones inside Syria, not to Turkey itself.”

Although far from being its diehard ideologue, Donald Trump has been affiliated with the infamous white supremacist “alt-right” movement, which regards Islamic terrorism as an existential threat to America’s security, unlike the ostensibly “pacifist” Obama administration that nurtured Islamic jihadist masquerading as “moderate rebels” in Syria to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Thus, the presence of al-Nusra Front’s militants in Syria’s Idlib poses an intractable dilemma for the Trump administration, and if the Syrian government could reassert its control over Idlib, it would eliminate a potential terrorist threat to Washington’s security.

Regarding the collusion between the jihadists of al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State, at its peak in 2014, when the Islamic State declared its “caliphate” in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the Islamic State reportedly used to have more than 70,000 jihadists.

Thousands of Islamic State’s jihadists have been killed in airstrikes conducted by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State and the ground offensives by the Iraqi armed forces and allied militias in Iraq and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria.

And due to frequent desertions, the number of fighters within the Islamic State’s ranks has evidently dwindled. But a question would naturally arise in the minds of perceptive observers of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that where did the remaining tens of thousands of Islamic State’s jihadists vanish?

The riddle can be easily solved, though, if we bear in mind the fact that although Idlib Governorate in Syria’s northwest has firmly been under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led by al-Nusra Front since 2015, its territory was equally divided between Turkey-backed rebels and al-Nusra Front.

In a brazen offensive in January, however, al-Nusra Front’s jihadists completely routed Turkey-backed militants, even though the latter were supported by a professionally trained and highly organized military of a NATO member, Turkey. And al-Nusra Front now reportedly controls more than 70% territory in the Idlib Governorate.

The reason why al-Nusra Front has been easily able to defeat Turkey-backed militants appears to be that the ranks of al-Nusra Front have now been swelled by highly motivated and battle-hardened jihadist deserters from the Islamic State after the fall of the latter’s “caliphate” in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

The merger of al-Nusra Front and Islamic State in Idlib doesn’t come as a surprise, though, since the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front used to be a single organization before a split occurred between the two militant groups in April 2013 over a leadership dispute. In fact, al-Nusra Front’s chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was reportedly appointed [2] as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, in January 2012.

Regarding the dominant group of Syrian militants in Syria’s northwestern Idlib Governorate, according to a May 2017 report [3] by CBC Canada, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was formerly known as al-Nusra Front until July 2016 and then as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) until January 2017, had been removed from the terror watch-lists of the US and Canada after it merged with fighters from Zenki Brigade and hardline jihadists from Ahrar al-Sham and rebranded itself as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in January 2017.

The US State Department was hesitant to label Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) a terror group, despite the group’s links to al-Qaeda, as the US government had directly funded and armed the Zenki Brigade, one of the constituents of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), with sophisticated weaponry including the US-made antitank missiles.

Although after the report was published in CBC News, Canada added the name of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to its terror watch-list in May 2018, Turkey designated it a terrorist organization in August 2018 and Washington came up with the excuse that since Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a merger of several militant outfits, and one of those militant groups, al-Nusra Front, was already on the terror watch-list of the US, therefore Washington, too, regards Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) a terrorist organization.

Nevertheless, the purpose behind the rebranding of al-Nusra Front, first as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) in July 2016 and then as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in January 2017 and purported severing of ties with al-Qaeda, was to legitimize itself and to make it easier for its patrons to send money and arms.

Washington blacklisted al-Nusra Front in December 2012 and persuaded its regional allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey to ban it, too. Although al-Nusra Front’s name had been in the list of proscribed organizations of Saudi Arabia and Turkey since 2014, it kept receiving money and arms from its regional patrons.

It’s worth noting that in a May 2015 interview [4] with Qatar’s state television al-Jazeera, al-Nusra’s chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani took a public pledge on the behest of his Gulf-based patrons that his organization simply had local ambitions limited to fighting the Syrian government and that it had no intention to mount terror attacks in the Western countries.

Although al-Jolani announced the split from al-Qaeda in a video statement in 2016, the persistent efforts of al-Jolani’s Gulf-based patrons bore fruit in January 2017, when al-Nusra Front once again rebranded itself from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which also included militants from Zenki Brigade, Ahrar al-Sham and several other militant groups, and thus the jihadist conglomerate that now goes by the name of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was able to overrun the northwestern Idlib Governorate in Syria, and it completely routed the Turkey-backed militants in a brazen offensive in Idlib in January.

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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 frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Trump and Erdoğan risk a resurgent Isis thanks to their recklessness in Syria:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/13/trump-and-erdogan-risk-a-resurgent-isis-thanks-to-their-recklessness-in-syria

[2] Al-Jolani was appointed as the emir of al-Nusra Front by al-Baghdadi:

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/16689

[3] Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate escapes from terror list:

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/terror-list-omission-1.4114621

[4] Al-Jolani’s interview to Al-Jazeera: “Our mission is to defeat the Syrian government”:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/nusra-front-golani-assad-syria-hezbollah-isil-150528044857528.html

Erdogan quer a Bomba

October 22nd, 2019 by Manlio Dinucci

“Alguns países têm mísseis nucleares, mas o Ocidente insiste que não podemos possuí-los. Isto é inaceitável”: esta declaração do Presidente Erdogan revela, que a crise vai além daquela iniciada com a ofensiva turca na Síria.

Na Turquia, durante a Guerra Fria, os USA instalaram armas nucleares contra a União Soviética. Em 1962, nos acordos com a URSS para a solução da crise dos mísseis em Cuba, o Presidente Kennedy prometeu remover essas armas da Turquia, mas o mesmo não foi feito. Após a Guerra Fria, permaneceram na Turquia, na base aérea de Incirlik, cerca de 50 bombas nucleares USA B61 (as mesmas inseridas em Aviano e Ghedi, em Itália), direccionadas principalmente contra a Rússia.

Deste modo, seja os EUA ou a Turquia, ambos violam o Tratado de Não Proliferação. Os pilotos turcos, no âmbito da NATO, são treinados (como os pilotos italianos da base de Ghedi) ao ataque com bombas nucleares B61, sob o comando USA. Dentro de pouco tempo, as B61 devem ser substituídas pelos USA, também na Turquia (como será feito em Itália e noutros países europeus) pelas novas bombas nucleares B61-12, também direccionadas principalmente contra a Rússia.

Enquanto isso, porém, após a aquisição turca de mísseis antiaéreos russos S-400, os USA retiraram a Turquia do programa F-35, principal transportador das B61-12: o caça do qual a Turquia deveria ter comprado 100 exemplares e do qual era co-produtora. “O F-35 – declarou a Casa Branca – não pode coexistir com o sistema antiaéreo S-400, que pode ser usado para conhecer as capacidades do caça”, ou seja, pode ser usado pela Rússia para reforçar as defesas contra o F- 35. Ao fornecer a Ankara os mísseis anti-aéreos S-400, Moscovo conseguiu impedir (pelo menos, por agora) que sejam instalados no território turco 100 F-35, prontos para o ataque com as novas bombas nucleares USA, B61-12.

Parece, nesta altura, provável que, entre as opções consideradas em Washington, exista a transferência de armas nucleares USA da Turquia para outro país mais confiável. Segundo o conceituado  Boletim dos Cientistas Atómicos (USA), “a base aérea de Aviano pode ser a melhor opção europeia do ponto de vista político, mas, provavelmente, não tem espaço suficiente para receber todas as armas nucleares de Incirlik”. No entanto, o espaço poderia ser obtido, dado que, em Aviano, já se iniciaram os trabalhos de reestruturação para receber as bombas nucleares B61-12.

Sobre este fundo coloca-se a declaração de Erdogan que, apostando também na presença ameaçadora do arsenal nuclear de Israel, anuncia a intenção turca de ter as suas próprias armas nucleares. O projecto não é fácil, mas não é irrealizável. A Turquia possui tecnologias militares avançadas, fornecidas em particular por empresas italianas, especialmente a Leonardo. Possui depósitos de urânio. Tem experiência no campo de reactores de pesquisa, fornecidos em particular pelos USA. Iniciou a construção de sua própria indústria de energia nuclear, adquirindo alguns reactores da Rússia, do Japão, da França e da China. Segundo algumas fontes, a Turquia já pode ter adquirido no “mercado negro nuclear”, centrifugadoras de enriquecimento de urânio.

O anúncio de Erdogan de que a Turquia se quer tornar uma potência nuclear, interpretado por alguns como um simples jogo a termo, a fim de ter mais peso na NATO, não deve, portanto, ser de subestimar. Ele descobre o que geralmente está oculto no debate mediático: o facto de que, na situação turbulenta causada pelas políticas de guerra, desempenha um papel cada vez mais importante, a posse de armas nucleares, pressionando os que não as possuem a procurá-las.

Manlio Dinucci

 

Artigo original em italiano :

Erdogan vuole la Bomba

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

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Author’s preface:

About 18 months ago the distinguished American historian and scientist, Noam Chomsky, directed my attention through emails to Otto Skorzeny’s ‘My Commando Operations’, a book on which the below article is largely based upon – and, a little later, Chomsky specifically pointed this author towards the material featured in Chapter 12 of Skorzeny’s book, ‘Why Hitler didn’t build the atomic bomb’.

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Seventy-five years ago, on 22 October 1944, SS lieutenant-colonel Otto Skorzeny was summoned once more to the Wolf’s Lair headquarters in East Prussia, Adolf Hitler’s secret compound buried deep in the Masurian woodlands.

Skorzeny’s presence at the Wolf’s Lair was requested by Hitler in order to discuss assignments for the Ardennes Offensive, which was designed to cut the Allied armies in two, and force them to negotiate a peace treaty in the Nazis’ favour. This was not an entirely impossible hope, considering the poor performance and sluggish advances made by American and British divisions in France, against the outnumbered Germans.

Contrary to myth, on those occasions that Allied soldiers met German forces on a level playing field, the outcome was not in doubt. The English historian Max Hastings noted of the Germans,

“Their tactics were masterly… Their junior leadership was much superior to that of the Americans, perhaps also to that of the British. Throughout the Second World War, wherever British or American troops met the Germans in anything like equal strength, the Germans prevailed”.

Hastings’ observations are supported by other scholars, and even by political figures like Winston Churchill, who wrote that,

“The superiority of the Germans in design, management and energy were plain… At Narvik a mixed and improvised German force, barely 6,000 strong, held at bay for six weeks some 20,000 Allied troops… some of our finest troops, the Scots and Irish Guards, were baffled by the vigour, enterprise and training of Hitler’s young men”.

Otto Skorzeny

The 6 feet 4 inch Skorzeny was among the most heavily decorated of Nazi Germany’s soldiers. Allied leadership and Western media were labelling this scarred commando as “the most dangerous man in Europe”. Come the autumn of 1944, Skorzeny’s reputation had reached legendary status within the Third Reich itself, and by this date he had become perhaps Hitler’s favourite soldier.

It is no exaggeration to note that Skorzeny’s operations had a direct impact upon the Second World War. His leading of the 1943 mission – to secure Benito Mussolini from a mountain top prison in central Italy – allowed a Nazi puppet government, led ostensibly by Il Duce, to remain firmly on Italian soil until almost the end of the war in Europe.

Mussolini’s rescuing was a factor in preventing a fascist collapse in Italy; but the Nazi cause was aided yet again, it must be said, by the underwhelming display of Allied soldiers on this separate front – though the Germans were assisted in their skilful defensive manoeuvres in Italy, by the particularly mountainous and muddy terrain of that country.

The significance of Mussolini’s safeguarding from Allied hands was a major propaganda coup for the Nazis. Having been informed immediately of the news at the Wolf’s Lair on 12 September 1943, an overjoyed Hitler rang Skorzeny at the Hotel Imperial in Vienna, where the latter had just arrived and said to him,

“Today, you have carried out a mission that will go down in history. You have given me back my old friend Mussolini. I have awarded you the Knight’s Cross and promoted you to Sturmbannführer. Heartiest congratulations!”

Skorzeny then passed the telephone to Mussolini so that he could speak to Hitler. Mussolini thanked sincerely his German counterpart, telling Hitler that he was feeling exhausted and needed to go to bed right away “for a long sleep”.

Later that evening, Skorzeny also received phone calls from the notorious Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goering – while even Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel dusted off his old monocle to ring him.

Skorzeny again performed a central role in influencing the fighting in World War II when, on the 15th and 16th of October 1944, he engineered the operation to institute an ardent pro-Nazi cabinet in Hungary, the Arrow Cross Party. As a consequence, the Hungarians continued fighting desperately alongside the Germans, enjoying local victories against the Red Army, and holding up their advance westwards. The Arrow Cross Party, with Nazi assistance, subsequently hunted down much of Hungary’s remaining Jewish population, sending them on death marches and off to concentration camps; an all too familiar scene witnessed in Europe over preceding years.

By 1944, rumours were rife among German soldiers that gravity-defying secret weapons were undergoing production by Nazi scientists, that would come to their ultimate rescue; and somehow grant a disintegrating Third Reich the most unlikely of victories.

In the war’s final months, Hitler retained a fervent wish to wipe from the planet’s surface not only Moscow and London with unheralded weapons, but also to bring ruin upon New York City. As we know from his diatribes, Hitler desired to exact vengeance on the Western powers for their systematic destruction of German cities.

He had form in this regard. During early September 1941, Hitler issued orders to German generals of his decision “to erase the city of Petersburg from the face of the earth. There is no reason for the future existence of this large town”. From September 1941, enormous German railway guns were lining up outside Petersburg (Leningrad), whose 30 inch shells could reach every street and district of the city. By January 1944 Leningrad was still just about standing, as hundreds of thousands of her residents lay dead.

In mid-August 1944, with Allied soldiers at last approaching Paris’s outskirts, Hitler ordered that the city be razed to the ground, screaming into the telephone “Is Paris burning?” Fortunately, these half-crazed demands were ignored by General Dietrich von Choltitz, Nazi Germany’s military governor of Paris. The French capital continued existing in all of its glory.

Meanwhile, London was experiencing a new terror as, from 13 June 1944, unmanned Nazi V-1 cruise missiles were careering across the sky and down upon that vast metropolis. The United States was soon to be targeted too, it was hoped. English author Geoffrey Michael Brooks outlined that,

“Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny argued energetically for the immediate implementation of the V-1 project against New York”.

During a meeting in November 1944 with Himmler and other Nazi dignitaries at Hohenlychen Sanatorium (Himmler’s new headquarters), Skorzeny mentioned the possibility too of equipping U-boats lurking off America’s eastern coastline with V-1 missiles – that could then be fired unmolested at New York City, from launching ramps attached to German submarines. Skorzeny was told of such a possibility by Admiral Hellmuth Heye, who had formed an opinion that the plan was feasible.

On hearing this revelation Himmler, convulsed with excitement, “leapt from his armchair and ran to the map which covered a large part of the wall”, before crying out,

“Then we must bombard New York! Lay it in ruins! The Americans will also get a taste of the war. We must inform the Führer at once and telephone the Grand Admiral [Karl Dönitz]… I am convinced that the Americans could not bear being attacked in their own country. Their fighting morale would sink to zero”.

The American mainland had not undergone attack by a foreign power for well over a century, since the War of 1812 against the British Empire. It was felt that the spectacle of German missiles, smashing into New York’s shining spires and skyscrapers, could inflict severe psychological damage upon the Americans. It would no doubt have come as a real shock to the world, had the United States’ landmark city been attacked by revolutionary German weaponry, which the Americans themselves did not possess – and it may have given the Roosevelt administration food for thought. Yet it is not realistic to suggest that such actions as striking New York could have altered the course of the war.

Front Cover

Even so, Skorzeny wrote that,

“Included in the V-weapons program was the construction of a rocket capable of bombarding New York or Moscow [from Germany]. This rocket was practically finished at the end of March 1945, and could have gone into series production in the beginning of July”.

The speculation surrounding Nazi wonder weapons was being disseminated far and wide by Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda ministry. Many among the Germans believed what they heard, perhaps out of desperation or with some reason, as ingenious rocket engineers – like Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph – were at the time producing miracles with their discoveries.

However, dialogue among the Germans had largely centred on a different, more sinister implement. Skorzeny remembers that “most talk was about another terrible weapon that was supposed to be based on artificially produced radioactivity. Without being an atomic physicist, I knew that it was possible to make an explosive device using the fission energy of uranium. The English sabotage mission against the heavy water factory in Norway at the beginning of 1943 drew my attention, as did the bombing raid which followed the next autumn, which damaged the plant heavily”.

Groundbreaking news regarding unusually powerful bombs was even enjoying exposure in the Nazi press. During the first hours of August 1944 the German agency, TranSozean Innendienst, relayed a report that,

“In the United States, scientific experiments are being carried out on a new bomb. Its explosive substance is uranium, and when the elements within its structure are liberated, a force of hitherto undreamed-of violence is generated”.

Leslie Groves.jpg

This disclosure we can assume spread among the SS and Wehrmacht hierarchy, quickly reaching Hitler’s ears. This leak was also known in America and caused much embarrassment to those like Major General Leslie Groves, who was directing America’s nuclear program, the Manhattan Project.

Hardly by coincidence, a few days after the German newspaper account Hitler had “enlarged upon his fears” regarding “this new explosive” with the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu at the Wolf’s Lair (on 5 August 1944).

Hitler’s knowledge of the potential of atomic weapons is very likely to have predated August 1944. Skorzeny writes that in the autumn of 1940 Hitler had “a long discussion on the subject” of nuclear fission with Fritz Todt, the German armaments minister. Following his meeting with Todt, the Nazi leader “thought that the use of atomic energy for military purposes would mean the end of humanity”.

Skorzeny claims that Hitler read a lengthy paper on nuclear fission produced in 1942 by Werner Heisenberg, Germany’s Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist. Furthermore, in late February 1942 Heisenberg conducted a lecture in front of Third Reich government officials at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin. The subject matter included the awesome potential of nuclear fission, and at this lecture he spoke in layman’s language that any ordinary citizen could grasp. Among what Heisenberg said was, “Pure uranium-235 is thus seen to be an explosive of quite unimagineable force”. U-235 is one of the common isotopes used in nuclear weapons production.

Heisenberg’s comments were most probably relayed to Hitler in some form. Among those in attendance at the Heisenberg lecture was Bernhard Rust, an incorrigible Nazi and the Reich minister “for science, education and national culture”. Rust was well known to Hitler for many years, and his membership of the Nazi Party dated as far back as 1922. Hitler was acquainted with Heisenberg too, and the dictator had repeatedly met other eminent scientists like Nobel Prize winners Philipp Lenard and Max Planck, while he also had discussions on rocket technology with Von Braun, such as in early 1943.

Skorzeny recalls, “As well I might describe a personal experience”, which comprises his meeting with Hitler of 22 October 1944. He recounts that Hitler said to him,

“Even if the radioactivity were controlled and then nuclear fission used as a weapon, the effects would still be horrible. When Dr. Todt was with me, I read that such a device with controlled radioactivity would release energy that would leave behind devastation which could only be compared with the meteors that fell in Arizona and near Lake Baikal in Siberia… That would be the Apocalypse”.

On the morning of 30 June 1908, an asteroid hundreds of feet in diameter blew up in mid-air about 600 miles north-west of Lake Baikal. Its explosive impact is often estimated to have been the equivalent of 10 to 15 megatons of force, making it possibly 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. This Siberian asteroid, known as the “Tunguska event”, flattened an area of around 2,000 square kilometres. Today, New York and its boroughs consist of less than 800 square kilometres, meaning that New York would have been annihilated more than twice over by this asteroid.

Nearly 50,000 years ago, a meteor slammed into the northern Arizona desert, leaving behind a crater more than one kilometre wide and just shy of 600 feet deep. This meteor impact zone remains almost perfectly preserved to current times, and is visible from space. It seems plausible that these events can only be compared to a nuclear conflict.

Such is the nature of an all-powerful dictatorship like Hitler’s, that information resembling anything of importance, sometimes even trivial details, are very often forwarded to the autocrat in charge. Those working under the dictator fear, quite reasonably, that their failure to pass on vital material may rebound upon them through severe retribution, should their silence or withholding of information be discovered. There may also be the need to score points and win Hitler’s personal favour, which was greatly sought after.

This is not the case in a democracy to the same degree, where occasionally the most critical developments have been concealed from the president, such as in America. Harry Truman was unaware of the possibility of our earth’s atmosphere igniting, following the fateful atomic test of 16 July 1945. Enrico Fermi, America’s chief nuclear physicist, estimated a 10% chance that the earth would be destroyed after the atomic blast. Fermi was not joking as is sometimes thought, and he feared that the intense heat released from the bomb could cause ignition with our planet’s elements, spreading globally and wiping out everything.

This was all kept secret from the blissfully unaware president Truman, who was present in Germany at the time for the Potsdam Conference, and impatiently awaiting news of what he hoped would be a successful atomic test. Scientists working on the US nuclear program, and also military personnel like Major General Groves, had kept their fears secret from Truman relating to the detonation.

In a democracy those working in the background can obscure details from their leader, knowing that they could never be put to death for their misdemeanours, or even endure imprisonment and scrutiny. Moreover, before long a president is either voted out of office, or departs at the end of his or her tenure. A dictatorship lasts indefinitely, and this ever-lasting spectre induces further psychological effects.

As Albert Speer notes in his postwar writings, Hitler was made aware in June 1942 of the possibility of an uncontrollable chain reaction occurring following an atomic blast. Heisenberg also informed Speer, who subsequently told Hitler, that the German scientist was unable to rule out with complete certainty the feared chain reaction, in the aftermath of exploding such a device.

Hitler was “plainly not delighted” with the risks involved in taking that hazardous route, and the Nazi A-bomb program was disbanded forever in the autumn of 1942, as Speer revealed. The chance of it ever succeeding was highly unlikely anyway, due to enemy bombing raids, lack of funding and time constraints.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Trump administration has failed to make protection decisions for dozens of imperiled species as promised in a workplan developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in late 2016. The plan aims to address a backlog of more than 500 species awaiting protection, including the wolverine and the Sierra Nevada Red Fox.

In total, the administration failed to designate protected critical habitat or to make decisions about whether species should be added to the threatened or endangered lists for 46 species in fiscal year 2019, which ended Sept. 30. This is the third straight year the administration has fallen behind on the backlog of wildlife needing protection.

“Scientists across the world are sounding the alarm over the extinction crisis, yet the Trump administration won’t even let the fire trucks out of the station,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “To have any chance at survival, these species need protection, not more delay.”

Overall, the Trump administration has only protected 19 species and only three in all of fiscal year 2019. This is the lowest of any administration at this point in their term.

The 46 species occur in more than 20 states from Florida to Washington and face a plethora of threats.

The secretive black rail, for example, is rapidly losing coastal marshes along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts to sea level rise and development. Whitebark pine is losing its high mountain habitats across the west to climate change and being decimated by an introduced disease. And the yellow-billed cuckoo has lost the streamside cottonwood forests where it lives to the multitude of threats to western rivers, from dams to cows to overuse.

“The double whammy of habitat destruction and climate change is putting species across the country in jeopardy,” said Greenwald. “The Endangered Species Act has saved 99 percent of species under its protection and it can save these plants and animals too, but only if they get the protection they need.”

Scientists recently determined that North America has lost as many as three billion birds in the last 50 years, with many common species having undergone severe declines. One interesting finding of this study is that waterfowl, which have strong regulatory protections for their habitat, actually increased. Likewise, most birds protected under the Endangered Species Act are also stable or improving.

“Despite claims to the contrary from the Trump administration and its polluting industry benefactors, strong laws to protect our land, air, water and wildlife work, particularly if enforced,” said Greenwald. “We’ll definitely go to court to make sure these species get the protection they’re due.”

Table 1. Forty-six species that didn’t get protection decisions in fiscal year 2019.


Key    

  • 12M: 12-month finding determining if species warrants listing
  • PL: Proposed listing
  • FL: Final listing
  • PCH: Proposed critical habitat
  • FCH: Final critical habitat
  • Candidate species: A species that has been found to warrant protection, but is waitlisted
  • 4(d): A rule defining prohibited activities for a threatened species

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Victoire Ingabire was born in Rwanda in 1968, is an economist and mother of 3 children. She leads the opposition party to the dictatorship of her home country, the Unified Democratic Forces (FDU-Inkingi) since 2006. Violence in the African Great Lakes region prevented her return to Rwanda from the Netherlands and remained exiled since 1994 to 2010.

Her courage and concerns led her to create various organizations for the promotion of human and women’s rights. She was a founding member of various civil society initiatives in the Netherlands as an NGO CODAC (whose objective is to morally, legally and materially support exiled persons from the Great Lakes region and create spaces for coexistence and relationship through sport and culture); URAHO NGO (gathers Rwandan women living in the Netherlands and helps them integrate into their new environment, takes care of orphans and asylum procedures); PROJUSTITIA FUNDACIÓ RWANDA (fight for justice for all victims of the Rwandan tragedy); HARAMBE (platform of associations of African women committed to promotion and development in the Netherlands). In addition, she is a member of the board of ZWALU (platform of women’s associations fighting for their emancipation).

Among the actions that bear their mark, the conference in Amsterdam (2004) that brought together all political organizations and all representative structures of civil society in the African Great Lakes region should be highlighted. Along the same lines, in 2005 she promoted a series of meetings between Rwandan civil society organizations and opposition organizations to design a common front against Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan president accused of crimes against humanity.

Since its inception, Ingabire is committed to the Inter-Rwandan Dialogue (DIR) that has been developing over ten editions, held in locations such as El Masnou, (Barcelona), Palma de Mallorca, Amsterdam (Netherlands), Washignton (USA) or Kinshasa (DR Congo). She has actively participated in the Barcelona edition, facilitated by Aequitas-Center for Mediation and Peaceful Conflict Resolution, under the auspices of Adolfo Pérez-Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize. She promoted and participated in the women’s edition held in El Masnou (2008) as well as in the one held in Mallorca (2009). Ingabire advocates the role of women in the peace and reconciliation processes to heal the aftermath of the Rwandan genocides.

In 2010, Ingabire returned to Rwanda to run for presidential elections. Upon arrival, she appealed for the recognition of all the victims and asked the perpetrators of the massacres to report to the courts. The Kigali government accused her of treason and denial of genocide and was imprisoned. After a trial without guarantees – condemned by Human Rights Watch and the European Commission – she was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Her case was seen in the African Court of Human Rights, who in November 2017 acknowledged that Ingabire had not had a fair trial in Rwanda and demanded that the Rwandan government release it and repair the damage caused to its person within a period of 6 months from the date of the trial. The Court ruled that Ingabire had not denied or minimized the genocide and that her criticism of the government should have been allowed under the freedom of expression that Rwandan justice observes. President Paul Kagame pardoned her in September 2018 but has not taken any reparation measures.

During the first months of imprisonment in Kigali, Ingabire wrote a book in which she recounts her return to Rwanda, the trial and her subsequent imprisonment as well as her thoughts and convictions. We reproduce below some quotes from the Spanish version of Rwanda. Between the four walls of the 1930 (Ediciones Trabe, Oviedo 2016):

“I decide to return to my beloved homeland, not out of ambition, but out of conviction […] We must work alongside those who seek to end the cycles of violence that have always accompanied the struggle for power in Rwanda.”

“I come for peace and it is this peace that will guide my political action to eradicate injustice and to break all the chains that are imprisoning us.”

“We want a peaceful liberation, without a new bloodshed.”

“Wake up, give up fear and let us free peacefully. Together we will win! ”

Victoire Ingabire, known as the “Rwandan Mandela” is not allowed to incur the elections nor can any opposition party. The current president fulfills his fifth term, and modified the constitution to perpetuate himself in power. We believe that Ingabire deserves international public recognition and we are convinced that the award would contribute to honoring their struggle, to persevere in their cause, to protect their integrity and that of their alliance. Making your case visible would open up new possibilities for reconciliation and peace reconstruction of a new Rwanda and would be a relevant example for other open peace processes. It would also give hope to the Rwandan groups that remain in exile in Europe and America.

Her link with Spain was born with the action of justice presented by associations before the National Court for crimes against humanity that include victims such as Quim Vallmajó, and eight other cooperators and missionaries. The relationship is deepened with the celebration in El Masnou and Mallorca of two editions of the Inter-Rwandan Dialogue facilitated by Spanish entities. We believe that the fight against impunity and the search for objective truth are fundamental to lay the foundations for reconciliation and the contribution of peace, objectives for which Victoire Ingabire has committed politically but also personally.

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Turkey began on October 9 its illegal offensive in northern Syria to expel terrorist organizations, primarily the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and the Islamic State according to Ankara, away from the Turkish border and to establish a safe zone in the northeast of the country to accommodate some of the millions of Syrian refugees currently in Turkey. However, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has raised some interesting questions and warned of the danger of “reverse migration” of foreign terrorists to their home countries as Turkey has completely ignored prisons and camps holding the jihadists.  

Shoigu revealed at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum yesterday that 12 jails and eight camps holding Islamic State terrorists and their family members have been left unattended by the Turkish military which “can lead to a surge of so-called reverse migration of terrorists back to their homeland.” In this context, he called on the international community to join forces to “face the challenges posed by terrorists, their ideology and propaganda.”

Shoigu then revealed that the Islamic State is now expanding into Southeast Asia after their defeat in Syria, specifically mentioning Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and partly Thailand as part of their so-called ‘caliphate.’ Although just a few years ago terrorism “was not considered a major threat” to the countries of Asia-Pacific, “today in the region there is the activity of numerous extremist groups of which about 60 are classified as terrorists.”

“The Russian Ministry of Defense has enormous experience in this area, which we are willing to share with our partners in the Asia-Pacific region,” the Russian minister said, before he cited terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka in April 2019 as an example of the revived threat in the region, which had been relatively dormant for several years. “High activity of extremist organizations is now registered in the region, around 60 of such have been designated as terrorist groups,” the minister added.

Southeast Asia has been directly targeted by the Islamic State’s global strategy, with the number of fighters, suicide bombers, organized training programs, and propaganda videos originating from the region growing steadily over the years, despite not having a claim to physical territory anymore, explained Foreign Affairs magazine. With widespread reports that thousands of imprisoned Islamic State fighters are being ignored by Turkish-backed forces when they drive out the SDF from a certain area, Shoigu is correct to show concern that these fighters will flock to Southeast Asia when they escape from Syria.

Along with the devastating attack in Sri Lanka, in the Catholic-majority Philippines, the Islamic State has shown boldness and willingness to take on the Filipino military when it invaded the Muslim-majority southern city of Marawi on May 23, 2017 with government forces not taking the city back until exactly five months later. With this attack, along with vast network and experience terrorist organizations based in Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia have, Shoigu is not incorrect to assume that Southeast Asia will become a terrorist hotspot because of Turkey’s irresponsible behaviour with the imprisoned Islamic State fighters who have gained vast experience in Syria.

The Russian Defense Minister declared that Russia is willing to dialogue with the U.S. to ensure strategic stability as the current level of relations between the two major nuclear powers is unacceptably low, and although Washington are yet to respond to his expression of dialogue, addressing the security threat that released Islamic State fighters can have in Asia-Pacific must be a priority.

Although Turkey insists it is also fighting against the Islamic State in northeast Syria, there is little evidence it has done so, and rather its operation has been proven to be against primarily the SDF, led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that Ankara recognizes as a terrorist organization. This is especially apparent as the Islamic State do not have an active presence in the northeast of Syria, and rather the only presence were the fighters and their families interned by the Kurdish forces.

The Russian Defense Ministry released information in December 2015 that alleges the Erdogan family was engaging in blood oil deals with the Islamic State. This would not be too far away in the mind of Shoigu. With it known that Turkey has maintained close links with the Islamic State, it must be rejected that they have a concern on the status of Islamic State fighters considering the country was the main gateway for foreign jihadists to enter Syria. An Islamic State commander told The Washington Post on August 12, 2014 that “Most of the fighters who joined us in the beginning of the war came via Turkey, and so did our equipment and supplies,” along with high-level members of the Islamic State getting treatment in Turkish hospitals. This is just one such example of Turkey providing support for the Islamic State that also includes providing intelligence, weapons, training, organization, finance, transportation and others.

With these deep relations between Islamic State and Turkey, there is little chance that Turkey will prevent terrorists from escaping prisons formerly controlled by the YPG. These radical fighters would be seeking a new jihad, and with over 60 jihadist groups in Southeast Asia, and showing a lot of potential as the Sri Lanka attacks and the invasion of Marawi demonstrates, this could be the next location for the international terrorists to conduct their jihad. This would not be an inevitable consequence of Turkey’s operation in northern Syria, but rather a known fact by the Turkish leadership. To what purpose Turkey is doing this is unknown, but there is little doubt it will have devastating affects on Southeast Asia as these Islamic State fighters bring with them a vast wealth of knowledge and experience from fighting in Syria that can embolden jihadists across the region.

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

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October 1, 2019, was the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. We were interested in visiting China during a time when there was a huge national celebration of what we consider an unprecedented accomplishment in human history: China has met the basic material needs of its 1.4 billion population. The lives and expectations of the average person have been transformed. This revolutionary accomplishment deserves to be applauded.

The 100 prior years of colonial-style looting, unequal treaties and military occupation — a national humiliation — had reduced China to a country of staggering poverty, famines, social chaos, enforced underdevelopment and constant wars.

The first thing we took note of was that countless signs, parade themes, TV programs and most of the messaging for the anniversary reminded people that it was the firm leadership of the Chinese Communist Party that made the transformation into a united, well-organized and modern but still developing society possible. That was the core message.

Another message was of China’s 5,000-year history. For millennia it was one of the most advanced societies in culture, art and technology. This was continually raised to promote self-reliance and build modern socialism with Chinese characteristics.

We experienced two weeks of tremendous national pride. There was a great deal of discussion, everywhere that we could see, of what needed to be strengthened, what were the challenges and how to cope with still uneven development.

Siu Hin Lee, a Chinese activist who has taken several solidarity delegations to China, was tireless in personally explaining and translating so much of this experience. Lee is national coordinator of the Action LA/National Immigrant Solidarity Network and the China-US Solidarity Network.

Communicating in China

Information technology has transformed China even faster than our internet links in the West. The great majority of people seem to always have their phones in hand.

In China everyone uses the app WeChat for texting, calls, photos, videos, calling cabs, grocery shopping, metro fares and schedules, movie listings, exchanging contact information and discussion groups. Literally every social and financial transaction needs only a phone tap. Huawei centers look much like Apple centers in the U.S. Large display tables of telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics, including the newest smartphones, are surrounded by hundreds of young shoppers comparing equipment.

Since China’s hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games, street signs, subway maps and numerous restaurant menus are also in English. More than 300 million people have studied and are English-language learners. English classes are now mandatory for all Chinese K-12 students.

By comparison, there are only 200,000 K-12 students learning Mandarin in the U.S., less than 0.4 percent. Only 20 percent of U.S. students study any world language. (U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 16, 2016)

We found lots of discussion groups and genuine interest in talking with U.S. leftists, especially now as U.S. corporate and political hostility increases everyday.

It was not difficult to meet with people who have studied and traveled in the U.S. and have some grasp of its technological development, but have also seen first hand the inequality and racism.

More than 4.5 million Chinese students have studied in Western universities. Currently there are 360,000 Chinese students studying in the U.S., although China graduates more students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) from their own universities than the rest of the world combined. This sharp rise in educational standards and expertise in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population was formerly illiterate is another source of national pride.

We met with a group of left cyberactivists who are interested in more left-generated material from the U.S. and want to share some of their journals and views. It is not easy to figure out good translations that go both ways, but there is interest in making that happen.

A lot is going on in environmental arenas. We talked with the editor of a green living journal and with a turbine mechanic who works at a wind farm. Some of the most interesting environmental efforts are happening in newly designed second-tier cities, not only in the older megacities of Beijing and  Shanghai.

We met with the Beijing City Friendship Association that has worked for decades to build friendly relations and exchanges. We had an evening discussion with a group of youth involved in the finance field, educated in the U.S. and working for big investment firms because they are expert math and software techies. But they are also socially aware.

In order to better understand China’s revolutionary history we visited the site of the 1921 founding convention of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai; the Yuhua Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery and Museum at Nanjing that highlighted the thousands of youth, aged 15 to 26, who died in the liberation struggle; and the Military and Revolution Museum in Beijing. All these sites were packed with large, excited delegations of the Communist Youth League. These were not stuffy or ignored museums.

Fundamental shift in U.S./China relations

There have been countless exchanges with China for the last four decades, with U.S. corporate investors, government agencies, scientific researchers and think-tank academics. China wants to continue these exchanges. But powerful forces in the U.S., both Republicans and Democrats, are determined to exert heavy political, military and economic pressures on China to undermine state planning and state-owned industries.

However, U.S. hostility appears to most sharply undercut Chinese capitalists, who have benefited disproportionately from the past four decades of opening to Western investment. This is the one grouping who, in their own self-interest, might have been most willing to concede to U.S. trade demands.

Many people we met in China raised the significance of meeting us now. The new U.S. sanctions on the state-owned Chinese freight fleet Cosco — the largest in the world with more than 1,000 cargo ships and 100 super tankers — hit just after we arrived.

These far-reaching sanctions, along with the escalating military threats going back to Obama’s military Asia Pivot, and now Trump’s trade war, confirm that U.S.-China relations are fundamentally shifting. The increasingly violent U.S.-backed Hong Kong protests confirm this.

The arrests of Chinese executives, and the purging of Chinese cancer researchers and other scientists working in U.S. universities, have sent out shock waves. The FBI “visits” to many Chinese students in the U.S. are dampening interest in studying here.

China’s 21st-century Shanghai

Shanghai — three times the size of New York City — is almost surreal and unbelievably modern on a grand scale. There is spectacular architecture. But what was most impressive was to be in such a dense city and see no litter or graffiti. We did see miles of new high-rise housing in every direction, always surrounded by parks.

Sixteen new subway lines, with hundreds of connecting stations, have been built in the last 20 years. The stations are beautifully designed, with escalators and elevators, clear signage, well-marked and clean connecting lines, staffed bathrooms in every station. In fact there were clean public bathrooms everywhere, usually within close walking distance, in the three cities we visited.

There were lots of funny videos on the metro trains, reinforcing passenger etiquette and safe conduct. We traveled mainly on the metro and quiet, smooth electric buses.

Being accustomed to seeing homeless and desperate people on almost every block in U.S. cities, this was not our experience in the streets, subways, plazas or many neighborhoods in China. We did find a huge variety of food shops, fruit stands, snack bars and coffee shops.

Unfortunately, there seem to be almost as many Starbucks here as in New York City. There are a total of 4,000 Starbucks in China and lots of other U.S. fast food chains.

Contradictions abound! Every corporate brand of clothes, shoes and designer items in the world seems to have flagship stores in big shopping malls and big ads in Shanghai and Beijing streets. Probably most of these goods are made in Chinese factories.

Consumerism on a grand scale is actually part of the national plan to raise the standard of living and consumption. Electric bikes are available everywhere with the tap of a phone. The stores, kiosks, markets, bakeries, cafes, local artisans, music venues and hangout places for youth are all socially encouraged and seem to have increased faster than subway lines.

But red flags and the red signs of the Revolution’s 70th anniversary were also everywhere.

In this new period, the strong focus is on totally ending poverty and providing a “moderately prosperous society for all.” At this stage of development this does not mean equality. There are extremely wealthy multimillionaires in China. They are protected, even though they are monitored, along with a sustained policy of encouraging as much Western investment as possible. Yet Maoism is still a strong undercurrent of political life here. People often express a healthy suspicion about the current level of privilege.

China’s leaders are very careful to continually say this is not yet socialism, but they are building toward socialism and still face very uneven development. The focus is on improving interconnected and harmonious national planning.

On our way to Beijing for the Revolution’s anniversary

On Sept. 28, we took a high-speed train from Shanghai to Nanjing and a Sept. 29 overnight to Beijing. Nothing in our U.S. experience had prepared us for these enormous modern stations or trains. U.S. transportation seems a century behind.

From the windows, we saw many construction projects. In every town we zipped past there was older two, three, even five-story housing as well as tall modern apartment blocks, almost all with balconies and big windows. A forest of construction cranes showed that far more buildings are still under construction.

Tree planting is happening on a vast scale, both in cities and in open spaces between cities and towns. Judging from the size of the trees, much has taken place in the past two to four years. These plantings will be green forests in a few more years.

When we arrived in Beijing, we could see that China’s capital had been transformed by preparations for the Revolution’s anniversary. The city was awash in red flags that adorn every building.

With most stores closing for the national holiday, people are rushing to do last-minute shopping as we walk around for a last-minute personal look.

Red slogans were all over billboards and subways: “Listen to the Party, win every fight! Keep good moral character! Serve the People, train hard, keep a positive manner” were just a few. The characters for the 24 core Chinese socialist values were repeated on thousands of street flags.

Along with police, there were 78,000 proud young volunteers organized by the Communist Youth League wearing red armbands. They helped direct metro crowds and were vigilant at public buildings. There were lots of senior volunteers, also with red armbands, comfortably seated in chairs in front of buildings.

News coverage of Hong Kong protesters setting fires at metro station entrances and platforms heightened transportation precautions. Security was a high priority. Bag checks and scans, like at airports, were at every metro entrance. But the checks go seamlessly fast. There was a collective determination not to let this celebration be disrupted.

The zone for the parade and the evening’s spectacle was cordoned off for blocks, as equipment and units moved into place in Tian’anmen Square.

Later we and over a billion people watched the military and civilian parades and the evening celebration on TV. Access and participation in the actual parade was of course limited and a highly sought honor. But even on TV, on millions of handheld devices and on big screens, as people watched in big crowds, it was a long day of incredible pageantry and patriotism. Our guide Siu Hin Lee translated and explained what we were viewing. There was lots of commentary on WeChat discussion groups of the meaning and significance of different parade contingents.

Parades, fireworks, history and patriotism

Patriotism has a repugnant feel in the center of U.S. imperialism. It is coated in layers of chauvinism, jingoism and racism. It is embraced by right-wing and white supremacist forces and dragged out with fervor as part of war mobilizations.

But patriotism has an entirely different dimension in an oppressed country where a people’s movement has struggled to break free and resist domination. The 70th anniversary celebration on Oct. 1 was clearly intended to send a strong political message to the people of China and to the imperialist forces demanding that China change course.

The celebration opened with a short talk by President Xi Jinping, who encouraged the Chinese people to stay true to the “original mission” of the party and continue the revolutionary struggle. Xi made a political point to visit Chairman Mao Zedong’s tomb the day before the celebration. Xi has increasingly invoked Mao and the spirit of the Long March and the revolutionary victory of 1949.

Xi did not specifically mention any country by name, but he defiantly declared: “There is no force that can shake the foundation of this great nation. … No force can stop the Chinese people and the Chinese nation forging ahead.” He emphasized that China would continue to pursue peaceful development.

The purpose of the military parade that followed was clearly to send a message of determined and well-prepared defense. Chinese media said the review showcased 160 aircraft and 580 pieces of new military technology, including drones and missiles. Some 40 percent of the armaments were displayed in public for the first time.

On display were units with ground-to-air anti-aircraft missiles, long-range and short-range missiles on trucks, sea-to-air missiles and tactical nuclear missiles. There were tanks and helicopter units, radar, info warfare and telecommunications divisions, a unit with mini-submarines and a unit with drones of every size. After logistics units and medical support units, finally came soldiers marching in military units; 15,000 military personnel participated.

The civilian part of the parade was far larger and longer, although it received no attention in Western media. It had 18 different contingents with themes, each with over 1,000 people, highlighting an event of the last 70 years. The civilian section opened with thousands, dressed in red, carrying a giant picture of Mao and enormous signs: “Firmly support Mao ideology.”

The next units were listed as “People, rise up and become masters of the land” and “Praise to the youth, liberate choice and love.”

This was followed by a smaller contingent in yellow (not red) with a big picture of Deng Xiaoping, the 1979 reforms and the opening to Western investment, followed by a unit in praise of reforms. This placement seemed intended to give a harmonious sweep to tumultuous historical eras.

That sequence ended with thematic groups, such as One Country, Two Systems, with people from Hong Kong and Macau, and one on President Xi and his theme of Rejuvenation by strengthening socialist planning.

Next was a section titled Forward Thinking, with separate contingents emphasizing innovation, scientific progress, development of rural areas, lifting rural areas from poverty, unifying ethnic minorities and Chinese cultural pride. The unit titled “A beautiful life” included people with disabilities and buses of seniors.

Then came giant floats from many cities and regions. At the very end was a contingent of the future — 5,000 Communist Young Pioneers.

‘Me and My Country’

As the parade finished at noon, we were fortunate to get tickets to a new patriotic movie made for the 70th anniversary and playing in theaters across China, “Me and My Country.” This moving film consisted of six personal vignettes of ordinary individuals and their participation in key accomplishments since the 1949 Revolution.

We watched the movie at a packed film center in a huge five-level megamall in downtown Beijing. Every global brand name in cosmetics, clothing, shoes and fast foods seemed to have a shop there. Contradictions again!

We rushed from the movie with huge crowds all trying to get close enough to the evening program in Tian’anmen Square to see the fireworks. All around us people were using phones to watch the elaborate celebration at the square.

This program involved tens of thousands of people in a choreographed extravaganza with sparkling flash cards, a huge orchestra and firework displays between sets. The theme was “New sky, new land, new era!” A favorite old song, with the same name as the film we saw, “Me and My Country,” was the background music.

The day’s program ended with “Praise for the People!” written in fireworks of Chinese characters.

The next day, Oct. 2, Tian’anmen Square was opened to the general public. Though the parade was finished, the celebration continued.

It was a holiday, and we walked to the square with hundreds of thousands of people, many dressed in red, waving flags. Thousands of young people had their faces painted or stickered with PRC red flags. People were cheering and waving and had children on their shoulders and in strollers. Of course, everyone was taking pictures and watching videos of the previous day.

We have so much to process and think about since our return. The U.S. attacks on China are not likely to recede. China is determined to reinforce its core values and its revolutionary gains.

We all need to learn much more.

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Politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths. I think you would find no expert in the field of sociopathy/psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder who would dispute this… That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience was and is a bitter pill for our society to swallow — but it does explain a great many things, shamelessly deceitful political behavior being one.”—Dr. Martha Stout, clinical psychologist and former instructor at Harvard Medical School

Twenty years ago, a newspaper headline asked the question: “What’s the difference between a politician and a psychopath?

The answer, then and now, remains the same: None.

There is no difference between psychopaths and politicians.

Nor is there much of a difference between the havoc wreaked on innocent lives by uncaring, unfeeling, selfish, irresponsible, parasitic criminals and elected officials who lie to their constituents, trade political favors for campaign contributions, turn a blind eye to the wishes of the electorate, cheat taxpayers out of hard-earned dollars, favor the corporate elite, entrench the military industrial complex, and spare little thought for the impact their thoughtless actions and hastily passed legislation might have on defenseless citizens.

Psychopaths and politicians both have a tendency to be selfish, callous, remorseless users of others, irresponsible, pathological liars, glib, con artists, lacking in remorse and shallow.

Charismatic politicians, like criminal psychopaths, exhibit a failure to accept responsibility for their actions, have a high sense of self-worth, are chronically unstable, have socially deviant lifestyles, need constant stimulation, have parasitic lifestyles and possess unrealistic goals.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans.

Political psychopaths are all largely cut from the same pathological cloth, brimming with seemingly easy charm and boasting calculating minds. Such leaders eventually create pathocracies: totalitarian societies bent on power, control, and destruction of both freedom in general and those who exercise their freedoms.

Once psychopaths gain power, the result is usually some form of totalitarian government or a pathocracy.

“At that point, the government operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups,” author James G. Long notes. “We are currently witnessing deliberate polarizations of American citizens, illegal actions, and massive and needless acquisition of debt. This is typical of psychopathic systems, and very similar things happened in the Soviet Union as it overextended and collapsed.”

In other words, electing a psychopath to public office is tantamount to national hara-kiri, the ritualized act of self-annihilation, self-destruction and suicide. It signals the demise of democratic government and lays the groundwork for a totalitarian regime that is legalistic, militaristic, inflexible, intolerant and inhuman.

Incredibly, despite clear evidence of the damage that has already been inflicted on our nation and its citizens by a psychopathic government, voters continue to elect psychopaths to positions of power and influence.

According to investigative journalist Zack Beauchamp,

“In 2012, a group of psychologists evaluated every President from Washington to Bush II using ‘psychopathy trait estimates derived from personality data completed by historical experts on each president.’ They found that presidents tended to have the psychopath’s characteristic fearlessness and low anxiety levels — traits that appear to help Presidents, but also might cause them to make reckless decisions that hurt other people’s lives.”

The willingness to prioritize power above all else, including the welfare of their fellow human beings, ruthlessness, callousness and an utter lack of conscience are among the defining traits of the sociopath.

When our own government no longer sees us as human beings with dignity and worth but as things to be manipulated, maneuvered, mined for data, manhandled by police, conned into believing it has our best interests at heart, mistreated, jailed if we dare step out of line, and then punished unjustly without remorse—all the while refusing to own up to its failings—we are no longer operating under a constitutional republic.

Instead, what we are experiencing is a pathocracy: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.”

Worse, psychopathology is not confined to those in high positions of government. It can spread like a virusamong the populace. As an academic study into pathocracy concluded, “[T]yranny does not flourish because perpetuators are helpless and ignorant of their actions. It flourishes because they actively identify with those who promote vicious acts as virtuous.”

People don’t simply line up and salute. It is through one’s own personal identification with a given leader, party or social order that they become agents of good or evil.

Much depends on how leaders “cultivate a sense of identification with their followers,” says Professor Alex Haslam.

“I mean one pretty obvious thing is that leaders talk about ‘we’ rather than ‘I,’ and actually what leadership is about is cultivating this sense of shared identity about ‘we-ness’ and then getting people to want to act in terms of that ‘we-ness,’ to promote our collective interests. . . . [We] is the single word that has increased in the inaugural addresses over the last century . . . and the other one is ‘America.’”

The goal of the modern corporate state is obvious: to promote, cultivate, and embed a sense of shared identification among its citizens. To this end, “we the people” have become “we the police state.”

We are fast becoming slaves in thrall to a faceless, nameless, bureaucratic totalitarian government machine that relentlessly erodes our freedoms through countless laws, statutes, and prohibitions.

Any resistance to such regimes depends on the strength of opinions in the minds of those who choose to fight back. What this means is that we the citizenry must be very careful that we are not manipulated into marching in lockstep with an oppressive regime.

Writing for ThinkProgress, Beauchamp suggests that “one of the best cures to bad leaders may very well be political democracy.”

But what does this really mean in practical terms?

It means holding politicians accountable for their actions and the actions of their staff using every available means at our disposal: through investigative journalism (what used to be referred to as the Fourth Estate) that enlightens and informs, through whistleblower complaints that expose corruption, through lawsuits that challenge misconduct, and through protests and mass political action that remind the powers-that-be that “we the people” are the ones that call the shots.

Remember, education precedes action. Citizens need to the do the hard work of educating themselves about what the government is doing and how to hold it accountable. Don’t allow yourselves to exist exclusively in an echo chamber that is restricted to views with which you agree. Expose yourself to multiple media sources, independent and mainstream, and think for yourself.

For that matter, no matter what your political leanings might be, don’t allow your partisan bias to trump the principles that serve as the basis for our constitutional republic. As Beauchamp notes, “A system that actually holds people accountable to the broader conscience of society may be one of the best ways to keep conscienceless people in check.”

That said, if we allow the ballot box to become our only means of pushing back against the police state, the battle is already lost.

Resistance will require a citizenry willing to be active at the local level.

Yet as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if you wait to act until the SWAT team is crashing through your door, until your name is placed on a terror watch list, until you are reported for such outlawed activities as collecting rainwater or letting your children play outside unsupervised, then it will be too late.

This much I know: we are not faceless numbers. We are not cogs in the machine. We are not slaves.

We are human beings, and for the moment, we have the opportunity to remain free—that is, if we tirelessly advocate for our rights and resist at every turn attempts by the government to place us in chains.

The Founders understood that our freedoms do not flow from the government. They were not given to us only to be taken away by the will of the State. They are inherently ours. In the same way, the government’s appointed purpose is not to threaten or undermine our freedoms, but to safeguard them.

Until we can get back to this way of thinking, until we can remind our fellow Americans what it really means to be free, and until we can stand firm in the face of threats to our freedoms, we will continue to be treated like slaves in thrall to a bureaucratic police state run by political psychopaths.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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Erdogan vuole la Bomba

October 22nd, 2019 by Manlio Dinucci

«Alcuni paesi hanno missili nucleari, ma l’Occidente insiste che noi non possiamo averli. Ciò è inaccettabile»: questa dichiarazione del presidente Erdogan rivela che la crisi va al di là di quella apertasi con l’offensiva turca in Siria.

In Turchia, durante la guerra fredda, gli Usa schierarono armi nucleari contro l’Unione Sovietica. Nel 1962, negli accordi con l’Urss per la soluzione della crisi dei missili a Cuba, il presidente Kennedy promise di rimuovere tali armi dalla Turchia, ma ciò non fu fatto. Finita la guerra fredda, sono rimaste in Turchia, nella base aerea di Incirlik, circa 50 bombe nucleari Usa B61 (le stesse schierate in Italia ad Aviano e Ghedi), dirette principalmente contro la Russia.

In tal modo sia gli Usa che la Turchia violano il Trattato di non-proliferazione. Piloti turchi, nel quadro della Nato, sono addestrati (come i piloti italiani della base di Ghedi) all’attacco con bombe nucleari B61 sotto comando Usa. Tra non molto, le B61 dovrebbero essere sostituite dagli Usa anche in Turchia (come sarà fatto in Italia e altri paesi europei) con le nuove bombe nucleari B61-12, anch’esse dirette principalmente contro la Russia.

Nel frattempo però, dopo l’acquisto turco di missili antiaerei russi S-400, gli Usa hanno rimosso la Turchia dal programma dell’F-35, principale vettore delle B61-12: il caccia di cui la Turchia avrebbe dovuto acquistare 100 esemplari e di cui era coproduttrice. «L’F-35 – ha dichiarato la Casa Bianca – non può coesistere col sistema antiaereo S-400, che può essere utilizzato per conoscere le capacità del caccia», ossia può essere usato dalla Russia per rafforzare le difese contro l’F-35. Fornendo  ad Ankara i missili antiaerei S-400, Mosca è riuscita a impedire  (almeno per ora) che sul territorio turco siano schierati 100 F-35 pronti all’attacco con le nuove bombe nucleari Usa B61-12.

Appare a questo punto probabile che, tra le opzioni considerate a Washington, vi sia quella del trasferimento delle armi nucleari Usa dalla Turchia in un altro paese più affidabile. Secondo l’autorevole Bollettino degli Scienziati Atomici (Usa), «la base aerea di Aviano può essere la migliore opzione europea dal punto di vista politico, ma probabilmente non ha abbastanza spazio per ricevere tutte le armi nucleari di Incirlik». Lo spazio si potrebbe però ricavare, dato che ad Aviano sono già iniziati lavori di ristrutturazione per accogliere le bombe nucleari B61-12.

Su questo sfondo si colloca la dichiarazione di Erdogan che, facendo leva anche sulla presenza minacciosa dell’arsenale nucleare israeliano, annuncia l’intenzione turca di avere proprie armi nucleari. Progetto non facile, ma non irrealizzabile. La Turchia dispone di avanzate  tecnologie militari, fornite in particolare da aziende italiane, soprattutto la Leonardo.  Possiede depositi di uranio. Ha esperienza nel campo dei reattori di ricerca, forniti in particolare dagli Usa. Ha avviato la realizzazione di una propria industria elettronucleare, acquistando alcuni reattori da Russia, Giappone, Francia e Cina. Secondo alcune fonti, la Turchia potrebbe essersi già procurata, sul «mercato nero nucleare», centrifughe per l’arricchimento dell’uranio.

L’annuncio di Erdogan che la Turchia vuole divenire una potenza nucleare, interpretato da alcuni come un semplice gioco al rialzo per avere maggiore peso nella Nato, non è quindi da sottovalutare. Esso scopre ciò che in genere viene nascosto nel dibattito mediatico: il fatto che, nella turbolenta situazione provocata dalle politiche di guerra, svolge un ruolo sempre più importante il possesso di armi nucleari, spingendo chi non le possiede a procurarsele.

Manlio Dinucci

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Slow-Motion US/UK Killing of Julian Assange

October 22nd, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Establishment media are in cahoots with US/UK ruling regimes against Assange for the “crime” of truth-telling journalism abhorred in the West — totalitarian rule where these societies are heading.

In mid-October, UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer denounced Assange’s judicial lynching and egregious mistreatment, saying the following:

“What has the man done? He has disclosed an enormous amount of information that governments want to remain secret, most infamously the ‘Collateral Murder’ video, which, in my view, is evidence for war crimes.”

“What is the scandal in this case is that everyone focuses on Julian Assange. Here is someone who exposes evidence for war crimes, including torture and murder, and he is under this constant pressure.”

“I am absolutely convinced he will not receive a fair trial in Virginia, and he will remain in prison under inhumane conditions for the rest of his life.”

Tulsi Gabbard is the only US presidential aspirant expressing support for journalist Assange, as well as whistleblowers Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and others like them, opposing their “prosecution like criminals.”

If elected president, she’d drop charges against them, she said, calling for greater “protect(ion) (of) our civil liberties,” adding:

Assange’s arrest in Britain “poses a great threat to our freedom of the press and to our freedom of speech” — the same true about how Chelsea Manning, Snowden, and other whistleblowers are mistreated.

What happened to them “could happen to you. It could happen to any of us,” she stressed.

Bipartisan politicians in the US and UK, along with establishment media, refuse to support Assange’s struggle for justice.

On Monday, he appeared in London’s Westminster Magistrates Court. Showing the effects of egregious mistreatment since unlawfully dragged from the city’s Ecuadorian embassy and imprisoned under harsh conditions, he was too physically and emotionally shattered to participate in his defense.

He’s an investigative journalist/whistleblower, publishing material supplied by sources believed to be credible, unidentified for their protection.

WikiLeaks is not an intelligence operation. Nor it it connected to Russia or any other country. Claims otherwise are fabricated.

Assange earlier explained that WikiLeaks has the right “to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the US Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true,” he stressed.

US charges against him are fabricated and malicious, what no legitimate tribunal would accept.

Justice Department lawyer James Lewis falsely accused him of “spying,” lied saying he’s “not a journalist,” turned truth on its head claiming his actions were “criminal in both the US and UK” — the above Big Lies how all fascist police states operate.

Assange attorney Mark Summers called for dismissal of Washington’s illegitimate extradition request, saying:

According to the 2003 UK/US extradition treaty, it “shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense,” adding:

The unjustifiable persecution of Assange and Chelsea Manning is “part of an avowed war on whistleblowers to include investigative journalists and publishers.”

Summers requested a three-month delay of Assange’s February 25 extradition hearing because “we need more time” to prepare a proper defense, given the “enormity” of issues involved, requiring “evidence gathering that would test most lawyers.”

Operating as an imperial tool, judge Vanessa Baraitser denied the request, saying the extradition hearing will proceed as schedule on February 25 at Woolwich Magistrates Court near Belmarsh Prison.

Its public gallery has three seats, assuring Assange’s judicial lynching will be virtually closed to public scrutiny.

Barely able to stand and speak after months of barbaric mistreatment, when asked if there’s “anything (he) would like to say, he replied barely audibly that he doesn’t “understand how this is equitable,” adding:

Imperial USA “had 10 years to prepare (its judicial lynching). I can’t remember anything. I can’t access any of my written work.”

“It’s very difficult to do anything with such limited resources against a superpower intent on” an illegitimate crucifixion. “I can’t think properly” from the barbaric ordeal he’s endured.

Baraitser dismissively replied that “conditions of your detainment are not the subject of this court.”

Following the hearing, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson called for the case against Assange to “be thrown out immediately,” adding:

“Not only is it illegal on the face of the (extradition) treaty, the US has conducted illegal operations against Assange and his lawyers which are the subject of a major investigation in Spain.”

John Pilger witnessed Monday’s spectacle, saying

“(t)he whole thing is a grotesque absurdity. There is an extradition law between this country and the United States.”

“It states specifically that someone cannot be extradited if the offenses are political.”

“The source of this is a rogue (US) state — a state that ignores its own laws and international laws and the laws of this country.”

Summers called Assange’s crucifixion “a political attempt to signal to journalists the consequences of publishing information” ruling regimes want suppressed.

“It’s legally unprecedented…part of an avowed war on (truth-telling) whistleblowers to include investigative journalists and publishers.”

In cahoots with the Trump regime, police state Britain is killing Assange slowly, wanting him, whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, and other truth-tellers silenced.

What’s going on is the hallmark of totalitarian rule – controlling the message, eliminating what conflicts with it, notably on major geopolitical issues.

Losing the right of free expression endangers all others. When truth-telling and dissent are considered threats to national security, free and open societies no longer exist – the slippery slope America and other Western societies are heading 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.

The roughly three dozen African heads of state who will travel to Sochi later this week to attend the first-ever Russia-Africa Summit realize that the comprehensive expansion of relations with the Eurasian Great Power gives them a competitive edge in the New Cold War and can help them thwart the many plots associated with the modern-day “Scramble for Africa”.

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The first-ever Russia-Africa Summit will take place in Sochi this week from 23-24 October and usher in an entirely new era of relations between the Eurasian Great Power and world’s least-developed continent from which Moscow largely withdrew following the end of the Old Cold War. There’s a lot of nostalgia and heavy symbolism associated with this event, but both Russia and Africa have markedly changed over the past quarter-century, so it isn’t so much a reunion between close friends as it is a meeting between distant ones after growing apart for so long. If anything, this is actually an advantage because it means that Russia has none of the “historical baggage” that its international peers such as the US and France do who have been directly involved in some of the more controversial developments that took place there since 1991 such as the Congo Wars and the so-called “Global War on Terror”. Russia’s “rediscovery” of Africa couldn’t have come at a better time either since the landmass is rapidly becoming a theater of international competition in the New Cold War given its enormous resource wealth, promising economic potential, and geostrategic location, hence why it’s possible to speak about a modern-day “Scramble for Africa” involving players such as the aforementioned three, China, the EU, India, Japan, and even the UAE.

On the surface, it sounds unreal that Russia is even able to compete given the military and economic strength of all the others increasingly involved in Africa at this moment, but the fact of the matter is that Moscow invaluably fills the much-needed niche of providing its partners there with “Democratic Security”, or in other words, the cost-effective and low-commitment capabilities needed to thwart Color Revolutions and resolve Unconventional Wars (collectively referred to as Hybrid War). To simplify, Russia’s “political technologists” have reportedly devised bespoke solutions for confronting incipient and ongoing Color Revolutions, just like its private military contractors (PMCs) have supposedly done the same when it comes to ending insurgencies, the latter of which has been powerfully on display in the Central African Republic (CAR) since the beginning of 2018 and was described at length in the author’s piece last summer concerning the latest “UN Update On Russia’s Military Mission In The Central African Republic“. Basically, Russian military advisors, arms shipments, and PMC trainers succeeded in stopping a civil war that was bordering on genocide despite the rest of the world having lost hope that this could happen.

The other African states looked in awe at what Russia achieved and wanted to learn more about how its “Democratic Security” services could be put to use for stabilize their countries as well in exchange for profitable extraction contracts that function as the gateway for Moscow to maximize its influence in each of its partners through forthcoming political deals afterwards. Before most observers realized it, Russia has pioneered an “African Transversal” through Sudan, CAR, and the Congo Republic that the author raised awareness about in his piece about how “Russia’s Military Deal With The Congo Republic Completes Its African Transversal“. Against the backdrop of the almost ten-year-long “African Spring” that most of the world has been ignoring, Russia’s “Democratic Security” services become more important than ever since no other actor is capable of providing them, especially seeing as how the other two most likely contenders — the US and France — aren’t trusted to do so whatsoever after squandering their “goodwill” there over the decades by actually being the ones largely responsible for most of Africa’s destabilization since independence.

The coordinated and comprehensive expansion of African countries’ relations with Russia also places Moscow in the driver’s seat for leading a new Non-Aligned Movement (Neo-NAM) there which could give states a third credible option between the West and China. Although the author first spoke about the possibly multipolar-modified revival of this Old Cold War-era structure in his March 2018 Sputnik Radio broadcast about how “Russia’s S-400s Are The Key To A Neo-NAM“, it’s since been more formally proposed by two experts at Russia’s top think tank, the Valdai Club. Oleg Barabanov wrote about it in his May 2019 piece about “China’s Rise To Global Leadership: Prospects And Challenges For Russia“, as did Alexey Kupriyanov and Alexander Korolov in their report about “The Eurasian Chord And The Oceanic Ring: Russia And India As The Third Force In A New World Order” which proposes that those two jointly lead this movement. However it ends up playing out in practice, it’s now undeniable that the Neo-NAM is on Russia’s policy-making agenda, and this couldn’t but help serve the interests of African states who are desperate for a “neutral” partner in the New Cold War.

As such, it’s to be expected that the Russia-Africa Summit will result in the signing of many significant economics deals (possibly even involving the creation of logistics facilities in some geostrategic countries), some unreported military ones, and the announcement that this gathering will become a yearly (or at least every 2-5-year) event. The African states crave the credible “Democratic Security” solutions that only Russia can provide for ensuring their continued stability, and they certainly don’t mind trading profitable extraction contracts in exchange for it since selling resources has always been something that most of them have done anyhow except they haven’t hitherto received anything other than financial benefits for the elite from it. Now, however, all of society can eventually (key word) benefit if Russia scales the expansion of its influence in those countries afterwards to positively influence their political and economic models (with the intent of making them more resistant to Color Revolution plots) concurrent with bolstering their security capabilities (against Unconventional War threats), all while elevating their status as (for now) informal members of the Neo-NAM.

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This article was also published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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In the first week of the month of October the US informed Turkey and Russia of its intention to withdraw from north-east Syria (NES). Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan pulled out a plan prepared over a year ago to move forces into NES and take control of cities like Manbij, Ain al-Arab and Ras al-Ayn: an area 440 kilometres long and 35 kilometres wide. The US central command and the Russian military command, as well as other countries including Syria, were informed of the Turkish intention to move forward to fill in the gap. Turkey believes this incursion into the Syrian territory serves its national security and will relocate millions of Syrian refugees living in Turkey, and those who will move out of Idlib once the liberation of the city is in process.  Erdogan considers it necessary to create a safe zone between the Turkish borders and that part of Syria under control of the Syrian branch of the PKK, the YPG, an organisation that figures in the US, Europe, NATO and Turkey lists of terrorism.

The quick reaction by Turkey caused alarm in Washington where President Donald Trump sent a letter – considered humiliating by Turkey – to his Turkish counterpart asking him “not to be a fool” and to wait before acting. Simultaneously, President Putin called a meeting for his National Security Council to discuss the US withdrawal and the Turkish intention to replace US forces in NES. Intelligence sources confirmed US withdrawal preparations. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was consulted and informed about US and Turkish intentions.

Decision-makers in Syria evaluated the situation: preliminary information indicated the seriousness of US intentions to withdraw, notwithstanding President Trump’s record of changing his mind and altering decisions at the last minute. It was agreed that the US move should be taken seriously into consideration, with plans to face it and gather the necessary forces to deploy in NES.

Damascus tried to contact the Syrian Kurds, before the official US announcement of departure from NES, to test their reaction to the game-changer decision of withdrawal. The YPG was dismissive. Damascus understood that the Kurds still placed their hopes in the US, British and French intervention to influence Trump’s withdrawal decision. The Kurdish political leaders were sceptical about the ability of Trump to implement this intention.

Damascus was convinced the Kurds had not learned their lesson and were gambling on the continuing presence of foreign forces – the US, EU (British, French and Italian) and Israel – who had, in fact, decided to withdraw and end their illegal presence in NES. Syrian officials knew the Kurds would be the biggest losers. But for the Syrian government, it was unacceptable to leave all of NES under Turkish control if the US were to pull out its forces.

Decision-makers in Syria understood that Russian and Iranian officials had agreed on the importance of direct contacts with Turkey to coordinate the presence of forces in NES. Their goal was not to increase the tension with Turkey nor to confront the Turkish forces on Syrian soil but rather to organise this presence and limit its advance to allow the US forces to withdraw. It would have been in the apparent interest of US forces to watch a Turkish-Syrian confrontation in NES, an eventuality that Russia and Iran sought to avoid.

Ankara’s motive and concern were the fact that the Syrian Kurds – a branch of the PKK organisation on the list of terrorism – would bet on the support of US forces and their European allies up until the day of withdrawal of these forces. It was imperative to fill in the gap and close the road to any possible future return of these forces in Syria. Turkish forces were assuring the forceful handover of land to the Syrian government. Nevertheless, Damascus would now have to face another occupation in the future– Turkey – that is not likely to withdraw in the near future regardless of all the promises coming from Ankara or Moscow.

Screenshot 2019-10-21 at 17.09.19

When Turkey pushed its proxies and forces into NES, the Syrian Kurds awoke to the danger. Their military commander General Ferhat Abdi Sahin, aka Mazloum Abdi, believed the only solution was to ask protection from Russia and the central government in Damascus. Russia, unlike the Syrian Army, has limited ground troops. The Russian military directed the Kurds to negotiate with Damascus. Negotiations were conducted at the military base of Hmaymeem and in Damascus. Qamishli airport – under Syrian Army control – acted as a hub for the Kurdish delegation to talk with Russian and Syrian government military officials.

General Abdi, who fought with the PKK leader Abdallah Ocalan, notwithstanding the disapproval of the Kurdish political leadership in NES, signed off a petition for intervention, asking the Syrian Army to defend Kurdish-US controlled areas. Damascus is aware of Kurdish-Israeli collaboration and the failed Israeli effort to keep US forces in NES.

There was no time to organise a fast Syrian Army deployment in an area almost five times as large as Lebanon (40,000 – 50,000 sq km). Russia and Iran were working together to slow down President Erdogan and minimise the cost of his invasion. Turkey showed understanding while negotiating with Russia and Iran and said it was ready to negotiate and organise the presence of all forces in the disputed area but would not tolerate any Kurdish armed presence in the area. President Erdogan committed not to attack the Syrian Army in any city where the soldiers of Damascus were present.

Last week, President Bashar al-Assad told a visiting Russian delegation led by President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy to Syria Alexander Lavrentiev that he rejected any occupation of his country and that the US was due to leave the country sooner or later. Assad expressed concern that Turkey might decide to remain in the country for many years before negotiating a withdrawal. The central government in Damascus is prepared to resist such occupation and will no doubt support domestic resistance against such an occupation. Russia confirmed its support for the full integrity of Syrian territory and its goal of ending the war in Syria, terminating the presence of all occupation forces, and its support for constitutional reforms to speed reconciliation.

Russia said it was possible to talk to Turkish President Erdogan and reach a reasonable agreement because, once a clear deal is reached, there are more chances that Turkey keeps its commitments, unlike President Trump who changes his mind daily. Syria and its allies decided to keep monitoring developments, keep the hotline open and prepare more forces to push into NES.

Trump’s soldiers are withdrawing from the main provinces and have completed their withdrawal from Raqqah and the east of Aleppo. US withdrawal from the borders with Turkey triggered a race of the Turkish forces and their proxies who managed to occupy Ras al-Ayn to keep control over the city. The Syrian Kurds – although they are still trying to change Trump’s mind by asking him to stay in Syria- are perhaps more aware they have no foreign allies left but Russia, who can serve as a guarantor to preserve the cities and villages they live in after US withdrawal.

The US President has given his Turkish counterpart President Erdogan what he wanted: a ceasefire to allow the Kurds to pull out from the Syrian zone coveted by Turkey, forcing the Kurds to give up on this territory and move its forces inland., which they did by abandoning the city of Ras al-Ayn over the weekend. This is even worse than a total US withdrawal of the entire area, from the Kurds’ point of view. Turkey’s proxy forces had proven ineffective fighting against ISIS in 2016 and against the Kurds since the beginning of the military operation. By delivering cities without resistance, Turkey has reached its objectives with fewer casualties.

Trump never promised the Kurds a state, nor had he promised to remain indefinitely in Syria to protect them. The departure of the US forces is an inevitable outcome even in countries it has occupied over decades (Afghanistan and Iraq are the best examples). The Syrian Kurds believed in their dream to form their own state because the partition of Iraq and Syria seemed likely to them. Had this happened, northern Iraq would have been the eastern part of the Kurdish state and Rojava (NES) its western part.

Screenshot 2019-10-18 at 07.22.39

But the “new Middle East” plan has failed and the continuous presence of US forces is not only illegal but also serves no US strategic purpose. Trump promised to pull out and he is likely to fulfil this promise. This will benefit his forthcoming electoral 2020 campaign.

President Erdogan is left with a nearby ally, Russia, with whom he will negotiate and organise the presence of his troops in NES. The American forces are leaving in an organised way. Trump has not clarified his intentions towards Syrian oil and gas fields under US control. He wishes to give the control of NES to the Kurds but is keeping no troops in the area, only at al-Tanf borders (150- 200 US servicemen). He is afraid of Iranian control over the oil fields; Tehran has been supplying the Syrian government with oil for the last 8 years. Its last shipment of 2.1 million barrels created a storm between Iran and the UK involving the confiscation of a supertanker and ships of both countries.

The Syrian Kurds have been selling oil to Damascus while they have controlled NES notwithstanding the US requests that they refrain from energy delivery to the Syrian population. The Kurds in Syria now recognise the Syrian army as their only remaining defenders, with the guarantee of Russia. If the US is really concerned about the safety of the Kurds, their only option is to support a stable central government in Damascus to protect the Kurds.

The presence of the Syrian Army in Manbij and Ayn al-Arab has spoiled the Turkish plan to control an area 440 kilometres long and 35 kilometres wide. The two cities are in the middle of the zone Erdogan aims to occupy. This is why the Putin-Erdogan meeting on Tuesday is crucial for the future of Syria. The 1999 Adana agreement between Syria and Turkey will be revised; the reform of the Syrian constitution will likely be discussed to speed up its consent to be implemented and ensure the withdrawal of Turkish forces if indeed that is Turkey’s only motive to stay in Syria.

Much has been achieved to end the war in Syria. A peaceful solution is in sight and the end of the Jihadists control of Idlib is near.

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In the magical illusions of the smoke and mirrors ideology behind Brexit, we should be acutely aware of what a trade deal with America means. In our article this week – The MAGA Agenda – it seems that among those on the radical right – the government, their acolytes and corporate donors – there is a widely held belief that a favourable trade deal can easily be negotiated with the United States. But this belief flies in the face of historical evidence as the US has proved on more than one occasion to be a ruthless and exploitative (so-called) partner where its own economic interests are involved. It is naive to think that America will be a cooperative and fair ally or partner in the common interest – it won’t. And being a sycophant of Trump’s America – with his MAGA agenda will prove to be the final nail in Britain’s coffin.

The radical right – members of the ERG, such as – Michael Gove, Iain Duncan-Smith, Priti Patel and Chris Grayling to name a tiny handful are driving Britain into the arms of a country that exploits everyone except the very few. American values are not British values and we should never dismiss the scale of damage that the USA inflicted upon Britain over the decades since the last World War.

For Boris Johnson to use inflammatory language to stoke up nationalism and adopt Churchillian euphemisms as a means to his own ends would make those who lost their lives to save this country from all sorts of evils turn in their graves. The fact is that the Americans exploited our position during the War and especially from 1945 for their own financial and economic gain. They were not just duplicitous, they were shameless about it and Britain should never trust them again – much as the Kurds in Northern Syria have just found out to their horror.

In the background, as the political warfare of Brexit rages on in the mainstream media, various Bill’s that relate to Brexit and future trade deals are being heard. For any politician to say that the latest Brexit deal continues to protect the rights of workers, protects the environment, food and medical supplies is simply lying, blindfolded or doesn’t understand the deceitful machinations of this government.

On the announcement of a new Trade Bill (1), Jean Blaylock, trade campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said:

Parliament needs to have a say on trade deals so that unaccountable government ministers aren’t able to use them to slash regulations, entrench privatisation and block climate action. This should be a simple, basic requirement in any democracy. MPs, Lords, business and civil society have all steadfastly been raising this for the past two years, and earlier this year Parliament introduced a clause in the old Trade Bill to guarantee that trade deals will be voted on. Yet Johnson’s government is so scared of having to answer to Parliament that it plans to have a new Trade Bill that conveniently leaves out all of these democratic provisions.

“We know that Johnson’s government wants to do a trade deal with the US in a hurry. Trump’s administration has already told us what it wants in deal, and it’s very worrying – chlorine chicken, higher prices for medicines, and an end to any attempt to rein in the power of Silicon Valley big tech firms like Google, Amazon and Facebook. A deal like that demonstrates the need for Parliament to be able to review what’s on the table and have a vote.”

The big problem with having made a career out of writing fantasies and falsities as Boris Johnson has done is that no-one believes the promises of habitual liars. And so it is with the one institution that stands heads and shoulders above all others in the UK – the NHS.

Last month, promises made by Boris Johnson that the NHS is “off the table” in negotiations over a post-Brexit trade deal with the US simply cannot be relied upon. As Nick Dearden says:

“Johnson’s promise to protect the NHS should be taken with a very large pinch of salt, because the threat to our health system will be written across a US-UK trade deal, from the new powers it gives big pharmaceutical corporations to charge higher prices for medicines, to restrictions on preventing Big Tech companies from mining the NHS database.

This will go well beyond a US trade deal, however. Johnson’s government is talking to countries across the world who will want to use Brexit to insist on even more damaging environmental policies from the UK. Only last week Malaysia said that reducing regulations on palm oil production would be the price of a post -Brexit free trade deal.”

The other point to remember is this – why would any country rely on America in any deal to play fair and by the rules. They don’t even in their own country. American’s don’t trust the regulatory agencies to do their work properly or professionally when most of them are drenched in corruption or bribery scandals. Take for instance the USDA’s National Organic (food) Program. Described by national media organisations as a ‘feckless agency‘ involving its complicity in what might be the biggest consumer scam in decades: the sale of phoney organic food. It’s a scam that’s been going on for years and years and yet the federal government looks the other way. Millions of American consumers have been — and are still being — duped, buying pricier “organic” products that are imported into the country without the correct licences or country of origin certificates, repackaged and sold on – making huge profits along the way. Food products can arrive from places like China, South America or Africa, be covered in pesticides and ridden with deadly heavy metals and sold as healthy organic produce simply by repackaging with misleading attractive labels.

Corporations all across America consider being fined billions of dollars for fraud and corruption as the cost of doing business. People and consumers are the last consideration. And healthcare companies are some of the worst in America. As the Forbes said at the end of last year – in an article entitled ‘Shame, Scandal Plague Healthcare Providers In 2018′ –  “Unfortunately, the problems (of corruption) are endemic and deeply embedded in medical culture.”

Nowhere are these ill-effects more apparent than in cancer care. A recent report titled “Unintended Consequences of Expensive Cancer Therapeutics” found that the last 71 chemotherapy agents to receive FDA approval extend life by an average of only 2.1 months—time often spent in pain, isolated from friends and family – purely for the purposes of making bigger profits. It’s extortion practices even extend to the heartbreak of a family member dying before your eyes.

In America today – two-thirds (66.5%) of all bankruptcies are caused by not having the right health insurance. Last year, 530,000 families lost everything – homes, savings, assets built for retirement – to save a family member from illness – only for everyone else in the family to be pauperised. A recent studyfound that only 40 per cent of Americans have enough saved to cover a $1,000 emergency expense – and medical care comes with co-pay (percentage of contribution) costs that can roll into thousands depending on the cover.

In 2019, the average price of health insurance rose above $20,000 for families that obtain their coverage through work. They pay just over $6.000 assuming that someone in the family has a good job as they employer stumps up $14,000 per employee – per year. The Keiser Foundation report into American healthcare costs said:

“These numbers are grotesque. Insuring a single family for a year costs almost as much as a Honda Civic. This fact should be a subject of daily outrage, and it probably would be if more workers realized just how much of their compensation is devoured by the cost of health care. After all, every dollar a company pays to Aetna or Cigna is a dollar it might otherwise be able spend on salaries and wages.”

Boris Johnson knows this. He was born in America. From faking his ancestral history to bendy bananas, eurocoffins, and the banning of prawn cocktail crisps. Boris Johnson has been fired more than once for lying and made to apologise for outrageous allegations such as he did about the Hillsborough disaster.  From his philandering and now accusations of corruption with a pole dancing ‘entrepreneur’, Boris Johnson’s honesty and integrity in any area of life mean nothing. He will be as happy selling Britain down a river without a paddle for a bit of personal glory and people will believe him.

Was it Noel Coward who once said – “It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”

This trade deal cannot be trusted to be in the best interests of Britain if left to the whims and fantasies of this government.

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The Mother of Messes in Syria

October 22nd, 2019 by Eric Margolis

What a mess. The imperial cooks in Washington have turned poor Syria into a poison pit of warring factions, with disastrous results for all.

Henry Kissinger once quipped that it is more dangerous being America’s ally than its enemy. A good example is how Washington used the Kurds in Syria to fight ISIS and then ditched them to face the wrath of the mighty Turkish military alone.

A great hue and cry has gone up from the US corporate media and Congress that the Kurds are being betrayed. The evangelical far right and Israel’s supporters are leading this charge. Israel has secretly been arming and aiding Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Syria since 1975 as a dandy way of splintering the fragile Arab Mideast.

But President Trump was right when he said that the Kurds had been richly paid by Washington for their services, adding ‘they are no angels.’ Some facts ignored by the US media:

  • Kurds, a tribal, non-Semitic people of Persian origin are, like Palestinians, a stateless people who are sand in the eye of the Mideast. They inhabit the uplands of Syria, Iraq, Armenia, and Iran. Kurds are a handsome, warlike people renowned for their fighting abilities and courage. They have long battled neighboring Arab and Iranian tribes over pasture land and water resources.
  • The Obama administration got talked into arming and financing the extremist Islamic State group by the deep state and Israel as a way of overthrowing Syria’s secular government, an ally of Iran. The US-equipped Iraqi Army sent to fight IS ran for their lives. When Islamic State threatened Baghdad, the US Air Force intervened and crushed it. Rogue elements of Islamic State ran amok, creating all sorts of atrocities. Some IS units still receive covert Israeli cross-border support.

The US found it expedient to pay Kurdish militias, known as YPG, to fight remnants of the rag-tag IS, an armed mob whose danger was wildly exaggerated by western media. IS was a perfect excuse to keep US military forces in the Mideast. Turkey helped arm IS.

  • Turkey’s Kurdish minority is 15-20% of its 80 million people. The dangerous Marxist PKK movement has been calling for an independent Kurdish state since the 1980’s. I covered the war in Turkey’s southern Anatolia between the PKK and the Turkish Army, a bloody affair of bombings and massacres that left over 40,000 dead. Turks go ballistic at the very mention of an independent Kurdish state, calling Kurds ‘mountain Turks’ and Marxist `terrorists.’

Kurds were harshly repressed by various Turkish governments and their generals. But when the Ottoman Turks marched tens of thousands of Armenian prisoners to Syria during World War I, Kurdish tribes raped and massacred them in great numbers. In the 1920’s, the sainted Winston Churchill authorized use of poison gas against ‘unruly’ Kurdish and Afghan tribes.

  • US attempts to overthrow Syria’s government created national chaos. The scrubby eastern third of Syria had a mixed tribal population, but the Kurdish YPG militia declared it independent from Syria, declaring a new Kurdish state called Rojava. To no surprise, a confusing melee developed between Syrian forces and Arab tribal fighters, US units, Kurdish militias, IS and tribes aligned to Damascus. Turkey, aghast at the prospects of an independent Kurdish state next door, decided to send in its army which had been demanding action against armed Kurdish groups.

Into this maelstrom strode Donald Trump, who knew nothing about Syria. There were only about 1,000 US troops in Syria, but they could call down the US Air Force based in nearby Qatar. These token troops are being withdrawn to neighboring Iraq, which remain a US-occupied nation with a puppet government, an American garrison of at least 5,000 troops, and oceans of oil.

In short, Syria is being ground up by wars for no good purpose. Turkey made a grave error by joining efforts to overthrow Syria’s Assad regime. The US, France, Britain and Israel have no business at all there. Only Russia has a legitimate geopolitical interest in Syria, which is close to its southern border. So far, Vlad Putin has played a very skillful game of big power chess in Syria while the US has blundered time and again.

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson came back from Brussels with a deal better than any Theresa May ever achieved, so he says. His talks with the departing European Commissioner, Jean-Claude Juncker, were very fruitful. But precise details are never known. Juncker, emotional about his leaving and handing over the office of EU Commissioner on 1 November to Madame Ursula von der Leyen, from Germany, may have made some special concessions to Johnson – some rumors go. But unlikely. He is not the only one to decide. Besides, deal or no deal, or BREXIT or no BREXIT, had already been decided shortly after the surprise pro-BREXIT public vote on 23 June 2016. And it is clear, not the EU and not the British elite want BREXIT.

In any case, in a first vote on Mr. Johnson’s new and ‘better’ deal, the British Parliament voted 322 to 306 to postpone the vote on whether or not to accept the “new deal”, until the new “ratification law” is voted on. – What ratification law? – A precise date for the vote is not known. All that would point to the need to ask again Brussels for a postponement of the British decision, “deal or no deal”, beyond the current target of 31 October 2019. But, THE Boris says, he will do everything to avoid such a step. How?

The mess and confusion are overwhelming. People go crazy, especially in Britain. They don’t know what will happen when; whether their jobs are at stake, their pensions in question, in case some of them at one point in the past, or now, have been or are working in another EU country. Will ”The Market” ruin their savings? Will sudden border closings – pure speculation – cause enormous shortages of necessary goods, food, medicine – and cause hyper-inflation?

Depression rates run high in Britain, as well as among those Brits who have made themselves a living in an associated EU country. Will they have to leave? Granted, it is not easy to live peacefully and without stress and anxiety under these circumstances.

Why is it so difficult to accept and respect the democratic vote to exit the European Union, never mind the narrow result of a 51.89% ‘yes’ ballot for leaving the EU? – Because this vote, of which we now know was helped by Cambridge Analytica came a as total surprise to the British elite, who never thought that a majority, even a small one, would be so sick and tired of being managed and told what to do by a cumbersome, bureaucratic EU Commission in Brussels.

Now, these behind-the-curtain elites are doing everything to appear keeping ‘democracy’ alive, respecting the vote, but finding any means to circumvent the action linked to the vote – namely BREXIT. The circus has lasted for over three years – and still no definitive decision is made. My hunch is – and I am not alone – that this has all been plotted shortly after the surprise ballot by a small elite that keeps a firm handle on the British Parliament – and of course on the PM.

Besides, Washington is not keen on seeing the UK leave the EU. In more cases than one, the UK has acted as a US mole in the EU. For example, on the decision to accept 13 Eastern European countries in the EU – countries that were economically and socially far from at par with the 15 EU members in 2004, when they were integrated into the EU between 2004 and 2013. No questions asked, no member country’s population was asked for their opinion. It was done like by dictatorship. Most of the population of the 15 members would have said NO.

It was clear that these new, economically weak countries would also weaken the whole of the EU, as they would require special financial aid in the billions of euros, funds that the EU would miss to solidify for eventually forming a solid federal European Union. That’s exactly what Washington wanted, preventing a federal European Union with a common Constitution – an equal or superior to the federal United States of America.

A federal United States of Europe was, of course, squarely against the idea of the US which was the mastermind behind the European Union in the first place; an idea that was borne during or right after WWII, and then implanted by the CIA in willing European politicians, those heading the Club of Rome, for instance.

What if the succession Cameron, May, Johnson was also planned? It helps confusing the public. What if the assertiveness of Johnson to pull BREXIT through come hell or high water, is mere make-believe? – He knows it will not happen, not on 31 October, and most likely not in January 2020. Then he “failed” and will resign? The new PM, whoever he / she may be, will call for a new referendum – as the public outcry in this direction becomes ever louder – democracy will finally be reinstated to bring order to the mess. Or, will a new referendum do that, reinstate “democracy” in the minds of those who have voted for BREXIT in June 2016? – Maybe not. Probably not. The possible consequences are unimaginable at this point.

The new referendum would be very carefully “accompanied” and supervised, so as not to allow any mishaps, or missteps by the voters. This time the votes must be SOLID pro-EU, if possible, by a landslide, so as not to evoke questions and recounts, and – foremost to avoid protests in the streets of London, the financial capital, the city of money, the home turf of capitalism. “Remain” must be achieved with a very comfortable margin. And bingo, democracy has been preserved. And nothing changes. By then, some 4 years will be down the drain, four years of anger, frustration, insecurity, fear, depression, anxiety – and who knows how many suicides?

What would really happen if BREXIT were to take place as the voters decided? – Doomsday-sayers are, of course, paid to spread fear, fear of uncertainty, fear of no-longer belonging, fear of being evicted from wherever in Europe one might live. And we know, fear is the best means to keep people in check, while none of the nefarious Armageddon predictions would occur.

The UK, after the obligatory, speculative, profit-taking fall and rise of the stock and currency markets, would fully recover and within a couple of years would very likely be far better off than under the watchful eye of Brussels. The EU bureaucracy of Brussels is worse than useless, especially the EU Parliament which is completely toothless, and the European Commission that decides over all major issues without consultation of the member countries’ people. It brings only frustration and hardship to most members, as in having to adapt their laws to EU standards, losing their sovereignty. Germany, the tacit EU leader, may be an exception, though a majority of Germans would also like to turn their back to the EU.

So, what good is it to stay in this useless non-Union, that has no sense of solidarity, that allows weak members, like Greece, to be literally slaughtered, by their own brothers, the IMF, the EC and the European Central Bank? Spain, Ireland and Portugal are not much better off – and Italy’s EU fate hovers dreadfully over the Italian public, so much so, that the Italian Government decided on its own on a Plan B, namely association with the east, signing up to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

What is doomed after BREXIT, is most probably not the UK, but the European (non-) Union itself. This construct, with a fiat currency like the dollar, is not sustainable. A single currency for a group of countries that have no declared common goals, like a Constitution, is not sustainable. It is just a question, what will fall first, the EU or the Euro; but fall they will. It’s a matter of time.

BREXIT or no-BREXIT is actually anecdotal. But, hey, let’s not jump the gun. It’s pure speculation. After all chaos is dynamic and unpredictable. Anything can happen.

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

Brexit Impasse Shows No Sign of Ending Soon

October 22nd, 2019 by Johanna Ross

‘Super Saturday’ as it was coined, should have seen perhaps the most significant vote take place in the House of Commons since the drama of Brexit began as MPs prepared to vote on the deal brought back from Brussels by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But nothing is certain in this Brexit saga, with events changing by the hour. As it happened, MPs voted instead for the so-called Letwin Amendment, which proposed to defer the Brexit vote, compelling Johnson instead to write to the EU to request an extension to the Brexit negotiation period.

Such a letter Boris Johnson did indeed write, although seemingly in protest he did not sign it, prompting Deputy Labour leader John McDonnell to refer to him as a ‘spoilt brat’. More significantly however, Johnson sent a second letter to the EU in which he stressed that his personal view and that of the government is that an extension would in fact be harmful for both Britain and Europe. This of course effectively undermines the first letter sent by Johnson, which have begged some to ask the question if the Prime Minister could face legal repercussions for sending such a letter.

Indeed Monday brought with it fresh developments in the Brexit story, as the Scottish courts heard another case put forward by the Scottish Nationalist Party’s Joanna Cherry and others which seeks to prove that the Prime Minister is ‘frustrating the Benn Act’ by penning a letter to EU leaders urging them to ignore his first letter requesting a Brexit extension. The judges have delayed their ruling on this however, as Scotland’s most senior judge, Lord Carloway, said that they needed to wait to ensure that Johnson did not try to block or sabotage the application he was forced to make on Saturday night asking for an extension.

On Monday it was also decided by John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, that the much-awaited vote on Johnson’s negotiated Brexit deal expected on Saturday, would not take place, as he cited it would be ‘repetitive and disorderly’ for MPs to debate and vote on the deal, so soon after heated discussions took place on Brexit in the House of Commons at the weekend. He said: “Today’s motion is in substance the same as Saturday’s motion, and the house has decided the matter. Today’s circumstances are in substance the same as Saturday’s circumstances.” This action, together with the passing of the Letwin amendment, means that the EU has to seriously consider Johnson’s letter asking for an extension. Had the Prime Minister won a vote on Monday, the letter could have been rescinded.

In a further blow to Boris Johnson’s ‘do or die’ Brexit on 31st October, the leaders of the Scottish and Welsh governments have compiled a joint letter to both the UK government and European Council President Donald Tusk, asking for a Brexit extension long enough to allow for a Second referendum on Brexit. They stated that “It is simply impossible for us to fulfil our constitutional responsibilities in this timescale, which is dictated by the way in which the Prime Minister delayed tabling formal proposals.” The letter also states that they find the latest deal brokered by Boris Johnson to be even worse than the previous one achieved by Theresa May.

With Boris Johnson’s planned exit on 31st October seemingly being blocked on a variety of fronts, it’s now less obvious how he will achieve his Brexit ‘come what may’ at this end of this month, despite the balky rhetoric coming out of 10 Downing Street. For some time it looked as if the Prime Minister couldn’t be stopped.  His strategy of pushing the UK’s constitution (albeit unwritten) to the limits, initially took everyone by surprise as he dared to enter territory which no PM had dared to enter before. But fairly soon, opposition MPs got wiser at predicting Johnson’s next steps in this fast moving game of political chess. A few court rulings and parliamentary amendments later, and Johnson’s path to No Deal Brexit is facing obstacles at every turn.

But with so many different agendas at play, the alternative path to No Deal is no clearer. A general election, a People’s Vote, a Brexit deal, or no Brexit at all – there is no consensus on what the best choice for the UK’s future is. On Tuesday MPs are due to vote finally on Johnson’s deal, but the numbers indicate that he’s unlikely to get support for it in the House of Commons. All sides may be tired of the stagnation of the last three years of negotiations but there’s no sure sign that the stalemate is likely to end any time soon…

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Johanna Ross is a journalist.

Featured image is from Pixabay

The gap between the 75%–80% of Catalans who uphold their country’s right to self-determination, and the Spanish elites and parts of Spanish society that do not want to know anything about it, was already very wide before October 14.

But on that day, when the Spanish Supreme Court condemned nine Catalan political and social movement leaders to a total of 99.5 years jail, it most likely became unbridgeable.

Following the sentence of the leaders for their role in the October 1, 2017 independence referendum, popular outrage in Catalonia immediately exploded in mass protests involving tens of thousands of people.

They occupied Barcelona airport, imposed road blocks on major highways, demonstrated in huge numbers outside Spanish government offices and began “Marches for Freedom” on Barcelona from five provincial cities.

Every imaginable Catalan social and sporting organisation, from Barcelona Football Club to chess associations, has issued statements condemning the sentences.

On the nights of October 15–16, police and small groups engaged in running battles in central Barcelona, as smoke rose from burning rubbish bins.

On October 16, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez appeared on television to warn that security forces would act “firmly, serenely and proportionately” in the face of violence.

To his right, People’s Party (PP) leader Pablo Casado demanded the declaration of a state of emergency in Catalonia, while Citizens’ leader Albert Rivera called for an end to Catalan self-rule under article 155 of the Spanish constitution.

One of the main instruments coordinating these responses is the Democratic Tsunami platform, anonymously run by activists from the October 1 referendum, and coordinated via a Telegram channel that, at the time of writing, had attracted 300,000 subscribers.

Punishment without crime

The unanimous verdict of the seven Supreme Court judges that set off this still expanding wave of protest was that nine Catalan leaders — seven former ministers and social movement leaders Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart — were guilty of “sedition” in preparing the October 1 referendum.

For this 18th century crime, long deleted from the penal codes of many other European states, they were sentenced to jail terms ranging from 9 to 13 years.

The harshest sentence was handed out to former Catalan vice-president Oriol Junqueras as “leader of the sedition”. Former ministers Raül Romeva (foreign affairs), Dolors Bassa (social welfare) and Jordi Turull (minister of state) came next with 12 years: along with Junqueras they were also found guilty of “embezzlement”.

Former Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell incurred 11.5 years jail for allowing the chamber to vote on the referendum’s enabling law, after being instructed by the Spanish Constitutional Court not to do so.

The “sedition” of former Catalan interior minister Joaquim Forn (11.5 years) consisted in undermining the ability of the Catalan police to deliver and enforce Spanish state court orders.

Former territory minister Josep Rull was found guilty of denying a Spanish Civil Guard ship mooring facilities and of making public buildings available as voting centres.

As for Òmnium Cultural president Cuixart and former Catalan National Assembly president Sànchez, their “sedition” was proven by the fact that they had called demonstrations against Civil Guard searches and urged people to defend voting centres against police and Civil Guard attempts to impound ballot boxes.

Along with these nine, who have already been held in preventive detention for up to two years, the court found former ministers Carles Mundó (attorney-general), Santi Vila (business) and Meritxell Borras (education) guilty of “disobedience”, fining each €60,000 and banning them from standing for public office for 18 months.

The nine jailed leaders have been banned from standing for public office for the term of their sentences.

Why this verdict?

The verdict is the predictable result of the pressures operating on the Supreme Court and its chief judge Manuel Marchena.

The chief pressure was for the trial to produce an exemplary punishment of the Catalan leaders. They had humiliated the Spanish state by successfully organising a unilateral independence referendum after 18 failed attempts to negotiate a Scottish-style referendum with successive Spanish governments.

A measure of the viciousness of the sentences is to compare them to those arising from the failed 1981 coup attempt. The average punishment for the military and Civil Guards who tried to reimpose the Francisco Franco dictatorship then was six years jail: the sentences of the Catalan leaders average 8.3 years.

The Supreme Court judges were doing the work set out for them by the previous PP government of Mariano Rajoy.

According to a leaked WhatsApp message by PP Senate spokesperson Ignacio Cosidó, its Second Chamber, which heard the case, was controlled “via the back door”.

There was no way its judges, even their “progressive” minority, were going to find the Catalan leaders innocent, or guilty only of disobedience (which carries no jail sentence).

There was no ‘rebellion’

However, the heavy sentences the court was always going to impose have to be defensible in law, not only within Spain but especially before a European Court of Human Rights — which in 2018 upheld nine out of ten appeals against Spanish court decisions.

This pressure to find a plausible legal foundation for their decision meant the judges had to discard the “rebellion” charge against the Catalan leaders.

This indictment was originally brought by the investigating magistrate Pablo Llarena and was backed by the Spanish prosecutor-general’s office and the “popular prosecution”, the ultra-right party Vox.

(The “popular prosecution” is a Spanish institution originally designed to allow the representation of community or public interest.)

Dropping the charge of “rebellion”, which a majority of Spanish jurists had already declared inapplicable, was also probably the price of a unanimous verdict between judges of different political temperaments.

It was also a political imperative. It will help Pedro Sánchez maintain the myth that Spain is a “law-governed state” with an independent judiciary and it will also help the European Union and its member states, fearful of any Catalan threat to the EU status quo, sustain the same fiction.

In the days after the verdict, spokespeople for the European Commission and the British government robotically repeated the line from Madrid.

Caught in contradiction

The dropping of “rebellion” comes at a price, however, because the whole Spanish-patriotic view of the October 1 referendum, from King Philip down, is that it was a deliberate, rebellious assault on the Constitution.

Sensitive to the angst their appeal-proofed verdict would cause, the judges devoted about 200 pages of the 493-page judgement to arguments against the “rebellion”.

Yet, in adopting the “sedition theory”, the judges fall into a painful contradiction.

Their decision says, for example, that October 1 did not involve “preconceived, deliberate and functional” violence aimed at achieving Catalonia’s separation from the Spanish state, but was rather an attempt to pressure it into negotiations.

“The over-excited citizens who believed that the positive result of the so-called referendum would lead to the hoped-for horizon of a sovereign republic were unaware that the right to decide had changed into an atypical right to bring pressure.”

But if that argument is valid against “rebellion”, how is it not also valid against “sedition”? The only difference in Spanish law is that “rebellion” is a crime against the constitution and “sedition” a crime against public order.

The judges’ answer was to smother the contradiction in lurid fictional accounts of the events of 2017. These are based on the well-rehearsed evidence of Spanish National Police and Civil Guard officers, whom Marchena “spared” from defence cross-examination, backed by visual evidence, during the trial.

In their decision, it is the huge peaceful demonstrations and non-violent protests of 2017 that become “sedition”. This ruling opens the door to any protest activity, like trade union pickets or organised attempts to stop evictions, being regarded as “seditious”.

In an October 16 interview in the Catalan daily Ara, Jordi Sànchez said:

“The sentence unequivocally lies. It doesn’t specify any detail of the supposed strategy of sedition. Not one confirmed meeting, not one email, only declarations in public ANC [Catalan National Assembly] events and the calling of demonstrations.

“The Supreme Court judges’ hostility towards us has betrayed them. Their animosity towards us has leaked out in the sentence in the form of false statements to justify the prison terms.”

Offensives launched

The verdict has also been the signal for new offensives from both sides of the Catalan-Spanish State struggle.

The Spanish judiciary immediately banned convicted Catalan leaders from standing in the November 10 Spanish general election and judge Llarena reissued a European arrest warrant for the extradition of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont from Belgium.

The PSOE government went on an offensive to persuade other countries of the immaculate character of the Spanish legal system. Cabinet members with foreign languages made themselves available for interviews on whatever international channels would have them.

On the Catalan side, the enormous, growing tsunami of mass protest started to roll.

All this is taking place three weeks out from the Spanish general election, in which Catalonia will dominate as never before. In Jordi Sànchez’s words: “They believe that they will terminate people’s sentiments by beheading those they think are leaders of the process.

“They are having the opposite effect.”

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Dick Nichols is Green Left Weekly’s European correspondent, based in Barcelona. A detailed update of this article will soon appear on the web site of Links — International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Featured image: Protesters blockade El Prat airport in Barcelona on October 14, after Catalan leaders were sentenced to almost 100 years in jail. (Source: GLW)

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Violence Against Indigenous Peoples Explodes in Brazil

October 22nd, 2019 by Clarissa Beretz

On the same day that President Jair Bolsonaro made his anti-indigenous speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) released its annual report, “Violence Against Indigenous Peoples in Brazil.” The data collected are from 2018, but the report also includes preliminary information for 2019, and the findings are alarming.

In the first nine months of the Bolsonaro government, which took office at the start of 2019, there have already been reports of 160 cases of land invasion, illegal exploitation of natural resources, and damage to property in 153 indigenous territories. This is a significant increase from 2018, both in number and scope: according to CIMI’s report, 111 incidents of this type were reported in 76 indigenous territories last year. With 2019 not yet over, the total area that has come under attack is already double last year’s.

The report does not include homicide data for 2019, but reveals that 135 indigenous people were murdered in 2018 — an increase of almost 23 percent from 2017, when 110 indigenous people were murdered. The state of Roraima stands out as the most violent, with 62 homicides, followed by Mato Grosso do Sul, with 38. Combined with data provided by Sesai (the Special Indigenous Health Secretariat) and state health departments, CIMI recorded violent deaths of indigenous peoples in 12 Brazilian states.

“This is the result of the policy of genocide initiated under the Temer government, with stripping of agencies that provide assistance and protection, like INCRA and Funai, emphasizing the idea that indigenous territories should be exploited,” said Roberto Liebgott, CIMI’s southern region coordinator and one of those responsible for producing the report.

According to Liebgott, Bolsonaro’s statement as presidential candidate that “not a centimeter will be demarcated either as an indigenous reserve or as a quilombola” — land owned by descendants of runaway slaves — was the “trigger that authorized a criminal state, allowing that land to be pillaged for the benefit of the sectors who elected him.”

CIMI’s report also draws attention to other cases of deaths resulting from state negligence, including suicides and infant mortality. In 2018, 101 indigenous people took their own lives in Brazil, 44 of them in Mato Grosso do Sul.

“The situation there clearly reflects a failed model. Far from their native lands, confined to overpopulated reserves or on the sides of big motorways, faced with extreme vulnerability, isolation and lack of opportunities, many opt to take their own lives, often by hanging themselves,” Liebgott said.

The infant mortality rate is also high. Last year, according to data collected by Sesai, 591 indigenous children aged five and below died as a result of state negligence. Almost 40 percent (219 children) lived in the state of Amazonas, which has the highest infant mortality rate in the country. According to Sesai, deaths in infancy are directly linked to a lack of medical assistance, which is even more urgent in the areas of extreme vulnerability where many indigenous peoples live. It is common for many villages to lack basic sanitation and even access to clean drinking water.

Guarani Kaiowá indigenous people in the Guapo’y Guasu community, in the Dourados Amambai Peguá Indigenous Reserve, in Mato Grosso do Sul. Image by Tiago Miotto/CIMI.

Return to the past

CIMI’s report also features details of other forms of violence carried out against indigenous peoples, including deforestation, gold and diamond mining, the contamination of rivers, illegal hunting and fishing, the opening of drug-trafficking routes, and even the systematic implementation of burning in forest areas.

“Before, the invaders would take the wood and leave. Now they take the wood and set the rest on fire. They destroy everything. The only thing left is ashes. The state, whose job it is to protect, endorses this destruction, supported by the bancadas ruralistas [the Ruralist Block in Congress] and evangelicals,” Liebgott said.

The increase in the illegal practice of dividing indigenous land into lots and selling it, especially in the northern region, is concerning. The indigenous lands of the Arariboia (in Maranhão state), Karipuna and Uru Eu Wau Wau (both in Rondônia) are some examples of ancestral territories that have been divided up by land grabbers with the criminal intent to sell them. Another serious case of violation of the original rights of indigenous peoples is that of the lands of the Munduruku (in Pará state), where it is estimated that more than 500 miners have now settled.

“It is the worst it has been since the redemocratization of Brazil. The attitude now is to return to the past, to the end of the 1970s, when megaprojects in indigenous territories — construction of motorways, hydroelectric dams and mines — were very damaging to the lives of indigenous peoples,” Liebgott said.

“Over the past few years, indigenous peoples, by demanding the demarcation of their territories, have become the target for attacks,” the report says. This has not only been reinforced in the rhetoric of officials opposed to the demarcation of indigenous lands, including Bolsonaro, but has also driven repeated invasions of these traditionally occupied areas. CIMI reports that out of the 1,290 indigenous lands that have been claimed in Brazil, 821 (63 percent of the total) are still pending finalization of the demarcation process. Of these, 528 have not seen any measures at all taken by the state.

“If we get too caught up on Bolsonaro, we will lose hope,” Liebgott said. “We need to remember that he is not the government, he is not able to do everything. Bolsonaro is part of an idiotic, fascist, hypocritical and dishonest government that invents data and twists reality. However, the rights acquired by indigenous peoples must be maintained. It is fundamental that international bodies ask the Brazilian government to take measures to stop this barbarity from taking place and that those responsible be punished.”

Dom Roque Paloschi, the CIMI president and archbishop of Porto Velho in Rondônia state, said “violence against indigenous peoples has become an institutionalized disease” in Brazil. In his introduction to the report, he painted a very grim picture for the future of these communities:

“If this predatory cycle of global dimensions is not contained, their forests will be destroyed, and their lands will be divided and subjected to indiscriminate exploitation. After the fences have been put up, the indigenous peoples that remain will be left, like those in the South, at the edges of farms and on the sides of roads; or will have to abandon their traditional ways of life and become manual laborers at the service of the accumulation of capital”.

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This article was first published by Mongabay Brasil.

Featured image: Guarani Kaiowá indigenous people in the Guapo’y Guasu community, in the Dourados Amambai Peguá Indigenous Reserve, Mato Grosso do Sul, by Tiago Miotto/CIMI.

Haiti’s Endless Sorrows

October 22nd, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Few people anywhere have suffered as long and egregiously as Haitians.

No strangers to adversity and anguish, for over 500 years, they endured severe oppression, slavery, despotism, colonization, reparations, embargoes, sanctions, deep poverty, starvation, unrepayable debt, and natural calamities.

Except for brief interregnum periods, most recently under priest, educator, man of the people-turned politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the 1990s and early new millennium years, Haitian misery continues unabated.

Toppled twice by US regimes — by Bush I in 1991, again in 2004  Bush II/Cheney, Aristide no longer is involved in Haitian politics. Widespread suffering has gone on for time immemorial.

Today Haitians are enduring some of their worst ever oppression, misrule, and deprivation under US puppet Jovenel Moise since installed in February 2017.

Protests for his removal raged almost daily since July 2018. Countless thousands of long-suffering Haitians have demonstrated in the capital Port-au-Prince and other cities nationwide.

They demand Moise’s resignation, installation of a transitional government, repeal of increased gasoline and other punitive taxes, as well as against regime corruption and oppression.

On Monday, Liberation News called Haiti’s landscape “apocalyptic, reflecting the fierce class war that has been waged since (summer 2018), if not for decades,” adding:

“The huge crowds are heroically taking to the streets to defend Haitian sovereignty from the murderous military forces and corrupt, corporate interests that dominate the Haitian government.”

“With each passing day and week, the movement only continues to grow in size and strength” — despite brutal regime violence, other human rights abuses, and indifference to popular needs and rights.

Police consistently attack protesters with tear gas, water cannons, beatings, and live fire, killing around 20 in recent weeks, arresting and injuring countless others.

Brutality failed to deter justifiable public rage over intolerable conditions, including deep poverty, lack of vital public services, unaffordability of food and other essentials to life, along with grand theft by Moise, other regime officials and cronies.

Haiti is indebted to the IMF and World Bank loan sharks of last resort, demanding their pound of flesh, compelling indebted nations to erode social services so they, private bankers and other corporate predators are paid, ordinary people exploited to serve them.

Haitians mostly suffer from longstanding US imperial control, plundering the country and exploiting its people for profit, no matter the human toll.

It’s what Chicago School fundamentalism is all about, featuring free-wheeling capitalism, unrestrained profit-making, public wealth in private hands, minimal (if any) social services, government serving powerful interests exclusively, human rights and needs ignored, along with harsh crackdowns on critics.

Haiti is the region’s poorest country, most of its people struggling on less than $2 a day to survive, enduring hunger, malnutrition, overall deprivation, and repressive rule.

Moise is Washington’s man in Port-au-Prince. Reviled by Haitians, protests continue to replace him.

Opposition elements formed so-called transition commissions, wanting him replaced with provisional rule, possibly a new constitution.

Falsely claiming it would be “irresponsible” for him to resign, his days may be numbered, dark forces in Washington perhaps wanting a clean slate with new puppet rule to try assuaging public rage.

No matter who’s in charge internally, US grip on the country is firm. Earlier in October, Haiti Liberte reported that anti-Moise protests continue with no signs of abating.

They’ve partially or entirely shut down Port-au-Prince, burning barricades, disrupting commerce, and weakening Moise’s hold on power.

Millions of Haitians won’t be deterred until he’s gone — what replaces him likely to be continued dirty business as usual like most always before.

Last week, Haiti Liberte editor Kim Ives reported that UN blue helmet MINUSTAH forces ended 15 years of repressive post-Aristide occupation on October 15.

They’re replaced by the so-called UN Integrated Office in Haiti (UNHIN), headed by Helen La Lime, a career State Department official, serving US imperial interests.

Ives explained that

“UNHIN has a one-year mandate to advise the Haitian government on ways to ‘promote and strengthen stability and good governance (and) support the government in the areas of elections, police, human rights, prison administration, and justice system reform.”

Like nearly always before, when things change in Haiti and other US-controlled countries, everything stays the same under new faces, continuing exploitation and repression.

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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.

US Syria Pullout Leaves Troops in North and South

October 22nd, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

US aggression, occupation and control of Syrian territory is a flagrant UN Charter breach — a hard truth establishment media ignore, falsely blaming Bashar al-Assad for US-led imperial high crimes committed against his country. 

The same goes for US actions in other war theaters — nations smashed for not subordinating their sovereign rights to Washington’s interests.

Endless US-orchestrated and/or led aggression rages in Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen, as well as intermittently in Iraq and Libya.

There’s no near-term resolution in these countries because restoration of peace and stability to active war theaters defeats Washington’s imperial aims, served by endless wars and chaos.

In the Middle East, US-led aggression also serves Israel’s aim to become the second leading regional power as junior partner to Washington’s dominant presence.

Russia’s intervention in Syria changing the dynamic on the ground, US inability to topple Iran’s government, and effectiveness of Yemeni Houthis against Pentagon/CIA-orchestrated Saudi aggression foiled US/Israeli regional aims.

Before withdrawal of unclear numbers of US forces from northern Syria cross-border to Iraq, Pentagon troops controlled around 30% of the country.

Unknown numbers of US forces continue to unlawfully control southern Syrian territory near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders, no plans to withdraw them.

The highly publicized withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria was partial, unknown numbers remaining in control of Syrian oil producing areas on the phony pretext of protecting them from the scourge of ISIS the US created and supports.

Bipartisan hardliners in Washington want Syrian ruling authorities prevented from earning vitally needed revenues for the country’s oil fields.

On Monday, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) cited a Times of London report about Turkey using banned white phosphorous, able to burn flesh to the bone on contact, in its northern Syria aggression against Kurdish YPG fighters.

On the same day, Czech MP Tomio Okamura accused Turkish forces of committing war crimes in northern Syria, adding evidence shows its military’s use of jihadist proxies in its offensive.

Deputy head of the Czech parliament’s defense committee Radovan Feikh condemned Turkish aggression — OK’d by the Trump regime, a scheme by Washington and Ankara to partition and control Syria.

Separately, Fars News reported that “US army helicopters have been sighted in heavy operation in Syria’s northern province of Hasaka since Sunday morning as eyewitness accounts said the choppers are taking large groups of (ISIS) takfiri terrorists away.”

In Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the Pentagon and CIA use ISIS, al-Qaeda, and likeminded jihadists as imperial foot soldiers — arming, funding, training, directing, and transporting them to areas where the US wants them used.

On Tuesday, Turkey’s Erdogan and Vladimir Putin are meeting in Sochi to discuss the situation in Syria, a Kremlin statement saying both leaders will address “normalization” of the country’s northeast, along with “countering international terrorist groups and promoting the political settlement process.”

Ankara is part of the problem, not the solution in Syria, because of Erdogan’s revanchist aim to control northern territory bordering Turkey, especially oil-producing areas — putting him at odds with similar US aims and Russia wanting Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity preserved and protected.

On Saturday, Erdogan said if “promises to Turkey are not fulfilled, we won’t be waiting as before. We will be going ahead with the operation and will keep on” combatting Kurds for control of northern Syrian territory.

His so-called “Operation Peace Spring” has nothing to do with peace, nothing to do with combatting terrorism, nothing to do with Turkish security, everything to do with wanting northern Syrian territory annexed.

The situation in the country’s north and elsewhere remains fluid, resolving years of US-launched aggression unattainable because bipartisan hardliners in Washington reject it.

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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.

In an article titled “Erdogan’s Terror, Which the West Ignores” in the London-based daily Al-Arab, ‘Ali Qassem, a Syrian journalist residing in Tunisia, castigated the West for its stance towards Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He argued that the West, led by the U.S., knows that Erdogan has been directly and personally supporting ISIS and other terror organizations for years, yet chooses to ignore this fact and the extensive evidence that proves it. He also called out Erdogan for his hypocrisy, noting that he condemns the “terror” and “terrorists,” meaning the Kurds who fight ISIS, while he himself has been sheltering ISIS, enabling its activity and providing it with resources and financial support since 2012. When it comes to spreading lies, said Qassem, Erdogan is “a faithful disciple of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels” because he just “keeps lying, in hope that people will believe him even though the lie is obvious.”

The following are translated excerpts from his article:[1]

“When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks about terror, what terror is he referring to? The terrorists he speaks about, are they the terrorists of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, or does he consider ISIS and Al-Qaeda to be saints? Erdogan says that whoever arms the terrorists… is party to [their] crimes and bears [responsibility] for the sin of shedding Muslim blood. That is what he stressed in his meeting with representatives of the Turkish diaspora and with [other] Muslims in New York, when he came there to attend the UN General Assembly. [But] the terrorists he hinted at, are they [actually] the people who are fighting ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the other jihadi groups [i.e., the Kurds]?

“Erdogan, who personally helped ignite flames inside Syria, [and] who opened the Turkish borders to masses of refugees and then threatened to expel them from Turkey in order to pressure and blackmail Europe… is [now] wondering how it is possible to remain silent in the face of the Islamophobia, antisemitism and growing antagonism to immigrants and foreigners that prevail in the West. Anyone listening to Erdogan… might think he is Mother Theresa, rather than a dictator who is determined to fill Turkey’s prisons with journalists and oppositionists…

“The West, and especially the U.S., are well aware that Erdogan has been sheltering ISIS and proving it with financial assistance and [other] means since 2012. On orders from Turkish intelligence, Turkish customs officers help this organization’s fighters cross the border to Syria and Iraq in droves…

“Politicians are often forced to lie, [but] they are careful to keep their lies logical and therefore credible. Erdogan is different. When it comes to lying, he is a faithful disciple of Nazi propaganda minister [Joseph] Goebbels. He [just] keeps lying, in hope that people will believe him even though the lie is obvious.  Most of the ISIS fighters who crossed into Syria and Iraq and declared the Islamic Caliphate there passed through Turkey. Proof of this is the fact that dozens of the fighters who were captured by the American Kurdish forces who helped the Americans were found to have Turkish stamps on their passports…

“Another characteristic of Erdogan, in addition to lying, is mixing things up. According to him, these terror organizations serve only the interests of the imperialists, and he expresses sorrow that countries that purport to be democracies and to defend human rights ignore the crimes perpetrated by these organizations. Erdogan cannot say, ‘I was misled,’ because Turkey’s sheltering of ISIS starts at the very top echelons of the Turkish leadership. In 2016, Wikileaks published 58,000 emails proving that Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, was involved in marketing stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil for the benefit of ISIS. Sümeyye Erdogan, the daughter of the Turkish president, established well-equipped medical centers in Urfa in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, to care for wounded ISIS soldiers. There is extensive proof of Erdogan’s direct and indirect support of ISIS and its affiliated terror groups. Why then does Western media insist on ignoring this?”

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Note

[1] Al-Arab (London), September 26, 2019. 

Featured image: Ali Qassem (Source: Al-Arab, London)

American taxpayers are now paying the salaries and expenses of dozens of Venezuelan opposition figures who have created a “shadow government” inside Venezuela and abroad. On October 8, USAID signed a bilateral agreement with the faction of the Venezuelan opposition led by National Assembly president Juan Guaidó (whom the Trump administration recognizes as the “interim president” of Venezuela) that includes $98 million in assistance for Venezuelans. A memo obtained by the L.A. Times reveals that USAID is diverting $41.9 million from aid for Central America and instead sending it “to Guaidó and his faction… to pay for their salaries, airfare, ‘good governance’ training, propaganda, technical assistance for holding elections and other ‘democracy-building’ projects.”

Elliott Abrams, the White House’s special envoy to Venezuela, said in an interview that the Trump administration wants to “pay for embassies, ambassadors [and] a National Assembly office in Caracas” for Guaidó’s team. At the signing of the USAID agreement, Carlos Vecchio, Mr. Guaidó’s representative in Washington, praised the agency for helping to “enhance our capabilities… in increasing our foreign service,” confirming that funds are going to the Guaidó team. With this public admission of financing, there is now no denying that the coup is orchestrated from Washington and that whatever authority Mr. Guaidó may have is only a function of his serving as a U.S. proxy.

To date, no information has been made public as to whose salaries are being paid and how much they are being paid. What we do know is that the hard-earned dollars of American citizens are lining the pockets of Venezuelan politicians who have demanded an increasingly harder line against the Maduro government. This harder line includes brutal economic sanctions that amount to the collective punishment of ordinary Venezuelans and have led to the death of at least 40,000 people.

Mr. Guaidó has been taking the Trump administration for a ride, and now he and his followers are cashing in. Nearly nine months after his coup began, he is no closer to being in power than he was when he swore himself into office on a street corner in Caracas. There has been no increase in the number of countries that support the coup (54 have followed the U.S. lead); in fact, after initially shunning the Maduro government, several European countries are now working with him. Mr. Guaidó’s promises of mass military desertions, numerous defections of high-profile officials and a splitting of chavismo (the base of the Maduro government) have not come to fruition. His own base has actually gotten smaller, perhaps because members of his team were caught embezzling humanitarian aid in Colombia. Or it could be because Mr. Guaidó was photographed with drug traffickers and allegedly received logistical support from a nefarious Colombian cartel.

The coup has not only failed, it has backfired. The left in Venezuela is now more unified and the opposition has splintered: parties representing nearly three million voters recently signed an agreement with the Maduro government and have declared that dialogue is the only way forward. Moreover, the USAID deal with the Guaidó faction is coming at a tricky time for the opposition. Venezuela is reportedly on the verge of losing Citgo, a U.S. based subsidiary of state oil company Pdvsa, to creditors as the Trump administration’s sanctions are preventing Pdvsa from paying bondholders. How will ordinary Venezuelans react if Citgo is lost while opposition leaders are getting paid in dollars and flying around the world on the backs of American taxpayers?

The issue of opposition leaders having the funds to travel is an unfolding scandal in Venezuela, as the second Vice President of the National Assembly, Stalin González – a Guaidó ally, was filmed at Game 4 of the National League Championship Series in Washington, D.C. on the same day that he missed a session in the National Assembly. One wonders whether U.S. tax dollars paid for Mr. González’s airfare or his front-row ticket to the ballgame. Venezuelans are wondering how a Vice President of the National Assembly could afford to fly to Washington and attend a Washington Nationals playoff game, as they themselves feel the stress of inflation and making ends meet.

On October 3, Vecchio flew to Florida for a political event with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other representatives from the Miami area. He travelled to Florida at least twice earlier in the year for similar events with Vice President Pence. Venezuelan coup supporters are being paid by to lobby both parties under the pretext that they are diplomats. This pretext does not extend to every Guaidó supporting country in Europe, where Spain and Germany, among others, have not granted diplomatic privileges to his representatives.

The payment of Mr. Guaidó’s representatives is a serious conflict of interest that is generating concern among Venezuelans. Do Vecchio and other members of the Guaidó team represent the Venezuelan people or the interests of the government that is paying their salaries?  It is a point worth reiterating: a foreign politician is being paid by the United States to influence policy in the United States.

The subsidies to the Venezuelan opposition have never been so blatant, but they are also nothing new. USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives began the indirect financing of the opposition in 2002. It began by funding opposition affiliated non-governmental organizations, students and parties; now it has progressed to paying politicians directly. The goal has always been the same: regime change. President Trump should recall his words as candidate Trump: “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with.” Instead, he is doubling down on the coup, keeping it on life support at the expense of taxpayers but also making it harder to support dialogue and a policy that helps solve the crisis. The voices of the moderate Venezuelan opposition and representatives of the Maduro government – who are currently engaging in dialogue in Caracas – are drowned out in Washington, in no small part because of the financial and logistical support offered to the coup supporters.

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Leonardo Flores is a Latin American policy expert and campaigner with CODEPINK.

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Game of Thrones: Olde-Style Catharsis or Bloody Good Counsel?

October 22nd, 2019 by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

Introduction

Game of Thrones is a television series based on the storylines of A Song of Ice and Fire, set in the fictional Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and the continent of Essos. The series chronicles the violent dynastic struggles among the realm’s noble families for the Iron Throne, while other families fight for independence from it. The final season depicts the culmination of the series’ two primary conflicts: the Great War against the Army of the Dead, and the Last War for control of the Iron Throne. Game of Thrones is not typical of contemporary fantasy, with more emphasis on battles and political intrigue and less emphasis on magic and sorcery.

Battle of the Goldroad from Game of Thrones – Season 7 Episode 4 on the official tapestry produced in Northern Ireland. 

As the series drew to a close many fans of the show complained bitterly about the final season and finale. As Ien Ang wrote in Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination, another show with a huge worldwide viewership in the 1970s:

“It is wrong, however, to pretend that the ideology of mass culture exercises dictatorial powers. The discourses of this ideology are very important, culturally legitimized organizers of the way in which the social meaning of Dallas is constructed, but alternative discourses do exist which offer alternative points of identification for lovers of Dallas.” [2]

People construct their own meanings that the show’s producers have no control over. They may agree or disagree with the decisions of the producers but they will still find a meaning that is satisfactory for them. Even the violence and bleakness of the show can be interpreted in a positive way. I will take Game of Thrones at face value and look at what was actually produced and transmitted and examine possible meanings. I will argue that the series has subconscious elements which satisfy audiences frustrated with modern society, and even though good forces generally prevail, ultimately the moral of the tale is that one should not hand one’s destiny over to ‘great’ leaders.

In this essay I will examine three questions: why do people watch Game of Thrones, is Game of Thrones an historical allegory? and, does Game of Thrones rise above being pure fantasy?

Why do people watch Game of Thrones?

Image on the right: Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen

One friend with the Game of Thrones box set revealed to me that she cried after watching the first episode of Season one because of its unremitting bleakness and didn’t watch any more episodes after that. She couldn’t find anything positive in the show, yet millions of people all over the world watched the show apparently finding it a worthwhile experience. The interest in Game of Thrones is similar to the interest in Romanticism in the mid nineteenth century. Disillusionment with society, a desire for a simpler life and a closer relationship with nature became the basis of a new Romantic culture and philosophy that spread across Europe.

What could a modern audience find positive in Game of Thrones in an era of mass production and international trade, alienation, disillusionment, ennui, gender confusion, and general dissatisfaction with governments, politicians and legal systems? In other words, in a world which is depressing enough already.

While the dramatic and sometimes very violent narrative holds the audience’s attention, there are subconscious elements that add to the fascination with the show. These are taken-for-granted elements which add to the background authenticity of the drama. And authenticity seems to have been high up in the objectives of the show runners. There is an earthiness in the production values that make one constantly aware of faeces, dung, dirt, urine, blood and mud. Indeed some scenes seem to try and incorporate all these aspects in to one scene (like when Jaime is tied to a pole in captivity). These elements I will look at under the headings of (1) small scale production, (2) gender roles, and (3) justice and politics.

Small scale production – (‘yesterday’s bread and a “bowl o’ brown”‘)

We are slowly drawn in and made aware that nothing in Game of Thrones can be taken for granted. There are no supermarkets or hardware stores. Small scale production is everywhere. Everything is made, grown, baked, forged, sewn, cooked, brewed or built before our eyes. This produces joy when made well and disgust when done badly (wine, bread, clothes, swords etc.) in the characters in the drama. However, when the characters are used to something bad they appreciate when something is good. In modern society the skills necessary to make things is taken out of our hands as production becomes more complex, standardised and automated.

We are alienated from production and are becoming more and more distant from the harvesting, gathering and production of our food and manufacture of our goods. It is really only at Christmas time that some of that sense of medieval production operates with baking, setting the fire, decorating the tree, wrapping presents and family games. Even then, consumption still plays a much larger role than production. However, the Romantic desire for a closer relationship with Nature and indigenous production is still strong and reveals itself in the burgeoning interest in nationalist ideas and politics.

Gender roles – (“I’m no Lady” – Brienne)

While the World Health Organization (WHO) defines gender roles as “socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women”, we live in a society where traditional roles have been breaking down and definitions of masculinity and femininity are constantly changing. In Game of Thrones we follow the actions of men training, fighting and dying for ’causes’. We see women training and fighting too (Brienne and Arya), as exceptions, but in the main women are there to be protected, or in particular, through oaths taken by knights.

Again a simple and Romantic notion but one that is obviously appealing on a subconscious level as it is a consistent theme throughout all eight seasons. The main characters also have a sense of destiny, objectives and direction in their lives. In our society unemployment, alienation and high suicide rates among men, show that at the very least something is broken and people do not have the same sense of control over their own lives.

Justice and politics – (serving up oats and oaths)

Oaths are a big thing in the Game of Thrones. The taking and breaking of oaths will get you lauded (Brienne of Tarth) or hated by everyone (Jaime the Kingslayer). The seriousness with which oaths are taken is a sign of the importance given to personal integrity in the show. In real life oaths are also taken, e.g. in the USA members of parliament ‘solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States’ and in the UK members ‘swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty’. However, we live in a society where MPs, committees, and task forces, do not take oaths seriously and are constantly found to be diluting bills, lying, and abusing the political system for self gain. This breeds much cynicism with politics and politicians especially as the justice system also seems to be loaded in their favour.

Not so, however, in the Game of Thrones, were justice is often meted out deftly and swiftly at the pointy end of a sword. Instant justice here may seem refreshing and satisfying compared to the real world of procrastinating judicial systems which breed cynicism regarding the ‘lack of a death penalty’, sentences perceived to be ‘too light’, or never-ending court cases.

Thus, Game of Thrones has many pared down and simplified aspects that give a temporary relief from complex, modern society. In Game of Thrones everyone is an artisan because everything has to be done or learned directly (swordsmanship, horse riding, copying books) or got from somebody with the necessary skills (wine, bread, smith).

Is Game of Thrones an historical allegory?

While it is known that Martin takes examples from history such as “Hadrian’s Wall (which becomes Martin’s Wall), the Roman Empire, and the legend of Atlantis (ancient Valyria), Byzantine Greek fire (“wildfire”), Icelandic sagas of the Viking Age (the Ironborn), the Mongol hordes (the Dothraki), the Hundred Years’ War, and the Italian Renaissance”, Game of Thrones is not a mish-mash of historical dramatic incidents. A certain logic is imposed on the narrative which is similar to a broad overview of human history. At first we have primitive society, then a combination of feudalism and slavery, then Enlightenment and bourgeois concepts of freedom and democracy with the future being left open to speculation.

Primitive society – (“We don’t kneel for anyone beyond the Wall.”  – Mance Rayder)

Image below: Martin at LoneStarCon 3 (the 71st World Science Fiction Convention), 2013

The people who live north of the wall, called Wildlings, worship the Old Gods of the Forest which consist of nature spirits. Their sacred places were ‘weirwood’ trees, a deciduous tree similar in shape to the Oak tree. In Game of Thrones many of the weirwood trees were cut down during the violent invasion of the Andals who killed and replaced the First Men. These ideas are similar to the ancient traditions of the Celtic and Germanic people who worshipped sacred oaks, and also the modern concepts of the Kurgan peoples who are believed to have expanded throughout the Pontic–Caspian steppe and into Eastern Europe by the early 3rd millennium BC. These expansions are believed to have been violent military incursions that imposed a patriarchal warrior society on what were essentially peaceful matriarchal, egalitarian, nature-based communities. This resulted in slavery, extractivism and eventually the appearance of fortified settlements and hillforts and the graves of warrior-chieftains.

These early communities were destroyed but their culture survived down the centuries in remnants of nature-based traditions, stories and mythology. One story focuses on Saint Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon missionary, who cut down a sacred tree of the Germanic pagans, Donar’s Oak. To add insult to injury the wood from the oak was then used to build a church at the site dedicated to Saint Peter.  In Game of Thrones, the awareness of the Old Gods survives as an active religion (“I swear it by the old gods and the new”) whereas in real life the old gods are relegated to mythology, but their nature-based rites have survived until today as traditions (e.g. wassailing the apple trees, the Christmas tree, festivals of light, Easter eggs, bonfires etc.).

Feudalism and slavery – (“No man wants to be owned” – Daenerys Targaryen)

The Wildlings described themselves as free folk, not bound by the oaths and loyalties of the feudal hierarchical structure of society in the Seven Kingdoms. The ‘turreted walls’ described by Ovid above became associated with ideas of honourable monarchies and chivalry throughout feudal Europe. Yet they were essentially the descendants of the earlier hostile invaders. Bronn breaks this Romantic vision with more than a touch of historical realism when Jaime reacts to his request for Highgarden castle:

“Jaime Lannister: Highgarden will never belong to a cutthroat. Bronn: No? Who were your ancestors, the ones who made your family rich? Fancy lads in silk? They were fucking cutthroats. That’s how all the great houses started, isn’t it? With a hard bastard who was good at killing people. Kill a few hundred people, they make you a lord. Kill a few thousand, they make you king. And then all your cocksucking grandsons can ruin the family with their cocksucking ways.” [4]

Bronn’s view of the rich echoes Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Enlightenment analysis on the origins of inequality in society. In Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau writes:

“The rich, in particular, must have felt how much they suffered by a constant state of war, of which they bore all the expense; and in which, though all risked their lives, they alone risked their property. Besides, however speciously they might disguise their usurpations, they knew that they were founded on precarious and false titles; so that, if others took from them by force what they themselves had gained by force, they would have no reason to complain.” [3]

Rousseau (1755), Discourse on Inequality, Holland, frontispiece and title page

The Game of Thrones essentially echoes the medieval battles of different families in Europe for power and supremacy: forming alliances and borrowing money, as well as risking the perils of getting the church involved, as the Inquisition-like ‘sparrow’ movement demonstrated, working its way up the hierarchy to the very top. Having the Iron Bank, ‘the most powerful financial institution in the Known World’, backing you is also extremely important for survival. As Tywin Lannister states:

“One stone crumbles and another takes its place and the temple holds its form for a thousand years or more. And that’s what the Iron Bank is, a temple. We all live in its shadow and almost none of us know it. You can’t run from them, you can’t cheat them, you can’t sway them with excuses. If you owe them money and you don’t want to crumble yourself, you pay it back.”

The Iron Bank always gets its due by switching sides to new kings who pay back the previous debt as well as the new loans given to them when claiming power. Similarly the central banks and the BIS (Bank for International Settlements) are looked after with bail-outs and bail-ins by generation after generation of politicians.

Image on the right: John Bradley as Samwell Tarly

Like the rise of humanism through the Renaissance and groups like the Florentine Camerata, Samwell Tarly goes to the ancient libraries and books for knowledge to solve fundamental problems in the face of dogma and ignorance. While in Europe the Enlightenment came through the ancient Greek texts, in the Game of Thrones, Enlightenment comes literally from the warm light of the south in the form of Daenerys Targaryen (who is known as the Breaker of Chains) as she brings mercy and freedom from slavery northwards, one town at a time. Known also as the Mother of Dragons, she has in her control an awesome source of power which aided her rise to power but was also her undoing: her three fire-breathing dragons. Thus we see the almost socialist continuum of the primitive communal (‘old free’) free folk, slavery, serfdom, and then the newly liberated (‘new free’) freed slaves who scrawled ‘Death to the Masters’ on their city walls.

Enlightenment and democracy – (“Chaos is a ladder” – Petyr Baelish)

Victory comes to Daenerys in the battle for King’s Landing as she uses the dragons to destroy the city and burn the inhabitants alive even though the city had surrendered to her. Her liberated slave army also killed many citizens under her orders. When the war is finished she rallies her troops “proclaiming that they will continue to ‘liberate’ the rest of the world as they did for King’s Landing and “break the wheel” to free all the common folk from their rulers, whom she perceives as tyrants.”

Daenerys Targaryen’s black leather costume and blond hair are reminiscent of the Nazi leaders’ uniforms and Aryan ideology (Targ-Aryan?). After her speech she is confronted by Jon (lover, nephew and competitor for the Iron Throne) about the genocide she has carried out. They disagree on what is good: to build a new world, Daenerys wants to destroy the old one, while Jon argues for mercy and forgiveness. Realising she was not going to change, Jon plunges a knife in her heart and kills her. The burning of the city using overwhelming firepower is reminiscent of Hitler’s bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941. However, the ‘democratic’ countries were not immune to similar strategies as the British/American aerial bombing attack on the city of Dresden in 1945 – 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices were dropped on the city killing an estimated 22,700 to 25,000 people. Thus it is shown that even the ‘good’ can be guilty of extreme measures to achieve political aims.

The surviving main leaders of the the Kingdoms gather and Tyrion proposes that all future monarchs be chosen by Westerosi leaders. They elect Bran the Broken to be leader as he cannot have children, thus finally breaking the wheel of hereditary titles and bringing in democracy of the nineteenth century type where only the elites can vote. Samwell Tarly suggests a much broader base for the voting:

“”Maybe the decision about what’s best for everyone should be left to … well, everyone.”
“Maybe we should give the dogs a vote as well,” laughs Bronze Yohn Royce.”

This disrespect for the masses echoes modern democracy whereby the gap between the people’s desires and their elected representatives’ promises always remains very wide.

The series ends with the new cabinet squabbling, while Jon heads north and the Danaerys’ Unsullied army sails away.

So, this historical time track is truncated in the narrative of Game of Thrones, which allows them to work together and learn from each other (e.g. unity in the Great War against the Army of the Dead, the Wildlings slagging off the others as ‘kneelers’).

Does Game of Thrones transcend fantasy?

The constant push for shocking drama in each episode, especially as the series headed for its grand finale could lead one to believe that the overriding mantra of the show was that effect was more important than affect. Much science fiction and fantasy literature stays within the narrow worlds created, and encourages never-ending adolescence and nerd-like awareness of every detail, accompanied by board games and comic cons.

Storytelling – (Stark raven madness)

While effect is an important aspect to the excitement generated by Game of Thrones, Martin believes in the power of story telling. Within the narrative many of the characters tell stories to explain their ideas or situation. There is also a meta element to the narrative as Martin uses the idea of storytelling in three different ways. At first, there is the play-within-a-play, with the medieval retelling of the poisoning of Joffrey and Tyrion’s patricide, called The Bloody Hand. The play is a farce and Arya, who happens upon the play, is disgusted at the humorous portrayal of the beheading of her father. The play allows Martin to have a little bit of fun with his own serious narrative, while at the same time showing how recent elite events can be satirised ‘from below’ by rebellious commoners, or become ‘false news’ propagated by elite competitors. It is also possible he is satirising the po-faced pretentiousness and egoism of many fantasy and science fiction narratives.

Image on the left Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister

Secondly, Martin has Tyrion extol the importance of storytelling as the memory of society itself:

“Tyrion Lannister: What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories. There’s nothing more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it. And who has a better story than Bran the Broken? The boy who fell from a high tower and lived. He knew he’d never walk again, so he learned to fly. He crossed beyond the Wall, a crippled boy, and became the Three-Eyed Raven. He is our memory, the keeper of all our stories. The wars, weddings, births, massacres, famines. Our triumphs, our defeats, our past. Who better to lead us into the future?”

Thirdly, the power of storytelling is also demonstrated by the power of inclusion or exclusion in a funny scene where Tyrion is presented with a large book describing recent history (and an ad for the Martin’s book, A Song of Ice and Fire):

“Tyrion Lannister: [sees a large book placed in front of him] What’s this?
Samwell Tarly: A Song of Ice and Fire. Archmaester Ebrose’s history of the wars following the death of King Robert. I helped him with the title.
Tyrion Lannister: [flips through pages] I suppose I come in for some heavy criticism.
Samwell Tarly: Oh, I wouldn’t say that.
Tyrion Lannister: Oh, he’s kind to me. Never would’ve guessed. [Sam doesn’t reply] He’s not kind?
Samwell Tarly: He…
Tyrion Lannister: He what? What does he say about me?
Samwell Tarly: …I don’t believe you’re mentioned, ahem.”

The tragic ending for Daenerys Targaryen, who audiences believed to be good, was an important moment for George R.R. Martin’s views on good storytelling.

Genocide – (“the true horrors of human history”)

Martin talked about fellow fantasy writer Tolkien’s less than critical attitude towards his own characters:

“George RR Martin pointed out that Tolkien believed if there was a good ruler, like King Aragorn at the end of The Lord of the Rings, then things would be okay. However, Martin disagreed saying: “You can be a really decent human being … you can have the noblest of intentions, and your reign can still be horribly screwed up. He did what he wanted to do very brilliantly but … I look at the end and it says Aragorn is the king and he says, ‘And Aragorn ruled wisely and well for 100 years’. It’s easy to write that sentence…but I want to know what was his tax policy and what did he do when famine struck the land. And what did he do with all those Orcs? A lot of Orcs left over. They weren’t all killed, they ran away into the mountains. Did Aragorn carry out a policy of systematic Orc genocide?”

Martin believes that “the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves.” He writes in a genre in which there is the constant, predictable battle between good and evil. However, in Game of Thrones we see, among others, the demonisation of (the good) Daenerys and the valorisation of (the bad) Jaime, demonstrating that questions of redemption and character change are an important part of Martin’s stories. The changes we see in the main heroine of the show demonstrate Martin’s reluctance to have only worn-out black and white, good and evil depictions of morality and instead he depicts the human psyche in all its dialectical processes.

Conclusion

This makes the series ending narrative perfectly logical, except for the fans who invested too much in the concept of a ‘good’ leader. Our leaders promise everything from employment and better social welfare to resolving the climate change crisis, yet when elected, continue with economic and political agendas which benefit only a tiny elite. George R.R. Martin’s point is to get the legions of superhero fans to stop looking for a ‘saviour’ and start looking to themselves to solve society’s problems. How much more plainly can it be put?

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

Notes:

[1] Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (John Hopkins: Baltimore, 1997) p.63

[2] Ien Ang, Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination (Routledge: London, 1991) p.111

[3] Jean Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality (Oxford Uni Press: Oxford, 1994) p.67

[4] Game of Thrones – Season 8 Episode 4: ‘The Last Of The Starks’

All images in this article are from Wikimedia Commons

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Video: Syrian Army Takes Control of Abandoned US Bases

October 22nd, 2019 by South Front

The northeastern Syria ceasefire, agreed by Washington and Ankara, immediately collapsed. Under the terms of the reached agreement, Turkey had to halt its Operation Peace Spring for 120 hours to allow units of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to withdraw from a 32km-deep safe zone. It was supposed that after this Turkey will not resume its offensive. This plan was doomed to failure.

The SDF leadership said that it accepts the ceasefire, but rejected the forces withdrawal. In own turn, the Syrian National Army (SNA), a coalition of Turkish proxies, did not halt attacks on Kurdish fighters. The battle for Ras al-Ayn between the SNA and the SDF continued.

By October 20, the SNA backed up by Turkish Army battle tanks had resumed offensive actions near Ras al-Ayn capturing the villages of Umm al-Asafir, al-Shakariyah, Haji Hisso and Jan Tamir, where an intense fighting erupted. Pro-SDF sources claim that these villages were recaptured by Kurdish forces. Pro-Turkish sources claim that the SDF counter-attack was repelled. In reality, the area remains contested.

Watch the video here.

Additionally, the SDF-affiliated Afrin Liberation Forces attacked SNA positions near Tuways in northern Aleppo. At least 6 SNA members were killed and 9 others were injured in the attack. The SNA confirmed the fact of the attack and revealed that the killed militants were from its Al-Waqas Brigades.

On October 19, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that his country will officially resume its military operation “a minute after 120 hours” if promises given to Turkey “are not kept as in the past”. Turkish media are counting minutes until the end of the formal ceasefire.

According to an adviser to the Turkish president, Yasin Aktay, the US-Turkish-agreed safe zone should be 444-km long and 32km-deep. With the Syrian Army deployed in the supposed safe zone, and the SDF is not planning to withdraw anywhere, it is hard to imagine how this promise can be kept. Therefore, Operation Peace Spring will soon be resumed.

Aktay also claimed that any efforts by the Damascus government to protect Kurdish militias in northeastern Syria will be seen by Turkey as a declaration of war. However, he added that if Damascus provides Turkey with guarantees that Kurdish forces will not operate in the border area, Turkey may change its attitude towards the deployment of the Syrian Army in northeastern Syria. These remarks are another indication of the unpublicized coordination between Turkey and the Damascus-Moscow alliance. Pro-SDF sources itself admitted that Russia appeared the only power capable to limit the scale of the Turkish offensive and already did it in such areas as Manbij and Ayn al-Arab.

Meanwhile, the US military continued its withdrawal from northern Syria. After bombing own military facility at the Lafarge Cement Factory, the US-led coalition destroyed a radar station at Abdulaziz Mount. US troops abandoned the Robariye facility, one of its largest bases in the region.

On October 19, the Syrian Army got control of the former US military garrison in Qasir Yalda. Government troops were deployed in the nearby villages of Tell Tamir and al-Ahras as a part of the SDF-Damascus security deal. According to Syrian state media, the army even repelled an attack by Turkish-backed militants near al-Ahras and entered the villages of al-Salamas and Umm al-Khair.

On October 22, President Erdogan will visit Russia for talks with his counterpart Vladimir Putin. Besides economic and military cooperation, the sides will discuss the situation in northeastern Syria. These talks may become a turning point in settling the developing crisis.

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On October 21, 2019, Julian Assange appeared in court for an extradition hearing. Assange is being held in a British jail pending extradition to the United States after having served his sentence for skipping bail when he was given asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy to avoid extradition. The court has refused his release pending the extradition hearing and denied him access to computers making it difficult for him to defend himself.

Assange fled to Ecuador’s embassy in 2012 to avoid being sent to Sweden for an investigation of manufactured charges being used to imprison him so he could be extradited to the United Staes. He faced a sex crimes investigation, which is highly suspect and has never resulted in charges despite three investigations. Assange spent seven years in Ecuador’s embassy before he was dragged out with Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno’s consent in April. He now faces 18 counts in the United States.

It is evident from this hearing that Assange is being railroaded and is not receiving due process for an alleged crime that should not exist, i.e. being an editor and publisher that told the truth about US war crimes and other illegal actions, as well as the corporate control of US foreign policy. Assange is facing up to 175 years in prison on more than a dozen charges related to WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents that exposed American war crimes and its corrupt corporate-dominated foreign policy. Popular Resistance has supported Julian Assange for his journalism and Chelsea Manning for whistleblowing and refusing to testify against Assange. Both need to be released and the charges against Assange dropped.

Assange arrived for the hearing in a van. There were numerous supporters outside as he arrived but he was driven into a garage with0ut people seeing him.

Assange People outisde of court, October 21, 2019 from Ruptly.

His mother commented on her son’s appearance in court and the extradition he is facing on Twitter:

Others expressed rage at the injustice of the court proceedings being used as a weapon against Assange, not an instrument of due process and justice. The court is not even trying to pretend it is being fair.

The silence of corporate media outlets and journalists is being noticed. Their cowardice is suicidal. If the Espionage Act is used against Assange successfully, it will be available for use against all journalists. They will either have to bow down to the government and not report on corruption and war crimes or risk prosecution. The Assange prosecution is an attack on Freedom of the Press and the people’s right to know. The Assange case will define Freedom of Speech and Press in the 21st Century.

Julian Assange turns to the crowd in court on October 21, 2019, raises fist and shows solidarity.

People did get to see Assange in court.

Julian Assange courtroom sketch, October 21, 2019.

His attorney, Mark Summers, told the court that Assange was spied on in the embassy, including conversations with his lawyers. Reuters reports:

Summers said the U.S. government had been listening to conversations between Assange and lawyers while he was in the Ecuadorean embassy in London from 2012 to 2019.

He said there was a criminal case in the Spanish courts allegedly involving Spanish contractors used by the U.S. government and that hooded men broke into offices, without giving details.

“This is part of a concerted and avowed war against whistleblowers including investigative journalists and publishers,” Summers said.

He argued that his team needed more time to gather and provide evidence, saying the challenges in this case would test the limits of most lawyers and citing the difficulty of communicating with Assange who doesn’t have a computer in jail.

Assange is the first publisher or editor charged under the Espionage Act, which was designed for traitors and is being misapplied to a journalist. The charges against him are a political attempt to silence journalists and publishers, and the fake Swedish allegations were part of a plot to incarcerate him for US prosecution.

Summers called the USextradition “a political attempt to signal to journalists the consequences of publishing information.” He described the prosecution as a war on journalis saying “It’s legally unprecedented. This is part of an avowed war on whistleblowers to include investigative journalists and publishers.”

Reuters reported that Assange mumbled and stuttered for several seconds as he gave his name and date of birth at the beginning of the hearing.  When “the judge asked him at the end of the hearing if he knew what was happening, he replied ‘not exactly,’ complained about the conditions in jail, and said he was unable to ‘think properly.’”

Assange understands he is going through an unfair hearing that does not allow him to defend himself saying to the judge: “I don’t understand how this is equitable. I can’t research anything, I can’t access any of my writing. It’s very difficult where I am.”

Amnesty International has called for Assange not to be extradited to the United States.

Assange faces the judge in court on October 21, 2019. Courtroom sketch shows Assange is melancholy, his shoulders heavy, represented behind bars and flanked by police. By Elizabeth Cook.

The judge refused to delay the hearing in the case when Assange’s lawyer, Mark Summers, argued that Assange’s extradition hearing, scheduled for February 2020, should be delayed by three months due to the complexity of the case. The judge showed there is a goal in this courtroom — the rapid extradition to the United States where he will face an unfair trial in Alexandria, VA, known as the ‘rocket docket’, where national security cases are held.

Reuters reports:

The crowd of supporters remained through the hearing and cheered Assange as he left.

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Kevin Zeese co-directs Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

Featured image: Julian Assange court sketch, October 21, 2019, supplied by Julia Quenzler.

There was what might be described as an extraordinary amount of nonsense being promoted by last week’s media. Unfortunately, some of it was quite dangerous. Admiral William McRaven, who commanded the Navy Seals when Osama bin Laden was captured and killed and who has been riding that horse ever since, announced that if Donald Trump continues to fail to provide the type of leadership the country needs, he should be replaced by whatever means are necessary. The op-ed entitled “Our Republic is Under Attack by the President” with the subtitle “If President Trump doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office” was featured in the New York Times, suggesting that the Gray Lady was providing its newspaper of record seal of approval for what might well be regarded as a call for a military coup.

McRaven’s exact words, after some ringing praise for the military and all its glorious deeds in past wars, were that the soldiers, sailors and marines now must respond because “The America that they believed in was under attack, not from without, but from within.”

McRaven then elaborated that

“These men and women, of all political persuasions, have seen the assaults on our institutions: on the intelligence and law enforcement community, the State Department and the press. They have seen our leaders stand beside despots and strongmen, preferring their government narrative to our own. They have seen us abandon our allies and have heard the shouts of betrayal from the battlefield. As I stood on the parade field at Fort Bragg, one retired four-star general, grabbed my arm, shook me and shouted, ‘I don’t like the Democrats, but Trump is destroying the Republic!’”

It is a call to arms if there ever was one. Too bad Trump can’t strip McRaven of his pension and generous health care benefits for starters and McRaven might also consider that he could be recalled to active duty by Trump and court martialed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And the good admiral, who up until 2018 headed the state university system in Texas, might also receive well merited pushback for his assessment of America’s role in the world over the past two decades, in which he was a major player, at least in terms of dealing out punishment. He wrote

“We are the most powerful nation in the world because we try to be the good guys. We are the most powerful nation in the world because our ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate.”

Utter bullshit, of course. The United States has been acting as the embodiment of a rogue nation, lashing out pointlessly and delivering death and destruction. If McRaven truly believes what he says he is not only violating his oath to defend the constitution while also toying with treason, he is an idiot and should never have been allowed to run anything more demanding than a hot dog stand. Washington has been systematically blowing people up worldwide for no good reasons, killing possibly as many as 4 million mostly Muslims, while systematically stripping Americans of their Bill of Rights at home. “Good guys” and “champions of justice” indeed!

And then there is the Great Hillary Clinton caper. In an interview last week Hillary claimed predictably that Donald Trump is “Vladimir Putin’s dream,” and then went on to assert that there would be other Russian assets emerging, including nestled in the bosom of her own beloved Democratic Party. She said, clearly suggesting that it would be Tulsi Gabbard, that

“They’re also going to do third-party again. I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on someone who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”

Clinton explained how the third-party designation would work, saying of Jill Stein, who ran for president in 2016 as a Green Party candidate,

“And that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset. Yeah, she’s a Russian asset — I mean, totally. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate. So I don’t know who it’s going to be, but I will guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most needed.”

Tulsi responded courageously and accurately

“Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.”

Tulsi has in fact been attacked relentless by the Establishment since she announced that she would be running for the Democratic nomination. Shortly before last Tuesday’s Democratic candidate debate the New York Times ran an article suggesting that Gabbard was an isolationist, was being promoted by Russia and was an apologist for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. In reality, Gabbard is the only candidate willing to confront America’s warfare-national security state.

The Hillary Clinton attack on Gabbard and on the completely respectable Jill Stein is to a certain extent incomprehensible unless one lives in the gutter that she and Bill have wallowed in ever since they rose to prominence in Arkansas. Hillary, the creator of the private home server for classified information as well as author of the catastrophic war against Libya and the Benghazi debacle has a lot to answer for but will never be held accountable, any more than her husband Bill for his rapes and molestations. And when it comes to foreign interference, Gabbard is being pilloried because the Russian media regards her favorably while the Clinton Foundation has taken tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and billionaires seeking quid pro quos, much of which has gone to line the pockets of Hillary, Bill and Chelsea.

Finally, one comment about the Democratic Party obsession with the Russians. The media was enthusing last Friday over a photo of Speaker Nancy Pelosi standing up across a table from President Trump and pointing at him before walking out of the room. The gushing regarding how a powerful, strong woman was defying the horrible chief executive was both predictable and ridiculous. By her own admission Pelosi’s last words before departing were “All roads lead to Putin.” I will leave it up to the reader to interpret what that was supposed to mean.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Taking Next Steps Toward Nuclear Abolition

October 22nd, 2019 by Kathy Kelly

My friend Marianne Goldscheider, who is 87, suffered a broken hip in July, 2018 and then, in June 2019, it happened again. When she broke her hip the first time, she was running, with her son, on a football field. After the second break, when she fell in her kitchen, she recalls her only desire as she was placed on a stretcher. “I just wanted ‘the right pill,’” she says. She wished she could end her life. Marianne says her Catholic friends, who live nearby in the New York Catholic Worker community, persuaded her not to give up. They’ve long admired her tenacity, and over the years many have learned from her history as a survivor of the Nazi regime who was forced to flee Germany. Recalling her entry to the United States, Marianne jokes she may have been one of the only displaced persons who arrived in the United States carrying her skis. Yet she also carried deep anxieties, the “angst,” she says, of her generation. She still wonders about German people in the military and the aristocracy who knew Hitler was mad and, yet, didn’t try to stop him. “When and how,” she wonders, “do human beings get beyond all reasoning?”

Marianne is deeply disturbed by the madness of maintaining nuclear weapons arsenals and believes such weapons threaten planetary survival. She worries that, similar to the 1930s, citizens of countries possessing nuclear weapons sleepwalk toward utter disaster.

On April 4, 2018, several of Marianne’s close friends from the New York Catholic Worker community became part of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 by entering the U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine base in King’s Bay, GA and performing a traditional Plowshares action. Guided by lines from Scripture urging people to “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” they prayed, reflected and then symbolically disarmed the Trident nuclear submarine site. The Kings Bay is home port to six nuclear armed Trident ballistic missile submarines with the combined explosive power of over 1825 Hiroshima bombs. One of the banners  they hung read “The Ultimate Logic of Trident is Omnicide.”

Referring to this sign, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, said the banner “is exactly right.” In an October 18 endorsement, he called their actions “necessary to avert a much greater evil.”

In late September, the Catholic Bishops of Canada, alarmed over the increasing danger nuclear weapons pose, urged the Government of Canada to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted at the UN in 2017. The Canadian bishops issued their statement on September 26, the United Nations International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. In it, they note the  Vatican has already signed and ratified the Treaty. “The ashes of World War I and the centenary of its armistice,” wrote Pope Francis, “should teach us that future acts of aggression are not deterred by the law of fear, but rather by the power of calm reason that encourages dialogue and mutual understanding as a means of resolving differences.”

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 activists at oceanfront in Georgia (Photo credit: Kings Bay Plowshares)

The seven defendants, in everyday life, practice nonviolence while serving people who are often the least cared for in our society. Like Marianne, I have known each defendant for close to four decades. They have risked their lives, safety and health in numerous actions of civil disobedience. When imprisoned, they write and speak of the cruel abuse of human beings and the racist, primitive nature of the United States prison-industrial complex. They’ve also chosen to visit or live in war zones, providing witness on behalf of people trapped under bombardment. They live simply, share resources and strive to help build a better world.

Nevertheless, beginning Monday, they will face serious criminal charges and potentially harsh sentences for their action at Kings Bay.

Marianne anxiously awaits their trial. “Why,” she asks, “isn’t there more coverage?”

One of the defendants, Rev. Steve Kelly, SJ, a Jesuit priest, referred to himself in a recent letter as “a tenuous voice in the wilderness.” He further explained that he is among the wilderness of the incarcerated, “two and a quarter million folks comprising the human warehouses in the empire.” Steve has been imprisoned in the Glynn County jail since April 4, 2018.

His letter continues:

And your presence today clearly demonstrates that while you can jail the resisters you cannot destroy the resistance. In this advent of our trial, we have a blue-ribbon legal team to whom I’m sure you’ll show your own gratitude.

This trial and the preliminary process represents the second phase of our witness. It is the Kings Bay Plowshares’ attempt to continue with what began in nonviolence – and hopefully without arrogance – to convert the judiciary according to Prophet Isaiah 2:4. As these judges historically legitimize the nuclear idols, we anticipate the government’s presentation of and the judge’s likely approval of motions preventing the jury from hearing our defense. The mechanism is an in limine – you’ll hear more about that if you don’t know already, but essentially it is, in the words of the late Phil Berrigan, a gag order.

Late in the afternoon of October 18, Judge Woods issued her long-awaited orders regarding testimony allowed in court. She will not allow testimony about the illegality of nuclear weapons, the necessity of civil disobedience, or individual motivations and  personal faith. Fortunately, the many dozens of people filling the Brunswick, GA courtroom on October 21 will help communicate the essential evidence that won’t be shared within the court. In alternative settings, such as over meals, during a Festival of Hope, and as part of a Citizens Tribunal, they’ll discuss and eventually share reasons that motivated our friends to perform the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 action.

A recent op-ed in the New York Times suggests the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 message is entering public discourse. The defendants have clarified that the U.S. nuclear weapon arsenal robs resources desperately needed for food, shelter, health care and education. The New York Times notes if we could reach a total nuclear weapons ban, we could save roughly $43 billion each year on weapons, delivery systems and upgrades. “That’s roughly the same amount we’ve allocated in federal hurricane aid for Puerto Rico.”

Marianne laments the madness which considers nuclear weapons a modern idol deserving of great sacrifice. She is rightfully wary of social and cultural developments that consider such madness normal.

She and I commiserate about recovering from hip fractures, (I’ve been on the mend for the past month), but we both know that Steve Kelly’s invitation deserves our greatest attention.

Tiny postcards are the only means of correspondence allowed to or from the Glynn County jail. On one of these,  Steve wrote a message to a large gathering in New York celebrating the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 action. “I am encouraged by your presence,” he wrote, “to ask that this small effort of ours not be the last word in nuclear abolition.”

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Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org), where this article was originally published.

Featured image: The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 activists at oceanfront in Georgia (Photo credit: Kings Bay Plowshares)

“It is up to us whether we will lift the world to new heights or let it fall into a valley of disrepair.” — US president Donald Trump addressing the UN General Assembly on 19 September 2017

The U.S. Economy is the envy of the world, as Europe and Asia slide ever toward recession. — Trump tweet from 19 September 2019

To be supreme is, by definition, to be the greatest, to be ultimate, to reach sublimity.

However, to believe yourself to be supreme or the greatest is to belie greatness. [1] Greatness, generally, presupposes recognition; ergo, there is no need to mention, and definitely not flaunt, such a status. To do so would be ostentation and arrogance.

 

Therefore, talk of American greatness, white supremacism, Jewish supremacism, or any kind of self or group-affiliated supremacism is nonsense.

The very act of claiming supreme or chosen stature is to vitiate such a claim. First, braggadocio invites repugnance. Humility is the revered trait. Second, the act of claiming greatness nullifies the claim. Third, it calls for a critical examination of what underlies such the claim.

Donald Trump, who attracts the support of white supremacists, ran on making America great again, ostensibly indicating that America was not great during his electoral campaigning. [2] After all, can a state established through genocide, land theft, and enslaving other human beings be great; especially when the theft continues without apology, atonement, and without reparations made to the impacted parties?

What pretense does America have to greatness subsequent to its foundation on territory violently stolen from Indigenous nations?

The US developed a mighty military capability. Since WWII, in flagrant abnegation of international law, [3] it has wreaked war on several smaller nations, devastating many of them for generations, thus incurring the label of a rogue state. [4] Does a great state not adhere to international law and seek to uphold it? Is resorting to military might not an admission of inability to lead or influence other states? [5]

So it is no surprise that Trump threatens to use US military might to destroy nations that do not obey US dictate.

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” — Trump to the UN Genera Assembly on 17 September 2017

“If I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be gone in 10 days.” — Trump on 22 July 2019

“I am fully prepared to swiftly destroy Turkey’s economy…” – Trump on 14 October 2019 [italics added]

US dictate or is it Trump’s dictate? Because in the past year, he talks in the first person, as if it is him, personally, that will be annihilating other nations.

Whether it be personal bluster or commanding a powerful military, resorting to violence is a violation of the United Nations Charter, and it certainly does not set the standard of the behavior desired from the community of nations.

Trump has dubbed himself the “King of Israel” and “the second coming of God.” It, therefore, seems only natural that he would align himself with another scofflaw state. To drive home his status with Israel, he tweeted of his greatness;

 

Israel is a state erected on historical Palestine with the acquiescence of the UN. Israel calls itself the Jewish state. It is guilty of a genocide which continues in slow motion. [6] It is expansionist and continues to annex Arab territory. It does not define its borders; although in the Oded Yinon Plan, Zionist Jews have proposed a state spread far beyond Israel’s borders as currently recognized by the international community.

Israel is criticized as an apartheid state. It practices open racism that only a fool or illusional person would fail to recognize. However, few racists have the fortitude to admit to their racism. [7]

Activist author Gray Zatzman argues “The Notion of the ‘Jewish State’ as an ‘Apartheid Regime’ is a Liberal-Zionist One.” He writes:

The cause of Palestine consists of the restoration of the national rights of the Palestinian people and enabling the Palestinians to exercise their right of self-determination in their own territory…. Enabling the Palestinians to exercise their right of self-determination in their own territory means implementing the Palestinians’ right to return to their lands and to be restored in the property/properties that were taken from them in the course of acts of conquest by the Zionist movement, and in clear cut violation of international law, during 1947-48 and again in June 1967.

… the cause of Palestine entails eliminating the Zionist junta’s so-called “Jewish state” of European-American colonialist privilege and restoring to the Palestinians what the Zionists stole.

Claims of supremacism are elitist. Supremacism and elitism go hand-in-hand with capitalism. It is the capitalists who place themselves above the working classes whose labor they exploit. Billionaires own and control mass media wherein they can preen and grandiosely display their wealth. As justification for the wealth disparity, they conjure the myth that they reached the pinnacle of monetary accumulation through smarts and hard work, [8] whereas they denigrate the poor as being lazy. But they may take pity on the poor masses and set up foundations, often bearing their name, and claim to be philanthropists.

Supremacism is anti-egalitarian. The supremacist posits that he is superior, hence others are posited, by linguistic logic, to be inferior. Capitalism, racism, Zionism, exceptionalism, and nationalism buy into this louche mindset.

The masses have a choice: a) to acquiesce to the elitists and accept subaltern status, b) attempt change through participation in the charade of a democracy bought, paid for, and rigged by the elitists, or c) they can withdraw from the system and strike out on their own. Better yet, d) organize with the masses and through sustained commitment and solidarity bring about a revolution. Abolish the fetid iniquity of capitalism and in its place erect an egalitarian system for the benefit of all the people. [9]

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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

Notes

  1. I speak of supremacism/greatness as a stable unvarying attribute by virtue of which group one aligns with and not to epochal moments of personal achievement. E.g., Muhammad Ali was one of the greatest boxers, but he pointed immodestly to his greatness in the ring during the peak of his career and not his group affiliation.
  2. And just what does it signify about the greatness of a nation that the vote-casting citizenry elected Donald Trump as their president?
  3. Read Nils Andersson, Daniel Iagolnitzer, and Diana G. (eds), International Justice and Impunity: The Case of the United States, (Clarity Press, 2008). Review.
  4. See William Blum, Rogue State (Common Courage Press, 2000).
  5. Stalwart US-ally Canada being referred to as “the peaceable kingdom”; however, it shares the same odious history for the most part with the USA. See Richard Sanders, Fictive Canada, Issue #69, Press for Conversion! (Fall 2017).
  6. For an informative affordable overview of the crimes of the Jewish State see Tony Seed and Gary Zatzman (eds), Dossier on Palestine, (Shunpiking, 2002).
  7. With my colleague B.J. Sabri, we wrote a 12-part series where we concluded, “Zionism is irrefutably racist.” See Kim Petersen and BJ Sabri, “Defining Israeli Zionist Racism,” Dissident Voice, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.
  8. Read Brian Miller and Mike Lapham’s The Self-Made Myth: And the Truth about How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed, (2012).
  9. How might such an egalitarian world look? Michael Albert discusses how an anarchist economy might operate in Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso, 2013). Review. Or one might even consider the emergence of a Star Trek economy. See Manu Saadia, Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek (Piper Text Publishing, 2016). Review.

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Today, Britain watches the dying moments of a mendacious Conservative Government and Party that has made the United Kingdom the laughing stock of both Europe and the world. Once the greatest economic and political force in history, now a comedy act run by a clown and a clutch of incompetent ideologues.

A Home Secretary and a Transport Minister who would struggle to get jobs waiting on tables. A Chancellor who is overwhelmed by his position and a Prime Minister who would fail in any job other than churning-out copy for a Tory rag. After having sacked the brightest and best of its old guard, the Tory Party is now the Gory Party, squelching about in its own blood as it desperately looks for a way out of its ideological excesses.

Fortunately, its political machinations are nearly at an end. The electorate will speak and speak loudly. Its voices will reverberate around Europe as it finally rejects this inept group of inconsequential political incompetents.

There will be a new dawn, a new economy and a new country in which the polarisation between rich and poor will measurably start to decrease: where bankers, personal wealth and hedge fund managers and non-executive directors will have to work hard and pay taxes like everyone else: where passengers will ride in modern rolling stock on a state-owned railway that will run smoothly and on time: where teachers, students, nurses, policemen, shop and office workers can afford decent housing and get prompt medical attention, where doctors surgeries and hospitals are properly funded and managed: where the country and the economy are run for the benefit of everyone not just the rich and powerful: where electricity, heating and water are affordable for all, both old and young: where the disabled are not disadvantaged but where salaries for executives are strictly tied to performance and where society respects a democratic government for everyone, not just a powerful class of landowners.

A new dawn will soon break for what will once again be the United Kingdom of Great Britain under a reforming Labour government and the rule of law. Democratic government is intended to be of the people, by the people and for the people – not by London bankers for the City of London and its friends.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Brexit: From Post-truth to Post-democracy

October 21st, 2019 by True Publica

Posttruth is a philosophical and political concept that refers to “the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth” and the “circuitous slippage between facts or alt-facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth. Post-democracy is a society that continues to have and to use all the institutions of democracy, but in which they increasingly become a formal shell and where the energy and drive of the nation pass from the democratic arena into small circles of a politico-economic elite.

You can search both terms and a plethora of results are returned. This article won’t look at the philosophical ideas of these very damaging concepts. The fact is, one has been around for a while and the other is now in an advanced state of operation.

It is ironic, is it not, that many members of the current British government insist that the EU is somehow ‘undemocratic’ just as it demonstrates how undemocratic it is itself. Today, elected MPs, broadcasters and political commentators all talk of little else apart from Britain’s ongoing democratic crisis – a manufactured crisis that left the door wide open for the new era of post-democracy to take root.

From post-truth…

There was a time when if a politician got caught with his pants down – he resigned and fell away from public life in disgrace – and it wasn’t so long ago that the cash-for-questions scandal was very influential in the fall of the John Major government in 1997. Just a decade ago, the Prime Minister would have been forced to stand down for a scandal involving a pole-dancing ‘entrepreneur’ receiving taxpayers cash and when his colleagues involved in the Brexit donors-for-access affair got caught on film, it would have rocked a sleaze ridden government to its core. Not today.

Nearly a decade ago, David Cameron’s election manifesto turned out to be not much more than a parchment of lies. From promises of building hundreds of thousands of starter homes, launching free childcare, a social care cap, making government the most transparent ever to no top-down reorganisations of the NHS – all were just soundbites designed to deceive. With Theresa May she stoked up the so-called ‘health-tourism’ fantasy (that the Royal College of Physicians said barely existed) and then when in power pushed the slogan ‘Brexit means Brexit’ while secretly funding corporations out of taxpayers money who were threatening to leave if she achieved it – just to stay in No10.

But Boris Johnson makes his former colleagues at the helm of Britain look like amateurs. His illustrious and distinguished career has derived solely from his own campaigns of disinformation and propaganda. From fantastical made-up stories like bendy bananas to misinformation campaigns of £350 million a week on a bus to the propaganda of ‘taking back control.’ Project Fear, do-or-die and ‘dead-in-a-ditch – are all fatuous and meaningless slogans made up to keep the electoral numbers up.

The post-truth world of today centres around politics and populists. Politicians glibly talk of law and order whilst presiding over racial violence and nationalism that threatens the very fabric of society. It’s a means to their own ends – as is an unelected Prime Minister who aimed to shut down parliamentary democracy, claiming it was acting in the national interest. There is an alarming political trajectory that should worry all normal thinking adults in Britain.

Examples of the government consistently duping the public would be distorting unemployment numbers, homelessness and the endless Brexit lies.

One recent very public example of the new era comes from within No 10 Downing Street. Dominic Cummings, not only threatened to end the career of elected MPs if they didn’t toe the Brexit line – but achieved exactly that when they didn’t. Cummings (who many skulking the corridors of Westminster think is running the entire BJ strategy) also reportedly told a meeting of special advisers that the mission of this government is to take Britain out of the EU on 31 October “by any means necessary.” That in itself has undertones of something more sinister given the language is derived from a definition that then puts the strategy  – “open all to all available tactics for the desired ends, including violence.” We already know he ultimately wants the destruction of institutions such as Britain’s civil service, the EU and the UN. Cummings genuinely thinks and often promotes the view that real chaos is the only route to real change. And given the state architecture of mass surveillance and laws designed to protect the government from over-reach is now in the hands of an anti-establishment anarchist like Cummings – who knows what might happen. The home of chaos comes from a lack of truth.

To post-democracy…

Throughout the furore of Brexit, many have forgotten that the government is pushing hard to change the Espionage Act that would jail journalists and whistleblowers as foreign state spies. The government has, through its own efforts, now received recommendations for a “future-proofed” new Espionage Act that would do exactly that. Today, the original expenses scandal could not be published, and even the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook Brexit scandal would see the majority of editors refusing to go to print. The example of the Snowden files and GCHQ destroying hard-drives at the Guardian is yet more evidence.

Journalists are already fighting a war against the state over the protection of their sources and using ever more sophisticated tools to remain out of the reach of GCHQ and agencies of the police. Those tools – especially encryption enabled – are being attacked by the state via legislation demanding ‘backdoor’ access – just another hallmark of a post-democratic society.

Legal professional privilege has all but been reduced to nothing in Britain as a direct result of very serious overreach by the state. Privilege doesn’t exist to protect lawyers or clients – it exists to make the justice system work. Spying on legal privilege negotiations to illegally defend the state from paying compensation to, say victims of torture at the hands of the state is no demonstration of a functioning democracy.

And as is now well known, the government has introduced the most intrusive civil society surveillance powers in any democratic society in the world. It is, to all intents and purposes now a techno-Stasi state. As this article goes to great pains to point out:

“The government can now mine data for any purpose it deems necessary. It can now harvest and manipulate it to shut down oppositional voices, hack journalists information and their sources, silence and imprison whistleblowers, stop peaceful protests and demonstrations – anything at all.”

The ‘chilling effect’ of surveillance on the right to freedom of assembly and now, even the deep monitoring of entire political movements at the grassroots level, the misuse and force of mass arrests adds considerable weight to that chilling. To be photographed, have data captured, being present or arrested at a protest can mean the end of careers for a myriad of government workers, such as teachers, nurses or working at your local council offices. “UK police have treated legitimate campaigning activities in a similar way to their response to organised criminal networks: by building profiles on the size, structures, leadership, individuals and alliances of campaign groups” – so says Britain’s privacy watchdog.

The result is that an illegal form of ‘blacklisting’ is alive and kicking. Outlawed by the Employment Relations Act 1999 (Blacklists) Regulations 2010 – the government and its agencies have been caught red-handed – again. The government is using the complex architecture of the law to suppress the truth that thousands have been denied employment as a result of state agencies or their proxies. In just one example – from the 2018 State of Surveillance report by BigBrotherWatch – “a judge-led undercover Policing inquiry followed revelations about the ‘Special Demonstration Squad‘ has been little more than a disaster with no evidence heard in its first three years and participants boycotting the process because of a lack of trust. It is not expected to report until 2023.” The point is, technology has replaced the SDS when it was supposedly shut down. And as the report goes on to say – “Meanwhile, the monitoring of workers, unionists and especially whistleblowers continues.

Turning frontline workers into border guards is nothing more than turning the general public into state informants. The governments’ commitment to ensuring Britain has a ‘hostile environment’ for undocumented migrants may well be supported by the general public if that was the only reason it was being used, but it is not. From the same report – “These public servants are transformed – often unwillingly and unknowingly – into spies, made to serve their part in a system of targeted surveillance designed to monitor undocumented migrants’ every interaction with essential frontline services. Even seriously ill people and children are seen as fair game by the Government in its determination to aid deportations at any human cost. And, in order for undocumented migrants to be denied access to goods and services, we all end up having to show photo ID to do things as mundane as registering with a GP or renting a flat.”  

Electoral suppression through voter ID is another good example of our post-democratic world. The headline from Britain’s Democratic Audit only this week says its all  – “Requiring voter ID in British elections suggests the government is adopting US ‘voter suppression’ tactics.”

Promising the fastest-growing protest movement in the world – Extinction Rebellion – that the government will declare a climate crisis, swiftly act to combat it and then allow Britain’s capital to become a ring-fenced police state where democratic rights and freedoms are met with mass arrest is not democracy. Forcing people to show ID as they walk to work as they did on Wednesday (16th Oct)  is not democracy. Will members of XR be met with the right-wing goons of capitalism in open street fights – the typical tactic of the security services and their many known false flags? We’ll see what happens.

Ignoring international law is another tendency of non-democratic or authoritarian states and Britain is now actively promoting itself as one. The Chagos Islands is but one shining example. Selling weapons to countries that flaunt international laws and the continued solitary confinement of Julian Assange are other examples. Extrajudicial assassinations and forcing statelessness of British citizens, like it not, is the trademark of state lawlessness and democracy dissolving.

Does jailing journalists and whistleblowers, closing down legal privilege, blacklisting, forming an army of state informants, enforcing electoral suppression and designing mass civil society surveillance sound like democracy to you?

Terror laws brought in by the Cameron government, laws designed to catch terrorists and organised crime networks to track down people who dodge the BBC licence fee, hundreds of councils have been authorised (in one year 9,607 times) to hunt down non-payment of council tax and seven public authorities, including the BBC, refused under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose why or how often they had used these powers. The BBC now refuses 48% of such requests.

All of these examples add to a trajectory where post-truths and lack of transparency lead directly to post-democracy. Just so you know – “the lack of concern of the wishes or opinions of others and the strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom” – is just one of many definitions of a state with authoritarian tendencies.

Hybrid regime

The government of David Cameron (enthusiastically assisted by Home Secretary Theresa May) consistently introduced legislation aimed directly at dismantling our rights and civil liberties in the name of national security. In the hands of this current government, the aim will be to deconstruct human rights laws and civil society protections. This is amply evidenced by Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. Its very design is about Britain adopting the Singapore Scenario. Even if it gets a green-light, because more promises are made, they will be reneged upon because this government no longer believes that the rule of law is as important as the unassailable power it is building for itself for the future. And like all non-democratic states; treaties, contracts and agreements at domestic and international levels mean little. Here is a revelation, the proof of post-democracy, and if it is true, and there’s no reason to believe it is not given the nature of the source, Brexit does not mean Brexit – it means something else.

Former UK ambassador Craig Murray presents us with insider information on the current Brexit deal:

“There is currently considerable alarm in the FCO that Legal Advisers have been asked about the circumstances constituting force majeure which would justify the UK in breaking a EU Withdrawal Agreement in the future. The EU did not fall for Johnson’s idea that a form of Northern Irish “backstop” would only come into effect with the future sanction of Stormont, as this effectively gives a hardline unionist veto, and Barnier was not born yesterday. The situation that Johnson and Raab appear now to contemplate is agreeing a “backstop” now to get Brexit done, but then not implementing the agreed backstop when the time comes due to “force majeure”.

There are two major problems with this line of thinking. The first is that it will give unionists an incentive to foment disorder in order to justify breaking the backstop agreement – indeed there is a concern that might be the tacit understanding Johnson is reaching with the DUP. Remember the British state conspired with the same people to murder the lawyer Pat Finucane and destroyed the evidence as recently as 2002.

The second problem is one of bad faith negotiation, and this is what is troubling the diplomats of the FCO. To negotiate an agreement with the secret intention of breaking it in future is a grossly immoral proceeding, and undermines the whole principle of good international relations. I should like to be able to say that I am sure this cannot be the intention. But when I look at Johnson, Raab and Cummings, I am really not so sure at all. It is possible that Johnson will succeed in the apparently insurmountable challenge of securing a deal all parties can agree, by the simple strategy of promising some parties he has no intention of honouring it.”

You might want to sit and think about the implications of what Murray has said there for a few minutes. In brief – Brexit means Brexit for some but for everyone else, it means something entirely different.

This is the British government of today. A government built on a foundation of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. From the acceleration of post-truth in 2010 to post-democracy in a decade. Quite soon you won’t just lose your civil liberty, you’ll lose much more as extreme capitalism and corporatism strangle the life out of what we understand to be democracy.

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Is Trump Mentally Unstable?

October 21st, 2019 by Rod Dreher

I’m serious. He blew up at the Congressional Democratic leadership today. Here’s what Rep. Steny Hoyer had to say about it:

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According to the NYT:

During the meeting, according to Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Trump berated her as “a third-grade politician” and suggesting that she would be happy if communists gained influence in the Middle East. Ms. Pelosi told reporters on the White House driveway afterward that the president seemed “very shaken up” and was having “a meltdown.”

Mr. Trump also dismissed his own former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, who resigned last year when the president first tried to withdraw troops from Syria. When Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, began to cite Mr. Mattis, a retired Marine general, the president interjected, calling him “the world’s most overrated general,” according to a Democrat briefed on the meeting.

“You know why?” Mr. Trump said. “He wasn’t tough enough. I captured ISIS. Mattis said it would take two years. I captured them in one month.”

And this:

Well, she’s right. This man is nuts. My colleague Daniel Larison wrote a short time ago about Trump’s scary-bonkers formal letter to Turkey’s Erdogan. You’ve got to read this thing to believe it. It’s not a hoax — the White House has confirmed that this is what POTUS sent to another world leader:

Who talks like that in real life? Who threatens another world leader like a TV mafioso? “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!” Who responds well to being addressed so condescendingly? Trump reportedly distributed copies of this letter to Congressional leaders today in an attempt to show them how tough he is. In fact, he demonstrated that he is a boob. Worse:

At what point does President Trump’s monumental foreign policy idiocy become a national security threat? Not only was he stupid to write and send such a letter, but he undermined his own emissary to Ankara by releasing it today.

In related news:

A former top White House foreign policy adviser told House impeachment investigators this week that she viewed Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, as a potential national security risk because he was so unprepared for his job, according to two people familiar with her private testimony.

The adviser, Fiona Hill, did not accuse Mr. Sondland of acting maliciously or intentionally putting the country at risk. But she described Mr. Sondland, a hotelier and Trump donor-turned-ambassador, as metaphorically driving in an unfamiliar place with no guardrails and no GPS, according to the people, who were not authorized to publicly discuss a deposition that took place behind closed doors.

Ms. Hill, the former senior director for European and Russian affairs at the White House, also said that she raised her concerns with intelligence officials inside the White House, one of the people said.

Mr. Sondland’s lawyer declined to comment.

In her testimony, Ms. Hill described her fears that Mr. Sondland represented a counterintelligence risk because his actions made him vulnerable to foreign governments who could exploit his inexperience. She said Mr. Sondland extensively used a personal cellphone for official diplomatic business and repeatedly told foreign officials they were welcome to come to the White House whenever they liked.

Ms. Hill said that his invitations, which were highly unusual and not communicated to others at the White House, prompted one instance in which Romanian officials arrived at the White House without appointments, citing Mr. Sondland.

Ms. Hill also testified that Mr. Sondland held himself out to foreign officials as someone who could deliver meetings at the White House while also providing the cellphone numbers of American officials to foreigners, the people said. Those actions created additional counterintelligence risks, she said.

Another incompetent boob — and a senior US diplomat appointed by Donald Trump.

At some point, Congressional Republicans are going to have to consider whether or not impeachment and removal is in the best national security interests of the United States. You can bluster about the Deep State all you want, but what we know to be true about the president’s behavior in this Turkey matter is profoundly troubling, not only about his competence as Commander in Chief, but about his own mental stability.

Think about it: if China, North Korea, or Iran were to choose this moment to test America, who among us would have confidence in Trump’s response? What if you were a senior US general or admiral? How much security would you have in the soundness of the orders coming from this White House?

As much as I fear and loathe some of the political positions of the Democrats, after today, we have cause to worry that the president is not mentally capable of doing his job. Whether or not you like the leadership of the opposition party, you have to be able to work with them to govern the country. And you have to be able to communicate to world leaders who have large and powerful armies in a way that does not unduly antagonize them via insults and empty threats. Trump lacks these skills. To put it mildly.

UPDATE: The Speaker of the House calmly asked the nation to pray for the president’s (mental) health:

UPDATE.2: Yeah, he’s draining the swamp, all right…

Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a central figure in the House impeachment inquiry of President Trump, is overseeing a nearly $1 million renovation of his government-provided residence, paid for with taxpayer money, that current and former officials have criticized as extravagant and unnecessary.

The work on the ambassador’s home on the outskirts of Brussels includes more than $400,000 in kitchen renovations, nearly $30,000 for a new sound system and $95,000 for an outdoor “living pod” with a pergola and electric heating, LED lighting strips and a remote-control system, government procurement records show.

The State Department also has allocated more than $100,000 for an “alternate” residence for Sondland for September and October, while work is performed.

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It is presently fashionable, but totally erroneous to aver that the Kurds have been “betrayed”. The truth is that the Kurds and the Americans have used each other for their mutual ends in the Syrian War, a catastrophe orchestrated by the United States and its regional allies Saudi Arabia and the State of Israel.

For the Saudis, the animus against the Assad government is based on the fact that it is ruled by what is considered by mainstream Sunni Muslims to be a heretical minority, the Alawites, whose alliance with Shia Iran poses a threat to Saudi influence in the Muslim Arab world.

And for the Israelis, it is the threat posed by the Triple Entente of Iran, Syria and the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, an alliance that is sometimes referred to as the “Shia Crescent”. The destabilisation and the destruction of Syria would, from Israel’s perspective, have achieved three goals. Firstly, the weakening of Iranian influence in the region. Secondly, the isolating of Hezbollah, the militant Shia group created out of the embers of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980s, which was responsible for the Jewish state’s withdrawal from the south of that country on two occasions. It is Hezbollah that has prevented the longstanding goal of colonising Lebanon south of the Litani River. Thirdly, a fractured Syria would from an Israeli view mean that no successor state would make a legal claim for the restoration of the Golan Heights, which was illegally annexed in 1981.

The object of Israel has always been to balkanise its Arab Muslim neighbours, and the enduring influence of its lobby in the United States is the overriding factor in this enterprise which provided the Saudis with the role of funding the anti-Assad jihadist insurrection begun in 2011. Israel, for its part, provided medical, logistical and financial assistance to a number of these jihadi fanatics and struck at Assad’s forces to weaken the Syrian effort in confronting them.

It is useful to be reminded of a declassified U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document circulated in 2012 which explicitly sought the creation of a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria. The so-called Islamic State (IS) and other Islamist-orientated militias functioned as the U.S.’s proxy army to achieve this end.

But Russian intervention with the help of Iranian soldiers and Hezbollah — all invited onto Syrian soil by the legitimate government of the country — beat back the threat posed by IS. The Americans, whose presence in parts of Syria is illegal, reacted by arming, training and supplying Kurdish militias such as the YPG to continue the quest of creating a statelet in oil-endowed eastern Syria.

Those who are versed in the history of the region know that the Turks will not tolerate the creation of an independent Kurdish state on its border. Moreover, members of the Syrian-based YPG also operate as guerrillas for the Turkish-based PKK, a group designated by the Turks as well as the U.S. and the EU as a terrorist organisation.

The Turks are of course no innocents in regard to the Syrian War. They were part of the original U.S.-Saudi-Israeli effort to overthrow the Assad government. Turkey provided a route through which jihadist fighters could infiltrate Syria’s borders. The Turkish Army High Command furnished these mercenaries with encampments and training facilities, and as IS began carving out its U.S. approved principality in eastern Syria, the Turks facilitated the establishment of this nascent caliphate by buying oil exploited from oil fields previously developed by the Syrian national government. Indeed, many will recall the role played by members of the Erdogan family in this illicit trade.

But while the Turks, like the U.S., the Saudis and the Israelis are no innocents in the enterprise that was geared towards destroying the Ba’athist government of Syria, President Donald Trump described the Kurds as being “no angels”.

Do the Kudish militias have clean hands? An examination of the facts reveals that they do not. For during the quest to carve out a separate, autonomous territory in eastern Syria (Kurds represent just 8% of the population of Syria), Kurdish militias ethnically cleansed the region of its Arab Muslim population and murdered Christian Assyrian communities. As noted earlier on, their primary role was to carve out a chunk of territory and the decision to arm Syrian Kurds taken by Trump in 2017 because it was seen as the fastest way to seize Raqqa, the capital of the proclaimed caliphate. It was a decision of course which drew opposition from Turkey.

The irony is that the Kurds would have been on more secure footing had they joined forces with the legal, secular government of Syria in fighting the locally-bred jihadists, as well as the imported Islamist fighters of al-Qaeda, al-Nusra and IS.

But they have miscalculated. Some accuse Ottoman-era Kurds of having facilitated the genocide of Christian Armenians in the early part of the 20th century, as a means through which they could obtain a state of their own. But they were denied this. And now in the 21st century, they look certain to be denied this.

The famous maxim in international relations of their being no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent national interests may explain Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from this area of Syria. For while the national interests of the Turks, the Saudis and the Israelis are clearly defined, the national interest on the part of the United States in pursuing the policy of balkanising Syria. If the illegal presence of the United States in Syria was indeed to fight jihadis, then it would have logically sided with the Syrian administration.

Those who claim that the Kurds have been “betrayed” do so largely out of ignorance of the wider facts. And among neoconservative figures such as US Senator Marco Rubio and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the frequent references to the Kurdish role in fighting jihadis is to say the least disingenuous. Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, was perhaps more honest when assessing that the biggest losers from Trump’s decision would be the “Kurds and Israel”.

For it has been in Israel’s interests that the campaign to destroy Syria has been waged, and not, as Graham strongly, albeit inadvertently implies, in the interests of the United States.

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Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research 

Is Erdogan Using Chemicals in Syria Again?

October 21st, 2019 by Steven Sahiounie

Hasaka Hospital in northeast Syria reported treating cases of chemical attacks on civilians, including children on Wednesday.  The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported the event after gathering information from the hospital, which is in an area that has a Kurdish, and Syrian government presence.  Photos emerged of children with obvious burns to the skin.  White Phosphorus is a chemical used in military actions to illuminate a battle zone at night.  However, it is a banned chemical weapon if used against civilians, as it causes severe burns

Have chemical attacks in Syria been used before, and who benefitted?

Pres. Obama stated that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be ared line’ not to be crossed, or those responsible would face US military intervention.  TheFree Syrian Army’ (FSA) attacking the Syrian civilians and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) took the ‘red-line’ statement to be a ‘green-light’ for them.  They effectively used chemical attacks multiple times in Syria, directed against Syrian civilians.  The FSA were Sunni Muslims, killing Sunni Muslims. This is the hallmark of Muslim Brotherhood ideology, which is a political ideology and is not a sect or religion-based.  The Muslim Brotherhood claims that killing fellow Muslims is allowed because the end goal is more important than innocent lives.

An early gas attack was in Khan al Assal, west of Aleppo.  The village population did not support the ‘revolution’ to create an Islamic State and had a small contingent of SAA stationed to fend off terrorist attacks.  The FSA mounted chlorine to their missiles and attacked the village, resulting in deaths and injuries reported live on Syrian TV coverage at the hospital.  Later, TV coverage at the village showed dead livestock and citizens.  Previous to the attack, the FSA had posted videos online showing chlorine containers from a Turkish source, as they practiced gassing rabbits.  The Syrian government requested the UN inspectors to come to the village, but it would be almost a year before they would arrive in Syria, and just as they were unpacking their bags in Damascus, the famous sarin gas attack was staged by the terrorists in East Ghouta.  That video went viral and was shown repeatedly globally for days.  Two deputies from the CHP party in Turkey claimed that Turkey was directly involved and that sarin was sent to Syria from Turkey via several businessmen.

The ultimate goal for the many chemical attacks carried out by the terrorists was to illicit a military invasion of Syria by the US and NATO.

Who are the ground troops used by Turkey currently in northeast Syria?

Pres. Erdogan would never risk sending dead Turkish soldiers back to their parents from fighting in Syria.  The Turkish population is tired of the war in Syria and wants no part in it.  The Turkish economy is in ruins, the Turkish lira has lost value, and the people want an end to military adventures in a foreign country.  They have had to bear the burden of over 3 million Syrian refugees, who do not speak their language and are from a very different culture.  Erdogan instructed his military leaders to use the assets on hand for ground troops: thousands of FSA, followers of Radical Islam, who failed at their ‘Islamic Revolution’ in Syria, inspired by their dedication to the Muslim Brotherhood, and took refuge in Turkey.  Erdogan and his AKP party adhere to the Muslim Brotherhood political ideology.  During the Syrian conflict, Turkey was an integral part of the Obama-NATO attack on Syria for ‘regime change’.  However, when Trump came into office he cut the funding and began a plan to get the US out of Syria, which progressed to his total withdrawal from northeast Syria.

This paved the way for Erdogan’s Operation Peace Spring, which was an invasion to eradicate the Kurdish militia in northeast Syria, who Turkey equates with the PKK, who is an internationally recognized terrorist group, responsible for over 40,000 deaths in Turkey spanning 30 years.

The Turkish military used Turkish aircraft, piloted by Turkish pilots, and they used Turkish tanks and armored vehicles; however, the ground troops are not all Turkish: they are Syrian terrorists.  The Syrian terrorist groups now employed by Turkey are numerous; however, we can focus on just one militia who are well known: the Northern Storm Brigade’.

The ‘Northern Storm Brigade’ first came to international notoriety when its leader met personally with the US Republican Senator John McCain in northern Syria in May 2013.   The photos that McCain’s office posted on the internet went viral as several of the Syrians he posed with were recognized by Lebanese citizens as having been kidnappers.  Much later, when the photos and videos of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who claimed to be the Caliph of the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS), were posted online it was noticed that the leader of theNorthern Storm Brigade’ with Sen. John McCain seemed to be identical.

Obama sold the American public on a story of the FSA as freedom fighters and secular Syrians who were fighting in tennis shoes for democracy.  That image lasted only until they recruited Al Qaeda to take over the ‘regime change’ program they had started for Obama and NATO.  Many of the surviving FSA are now living in USA and Europe, and could be passing on their extensive knowledge in bomb-making to young radicals; however, we know many of the surviving FSA are living in Turkey, and are well paid for their mercenary services, including the current invasion into northeast Syria against the Kurds.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a journalist and commentator. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

Ms. Pumpkin Head for President: A Nightmare

October 21st, 2019 by Edward Curtin

A few weeks ago I had a terrifying nightmare, so gruesome was it that I awoke screaming. In this dark horror show, I was carving a pumpkin for Halloween.  The cap came off easily and I disemboweled the slimy interior quickly, but as I did, I felt a strange sensation on my hand, as if a tongue were biting it. 

When I was finishing carving the face, however, the trouble really started.  The pumpkin head came alive as the eyes and mouth moved and then it started speaking in a voice that was familiar but one I couldn’t place.  Blond hair started sprouting from its head as it started shrieking and bouncing on the table in an hysterical manner.  I jumped back in fear and trembling as it started cackling, “I running, I running.” Blood ran from between the carved teeth and the blue eyes pulsated with the mania of a serial killer in a horror movie.

I awoke with a scream when I realized it was Hillary Clinton.

So hideous was this night terror that I kept it to myself. But a week later when the next Democratic pseudo-debate was being promoted, I said to my wife that something told me that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee and the debates were a sideshow.  She said she thought that would never happen and that Clinton was now hated and done for. I disagreed without recounting my nightmare because to describe it at that point would have induced more retching at the thought of the night monster.

Then this past week during the Democratic debate, the courageous Tulsi Gabbard put the lie to the murderous militarism of U.S. foreign policy and its regime change operations with its use of American supported terrorists in Syria and throughout the world.  She calmly and eloquently denounced the militarist positions of the other candidates standing beside her, as they listened disquieted and disturbed to a patriotic American speaking truth that they dare not even think, so bought and sold are they.

She was a woman alone among a cast of sycophants denouncing the murderous policies carried out by presidents Democratic and Republican and foisted on the American people through a vast network of propaganda, appealing to their worst instincts.  It was a stunning few minutes, for it is so rare, almost unheard of, for a politician to tell Americans the brutal truth about their government.

To many it was a sign of hope, but to the evil forces that run this country, Rep. Gabbard had gone too far and the knives came out in force, this time led by the pumpkin-headed Hillary Clinton and her accomplices at The New York Times and The Washington Post, who have consistently trashed Tulsi Gabbard in an effort to destroy her candidacy.

I felt my dream was prophetic when Clinton, in her slimy manner, attacked Tulsi Gabbard, without naming her, by saying,

I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve [The Russians] got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.

Well, I ain’t making any prediction either; I’m leaving that up to my nightmare to do my talking.

It tells me that Hillary-O-Lantern, spitting blood, is running and gunning again.

She’s the favorite of the CIA and the military industrial complex and all those who profit from war and live off the deaths of victims everywhere.  They have bunches of sites and bots and fake news conspirators and all sorts of ways of supporting her, which they have been doing for many years, straight through their constructed Russia-gate and Ukraine-gate conspiracies and her barbaric support for wars everywhere, including the destruction of Libya and her joyful response to the fiendish death of Muammar Gaddafi, among so may atrocities.

Tulsi, never cowered, said it straight and true in response:

Great, Thank you.  You the Queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and  of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.

It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.

She later said, “I stand against everything she represents.”

Halloween is the time for masks and dissembling. Hillary Clinton is a figure straight out of a grotesque Halloween party, as are her clones in the Democratic party. Tulsi Gabbard was not invited to their party but came anyway, and came to tell the truth about the masquerade.

She has torn off Clinton’s mask and asks the American people to see the true face of Clinton and all her minions, who represent the triumph of war and death, and the sick play we have been living through, an endless war on terror justified by endless lies.

Norman O. Brown so well describes our stage set:

Ancestral voices prophesying war; ancestral spirits in the danse macabreor war dance; Valhalla, ghostly warriors who kill each other and are reborn to fight again. All warfare is ghostly, every army an exercitus feralis (army of ghosts), every soldier a living corpse.

Lying is the leading cause of living death in the United States.

Tulsi Gabbard has told the truth.

Like me, I am sure you don’t want your nightmares to become reality. Let’s live in the truth.

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

Why is it that the two words ‘Zero Carbon’ send a cool shiver down my spine? Is it the ‘zero’ or is it the ‘carbon’? Or is it particularly the combination of the two? 

I wasn’t sure, until I looked-up ‘zero carbon’ within a scientific context addressing greenhouse gasses, and the answer that came back was this “If there were no greenhouse gasses the average temperature on Earth would be about -18 degrees celsius”.  Now I know why the cool shiver passed down my spine. 

The high profile use of this zero carbon goal, particularly via Green New Deal proponents upping the pressure on governments to follow-through their commitments to the Paris climate change treaty, carries with it the overtones of a global crusade. And the missionary zeal behind global crusades is often drummed-up by people and institutions guided by dogma rather than by conscious and humanitarian instincts for a better world. 

An exploration of the roots of the ambition to achieve ‘zero carbon’ reveals a direct link to ‘climate action’/’climate emergency’ measures promoted via Extinction Rebellion, advocates of a Green New Deal and the ‘sustainable development’ edicts of the United Nation’s Agenda 21 – now renamed  Agenda 2030. 

All of these ‘stop global warming’ institutions/movements are heavily backed by money derived from sources that have no record of following a transparently ‘green’ commitment within their own ethos or business practices.

Now this immediately raises the question: if the backers are not ethically in line with the supposed aims of those they are funding  – could those that they are funding be influenced to adapt to the values of their backers? Might they be drawn into something quite contrary to the original ideal they set out to achieve? 

Well, quite obviously the answer is yes, they could. And a quick revue of the fate of such organisations as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth shows that this is exactly what happened.

High ambitions of the sort embraced by Greenpeace, for example, led to it becoming embroiled in ‘the art of compromise’ for the sake of rapid growth and influence. 

Very soon genuine green credentials become tainted by the influence of the corporate and/or political backers, whose funds come with the proviso to adhere to certain criteria and conditions in order for further funding to be guaranteed. It’s a trap a large number of ambitious NGO’s have fallen  into and never recovered from. 

The truth is that leading parties in green NGO organisations focused on a prize which conformed to the standard definition of neo-liberal globalisation ‘success’, rather than holding true to the founding principles of the organisations they were steering. 

The green movement that jumped onto the band-wagon called ‘stop global warming’ has, however, got an even bigger problem to deal with, one which is far more devious than the familiar ‘art of compromise’ that has undone so many once well intentioned movements. 

This is the fact that ‘the problem’ it is addressing is an invention – not a reality. An invention pushed into prominence by the United Nations body called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A body with direct links to the most powerful grouping of corporate institutions on the planet with the addition of a coterie of multi millionaires determined to set the planet’s top-down ‘green’ agenda for the indefinite future. 

An agenda that has little or nothing to do with the environment – and everything to do with the survival of the neo-liberal ‘big’ global economy, as admitted by Dr Otmar Edenhofer, head of Working Group 3 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

The actual causes of climactic change – and yes, it is happening – are to be found in a composite of man made and natural events, ranging from HAARP’s gross interference via heating-up the ionosphere, atmospheric aerosol geoengineering (chemtrails), the residues of perpetual war, natural solar activity, the Pole shift, a weakening magnetosphere, intense electro smog and ozone depletion.

CO2 making only a tiny contribution. 

Zero Carbon and the Extinction Event

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) is an NGO  based in West Wales. It started-out in the early 1970’s as a truly innovative ‘make something out of nothing’ alternative energy and ecological life style community. A small group of entrepreneurs settled an old slate quarry at Machynlleth on the edge of Snowdonia, and built around themselves a community devoted to self sufficiency, especially in renewable energy, where home made wind turbines and water wheels, mostly constructed from scrap metal, powered their makeshift homes and artisan enterprises. CAT was an inspiration for many early ecological enthusiasts, many of whom (including myself) had read EF Schumacher’s iconic book ‘Small Is Beautiful’ and wanted to put into practice the human scale wisdom expressed in its pages. 

The CAT community increased throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s and more eco-friendly innovations were put in place that enabled the public to get their hands onto green solutions to everyday needs. Soon people came from all over the world to learn about renewable energy and the art of human scale ecologically sustainable living.

It wasn’t until around 2000 that most of the original pioneers retired from active involvement in CAT’s development and a new breed of entrepreneur took their place. With a focus ever more geared to education, large sums of money were raised to build a state of the art rammed earth eco-friendly education centre in which officially recognised state supported training courses were put in place that enabled budding practitioners to learn the skills necessary for a general ‘greening ‘ of the wider environment. 

As the global warming/climate change concept rose up the political agenda, so CAT became more and more absorbed by the edicts of the CO2 obsessed IPCC. Seeing itself as a beacon of pragmatic light in a sea of theoretical dogma, CAT’s new leadership sought to take the helm, declaring that the various suggested time frames for reduction in warming to be achieved by ‘decarbonising’ the atmosphere, were all too long and too unambitious. There was an emergency, they declared, and (initially within the context of the UK) only a ‘zero carbon by 2030’ end game could save the day. 

This message was presented to the public, to government officials and to industry, with scientific documentation to back it up. Suddenly CAT was the centre of a hugely controversial arena, pitching its Zero Carbon message in amongst the list of demands forming the basis of various international climate treaties of which the Paris accord is the most recent.

But how many stopped to ask the question: what exactly is ‘Zero Carbon’? 

Do CAT and the other institutions holding high this flag want us to take it literally? Is it simply a strategic way of getting the climate change agenda speeded up? What actually is going on here? 

Upon closer examination the entire package is riddled with holes. A kind of madness is built into the entire process, right from the original thesis that one variable – ‘CO2’ – a clear and odorless gas that constitutes just 0.0391% of the composition of the atmosphere, could, on its own, be responsible for dangerously warming the entire planet. This, even when this proportion may be rising due to the burning of fossil fuels. 

Then the notion that we should all buckle down to bring this single element ‘carbon dioxide’ down to an even smaller percentage of global atmospheric gasses, by using carbon taxes and ‘cap and trade’ regulations to force less industrialised countries of the world to slow their fossil fuel dependent economies and hobble their infrastructural development. Isn’t this simply the old colonial rule dressed in new clothes?  And these two issues are, of course, just the tip of the iceberg. The real story behind the push to promote ‘stop global warming’/’climate change’ involves the fostering of a scam whose scale and deviousness has surely set a new precedent in the art of deception. 

Those, like me, who deeply believe in a progressive transformation of polluting fossil fuels into decentralised human scale renewable energy solutions, are being dramatically conned; even if CAT and other environmental NGO publications suggest otherwise. 

Zero Carbon is the official call we are all being told to get behind, and it is the one taken up, directly or indirectly, by Extinction Rebellion, the Greta Thunberg school of youth indoctrination, the proponents of Green New Deal and the telecoms pushing forward a blanket 5G network. 

Smelling big money, politicians are happy to go along with it too. Especially since Mark Carney, director of the Bank of England, announced that any businesses that do not conform to the zero carbon ‘green’ criteria will be blocked from access to new loans, while those that do can expect high financial rewards. Yes, all the big multinational/transnational corporations are being invited to the table and are running to get the best seats. It’s a heist. 

A heist, led by ‘the green movement’ itself. What an irony! The supposedly anti neo-liberal globalist movement that was supposed to point the way to a decentralised, localised and human scale form of people power, taking sound ecological practices as the foundation for a world that would finally shift ‘the god of money’ off its throne to be replaced by the cultivation of respect for the laws of nature and a human scale economy operating ‘as if people mattered’. 

When one takes a serious look at the scale of our current deviation from the path of truth, it swims before one’s eyes like a virtual reality dream (nightmare). The zero carbon world we are being exalted to adapt to, when viewed through this virtual google 3D head set, reveals scenes of a fenced-off brave new world of ‘rewilded’ landscapes on the one hand – and sterile 5G driven ‘smart cities’ on the other. All of it overseen by Amazon/Google ‘Cloud’ powered smart grids monitoring and controlling an ever more dystopian robotic world, increasingly resembling a totalitarian prison camp. 

Ray Kurzwell would surely feel quite at home with the ushering-in of such artificial intelligence led systems finally achieving their place as the ‘new brain’; having successfully usurped the human one.   

Zero Carbon suggests to me that the cyborg 5G smart city is the Agenda 2030 ‘sustainable development’ carbon free omega point towards which we are all being ushered at brake-neck speed. With Caroline Lucas, Greta Thunberg, Gail Bradbrook, Yanis Verufakis and others leading ‘the rebellion’ while holding high the flag of a Green-Fascist New World Order. 

Eco-fascism has arrived on our doorstep and its appeal has become almost irresistible to those who combine a hyped-up fear of ‘the end of the world’ with belief in the rhetoric of bought-out climatologists, ambitious fake green con men (and women) and the political figurehead puppets of the deep state.

Zero carbon has taken the lead as ‘the solution’ to an anthropogenic global warming invention whose alarmist climate rhetoric was cunningly dreamed-up by the Club of Rome some thirty five years ago, as the perfect means of controlling the people as well as the essential political agenda of planetary life, both economic and social. By cleverly giving carbon the lead role in an extinction narrative – in which it is caste as the chief villain – the perpetrators of the myth (United Nations plc) have grabbed the headlines –  insisting that this harmless, essential component of nature (CO2) is the all-time baddie that must now be reduced to zero in order to save the planet. The Putin of the biosphere. 

The sheer audacity of this lie is breathtaking. Think about it.. reduce nature’s natural capital, carbon dioxide, to zero and what do you have?  An extinction event. The very ‘event’ that Extinction Rebellion is, on behalf of the United Nation’s Agenda 2030, blocking the streets of London, New York, Berlin et al. to demand action against. Thereby supporting a bunch of crooks, well versed in the art of deception, to enforce their master plan for absolute control combined with a significant reduction in the world population. “Carbon must be eliminated – therefore get rid of non carbon neutral humans.” 

The unknowing would never associate fascism with environmentalism, would they. They would never guess that a fake green agenda could be the Trojan horse for for the final take-over. Yet the fascist take-over that failed under Hitler and Mussolini, has crept steadily and stealthily forward under the dictatorship of the giant banking fiefdoms of the past half century – and it is precisely these institutions that are now falling in line to back a Green New Deal. 

Green is the colour chosen for the  final great deception and that which trees and plants convert into oxygen has been cast as the ‘demiurge’ which heroic styled NGO’s are riding out to do battle with. A battle to the death, no less. 

We will not all be fooled all the time, even if a majority maintain an eyes wide shut disposition to the roll-out of such a toxic agenda. The wake-up is gathering momentum at an ever accelerating rate. An instinctual resistance to the 5G microwave crowd control weapon, coupled with a plethora of reports on its egregious health affects, is acting as a powerful vector to unite people across the globe, causing all of us to recognise that this is not just about one exceptionally cruel form of eco-genocide, but the pinnacling of an underlying fear – by humanity’s oppressors – of that which stands behind love, beauty, compassion and joy. Fear that takes the form of an aggressive suppression of these primary life instincts. 

As the eminent social psychiatrist Dr Erich Fromm stated, it is The Fear of Freedom that we are witnessing in the diabolic attempts to shut-down the energetic evolution of the universal life force itself. 

The tables are turning.The greater the downward pressure to conform to a dead-end, slavish and robotic existence, the greater the innate inner power of opposition rises up in resistance – in those who let it. A resistance sparked by outrage – and a defiant determination to act in defence of Life. 

Onward, onward, dear friends, in the midst of the darkness more and more light is shining through!

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Julian Rose is author of  ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through,   now available from Amazon and Dixi Books. See www.julianrose.info for more information. He is an international activist, writer, organic farming pioneer and actor.  In 1987 and 1998, he led a campaign that saved unpasteurised milk from being banned in the UK; and, with Jadwiga Lopata, a ‘Say No to GMO’ campaign in Poland which led to a national ban of GM seeds and plants in that country in 2006. Julian is currently campaigning to ‘Stop 5G’ WiFi.

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US Ditches Kurdish Proxies in Syria

October 21st, 2019 by Tony Cartalucci

As US troops flee northeast Syria – they leave behind their Kurdish proxies to face an uncertain future at the hands of approaching Turkish troops. Reports of Turkish forces entering Syria dominated news headlines – followed by Western op-eds trading blame for America’s failed policy in Syria.

Absent from these headlines is any mention of how Washington deliberately engineered and executed this war against Syria – beginning in 2011 through the use of proxies including Al Qaeda and its affiliates – escalating in 2014 with the illegal invasion and occupation of Syria by US troops themselves – to Washington’s unravelling fortunes now.

For example, Washington Post’s Josh Rogin can now be seen across social media hand-wringing over alleged atrocities committed against America’s abandoned Kurds – atrocities the mainstream media spent years covering up, spinning, or even defending when committed by these same forces against the Syrian Army.

America Abandons its Kurds 

For Kurds who aided and abetted US machinations in Syria – regardless of how the conflict ended – it was a miscalculation on their part.

Syrian Kurds were certainly not going to be the first US proxy in history to actually benefit from a US-led war aimed at destroying the nation they resided in. Just as the US has done in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya – Syria was slated for dismemberment – with friend and foe alike left amid a failed, dysfunctional state that would burn around them and require decades to rebuild.

And this would have been the “best” case scenario.

The worst case scenario is that the US would abandon its proxies – possibly even betraying them in exchange for entirely self-serving concessions.

Foreign Policy magazine which at one point during the Syrian conflict featured an article titled, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists: So the rebels aren’t secular Jeffersonians. As far as America is concerned, it doesn’t much matter,” – a contribution to a Western media campaign at the time defending US-support for Al Qaeda in Syria – has more recently featured an op-ed penned by Kurdish military commander Mazloum Abdi.

Titled, “If We Have to Choose Between Compromise and Genocide, We Will Choose Our People,” the op-ed declares:

We believe in democracy as a core concept, but in light of the invasion by Turkey and the existential threat its attack poses for our people, we may have to reconsider our alliances. The Russians and the Syrian regime have made proposals that could save the lives of millions of people who live under our protection.

The op-ed ends by claiming:

The reason we allied ourselves with the United States is our core belief in democracy. We are disappointed and frustrated by the current crisis. Our people are under attack, and their safety is our paramount concern. Two questions remain: How can we best protect our people? And is the United States still our ally?

Its hard to believe a successful military commander could be so politically naive as to think the US stands for democracy or that the US has allies rather than interests it merely uses proxies like the Kurds to advance. The fact that the very same publication featuring Mazloum Abdi’s op-ed had at one time eagerly promoted the extremists now descending upon his Kurdish fighters should aptly answer his final question as to whether or not the US is “still” – or ever was – his ally.

Mazloum Abdi also noted in his op-ed that:

Syria has two options: a religious sectarian and ethnic bloody war if the United States leaves without reaching a political solution, or a safe and stable future—but only if the United States uses its power and leverage to reach an agreement before it withdraws.

This seems to suggest that the Kurdish commander is oblivious to the fact that in this case – the firefighter he wants to douse the flames of Syria’s conflict about to consume him was the arsonist who lit them in the first place.

Syrian “Kurdistan” Was Always a Fantasy 

Whether a demonstration of his naivety or an exercise in shrewd propaganda – Mazloum Abdi and his Kurdish fighters find themselves painted into this corner by their own hands and their own brush.

Nothing about the territorial entity many fighters under Abdi sought to create was politically, militarily, or economically feasible. It would have been a vector of US influence first and foremost – and would exist only for as long as it served Washington’s interests.

Syria’s major cities all exist west of the Euphrates or directly on its eastern banks – not east of it where America’s Kurdish proxies reside. Any “Kurdish state” that would form in Syria’s east would be entirely artificial – propped up by a US military occupation and subsidized by US taxpayers. It would be decades before this region could develop the economic capacity to independently sustain itself and defend against Turkish incursions, uprisings by non-Kurdish locals, or attempts by Damascus to uphold Syria’s territorial integrity as guaranteed by international law.

Syria’s Kurds may face uncertainty and fear for their future but the failure of US regime change in Syria is a blessing for them in disguise. These Kurds now have the opportunity to reapproach Damascus, play a direct role in restoring Syria’s territorial integrity, and cut deals with Syria and its allies to secure their future.

It will be a future within Syria – which will remain a united, functioning nation-state and where in many of its most populated areas life is already returning to normal – and a future that would have been impossible in the fractured, dysfunctional Syria the United States envisioned and worked toward from 2011 onward.

Such deals made between the Kurds and Damascus will not live up to the fantastical and entirely unrealistic promises made to Syria’s Kurds by Washington – but Washington was never going to fulfill its promises, couldn’t, and now – demonstratably hasn’t.

Turkey’s Intentions 

Turkey – a nation straddling East and West – has shifted its policy radically throughout the war – a war Turkey played a pivotal role in facilitating in its first several years.

Moscow’s patience with Ankara – during Russia’s long and arduous process of stopping – then rolling back US-regime change efforts – has created the diplomatic conditions in which Turkey has a graceful exit from the blind alley Washington led it into. Whether or not Turkey will utilize that exit and constructively work with Syria and Russia in ending the conflict is another matter entirely – and a matter only time will tell.

The possibility that Turkey is simply replacing America’s tenuous occupation with one thought to be more sustainable and conducive toward US objectives still remains and Turkey’s diplomatic overtures toward Russia may have been a partial ploy.

However while deception is a key ingredient in both war and the empire it helps build and maintain – there always was to be a day when an inflection point was reached and the true – genuine unravelling of US hegemony would begin.

Turkey’s pivot Eastward and Washington’s disposal of its Kurdish “allies” may be a key indicator that at least for US hegemony in the Middle East – that inflection point is here and now.

A Possible Inflection Point 

The US withdrawal from Vietnam and the fate of its client regime in the nation’s south comes to mind when analyzing America’s apparent withdrawal – or at the very least – redeployment in Syria.

The US withdrawal from Vietnam marked the end of major US military aggression in Asia Pacific. US forces retreated to their regional military bases and have been confined there ever since by a combination of growing economic prosperity across Asia and growing military might making any future US military aggression in the region unimaginable.

For the fractured Middle East – a similar process where chaos engineered and exploited by the US being replaced by constructive and cooperative economic development – will finally and indefinitely end US military aggression there.

In 2015 when the Russian Federation intervened militarily in the Syrian conflict at the request of the Syrian government – the US proxy war was all but doomed.

No amount of posturing, positioning, maneuvering, propaganda, or false flags would put US-led regime change in Syria back on track if Moscow refused to blink.

Both within the context of  Washington’s shifting fortunes in Syria and in terms of shifting global economic and political power – the self-interests of nations aiding and abetting the US in the Middle East- along with many other nations worldwide – will continue pivoting West to East.

US troops – rather than returning home from its many Middle Eastern wars – are instead ending up garrisoned in Saudi Arabia. This could be the beginning of a long-term process similar to US troop deployments in South Korea and Japan – where US intervention becomes less and less feasible – and US forces pushed further and further from the region.

Still – Syria’s survival in the face of a multi-year multinational proxy war waged against it is not the end of US hegemony in the Middle East. The US still possesses the capacity to trigger political unrest across the region and is still leading a destructive war against Yemen and a proxy war against Iran and its allies in Iraq. The US also still possesses an eager provocateur – the Israeli government – which will complicate and drag out for as long as possible any regional transition away from Western hegemony and toward lasting peace and prosperity.

It is interesting that while the US claims to underwrite global peace and stability – the one common denominator regions of the planet experiencing peace and prosperity seem to share is an absence of abundant US military and political influence. As another nation and perhaps a whole region begins to slip from Washington’s hands – the US sees yet another opportunity to instead pursue a genuinely constructive role within an emerging multipolar world not only changing despite of it – but prepared and eager to move on with out it if need be.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazineNew Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Former and current US officials have slammed the Turkish mercenary force of “Arab militias” for executing and beheading Kurds in northern Syria. New data from Turkey reveals that almost all of these militias were armed and trained in the past by the CIA and Pentagon.

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Footage showing members of Turkey’s mercenary “national army” executing Kurdish captives as they led the Turkish invasion of northern Syria touched off a national outrage, provoking US government officials, pundits and major politicians to rage against their brutality.

In the Washington Post, a US official condemned the militias as a “crazy and unreliable.” Another official called them “thugs and bandits and pirates that should be wiped off the face of the earth.” Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the scene as a “sickening horror,” blaming President Donald Trump exclusively for the atrocities.

But the fighters involved in the atrocities in northern Syria were not just random tribesmen assembled into an ad hoc army. In fact, many were former members of the Free Syrian Army, the force once armed by the CIA and Pentagon and branded as “moderate rebels.” This disturbing context was conveniently omitted from the breathless denunciations of US officials and Western pundits.

According to a research paper published this October by the pro-government Turkish think tank SETA,

“Out of the 28 factions [in the Turkish mercenary force], 21 were previously supported by the United States, three of them via the Pentagon’s program to combat DAESH. Eighteen of these factions were supplied by the CIA via the MOM Operations Room in Turkey, a joint intelligence operation room of the ‘Friends of Syria’ to support the armed opposition. Fourteen factions of the 28 were also recipients of the U.S.-supplied TOW anti-tank guided missiles.” (A graph by SETA naming the various militias and the type of US support they received is at the end of this article).

In other words, virtually the entire apparatus of anti-Assad insurgents armed and equipped under the Obama administration has been repurposed by the Turkish military to serve as the spearhead of its brutal invasion of northern Syria. The leader of this force is Salim Idriss, now the “Defense Minister” of Syria’s Turkish-backed “interim government.” He’s the same figure who hosted John McCain when the late senator made his infamous 2013 incursion into Syria.

The “sickening horror” this collection of extremists is carrying out against Kurds is, in fact, the same one it imposed on Syrians across the country for the past seven years. Before, when their goal was regime change in Damascus, they had the blessing and wholehearted support of official Washington. But now that they are slaughtering members of a much more loyal US proxy force, their former patrons and enablers are rushing to denounce them as “bandits and pirates.”

Left: John McCain with then-FSA chief Salim Idriss (right) in 2013; Right: Salim Idriss (center) in October, announcing the establishment of the National Front for Liberation, the Turkish mercenary army that has invaded northern Syria.

The FSA and White Helmets become Turkey’s mercenary army

Turkey employed anti-Assad insurgents against the Kurdish YPG for the first time in March 2018, when it invaded the northern Syrian city of Afrin during Operation Olive Branch. That onslaught saw an array of heinous atrocities, from the vandalism of the corpse of a female Kurdish fighter to the looting of Afrin. These war crimes were committed largely by fighters of the defunct Free Syrian Army – the collection of “moderate rebels” once armed by the CIA.

In a video message, one of the invading fighters promised mass ethnic cleansing if Kurds in the area refused to convert to his Wahhabi strain of Sunni Islam. “By Allah,” the fighter declared, “if you repent and come back to Allah, then know that you are our brothers. But if you refuse, then we see that your heads are ripe, and that it’s time for us to pluck them.”

Also present in Afrin were the White Helmets, the supposed civil defense outfit that was nominated for a Nobel Prize, celebrated by the Western media as life-saving rescuers, and heavily funded by the US and UK governments. The White Helmets had arrived as auxiliaries of the Islamist mercenary forces, and were operating as Turkish proxies themselves.

After Turkey and its rebel proxies ethnically cleansed the Kurdish-majority community of Afrin, the White Helmets pledged to “rebuilt it,” to “restore the city to its former beauty and utility.” In a photo op, they even spelled out the Arabic word Afrin with the bodies of their volunteers:

This October, when Turkish-backed Islamist fighters stormed back into northern Syria, atrocities immediately followed.

Hevrin Khalaf, a Syrian Kurdish legislator, was pulled from her car by the militiamen and executed along with her driver. Other Kurds, including two unarmed captives, were filmed as they were murdered by the Turkish proxies. The mercenary gangs went on to deliberately free ISIS captives from unguarded prisons, releasing hundreds of their ideological soulmates to the battlefield.

The most shocking footage allegedly showed the Turkish mercenaries sawing the heads off of Kurdish fighters they had killed. For those familiar with Nour al-Din al-Zinki, a participant in the Turkish invasion that was formerly supplied by the CIA, and which beheaded a captive Palestinian-Syrian fighter on camera in 2016, this behavior was not surprising.

Left out of the coverage of these horrors was the fact that none of them would have been possible if Washington had not spent several years and billions of dollars subsidizing Syria’s armed opposition.

Prolific promoters of the “moderate rebels” run from their records

When the Turkish military and its proxy force overwhelmed the Kurdish YPG this October, Hillary Clinton angrily denounced their brutality.

Back in 2012, however, when Clinton was Secretary of State, she junketed to Istanbul to rally support for those very same militias during a “Friends of Syria” conference convened by Erdogan.

She later remarked, “The hard men with the guns are going to be the more likely actors in any political transition than those on the outside just talking. And therefore we needed to figure out how we could support them on the ground, better equip them…”

One of those “hard men” is Salim Idriss, today the “Defense Minister” of Syria’s non-existent “provisional government” and de facto leader of the mercenary forces dispatched by Turkey into northern Syria. He has pledged, “We will fight against all terror organizations led by the PYD/PKK.”

Back in 2013, however, Idriss was lionized in Washington and hyped as a future leader of Syria.

When the later Sen. John McCain made his notorious surprise visit to the Turkish-Syrian border in May 2013, hoping to inspire a US military intervention, he was warmly welcomed by Idriss, the then-leader of the US-backed Free Syrian Army.

“What we want from the US government is to take the decision to support the Syrian revolution with weapons and ammunition, anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft weapons,” Idris told Josh Rogin, a reporter and neoconservative booster of regime change in Syria.

Though Idriss and his allies never got the full-scale intervention they sought from the Obama administration, they did receive shipments of heavy weapons, including hundreds of anti-tank TOW missiles.

They were also showered with adulation by droves of hyper-ambitious foreign correspondents from corporate Western outlets.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward was an especially enthusiastic promoter of the FSA, embedding with its fighters, painting them as a heroic resistance. When she returned to Syria years later, she used a top mouthpiece of Syria’s local Al Qaeda affiliate as a fixer for her unequivocally pro-opposition “Inside Aleppo” series.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward, then of CBS, with the FSA in 2011

Danny Gold was also among the flocks of Western reporters that embedded with the armed opposition during the height of the insurgency against Damascus. In 2013, he churned around a piece for Vice on “chatting about ‘Game of Thrones’” with a group of fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Qaeda’s local franchise.

Gold and a clique of rabid online regime change zealots spent the rest of their time clamoring for US intervention in the country and viciously denigrating anyone who disagreed. Gold has, for instance, likened The Grayzone’s factual coverage of Syria to Nazi propaganda.

This October, when the Turkish invasion of northern Syria began, Gold reported that one of the FSA fighters he embedded with back in 2013 was taking part in the assault on Kurdish positions.

Like Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Islamist fighters’ former boosters, Gold was clearly struggling with a case of cognitive dissonance. Unable to take responsibility for promoting these extremists as they rampaged across Syria for years, or for smearing anyone who forcefully opposed the regime change agenda, he lashed out at his critics: “Almost as if war is complicated and doesn’t fit into the neat little box the anime teens in my mentions don’t realize,” he tweeted.

As members of a former US proxy ruthlessly prey on a present day US proxy, Western pundits and politicians are hoping that no one notices that they spent the past seven years celebrating the former group. They are initiating a cover-up, not only of the blowback unfolding in northern Syria, but of their own records.

This band of hacks is now fully exposed for foisting a bloody scam on the public, marketing some of the most brutal fanatics on the planet as revolutionaries and “moderate rebels” while they destabilized an entire region. Like the extremists they once promoted, most have somehow managed to evade accountability and remain employed.

Below is SETA’s list of Turkish “national army” militias, outlining the type of US support each one received over the years. 

SETA Turkey National Army Syrian rebel factions

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Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican GomorrahGoliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

All images in this article are from The Grayzone unless otherwise stated

Detailed Report on Israeli Human Rights Violations

October 21st, 2019 by If Americans Knew

Reposted from PCHRGaza (which publishes these detailed reports every single week): 

  • Great March of Return in Eastern Gaza Strip: 78 civilians injured, including 31 children.
  • West Bank: 4 civilians injured, including a child in the West Bank
  • During 74 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem: 65 civilians arrested, including 5 children and 5 women
  • Israeli forces raided the Public Administration office of the Union of Health Work committee 
  • 4 houses demolished in Hebron and Bethlehem, and a civilian was forced to self-demolish his house in Jerusalem
  • Hundreds of settlers raided al-Aqsa Mosque yards in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City and performed prayers
  • Settlers attacked 2 volunteer foreigners in Burin village, in Nablus and farms in Bethlehem
  • 6 shootings reported against Palestinian agricultural lands, eastern Gaza Strip, and 4 shootings reported against Palestinian fishing boats off Gaza Strip Shore
  • Israeli forces closed the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron for 2 days due to Jewish holidays
  • Complete closure imposed on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank for Jewish holidays                                             
  • 49 temporary checkpoints erupted in the West Bank, where 2 Palestinian civilians were arrested. 

Summary 

During the reporting period, PCHR documented 157 violations of the international human rights law and international humanitarian law (IHL) by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory.

As part of the Israeli violations of the right to life and bodily integrity, Israeli forces wounded 78 Palestinian civilians, including 31 children, on 78th Friday of the Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile in the West Bank, the Israeli forces wounded 4 Palestinian civilians, including a child near the annexation wall.

It was notable that for the past two weeks, shooting incidents against Palestinian civilians attempting to sneak into Israel without permits through the annexation wall, north of the West Bank, escalated. Israel had left gateways in the wall for Palestinian farmers to access their lands behind the wall; however, Palestinians use these gates to sneak into Israel for work. PCHR’s investigations affirm that Israeli occupation forces could have arrested those young men or keeping them away from the annexation wall without resorting to fire.

As part of the Israeli incursions and house raids, Israel carried out 74 incursions into the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, and raided civilian houses, attacking and enticing fear among residents in addition to shooting in many incidents. As a result, 65 Palestinians were arrested, including 5 children and 5 women. During this week, as part of its policy to restrict the work of civil society organizations, Israeli occupation forces raided the office of UHWC in al-Birah, Ramallah and damaged its equipment and contents. Two weeks ago, the Israeli occupation forces raided the head office of ADDAMEER Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association in Ramallah.

As part of Israeli attacks against Palestinian fishermen in the Gaza Strip, 4 shootings were reported by the Israeli gunboats against the Palestinian fishing boats at sea within the allowed limited area for fishing while 6 shootings were reported against the agricultural lands in eastern Gaza Strip in addition to one limited incursion into the northern Gaza Strip.

Under the settlement expansion activities in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, PCHR documented 4 violations relevant to house demolitions, including 5 houses in Hebron and Bethlehem and 8 attacks by settlers, including attacking 2 international volunteers in Burin village in Nablus and a famer in Bethlehem in addition to puncturing vehicles’ tires in Salfit.

In terms of the Israeli closure policy, the Gaza Strip still suffers the worst closure in the History of the Israeli occupation in the oPt as it has entered the 14th consecutive year, without any improvement to the movement of persons and goods and ongoing isolation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the West Bank is divided into separate cantons with key roads blocked by the Israeli occupation since the Second Intifada and with temporary and permanent checkpoints, where civilians’ movement is restricted and others are arrested.

Moreover, during the reporting period, Israel imposed a complete closure on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for Jewish Holidays that will start on Sunday morning, 13 October 2019, and end on Monday, 21 October 2019.  According to Israeli occupation forces’ declaration, the West Bank and Gaza strip crossings, will be closed during this period except for urgent cases that includes people, who have special permits.

First: Violation of the right to life and to bodily integrity 

  1. Excessive Use of Force against the Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip

Israeli occupation forces continued its excessive use of lethal force against the “Great March of Return” peaceful demonstrations organized by Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the peaceful protests in the West Bank against Israeli occupation forces’ crimes and settlement activities.

According to fieldworkers’ observations, the 78th Friday titled: “Our Martyr Children,” witnessed large participation of civilians aced with excessive and lethal force by Israeli forces despite the peaceful nature of the demonstrations. At approximately 15:00 on 04 October 2019, protests started across the five GMR encampments until 19:00, and involved activities such as speeches and theatrical performances. Hundreds of civilians protested at varied distances from the border fence across the Gaza Strip, and threw stones, firecrackers and Molotov Cocktails at Israeli forces. As a result, 78 civilians were injured, including 31 children. PCHR’s fieldworkers documented thar 2 civilians, including 2 children, sustained serious wounds while 22 others were shot with live bullets and their shrapnel in addition to others being shot in the upper body due to targeting them directly with rubber bullets and tear gas canisters.

The incidents were as follows:

  • Northern Gaza Strip: Israeli occupation forces’ attacks against protestors resulted in the injury of 21 civilians, including 8 children: 6, including a child, were shot with live bullets and shrapnel; 11, including 4 children, were shot with rubber bullets; and 4, including 3 children, were hit with tear gas canisters. Samer Wael Rajab al-Refi (23), from al-Toufah neighborhood, sustained serious wounds after being shot with a live bullet in his neck.
  • Gaza City: Israeli forces’ attacks against protestors resulted in the injury of 6 civilians, including 2 children: 3 with live bullets and shrapnel; and 3 with rubber bullets.
  • Central Gaza Strip: Israeli shooting and firing tear gas canisters at protestors resulted in the injury of 15 civilians, including 10 childrenone of them deemed in critical condition: 10 were shot with live bullets and shrapnel, and 5 were hit with tear gas canisters. All of them were then taken to al-Aqsa Hospital, where their injuries ranged between minor and moderate. Furthermore, dozens of civilians suffocated due to tear gas inhalation and received medical treatment on the spot while others were taken to hospitals. Bahaa’ Mostafa Salama Abu Rokaab (17), from al-Zawayda village, sustained serious wounds after being shot with a live bullet in his abdomen.
  • Khan Younis: Israeli forces fired live and rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at the protestors, wounding 11 civilians, including 3 children; one of them deemed in extremely critical condition. All of them were transferred to hospitals. Among those wounded, a civilian was shot with a live bullet, and 5 were shot with rubber bullets and hit with tear gas canisters. In addition, many civilians sustained superficial bullet wounds and suffocated due to tear gas inhalation. They received treatment on the spot. ‘Alaa Hani al-‘Abasi (13) sustained serious wounds after being hit with a tear gas canister in his head. He was then taken to the Gaza European Hospital to receive treatment.
  • Rafah: Israeli shooting and firing tear gas canisters at protestors resulted in the injury of 25 civilians, including 8 children; 4 of them were shot with live bullets and shrapnel, 20 were shot with rubber bullets, and one was directly hit with a tear gas canister.
  1. Excessive use of force in the West Bank:

  • At approximately 13:30 on Friday, 11 October 2019, Palestinians from Kufor Qaddoum village, northeast of Qalqiliyah launched their weekly peaceful protest and headed towards the village’s eastern entrance that has been closed by Israeli forces for the past 16 years in favor of “Kedumim” settlement. The demonstrators chanted national slogans demanding end of the occupation and protested the Israeli forces’ crimes against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The protestors threw stones at the Israeli soldiers stationed behind sand berms while the soldiers fired live and rubber bullets, sound bombs and tear gas canisters at them. As a result, Ahmed Emad Shtaiwi (19) was shot with a live bullet to the chest. Moreover, a number of civilians suffered tear gas inhalation.
  1. Shooting and other violations of the right to life and bodily integrity
  • At approximately 06:00 on Thursday, 10 October 2019, Israeli forces assigned to guard the annexation wall fired live bullets at Mahmoud Bahjat Amin Jaradat (39), from al-Silah al-Harithiyah village, west of Jenin while. As a result, Mahmoud was shot with a live bullet to the right leg while attempting to sneak into Israel through the gate in the wall established on lands Thuhor al-‘Abed village, west of Ya’bud village, southwest of Jenin. He was then taken to Khalil Suleiman Hospital in Jenin to receive medical treatment.
  • At approximately 09:00, Israeli occupation forces stationed in eastern Khan Younis border area fired live bullets and tear gas canisters at agricultural lands in eastern Khuza’ah village. The shooting sporadically continued for half an hour; no casualties were reported.
  • At approximately 09:30 on Friday, 11 October 2019, Israeli forces assigned to guard the annexation wall fired live bullets at Ahmed Bassam Mohammed Kamil (25), from Qabatiyah village, southeast of Jenin. As a result, he was shot with a live bullet in the foot while attempting to sneak into Israel through the gate established on lands of Thuhor al-‘Abed village, west of Ya’bud village, southwest of Jenin.
  • At approximately 07:45 on Friday, 11 October 2019, Israeli gunboats stationed northwest of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza Strip, opened fire and chased Palestinian fishing boats sailing within 3 nautical miles. The shooting continued until 10:00 on the same day. As a result, the fishermen were forced to flee fearing for their lives; neither casualties nor material damage was reported.
  • At approximately 06:40 on Saturday, 12 October 2019, Israeli gunboats stationed northwest of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza Strip, opened fire and chased Palestinian fishing boats sailing within 3 nautical miles. As a result, the fishermen were forced to flee fearing for their lives; neither casualties nor material damage was reported.
  • At approximately 06:40 on Sunday, 13 October 2019, Israeli gunboats stationed northwest of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza Strip, heavily opened fire and chased Palestinian fishing boats sailing within 3 nautical miles. As a result, the fishermen were forced to flee fearing for their lives; neither casualties nor material damage was reported.
  • At approximately 14:30 on the Same day, Israeli forces stationed along the border fence, in eastern al-Shuhada’a cemetery, east of Jabalia in northern Gaza Strip, opened fire at Jabalia Municipality crew, who were working in the landfill area. As a result, a live bullet hit the equipment; no casualties were reported. It should be noted that the municipality crew obtained a permit from the Palestinian General Authority for Civil Affairs (GACA) for their equipment, which include 2 bulldozers. It should be noted that at approximately 12:00 on Wednesday, 09 October 2019, Israeli occupation forces opened fire at the same crew in the same area despite obtaining a permit from the GACA.
  • At approximately 10:00 on Monday, 14 October 2019, Israeli gunboats stationed in western Rafah shore in southern Gaza Strip, opened fire at Palestinian fishing boats sailing within 3 nautical miles. As a result, the fishermen were forced to flee fearing for their lives; neither casualties nor material damage was reported.
  • At approximately 08:00 on the same day, Israeli forces stationed in eastern Kahn Younis border area opened fire at agricultural lands in eastern ‘Abasan al-Kabirah for few minutes; no casualties were reported. At approximately 15:10, Israeli forces opened fire again at agricultural lands in eastern Khuza’ah and al-Fukhari villages; no casualties were reported.
  • At approximately 11:30 on the same day, Israeli soldiers stationed in eastern al-Shoka border area, east of Rafah, opened fire at the agricultural lands; no casualties were reported.
  • At approximately 16:00 on Tuesday, 10 October 2019, Israeli soldiers stationed along the border fence in eastern al-Shoka village, east of Rafah, opened fire at Shepherds. As a result, the shepherds were forced to leave the area; no casualties were reported.

At approximately 07:00 on Wednesday, 16 October 2019, Israeli forces opened fire at Bara’a Mohammed Fareez Te’mah (17), from Qifin village, north of Tulkarm. As a result,  Mohammed was shot with a rubber bullet to the right hand while attempting to sneak into Israeli through the annexation wall’s gate established on lands of Thohur al-‘Abed village, southwest of Jenin.

Second: Incursions and Arrests 

Thursday, 10 October 2019:

  • At approximately 02:15, Israeli occupation forces moved into Jenin. They raided and searched a house belonging to Sultan Kamal al-Sa’di (27) and then arrested him.
  • At approximately 01:00, Israeli occupation forces, reinforced by heavy military vehicles, moved into Dura village, southwest of Hebron and stationed in al-Hijra neighborhood. They raided and searched a house belonging to Ahmed Ishaq Abu Hushhush (33). He was then arrested and taken to an unknown destination.
  • At approximately 01:30, Israeli occupation forces, reinforced by heavy military vehicles, moved into Beit Owa village, southwest of Dura, southwest of Hebron. They raided and searched two houses belonging to Bara’ Isma’el al-Masalma (24) and Eyad Ra’ed al-Masalma (27). He was then arrested and taken to an unknown destination.
  • At approximately 07:00, Israeli occupation forces moved into al-Auja village, northeast of Jericho. They raided and searched a house belonging to Abdullah Khaled Ajouri (33) and then arrested him.
  • At approximately 11:20, Israeli occupation forces moved into Deir Nizam village, northwest of Ramallah, and stationed in al-Hadeeqa area, where there was event organized by Deir al-Nizam high School in cooperation with al-Ro’ya International Foundation. Dozens of school students and young men gathered on the main street and threw stones and empty bottles at the Israeli soldiers, who fired in response teargas canisters. As a result, a number of students and teachers suffered teargas inhalation and they were treated on the spot. Furthermore, they arrested Ramiz Mohammed Yehya al-Tamimi (13) and took him to “Helmish” investigation center. He was released at approximately 23:40 on the same day.

Note: Israeli occupation forces carried out (9) incursions in Hebron and Dora villages in Hebron; Jeious and Qalqilya in Qalqilya; Beit Led in Tulkarm; ‘Aboud and Deir Abu Mesha’al in Ramallah. No arrests were reported.

Friday, 11 October 2019:

  • At approximately 01:30, Israeli occupation forces moved into Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus. They raided and searched a house belonging to Mohammed Samir Hasan Hashash (22) and then arrested him.
  • At approximately 03:00, Israeli occupation forces, reinforced by heavy military vehicles, moved into Bani Na’em village, north of Hebron. They raided and searched a house belonging to Mahmoud Mohammed al-Khadour, and then handed his two sons; Mohammed (24) and Khalil (27) summonses to refer to the Israeli Intelligence service in “Ghosh ‘Etzion”, south of Bethlehem.
  • At approximately 05:15, Israeli occupation forces, reinforced by heavy military vehicles, moved into al-Bira village and stationed in Sateh Marhaba neighborhood. They raided and searched head office of UHWC in Sateh Marhaba neighborhood, and fired teargas canisters. Ali Ahmed Mahmoud Abdulrahman, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of UHWC said to PCHR’s fieldworker: “At approximately 07:00, I was at my house in Abi Ghoush village in Jerusalem; I received a phone call telling me that the Israeli occupation forces broke the doors and stormed UHWC head office in Sateh Marhaba. I immediately headed there and saw the two main doors were forcibly opened; they ransacked the office, disabled the phone lines and the elevator, ruined two drugs refrigerators and threw the drugs on the ground. The neighbors told me that the Israeli soldiers packed by 17 military machines stormed the head office and fired teargas canisters at approximately 05:15, and left at 06:00. Finally, there’s no justification to storm such charitable organization which does not pose any threat or danger, and its objectives are clear for serving citizens”.
  • At approximately 05:30, Israeli forces moved into Ramallah, and stationed in al-Irsal neighborhood, they raided and searched a house belonging to Hadi al-Tarsha (20) and then arrested him. Around the same time, another Israeli occupation force moved into al-Teera neighborhood, they raided and searched a house belonging to Mais Waleed Hanatsha (20) and then arrested her. It should be noted that Hadi and Mais are students at Birzeit University, and Mais’s father is a prisoner in the Israeli jails since 03 October 2019.
  • At approximately 11:00, Israeli occupation forces stationed in the Council Gate (Bab al-Majlis), in the occupied East Jerusalem’s old city, arrested Mohammed Musbah Abu Sbaih (17) while coming out from al-Aqsa Mosque and took him to “al-Qishla” investigation center in the old city of Jerusalem. A few hours later, he was released, provided that banned his entry to al-Aqsa Mosque for 15 days.
  • At approximately 15:00, Israeli occupation forces stationed on Beit Foriq checkpoint at the northeast entry to Nablus arrested Mohammed Ahmed Hanani (16) and ‘Aref Nazeer Hanani (15), from Beit Foriq. They arrested and took them to an unknown destination. On the morning of the next day, ‘Aref was released while they kept Mohammed arrested.
  • At approximately 18:30, Israeli occupation forces moved into Qalqilya. They raided and searched two houses belonging to Mahmoud Mostafa Zaid (23) and Mahmoud Yoused Zaid (18), and then arrested them.
  • Israeli occupation forces carried out (9) incursions in Hebron, al-Samou’, and Beit Umor villages in Hebron; Kafr Zibad, Deir al-Qhusoun, Anabata, Anteel, and Tulkarm in Tulkarm. No arrests were reported.

Saturday, 12 October 2019:

  • Israeli occupation forces carried out (2) incursions in the northern Dora village and al-Fawwar refugee camp in Hebron. No arrests were reported.

Sunday, 13 October 2019:

  • At approximately 01:00, Israeli occupation forces moved into al-Issaweya village, northeast of occupied East Jerusalem. They raided and searched several houses and arrested (11) civilians including a child namely: Mo’tasim Hamza Obaid (16); Mohammed Ibrahim Darweesh (26); Khaled Mousa Mostafa (21); Adam Shafeeq Obaid (19); Mohammed Marwan Obaid (19); Khaled Waleed Obaid (22); Deya’ Ayman Obaid (23); Hatem Hasan Zumorod (19); Nadeem Mostafa al-Safadi (19); Mohammed Mousa Hamdan (19); and Firas Akram Zagheir (24).
  • At approximately 01:30, Israeli occupation forces, reinforced by heavy military vehicles, moved into Bani Na’em village, north of Hebron. They raided and searched a house belonging to Yehya Ali Mousa Manasra (45) and then arrested him and his daughter Maryam (21), and took them to an unknown destination.
  • At approximately 03:30, Israeli occupation forces, reinforced by heavy military vehicles, moved into Dora, southwest of Hebron. They raided and searched a house belonging to Bassam Hamad al-Zeer (54), and no arrests were reported.
  • At approximately 02:00, Israeli occupation forces moved into Anabta village, north of Tulkarm. They raided and searched two houses belonging to Zaher ‘Amer abdulkarim Barakat (27) and Yazan Tyseer Sobhi Abduldayem (21), and then arrested them.
  • Israeli occupation forces carried out (3) incursions in Deir Samit village, al-Fawwar refugee camp, and Dora village in Hebron. No arrests were reported.

Monday, 14 October 2019:

  • At approximately 03:00, Israeli occupation forces moved into Salwan village, south of occupied East Jerusalem’s old city. They raided and searched a house belonging to Adnan Tawfeq Ghaith (45), the governor of Jerusalem. And then they arrested him and took him to “al-Maskoubeya” investigation center. Lawyer Rami Othman said that Adnan Ghaith was arrested at dawn on charge of working with the Palestinian Authority (PA) inside Jerusalem, and he was released in the evening of the same day on bail of 5.000 NIS.
  • At approximately 04:00, Israeli occupying forces moved into Beit Hanina, north of occupying East Jerusalem’s old city. They raided and searched a house belonging to Shady Abdullah al-Mtour (42), the secretary of Fateh Movement in Jerusalem, and then he was arrested and taken to “al-Maskoubeya” investigation center. It should be mentioned that al-Mtour was accused on charge of working with the Palestinian Authority (PA) inside Jerusalem, and he was released at approximately 23:00 of the same day on bail of 5,000 NIS.
  • At approximately 21:30, Israeli occupation forces moved into al-Issaweya village, northeast of occupied East Jerusalem, and stationed around al-Arba’een Mosque in the center of the village, and then arrested Nasrallah Ibrahim Mhmoud (17) and Munir Darbas (23).
  • Israeli occupation forces carried out (4) incursions in Beit Umor, Surif, Karma, Beit Oula villages in Hebron. No arrests were reported.

Tuesday, 15 October 2019:

  • At approximately 02:00, Israeli occupation forces, reinforced by heavy military vehicles, moved into Beit Umor, north of Hebron and stationed in al-Shaikh neighborhood. They raided and searched a house belonging to Ali Mohammed Ali al-Allami (38) and took him to an unknown destination. It should be noted that the Israeli Construction and Organization Department demolished the abovementioned house two weeks ago, claiming that the building is non-licensed.
  • Around the same time, Israeli occupying forces moved into Deir Abu Misha’al, northwest of Ramallah. They raided and searched a house belonging to Mohammed Ali Zahran (20) and then arrested him.
  • At approximately 04:00, Israeli occupation forces moved into al-Sa’deya neighborhood, one of the Jerusalem’s old city neighborhoods. They raided and searched a house belonging to Rawhi Mahmoud al-Kalghasi (22) and then arrested him.
  • Israeli occupation forces carried out (2) incursions in Sa’eer and al-Shoyoukh villages in Hebron. No arrests were reported.

Wednesday, 16 October 2019:                   

  • At approximately 01:00, Israeli occupation forces moved into Bal’a village, north of Tulkarm. They raided and searched a house belonging to Ibrahim Abdul Qader Salama searching for weapons. The soldiers handcuffed Salama, and blindfolded him and then detained him in the military vehicle. They also stole NIS 10,000 from the house without giving the family a confiscation notice. Salama said to PCHR’s fieldworker:

“At approximately 01:00 on Wednesday, 16 October 2019, we heard sound of knocking on the door while we were sleeping. When I got up from the bed, I was startled with Israeli soldiers in front of me as they opened the door with a special tool. They raided the house, entered all room, and detained my wife and children in a room and me in another room. They then handed cuffed me and blindfolded my eyes and took me to the military vehicles outside the house. When the soldiers finished searching the house at approximately 03:30, they brought me back to the room and kept me hand cuffed and blindfolded. We found out that the soldiers stole about NIS 10,000, which belongs to my job as I own a Shawarma Restaurant and it is not strange that I have that amount of money on a daily basis.”

  • At approximately 01:30, Israeli occupation forces moved into Qalqiliyah. They raided and searched 3 houses belonging to Wesam Bilal Duweiri (27), Wasfi Mohammed Dawoud (56), Hasan Ibrahim Melhem (46) and then arrested them.
  • At the same time, Israeli occupation forces backed by several military vehicles moved into Beit Ummer village, north of Hebron and stationed in al-Bayadah area. They raided and searched 3 houses and then arrested Montaser Abdul Hamid Moheisen (26), Ward Ibrahim Yusuf ‘Awad (19) and ‘Ala’a Mahmoud al-‘Awawdah (26).
  • At approximately 02:00, Israeli occupation forces moved into Abu dese village, east of occupied East Jerusalem. They raided and searched a house belonging to Yusuf Ahmed ‘Ariqat (20) and then arrested him.
  • At the same time, an Israeli occupation forces backed by several military vehicles moved into Bani Na’im village, east of Hebron. They raided and searched a house belonging to Ayoub Mohammed Rashid Tarairah (29) and the arrested him.
  • At approximately 02:15, Israeli occupation forces moved into Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus. They raided and searched a house belonging to Omer Salamah Hashash (20) and then arrested him.
  • At approximately 02:30, Israeli occupation forces moved into Betunia village, west of Ramallah. They raided and searched a number of houses and the arrested Tha’er Mohammed ‘Ali Bader (43), his brother Ashraf (39) and Tamer (30).
  • At approximately 03:30, an Israeli occupation force backed by several military vehicles moved into Dura, southwest of Hebron and stationed in Rajm Abu Hilal area. They raided and searched 2 houses after which they arrested Saddam Husein Masharqa (28), Hamzah Nader ‘Azmi Abu Hleil (28).
  • At approximately 13:30, Israeli occupation forces moved into al-‘Issawiyah village, northeast of occupied East Jerusalem. They raided and searched several houses after which they arrested 7 civilians namely: Mohammed Mousa Mustafa (20), Mohammed Zakaria ‘Eliyan (19), Yazan Zakaria ‘Eliyan (22), Ahmed Khalid Abu Shamala (21), Younis Mohammed Abu al-Humus (23), Abdul Qader Mahmoud Abu Saimah (19) and Qasem Monir Derbas (20).
  • At approximately 08:20, Israeli occupation forces backed by a number of military construction vehicles moved about 100 meters into the south of the border fence, northeast of Jabalia in northern Gaza Strip. The vehicles leveled lands that were previously leveled along with sporadic shooting at the area. At approximately 11:00 on the same day, Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the area; no casualties were reported.
  • At approximately 12:00, Israeli forces stationed at Qalandiya military checkpoint, north of occupied East Jerusalem, arrested Ismail Amin Nawahdah (71), al-Aqsa Mosque Khatib, and took him to al-Mascubiyah detention center for investigation.

Lawyer Khaldoun Najem said that Israeli Intelligence Services released Sheikh Nawahdah at approximately 18:00 on the same day, on condition to deny him access to al-Aqsa Mosque for 11 days after investigation with him about last Friday’s speech in al-Aqsa Mosque. Israeli authorities claimed that Nawahdah incites people against them. Sheikh Nawahda stressed through investigation with him that all laws ensured the freedom of expression. Nawahdah also denied that the Friday speech was inciteful. Lawyer Najem was concerned that by arresting, Sheikh Nawahdah, Israeli occupation forces might intend to intervene in Friday’s speeches in al-Aqsa Mosque. Najem also pointed out that Israeli occupation forces adopt escalating policy towards the condition in Jerusalem, including their attempt to intervene in Friday prayer’s speeches, which is un acceptable.

  • Israeli occupation forces carried out (3) incursions in Qabatiya village, southeast of Jenin; Tal village, west of Nablus; Beit Furik village, north of Nablus. No arrests were reported.

Collective Punishment:

  • At approximately 05:00 on Friday, 11 October 2019, an Israeli force backed by several military vehicles accompanied by a vehicle of the engineering unit, moved into Birzeit village, north of Ramallah. They raided and searched a house of prisoner Yazan Husein Maghames (25), which is comprised of one floor. The soldiers detained the family members in the house’s balcony, searched the house contents and then took its measurements and made holes in the walls to demolish the house. The soldiers verbally informed the family that they will demolish the house. Maghames was arrested on 11 September 2019, by Israeli soldiers, who arrested him from his house and took him to “Ofer” prison where he was interrogated in al-Mascubiyah detention centre in Jerusalem. Maghames was charged with participation in the attack at Ein Bubin near Deir Bzai’a village, west of Ramallah on 23 August 2019, which caused the killing of Israeli female settler and injuring her father and brother.

This decision is part of the collective punishment policy adopted by the Israeli forces against families  of Palestinian individuals accused of carrying out attacks against Israeli forces and/or settlers.

Settlement Expansion and settler violence in the West Bank including occupied East Jerusalem

Demolition and Confiscation of Civilian Property for Settlement Expansion Activities

  • At approximately 01:00 on Thursday, 10 October 2019, Israeli forces backed by military construction vehicles and accompanied with a vehicle of the Israeli Civil Administration, an excavator and a bulldozer moved into Sha’b al-Haratheen area in southern Hebron. The military construction vehicles demolished two 20-sqaure-meter houses built of tin plates and sheds, under the pretext of non-licensing. The demolished houses belong to Jameel Mahmoud al-Ka’abnah (55) and his son Mahmoud (24). A solar panel was confiscated as well.
  • At approximately 11:00, Israeli forces demolished 2 houses; one of them was under-construction, in Kisan village, east of Bethlehem, under the pretext of non-licensing. Head of Kisan village council, Sadam ‘Abiyaat, said that Israeli forces moved into the village and demolished Ayman Ya’qoub Ghazal’s 150 square-meter house, which sheltered 4 people. The Israeli forces also demolished another 120-sqaure-meter under-construction house belonging to Sadam’s brother, Amjad. ‘Abiyaat added that the Israeli authorities moved into the village 20 days ago and notified the two siblings to demolish their houses. He pointed out that clashes erupted between the village’s residents and Israeli forces, who fired tear gas canisters and sound bombs at them during the demolition.
  • At approximately, 09:00 on the same day, Israeli forces moved into Wadi al-Makhrour area, west of Beit Jala, and raided a demolished restaurant belonging to Ramzi Qisiyah. It should be noted that the Israeli forces demolished the restaurant few weeks ago and confiscated its contents. They then returned and demolished the restaurant’s floor. Wadi al-Makhrour lands were lately attacked by the Israeli forces and settlers. Moreover, Israeli settlers set up a mobile house in the center of the area. All these attacks aim at building a settlement outpost in the center of Wadi al-Makhrour area.
  • At approximately 10:00 on Tuesday, 15 October 2019, Mohamed al-Atrash self-demolished 2 under-construction floors of his building in Wadi al-Humus neighborhood in Surbaher village, south of occupied East Jerusalem. The Israeli Supreme Court issued the demolition decision under the pretext that the building overlooked a security street established on the village’s lands. Hamada Hamada, Head of the Defense Committee of Wadi al-Humus Lands, said that the building is located in an area classified as Area A, according to Oslo Agreement, and its owner obtained a license from the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). However, the Israeli military governor issued a demolition decision against the building, under the pretext that it is located near a security street. He pointed out that the Israeli Supreme Court did not approve the demolition decision. Hamada added that al-Atrash self-demolished parts of his building, comprising of 4 floors built on an area of 400 square meters. Al-Atrash clarified that he was forced to implement the demotion for fear of damaging the other floors.

It should be noted that on 22 July 2019, the Israeli authorities demolished 10 residential buildings, comprising of 72 apartments; 3 of them were inhabited while the others were under-construction, in Wadi al-Humus neighborhood. They also blow-up 4 floors of Mohamed Idrees Abu Tair’s 7-floor building, under the pretext of overlooking a security street. The Israeli authorities claimed that the construction in Wadi al-Humus neighborhood obstructs the Israeli security officers’ work. Moreover, the Israeli forces refused residents’ proposed alternatives to the Israeli court, such as removing the fence and turning it into a wall or using advanced technology to prevent sneaking incidents. It is noteworthy that the Palestinian citizens in Jerusalem are living a real construction crisis, as they could not meet the complex procedures required by the Israel Municipality, in exchange for granting them construction permits. These procedures take years and cost tens of thousands of dollars.  The municipality deliberately obstructs Palestinians’ construction efforts in order to expand the Israeli neighborhoods by allocating large amounts of money to build them and create “Greater Jerusalem”.

Israeli Settler Violence

  • At approximately 16:30 on Friday, 11 October 2019, a group of Israeli settlers, who were present in Zohar hill near Jenasafout village, on Nablus-Qalqiliyia Road, threw stones at a taxi driven by Jehad Mostafa ‘Ali Ramadan (47), from Tal village, southwest of Nablus. As a result, the vehicle’s windshield was broken.
  • At approximately 01:30 on Sunday, 13 October 2019, a group of Israeli settlers moved into Merda village, north of Salfit, where they punctured the tires of 6 vehicles and wrote slogans against Arabs on them. They also wrote slogans on the walls of 2 houses. Head of Merda village council, Bassam Ebdah, said that a group of Israeli settlers moved into the village from the eastern side, through the Bypass road. They then attacked Palestinian civilians’ houses and vehicles, noting that the village residents did not woke up, but they later saw them via surveillance camera recordings. The recordings showed that the settlers were masked and carrying bags on their backs. The affected vehicles belong to: Shawqi ‘Emad Abu Baker, Mohamed ‘Aref Ebdah and Monther Ahmed Mohamed Ebdah. The settler wrote slogans on the walls of Zahi and Zohdi Rashid Masour’s houses.
  • At approximately 10:00, a group of Israeli settlers severely beat Fadel Ahmed Hamdan (68) while harvesting olive trees in al-Walaja village, southwest of Bethlehem. He was then taken to al-Hussain Hospital in Beit Jala to receive treatment. Fadel’s son, Wesam, said to PCHR’s fieldworker that his father was harvesting olive trees from his plot of land in “Biet ‘Ail” settlement; meanwhile, 10 Israeli settlers brutally beat him with sticks. As a result, his father’s hand was fractured while his head was wounded. He was then taken to al-Hussain Hospital for treatment.  It should be noted this was not the first time that the settlers attack the village’s farmers while harvesting olive trees. The Israel authorities annually gave the residents permits allowing them to access their lands for harvesting olive trees, but this year the famers did not get permission, so they were forced to harvest the trees for fear of stealing the crop by the settlers or damaging it due to bad weather.
  • At approximately 11:00 on Monday, 14 October 2019, at least hundreds of Israeli settlers raided al-Aqsa Mosque’s yards in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, from al-Maghareba Gate, under the tight Israeli forces’ protection. This coincided with arresting 5 Palestinian worshipers from the mosque’s yards and transferring them to investigation centers. Eyewitnesses said that the Israeli police issued in the morning a decision to evacuate Bab al-Rahma Mosque, coinciding with storming the mosque’s yards by settlers and intelligence officers. Furthermore, Israeli police arrested 5 Palestinian civilians, who came from Israel to perform prayers, and later released them.
  • At approximately 10:00 on Tuesday, 15 October 2019, hundreds of Israeli settlers raided al-Aqsa Mosque from al-magharebah Gate, under the tight Israeli forces’ protection, on the Jewish Sukkot Holiday. The Islamic Endowment (Awqaf) Department stated that at least 400 Israeli settlers raided al-Aqsa Mosque and wandered in its yards, under tight Israeli forces and intelligence officers’ protection. The department clarified that the settlers performed prayers in the mosque while Israeli police imposed tight restrictions on Palestinians’ entering to the mosque, checked their IDs and detained some of them. Furthermore, Israeli police arrested Belal Mohamed ‘Ali (43), while present near al-Rahma Mosque in eastern al-Aqsa Mosque and took him to an investigation center.
  • On the same day morning, the Israeli Municipality opened ‘Ain Haninah site, west of al-Walaja village, west of Bethlehem, to Israeli settlers and prevented Palestinians ‘entering. Haaretz Newspaper pointed out that the site was opened amid tight security measures by Israeli police officers and border guard officers, who closed a road leading to Palestinian villages.
  • At approximately 04:25 on Wednesday, 16 October 2019, a group of Israeli settlers moved into Dir ‘Ammar village, northwest of Ramallah, where they punctured the tires of 5 vehicles and wrote slogans on them, in addition to writing slogans against Arabs on the village’s walls. Head of the Dir ‘Ammar village council, Hasan Rushdi, said that the attack occurred in “al-Maghshi” area, near “Talmoun” settlement and that was the first time that the settlers attacked the residents’ properties. The affected vehicles belong to: Yaser Felfel ‘Awda, Thair Felfel ‘Awda, Khaled Abu ‘Arifah, Isma’il al-Ja’ouni, and ‘Abed al-Elah ‘Awda.
  • At approximately 11:30 on Wednesday, 16 October 2019, at least 20 Israeli settlers, from “Yatizhar” settlement, moved into the south-eastern of Nablus, where they attacked an international solidarity group comprising of 15 members with stones and sticks. The international solidarity group was helping Palestinian farmers in harvesting olive trees. As a result, 2 of them sustained wounds. The settlers also set fire to the area, burning dozens of dunums planted with olive trees. The wounded were identified as:
  1. Izaik Jasmin Histoun (32), from Chicago, who sustained wounds in his head.
  2. Jim Kohen (71), from United Kingdom, who sustained wounds in his right hand, back and leg.
  • At approximately 13:00 on the same day, hundreds of Israeli settlers raided al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, on the 3rd day of Israeli Sukkot Holidays. In addition, Israeli forces arrested 3 Palestinian women while present near al-Selselah Gate and beat them. The Islamic Endowment (Awqaf) Department stated that at least 900 Israeli settlers raided al-Aqsa Mosque in the morning while over 200 other settlers raided it in afternoon via al-Magharebah Gate, under the tight Israeli forces and police officers’ protection. Among those raided the mosque were the Israeli Minister of Agriculture, Uri Ariel, and dozens of extremist settlers. The settlers performed prayers in the mosque yards and at its gates, especially near al-Selselah Gate. The settlers attempted to attack and cursed journalists and Palestinians banned from entering the mosque. The Israeli forces arrested 3 Palestinian women identified as Madleen Mohamed ‘Issa (27), Hanadi Mohamed Saleh al-Helwani (38), ‘Aydah al-Sidawi (59), noting that all of them were banned from entering the mosque for 4-6 months.

Closure policy and restrictions on freedom of movement of persons and goods

West Bank

In addition to permanent checkpoints and closed roads, this week witnessed the establishment of more temporary checkpoints that restrict the goods and individuals movement between villages and cities and deny civilians’ access to their work. Israeli forces established 49 temporary checkpoints and arrested 2 civilians.

The military checkpoint were as follows:

Ramallah:

  • On Thursday, 10 October 2019, Israeli forces established 2 checkpoints at the entrances to al-Nabi Saleh and Dir Abu Mish’al villages. They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs.
  • On Friday, 11 October 2019, Israeli forces established 2 checkpoints at the entrance to al-Nabi Saleh village and in ‘Ain Sinah square. They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs.
  • On Saturday, 12 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the entrance to al-Jalazoun refugee camp. They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs.
  • On Sunday, 13 October 2019, Israeli forces established 3 checkpoints at the entrance to Biet ‘Ur al-Foqah village, at the intersection of al-Taiba village, and in “Hemlish” settlement square near al-Nabi Saleh village.They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs.

On Monday, 14 October 2019, Israeli forces established 4 checkpoints at the entrances to ‘Ain Yabroud, ‘Ain Sinah and Sinjel villages, at the main intersections of city (al-Nabi Saleh- ‘Aboud- Dir Abu Mish’al- Beit Rima). They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs.

  • On Tuesday, 15 October 2019, Israeli forces established 2 checkpoint in “Hemlish” settlement square near al-Nabi Saleh village, and at the intersection of al-Jeftlik village, north of Jericho. They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs.
  • On Wednesday, 16 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the entrance to Dir Baziegh village, west of Ramallah.They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs.

Jericho:

  • On Thursday, 10 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the northern entrance to Jericho. They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. No arrests among them were reported.
  • On Friday, 11 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the northern entrance to Jericho. They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. No arrests among them were reported.
  • On Tuesday, 15 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the northern entrance to Jericho. They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. No arrests among them were reported.
  • On Wedneday, 16 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the intersection of al-Jeftlik village, north of Jericho. They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. No arrests among them were reported.

Hebron:

  • On Thursday, 10 October 2019, Israeli forces established 4 checkpoints at the entrances to Samou’a, bani Na’iem, al-Moreq, and Ethna villages. They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs, No arrests among them were reported.
  • On Friday, 11 October 2019, Israeli forces established 2 checkpoints at the entrance to al-Dahiriyia village and at the southern entrance to Hebron.
  • On Saturday, 12 October 2019, Israeli forces established 4 checkpoints at the entrances to al-Shayyoukh, Sureef and Beit Ummer villages, and on Abu Risha Road.
  • On Sunday, 13 October 2019, Israeli forces established 4 checkpoints at the southern entrance to Halhoul, at the entrance to Yatta, at the southern entrance to Hebron, and at the entrance to Beit Kahel village.
  • On Monday, 14 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the southern entrance to Halhoul and no arrests among Palestinians were reported.
  • On Tuesday, 15 October 2019, Israeli forces established 4 checkpoints at the entrances to al-Fawar and al-‘Aroub refugee camps, and at the entrances to Samou’a and Beit Ummer villages.
  • On Wednesday, 16 October 2019, Israeli forces established 3 checkpoints at the northern entrance to Halhoul village, at the southern entrance to Hebron, and at the entrance to Yatta village.

Jenin:

  • At approximately 13:00 on Tuesday, 15 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the intersection of the American University, southeast of Jenin. They stopped Palestinians’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs; No arrests among them were reported.

Nablus:

  • At approximately 13:30 on Thursday, 10 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint on Road (17), on ‘Asirah-Nablus Road. They stopped Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs, No arrests among them were reported.
  • At approximately 16:30 on Friday, 11 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at al-Tota intersection northwest of Nablus.
  • At approximately 10:30 on Tuesday, 15 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint on Nablus New Road, south of Nablus, at the southern entrance to the city. They stopped Palestinians’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs, No arrests among them were reported.

Qalqiliyia:

  • At approximately 13:45 on Friday, 11 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the entrance to ‘Azoun village, east of Qalqiliyia. They searched Palestinians’’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. The checkpoint was later removed.
  • At approximately 20:0 on Saturday, 12 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the entrance to ‘Azoun village, east of Qalqiliyia. They searched Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. The checkpoint was later removed.
  • At approximately 21:45 on Saturday, 12 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the intersection of Amateen village, north of Qalqiliyia. They searched Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. The checkpoint was later removed.
  • At approximately 18:00 on Sunday, 13 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the entrance to Qalqiliyia. They searched Palestinains’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. They then arrested Riyad ‘Ali al-Taneeb (27), from Qalqiliyia.
  • At approximately 17:20 on Sunday, 13 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the entrance to Izbit al-Tabeeb village, east of Qalqiliyia. They searched Palestinians’’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. The checkpoint was later removed.

Salfit:

  • At approximately 19:30 on Friday, 11 October 2019, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the entrance to Hares village, north of Salfit. They searched Palestinians’’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. The checkpoint was later removed.
  • At approximately 20:00, Israeli forces established a checkpoint at the entrance to Kaful Hares village, north of Salfit. They searched Palestinians’’ vehicles and checked the passengers’ IDs. The checkpoint was later removed.

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Featured image: Israeli soldier aim at Palestinians protesting confiscation of their land by Jewish settlements in Kufr Qadoom vsillage near the West Bank city of Nablus, Oct. 11, 2019. (Photo by Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua)

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A leaked conversation between two Boeing employees provides further evidence that even though the aerospace giant was well aware of potentially catastrophic problems of the Boeing 737 Max 8 jet, it still decided to introduce the aircraft for commercial flights. Within two years of executives making the decision to put it into service, the deadly aircraft crashed twice—first in October 2018 and then in March of this year—killing 346 men, women and children.

So why aren’t any of Boeing’s executives facing criminal charges?

The exchange between Boeing pilot Mark Forkner and his colleague Patrick Gustavsson, first published by Reuters, again reveals that the company subordinates passenger safety to the drive for profit. With only six months to go before the release of the aircraft, Forkner noted “fundamental issues” with the Max 8 that other Boeing officials “claim they’re aware of.” He specifically mentioned that “MCAS” was “running rampant in the [simulator]” and that “the plane [was] trimming like crazy.”

These comments by two Boeing employees dovetail with black box recordings and other data collected on the two crashes, Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which show that a previously unknown system, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), forced the planes into an unrecoverable nosedive. The system was ostensibly installed so that pilots of previous Boeing 737s would require next to no training on the new aircraft, a major selling point the company used to push its plane onto customers over European rival Airbus’s A320neo aircraft.

The real reason MCAS was developed, however, was to correct for a tendency of the Max 8 to stall. In order to shorten development time for the aircraft, Boeing essentially welded on new engines to a half-century old airframe, which meant the jet constantly had a slight pitch up. Instead of designing a new body for the engines, company executives determined it would be much quicker and cheaper to apply a software fix to faulty hardware.

Moreover, Boeing did everything it could to hide this development from regulators. Forkner, who at the time was a technical pilot for the company, told Gustavsson “I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)” because neither he nor his coworker had been informed of how much control MCAS could assume over an aircraft. Despite this incident, which was likely one among many, Boeing not only hid the dangers of the system from aviation safety officials, it kept the software out of Max 8 flight manuals. Even after the Lion Air crash, many pilots in the US and internationally were unaware of MCAS and the potential dangers it posed.

There is no innocent explanation for these omissions. They indicate reckless and criminally negligent behavior on the part of Boeing executives to rush into service a flying deathtrap in order to gain market share over its corporate rivals.

That none of them have been prosecuted, much less arrested, speaks to the incestuous relationship between airline companies and the US government. Ali Bahrami, one of the heads of the aerospace industry’s lobbying group, was one of the leading members of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) during the initial development of the Max 8. FAA Acting Administrator during both crashes was Dan Elwell, a former American Airlines executive. Stephen Dickson, the new head of the agency, was a Senior Vice President at Delta.

It also indicts Boeing’s Wall Street investors, which see lives lost only as the cost of doing business. This includes The Vanguard Group, T. Rowe Price Associates, the Newport Trust Co., SSGA Funds Management and Blackrock Fund Advisors, among others. They collectively control 27.9 percent of Boeing’s stock, valued at $59.4 billion, which is more than twice what it was when Boeing first introduced the Max 8.

Boeing’s executives themselves also made a tidy sum. During the meteoric rise of the company’s stock in January and February, Chief Financial Officer Gregory Smith, Executive Vice President John Keating, General Counsel Michael Luttig and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenberg all sold shares worth $9.5 million, $10.1 million, $9.5 million and $6.5 million, respectively. That the second Max 8 crash occurred within a month of these and other similar windfalls raises questions about what else corporate executives knew.

The relationship between Boeing, its executives and its Wall Street investors, however, is only a symptom of the logic produced by the deregulation of the airline industry as a whole, an effort spearheaded by the Democratic administration of Jimmy Carter in 1978. Aided and abetted by Professor Alfred Kahn and liberal icon Senator Edward Kennedy, Carter pushed through the Airline Deregulation Act, which smashed the existing setup that treated interstate airlines as a regulated public utility, setting routes, schedules and fares.

At the same time, Carter drew up plans to smash the air traffic controllers’ union, PATCO, which were carried out in 1981 by his Republican successor Ronald Reagan—with the support of a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. This began an assault on airline workers and all sections of the working class, made possible by the treachery and complicity of the trade unions, which accelerated the growth of financial speculation and parasitism which has dismantled much of the country’s industry.

The basis for this is the ongoing counterrevolution being carried out by the ruling elite against the social position and living standards of the working class as wealth is concentrated ever more tightly in the top 1 percent and .1 percent of society. These same processes led the utility company PG&E to plunge millions into darkness two weeks ago without warning. The company, which has been implicated in the deaths of 85 people in last year’s Camp Fire, has stated that random blackouts will likely be the new normal for working-class Californians for at least a decade.

The Boeing 737 Max 8 disasters are the outcome of the capitalist ownership of the airline industry and the financial system. They point to the inherent incompatibility between the basic interests of the working class and the private ownership of essential industries, as well as the division of the world’s economy into rival nations. These catastrophes were driven by both the greed of Boeing executives and big investors and the intensifying trade conflict between the United States and Europe.

The only way forward is the opposite, the transformation of the airlines and other major corporations and banks into publicly owned utilities under the democratic control of the working class. This will be a key part of a political fight against the corporate-financial oligarchy and both of its parties, as part of the establishment of a planned economy based on social need, not private profit.

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Recipe for Disaster and The U.S. Military Industrial Empire

October 21st, 2019 by Philip A Farruggio

I tune into many cooking shows lately. They all have lots of recipes for just about any kind of dish one can imagine. Well, from our 21st Century Military Industrial Empire’s Cookbook the most popular recipe is this one: Take the Two Party/One Party food fight and add a large portion of Mainstream Media Bu**hit. Wallah, you will have the finest disaster dish around. With all the many terrible actions by this administration to subjugate we working stiffs, the apologists for empire refuse to mention them and instead focus on constitutional technicalities.Tune in the boob tube and view the Pro Impeachment vs. No impeachment rhetoric concerning this possibly Adhdd (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) president.

Symptoms of inattention

  • Often makes careless mistakes and lacks attention to details
    Examples: overlooking or missing details or handing in work that is inaccurate
  • Often has difficulty paying attention to tasks
    Example: difficulty remaining focused during lectures, conversations, or lengthy readings
  • Often seems to not listen when spoken to directly
    Example: mind seems elsewhere, even in the absence of obvious distraction
  • Often fails to follow through on instructions, chores, or duties in the workplace
    Example: starts tasks but quickly loses focus and is easily sidetracked
  • Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities
    Examples: messy, disorganized work; poor time management; fails to meet deadlines
  • Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to participate in tasks requiring sustained mental effort, like preparing reports, completing forms, or reviewing lengthy papers
  • Often loses things like tools, wallets, keys, paperwork, eyeglasses, and mobile phones
  • Often easily distracted by other things, including unrelated thoughts
  • Often forgetful in daily activities, such as running errands, returning calls, paying bills, and keeping appointments

You don’t need a degree in psychiatry to notice how Mr. Trump displays many, if not all, of these symptoms. The fact that he continuously repeats a phrase two times is an indication. Yet, his ‘ condition’ is only one part of the complex problem that this Military Industrial Empire has created.

Viewing last week’s (supposed) Democratic Party presidential debate made this writer contemplate throwing my shoe at the television screen. One solitary aspirant on that stage, Ms. Gabbard, had the audacity to mention ‘Wars of regime change’ that are synonymous with longstanding US foreign policy… under ALL our previous presidents. The others on that stage, all of them, like ‘deer caught in the headlights’, just brushed her remarks aside, like an elephant does to a fly on its ass. They were too concerned with ‘helping the Kurds from being massacred by the Turks in Syria’. After all, the Kurdish forces were wiping out ISIS from that part of Syria, and Trump gave a ‘green light’ to Turkey by pulling US forces out. And that was and IS the new rhetoric, right? Well, not really. You see, if the Bush/Cheney gang did not attack and occupy Iraq an Afghanistan, and the Obama/Hillary gang did not attack and destroy Libya… there would be NO ISIS or whatever group of Islamic fanatics assembled in that region, including Syria. By the way, US foreign policy aided and abetted those fanatics so as to see ‘Regime change’ come to Syria, a cog in the geopolitical landscape of that Middle East region. Translated: What Ms. Gabbard was stating by her assertions, is that the Two Party/One Party representatives of this empire ALL have dirty hands in this mess! Mr. Trump is just the latest of many minions of empire!

The Two Party/One Party scam continues so long as the hundreds of millions of working stiffs keep buying into what they are selling. The Republicans always take the lead in protecting the interests of the Super rich. All Trump did was sell his phony populist Kool Aid to the millions of working stiffs by scapegoating the non white poor, playing the terrorist fear card, blessing our militarism… and of course catering to the evangelical anti abortionists. With all the skeletons he has in his closet, if the Democrats ran Donald Duck instead of Mrs. Clinton, with ALL her skeletons, they would have won the White House. Not to be Not to be. The empire needs to keep the suckers ‘deaf and dumb’ to what it has always been doing: Support the Super Rich and the obscene militarism that protects them. Why is it that, during ALL the Democratic Party’s (so-called) debates, no mention of the fact that over HALF our federal tax dollars goes down the rabbit hole of military spending? You want what now many running for president are trumpeting, Medicare for All (of course, all but perhaps Sanders are still embedded with keeping private insurance active in it)? Well, cut even but 25% of that money, which would be at least $ 180 billion a year, and you can have comprehensive national health care for all of us. without the private insurers being involved!

Of course, if we want to see real and viable change within our political system, then take ALL the private money OUT of elections by instituting Public funding. Then, the Two Party/One Party scam would end… for good!

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

India Is Confused; Where Does It Go from Here?

October 21st, 2019 by Andre Vltchek

At J. Nehru University, most students know about China and Russia only from the BBC, Reuters and other Western media outlets. Even those individuals who claim they belong to the left are not immune; influenced mainly by the British propaganda.

It has been like this for years: usual confusion, all around India: tough nationalistic, even chauvinistic rhetoric, mixed with almost religious economic submission to the West, and often, to Western geo-political interests.

During the last few years, nationalism, as well as Hindu religious dogmatism have been gaining ground, while capitalism, often in its most vulgar and grotesque form, has been turned into a worshipped and bulletproof demagogy.

Gone are the days of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Now, there is no flirtation with socialism, anymore, and no attempt to create a country that would serve all of its citizens.

Like in Thailand, which is now the country with the most unequally distributed income on earth, Indian elites are thriving on their exceptionalism, on being separated from the poor majority by entire galaxies.

Here, Bentley and Jaguar showrooms rub shoulders with terrible, impenetrable slums. Expensive private hospitals are shamelessly seducing foreigners into “cheap” medical tourism, while the local poor are dying in pain and misery, often with no help at all.

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For many years, I have been writing about this country, from Kerala and Tamil Nadu to the oppressed Northeast and Kashmir. I have encountered, and worked with, many local thinkers, opposition figures and artists.

Then, four years ago, after covering Kashmir, Assam and the deprived villages north of Delhi, something broke inside me, and I couldn’t stand what I saw here, anymore. I could not deal with the gang rapes, with people being tortured and forced to eat their own flesh. And I refused to be subjected to the most grotesque “security”measurements and bullying on earth.

“Democracy!”, people laughed at me, when I mentioned the word. “Yes, democracy, for them, for the rich. We the poor only stick pieces of paper into a box, take small bribes and alcohol from various political parties, before elections. We get beaten up if we do something the rulers and the rich consider wrong.”

I have had enough of the farce: in India, Indonesia, Thailand – wherever the brutal, nihilist regimes which have been reducing the majority of the population into beggars, have been clinging, almost unopposed, to power.

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Then two months ago, the Student Association at Jawaharlal Nehru University, wrote me a letter, inviting me back to speak, this time about China and the conflict between the PRC and the United States.

The email exchange with the Students Union Leaders included a piece of information which I was actually aware of:

“The International Relations field is being completely taken over by pro US / pro NATO people here…”

“Everybody here is occupied with JNU student union elections next week. It is one of the most important places of ideological resistance to the current Fascist government in India. “

Modi… Yes. They hate Modi at JNU. Many do. But then later, in Delhi, after accepting the invitation, in an Uber from my hotel to the university, I was told, bluntly:

Your friends, including Arundhati Roy and a Kashmiri documentary film director Sanjay Kak, used to speak at this university, often. Now they cannot even show their faces here, or there would be a riot organized by the RSS.”

At that moment I knew that I am on my own. Ready to face the students at the school which could be still considered the best public university in India, but which was hostile to even the most luminous intellectuals this nation has recently produced.

I recalled how, four years ago, in a café in New Delhi, sitting at a table with Arundhati Roy and Sanjay Kak, I committed an indiscretion, exclaiming:

But India has such great opposition figures!”

Arundhati looked at me, sarcastically, and uttered:

Yes, and most of us are sitting, right now here, at this table.”

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My encounter with the JNU students and researchers was colorful; from the beginning to the end. They wanted me to speak about the “Global South”, and about the conflict between the West and both China and Russia.

I did. But I also wanted to “take the pulse”, to understand, from their questions and statements, what they actually know, and what they would like to learn from exchanges like this.

For two full hours we faced each other, and these were not always pleasant moments.

I spoke about China and Russia as I knew them, experienced, and wrote about. They were shooting many questions at me, questions that were often shaped by the Western propaganda language, and by mass media jargon.

“Human rights”, “democracy”, “why does China do this?”, “why does Russia do that?”

I stood my ground.

“Why did China do nothing to help Cuba?”

I patiently explained that China saved Cuba, after the Soviet Union decomposed under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Sarcastic sounds followed.

“Fidel Castro quoted me, and wrote that I was correct,” I uttered. This restored order. There was not much to add.

There were questions about Hong Kong. Confrontational questions. Definitely not questions that are asked among comrades. I did not lose my temper. Patiently, I explained what I recently witnessed in Hong Kong: the confusion of the rioters backed by European and North American countries. Violence and hate; destruction.

At the end, one young man asked me, with a smile: “And what about Iranian imperialism?”

“Iranian imperialism?” I couldn’t understand. I still did not fully comprehend that this was different India that I knew in quite a recent past.

“Yes. Iranian imperialism… You know: supporting Yemeni rebels, and brutal Assad’s dictatorship…”

I recalled how I was approached: [JNU] is one of the most important places of ideological resistance to the current Fascist government in India.

One of the left-activists and research scholars at JNU who asked not to be identified, and who was present during my presentation, later wrote for this essay:

“On the extreme right-wing violence kind of things like lynching, riots, hate speech, Hindutva interpretation of history etc. – there is some resistance from a section of liberal elites. Or resistance on caste issues from people who care about these issues.

But on long term policies of Indian state – pro-US foreign policy, neoliberal economic policies, etc – there is hardly any understanding or resistance. 

I even heard one ex-WTO guy in a seminar here – who was surprised to see the consensus among students on the ‘rule-based international trading system’ in contrast to fierce disagreements when he came a few years back. 

There are few teachers who are exceptions – but in general a far-right shift (in economic and foreign policy) is unfortunately true.”

That is obviously and unfortunately what is happening. I witnessed it at JNU, I was told this by my friends, and I felt it on the street.

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Binu Mathew, the legendary Editor of “Countercurrents” magazine, based in Kerala, explained:

“During the cold war India was one of the conscience keepers of the world. It took a moral stand on world issues. Jawaharlal Nehru was one of the founders of the Non Aligned Movement during the Cold War. It was a huge moral force during those maddening times. It has completely lost now. It was done by the very followers of Nehru’s Congress party. They made India a minion of the USA by signing a military strategic partnership in 2008. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which came to power after the Congress-led government, took it to another level. In 2016, the US designated India a “Major Defense Partner”. Now India is following the dictate from Washington… I think the USA is using India as a bulwark against the growing Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Narendra Modi used to be the Chief Minister of Gujarat, during those brutal massacres that I covered. The right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organization, RSS, responsible for those massacres, is now a major force on the Indian political scene. Mr. Modi is held responsible for the pogroms. The academic view of the “events” is summarized by Martha Nussbaum, who said:

“There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law.”

Mr. Modi is now Prime Minister of India. Under his rule, the misery of the poor (the majority of the nation) is deepening. The shameful cast system is still firmly in place.

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Leaving India for Thailand, I watched the extremely long Hindi film, called “Guru”. Melodramatic, badly acted and directed, but it was still worth watching.

Nowhere else in the world, would such films be possible to make a film glorifying capitalist, thuggish cronyism and corruption, a feel-good film about an ambitious young man becoming the owner of an industrial empire. In India, no one laughs at such propaganda, turbo-capitalist monstrosities. Such films are actually admired. People are dreaming to be like the main character.

While right-wing publications were lying everywhere, I couldn’t find or purchase the relatively progressive weekly news magazine Frontline; in my hotel, at the airport or on board the airplane.

A few years ago, I wrote an essay: “India Is Where? On Two Chairs!” Now, it is clearly sitting on the lap of the West. It has found “its place”.

The Global South? BRICS? Just words; at least for now. A few great individuals, like Arundhati Roy, are still fighting, but they are locked out, even from the J. Nehru University.

It is painful to accept, but it is the reality.

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Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that penned a number of books, including China and Ecological Civilization. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from the author

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The Four A’s of American Policy Failure in Syria

October 21st, 2019 by Scott Ritter

The ceasefire agreement brokered by Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday accomplishes very little outside of putting window dressing on a foregone conclusion. Simply put, the Turks will be able to achieve their objectives of clearing a safe zone of Kurdish forces south of the Turkish border, albeit under a U.S. sanctioned agreement. In return, the U.S. agrees not to impose economic sanctions on Turkey. 

So basically it doesn’t change anything that’s already been set into motion by the Turkish invasion of northern Syria. But it does signal the end of the American experiment in Syrian regime change, with the United States supplanted by Russia as the shot caller in Middle Eastern affairs.

To understand how we got to this point, we need to navigate the four A’s that underpin America’s failed policy vis-à-vis Syria—Afghanistan, Astana, Adana, and Ankara.

The first, Afghanistan, represents the epitome of covert American meddling in regional affairs—Operation Cyclone, the successful CIA-run effort to arm and equip anti-communist rebels in Afghanistan to confront the Soviet Army from 1979 to 1989. The success of the Afghanistan experience helped shape an overly optimistic assessment by the administration of President Barack Obama that a similarly successful effort could be had in Syria by covertly training and equipping anti-Assad rebels.

The second, Astana, is the capital city of Kazakhstan, recently renamed Nur Sultan in March 2019. Since 2017, Astana has played host to a series of summits that have become known as “the Astana Process,” a Russian-directed diplomatic effort ostensibly designed to facilitate a peaceful ending to the Syrian crisis, but in reality part of a larger Russian-run effort to sideline American regime change efforts in Syria.

The Astana Process was sold as a complementary effort to the U.S.-backed, UN-brokered Geneva Talks, which were initially convened in 2012 to bring an end to the Syrian conflict. The adoption by the U.S. of an “Assad must go” posture doomed the Geneva Talks from the outset. The Astana Process was the logical outcome of this American failure.

The third “A”—Adana—is a major city located in southern Turkey, some 35 kilometers inland from the Mediterranean Sea. It’s home to the Incirlik Air Base, which hosts significant U.S. Air Force assets, including some 50 B-61 nuclear bombs. It also hosted a meeting between Turkish and Syrian officials in October 1998 for the purpose of crafting a diplomatic solution to the problem presented by forces belonging to the Kurdish People’s Party, or PKK, who were carrying out attacks inside Turkey from camps located within Syria.

The resulting agreement, known as the Adana Agreement, helped prevent a potential war between Turkey and Syria by formally recognizing the respective sovereignty and inviolability of their common border. In 2010, the two nations expanded the 1998 deal into a formal treaty governing cooperation and joint action, inclusive of intelligence sharing on designated terrorist organizations (i.e., the PKK). The Adana Agreement/Treaty was all but forgotten in the aftermath of the 2011 Syrian crisis, as Turkey embraced regime change regarding the Assad government, only to be resuscitated by Russian President Vladimir Putin during talks with Erdogan in Moscow in January 2019. The re-introduction of the moribund agreement into the Syrian-Turkish political dynamic successfully created a diplomatic bridge between the two countries, paving the way for a formal resolution of their considerable differences.

The final “A”—Ankara—is perhaps the most crucial when it comes to understanding the demise of the American position in Syria. Ankara is the Turkish capital, situated in the central Anatolian plateau. In September 2019, Ankara played host to a summit between Erdogan, Putin, and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani. While the ostensible focus of the summit was to negotiate a ceasefire in the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib, where Turkish-backed militants were under incessant attack by the combined forces of Russia and Syria, the real purpose was to facilitate an endgame to the Syrian crisis.

Russia’s rejection of the Turkish demands for a ceasefire were interpreted by the Western media as a sign of the summit’s failure. But the opposite was true—Russia backed Turkey’s demand for a security corridor along the Turkish-Syrian border, and accepted Ankara’s characterization of the American-backed Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) as “terrorists.” This agreement, combined with Turkey’s willingness to recognize the outcome of Syrian presidential elections projected to take place in 2021, paved the way for the political reconciliation between Turkey and Syria. It also hammered the last nail in the coffin of America’s regime change policy regarding Bashar al-Assad.

There is little mention of the four A’s in American politics and the mainstream media. Instead there’s only a skewed version of reality, which portrays the American military presence in Syria as part and parcel of a noble alliance between the U.S. and the Kurdish SDF to confront the ISIS scourge. This ignores the reality that the U.S. has been committed to regime change in Syria since 2011, and that the fight against ISIS was merely a sideshow to this larger policy objective.

“Assad must go.” Those three words have defined American policy on Syria since they were first alluded to by President Obama in an official White House statementreleased in August 2011. The initial U.S. strategy did not involve an Afghanistan-like arming of rebel forces, but rather a political solution under the auspices of policies and entities created under the administration of President George W. Bush. In 2006, the State Department created the Iran-Syrian Operations Group, or ISOG, which oversaw interdepartmental coordination of regime change options in both Iran and Syria.

Though ISOG was disbanded in 2008, its mission was continued by other American agencies. One of the byproducts of the work initiated by ISOG was the creation of Syrian political opposition groups that were later morphed by the Obama administration into an entity known as the Syrian National Council, or SNC. When Obama demanded that Assad must step aside in August 2011, he envisioned that the Syrian president would be replaced by the SNC. This was the objective of the Geneva Talks brokered by the United Nations and the Arab League in 2011-2012. One of the defining features of those talks was the insistence on the part of the U.S., UK, and SNC that the Assad government not be allowed to participate in any discussion about the political future of Syria. This condition was rejected by Russia, and the talks ultimately failed. Efforts to revive the Geneva Process likewise floundered on this point.

Faced with this diplomatic failure, Obama turned to the CIA to undertake an Afghanistan-like arming of Syrian rebels to accomplish on the ground what could not be around a table in Geneva.

The CIA took advantage of Turkish animosity toward Syria in the aftermath of suppression of anti-Syrian government demonstrations in 2011 to funnel massive quantities of military equipment, weapons, and ammunition from Libya to Turkey, where they were used to arm a number of anti-Assad rebels operating under the umbrella of the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” or FSA. In 2013, the CIA took direct control of the arm and equip program, sending teams to Turkey and Jordan to train the FSA. This effort, known as Operation Timber Sycamore, was later supplemented with a Department of Defense program to provide anti-tank weapons to the Syrian opposition.

American efforts to create a viable armed opposition ultimately failed, with many of the weapons and equipment eventually falling into the hands of radical jihadist groups aligned with al-Qaeda and, later, ISIS. The emergence of ISIS as a regional threat in 2014 led to the U.S. building ties with Syrian Kurds as an alternative vector for implementation of its Syrian policy objectives.

While the fight against ISIS was real, it was done in the context of the American occupation of fully one third of Syria’s territory, including oil fields and agricultural resources. As recently as January 2019, the U.S. was justifying the continued presence of forces in Syria as a means of containing the Iranian presence there; the relationship with the SDF and Syrian Kurds was little more than a front to facilitate this policy.

Turkish incursion into Syria is the direct manifestation of the four A’s that define the failure of American policy in Syria—Afghanistan, Astana, Adana and Ankara. It represents the victory of Russian diplomacy over American force of arms. This is a hard pill for most Americans to swallow, which is why many are busy crafting a revisionist history that both glorifies and justifies failed American policy by wrapping it in the flag of our erstwhile Kurdish allies.

But the American misadventure in Syria was never going to end well—bad policy never does. For the American troops caught up in the collapse of the decades-long effort of the United States to overthrow the Assad government, the retreat from Syria was every bit as ignominious as the retreats of all defeated military forces before them. But at least our forces left Syria alive, and not inside body bags—which was an all too real alternative had they remained in place to face the overwhelming forces of geopolitical reality in transition.

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

The crisis in Syria has taken a new direction with the Turkish invasion into Syria ostensibly to push back the Kurdish peoples. The US has added to this crisis by its indifference toward the Kurds after using them as a proxy force in its battle against ISIS.

The US role in Syria, in the greater Middle East, has been destructive throughout this century. The invasion and occupation of Iraq have left destruction and chaos. The illegal bombing of Libya and the brutal murder of former prime minister, Muammar al-Gaddafi, has created a failed state. The alliance with Saudi Arabia in the war against Yemen has resulted in mass murder and destruction. The ongoing conflicts with Iran through illegal unilateral coercive measures (sanctions), regime change attempts, threats of war and military skirmishes create more instability in the region. And, the ‘special relationship’ with Israel has allowed the continued ethnic cleansing and land theft from the Palestinians and has been a US tool for instability in the region. The never-ending war in Afghanistan continues to cause destruction as the US remains even though it has been defeated.

All of these actions have resulted in more than a million deaths and mass migration which has not only impacted the region but Europe, causing political instability and the advance of right-wing, anti-immigrant forces.

It is time for the US to get out of Syria and out of the Middle East. The Middle East was better off, more stable and wealthier before the disastrous US actions of this century. The illegal US wars have also cost the US trillions of dollars for no benefit for the United States. US policy has not served any positive purposes but has caused instability, conflict and destruction. It is time for the US to get out of the Middle East.

Mobilization against war protest in Vancouver, Canada.

Syria: A Major Defeat for the US and a Geopolitical Game Changer

The bi-partisans in Washington, DC and the foreign policy establishment are furious at Donald Trump for pulling out of the Kurdish region of Syria and allowing Turkey to invade the area. These groups were united when the US goal was removing President Assad from power, but with the culmination of this failed policy, there is political division. Seven years of murderous war have been destructive and accomplished little.

Pepe Escobar describes Syria as the biggest defeat for the CIA since Vietnam. It is a significant defeat, but US losses in Iraq and Afghanistan are in the running for the worst defeat since Vietnam. He describes Syria “as a massive geopolitical game-changer” that strengthens Assad in Syria as he retakes control of northeast Syria, Russia as a guarantor for Syria and key player in the victory over US regime change, and Turkey which is getting protection from the Kurds. The losers are the United States and Kurds, although something might be developed for the Kurds in Syria.

The US contribution to the current chaos and destruction is bi-partisan and precedes Trump. While the brutal attacks by Turkey in Syria in are being blamed on Trump,  in reality, they go back to President Obama. Max Blumenthal reportsin The Grayzone that “many [of the Turkish fighters] were former members of the Free Syrian Army, the force once armed by the CIA and Pentagon and branded as ‘moderate rebels.’” Blumenthal cites a research paper published this October by the pro-government Turkish think tank, SETA, “Out of the 28 factions [in the Turkish mercenary force], 21 were previously supported by the United States, three of them via the Pentagon’s program to combat DAESH. Eighteen of these factions were supplied by the CIA ….”  Further, the leader of this force is Salim Idriss, hosted John McCain when the late senator made his infamous 2013 incursion into Syria.

The Turkish attack in Syria has been filled with ugly extreme violence including beheadings that are causing outrage. They include mercenaries sawing the heads off of Kurdish fighters they had killed, a Syrian Kurdish legislator pulled from her car by the militiamen and executed along with her driver, unarmed Kurdish captives filmed as they were murdered, the vandalism of the corpse of a female Kurdish fighter, the deliberately freeing of ISIS captives from unguarded prisons, and a video message, one of the invading fighters promised mass ethnic cleansing if Kurds in the area refused to convert to his Wahhabi strain of Sunni Islam.

Ajamu Baraka points out that the US created “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) were the good guys when they were part of overthrowing Assad, but now have been turned into the “Turkish supported FSA,”  especially after the gruesome graphic videos of the Turkish invasion emerged. In reality, Baraka points out “many of us knew, along with the CIA and most of the honest foreign policy community, that the FSA was always al-Qaeda’s Syria operation in the form of Jabhat al-Nusra and other jihadist militias.”

Blumenthal concludes:

“Left out of the coverage of these horrors was the fact that none of them would have been possible if Washington had not spent several years and billions of dollars subsidizing Syria’s armed opposition.”

These recent events need to be viewed through the context of fifty years of on-again, off-again coups and regime change campaigns have failed. Timber Sycamore, the regime change project of the Obama administration, was a “secret” plan authorized by Obama which allowed the CIA to arm terrorists in Syria. Timber Sycamore, included Saudi Arabia, Qatari, Jordan and Turkey working with the US, officially began in late 2012 and ended in failure in 2017. The secret program included training future ISIS members as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting Bashar al-Assad. The US was duplicitous and used terrorism as a tool as documented in the book “The Management of Savagery”.

When Obama’s regime change strategy failed, the US switched to occupying one-third of Syria, including the oil region. In January, Secretary of State Tillerson announced the US was creating a de facto Kurdish State including one-third of Syria with a 30,000-strong force of Syrian Defense Force (SDF) troops, with US air support, and eight new US bases. In April 2018, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced that the US planned to maintain its illegal presence in Syria.

Obama’s effort to dominate Syria was rooted in the Bush-era. In 2001, former NATO commander Wesley Clark was on record as stating that Syria was on a list of targeted nations to be toppled by the US and in 2002, former Secretary of State John Bolton said in a speech titled “Beyond the Axis of Evil” that Syria was among a handful of nations the US was targeting. The 2011 protests in Syria, which the US media claimed were to remove Assad, were quickly manipulated by the US and foreign powers who sought to destabilize Syria. CIA-backed Muslim Brotherhood assets were in place to snipe at both police and protesters when the demonstrations broke out and Saudia Arabia provided weapons to aid regime change.

Caitlan Johnstone points to more evidence that Syria was not an organic uprising but a foreign regime change effort from the beginning:

“The former Prime Minister of Qatar said on television that the US and its allies were involved in the Syrian conflict from the very beginning. A WikiLeaks cable and a declassified CIA memo both show the US government plotting to provoke an uprising in Syria exactly as it occurred, years before it happened. Former Foreign Minister of France Roland Dumas stated that he was informed that the UK was engineering an uprising in Syria two years before the violence erupted.”

But, even the Obama era regime change goal needs to be put in the context of fifty years of on-again, off-again efforts by the US to put in place a government the US could control. The US has a long history of trying to control Syria dating back to the 1940s. The first coup attempt by the CIA after it was created was in Syria in 1949. Controlling Syria has been a consistent policy objective. CIA documents from 1986 describe how the US could remove the Assad family. Obama’s policy carried out a long-established goal of US foreign policy to dominate Syria.

In January Trump called for withdrawal from Syria which was met with a firestorm of opposition and he was outmaneuvered by war hawks in his administration and Congress. There continues to be resistance to withdrawal today. The US is not leaving Syria, but merely moving troops from Northeast Syria to other areas. David Macilwain reports

 “The truth of US intentions – to remain in Eastern Syria until they are driven out militarily – has now been emphasized by US Defence secretary Mark Esper. At a press conference where he confirmed the US intention to withdraw 1000 troops from Syria, when asked whether this meant from all of Syria he simply repeated what he had said –’from Northern Syria.’”

In March 2018, Trump tweeted that the US would soon be withdrawing from Syria, one month later Secretary of Defense Mattis told Congress the US was not withdrawing testifying “We are continuing the fight, we are going to expand it and bring in more regional support.” Each of Trump’s efforts to get out has been opposed by bipartisan war hawks.

It is past time for the US to leave Syria and end its longterm desire to dominate the country. People in the United States and around the world must insist on the US obeying international law which means, the US must leave Syria as it has no legal grounds for being in that sovereign nation.

The Rojava Cantons direct democracy governance without a state. Still from video

Kurds in Syria Negotiate Their Future With Damascus

Kurds are often regarded as “the largest ethnic group without a state.” With the US withdrawal from the Kurdish area of Syria, the Kurds must negotiate their future with Damascus. The Kurds in Syria are now working with Damascus to repel the Turkish invasion and negotiating their future.

In mid-2012, Assad’s forces largely withdrew from the Kurdish area, and the battle against ISIS was left to the Kurdish militias: the YPG (People’s Protection Units) and the YPJ (Women’s Defense Forces), the autonomous women’s militias. When the Free Syrian Army failed, the US funded the Syrian Kurdish militias known as the Peoples Protection Unit with a new name, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).  The Kurdish never targeted the Syrian government but focused on ISIS. Now, the Syrian Kurdish militias have come to an agreement to work with Damascus to combat the Turkish invasion.

The Kurdish, Rojava cantons are a liberated area in Syria led by socialist-feminists and a population that makes decisions through local councils. Their economy is based on a cooperative model with thousands of co-ops, but private businesses are allowed. The co-ops are initiated and controlled by the communes, i.e. the community assembly structures. Their basic principle is the participation of everyone in production. In the words of a minister of economics: “If a single loaf of bread is manufactured in Rojava, everyone will have contributed to it.”

Their governing model is direct democracy governance without a state, built on local assemblies. There are multiple levels with neighborhood councils, District Councils and a People’s Council for the entire region. And there is also ‘Democratic Self-Administration’ which is a more conventional government structure of legislative and executive bodies as well as municipal administration. These bodies are not limited to Kurds but open to all religions and races. Women hold 40 percent of leadership positions at all levels. Three leftist enclaves making up an area slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut.

Some see Rojava’s governance without hierarchy, patriarchy or capitalism as a model for the future of the Middle East and beyond, and as an antidote to capitalism. It is the Communalist Model of Democratic Confederalism an adoptation of the ideas of the Zapatistas in Chiapas and the work of Murray Bookchin.

In Turkey, Kurds remain part of Turkey and “have formed a political party (Peoples Democratic Party – HDP) which unites progressives of all ethnicities.  In the 2015 Turkish election, HDP emerged as the third most popular party and stopped Erdogan’s election domination.”  The HDP opposes Turkey’s invasion of Syria.

Turkey is concerned that the Kurds will use the territory they’ve captured to establish an independent Kurdish state for the region’s 25 to 35 million Kurds, roughly 15 million of whom reside in Turkey. Four percent of Kurds reside in Syria, approximately 1.6 million people. Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the region after Arabs, Persians, and Turks. After the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I they were not granted a homeland.

The Syrian and the Kurds must determine the future of the Kurdish areas. Peace activists and popular movements around the world should be in solidarity with the Kurdish peoples desire of a semi-independent territory. The Kurdish population exists over multiple countries. A contiguous Kurdish state is an impossible dream and negotiation will be required by each population in the country where they reside.

US Out of Syria Internationalist protest in NYC (Internationalist photo).

US Out of Syria and Out of the Middle East

We agree with the US Peace Council which demands “the US peace movement to organize a united national campaign in support of the Syrian people and demand the total withdrawal of all occupying forces from Syria. Leave Syria to the Syrian People!”

The movement’s first demand must be the US out of Syria and out of the Middle East because the US is not leaving Syria or the region. Reports indicate between 200 and 300 U.S. troops will remain at the southern Syrian outpost of Al-Tanf and 1,000 troops will shift leaving Syria and going into western Iraq adding to the than 5,000 troops the US has in Iraq, US forces may conduct operations in Syria from Iraq. On October 11, the US announced it was sending an additional 1,800 troops to Saudi Arabia. An additional 14,000 US troops have been deployed to the Middle East since spring, including more than 6,000 who are part of a naval strike group. The US is fighting in at least seven countries in the Middle East and North Africa: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

We must also be in solidarity with the Kurdish people and call for an end to the Turkish invasion of Syria. The Turkish invasion is already backfiring and people mobilizing against the invasion will lead to its retreat. Syria will need to ensure there are no threats to Turkey from Syria.

And, the US must accept immigrants from Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan where migration crises have been caused by US wars. Rebuilding nations destroyed by the United States is a costly endeavor that the US owes to the region. These countries do not want the US meddling in their efforts so retribution must be made through the United Nations without any US strings attached.

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

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Tulsi Gabbard Is Right, and Nancy Pelosi Wrong. It Was US Democrats Who Helped Cultivate the Barbarism of ISIS

By Jonathan Cook, October 21, 2019

Islamic State, or Isis, didn’t emerge out of nowhere. It was entirely a creation of two decades of US interference in the Middle East. And I’m not even referring to the mountains of evidence that US officials backed their Saudi allies in directly funding and arming Isis – just as their predecessors in Washington, in their enthusiasm to oust the Soviets from the region, assisted the jihadists who went on to become al-Qaeda.

Fifty Years Ago Today, US Soldiers Joined the Vietnam Moratorium Protests in Mass Numbers

By Derek Seidman, October 21, 2019

Millions turned out across the United States in a historic day of action. Nothing else so conveyed the breadth of the antiwar movement. Life magazine described the Moratorium as “a display without historic parallel, the largest expression of public dissent ever seen in this country.” With the Moratorium, wrote Fred Halstead, “the antiwar movement for the first time reached the level of a full-fledged mass movement.”

Peace Restored in Ecuador. But Is Trust Restored?

By Nino Pagliccia, October 21, 2019

The tipping point has been decree 883 that forced a series of measures such as removal of subsidies for gasoline and diesel fuels deregulating their price, which caused a price increase of 20 percent up to more than 100 percent. Other costs were in turn affected together with everything that relies on transportation like food. Additional aspects of the decree included the elimination of import duties and the lay-off of thousands of public employees. This was viewed as part of a set of austerity measuresimposed on the country by the IMF, which Ecuadoreans referred to as “paquetazo” (big package). In exchange, the Moreno government was to receive more than $4 billion from the IMF at t

Ecuadorean General Strike Wins Concession on Fuel Subsidies

By Abayomi Azikiwe, October 21, 2019

The government of Lenin Moreno, adhering to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionality, announced the new economic program which resulted in the sharp rise in the price of diesel by 100% and petroleum by 30%. These price increases happened over night making it impossible for many working people and farmers to pay for their household expenses. These hyperinflationary trends also resulted in the rise in food prices and the cost of transportation. The Moreno government initially rejected the demands of the unions and mass organizations saying that fuel subsidies had cost the country over $60 Billion.

Bolivia at the Crossroads: Choosing Between Continued Success or Handover to US Hegemony

By Peter Koenig, October 21, 2019

The United States has not stopped trying to change public opinion with false propaganda and making incredibly ludicrous promises to the population. For example, US Embassy people – maybe Fifth Columnists on US payroll, promised the population of the poor Yungas region of Bolivia, new and asphalted roads, if they didn’t support Evo Morales in the upcoming elections. There are also flagrant lies circulating, that Evo and his families had stolen hundreds of millions of dollars and deposited them in a secret account in the Bank of the Vatican.  Similar lies as are being spread about Nicolas Maduro, the Castro family, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the leaders of Iran and Syria and many more, who oppose the dictate of Washington.

US Interventions in Canada – A Brief History

By Larry Romanoff, October 20, 2019

The US has always maintained a dream of annexing Canada and expanding the American homeland empire to include the entire length and breadth of the North American continent. The ambition to take territorial control of Canada has existed since before the founding of the US and has not measurably diminished since then. The US has invaded Canada five times, the last attempt involving plans to bury most of Canada in poison gas. In the 1970s the US launched an extensive program of propaganda and violence intended to fragment and dismember Canada as a prelude to swallowing it, and is again trying to absorb Canada today through its misbegotten “Fortress America” scheme. A forcible military option disappeared from the radar for some time, but could easily reappear in the future especially as the US begins to increasingly covet Canada’s fresh-water resources.

The Road to Damascus: How the Syria War Was Won

By Pepe Escobar, October 20, 2019

Starting in 1963, the Baath party, secular and nationalist, took over Syria, finally consolidating its power in 1970 with Hafez al-Assad, who instead of just relying on his Alawite minority, built a humongous, hyper-centralized state machinery mixed with a police state. The key actors who refused to play the game were the Muslim Brotherhood, all the way to being massacred during the hardcore 1982 Hama repression.

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  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: US Democrats Helped Cultivate the Barbarism of ISIS

There is something profoundly deceitful in the way the Democratic Party and the corporate media are framing Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria.

One does not need to defend Trump’s actions or ignore the dangers posed to the Kurds, at least in the short-term, by the departure of US forces from northern Syria to understand that the coverage is being crafted in such a way as to entirely overlook the bigger picture.

The problem is neatly illustrated in this line from a report by the Guardian newspaper of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s meeting this week with Trump, who is described as having had a “meltdown”. Explaining why she and other senior Democrats stormed out, the paper writes that “it became clear the president had no plan to deal with a potential revival of Isis in the Middle East”.

Hang on a minute! Let’s pull back a little, and not pretend – as the media and Democratic party leadership wish us to – that the last 20 years did not actually happen. Many of us lived through those events. Our memories are not so short.

Islamic State, or Isis, didn’t emerge out of nowhere. It was entirely a creation of two decades of US interference in the Middle East. And I’m not even referring to the mountains of evidence that US officials backed their Saudi allies in directly funding and arming Isis – just as their predecessors in Washington, in their enthusiasm to oust the Soviets from the region, assisted the jihadists who went on to become al-Qaeda.

No, I’m talking about the fact that in destroying three key Arab states – Iraq, Libya and Syria – that refused to submit to the joint regional hegemony of Saudi Arabia and Israel, Washington’s local client states, the US created a giant void of governance at the heart of the Middle East. They knew that that void would be filled soon enough by religious extremists like Islamic State – and they didn’t care.

Overthrow, not regime change

You don’t have to be a Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi or Bashar Assad apologist to accept this point. You don’t even have to be concerned that these so-called “humanitarian” wars violated each state’s integrity and sovereignty, and are therefore defined in international law as “the supreme war crime”.

The bigger picture – the one no one appears to want us thinking about – is that the US intentionally sought to destroy these states with no obvious plan for the day after. As I explained in my book Israel and the Clash of Civilisations, these haven’t so much been regime-change wars as nation-state dismantling operations – what I have termed overthrow wars.

The logic was a horrifying hybrid of two schools of thought that meshed neatly in the psychopathic foreign policy goals embodied in the ideology of neoconservatism – the so-called “Washington consensus” since 9/11.

The first was Israel’s long-standing approach to the Palestinians. By constantly devastating any emerging Palestinian institution or social structures, Israel produced a divide-and-rule model on steroids, creating a leaderless, ravaged, enfeebled society that sucked out all the local population’s energy. That strategy proved very appealing to the neoconservatives, who saw it as one they could export to non-compliant states in the region.

The second was the Chicago school’s Shock Doctrine, as explained in Naomi Klein’s book of that name. The chaotic campaign of destruction, the psychological trauma and the sense of dislocation created by these overthrow wars were supposed to engender a far more malleable population that would be ripe for a US-controlled “colour revolution”.

The recalcitrant states would be made an example of, broken apart, asset-stripped of their resources and eventually remade as new dependent markets for US goods. That was what George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Halliburton really meant when they talked about building a New Middle East and exporting democracy.

Even judged by the vile aims of its proponents, the Shock Doctrine has been a half-century story of dismal economic failure everywhere it has been attempted – from Pinochet’s Chile to Yeltsin’s Russia. But let us not credit the architects of this policy with any kind of acumen for learning from past errors. As Bush’s senior adviser Karl Rove explained to a journalist whom he rebuked for being part of the “reality-based community”: “We’re an empire now and, when we act, we create our own reality.”

The birth of Islamic State

The barely veiled aim of the attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria was to destroy the institutions and structures that held these societies together, however imperfectly. Though no one likes to mention it nowadays, these states – deeply authoritarian though they were – were also secular, and had well-developed welfare states that ensured high rates of literacy and some of the region’s finest public health services.

One can argue about the initial causes of the uprising against Assad that erupted in Syria in 2011. Did it start as a popular struggle for liberation from the Assad government’s authoritarianism? Or was it a sectarian insurgency by those who wished to replace Shia minority rule with Sunni majority rule? Or was it driven by something else: as a largely economic protest by an under-class suffering from food shortages as climate change led to repeated crop failures? Or are all these factors relevant to some degree?

Given how closed a society Syria was and is, and how difficult it therefore is to weigh the evidence in ways that are likely to prove convincing to those not already persuaded, let us set that issue aside too. Anyway, it is irrelevant to the bigger picture I want to address.

The indisputable fact is that Washington and its Gulf allies wished to exploit this initial unrest as an opportunity to create a void in Syria – just as they had earlier done in Iraq, where there were no uprisings, nor even the WMDs the US promised would be found and that served as the pretext for Bush’s campaign of Shock and Awe.

The limited uprisings in Syria quickly turned into a much larger and far more vicious war because the Gulf states, with US backing, flooded the country with proxy fighters and arms in an effort to overthrow Assad and thereby weaken Iranian and Shia influence in the region. The events in Syria and earlier in Iraq gradually transformed the Sunni religious extremists of al-Qaeda into the even more barbaric, more nihilistic extremists of Islamic State.

A dark US vanity project

After Rove and Cheney had their fill playing around with reality, nature got on with honouring the maxim that it always abhors a vacuum. Islamic State filled the vacuum Washington’s policy had engineered.

The clue, after all, was in the name. With the US and Gulf states using oil money to wage a proxy war against Assad, Isis saw its chance to establish a state inspired by a variety of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabist dogma. Isis needed territory for their planned state, and the Saudis and US obliged by destroying Syria.

This barbarian army, one that murdered other religious groups as infidels and killed fellow Sunnis who refused to bow before their absolute rule, became the west’s chief allies in Syria. Directly and covertly, we gave them money and weapons to begin building their state on parts of Syria.

Again, let us ignore the fact that the US, in helping to destroy a sovereign nation, committed the supreme war crime, one that in a rightly ordered world would ensure every senior Washington official faces their own Nuremberg Trial. Let us ignore too for the moment that the US, consciously through its actions, brought to life a monster that sowed death and destruction everywhere it went.

The fact is that at the moment Assad called in Russia to help him survive, the battle the US and the Gulf states were waging through Islamic State and other proxies was lost. It was only a matter of time before Assad would reassert his rule.

From that point onwards, every single person who was killed and every single Syrian made homeless – and there were hundreds of thousands of them – suffered their terrible fate for no possible gain in US policy goals. A vastly destructive overthrow war became instead something darker still: a neoconservative vanity project that ravaged countless Syrian lives.

A giant red herring

Trump now appears to be ending part of that policy. He may be doing so for the wrong reasons. But very belatedly – and possibly only temporarily – he is seeking to close a small chapter in a horrifying story of western-sponsored barbarism in the Middle East, one intimately tied to Islamic State.

What of the supposed concerns of Pelosi and the Democratic Party under whose watch the barbarism in Syria took place. They should have no credibility on the matter to begin with.

But their claims that Trump has “no plan to deal with a potential revival of Isis in the Middle East” is a giant red herring they are viciously slapping us in the face with in the hope the spray of seawater blinds us.

First, Washington sowed the seeds of Islamic State by engineering a vacuum in Syria that Isis – or something very like it – was inevitably going to fill. Then, it allowed those seeds to flourish by assisting its Gulf allies in showering fighters in Syria with money and arms that came with only one string attached – a commitment to Sunni jihadist ideology inspired by Saudi Wahhabism.

Isis was made in Washington as much as it was in Riyadh. For that reason, the only certain strategy for preventing the revival of Islamic State is preventing the US and the Gulf states from interfering in Syria again.

With the Syrian army in charge of Syrian territory, there will be no vacuum for Isis to fill. The jihadists’ state-building project is now unrealisable, at least in Syria. Islamic State will continue to wither, as it would have done years before if the US and its Gulf allies had not fuelled it in a proxy war they knew could not be won.

Doomed Great Game

The same lesson can be drawn by looking at the experience of the Syrian Kurds. The Rojava fiefdom they managed to carve out in northern Syria during the war survived till now only because of continuing US military support. With a US departure, and the Kurds too weak to maintain their improvised statelet, a vacuum was again created that this time has risked sucking in the Turkish army, which fears a base for Kurdish nationalism on its doorstep.

The Syrian Kurds’ predicament is simple: face a takeover by Turkey or seek Assad’s protection to foil Turkish ambitions. The best hope for the Kurds looks to be the Syrian army’s return, filling the vacuum and regaining a chance of long-term stability.

That could have been the case for all of Syria many tens of thousands of deaths ago. Whatever the corporate media suggest, those deaths were lost not in a failed heroic battle for freedom, which, even if it was an early aspiration for some fighters, quickly became a goal that was impossible for them to realise. No, those deaths were entirely pointless. They were sacrificed by a western military-industrial complex in a US-Saudi Great Game that dragged on for many years after everyone knew it was doomed.

Nancy Pelosi’s purported worries about Isis reviving because of Trump’s Syria withdrawal are simply crocodile fears. If she is really so worried about Islamic State, then why did she and other senior Democrats stand silently by as the US under Barack Obama spent years spawning, cultivating and financing Isis to destroy Syria, a state that was best placed to serve as a bulwark against the head-chopping extremists?

Pelosi and the Democratic leadership’s bad faith – and that of the corporate media – are revealed in their ongoing efforts to silence and smear Tulsi Gabbard, the party’s only candidate for the presidential nomination who has pointed out the harsh political realities in Syria, and tried to expose their years of lies.

Pelosi and most of the Democratic leadership don’t care about Syria, or its population’s welfare. They don’t care about Assad, or Isis. They care only about the maintenance and expansion of American power – and the personal wealth and influence it continues to bestow on them.

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