Global Research

As the Quantum field oversees the disintegration of institutions no longer in service to the public, the Democratic party continues to lose their marbles, perpetuating their own simulated bubble as if they alone are the nation’s most trusted purveyors of truth. 

Since the Mueller Report failed to deliver on the dubious Russiagate accusations, the party of Thomas Jefferson continues to remain in search of another ethical pretense to justify continued partisan turmoil.  In an effort to discredit and/or distract attention from the Barr-Durham and IG investigations, the Dems have come up with an implausible piece of political theatre known as Ukrainegate which has morphed into an impeachment inquiry.    

The Inspector General’s Report, which may soon be ready for release, will address the presentation of fabricated FBI evidence to the FISA Court for permission to initiate a surveillance campaign on Trump Administration personnel.  In addition, the Department of Justice has confirmed that Special Investigator John Durham’s probe into the origin of the FBI’s counter intelligence investigation during the 2016 election has moved from an administrative review into the criminal prosecution realm.  Durham will now be able to actively pursue candidates for possible prosecution. 

The defensive assault from the Democrat hierarchy and its corporate media cohorts can be expected to reach a fevered pitch of manic proportions as both investigations threatened not only their political future in 2020 but perhaps their very existence.       

NBC suggests that the Barr investigation is a ‘mysterious’ review “amid concerns about whether the probe has any legal or factual basis” while the NY Times continues to cast doubt that the investigation has a legitimate basis implying that AG Barr is attempting to “deliver a political victory for President Trump.”   The Times misleads its readers with

“Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it.”

when in fact, it was the Russiagate collusion allegations that Trump referred to as a hoax, rather than the Mueller investigation per se.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va), minority leader of the Senate Intel Committee suggested that Attorney General William Barr “owes the Committee an explanation” since the committee is completing a “three-year bipartisan investigation” that has “found nothing to justify” Barr’s expanded effort.  The Senator’s gauntlet will be ever so fascinating as the public reads exactly how the Intel Committee spent three years and came up with “nothing” as compared to what Durham and the IG reports have to say.

On the House side, prime-time whiners Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) commented that news of the Durham investigation moving towards criminal liability “raised profound concerns that Barr has lost his independence and become a vehicle for political revenge” and that “the Rule of Law will suffer irreparable damage.”    

Since Barr has issued no determination of blame other than to assure a full, fair and rigorous investigation, it is curious that the Dems are in premature meltdown as if they expect indictments even though the investigations are not yet complete.

There is, however, one small inconvenient glitch that challenges the Democratic version of reality that does not fit their partisan spin. The news that former FBI General Counsel James Baker is actively cooperating with the BD investigation ought to send ripples through the ranks. Baker has already stated that it was a ‘small group’ within the agency who led the counterintelligence inquiry into the Trump campaign; notably former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Baker’s cooperation was not totally unexpected since he also cooperated with the Inspector General’s FISA abuse investigation which is awaiting public release.  As FBI General Counsel, Baker had a role in reviewing the FISA applications before they were submitted to the FISA court and currently remains under criminal investigation for making unauthorized leaks to the media. 

As the agency’s chief legal officer, Baker had to be a first-hand participant and privy to every strategy discussion and decision (real or contemplated).  It was his job to identify potential legal implications that might negatively affect the agency or boomerang back on the FBI.  In other words, Baker is in a unique position to know who knew what and when did they know it. His ‘cooperation’ can be generally attributed to being more concerned with saving his own butt rather than the Constitution.  In any case, the information he is able to provide will be key for getting to the true origins of Russiagate and the FISA scandal.  Baker’s collaboration may augur others facing possible prosecution to step up since ‘cooperation’ usually comes with the gift of a lesser charge..   

With a special focus on senior Obama era intel officials  Durham has reportedly already interviewed up to two dozen former and current FBI employees as well as officials in the office of the Director of National Intelligence.  From the number of interviews conducted to date it can be surmised that Durham has been accumulating all the necessary facts and evidence as he works his way up the chain of command, prior to concentrating on top officials who may be central to the investigation.

It has also been reported that Durham expects to interview current and former intelligence officials including CIA analysts, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper regarding Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.

In a recent CNN interview, when asked if he was concerned about any wrong doing on the part of intel officials, Clapper nervously responded “I don’t know.  I don’t think there was any wrong doing.  It is disconcerting to know that we are being investigated for having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the President.”  One wonders if Clapper might be a candidate for ‘cooperating’ along with Baker.

As CIA Director, Brennan made no secret of his efforts to nail the Trump Administration.  In the summer of 2016, he formed an inter agency taskforce to investigate what was being reported as Russian collusion within the Trump campaign.  He boasted to Rachel Maddow that he brought NSA and FBI officials together with the CIA to ‘connect the dots.”  With the addition of James Clapper’s DNI, three reports were released:  October, 2016, December, 2016 and January, 2017 all disseminating the Russian-Trump collusion theory which the Mueller Report later found to be unproven.

Since 1947 when the CIA was first authorized by President Harry Truman who belatedly regretted his approval, the agency has been operating as if they report to no one and  that they never owe the public or Congress any explanation of their behavior or activity or  how they spend the money.  Since those days it has been a weak-minded Congress, intimidated and/or compromised Members who have allowed intel to run their own show as if they are immune to the Constitution and the Rule of Law.  Since 1947, there has been no functioning Congress willing to provide true accountability or meaningful oversight on the intel community.   

Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31

In the event of the death of the Islamic State’s self-styled caliph, Amaq, a news agency affiliated with the Islamic State, reported on 7 August 2019 that the terrorist organization’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had appointed Abdullah Qardash as his successor.

 Abdullah Qardash is from Tal Afar, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city in northwestern Iraq, and has served as an army officer during Saddam Hussein’s regime. Besides Qardash, two other close aides who have emerged as al-Baghdadi’s likely successors over the years are Iyad al-Obaidi, his defense minister, and Ayad al-Jumaili, the in charge of security.

Al-Jumaili has already reportedly been killed in an airstrike in April 2017 in al-Qaim region on Iraq’s border with Syria, while the whereabouts of al-Obaidi are unknown. Both al-Jumaili and al-Obaidi have also previously served as security officers in Iraq’s Baathist army under Saddam Hussein.

Regarding the creation and composition of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, apart from training and arms which were provided to Syrian militants in the training camps located in the Turkish and Jordanian border regions adjacent to Syria by the CIA in collaboration with Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies, another factor that contributed to the success of the Islamic State in early 2014 when it overran Raqqa in Syria and Mosul and Anbar in Iraq was that its top cadres were comprised of former Baathist military and intelligence officers from the Saddam era.

Reportedly, hundreds of ex-Baathists constituted the top and mid-tier command structure of the Islamic State who planned all the operations and directed its military strategy. The only feature that differentiated the Islamic State from all other insurgent groups was its command structure which was comprised of professional ex-Baathists and its state-of-the-art weaponry that was provided to all militant outfits fighting in Syria by the intelligence agencies of the Western powers, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf states.

Recently, the Islamic State’s purported “terror franchises” in Afghanistan and Pakistan have claimed a spate of bombings against the Shi’a and Barelvi Muslims who are regarded as heretics by Takfiri jihadists. But to contend that the Islamic State is responsible for suicide blasts in Pakistan and Afghanistan is to declare that the Taliban are responsible for the sectarian war in Syria and Iraq.

Both are localized militant outfits and the Islamic State without its Baathist command structure and superior weaponry is just another ragtag, regional militant outfit. The distinction between the Taliban and the Islamic State lies in the fact that the Taliban follow Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam which is a sect native to South Asia, whereas the jihadists of the Islamic State mostly belong to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi-Salafi denomination.

Secondly, and more importantly, the insurgency in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan is an indigenous Pashtun uprising which is an ethnic group native to Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, whereas the bulk of the Islamic State’s jihadists in Syria and Iraq was comprised of Arab militants and included foreign fighters from the neighboring Middle Eastern countries, North Africa, the Central Asian states, Russia, China and even radicalized Muslims from as far away as Europe and the United States.

The so-called “Khorasan Province” of the Islamic State in the Af-Pak region is nothing more than a coalition of several breakaway factions of the Taliban and a few other inconsequential local militant outfits that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s late chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in order to enhance their prestige, and draw funds and followers, but which doesn’t have any organizational and operational association with the Islamic State proper in Syria and Iraq.

The total strength of the Islamic State-Khorasan is estimated to be between 3,000 to 5,000 fighters. By comparison, the strength of the Taliban is estimated to be between 60,000 to 80,000 militants. The Islamic State-Khorasan was formed as a merger between several breakaway factions of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in early 2015. Later, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Pakistani terrorist group Jundullah and Chinese Uyghur militants pledged allegiance to it.

In 2017, the Islamic State-Khorasan split into two factions. One faction, based in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, is led by a Pakistani militant commander Aslam Farooqi, and the other faction, based in the northern provinces of Afghanistan, is led by a former Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) commander Moawiya. The latter faction also includes Uzbek, Tajik, Uyghur and Baloch militants.

In Pakistan, there are three distinct categories of militants: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants; and foreign transnational terrorists, including the Arab militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Chinese Uyghur jihadists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Compared to tens of thousands of native Pashtun and Punjabi militants, the foreign transnational terrorists number only in a few hundred and are hence inconsequential.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) like to couch their rhetoric in religious terms, it is the difference of ethnicity and language that enables them to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.

Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which are regarded as a security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, as far as the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as “strategic assets” by Pakistan’s security agencies.

Therefore, recent allegations by regional power-brokers that Washington has provided material support to the Islamic State-affiliate in Afghanistan and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) as a tit-for-tat response to Pakistan’s security agencies double game of providing support to the Afghan Taliban to mount attacks against the Afghan security forces and their American backers cannot be ruled out.

In November last year, for instance, infighting between the main faction of the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada and a breakaway faction led by Mullah Mohammad Rasul left scores of fighters dead in Afghanistan’s western Herat province.

Mullah Rasul was close to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, and served as the governor of southwestern Nimroz province during the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. After the news of the death of Mullah Omar was made public in 2015, Mullah Rasul broke ranks with the Taliban and formed his own faction.

Mullah Rasul’s group is active in the provinces of Herat, Farah, Nimroz and Helmand, and is known to have received arms and support from the Afghan intelligence, as he has expressed willingness to recognize the Washington-backed Kabul government.

Regarding Washington’s motives for providing covert support to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack, and toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance comprised of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek warlords.

The leadership and fighters of the Pashtun-majority Taliban resistance movement found sanctuary in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, and mounted an insurgency against the Washington-backed Kabul government. Throughout the occupation years, Washington kept pressuring Islamabad to mount military operations in the tribal areas in order to deny safe havens to the Taliban.

However, Islamabad was reluctant to conduct military operations, which is a euphemism for all-out war, for the fear of alienating the Pashtun population of the tribal areas. After Pakistan’s military’s raid in July 2007 on a mosque (Laal Masjid) in the heart of Islamabad, which also contained a religious seminary, scores of civilians, including students of the seminary, died.

The Pakistani Taliban made the incident a rallying call for waging a jihad against Pakistan’s military. Thereafter, terror attacks and suicide bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus peaked after the July 2007 Laal Masjid incident. Eventually, under pressure from the Obama administration, Pakistan’s military decided in 2009 to conduct military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The first military operation was mounted in the Swat valley in April 2009, the second in South Waziristan tribal agency in October the same year, and the third military operation was launched in North Waziristan and Khyber tribal agencies in June 2014. In the ensuing violence, tens of thousands of civilians, security personnel and militants lost their lives.

Although Pakistani political commentators often point fingers at the Washington-backed Kabul government in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s arch-foe India for providing money and arms to the Pakistani Taliban for waging a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment, reportedly Washington has provided covert support to the Pakistani Taliban in order to force Pakistan’s military to conduct military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Keeping this background of Washington’s covert support to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban that have waged an insurgency against the US-backed Kabul government and to the Pakistani Taliban that has mounted a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment in mind, the allegations that Washington has provided material support to the Islamic State’s affiliate in the Af-Pak region in order to divide and weaken the Taliban resistance against American occupation of Afghanistan are not unfounded.

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 died like a dog.” President Trump could not have scripted a better one-liner as he got ready for his Obama bin Laden close-up in front of the whole world.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, fake caliph, ISIS/Daesh leader, the most wanted man on the planet, was “brought to justice” under Trump’s watch. The dead dog caliph is now positioned as the ultimate foreign policy winning trophy ahead of 2020 reelection.

The climatic scenes of the inevitable-as-death-and-taxes movie or Netflix series to come are already written. (Trump: I “watched it like a movie.”) Cowardly uber-terrorist cornered in a dead-end tunnel, eight helicopter gunships hovering above, dogs barking in the darkness, three terrified children taken as hostages, coward detonates a suicide vest, tunnel collapses over himself and the children.

A crack forensic team carrying samples of the fake caliph’s DNA apparently does its job in record time. The remains of the self-exploded target – then sealed in plastic bags – confirm it: it’s Baghdadi. In the dead of night, it’s time for the commando unit to go back to Irbil, a 70-minute flight over northeast Syria and northwest Iraq. Cut to Trump’s presser. Mission accomplished. Roll credits.

This all happened at a compound only 300 meters away from the village of Barisha, in Idlib, rural northwest Syria, only 5km from the Syria-Turkish border. The compound is no more:  it was turned to rubble so it would not become a (Syrian) shrine for a renegade Iraqi.

The caliph was already on the run, and arrived at this rural back of beyond only 48 hours before the raid, according to Turkish intelligence. A serious question is what he was doing in northwest Syria, in Idlib – a de facto cauldron-like Donbass in 2014 – which the Syrian army and Russian airpower are just waiting for the right moment to extinguish.

There are virtually no ISIS/Daesh jihadis in Irbil, but lots of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, as in al-Qaeda in Syria, known inside the Beltway as “moderate rebels,” including hardcore Turkmen brigades previously weaponized by Turkish intel. The only rational explanation is that the Caliph might have identified this Idlib backwater near Barisha, away from the war zone, as the ideal under-the-radar passport to cross to Turkey.

Russians knew?

The plot thickens when we examine Trump’s long list of “thank yous” for the successful raid. Russia came first, followed by Syria – presumably Syrian Kurds, not Damascus – Turkey and Iraq. In fact, Syrian Kurds were only credited with “certain support,” in Trump’s words. Their commander Mazloum Abdi, though, preferred to extol the raid as a “historic operation” with essential Syrian Kurd intel input.

In Trump’s press conference, expanding somewhat on the thank yous, Russia again came first (“great” collaboration) and Iraq was “excellent”: the Iraqi National Intelligence Service later commented on the break it had gotten, via a Syrian who had smuggled the wives of two of Baghdadi’s brothers, Ahmad and Jumah, to Idlib via Turkey.

There’s no way US Special Forces could have pulled this off without complex, combined Turkish, Iraqi and Syrian Kurd intel. Additionally, President Erdogan accomplishes one more tactical masterpiece, juggling between performing the role of dutiful, major NATO ally while still allowing al-Qaeda remnants their safe haven in Idlib under the watchful eye of the Turkish military.

Significantly, Trump said, about Moscow: “We told them, ‘We’re coming in’ … and they said, ‘Thank you for telling us.’” But, “they did not know the mission.”

They definitely didn’t. In fact, the Russian Defense Ministry, via spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov, said it had “no reliable information about US servicemen conducting an operation to ‘yet another’ elimination of the former Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the Turkish-controlled part of the Idlib de-escalation zone.”

And on Trump’s “we told them,” the Russian Defense Ministry was emphatic: “We know nothing about any assistance to the flight of US aircraft to the Idlib de-escalation zone’s airspace in the course of this operation.”

According to ground sources in Syria, a prevalent rumor in Idlib is that the “dead dog” in Barisha could be Abu Mohammad Salama, the leader of Haras al-Din, a minor sub-group of al-Qaeda in Syria. Haras al-Din has not issued any statement about it.

ISIS/Daesh anyway has already named a successor: Abdullah Qardash, aka Hajji Abdullah al-Afari, also Iraqi and also a former Saddam Hussein military officer. There’s a strong possibility that ISIS/Daesh and myriad subgroups and variations of al-Qaeda in Syria will now re-merge, after their split in 2014.

Who gets the oil?

There’s no plausible explanation whatsoever for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, for years, enjoying the freedom of shuttling back and forth between Syria and Iraq, always evading the formidable surveillance capabilities of the US government.

Well, there’s also no plausible explanation for that famous convoy of 53 brand new, white Toyota Hi-Luxes crossing the desert from Syria to Iraq in 2014 crammed with flag-waving ISIS/Daesh jihadis on their way to capture Mosul, also evading the cornucopia of US satellites covering the Middle East 24/7.

And there’s no way to bury the 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)  leaked memo that explicitly named “the West, Gulf monarchies, and Turkey” as seeking a “Salafist principality” in Syria (opposed, significantly, by Russia, China and Iran – the key poles of Eurasia integration).

That was way before ISIS/Daesh’s irresistible ascension. The DIA memo was unmistakable: “If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

True, the fake caliph has been proclaimed definitely dead at least five times, starting in December 2016. Yet the timing, now, could not be more convenient.

The facts on the ground, after the latest ground-breaking Russia-brokered deal between the Turks and the Syrian Kurds, graphically spell out the slow but sure restoration of Syria’s territorial integrity. There will be no balkanization of Syria. The last remaining pocket to be cleared of jihadis is Irbil.

And then, there’s the oil question. The “died as a dog” movie literally buries – at least for now – an extremely embarrassing story: the Pentagon deploying tanks to “protect” Syrian oilfields. This is as illegal, by any possible interpretation of international law, as is, for that matter, the very presence in Syria of US troops, which were never invited by the government in Damascus.

Persian Gulf traders told me that before 2011, Syria was producing 387,000 barrels of oil a day and selling 140,000 – the equivalent of 25.1% of Damascus’s income. Nowadays, the Omar, al-Shadaddi and Suwayda fields, in eastern Syria, would not be producing more than 60,000 barrels a day. Still, that’s essential for Damascus and for “the Syrian people” so admired within the Beltway – the legitimate owners of the oil.

The mostly Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) did in fact take military control of Deir er-Zor when they were fighting ISIS/Daesh. Yet the majority of the local population is Sunni Arab. They will never tolerate any hint of a longtime Syrian Kurd domination – much less in tandem with a US occupation.

Sooner or later the Syrian army will get there, with Russian air power support. The Deep State might, but Trump, in an electoral year, would never risk a hot war over a few, illegally occupied oilfields.

In the end, the “died as a dog” movie can be interpreted as a victory lap, and the closure of a historical arc languishing since 2011. When he “abandoned” the Syrian Demoratic Forces Kurds, Trump effectively buried the Rojava question – as in an independent Syrian Kurdistan.

Russia is in charge in Syria – on all fronts. Turkey got rid of its “terrorism” paranoia – always having to demonize the Syrian Kurd PYD and its armed wing YPG as a spin-off of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) separatists inside Turkey – and this may help to settle the Syrian refugee question. Syria is on the way to recover all its territory.

The “died as a dog” movie can also be interpreted as the liquidation of a formerly useful asset that was a valued component of the gift that keeps on giving, the never-ending Global War on Terror. Other scarecrows, and other movies, await.

Originally published on Asia Times

The Israel lobby in the United States and its counterparts in Europe have been paying particular attention to curtailing the activities of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS). This is because BDS, which is non-violent and based on established human rights principles, is extremely appealing to college students, who will be tomorrow’s leaders. Israel, which promotes its own largely fictional narrative about itself, is reluctant to allow any competing stories about its foundation and current activities, so it has worked hard to exclude any and all criticism of its practices on college campuses and even among students in public high schools.

Unfortunately, many colleges and universities are all too ready to compromise their principles, such as they are, whenever a representative of Israel or of Jewish groups comes calling. A popular line that has proven to be particularly effective is that Jews on campus feel threatened whenever anyone advocates for the Palestinians or Iranians, intended to convey that their civil rights are being violated.

Even if that type of allegation is actually relevant to whether or not one allows free speech and association, one wonders how violated the Palestinians and Iranians must feel when confronted by the endless stream of hostility emanating from the U.S. media and Hollywood as well as from select politicians representing both parties and the White House.

In the most recent manifestation of suppression of views critical of Israel, the federal government’s Department of Education has ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to reorganize the Consortium for Middle East Studies program run jointly by the two colleges based on their failure to include enough “positive” content relating to Christianity and Judaism. The demand came with a threat to suspend federal funding of Title VI Higher Education Act international studies and foreign language grants to the two schools if the curriculum is not changed.

Of course, the demands have nothing to do with Christian groups demanding inclusion and everything to do with organized Jewish pressure to present Israel in a positive light while also casting aspersions on the Jewish state’s perceived enemies in the region and also on university campuses. Anyone who has even cursory knowledge about the Middle East knows that Christians and Jews constitute only a tiny minority in the region, so the emphasis on teaching about Islam, the Arabs, and the Persians makes sense if the instruction is to have any actual relevance.

One particular event that apparently led to an earlier investigation in June launched by the Education Department consisted of a conference in March called “Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities.” A Republican congressman was outraged by the development and asked Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to investigate because the gathering was full of “radical anti-Israel bias.”

Even The New York Times acknowledged in their coverage of the story that “Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, has become increasingly aggressive in going after perceived anti-Israel bias in higher education.” Her deputy—who has served as a focal point for the effort to root out anti-Israel sentiment—is Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights Kenneth L. Marcus, who might reasonably be described as “a career pro-Israel advocate.”

Marcus is the founder and president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a foundation that he has used to exclusively defend the rights of Jewish groups and individuals against BDS and other manifestations of Palestinian pushback against the Israeli occupation of their country. He has not hesitated to call opponents anti- Semites and has worked with Jewish students to file civil rights complaints against college administrations, including schools in Wisconsin and California. In an op-ed that appeared, not surprisingly, in The Jerusalem Post, he observed that even when student complaints were rejected, they created major problems for the institutions involved. “If a university shows a failure to treat initial complaints seriously, it hurts them with donors, faculty, political leaders, and prospective students.”

Last year Marcus reopened an investigation into alleged anti-Jewish bias at Rutgers University that the Obama administration had closed after finding that the charges were baseless. Marcus indicated that the re-examination was called for, as his office in the Education Department would henceforth be using the State Department definition of anti-Semitism that includes “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” making much criticism of Israel a hate crime.

In the current North Carolina-Duke case, DeVos and Marcus expressed concern over course content that had “a considerable emphasis placed on understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East.” The complaint called for balancing content relating to “the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze, and others.”

Zoha Khalili, a staff lawyer at Palestine Legal, explained how the message coming from Washington is actually quite simple and has nothing to do with balance:

“They really want to send the message that if you want to criticize Israel, then the federal government is going to look very closely at your entire program and micromanage it to death. . . . [It] sends a message to Middle Eastern studies programs that their continued existence depends on their willingness to toe the government line on Israel.”

The possible consequences are very clear. If you are an educational institution that criticizes Israel in any way, shape or form, you will lose any funding you receive from the federal government. The move has nothing to do with budgetary demands or the national security of the United States or even with the efficacy of the programs that are being funded. It has everything to do with promoting Israeli interests. That a demonstrated and outspoken Israeli advocate like Marcus should be placed in a key position to decide who gets what based on his own biases is a travesty, but it is something that we should all be accustomed to by now, as there is apparently no limit to what the Trump administration is willing to do for Israel and for that monstrous country’s powerful, wealthy, and incessantly vocal supporters in the United States.

Originally published on Aletho News

U.S. Special Operations forces eliminated ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during a nighttime raid into northwestern Syria on October 26, President Donald Trump officially announced. According to the President, Baghdadi died with his 3 young children after activating his suicide vest. Baghdadi’s body was mutilated by the blast. However, Trump said, “test results gave certain and positive identification.”

A large number of Baghdadi’s fighters and companions were killed and 11 young children were moved out of the operation site, the President added. He also thanked Russia, Turkey, Iraq and Syria, including Kurds, for “support”. He praised the “great cooperation” with Russia, which allegedly opened up airspace under its control to allow US aircraft to use the area.

Earlier, reports appeared that eight military helicopters carried out an operation, including delivering strikes, near the village of Barisha in the Syrian province of Idlib, near the Turkish border. At least 7 people, including 3 children, were killed, according to local sources.

Iraqi sources claimed that a group of senior ISIS and al-Qaeda commanders was killed along the ISIS leader. These were Baghdadi’s deputy – Abu Said al-Iraqi, his bodyguard – Ghazwan al-Rawi, the head of ISIS security in Syria – Abu al-Yaman, and Abu Mohamad al-Halabi, a prominent commander of the Syrian al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group, Horas al-Din. The family of Abu Mohamad al-Halabi was also allegedly killed.

The Russian Defense Ministry commented on Trump’s statement by saying that it has no verifiable information confirming the ‘yet another’ elimination of al-Baghdadi. A defense ministry spokesman Maj.Gen. Igor Konashenkov added that Russia also has no info about the supposed opening of airspace for US aircraft.

The Trump administration needed an operation to eliminate al-Baghdadi to once again take credit for ‘eliminating ISIS’ and get a PR success for Trump’s ‘mission accomplished’ claims and the withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria. With these developments, Trump will be able to explain his administration’s Middle East strategy to the internal audience ahead of the upcoming presidential election in 2020.

Another important factor is that the US action once again revealed the double-faced policy of Western states and mainstream media that have been promoting northwestern Syria, including the province of Idlib, as a stronghold of the ‘democratic opposition’ to the ‘bloody regime’ of Bashar al-Assad. In fact, this ‘democratic opposition’ does not exist and the Greater Idlib area is almost fully controlled by various radicals and terrorists. So, the ISIS Leader and his inner circle were free to hide there, near the Turkish border.

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.” — They Live

We’re living in two worlds, you and I.

There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released more than 30 years ago, and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”

And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.

When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.

Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”

When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.

This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.

A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.

In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers).

They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.

They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.

Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.

In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.

In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.

Not only do you have to be rich—or beholden to the rich—to get elected these days, but getting elected is also a surefire way to get rich. As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.”

In denouncing this blatant corruption of America’s political system, former president Jimmy Carter blasted the process of getting elected—to the White House, governor’s mansion, Congress or state legislatures—as “unlimited political bribery… a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over.”

Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.

Sound familiar?

Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests.

We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism.

Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary.

But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime?

The answer is the same in every age: fear.

Fear makes people stupid.

Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on.

The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.

Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.

As the Bearded Man in They Live warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”

In this regard, we’re not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live.

From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.

Despite the truth staring us in the face, we have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.

We live in a perpetual state of denial, insulated from the painful reality of the American police state by wall-to-wall entertainment news and screen devices.

Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re crossing the street. Families sit in restaurants with their heads down, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what’s going on around them. Young people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away.

Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens—that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on. In fact, a Nielsen study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high. For example, the average American watches approximately 151 hours of television per month.

The question, of course, is what effect does such screen consumption have on one’s mind?

Psychologically it is similar to drug addiction. Researchers found that “almost immediately after turning on the TV, subjects reported feeling more relaxed, and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a lack of tension.” Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers’ brain waves slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, nonresistant state.

Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. “Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and counseling, more and more prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet,” according to Newsweek.

Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels controlled by six mega corporations, what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so on a large scale.

If we’re watching, we’re not doing.

The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech:

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.

When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”

We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Racial injustice is growing. Human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.

Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.

So where does that leave us?

The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.

Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.

When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hyno-transmitter in They Live, he restores hope by delivering America a wake-up call for freedom.

That’s the key right there: we need to wake up.

Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.

The real battle for control of this nation is not being waged between Republicans and Democrats in the ballot box.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.

The real battle between freedom and tyranny is taking place right in front of our eyes, if we would only open them.

All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.

Wake up, America.

If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.

WC: 2446

Originally published by The Rutherford Institute

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

Incisive article originally published by GR in September 2014.  In recent developments, Al Baghdadi the leader of the ISIS terror group is dead.  Hollywood in Real Time: Trump said that “he watched the operation from the Situation Room”. 

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The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history.

The CIA first aligned itself with extremist Islam during the Cold War era. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side, the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side, Western nations and militant political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union.

The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom recently remarked, “by any measure the U.S. has long used terrorism. In 1978-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation.”

During the 1970’s the CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a barrier, both to thwart Soviet expansion and prevent the spread of Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. The United States also openly supported Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, and supported the Jamaat-e-Islami terror group against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan. Last but certainly not least, there is Al Qaeda.

Lest we forget, the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and breastfed his organization during the 1980’s. Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.

America’s relationship with Al Qaeda has always been a love-hate affair. Depending on whether a particular Al Qaeda terrorist group in a given region furthers American interests or not, the U.S. State Department either funds or aggressively targets that terrorist group. Even as American foreign policy makers claim to oppose Muslim extremism, they knowingly foment it as a weapon of foreign policy.

The Islamic State is its latest weapon that, much like Al Qaeda, is certainly backfiring. ISIS recently rose to international prominence after its thugs began beheading American journalists. Now the terrorist group controls an area the size of the United Kingdom.

In order to understand why the Islamic State has grown and flourished so quickly, one has to take a look at the organization’s American-backed roots. The 2003 American invasion and occupation of Iraq created the pre-conditions for radical Sunni groups, like ISIS, to take root. America, rather unwisely, destroyed Saddam Hussein’s secular state machinery and replaced it with a predominantly Shiite administration. The U.S. occupation caused vast unemployment in Sunni areas, by rejecting socialism and closing down factories in the naive hope that the magical hand of the free market would create jobs. Under the new U.S.-backed Shiite regime, working class Sunni’s lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unlike the white Afrikaners in South Africa, who were allowed to keep their wealth after regime change, upper class Sunni’s were systematically dispossessed of their assets and lost their political influence. Rather than promoting religious integration and unity, American policy in Iraq exacerbated sectarian divisions and created a fertile breading ground for Sunni discontent, from which Al Qaeda in Iraq took root.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) used to have a different name: Al Qaeda in Iraq. After 2010 the group rebranded and refocused its efforts on Syria.

There are essentially three wars being waged in Syria: one between the government and the rebels, another between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and yet another between America and Russia. It is this third, neo-Cold War battle that made U.S. foreign policy makers decide to take the risk of arming Islamist rebels in Syria, because Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, is a key Russian ally. Rather embarrassingly, many of these Syrian rebels have now turned out to be ISIS thugs, who are openly brandishing American-made M16 Assault rifles.

America’s Middle East policy revolves around oil and Israel. The invasion of Iraq has partially satisfied Washington’s thirst for oil, but ongoing air strikes in Syria and economic sanctions on Iran have everything to do with Israel. The goal is to deprive Israel’s neighboring enemies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas, of crucial Syrian and Iranian support.

ISIS is not merely an instrument of terror used by America to topple the Syrian government; it is also used to put pressure on Iran.

The last time Iran invaded another nation was in 1738. Since independence in 1776, the U.S. has been engaged in over 53 military invasions and expeditions. Despite what the Western media’s war cries would have you believe, Iran is clearly not the threat to regional security, Washington is. An Intelligence Report published in 2012, endorsed by all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, confirms that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Truth is, any Iranian nuclear ambition, real or imagined, is as a result of American hostility towards Iran, and not the other way around.

America is using ISIS in three ways: to attack its enemies in the Middle East, to serve as a pretext for U.S. military intervention abroad, and at home to foment a manufactured domestic threat, used to justify the unprecedented expansion of invasive domestic surveillance.

By rapidly increasing both government secrecy and surveillance, Mr. Obama’s government is increasing its power to watch its citizens, while diminishing its citizens’ power to watch their government. Terrorism is an excuse to justify mass surveillance, in preparation for mass revolt.

The so-called “War on Terror” should be seen for what it really is: a pretext for maintaining a dangerously oversized U.S. military. The two most powerful groups in the U.S. foreign policy establishment are the Israel lobby, which directs U.S. Middle East policy, and the Military-Industrial-Complex, which profits from the former group’s actions. Since George W. Bush declared the “War on Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayer approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters; but, the wars have also raked in billions of dollars for Washington’s military elite.

In fact, more than seventy American companies and individuals have won up to $27 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last three years, according to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity. According to the study, nearly 75 per cent of these private companies had employees or board members, who either served in, or had close ties to, the executive branch of the Republican and Democratic administrations, members of Congress, or the highest levels of the military.

In 1997, a U.S. Department of Defense report stated, “the data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement abroad and an increase in terrorist attacks against the U.S.” Truth is, the only way America can win the “War On Terror” is if it stops giving terrorists the motivation and the resources to attack America. Terrorism is the symptom; American imperialism in the Middle East is the cancer. Put simply, the War on Terror is terrorism; only, it is conducted on a much larger scale by people with jets and missiles.

Garikai Chengu is a research scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on [email protected]

According to a New York Times report [1], the surprising information about the Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts came following the arrest and interrogation of one of al-Baghdadi’s wives and a courier in Iraq this past summer.

The report details the chronology of the US Special Ops overnight raid: “Around midnight Sunday morning — 5 p.m. Saturday in Washington — eight American helicopters, primarily CH-47 Chinooks, took off from a military base near Erbil, Iraq. Flying low and fast to avoid detection, the helicopters quickly crossed the Syrian border and then flew all the way across Syria itself — a dangerous 70-minute flight in which the helicopters took sporadic groundfire — to the Barisha area just north of Idlib city, in western Syria.”

Before the publishing of the NY Times report, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported earlier [2] on Sunday that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by warplanes belonging to the international coalition, had attacked positions of Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, in Idlib province where the Islamic State chief was believed to be hiding.

Despite detailing the operational minutiae of the Special Ops raid, however, the NY Times deliberately elided over the crucial piece of information that the compound in Barisha village 5 km. from Turkish border where al-Baghdadi was killed belonged to Hurras al-Din, which has previously been targeted several times in the US airstrikes.

Although Hurras al-Din is generally assumed to be an al-Qaeda affiliate, it is in fact regrouping of the Islamic State’s jihadists in northwestern Idlib after the latter terrorist organization was routed from Mosul and Raqqa and was hard pressed by the US-led coalition’s air raids in eastern Syria.

It’s worth pointing out that the distinction between Islamic jihadists and purported “moderate rebels” in Syria is more illusory than real. Before it turned rogue and overran Mosul in Iraq in June 2014, Islamic State used to be an integral part of the Syrian opposition and enjoyed close ideological and operational ties with other militant groups in Syria.

Thus, though practically impossible, even if Washington does eliminate all Islamic State militants from Syria, what would it do with myriads of other militant outfits in Syria, particularly with tens of thousands of al-Nusra Front jihadists, including the transnational terrorists of Hurras al-Din, who have carved out a new sanctuary in Syria’s northwestern Idlib governorate since 2015?

The only practical solution to the conundrum is to withdraw all American troops from Syria and let Damascus establish writ of the state over all of Syria in order to eliminate all militant groups from Syria, including the jihadists of the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and Hurras al-Din, though the foreign policy hawks in Washington might have objections to strengthening the hands of Iran and Russia in Syria.

Before the evacuation of 1,000 American troops from northern Syria to western Iraq, the Pentagon had 2,000 US forces in Syria. After the drawdown of US troops at Erdogan’s insistence in order for Ankara to mount a ground offensive in northern Syria, the US still has 1,000 troops, mainly in oil-rich, eastern Deir al-Zor province and at al-Tanf military base.

Al-Tanf military base is strategically located in southeastern Syria on the border between Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and it sits on a critically important Damascus-Baghdad highway, which serves as a lifeline for Damascus. Washington has illegally occupied 55-kilometer area around al-Tanf since 2016, and several hundred US Marines have trained several Syrian militant groups there.

It’s worth noting that rather than fighting the Islamic State, the purpose of continued presence of the US forces at al-Tanf military base is to address Israel’s concerns regarding the expansion of Iran’s influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Washington’s interest in the Syrian proxy war has been mainly about ensuring Israel’s regional security. The United States Defense Intelligence Agency’s declassified report [3] of 2012 clearly spelled out the imminent rise of a Salafist principality in northeastern Syria – in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor which were occupied by the Islamic State until October 2017 – in the event of an outbreak of a civil war in Syria.

Under pressure from the Zionist lobby in Washington, however, the former Obama administration deliberately suppressed the report and also overlooked the view in general that a proxy war in Syria would give birth to radical Islamic jihadists.

The hawks in Washington were fully aware of the consequences of their actions in Syria, but they kept pursuing the ill-fated policy of nurturing militants in the training camps located in Syria’s border regions with Turkey and Jordan in order to weaken the anti-Zionist Syrian government.

The single biggest threat to Israel’s regional security was posed by the Iranian resistance axis, which is comprised of Tehran, Damascus and their Lebanon-based surrogate, Hezbollah. During the course of 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel and Israel’s defense community realized for the first time the nature of threat that Hezbollah and its patrons posed to Israel’s regional security.

Those were only unguided rockets but it was a wakeup call for Israel’s military strategists that what will happen if Iran passed the guided missile technology to Hezbollah whose area of operations lies very close to the northern borders of Israel. Therefore, the Zionist lobbies in Washington literally coerced then-President Obama to coordinate a proxy war against Damascus and its Lebanon-based surrogate Hezbollah in order to dismantle the Iranian resistance axis against Israel.

Over the years, Israel has not only provided medical aid and material support to militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force virtually played the role of air force of Syrian jihadists and conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the eight-year conflict.

In an interview to New York Times [4] in January, Israel’s outgoing Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his shift in strategy in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently, more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched against the Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018, as revealed [5] by the Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September last year.

In 2018 alone, Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria. The purpose of Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s guided missile technology provided to Damascus and Hezbollah. Though after Russia provided S-300 missile system to the Syrian military after a Russian surveillance plane was shot down in Syria on September 18 last year, killing 15 Russians onboard, Israel’s airstrikes in Syria have been significantly reduced.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Notes

[1] C.I.A. Got Tip on al-Baghdadi’s Location From Arrest of a Wife and a Courier

[2] Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in US raid

[3] The United States Defense Intelligence Agency’s declassified report of 2012

[4] An interview with Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s chief of staff

[5] Israel Katz: Israel conducted 200 airstrikes in Syria in 2017 and 2018

A future without independent media leaves us with an upside down reality where according to the corporate media “NATO deserves a Nobel Peace Prize”, and where “nuclear weapons and wars make us safer”

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Twenty-six Things About the Islamic State (ISIS-ISIL-Daesh) that Obama (and Trump) Do Not Want You to Know About

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 27, 2019

“Capturing or killing him has been the top national security priority of my administration.” Addressing the Nation from the White House, “Trump said al-Baghdadi killed himself and three of his children, detonating a suicide vest as U.S. forces closed in after a “dangerous and daring” U.S.-led air raid in northwestern Syria.” Hollywood in Real Time: Trump says that “he watched the operation from the Situation Room”.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: Made and Killed by the CIA

By Marc Vandepitte, October 28, 2019

In 2003 the US and Great Britain invaded Iraq. At the time, there was little mention of Al Qaeda or other jihadist terror groups in the region. After the invasion, the US army was confronted with a fierce uprising. To crush it, death squads were used just like in Latin America, what the Americans called the ‘Salvador option’. Moreover, in that dirty war, the Sunnis and Shiites were deliberately set against each other, the tactic of divide and rule. It was in that orgy of religiously provoked violence that Al Qaeda gained a foothold in Iraq under the name ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ (ISI).

ISIS Chief Al-Baghdadi Killed on Turkish Border while Fleeing Idlib

By Nauman Sadiq, October 28, 2019

Islamic State’s self-styled Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a United States Special Ops overnight raid Saturday involving helicopters, warplanes and a ground clash on the Turkey-Syria border while fleeing Syria’s northwestern Idlib Governorate, Reuters and Newsweek are reporting, and President Trump [has made] the major announcement of the biggest symbolic victory of his administration in the war against terrorism soon.

ISIS Leader Al-Baghdadi Killed? Trump’s Dubious Announcement. “Fake Politics”?

By Stephen Lendman, October 28, 2019

Whether Baghdadi or others headed ISIS leaves unexplained that the terror group was created, supported and controlled by the US, their fighters used as proxy troops, deployed to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, aided by Pentagon terror-bombing. Trump’s Sunday announcement about the alleged elimination of Baghdadi was a political stunt, diverting attention momentarily from Dem efforts to remove him by impeachment, along with aiming to boost his reelection campaign — by falsely claiming he’s combatting terrorism, the scourge created and supported by the US.

Forever War Propaganda: Trump and the Death of al-Baghdadi

By Kurt Nimmo, October 28, 2019

There is no evidence al-Baghdadi killed himself when confronted by US Special Forces in Syria, the same as there is no evidence that Obama killed Osama bin Laden (evidence indicates Osama died in Afghanistan of natural causes in late 2001). Abu “from Baghdad” has died before. In June 2017, Russia said it may have killed him during an airstrike in Syria. The following month, ISIS allegedly admitted al-Baghdadi was killed during an air raid in the Iraqi province of Nineveh. 

US Tries to Reverse Syrian Fortunes with “Baghdadi Raid”

By Tony Cartalucci, October 27, 2019

The supposed military operation – unfolding just miles from the Syrian-Turkish border – comes at a time when the prospects of America’s proxy war in Syria have reached all time lows. First – US proxy forces jointly armed and aided by Turkey as well as other US allies – have been all but eliminated from the battlefield with their remnants residing in Idlib, increasingly encircled by Syrian forces. Attempts by the US to intervene in Syria directly to oversee the overthrow of the government in Damascus was also thwarted by Russia’s military intervention beginning in 2015.

Did John McCain Meet with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Alleged Head of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh)?

By Global Research News, October 27, 2019

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the alleged leader of ISIS is dead. President Trump confirmed that he was under surveillance and that he had ordered his execution. “He died like a dog, he died like a coward,” the President said he watched the operation from the Situation Room but would not give more details of what type of feed it was. Who is Al Baghdadi, leader of the ISIS? Was he an asset of Western intelligence?

The Caliphate Project, Made in America. Declassified U.S. Government Documents Confirm the US Supported the Creation of ISIS

By Washington’s Blog, October 26, 2019

Judicial Watch has – for many years – obtained sensitive U.S. government documents through freedom of information requests and lawsuits. The government just produced documents to Judicial Watch in response to a freedom of information suit which show that the West has long supported ISIS.   The documents were written by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency on August 12, 2012 … years before ISIS burst onto the world stage.

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A project for Greater Albania – conspiracy or legitimate? According to a 2010 Gallup Balkan Monitor report, 83% of Albanians in Albania supported the idea of a Greater Albania, with 81% and 53% of Albanians in Kosovo and North Macedonia respectively supporting such an ambition.

The ultimate goal? To have Kosovo and the Preševo Valley in Serbia, southern Montenegro, Epirus in Greece and western North Macedonia into a single Greater Albanian state. Although this may not be official policy of the Albanian Republic, it is ingrained into the Albanian mythos. The very idea of a Greater Albania has roots in the 1913 Treaty of London that left roughly 40% of the Albanian population outside the newly established Albanian country. This has been something that the U.S. could weaponize against Russian influence in the Balkans.

Despite the heroics of Albanian national figure and anti-Ottoman guerrilla leader Gjergj Kastrioti, more commonly known as Skënderbej, the Albanians became loyal Ottoman subjects and were used as colonists in more restive and disloyal areas of the empire, especially those inhabited by the Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks. They often became a majority over the initial inhabitants, like what happened in Kosovo and western North Macedonia.

Although the idea of a Greater Albania may seem like an exaggerated conspiracy, to the Serbian people this is anything but. The Serbian mythos finds itself in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, where despite their courage, Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović was martyred and his forces routed by the Ottoman invaders. Although the Serbs achieved sovereignty over Kosovo with the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, the region had already become an Albanian majority on Ottoman orders to weaken Serbian identity to the region.

Kosovo became an autonomous region of Serbia after the establishment of socialist Yugoslavia in the aftermath of World War Two and retained its Albanian-majority. The 1990’s proved this was always a weak point of Serbia. With the U.S. sponsoring the violent destruction of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s, the status of Kosovo was left unresolved, culminating in the terrorist-led war against the Yugoslav state (in which Serbia was the successor of) in 1999.

The terrorist ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had the backing of NATO and the Albanian Republic. The United Nations and NATO assumed control of the territory, which eventually declared independence in 2008. Since then the region has become a heroin ‘smugglers paradise,’ and a hub for human trafficking, organ harvesting and arms trafficking.

It is for this reason that in an interview on Saturday, the former Serbian Chief of General Staff, General Ljubisa Dikovic, discussed the project for a Greater Albania. Dikovic believes that the area of ​​the Balkan Peninsula cannot be peaceful because of unresolved issues like Kosovo.

“There can easily be big problems if things get out of hand. I hope that there will be enough wisdom and intelligence and that everyone will do what we do, in terms of strengthening security, cooperation and trust. I am free to say that we are in the lead because I do not see on other sides showing desire to build peace. After all, the issue of ‘Greater Albania’ is a matter of the highest security risk. We can ask why this is happening now with Albania and [North] Macedonia? It might be waiting to create a ‘Greater Albania’,” Dikovic said.

His comments come as the economic situation in Kosovo continues to deteriorate and becomes even more reliant upon foreign aid and donations from the unilateral behaving U.S., their former Ottoman masters in Turkey that had gifted lands to them hundreds of years earlier, and Germany who effectively rules the European Union.

The former military man’s comments also come as Serbia leads Exercise “Slovenian Shield 2019” with Russia. Although some Slavic tribes broke off and headed south into the Balkans sometime at around 600AD, they maintained their Slavic kinship with the Russians and shared Christian Orthodox faith, ensuring Serbia has always had a pro-Russia view. Albanian expansionism has therefore become a natural ally of the U.S. to limit Russian influence in the Balkans.

However, this begs the question then why strong efforts for Albanian independence in Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia has been weak in comparison to those in Serbia. Greece has been a long-time loyal NATO member, with the exception of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and therefore does not pose a threat to U.S. hegemony in the Balkans, protecting Greece from destabilization efforts via Albanian expansionism. Although Montenegro and North Macedonia also share Slavic kinship with the Serbs and Russians, as well as the Orthodox faith, they have proven to have Globalist ambitions, wanting to join NATO and the EU.

Serbia remains the only anti-EU/NATO state in the Balkans that is overwhelmingly pro-Russia. It is for this reason that Dikovic wants to renew compulsory military service, stating: “One should not gamble and think that there will be no conflict and risk. It is not only up to us, but we must have an answer to everything.”

Although the overwhelming majority of Albanians want a Greater Albania, it is unlikely to be achieved with Washington’s backing in Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia as they do not pose a threat to U.S. hegemony in the Balkans, but rather serve it, while not encouraging Russian influence in the region. As Serbia is a pro-Russian island in a hostile region, it will continue to be targeted by Albanian expansionism with U.S. backing. Will this drive for expansionism violently spill over into the Preševo Valley? That remains to be seen.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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We talk to Fidel Narvaez, the ousted Ecuadorian diplomat who handled Julian Assange’s case about why Lenín Moreno caved to international pressure, broke his promises, and gave Assange up to British authorities.

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Assange had been granted asylum in 2012, at the height of Latin America’s Pink Tide, when progressive governments across the continent challenged US interference in the region. Six and a half years later, Assange’s expulsion reflects a rightwards shift in Ecuadorian politics and a new president, Lenín Moreno, willing to serve US interests.

For his cooperation, Moreno has been warmly received by Washington, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing his enthusiasm to “continue to work in partnership” with Ecuador.

To discuss the dynamics behind Ecuador’s decision to expel the Australian Wikileaks founder, Jacobin spoke to Fidel Narvaez, the former Ecuadorian consul in London, who was instrumental in obtaining asylum for Assange in 2012, and who spent six years at the embassy with him.

Stefania Maurizi: When did you first hear about Julian Assange?

Fidel Narvaez: I first heard of Julian in 2010, when Wikileaks began publishing the archives of American military and diplomatic document. I personally approached him in 2011, because my government was interested in making public all the diplomatic cables on Ecuador. We were not looking for privileged access to the cables, but we did want them available in the public domain. To that end, in May 2011, Wikileaks released all those documents — and with no strings attached.

Since then, I had maintained some contact with the Wikileaks team, so when Julian reached the stage where he needed protection, and knocked on Ecuador’s door, he came to me first. I felt very strongly about the idea of protecting him, because my background is not in diplomacy, but in human rights. I was absolutely convinced that he needed protection.

SM: Did you ever perceive that by providing protection to Assange, Ecuador’s then president, Rafael Correa, wanted to antagonize the United States?

FN: The United States is a major superpower. It’s also Ecuador’s most important economic partner, so it’s not in our interest to look for a fight. However, we did want to make clear that we were not prepared to have the same relationships that we historically had. That’s why we said “no” to the Manta US military base: we wanted to exercise our sovereignty in accordance with our new Constitution, which allows no foreign military presence in Ecuador.

When WikiLeaks cables brought to light one American ambassador’s interference in Ecuadorian internal affairs, she was subsequently expelled. We also expelled several CIA agents, because they were interfering with our police forces. We refused to enter free trade agreements with the United States, because they weren’t the best deal for our country. In the case of Julian, we were not obliged to provide asylum, but we saw it as a human-rights issue, and the right thing to do.

SM: What happened immediately after you granted him asylum?

FN: The United States, of course, was not happy, and I think they were acting through the United Kingdom. The official American discourse was to deny that they were going after Julian. But the day before we announced the asylum, the United Kingdom delivered a letter threatening to enter the embassy to arrest Julian. They also deployed a disproportionately large contingent of police, and at night they closed the street to normal traffic. There were policemen everywhere: they were outside every window and they were even inside the building, because there was an interior patio. Ecuadorian diplomacy reacted fast and publicly rejected the threats: you can’t storm an embassy, not even during a war. The British backtracked, and even tried to say that we had misunderstood. In any event, Ecuador stood firm and granted asylum. We protected Julian for six years until the change in government.

SM: What was the most difficult time?

FN: The night the British threatened the embassy was probably the tensest, but after that, I would say the US elections, when WikiLeaks published the documents from the Democratic Party.

SM: Did the United States send any official diplomatic communication on that occasion?

FN: No, not as far as I know. I can only speculate that the pressure was delivered in a diplomatic way, probably through the ambassador in the United States. Also, for the first time, the government suspended Julian’s internet connection during the elections, for something like ten days. However, Ecuador was not going to withdraw protection, not under President Correa. But that was a difficult moment.

SM: Were you ever afraid?

FN: Personally, no. However, during those years, there were a couple of times when the embassy received threats, mostly by post. We also received white powder in envelopes.

SM: How was Julian’s relationship with staff at the embassy?

FN: Contrary to what Moreno’s government led people to believe, there was mutual respect between Assange and the diplomatic and administrative staff at the embassy.

SM: The Spanish newspaper El Paìs recently revealed that UC Global, the security company hired by Ecuador to protect Julian Assange inside the embassy, was actually spying on him, as well as his staff and every journalist, lawyer, and activist who visited him. El Paìs reported that the company shared the information with the CIA. Had you ever suspected anything like that?

FN:  I never trusted the security in the embassy. They were brought on in 2012, two months after Julian’s arrival. We needed security because the embassy didn’t even have cameras installed, but I think the company was very unprofessional. In order to secure their own employment they were misrepresenting Julian’s behavior inside the embassy.

SM: Do you have any examples of this?

FN: Let me describe one small episode. At the very beginning, during the night somebody was throwing something from the streets onto Julian’s windows. Assange immediately went to see the security guard and asked him to look through the security cameras. The guard didn’t speak English, he didn’t know what Julian wanted, he didn’t let Julian look at the cameras, and there was a little argument. What does the company do? It complains about him. On the video, I saw that the British police outside were having fun, throwing coins at Julian’s window at two o’clock in the morning.

So I complained about the company, saying that Julian was not the problem, and asking to see the video — which they never produced, claiming it was lost. I have to say, we did underestimate the extent of this company’s espionage. We knew that UC Global had started to produce very inaccurate reports, misrepresenting what was going on in the embassy. It was in the interest of the company to portray Julian as a problematic presence. Why? Because that way they were justifying their own employment.

SM: It’s the old strategy “keep the problem going, so the money keeps flowing” …

FN: Exactly. We underestimated that. Soon enough, the company’s reports were leaked and, gaining access to those, the Ecuadorian press started to attack Julian, pressuring the government to get rid of him. Then, based on those reports, the international media also rolled out aggressive smear campaigns, especially the Guardian and CNN.

SM: The Guardian even reported on “Russia’s secret plan to help Julian Assange escape from the UK” …

FN: First of all, there is an obsession with trying to link WikiLeaks to Russia. I don’t think there is any ground for this — neither in terms of the Russian state, nor Russian intelligence services. In 2017, Ecuador appointed Julian as a diplomat and requested the UK Foreign Office to register him in the diplomatic list. The idea was to increase protection of the political asylee, in a way similar to what the United Kingdom has done with the journalist Nazanin Rafcliffe [detained by Iran]. The United Kingdom rejected this, and though Ecuador could have taken the case to the International Court of Justice, there was another option: to appoint Julian as a diplomat to a third country that might accept him. So it is true that Ecuador did consider appointing him as a diplomat to Russia, but in the end, it didn’t happen.

SM: Why is that?

FN: I don’t know for sure, but I think that the United States learned of the plan and threatened unfriendly action. That was the breaking point. After that, Ecuador began withdrawing its protection. That’s the fact. The Guardian published a very different story, saying that Russia had devised a secret undercover operation to smuggle Julian out.

SM: A James Bond story …

FN: That’s how the Guardian presented it. The article said that I was Moscow’s contact, in other words that I was plotting with Russia. I filed a complaint against the newspaper, and it is still being assessed.

SM: Why do you think Lenín Moreno stopped protecting Julian?

FN: Lenín Moreno never liked Julian, not even when he was vice president. He doesn’t understand what WikiLeaks is or what they do. At the beginning of his government, Maria Fernanda Espinosa — who became the president of the UN General Assembly soon afterwards — was the one protecting Julian, I think even despite Moreno’s dislike for him. But when she wasn’t there anymore, that was when I think Julian’s fate was decided: they started making the case to end his asylum. How? They isolated him, they tried to break him down, so that he would leave the embassy of his own accord. They failed.

When the isolation started arousing international condemnation, they tried to impose the so-called “protocol,” which was an outrageous prison regime of putting banana peels all over the floor to provoke him and get an excuse to kick him out. That was one of the strategies. Another was to defame him in order to justify his expulsion, and to approach the British and the Americans in order to hand Julian over.

SM: You were no longer a diplomat at that time, right?

FN: No, I left in July 2018, because I was asked to. They didn’t want me anymore — and I didn’t want them anymore either. It was unbearable. Julian’s isolation began when I was there. I witnessed it.

SM: Moreno obtained a 4.2 billion-dollar deal from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Do you think it was related to his decision to stop protecting Assange?

FN: Moreno was desperate to get cash from any source. Under Correa, we avoided deals with the IMF, but with Moreno things were different. I think he would have expelled Julian anyway, even if he hadn’t gotten cash for it, because it is part of his colonial mentality to be subservient, to try to please the United States. I wouldn’t be able to say whether Julian’s expulsion was a condition of the deal, but we do know that the United States has veto power with the IMF.

SM: You lost your privileged position; you are no longer a diplomat. Do you have any regrets?

FN: Of course, I’ve paid a price. I don’t think my job opportunities are very broad. If people Google my name, they see that the Guardian is calling me a “Russian plotter,” and that the government of Ecuador is trying to discredit me. But I don’t regret anything at all. As a diplomat, the most interesting people I met were in connection to providing asylum for Julian Assange, and in trying to help Edward Snowden. I would do it again, for sure.

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Fidel Narvaez is the former Ecuadorian consul in London who was instrumental in obtaining asylum for Assange in 2012, and who spent six years at the embassy with him.

Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist for the Italian daily La Repubblica. She has worked on all major WikiLeaks releases and partnered with Glenn Greenwald to reveal the Snowden files about Italy.

Featured image is from Jacobin

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi allegedly headed ISIS, the jihadist group created and supported by the US and its imperial allies.

Years earlier, he was held in Camp Bucca, a US military prison in Iraq, later released, after which the ISIS terrorist group emerged.

Their fighters captured and controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria — heavily armed with US, other Western, Israeli and Turkish weapons, trained by US special forces and CIA operatives at regional Pentagon bases.

Whether Baghdadi or others headed ISIS leaves unexplained that the terror group was created, supported and controlled by the US, their fighters used as proxy troops, deployed to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, aided by Pentagon terror-bombing.

Trump’s Sunday announcement about the alleged elimination of Baghdadi was a political stunt, diverting attention momentarily from Dem efforts to remove him by impeachment, along with aiming to boost his reelection campaign — by falsely claiming he’s combatting terrorism, the scourge created and supported by the US.

His announcement was reminiscent of Obama’s fake news about Osama bin Laden’s alleged May 2011 death.

Post-9/11, he became “Enemy Number One,” the nation’s top “security threat.” If he hadn’t existed, he’d have been invented.

He had nothing to do with 9/11. Obama didn’t kill him. Gravely ill with kidney disease and other ailments, he died of natural causes in December 2001 — reported by the NYT, the BBC, Fox News and other Western media at the time.

Influential people reported his death, including then-Pakistani President Musharraf, FBI counterterrorism head Dale Watson, Pakistani intelligence, and Israel’s Mossad, saying supposed messages from him were fake.

Is Baghdadi dead or alive? Does it matter either way? Can anything Trump says be believed? His credibility was long ago lost.

Trump saying Baghdadi was “killed…in a daring nighttime raid” sounded like Obama’s earlier falsely claiming “the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden (by) a targeted operation…carried out…with extraordinary courage and capability (sic).”

Bin Laden was an unwitting CIA asset, later demonized post-mortem for political purposes — Baghdadi serving in a similar capacity.

Whether alive or dead doesn’t matter. ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorists ground continue to be used by the Pentagon and CIA as proxy troops.

In response to Trump’s Sunday announcement, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov said the following:

The ministry “has no reliable information about (involvement of) US servicemen (in) an operation to ‘yet another’ elimination of the former Daesh leader Abu Bark al-Baghdadi in the Turkish-controlled part of the Idlib deescalation zone,” adding:

“No airstrikes performed by US aircraft or aircraft belonging to the so called ‘international coalition’ were detected on Saturday or during the following days.”

No Russian cooperation was provided to the US for the alleged operation, no permission to use deescalation zone airspace, as Trump claimed.

“Since the moment of the final Daesh’s defeat at the hands of the Syrian government army supported by Russian Aerospace Forces in early 2018, yet another ‘death’ of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi does not have any strategic importance regarding the situation in Syria or the actions of the remaining terrorists in Idlib,” Konashenkov stressed.

Reports of his death proved greatly exaggerated a number of times before. If Washington wanted him killed, he’d have been eliminated long ago.

Trump’s Sunday announcement is another example of things allegedly changing but staying the same.

Endless US wars rage in Syria and elsewhere, no near-term prospect for resolving them because bipartisan US hardliners and the nation’s military, industrial, security, media complex oppose restoration of peace and stability to war-torn countries.

A Final Comment

On June 16, 2017, Tass reported that “Baghdadi may have been killed by a Russian airstrike on the southern outskirts of Raqqa in late May, according to the Defense Ministry,” adding:

“The airstrike was carried out overnight to May 28 against a command post, where the IS group’s leaders were meeting to discuss the routes for the terrorists’ exit from Raqqa through the so-called southern corridor, the ministry said in a statement.”

“According to information…the meeting was also attended by the IS leader Ibrahim Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was eliminated in the strike,” the ministry said.

“Russia’s Aerospace Forces killed a number of high-ranking commanders of the Islamic State terrorist group, including 330 field commanders and militants, in the southern suburb of Syria’s Raqqa in late May,” according to its Defense Ministry.

Russian and Syrian forces successfully combated ISIS and other terrorist groups.

The US and its imperial allies pretend to be combating the scourge of ISIS they support — along with al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot, and likeminded jihadists.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Flickr

Saudi Arabia’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir has recently called out Iran for its alleged “support of terrorist groups, its ballistic missile program and its destabilizing effect” in the Middle East even though Iran has not attacked a country in more than 200 years.

The Saudi Gazette, an English-language online daily newspaper published in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia who describes itself as “The Tone of Truth and Moderation” reported on October 21st ‘Iranians are on a rampage — Al-Jubeir’ on a Q&A event that took place at the Chatham House, a think tank based in London with Al-Jubeir. Al-Jubeir claimed that “Iran’s hand is in almost all countries in the region… Iranians are on a rampage and have been on a rampage since 1979″ and that there is an ‘Iran Problem’ — its support of terrorist groups, its ballistic missile program and its destabilizing effect in the region and unless we deal with those problems, “we will always have an Iran problem as they keep on meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.”

Al-Jubeir said the Iran poses problems when it comes to the internal affairs of other countries, so is he talking about Syria who its President, Bashar al-Assad has invited not only Iran but also Russia to help fight the Islamic State? Let’s go back to 2011, during the start of the Syrian conflict which began as an uprising against the Assad government, there were U.S. backed moderate rebels and members of ISIS and other terrorist groups that came from Iraq, Libya and elsewhere who infiltrated the demonstrations.

Professor Tim Anderson, a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney and an author of several books including ‘The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance’ and ‘Daraa 2011: Syria’s Islamist Insurrection in Disguise’ described how the Syrian civil war actually began:

A double story began on the Syrian conflict, at the very beginning of the armed violence in 2011, in the southern border town of Daraa. The first story comes from independent witnesses in Syria, such as the late Father Frans Van der Lugt in Homs. They say that armed men infiltrated the early political reform demonstrations to shoot at both police and civilians. This violence came from sectarian Islamists. The second comes from the Islamist groups (‘rebels’) and their western backers, including the Washington-based Human Rights Watch. They claim there was ‘indiscriminate’ violence from Syrian security forces to repress political rallies and that the ‘rebels’ grew out of a secular political reform movement

Iraq, Libya and Syria did not want to be controlled by the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East including Israel and Saudi Arabia, so they were targeted for regime change, now they are destabilized and the results are never-ending conflicts, increased poverty and even human trafficking in regards to Libya, so the revolution against the Syrian government was anything but organic.

The US-Saudi Alliance: Supporting Terrorists One Step At A Time

Investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh published ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’ in the London Review of Books in April 2014 where he interviewed an anonymous former pentagon official who claimed that the U.S. diplomatic post located in Benghazi, Libya existed for the purpose of sending weapons through a secret pipeline to the Syrian rebels who were fighting Syrian government forces. Hersh elaborated on the Obama administration’s role in sending weapons from Libya through Turkey and finally into the hands of the terrorists or the moderate rebels within Syria’s borders:

The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida

That’s just one side of the story. The majority of fighters that made their way into Syria were trained and armed in Jordan by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies under ‘Operation Timber Sycamore’ that began in 2011 and supposedly lasted until 2013 according to the mainstream media. The pipeline to ISIS was through Saudi Arabia according to a September 2016 report by The New York Times ‘U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels’:

When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin arming Syria’s embattled rebels in 2013, the spy agency knew it would have a willing partner to help pay for the covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Since then, the C.I.A. and its Saudi counterpart have maintained an unusual arrangement for the rebel-training mission, which the Americans have code-named Timber Sycamore. Under the deal, current and former administration officials said, the Saudis contribute both weapons and large sums of money, and the C.I.A takes the lead in training the rebels on AK-47 assault rifles and tank-destroying missiles

In June 2016, another report by The New York Times ‘C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say’ suggested that weapons delivered to Jordan that were intended for the Syrian rebels were stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold on the black market ending up in the hands of ISIS and other terrorists groups. “The theft, involving millions of dollars of weapons, highlights the messy, unplanned consequences of programs to arm and train rebels — the kind of program the C.I.A. and Pentagon have conducted for decades — even after the Obama administration had hoped to keep the training program in Jordan under tight control.” Well, the world knows who supported ISIS and it was not Iran.

Iran is also guilty in the attacks on the Aramco oil facility according to Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia is convinced, from the evidence we have gathered, that Iran is involved in the Aramco oil facilities attacks” besides the fact that the Houthi
resistance in Yemen has claimed credit for the attacks. Al-Jubeir claimed that “Iran’s targeting of these facilities indicate Tehran’s hostile intentions in the region.” How would Iran even remotely benefit from such an attack in the first place? “We are convinced that the missile attacks on Saudi facilities came from the North, not South” meaning that they are convinced, but in reality, they have no proof “We don’t want war but we also can’t sit idle and be attacked constantly by Iran and its proxies. What Iran needs to do is very simply to act like a normal country and stop its destabilizing the region with murderous actions,” Al-Jubeir said. However, Saudi Arabia itself has been involved in a relentless bombing campaign in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East since March of 2015. Death and misery is the only result for the Yemeni people. This geopolitical tragedy is the making of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that has backed the Saudi’s destruction of Yemen. The Guardian’s Mohamed Bazzi wrote an opinion piece on October 19th ‘America is likely complicit in war crimes in Yemen. It’s time to hold the US to account’ on the full-picture of what is actually going on with Saudi Arabia’s barbaric war on Yemen:

The full scope of human suffering in Yemen has been partly obscured because the UN stopped updating civilian deaths in January 2017, when the toll reached 10,000. And while the actual death toll is far higher, many news reports still rely on the outdated UN figures. In June, an independent monitoring group, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, released a report detailing more than 90,000 fatalities since the war began in 2015.

In April, the United Nations Development Programme issued a report warning that the death toll in Yemen could rise to 233,000 by the end of 2019 – far higher than previous estimates. That projection includes deaths from combat as well as 131,000 indirect deaths due to the lack of food, health crises such as a cholera epidemic, and damage to Yemen’s infrastructure

The U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia are the destabilizing factors in the Middle East. Human rights for Saudi Arabia is non-existent in its foreign policy as well as their internal affairs with its own citizens. However, when it comes to human rights in Saudi Arabia, I should mention an important milestone that did occur on September 2017, I mean it was a breakthrough for human rights around the world, Saudi women were finally allowed to drive! Imagine that. Since 1957, Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world where women were not allowed to drive due to Wahhabism, a strict form of Sunni Islam where women and men are not allowed to mix or mingle in any way. Saudi Arabia’s ruler, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud announced that Saudi women could drive starting on June 24, 2018. What an achievement.

Of course, I am being sarcastic. Saudi Arabia, in my view is possibly the worst dictatorship on the planet is launching an all-out propaganda war against Iran, albeit, Iran is not perfect, it has its own domestic issues, but for a country like Saudi Arabia to criticize and accuse Iran of being hostile and dangerous is absurd. Saudi Arabia is on a rampage in Yemen and Syria, and don’t forget the rampage it has on its own citizens when it comes to women’s rights, torture, public beheadings and other human rights abuses.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association (RRA) has come out in support of a bill that promotes the human rights of Palestinian children and they’re calling on congress to pass it.

H.R.2407, the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act, was introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) in April. The bill would amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money would not go towards the military detention of children in foreign countries, including Israel. A different version of the bill was introduced by McCollum in 2017, but it died at the end of that congressional session.

“While we fully support Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists, we believe that the detention and interrogation of children is a very last resort only in the most urgent cases. It should never be a normal course of action,” reads a statement put out by RRA.

The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association was founded in 1974. It has over 300 members and most of them are graduates of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Pennsylvania, the only seminary connected to Reconstructionist Judaism.

“The RRA represents the rabbinic voice within the Reconstructionist movement, bringing the teachings, stories, and traditions of Judaism to bear on contemporary issues and challenges, and helping to define Reconstructionist positions on Jewish issues for our time,” reads the groups website.

In recent months, the group has also released statements opposing a potential annexation of the West Bank and condemning the Netanyahu government’s decision to bar Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from entering Israel.

Rabbi Elyse Wechterman is the Executive Director of the RRA.

“As Jews and reconstructionist rabbis, we have a long standing commitment to human rights and an awareness that societies are measured by how they treat their most vulnerable – especially children,” she told Mondoweiss, “Our members have been working hard against child detention and family separation on the border here in the United States.  When the issue of child incarceration, torture and detention by the Israeli military was brought to our attention, we felt we could not ignore it – this is part of what it means to fight for justice locally and globally.”

Earlier this month, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) became the 22nd member of Congress to co-sponsor McCollum’s bill. The legislation continues to gain support amidst a wider national discussion on the subject of conditioning aid to Israel. Democratic presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have all indicated that they might be open to the idea of leveraging aid to impact Israel’s policies. A recent report released by the progressive think tank Data for Progress indicates that a net majority of Democratic voters support cutting aid to Israel over their human rights violations.

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Michael Arria is the U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss.

Featured image is from RRA Facebook

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the alleged head of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) renamed ISIS-ISIL-Daesh in 2014. This Al Qaeda jihadist group was created and supported by the US and its allies.

The following video features Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who candidly acknowledges that America created and funded Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:  

““Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago

… let’s go recruit these mujahideen. 

“And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.” 

And that is precisely what the US is doing in Syria: using their Al Qaeda “Moderates” to fight against Syria and Russia. For Moscow, it is “Déjà Vu.

The plan in Afghanistan was to destroy the secular state and install a proxy U.S. Islamic State.  The same objective prevails in Syria. 

What Hillary does not mention is that at no time in the course of the last 36 years has the US ceased to support and finance Al Qaeda as a means to destabilizing sovereign countries. It was “a pretty good idea”, says Hillary, and it remains a good idea today: 

Amply documented, the ISIS and Al Nusrah Mujahideen are recruited by NATO and the Turkish High command, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel. 

And Trump has endorsed US support for Al Qaeda and ISIS “rebels” in Syria. America is a state sponsor of terrorism, which uses Al Qaeda affiliated mercenaries to wage war on Syria.

US, French and Israeli operatives are fighting alongside Al Qaeda in Southern Syria.

Michel Chossudovsky, Jun 27, 2018

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The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is led by the United States. It is not directed against Al Qaeda.

Quite the opposite: The “Global War on Terrorism” uses Al Qaeda terrorist operatives as their foot soldiers.

“Political Islam” and the imposition of  an “Islamic State” (modeled on Qatar or Saudi Arabia) is an integral part of US foreign policy.

America is the Terror State.

The GWOT is a diabolical instrument of Worldwide conquest.

It is a means to destabilizing sovereign countries and imposing “regime change”.

Clinton’s successor at the State Department, John Kerry is in direct liaison with Al Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliated organization in Syria, integrated by terrorists and funded by the US and its allies.

In a bitter irony, John Kerry is not only complicit in the killings committed by Al Nusra, he is also in blatant violation of US anti-terrorist legislation. If the latter were to be applied to politicians in high office, John Kerry would be considered as a “Terror  Suspect”.

New Normal? Al Nusra is on the State Department blacklist of terrorist organizations and the US Secretary of State is channeling money and weapons to Al Nusra.

Support to Al Qaeda operatives in different countries by the US government is known and documented.

In this upside down World,  the Lie prevails: The Protagonists of the “Global War on Terrorism” and the “Responsibility to Protect” are the Terrorists.

Its a circular relationship, a vicious circle: Those who lead the “Global War on Terrorism” in the name of “Democracy” are those who are supporting and financing terrorist organizations, which they themselves created.

TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO

“Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union.

“They invaded Afghanistan… and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work… and it was President Reagan in partnership with Congress led by Democrats who said you know what it sounds like a pretty good idea… let’s deal with the ISI and the Pakistan military and let’s go recruit these mujahideen.

“And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.

“And guess what … they (Soviets) retreated … they lost billions of dollars and it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“So there is a very strong argument which is… it wasn’t a bad investment in terms of Soviet Union but let’s be careful with what we sow… because we will harvest.

“So we then left Pakistan … We said okay fine you deal with the Stingers that we left all over your country… you deal with the mines that are along the border and… by the way we don’t want to have anything to do with you… in fact we’re sanctioning you… So we stopped dealing with the Pakistani military and with ISI and we now are making up for a lot of lost time.” (HILLARY CLINTON)

C’est le monde à l’envers.

Now that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of IS, has been eliminated, there is a great deal of joy and relief in the US and the West. What they don’t mention is that this barbaric terror group is a product of their own foreign policy in the region.

The emergence of IS

In 2003 the US and Great Britain invaded Iraq. At the time, there was little mention of Al Qaeda or other jihadist terror groups in the region. After the invasion, the US army was confronted with a fierce uprising. To crush it, death squads were used just like in Latin America, what the Americans called the ‘Salvador option’. Moreover, in that dirty war, the Sunnis and Shiites were deliberately set against each other, the tactic of divide and rule. It was in that orgy of religiously provoked violence that Al Qaeda gained a foothold in Iraq under the name ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ (ISI).

Then came the Arab Spring of 2011. To overthrow Gaddafi, NATO collaborated with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) under the leadership of Abdelhakim Belhaj, a former leader of al-Qaeda in Libya. When the uprising started in Syria, Belhaj sent hundreds of armed fighters to that country to expel Assad from power. The security services of the US and GB cooperated in transferring Libyan arsenals to Syrian rebels.

In 2012, the US, Turkey and Jordan set up a training camp for Syrian rebels in Safawi, northern Jordan. French and British instructors were also involved. Parts of these rebel groups would later join ISIS.

There were many Syrians in the ranks of Al Qaeda in Iraq. At the start of the civil war in Syria, many of them returned to their homeland to establish the al-Nusra Front. In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISI, declared that his group and Al-Nusra had merged under the name Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and later Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Al Qaeda, however, distanced itself from it and from now on both terrorist organizations went their own way.

In this ‘wasp’s nest‘ ISIS, later called IS, originated and became strong. The terror organization expanded rapidly, conquered a lot of ground from 2014 onwards and proclaimed itself a caliphate in June of that year. The US Military Intelligence Service (DIA) had known for some time that there were plans for such a caliphate. But according to Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor under President Trump, the U.S. government looked the other way. Such a caliphate was an excellent Sunni buffer to weaken Syria and reduce the influence of Shia Iran.

Graham Fuller, one of the most respected Middle Eastern analysts and former CIA agent, is very clear:

“I think the United States is one of the key creators of ISIS. The United States did not plan the formation of ISIS, but its destructive interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS.”

There’s nothing new under the sun

The Pentagon’s flirting with extremist Islamic groups is not new. Remember the mudjahedin, from 1979 they were recruited, armed and trained by the US to expel the communist government in Afghanistan. Rambo 3 by Silverster Stallone, is a Hollywood version of this collaboration. It is from these mudjahedin circles that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden later came.

In the 1990s, the extremist and even more violent Taliban fighters became Washington’s preferred partner in Afghanistan. This cooperation came to an end when it became clear that the Taliban could no longer serve US interests.

During the civil war in Yugoslavia (1992-1995) the Pentagon had thousands of Al Qaeda fighters flown over to Bosnia, in support of the Muslims in the area.

In 1996 the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was trained by Al Qaeda officers just across the border with Albania. At the same time there was help from British and US soldiers.

We have already referred to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and NATO working together to overthrow Gaddafi. After 2011, this terrorist organization formed an alliance with the Islamist rebels of Mali. The latter, together with the Tuaregs, managed to conquer the north of Mali for several months. Thanks to NATO bombardments, LIFG was able to plunder the Libyan army’s arms depots. The very weapons that jihadis are using today in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Chad and Mali. The Financial Timessees a link between these events and the geopolitical rivalry with China: “The militarization of US policy in Africa post 9/11 has long been contentious, perceived in the region as an attempt to shore up US control of resources and counter China’s burgeoning commercial role.”

Nor can it be ruled out that Western intelligence services may be directly or indirectly involved in the terrorist activities of the Chechens in Russia and of the Uyghurs in China.

We are therefore talking about a systematic and deliberate policy on the part of Washington and its allies to maintain control of the region.

The strategy of chaos

Today, the war on terror has turned into its opposite, the spread of terror. The failed operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria clearly demonstrate that the US and the West are no longer able to mold the region of the Middle East as they would like it.

Washington and its allies are in danger of losing their grip more and more and are increasingly turning to sub-contractors of the worst kind. They argue: ‘if we cannot control the area ourselves, then certainly no one else either’.

That is what could be described as the strategy of chaos, or perhaps better ‘the chaos of strategy’. In any case, it is the pinnacle of immorality.

One thing’s for sure. The terror in the region will not be eradicated by the same forces that brought them to life. Or, as an unsuspected source such as Dominique de Villepin, France’s former Minister for Home and Foreign Affairs, put it strongly:

“The wars lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya favor separatism, failed states, the brazen law of armed militias. Never have these wars made it possible to overcome terrorists swarming over the region. On the contrary, they legitimize the most radical. … Each Western intervention creates the conditions for the next. We must stop this.”

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For about 70 years the CIA has been undermining a free press.  It began with Operation Mockingbird, a Cold War operation against communism.  The CIA recruited journalists into a propaganda network.  The CIA paid journalists to write fake stories or to publish stories written by the CIA in order to control explanations that served the agency’s agendas.  Student and cultural organizations and intellectual magazines, such as Encounter, were suborned into the CIA’s propaganda network.  Thanks to the German journalist, Udo Ulfkotte, we know that every European journalist of any significance is a CIA asset.  In 1977 Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame wrote in Rolling Stone that the CIA “has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers—both English and foreign language—which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives.”  Like most other people, Western journalists were all too willing to sell out their integrity for money.  The few who were not were blackmailed into submission.

The few honest journalists who remain have been forced out of the “mainstream” or “presstitute media” onto Internet websites.  Wikileaks is by far the best news organization of our time.  To bring this organization to heel Washington, using its Swedish, British, and Ecuadoran vassals, has persecuted Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, for years.  The CIA’s media vassals, including the New York Times and The Guardian, both of which published the material leaked to Wikileaks that is being used to destroy Assange, have joined wholeheartedly in the persecution of the World’s Best and Most Honest Journalist.  

Currently Assange is being tortured, apparently to death, while bring held in solitary confinement in a maximum security British prison awaiting his extradition to the US on false charges.  As the CIA cannot be certain it has suborned all the federal judges, Washington is just as happy if Assange dies in a British prison as there is no valid case against him under current US law.  Probably the absence of a valid case doesn’t matter as the rule of law in the US is very difficult to find.

The lack of any valid case against Assange is the reason the distinguished documentary film maker John Pilger describes Assange’s persecution as a Stalinist Show Trial.

What is astonishing about the CIA’s destruction of Julian Assange is the silence of American law schools and bar associations, the silence of universities, the absence of student and labor union protests, the absence of any protection of Assange’s rights from courts as the last news organization willing and capable of holding governments accountable for their crimes is destroyed openly in full view of the law schools, intellectuals, bar associations, courts, and print and TV media.  

The CIA’s control over explanations is as complete as the control Big Brother has in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.  And this doesn’t bother the citizens of the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Europe.  Only a few individuals speak out for Assange, and they, too, are demonized in turn.  

The Age of Tyranny has now descended upon the Western World. 

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Snopes.com

Trump said he talked to Syrian Democratic Forces leader Gen. Mazloum Abdi on Thursday. As usual, Trump’s report of the conversation is marred by outright lies and bizarre allegations. He said,

.

.

I really enjoyed my conversation with General @MazloumAbdi. He appreciates what we have done, and I appreciate what the Kurds have done. Perhaps it is time for the Kurds to start heading to the Oil Region!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2019

We know that Abdi (who sometimes goes by the nom de guerre Mazloum Kobanê) is not actually happy with “what Trump did,” in inviting Turkey to invade the Kurdish regions of northeast Syria because he repeatedly said so.

What Trump was likely referring to was Abdi’s relief at the pause in fighting arranged by vice president Mike Pence last week, which gave Russia time to impose severe limits on Turkey’s advance into Syria.

Trump had earlier said,

“This was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else, Now we’re getting out. … Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.”

Trump goes back and forth between dismissing Syria as an unimportant desert and playing up its small oil reserves. Northeast Syria, from which Trump pulled 1,000 US special operations personnel, is the most fertile agricultural area in Syria and is for the most part not desert.

As for the issue of oil, Syria’s reserves are mostly in the east, with the bulk in the southeast province of Deir al-Zor (Deir Ezzor). Its population is largely Sunni Arab and it had been controlled by ISIL, but Abdi’s Kurdish troops and some Arab allies fought down there. The al-Assad regime wants this region back, and even risked tangling with the US over a Conoco Gas plant in 2018.

The Guardian’s Julian Borger points out that Trump administration officials are talking about the possibility of a US tank force invading Deir al-Zor from Iraq and occupying it. The goal would be to deny the oil resources to a resurgent ISIL but also to keep them out of the hands of the Syrian government. Also, the US is somehow convinced, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that it can block Iranian personnel and supply lines into Syria with this southeast garrison.

h/t Energy Consulting Group

Trump appears to have encouraged a massive Kurdish population movement down to Deir al-Zor from the northeast in order to deny ISIL and Damascus the petroleum. This suggestion would please Turkey, which dreams of kicking hundreds of thousands of Syrian Kurds out of their homes and replacing them with Sunni Arab Syrian refugees now resident in Turkey. As Samantha Power observed, Trump is signing on to Erdogan’s
ethnic cleansing effort, for his own purposes.

Although the YPG took military control of Deir al-Zor during its fight with ISIL, the local Arab population is not happy with even this light Kurdish presence. The Kurds are unlikely actually to emigrate to Deir al-Zor in any numbers. And anyway, they have invited Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Arab Army into their territory to protect them from Turkey, so their presence to the south wouldn’t keep al-Assad from having a presence in Deir al-Zor.

The notion of a US invasion and occupation of Deir al-Zor is entirely illegal in international law. The US has no grounds for militarily occupying part of Syria after it withdrew from another part. Washington also has no grounds for denying Syrian oil resources to the Syrian government.

Also, wouldn’t this require Congressional approval?

As Borger points out, occupying Deir al-Zor would certainly take a big US force, much bigger than the 1000-strong spec ops soldiers who have just been withdraw. So much for Trump binging the troops home.

Iraq would also have to cooperate with this move, which seems to me unlikely.

Sen. Lindsay Graham and other senators want to bring Abdi to Washington for consultations and have asked secretary of state Mike Pompeo to expedite his visa.

The senators are concerned about the impact of Trump’s withdrawal in favor of Turkey on the continued fight against ISIL extremism in eastern Syria, which Trump has endangered by demoralizing his Kurdish allies.

About 100 hardened ISIL fighters have escaped in the chaos.

In response, the Turkish government threatened to have Abdi extradited to Turkey for terrorism, branding him a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which both the US and Turkey consider a terrorist organization. Ankara does not make a distinction between the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Syrian Democratic Union Party and the PKK, even though they are quite distinct. Abdi is YPG. Abdi, moreover, is the general who led the campaign against ISIL and took their capital of Raqqa, losing 10,000 of his men in the effort. Turkey did almost nothing against ISIL. Let’s just say I don’t think the US justice system is very likely to extradite Abdi to Turkey.

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Hundreds of American soldiers are remaining in Syria to occupy its oil reserves and block the Syrian government from revenue needed for reconstruction. Trump said openly, “We want to keep the oil.”

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US President Donald Trump has reassured supporters that he is “bringing soldiers home” from the “endless” war in Syria. But that is simply not the case.

While Trump has ordered a partial withdrawal of the approximately 1,000 American troops on Syrian territory — who have been enforcing an illegal military occupation under international law — US officials and the president himself have admitted that some will be staying. And they will remain on Syrian soil not to ensure to safety of any group of people, but rather to maintain control over oil and gas fields.

The US military has already killed hundreds of Syrians, and possibly even some Russians, precisely in order to hold on to these Syrian fossil fuel reserves.

Washington’s obsession with toppling the Syrian government refuses to die. The United States remains committed to preventing Damascus from retaking its own oil, as well as its wheat-producing breadbasket region, in order to starve the government of revenue and prevent it from funding reconstruction efforts.

The Washington Post noted in 2018 that the US and its Kurdish allies were militarily occupying a massive “30 percent slice of Syria, which is probably where 90 percent of the pre-war oil production took place.”

Now, for the first time, Trump has openly confirmed the imperialist ulterior motives behind maintaining a US military presence in Syria.

“We want to keep the oil,” Trump confessed in a cabinet meeting on October 21. “Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

Three days earlier, the president tweeted, “The U.S. has secured the Oil.”

…..this thinking years ago. Instead, it was always held together with very weak bandaids, & in an artificial manner. There is good will on both sides & a really good chance for success. The U.S. has secured the Oil, & the ISIS Fighters are double secured by Kurds & Turkey….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2019

The New York Times confirmed the strategy on October 20. Citing a “senior administration official,” the newspaper reported:

“President Trump is leaning in favor of a new Pentagon plan to keep a small contingent of American troops in eastern Syria, perhaps numbering about 200, to combat the Islamic State and block the advance of Syrian government and Russian forces into the region’s coveted oil fields.

… A side benefit would be helping the Kurds keep control of oil fields in the east, the official said.”

Trump then explicitly reiterated this policy in a White House press briefing on the Syria withdrawal on October 23.

“We’ve secured the oil (in Syria), and therefore a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil,” Trump said. “And we’re going to be protecting it. And we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.”

Using ISIS as an excuse to occupy Syria’s oil fields

US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper – the former vice president of government relations at top weapons manufacturer Raytheon, before being promoted by Trump to the head of the Pentagon – revealed the actual US policy on Syria in a press conference on the 21st:

“We have troops in towns in northeast Syria that are located next to the oil fields. The troops in those towns are not in the present phase of withdrawal.

… Our forces will remain in the towns that are located near the oil fields.”

Esper added that the US military is “maintaining a combat air patrol above all of our forces on the ground in Syria.”

Unlike Trump, Esper offered an excuse to justify the continued US military occupation of Syria’s oil fields. He insisted that American soldiers remain to help the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hold on to the resources and prevent ISIS jihadists from taking them over.

This led mainstream corporate media outlets like CNN to report, “Defense secretary says some US troops will temporarily stay in Syria to protect oil fields from ISIS.”

But any observer who carefully parsed Esper’s comments during his press conference would have been able to detect the real goal behind the prolonged US presence in northeastern Syria. As Esper said, “A purpose of those [US] forces, working with the SDF, is to deny access to those oil fields by ISIS and others who may benefit from revenues that could be earned.”

An excerpt from the Pentagon’s official transcript of the Mark Esper press conference

“And others who may benefit from their revenues earned” is a crucial qualifier. In fact, Esper used this language – “ISIS and others” – two more times in his presser.

Who exactly Esper meant by “others” is clear: The US strategy is to prevent Syria’s UN-recognized government and the Syrian majority that lives under its control from retaking their own oil fields and reaping the benefits of their revenue.

US military massacred hundreds to keep control of Syrian oil fields

This is not just speculation. CNN made it plain when it reported the following in an undeniably blunt passage, citing anonymous US senior military officials:

“The US military has long had military advisers embedded with the Syrian Democratic Forces near the Syrian oil fields at Deir Ezzoir ever since the area was captured from ISIS. The loss of those oil fields denied ISIS a major source of revenue, a one-time source of funds that has differentiated the organization from other terror groups.

The oil fields are assets that have also been long sought after by Russia and the Assad regime, which is strapped for cash after years of civil war. Both Moscow and Damascus hope to use oil revenues to help rebuild western Syria and solidify the regime’s hold.

In a bid to seize the oil fields, Russian mercenaries attacked the areas, leading to a clash that saw dozens if not hundreds of Russian mercenaries killed in US airstrikes, an episode that Trump has touted as proof he is tough on Russia. That action helped deter Russian or regime forces from making similar bids for the oil fields.

The US forces near the oil fields remain in place and senior military officials had previously told CNN that they would likely be among the last to leave Syria.”

CNN thus acknowledged that the US military had killed up to “hundreds” of Syrian and Russia-backed fighters seeking to gain access to Syria’s oil fields. It massacred these fighters not for humanitarian reasons, but to prevent the Syrian government from using “oil revenues to help rebuild western Syria.”

This shockingly direct admission flew in the face of the popular myth that the US was keeping troops in Syria to protect Kurds from an assault by NATO member Turkey.

The CNN report was an apparent reference to the Battle of Khasham, a little known but important episode in the eight-year international proxy war on Syria.

The battle unfolded on February 7, 2018, when the Syrian military and its allies launched an attack to try to retake major oil and gas reserves in Syria’s Deir ez-Zour governorate, which were being occupied by American troops and their Kurdish proxies.

The New York Times seemed to revel in the news that the US military massacred 200 to 300 fighters after hours of “merciless airstrikes from the United States.”

The Times repeatedly stressed that Deir ez-Zour is “oil-rich.” And it cited anonymous US officials who claimed that many of the slaughtered fighters were Russian nationals from the private military company the Wagner Group. These unnamed “American intelligence officials” told the Times that the alleged Russian fighters were “in Syria to seize oil and gas fields and protect them on behalf of the Assad government.”

The Times noted that US special operations forces from JSOC were working with Kurdish forces at an outpost next to Syria’s important Conoco gas plant. The Kurdish-led SDF had seized this facility from ISIS in 2017 with the help of the US military. The Wall Street Journal noted at the time that the “plant is capable of producing nearly 450 tons of gas a day,” and was one of ISIS’ most important sources of funding.

The newspaper added, “The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, are racing against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad for territorial gains in Syria’s east.” The commodities monitoring websites MarketWatchand OilPrice.com were closely following the story and analyzing which forces would take over one of Syria’s most important gas plants.

Starving Syria of oil and wheat, the basics of survival

For the Syrian government, regaining control over its oil and gas reserves in the eastern part of its territory is crucial to paying for reconstruction efforts and social programs — especially at a time when suffocating US and EU sanctions have crippled the economy, caused fuel shortages, and severely hurt Syria’s civilian population.

The US has aimed to prevent Damascus from retaking profitable territory, starving it of natural resources from fossil fuels to basic foodstuffs.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama deployed US troops to northeastern Syria on the grounds of helping the Kurdish militia the People’s Protection Units (YPG) fight ISIS. What started as several dozen US special operations forces quickly ballooned into some 2,000 troops, largely stationed in northeastern Syria.

As these US soldiers enabled the YPG retake territory from ISIS, they solidified Washington’s control over nearly one-third of Syrian sovereign territory — territory that just so happened to include 90 percent of Syria’s oil, as well as 70 percent of its wheat.

The US subsequently forced the Kurdish-led YPG to rebrand as the SDF, and then treated them as proxies to try to weaken the Syrian government and its allies Iran and Russia.

In June, Reuters confirmed that Kurdish-led authorities had agreed to stop selling wheat to Damascus, after the US government pressured them to do so.

The Grayzone has reported how the Center for a New American Security, a leading Democratic Party foreign policy think tank bankrolled by the US government and NATO, proposed using the “wheat weapon” to starve Syria’s civilian population.

A former Pentagon researcher-turned-senior fellow at the think tank declared openly, “Wheat is a weapon of great power in this next phase of the Syrian conflict.” He added, “It can be used to apply pressure on the Assad regime, and through the regime on Russia, to force concessions in the UN-led diplomatic process.”

Donald Trump appeared to echo this strategy in his October 21 cabinet meeting.

“We want to keep the oil, and we’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, have some cashflow,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

While Trump has pledged to bring US soldiers home and end their military occupation of Syrian territory – which is illegal under international law – it is evident that the broader regime change war continues.

A brutal economic war on Damascus is escalating, not only through sanctions but through the theft of Syria’s natural treasures by foreign powers.

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

The smorgasbord of Brexit terms has been further plated up with the latest acronym: the WAB or Withdrawal Agreement Bill.  It comes in at 115 pages, with an added bonus of 126 pages of explanatory notes.  For something seemingly so significant, not much time was on offer for those in the Commons to peruse, let alone digest it.  Rushed before the members last Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hoping that the most significant constitutional change to Britain in decades would be a push over.   

The WAB is intended to give the agreement between the UK and the European Union legal substance. But Halloween looms.  The stress from Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on speed.  What characterises the WAB from previous incarnations under the May government are various hooks to catch members of parliament who might otherwise dismiss it.  A significant concern among Labour party members, for instance, is the issue of workers’ rights.  By all means, initiate Brexit, but what of those protections incorporated under European law?  Are they to go by the wayside in an ugly act of pro-corporation fancy?

The political declaration underpinning the Brexit transition deal for trade talks between the UK and Brussels makes it clear that “the future relationship must ensure open and fair competition, encompassing robust commitments to ensure a level playing field.”  Workers’ rights drawn from EU law will continue in a Brexited Britain, with some unclear commitment to ensure “non-regression” in subsequent laws (that is, any subsequent laws after the transition period not abridge those rights).

The problem with this should have been evident to anyone noting the absence of the level playing field concept in the deal, which is instead found in the words of the non-binding political declaration. What the WAB does is actually make Northern Ireland the subject of level-playing field logic, permitting the rest of the UK to dabble in threatening alternatives.

On Saturday, the sweeteners on bringing in rebel Labour MPs into the fold seemed to sour.  Documents obtained by the Financial Times suggested that commitments on workers’ rights and the environment had left considerable “room for interpretation”.  The Brexit deal might well be, not just a matter of flexible interpretation but a boon for corporate vengeance. 

It gave Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, erratic of late, a platform to suspect the motivations of the government.  Labour shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman found the revelations unsettling. 

“These documents confirm our worst fears.  Boris Johnson’s Brexit is a blueprint for a regulated economy, which will see vital rights and protections torn up.”

This might well be true, but the EU can hardly claim a sense of purity in the guardianship of workers’ rights. A certain strain of EU jurisprudence suggests hostility to workers in employment law, while providing certain dispensations to corporations.  Decisions by such bodies as the European Court of Justice have demonstrated that the right to strike is secondary to the freedom of employers to relocate their concern, a feature found in Article 43 of the EC Treaty which strikes at any fetters of “freedom of establishment”.  In 2007, the ECJ notably found in the Viking Line case that a trade union’s threat to strike in an effort to force an employer to conclude a collective agreement constituted a restriction on the freedom of establishment. 

The Laval case furnished another example of pro-company logic over union action.  In that instance, the point of issue was how industrial action might square with freedom of movement under Article 49 of the EC Treaty.  The Swedish building workers’ union had attempted to force Laval’s Swedish subsidiary to accept a collective agreement covering 35 Latvian workers sent to Sweden to refurbish a school.  Negotiations failed; the company was picketed and eventually went bankrupt.  In hearing the case against the union for compensation, the ECJ held that the Posted Workers Directive guaranteeing equal protections for posted workers and those in the host country, was inapplicable.  It was too onerous to expect service provides to take part in peculiar collective bargaining practices.  Economic uncertainty was the enemy.

In a sense, both EU diplomats and their Brexit ministry counterparts have kept up appearances, talking about level playing fields when knowing full well that the corporate sector will be well catered for, Brexit or otherwise.  Tory government ministers, caught unawares, rallied against the leaks discussed by the FT.  The Brexit department decided to ignore the document altogether, a habit that seems to be catching in Whitehall.  The government, according to a spokesperson, “has no intention of lowering the standards of workers’ rights or environmental protection after we leave the EU”. 

Junior business minister Kwasi Kwarteng dismissed it as “completely mad, actually.”  It would make little sense “at all to dilute workers’ rights” given that some nineteen Labour MPs had actually voted for a second reading of the Brexit bill.  Business minister Andrea Leadsom was also quick to deny the veracity of the reports.  “The story is not correct.  UK will maintain (the) highest standards of workers’ rights and environmental standards when we leave the EU.”

The feathers of environmental advocates have also been ruffled.  Affirmations and promises made have been unconvincing.  Benjamin Halfpenny, representing a coalition of environmental groups including Friends of the Earth and the National Trust, insists on additions to the Environmental Bill that will shore up broader European protections.  “The government has had plenty of opportunities to put a commitment to existing standards into law, but has thus far not done so.”

 In the tug-of-war between Brussels and the UK, it is clear that Britain, in angling for future free trade deals, will be tempted by the genie of deregulation and the self-imposed reduction of standards for the sake of a competitive advantage.  It might well be that EU and UK diplomats are being rather sly about this: the EU is facing its own internal challenges and wishes an exit to take place within orderly reason.  It cannot afford a messy divorce, a point that will looked upon by dissenting groups within the bloc.  But should the Johnson’s deal become a reality, fans of working welfare and environmental standards will be left disappointed.

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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]

This article was completed on October 26, 2019.

Islamic State’s self-styled Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a United States Special Ops overnight raid Saturday involving helicopters, warplanes and a ground clash on the Turkey-Syria border while fleeing Syria’s northwestern Idlib Governorate, Reuters and Newsweek are reporting, and President Trump [has made] the major announcement of the biggest symbolic victory of his administration in the war against terrorism soon.

What’s worth noting in the news reports about the killing of al-Baghdadi is the fact that although the mainstream media had been trumpeting for the last several years that the Islamic State chief had been hiding somewhere on the Iraq-Syria border in the east, he was found hiding in the northwestern Idlib Governorate, under the control of Turkey’s militant proxies and al-Nusra Front, and was killed while trying to flee to Turkey in Brisha village on the Syria border.

Reuters reports [1]:

“Two Iraqi security sources and two Iranian officials said they had received confirmation from inside Syria that Baghdadi had been killed. ‘Our sources from inside Syria have confirmed to the Iraqi intelligence team tasked with pursuing Baghdadi that he has been killed alongside his personal bodyguard in Idlib after his hiding place was discovered when he tried to get his family out of Idlib toward the Turkish border,’ one of the Iraqi officials said.”

The reason why the mainstream media scrupulously avoided mentioning Idlib as al-Baghdadi’s most likely hideout in Syria was to cover up the collusion between the militant proxies of Turkey and the jihadists 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 had more than 70,000 jihadists.

The divisions within the rank and file of the terrorist organization seem to be growing as it has lost all of its territory, and 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.

Furthermore, due to frequent desertions and detention of hundreds of hardcore militants alongside thousands of innocent Arab villagers held captive by the Kurds in northeastern Syria, 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 nexus between Islamic jihadists and so-called “moderate rebels” in Syria, while the representatives of Free Syria Army (FSA) were in Washington in January last year, soliciting the Trump administration to restore the CIA’s “train and equip” program for the Syrian militants that was shuttered in July 2017, hundreds of Islamic State’s jihadists joined the moderate militants in Idlib in their battle against the advancing Syrian government troops backed by Russian airstrikes to capture the strategically important Abu Duhur airbase, according to a January last year’s AFP report [3] authored by Maya Gebeily.

The Islamic State already had a foothold in neighboring Hama province and its foray into Idlib was an extension of its outreach. The Islamic State reportedly captured several villages and claimed to have killed two dozen Syrian soldiers and taken twenty hostages. And on January 12 last year, the Islamic State officially declared Idlib one of its “Islamic emirates,” according to the aforementioned AFP report.

In all likelihood, some of the Islamic State’s jihadists who joined the battle in Idlib in January last year were part of the same contingent of thousands of Islamic State militants that fled Raqqa in October 2017 under a deal brokered [4] by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Islamic State leader Baghdadi reportedly killed in Syria by U.S. forces

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

[3] Four years and one caliphate later, Islamic State claims Idlib comeback

[4] Raqqa’s dirty secret: the deal that let Islamic State jihadists escape Raqqa

“What’s wrong with the bees?” 

I’ve been asked that question frequently over the years.  My friends, family and most of my work colleagues know that I’ve been a beekeeper for decades, so it’s a reasonable question and it usually leads to an extended and enjoyable conversation about bees and ultimately to food. 

I’ve found that most people are aware there is something wrong with bees and that they should be concerned.  What many people don’t realize is how dependent our food system is upon the honey bee and how the problems that bees face is putting our very food system at risk.

With this in mind, I set off on a multi-year documentary film project to tell the story of commercial migratory beekeepers, their honey bees and the role they play in agriculture.  The resulting film, The Pollinators has been busy on the film festival circuit this year and is just coming out in cinemas across the country now.

Watch the trailer:

A national screening day for “The Pollinators” in the U.S. is taking place on Wednesday, November 6. Find a screening near you here. If there isn’t a screening near you, find out how to request one here.

I met beekeeper Dave Hackenberg in a truck stop off I-495 in Massachusetts. He was returning home to Pennsylvania after bringing a truckload of honey bees to Maine to pollinate blueberries, one of the many crops that his honey bees pollinate.  Dave and his son Davey are part of a multigenerational family business, which is typical of many migratory beekeepers. Officially called pollination services, the beekeepers work in a niche sector of agriculture. They move millions of bee hives all around the country into the fields and orchards that require honey bee pollination when they bloom.  Most people are not aware that honey bees are moved at all because the bees are typically moved at night when the bees are in their hives and often placed in remote areas on the edges of fields where they will be out of sight.

Dave and Davey Hackenberg—like all migratory beekeepers—are an essential link in our food system because very simply, if there is no pollination, there will not be a viable crop. For many farmers, bringing honey bees onto their farm is somewhat of an insurance policy to guarantee sufficient pollination. The farmer pays the beekeeper by the hive to provide this service.  As many as 400 common fruits, nuts and vegetables that we eat every day depend upon insect pollination and represent the most nutritious and tasty foods in our diets. While honey bees have been moved for pollination for decades, the scale and dependency upon pollination services has expanded and become essential in some parts of the country over the last couple of decades.  This is due to some systemic changes in agriculture techniques and also the decline of native bees that cannot survive in the chemically dependent monocultures that much of agriculture has moved towards. The migratory beekeepers have responded to these changes in farming and are filling this need through pollination services.

Like most migratory beekeepers, the Hackenberg’s and the other beekeepers I filmed, move their bees out to California in February for the almond pollination, which is the biggest pollination event in the world—and also the most lucrative.  Beekeeper Bret Adee who along with his family, runs the largest bee operation in the country states that, “Almost the entire US bee supply is moved out to California for almond pollination.” Alarm bells should be going off now. After the almond bloom is over, there is nothing else for the bees to eat so they are loaded up and moved into other pollinations around the country.

The bees pollinate many crops after almonds from blueberries, apples, cranberries to pumpkins and also the seeds for next seasons carrots, onions and other important row crops.

Along this pollination journey, the bees and beekeepers can face many serious challenges and risks.  I quickly came to realize that these hardworking and iconoclastic beekeepers are anxious about the alarming rate of the bee losses they face, which have been ranging from 33 to 50 percent annually and sometimes more.  Not many businesses can sustain losses like this every year. The commercial beekeepers work hard to split and create new hives out of older ones in order to maintain the numbers they need for pollination and try to keep ahead of the losses. They know this is not a sustainable situation and are desperate for other solutions.  Thirty years ago, losing 10 percent of one’s hives was alarming, but now any commercial beekeeper would be happy to lose that few hives. According to the scientists and beekeepers I spoke with, bee colony losses are due to multiple and interactive causes including parasites, pesticides, viruses, poor nutrition and habitat loss.  Climate change is a factor that is being studied, but studies are indeed showing a negative effect on bees. Despite what people may think, the actual movement of bees is not a significant contributor to annual losses and the bees are trucked by drivers used to handling livestock and know how to take care of them.

Beekeepers are eager to get the word out about their plight because their current methods are unsustainable and we are in serious trouble if we don’t come up with answers to stem these losses.

If these beekeepers are worried, we all should be: our diet depends upon pollination for one of every three bites we eat.

The good news is there are people that are implementing new methods in agriculture and making a positive difference.  Former USDA scientist, Dr. Jonathan Lundgren is an active proponent of regenerative agriculture as a key solution. According to Dr. Lundgren, we need to stop tilling the ground, eliminate excessive chemical inputs, stop planting monocultures and adopt time proven methods of cover cropping, rotation and diversity on the landscape. He believes that we need to fix the soil to fix the bee problem.

A pesticide-free and diverse habitat creates a healthy diet for pollinators and attracts many species of other beneficial insects that can minimize many pests. Specific troublesome pests can be targeted through integrated pest management techniques.

Farmers Lucas and William Criswell along with neighbor farmer Alan Ard have put this into practice and are literally changing the landscape in the Pennsylvania valley where they live and farm. Their successes are inspiring their neighbors who farm traditionally to adopt the same regenerative techniques that are working for the Criswell’s and the Ard’s.

Dan Barber, the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill restaurant gave me a big picture view of the regenerative farm practices at the Stone Barns Center in Westchester County, New York. He states “We really have to create a system, a pattern of eating that supports the kind of diversity that the landscape needs to be healthy”.  Jack Algiere, the farm director at the Stone Barns Center, speaks eloquently about that diversity of our landscape and the importance of crop rotation and soil health to create a healthy environment from which we can grow healthy, delicious food and educate and inspire others in the process.  Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben gave me his thoughts about how efficiency and simplification in agriculture has eliminated diversity and resiliency at a high cost to the natural world.

There is something about honey bees that touches people: their beauty, their indefatigable work ethic, their efficiency with fascinating and complex societies that are a window into the natural world that we all long for.  While most people have heard that bees are in trouble and are interested in knowing more, the threats to bees are a certainly a complex and interwoven set of problems and there are no easy solutions, no silver bullet.

But we also have a lot of opportunities to fix these problems and we have more power to change things than we think we do.  Every one of us can do things big and small to make it better. This topic is completely actionable and our own choices really matter.  We vote with our dollars when we buy food and make a difference by deciding what we grow in our own landscapes. A green grassy lawns is a monocultures and food desert for bees.  Asking questions about our food and learning where our food comes from, supporting local farmers, educating our children and working with our legislators to create pollinator friendly policies in our communities are all key components to changing this broken system.  Many states have taken the lead on pollinator protection legislation since our current federal agency’s leadership tends to side with corporate interests, so promoting and supporting state and local legislation is proving to be a very effective tool.

The answer is not going to come from the top, but is going to come from our own citizen actions on a grassroots level.

When I started beekeeping over 30 years ago, I had no idea that ultimately it would lead me to making a film about migratory beekeepers, bees and our food system.  Yet the intersection of these elements was a story I felt had not been fully explored and one that desperately needed to be told. We can make this better and it has to start with us.  Many small changes in our individual lives can add up to make a big difference.

A national screening day for “The Pollinators” in the U.S. is taking place on Wednesday, November 6. Find a screening near you here. If there isn’t a screening near you, find out how to request one here.

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Peter Nelson is a filmmaker, director, and beekeeper.

Featured image is from the author

1. At the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit held in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Friday, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro lashed out at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and announced that the U.S. economic and financial aggressions are as lethal as its armies.

The Bolivarian leader said that “the new modes of international war are economic aggressions” against the most vulnerable population groups, among which are children, women and the elderly.

“In the years to come, our movement must raise an alternative to the inhuman, exclusionary and impoverishing model which the IMF and the World Bank intend to impose,” Maduro urged.

“The imposition of brutal neoliberal economic measures, which are designed by the IMF and applied by Washignton’s satellite governments, include pension and salary cuts, brutal increases in public service fares and curtailment of the right to education and health.”

Besides evidencing the social effects of economic warfare, Maduro stressed that the IMF policy packages are driving “a massive violation of human rights” in developing countries around the world.

RT NicolasMaduro: Luego del primer día de deliberaciones en la XVIII Cumbre del MNOAL, nos sentimos felices porque 120 países han ratificado su decidido respaldo a Venezuela. Con orgullo seguiremos defendiendo la verdad de nuestro pueblo. No estamos solo… pic.twitter.com/31b0E2Y0Nd

— David Prado (@shasta_1183) October 25, 2019

“Nicolas Maduro: After the first day of deliberations at the 18th NAM Summit, we feel happy because 120 countries have ratified their strong support for Venezuela. With pride we will continue to defend the truth of our people. We are not alone.”

“That is why we denounce the imposition of economic, financial and trade policies as acts of aggression, which have such a devastating effect as military actions. Nowadays some powers’ economic and financial aggressions are as lethal as their armies.”

With regard to the externally-induced problems that Venezuela faces, Maduro recalled that his government prefers to place its policy emphasis on the people, which makes “decadent empires” impose blockages which are contrary to international laws.

“Venezuela is resisting and will continue to resist and, in addition, it is overcoming. We are overcoming a multiform economic warfare. The future holds for us growth, recovery and prosperity,” the Bolivarian president said.

Maduro also recalled that global powers violate international laws each time they implement “unilateral coercive measures, which are applied as political pressure instruments and blackmailing devices” aimed at inflicting collective punishment.

Sostuve un importante encuentro con el hermano Presidente de la República Islámica de Irán, Hasán Rohaní. Reiteramos nuestra firme disposición y compromiso de consolidar los lazos de cooperación, hermandad y amistad existente entre nuestros pueblos. pic.twitter.com/urZ7yYXgp4

— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) October 25, 2019

“I had an important meeting with the brother President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hassan Rohani. We reiterate our firm willingness and commitment to consolidate cooperation, brotherhood and friendship ties between our peoples.”

Moreover, Maduro warned about the limitations of the current multilateral governance system, which generates problems instead of promoting peace among nations.

“The multilateral system as a whole faces a complex crisis… military interventions, imposition of regime change policies, coups, disinformation media campaigns and undercover operations, all of which are aimed at the political, economic and financial destabilization of the NAM members.”

At the Baku Summit, the Republic of Azerbaijan will take over the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement for the upcoming 3 years.

The NAM was established in 1961 as a forum for independent dialogue and cooperation among 120 developing countries.

As the late Cuba’s President Fidel Castro said, the NAM aims at ensuring “national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.”​​​​​​​

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The ongoing theatrical absurdity of twisted forever war propaganda went over the top on Sunday when President Trump announced the death of the elusive leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. 

Trump announced the death (said to be by way of suicide vest) while reading from a teleprompter, a skill he has yet to master. 

.

.

“He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone. Baghdadi was vicious and violent and he died in a vicious and violent way”

US President Donald Trump says the “world is now a much safer place” after the killing of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadihttps://t.co/yePDgUsGuJ pic.twitter.com/WBB3nUjC4r

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) October 27, 2019

There is no evidence al-Baghdadi killed himself when confronted by US Special Forces in Syria, the same as there is no evidence that Obama killed Osama bin Laden (evidence indicates Osama died in Afghanistan of natural causes in late 2001). 

Abu “from Baghdad” has died before. In June 2017, Russia said it may have killed him during an airstrike in Syria. The following month, ISIS allegedly admitted al-Baghdadi was killed during an air raid in the Iraqi province of Nineveh. 

There is scant evidence Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi existed as described by the US military and the corporate war propaganda media. 

“Reclusive even when IS was at the peak of its power, the 47-year-old Iraqi, who suffers from diabetes, was rumored to have been wounded or killed several times,” the AFP reported this past April. “His whereabouts have never been confirmed.” He was known as “The Ghost” (al-Shabah in Arabic), the invisible caliphate leader.

There is little if any reliable factual information on al-Baghdadi. “There are disputes over his career depending on whether the source is ISIS itself, US or Iraqi intelligence,” the Independent reported in 2014. 

He was born in Samarra, a largely Sunni city north of Baghdad, in 1971 and is well educated. With black hair and brown eyes, a picture of al-Baghdadi taken when he was a prisoner of the Americans in Bocca (sic) Camp in southern Iraq between 2005 and 2009, makes him look like any Iraqi man in his thirties.

The newspaper reports it “believes” al-Baghdadi “was born in Samarra, a largely Sunni city north of Baghdad, in 1971 and is well educated. With black hair and brown eyes, a picture of al-Baghdadi taken when he was a prisoner of the Americans in Bocca Camp in southern Iraq between 2005 and 2009, makes him look like any Iraqi man in his thirties.”

We are told al-Baghdadi rose to the leadership of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn) after the supposed targeted murder of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, yet another elusive character who may not, in fact, have existed as described by the government and its media. 

The media, however, did report on the “Zarqawi program,” a psychological operation run out of the Pentagon. According to the Post: 

The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. “Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response,” one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: “Media operations,” “Special Ops (626)” (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein’s government) and “PSYOP,” the U.S. military term for propaganda work…

The military’s propaganda program largely has been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. One briefing slide about U.S. “strategic communications” in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the “home audience” as one of six major targets of the American side of the war.

The Zarqawi myth was engineered specifically for the “home audience.” It was an effort to condition the American people to accept the war on terror abroad and a police and surveillance state at home. 

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky writes:

The practice of “successful propaganda” in relation to the Iraq war has gone well beyond the official boundaries contained in military manuals. Propaganda creates an “outside enemy”. Al Qaeda led by Osama and Al Qaeda in Iraq led by Zarqawi. Al Qaeda is behind most news stories regarding the  “war on terrorism” including  the suicide attacks. What is rarely mentioned is that this outside enemy Al Qaeda is a CIA “intelligence asset”, used in covert operations.

According to the official narrative, Baghdadi, aka Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai, was captured in Fallujah in 2004 and sent as a “civilian internee” to the Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca detention centers. 

Major General Doug Stone, the head of Task Force 134, Detainee Operations in Iraq, told Andrew Keane Woods of Lawfare in 2016 Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca served as “universities” for jihadi terror:

Stone had been brought in to clean things up after Abu Ghraib; at the time, he was a high-ranking marine reservist willing to take a job that many lifetime military folks wouldn’t touch.  Stone was shocked at what he found:  not just a few bad apples torturing a few prisoners, but rather a dysfunctional detention regime, one that seemingly had no purpose and was a proving grounds for young militants. 

This is a standard fallback story. It is similar to the “intelligence failures” that supposedly led to 9/11. The “detention regime” at these illegal prison facilities was not “dysfunctional,” but rather part of an operation to crank out terrorists and feed the war on terror, which is designed to last forever. 

The official explanation from the Bush administration upon revelations of torture and murder at Abu Ghraib was that the torture was “isolated” and not indicative of US policy. In fact, the opposite was true—Abu Ghraib was part of a wider pattern of torture and brutal treatment at detention centers, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay (see Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror—a case against Donald Rumsfeld?).

The “enhanced interrogation” used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay was conceived by the CIA, not for interrogation but, as the CIA’s MKUltra demonstrates, for breaking down and brainwashing individuals. The techniques used were similar to those developed by the CIA and SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) developed by DoD and housed at Fairchild AFB, Washington, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Fort Rucker, Alabama. SERE was based on supposed Chinese brainwashing techniques.

The truth about Abu Ghraib was revealed during the trial of Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, two CIA “psychologists” sued by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two former prisoners and the family of one detainee who died of extreme cold in a secret CIA prison.

“Concealed from Congress and the public, the CIA had spent the previous half-century developing and propagating a sophisticated form of psychological torture meant to defy investigation, prosecution, or prohibition—and so far it has proved remarkably successful on all these counts,” writes Alfred McCoy. “Even now, since many of the leading psychologists who worked to advance the CIA’s torture skills have remained silent, we understand surprisingly little about the psychopathology of the program of mental torture that the Bush administration applied so globally.”

The CIA program of “mental torture” was not used to gain information on al-Qaeda and the Islamic State—it is well-known torture does not work and is counterproductive—but rather to breakdown detainees, vacate their personalities, and rebuild them as terrorists and suicide bombers. The “psychopathology of the program” is designed to keep the war on manufactured terror alive and the military-industrial complex fat and happy. 

“Enhanced interrogation” is an Orwellian term for trauma-based techniques engineered to brainwash and control individuals. However, as should be expected, the Pentagon has a cover for its behavior. From a US Army publication:

Task Force 134’s current strategy regards detention facility operations as a legitimate part of America’s overall counterinsurgency fight. The detention facility is not just a repository for those plucked from the “real” insurgency, but a legitimate arena for counterinsurgency actions. The task force has shifted detention operations from warehousing insurgents to engaging them. The strategy focuses on touching the human spirit and aligning detainee goals and aspirations with those of a peaceful and prosperous Iraq. 

In other words, working to have the Iraqi people accept the brutal invasion of their country, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, targeting of water and agriculture resources, and the murder of a million and a half people. 

I don’t believe the US military seriously attempted this, primarily because it is virtually impossible—the Iraqi people know who is responsible for the destruction of their country and the murder of more than a million of their fellow citizens. It is absurd to believe a half-baked “counterinsurgency” program would result in forgiveness of the neocons and George W. Bush. If Iraqis invaded your city or town and began killing your family and neighbors, would you be in a frame of mind to forgive and forget? 

No, I believe the real story of Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib is a secret Pentagon program designed to make certain conflict continues in the Middle East. The ruling elite responsible for the invasion of Iraq is not interest in the “goals and aspirations” of the Iraqi people. It is determined to balkanize and terrorize Arabs, Muslims, and especially the Shias of Iran. An endless cadre of jihadi (Wahhabi) terrorists is required to accomplish this feat and make sure the client states of Israel and Saudi Arabia are the dominant powerbrokers in the Middle East. 

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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

Protests that started over a hike in public transport fares boiled into massive marches. The government responded with heavy repression. At least 18 people have been killed, hundreds have been injured, and over 7,000 arrested.

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Over one million people are marching in the streets of the Chilean capital, responding to the convocation of students and labor unions who organized on social media “The Largest March in Chile” on Friday afternoon, with rallies paralyzing major cities.

The march started between 5-6 p.m., local time, from the Plaza Italia, demanding among others the government to send back the Armed Forces to their military base, and to convoke a Constituent Assembly in order to outline a new Constitution.

They are holding banners like “Chile woke up” and “We are not at war,” as Chile’s military has taken over security in Santiago, a city of 6 million now under a state of emergency with night-time curfews.

1 millón de personas solo en un sector de Santiago, confirmado por la Intendencia. El resto de Chile también está movilizado 💪🏻#LaMarchaMasGrandeDeChile pic.twitter.com/im6wDjdwz6

— fER 👽 (@Heeroin13) October 25, 2019

#LaMarchaMasGrandeDeChile
Ya la autoridad reconoce que A LO MENOS es la #marchadelmillon pic.twitter.com/LMslDbd429

— Mónica Rincón González (@tv_monica) October 25, 2019

“These protests were necessary,” said fruit vendor Sergio Perez to Reuters. “But they’ve made everything difficult, especially getting around.”

Many shops and schools in downtown Santiago remained closed.

Many bus drivers in Santiago also staged a walk-off on Friday after one of their number was shot.

“I used to take one bus to get to work, now I have to take four. This must stop,” said Julio Herrera, 71, as he waited in a long line at a street corner for what few buses remained.

On Friday morning, trucks, cars and taxis also slowed to a crawl on major roads, honking horns, waving Chilean flags and bearing signs of protest. “No more tolls! Enough with the abuse!” read bright yellow-and-red signs plastered to the front of vehicles.

Pinera, a billionaire businessman, told the nation on Thursday he had heard “loud and clear” the demands of Chileans.

He has sent lawmakers legislation to overturn a recent hike in electricity rates, and called for reforms to guarantee a minimum wage of US$480 a month and introduce state medical insurance – only in the case of “catastrophes.”

Seated with a group of elderly Chileans over lunch on Friday, Pinera put finishing touches on a bill to hike minimum pensions by 20 percent. “We must approve these projects with the urgency that Chileans demand,” Pinera said.

So far, the biggest rallies, according to the interior ministry’s estimate, took place on Wednesday, with 424,050 people rallying nationwide.

An online poll conducted by local company Activa Research of 2,090 people between Oct. 22-23 found 83 percent of respondents said they supported the goals of the demonstrators.

The principal causes of the protests were low salaries, utility prices, pensions and economic inequality, the poll said.

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, former social-democrat President of Chile, said she would send a mission to her homeland to investigate allegations of rights violations by security forces.

The Chilean government said it would welcome a U.N. delegation, along with representatives of global NGO Human Rights Watch.

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Featured image: The popular movement against Piñera’s neoliberal government and its repressive policies, is unprecedented in Chile’s modern history | Photo: teleSUR

In a special comment written for Consortium News, John Pilger, legendary filmmaker, journalist and friend of Assange, describes the troubling scene inside a London courtroom this week where the WikiLeaks publisher appeared in his U.S. extradition case.

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The worst moment was one of a number of ‘worst’ moments. I have sat in many courtrooms and seen judges abuse their positions, This judge, Vanessa Baraitser—actually she isn’t a judge at all; she’s a magistrate—shocked all of us who were there.

Her face was a progression of sneers and imperious indifference; she addressed Julian with an arrogance that reminded me of a magistrate presiding over apartheid South Africa’s Race Classification Board. When Julian struggled to speak, he couldn’t get words out, even stumbling over his name and date of birth.

When he spoke truth and when his barrister spoke, Baraister contrived boredom; when the prosecuting barrister spoke, she was attentive. She had nothing to do; it was demonstrably preordained. In the table in front of us were a handful of American officials, whose directions to the prosecutor were carried by his junior; back and forth this young woman went, delivering instructions.

The judge watched this outrage without a comment. It reminded me of a newsreel of a show trial in Stalin’s Moscow; the difference was that Soviet show trials were broadcast. Here, the state broadcaster, the BBC, blacked it out, as did the other mainstream channels.

Having ignored Julian’s barrister’s factual description of how the CIA had run a Spanish security firm that spied on him in the Ecuadorean embassy, she didn’t yawn, but her disinterest was as expressive. She then denied Julian’s lawyers any more time to prepare their case – even though their client was prevented in prison from receiving legal documents and other tools with which to defend himself.

Her knee in the groin was to announce that the next court hearing would be at remote Woolwich, which adjoins Belmarsh prison and has few seats for the public. This will ensure isolation and be as close to a secret trial as it’s possible to get. Did this happen in the home of the Magna Carta? Yes, but who knew?

More Important Than Dreyfus

Julian’s case is often compared with Dreyfus; but historically it’s far more important. No one doubts — not his enemies on The New York Times, not the Murdoch press in Australia – that if he is extradited to the United States and the inevitable supermax, journalism will be incarcerated, too.

Who will then dare to expose anything of importance, let alone the high crimes of the West? Who will dare publish ‘Collateral Murder’? Who will dare tell the public that democracy, such as it is, has been subverted by a corporate authoritarianism from which fascism draws its strength.

Once there were spaces, gaps, boltholes, in mainstream journalism in which mavericks, who are the best journalists, could work. These are long closed now. The hope is the samizdat on the internet, where fine disobedient journalism is still practised. The greater hope is that a judge or even judges in Britain’s court of appeal, the High Court, will rediscover justice and set him free. In the meantime, it’s our responsibility to fight in ways we know but which now require more than a modicum of Assange courage.

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John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist and filmmaker based in London. Pilger’s Web site is: www.johnpilger.com. In 2017, the British Library announced a John Pilger Archive of all his written and filmed work. The British Film Institute includes his 1979 film, “Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia,” among the 10 most important documentaries of the 20^thcentury. Some of his previous contributions to Consortium News can be found here.  

Featured image is from 21st Century Wire

Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohammad, announced on Friday that his country is to open an accredited embassy to Palestine, Anadolu News Agency reported.

“We know that Israel will not allow Malaysia to open an embassy in the Occupied Territory. As such, we will open the embassy in Jordan,” Mohammad announced.

Mohammad revealed that the embassy would be accredited to Palestine, and it would more freely facilitate the extension of aid to Palestinians.

Addressing the 18th summit of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Azerbaijan, Mohammad criticised the silence of the international community for “doing nothing” against Israeli actions.

Leaders and representatives of at least 120 member countries of the NAM are meeting in Baku.

“I would also like to bring to this occasion the fate that awaits our poor Palestinian brothers. Palestine remains occupied by a brutal regime. This regime continues to expand illegal settlements on land that rightfully belongs to the Palestinians,” he stated.

Mohammad added

“it is unfortunate that a world organisation set up by powerful nations now sees those very people ignoring the resolutions of that world body. Now, we see others doing the same.”

Meanwhile, he criticised Israel for its plans to annex parts of the West Bank, as well as claiming Jerusalem as its capital.

“Many western countries are supporting this move by relocating, or vowing to relocate, their embassies there. Malaysia does not agree with this,” he explained.

Mohammad called on NAM member countries that have relocated their Israeli embassies to Jerusalem, or are planning to do so, to reconsider their decision.

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It was just a matter of time before the Bolivian government would be the target of a reactionary opposition. Indeed it happened at its most vulnerable time during an election process that had not officially ended. Following popular protests against neoliberal structural changes imposed by the governments of Ecuador and Chile, it was the conservative opposition in Bolivia that attempted to prevent the presidential re-election of Evo Morales.

In an already political tense situation in Latin America with major protracted protests in Ecuador and Chile, the OAS threw fuel to the fire by issuing a statement of its Electoral Observation Mission in Bolivia. Just a day after elections in Bolivia on October 20 and before the polls were officially closed, the Mission expressed “its deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results.” The trend in question was in favor of Evo Morales. But more damaging, the statement said, “the Mission will issue a report with recommendations ahead of a second round.” That last sentence sounded like an announcement that a second round must take place when in reality the final ballot count was not at hand. A runoff election is called if there is no majority winner or the margin of votes over the second candidate is less than 10%.

The untimely OAS statement has been criticised by the Mexican government as not being “objective”, and it may well have been a call for the supporters of opposition candidate Carlos Mesa to immediately respond with violent protests in La Paz and other cities for alleged fraud. They destroyed properties, set one electoral building on fire and looted business. Expressions of “concern” about the election from Argentina, Brazil and the White House could only have further emboldened the opposition.

After final ballots count and with a margin over the second candidate of 10.5%, Evo Morales has officially been re-elected president of Bolivia at the same time that he is warning of a coup attempt being “carried out by the right-wing with foreign support.” The corporate media is already creating a conspiracy by calling Morales’ presidency “illegitimate”. This is an all familiar term often repeated in the case of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. We all know the dangerous political consequences.

Ecuador has seen major protests since the beginning of October triggered by a controversial government decree enforcing stringent IMF imposed neoliberal policies. The protests have come to a relative calm following a timely dialogue between the Moreno government and the mostly indigenous organization protesters.

However, the OAS has again taken the opportunity to find the culprit of the unrest in Ecuador and the rest of the region, not in the IMF or the unpopular decree, but in Venezuela and Cuba. A statement from the office of the OAS Secretary General declared,

“The crisis in Ecuador is an expression of the distortions that the Venezuelan and Cuban dictatorships have installed in the political systems of the continent.” And more broadly, “The present currents of destabilization of the political systems of the continent have their origin in the strategy of the Bolivarian and Cuban dictatorships.”

The situation in Chile is still developing. Protests were initiated mid-October by mostly students opposing a public transportation fare increase by the Sebastian Piñera government. The violent police repression chasing and arresting students widely reported on social media has surely contributed to larger sectors of the population to join the protests. As the government imposed a curfew, the actions in Chile have also escalated to include a call to a general strike. As a union leader concisely put it,

“The problem is not 30 pesos [transit fare increase]. It’s 30 years of corruption and abuse of the political class, the church and the Armed Forces.”

That is a reference to the brutal military dictatorship in Chile from 1973 to 1990 under Augusto Pinochet who also continued as the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army until 1998. Pinochet came to power following a US backed coup that toppled elected president Salvador Allende. Under his rule numerous human right violations and crimes were reported including murder, illegal imprisonment, torture, disappearances, political repression, and financial corruption. A trial on many of those charges was still underway when he died in 2006.

During the current protests so far, 15 people have been reported killed and thousands arrested.

Many believe that Pinochet’s legacy has not totally been erased as long as the current Chilean constitution remains in place. The constitution was drafted during Pinochet’s rule by government appointed individuals and ratified by a highly dubious plebiscite in 1980. Under this constitution the presence of the National Security Council (COSENA) is still today one of the major concerns because it concentrates a lot of power in the hands of the three branches of the armed forces and the police. This may explain the prompt display and repression of the military in today’s manifestations. Civil groups in Chile are participating in public discussion around the constitution acting as virtual popular constituent assembly as part of the demonstrations against the neoliberal policies of Sebastian Piñera.

In geopolitical terms, we may be witnessing a rekindling of the progressive movement in Latin America. On October 27 two important elections will take place. One in Argentina that has already indicated a rejection of neoliberal policies of Mauricio Macri in the preliminaries last August and will decide in the upcoming run-off elections. The other election will be in Uruguay where the leftist party Frente Amplio has maintained a very stable government for ten years and has a strong candidate in the incumbent Daniel Martinez. We expect progressive victories in those elections. However, it is hard to predict the impact that the more recent events in the region may have on the voters on October 27.

The continued intervention with US-aligned declarations and statements by the OAS seems to be another factor intended to confuse and put pressure on voters with an obsessive condemnation of Venezuela and Cuba. This is consistent with the stark reality that there are forces intent on destabilising countries by changing the balance of forces from revolutionary to neoliberal.

It has not worked in Bolivia in terms of the ballot results, although it may contribute to create some degree of political instability in the country. But it is also possible that the “Venezuela and Cuba” component, together with the events in Ecuador and Chile, may actually be positive contributing factors in setting the example that there are risks worth taking to help the revolutionary movement. This will be totally consistent with the rebellious history of Latin America.

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Nino Pagliccia is an activist and freelance writer based in Vancouver. He is a retired researcher from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who follows and writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is the editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” (2014). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Promoters of genetic modification (GM) in agriculture have long argued that genetically engineered Golden Rice is a practical way to provide poor farmers in remote areas with a subsistence crop capable of adding much-needed vitamin A to local diets. Vitamin A deficiency is a problem in many poor countries in the Global South and leaves millions at high risk for infection, diseases and other maladies, such as blindness.

Some scientists believe that Golden Rice, which has been developed with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, could help save the lives of around 670,000 children who die each year from Vitamin A deficiency and another 350,000 who go blind.

Meanwhile, critics say there are serious issues with Golden Rice and that alternative approaches to tackling vitamin A deficiency should be implemented. Greenpeace and other environmental groups say the claims being made by the pro-Golden Rice lobby are misleading and are oversimplifying the actual problems in combating vitamin A deficiency.

Many critics regard Golden Rice as an over-hyped Trojan horse that biotechnology corporations and their allies hope will pave the way for the global approval of other more profitable GM crops. The Rockefeller Foundation might be regarded as a ‘philanthropic’ entity but its track record indicates it has been very much part of an agenda which facilitates commercial and geopolitical interests to the detriment of indigenous agriculture and local and national economies.

Smears and baseless attacks

As Britain’s Environment Secretary in 2013, Owen Paterson claimed that opponents of GM were “casting a dark shadow over attempts to feed the world”. He called for the rapid roll-out of vitamin A-enhanced rice to help prevent the cause of up to a third of the world’s child deaths: 

“It’s just disgusting that little children are allowed to go blind and die because of a hang-up by a small number of people about this technology. I feel really strongly about it. I think what they do is absolutely wicked.”

Just recently, Robin McKie, science writer for The Observer, wrote a piece on Golden Rice that uncritically presented all the usual industry talking points. On Twitter, The Observer’s Nick Cohen chimed in with his support by tweeting:

“There is no greater example of ignorant Western privilege causing needless misery than the campaign against genetically modified golden rice.”

Yes, that Nick Cohen; the one who cheer-led for the illegal invasion of Iraq and who remains unrepentant.

Whether it comes from the likes of corporate lobbyist Patrick Moore, Owen Paterson, biotech spin-merchant Mark Lynas, well-remunerated journalists or from the lobbyist CS Prakash who engages more in spin that fact, the rhetoric takes the well-worn cynically devised PR line that anti-GM activists and environmentalists are little more than privileged, affluent people residing in rich countries and are denying the poor the supposed benefits of GM crops. 

Golden Rice does not work and opponents are not to blame

Despite the smears and emotional blackmail employed by supporters of Golden Rice, in a 2016 article in the journal Agriculture & Human Values Glenn Stone and Dominic Glover found little evidence that anti-GM activists are to blame for Golden Rice’s unfulfilled promises. Golden rice was still years away from field introduction and may fall far short of lofty health benefits claimed by its supporters.

Professor Glenn Stone from Washington University in St. Louis stated that: 

“Golden Rice is still not ready for the market, but we find little support for the common claim that environmental activists are responsible for stalling its introduction. GMO opponents have not been the problem.”

Stone added that the rice simply has not been successful in test plots of the rice breeding institutes in the Philippines, where the leading research is being done. While activists did destroy one Golden Rice test plot in a 2013 protest, it is unlikely that this action had any significant impact on the approval of Golden Rice.

Stone said:

“Destroying test plots is a dubious way to express opposition, but this was only one small plot out of many plots in multiple locations over many years. Moreover, they have been calling Golden Rice critics ‘murderers’ for over a decade.”

Believing that Golden Rice was originally a promising idea backed by good intentions, Stone argued:

“But if we are actually interested in the welfare of poor children – instead of just fighting over GMOs – then we have to make unbiased assessments of possible solutions. The simple fact is that after 24 years of research and breeding, Golden Rice is still years away from being ready for release.”

Researchers continue to have problems developing beta carotene-enriched strains that yield as well as non-GM strains already being grown by farmers. Stone and Glover point out that it is still unknown if the beta carotene in Golden Rice can even be converted to vitamin A in the bodies of badly undernourished children. There also has been little research on how well the beta carotene in Golden Rice will hold up when stored for long periods between harvest seasons or when cooked using traditional methods common in remote rural locations.

Claire Robinson, an editor at GMWatch, has argued that the

rapid degradation of beta-carotene in the rice during storage and cooking means it’s not a solution to vitamin A deficiency in the developing world. There are also various other problems, including absorption in the gut, the low and varying levels of beta-carotene that may be delivered by Golden Rice in the first place and the rapid degradation of beta-carotene when stored.

In the meantime, Glenn Stones says that, as the development of Golden Rice creeps along, the Philippines has managed to slash the incidence of Vitamin A deficiency by non-GM methods.

In whose interest?

The evidence presented here might lead us to question why supporters of Golden Rice continue to smear critics and engage in abuse and emotional blackmail when they are not to blame for the failure of Golden Rice to reach the commercial market. Whose interests are they really serving in pushing so hard for this technology? 

In 2011, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a senior scientist with a background in insect ecology and pest management asked a similar question: 

“Who oversees this ambitious project, which its advocates claim will end the suffering of millions?”

She answered her question by stating:

“An elite, so-called “Humanitarian Board” where Syngenta sits – along with the inventors of Golden Rice, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and public relations and marketing experts, among a handful of others. Not a single farmer, indigenous person or even an ecologist, or sociologist to assess the huge political, social, and ecological implications of this massive experiment. And the leader of IRRI’s Golden Rice project is none other than Gerald Barry, previously Director of Research at Monsanto.”

Sarojeni V. Rengam, executive director of Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific, has called on the donors and scientists involved to wake up and do the right thing:

“Golden Rice is really a ‘Trojan horse’; a public relations stunt pulled by the agri-business corporations to garner acceptance of GE crops and food. The whole idea of GE seeds is to make money… we want to send out a strong message to all those supporting the promotion of Golden Rice, especially donor organizations, that their money and efforts would be better spent on restoring natural and agricultural biodiversity rather than destroying it by promoting monoculture plantations and genetically engineered (GE) food crops.” 

And she makes a valid point. To tackle disease, malnutrition and poverty, you have to first understand the underlying causes – or indeed want to understand them. Walden Bello notes that the complex of policies that pushed the Philippines into an economic quagmire over the past 30 years is due to ‘structural adjustment’, involving prioritizing debt repayment, conservative macroeconomic management, huge cutbacks in government spending, trade and financial liberalization, privatization and deregulation, the restructuring of agriculture and export-oriented production. 

And that restructuring of the agrarian economy is something touched on by Claire Robinson who notes that leafy green vegetables used to be grown in backyards as well as in rice (paddy) fields on the banks between the flooded ditches in which the rice grew. She argues that the ditches also contained fish, which ate pests. People thus had access to rice, green leafy veg, and fish – a balanced diet that gave them a healthy mix of nutrients, including plenty of beta-carotene.

But indigenous crops and farming systems have been replaced by monocultures dependent on chemical inputs. Robinson says that green leafy veg were killed off with pesticides, artificial fertilizers were introduced and the fish could not live in the resulting chemically contaminated water. Moreover, decreased access to land meant that many people no longer had backyards containing leafy green veg. People only had access to an impoverished diet of rice alone, laying the foundation for the supposed Golden Rice ‘solution’.

Whether it concerns The Philippines, Ethiopia, Somalia or Africa as a whole, the effects of IMF/World Bank ‘structural adjustments’ have devastated agrarian economies and made them dependent on Western agribusiness, manipulated markets and unfair trade rules. And GM is now offered as the ‘solution’ for tackling poverty-related diseases. The very corporations which gained from restructuring agrarian economies now want to profit from the havoc caused. 

Genuine solutions

In finishing, let us turn to what the Soil Association argued in 2013: the poor are suffering from broader malnourishment than just vitamin A deficiency; the best solution to vitamin A deficiency is to use supplementation and fortification as emergency sticking-plasters and then for implementing measures which tackle the broader issues of poverty and malnutrition.

Tackling the wider issues includes providing farmers with a range of seeds, tools and skills necessary for growing more diverse crops to target broader issues of malnutrition. Part of this entails breeding crops high in nutrients; for instance, the creation of sweet potatoes that grow in tropical conditions, cross-bred with vitamin A rich orange sweet potatoes, which grow in the USA. There are successful campaigns providing these potatoes, a staggering five times higher in vitamin A than Golden Rice, to farmers in Uganda and Mozambique.

The Soil Association says, despite the fanfare, Golden Rice has not yet actually helped a single person and if commercialised it will not be helping to reduce people’s reliance on a rice based diet. It believes that we could have gone further in curing blindness in developing countries years ago if only the money, research, and publicity that have gone into Golden Rice over the last 15 years had gone into proven ways of curing the Vitamin A deficiency that causes blindness.

However, instead of pursuing genuine solutions, we continue to get smears and pro-GM spin in an attempt to close down debate.

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

The current military and diplomatic situation in the Middle East demonstrates that the capability and quality of air defense forces is especially important for states operating in a tense geopolitical environment.

Saudi Arabia with Patriot surface-to-air missiles appeared to be unable to defend itself from missile and drone attacks by the Houthis. Thus, the Kingdom lost its remaining chances to achieve a military victory in the Yemeni war and resumed negotiations with the Houthis.

Devastated by the war on terrorism, Syria and Iraq are suffering from regular Israeli strikes carried out under a pretext of combating the so-called Iranian threat. The Trump administration strongly supports these actions and together with its Israeli counterparts fuel the anti-Iranian hysteria to justify its own policies in the region. In a recent interview to Jerusalem Post, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that Israel has a “fundamental right” to bomb what it wants to “ensure” its own “security”. In the event of a new round of tensions in the Persian Gulf, Iran’s ability to defend its territory from a possible aerial attack will be one of the factors shaping the course of the possible escalation.

The Islamic Republic already demonstrated its air defense capability on June 20, 2019, when forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shot down a U.S. RQ-4A Global Hawk BAMS-D surveillance drone that violated Iranian airspace near the Strait of Hormuz. Iran says that the Global Hawk was downed with its developed surface-to-air missile (SAM) system Khordad-3.

As a part of its multi-layered air defense, Iran employs a variety of short-, medium- and long-range systems. Earlier, the core of Iran’s air defense was foreign-made systems, including Russian, Chinese, and even US models. Today, Iranian air defense actively employs domestically produced systems. Most of foreign systems were locally modernized. The most capable foreign air defense system acquired by Iran is the Russian-made S-300, the delivery of which was completed in 2016. The most-widely known Iranian indigenous SAMs are the Bavar-373, the Khordad-15 and the Khordad-3.

Watch the video here.

The Bavar-373 is a multi-channel long-range SAM system created in Iran. According to the Iranian military, the system has a range of up to 200 km and altitude of up to 27 km. It is reportedly capable of hitting stealth air targets, cruise missiles and even warheads of ballistic missiles. Official Teheran says that the Bavar-373 is superior to the Russian S-300 and only slightly inferior to the S-400.

In 2019, Iran unveiled the medium-range SAM system Khordad-15. The system is capable of detecting fighter jets, cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles in a range of 150km and track them within a range of 120 km. The Sayyad-3 missile, employed by the system, has a range of 200 km. The Khordad-15 reportedly can detect stealth targets in a distance of 85 km and can intercept and destroy them within a range of 45km.

There are more SAM systems of Iranian design: Talash and Raad. Each unit of the Talash system includes three vehicles, a truck carrying Patriot-style missile launchers and two command and control vehicles. The Talash-1 is employed for low and medium altitudes, the Talash-2 – for medium to high altitudes, and the Talash-3 – for high and very high altitudes. The Talash-2 can engage targets at a range of up to 120 km, and an altitude of up to 27km. Some sources say that the Talash concept originates from the Patriot.

The Raad SAM family externally resembles the Russian Buk and Buk M2 systems. According to Iranian sources, it is designed to confront hostile aircraft, cruise missiles, smart bombs, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The system’s Taer-2 missiles can trace and hit targets in ranges up to 50 km and in altitudes of up to 25-27 km. Another missile employed by the SAM is the Sayyad-2. It has a range of 75km and a top altitude of 30. The most modern version of this SAM system is the Khorad-3 employed against the US Global Hawk in June.

The development of these systems is the visible demonstration of successes of the Iranian military industrial complex. Pro-Iranian sources say that Iran successfully joined the United States, China and Russia in the club of the countries capable of producing effective long-range SAM systems. However, the tactical and technical data of the latest Iranian SAMs that are presented in the open press is very limited, and there are almost no data on the probability of interception of various types of targets. The degree of protection of Iranian SAMs from electronic warfare also remains a question. Accordingly, their real combat capabilities in the event of an armed conflict with a high-tech enemy cannot be estimated using the existing data. Another question is how successful can Iran’s multi-layered air defense be against combined drone, ballistic and cruise missiles strikes that Saudi Arabia experienced during the past years.

Representatives of the Trump administration, including the US president himself, repeatedly threatened Iran with a military action. However, no threats were ever turned into reality, even in a form of a symbolic move like the US missile strike on Syria’s Sharyat airfield. The US stance of empty threats and symbolic gestures is likely not a result the powerful Iranian air-defenses nor Washington’s attempts to avoid an open military escalation in the region. During the years of sanction pressure and military threats, Iran developed a complex asymmetric warfare doctrine. This doctrine provided the Iranian leadership with a number of means and measures that it can employ to deliver a painful blow to its adversaries, which consist primarily of the Israeli-US-Saudi alliance. Therefore, the cost of a military aggression against the Islamic Republic in the current conditions appears to be too high for sides that could be involved.

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This article was originally published in 2011.

At the beginning of 2010, right-wing billionaire Sebastian Piñera Echenique defeated Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, candidate of the “Concertacion” coalition of social democrats and centrists, which has ruled Chile since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, by a margin of 51 to 49 percent in a runoff election. In October of that year, Piñera managed to manipulate the media into giving him credit for the rescue of 33 miners in a collapsed copper mine, and his popularity rating went up to 63 percent.

Now, as the latest of blows from a mass upsurge not seen since the days of socialist President Salvador Allende, Piñera’s popularity rate is at 31 percent. And 31 of the 33 miners are suing the Chilean government for negligence, for not having properly supervised safety conditions at the privately owned San Jose copper and gold mine in the bleak Atacama region. The mine had a history of safety problems, which the plaintiffs say were not properly dealt with by the responsible government agency, the National Service of Geology and Mines (Sernageomin). They are asking courts for the equivalent of U.S. $16 million. They are also suing the owners, according to AFP.

The announcement of the suit comes on top of massive student demonstrations, a one-day strike in the biggest copper mine in the world, and a long running fight against the construction of a huge hydroelectric project farmers and environmentalists say will wreck an environmentally sensitive area. In the Chilean Congress, deputies from the Communist Party and its allies have introduced legislation to nationalize private mining concerns.

The student protests have roots in the measures taken in education by the military regime of General Agosto Pinochet Ugarte, who overthrew socialist President Salvador Allende Gossens on September 11, 1973. Pinochet broke up the national education system by devolving control to local communities, which had the effect of greatly increasing inequality of educational resources and quality between rich and poor students.

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Education announced sharp cuts to the budgets for schools and universities. Almost immediately, protests arose.  Tens of thousands of students and teachers, in this country of 15 million people, have been marching and protesting since the middle of June. Protesters want an end to the decentralized system and its inequities, and budget increases to increase educational opportunities from kindergarten to university for the poor and working class.

Students in the United States can sympathize, especially, with the Chilean students’ complain that to study, they have to get themselves deeply into debt through student loans. At writing, Piñera made an offer of an increase in scholarship funds, but student and teacher organizations are holding out for much more money and a complete restructuring of the system.

On July 14, a particularly militant demonstration in downtown Santiago, Chile’s capital, led to a wild melee between students and police, with a number of injuries and arrests. Chilean Communist Party deputy Lautero Carmona hailed the marchers and denounced the repression, pointing out that, against the expectations of the government, the students had managed to put together a protest of over 150,000 people. Carmona also warned that repressive actions toward protesters reflect nostalgia for the Pinochet days within the present government.

On July 11, as many as 40,000 unionized employees and subcontracted workers, members of the Federacion de Trabajadores de Cobre (Copper Workers Federation), carried out a highly effective one-day strike at the Chuquicamata mine, the largest copper mine in the world, which is run by the government’s Codelco company. Other Codelco units were also struck. The strike by the miners, who have some of the best pay and benefit scales in Chile, was in response to “restructuring” plans announced by management. Management wants to cut about 2,600 jobs, but the union suspects that privatization schemes are also in the works.

Chuquicamata produces about a third of Chile’s copper, which is a big part of copper production worldwide. The Chuquicamata mine was nationalized by Allende’s socialist government in 1971, and never re-privatized up till now. But the head of Codelco is now Diego Hernandez, who formerly headed Chilean operations of the private Anglo-Australian mining company BHP Billiton, giving the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The environmental and farmers protests in southern Chile have to do with a massive hydroelectric project to be carried out by the HidroAysen Company, the BBC reports. The project, designed to increase the generation of power other than from fossil fuels, involves damming two important rivers in Patagonia, in the far south of the country. Local farmers object to being forced off their lands, and environmentalists worry that the damming of the rivers will upset delicate ecological balances. They also say that Chile would not need huge expansions of its electrical generating capacity if the huge overuse of power by private industry, especially the mines, were better regulated. Opponents of the dams have gone to court to stop them, as well as protesting.

To these massive protests one may add a long conflict over the treatment of the Mapuche people, the major indigenous group in Chile, and investigations into the real circumstances of the 1973 deaths of President Allende and of communist poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda.

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Emile Schepers is a veteran civil and immigrant rights activist. Emile Schepers was born in South Africa and has a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Northwestern University. He has worked as a researcher and activist in urban, working-class communities in Chicago since 1966. He is active in the struggle for immigrant rights, in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and a number of other issues. He now writes from Northern Virginia.

It is a pity that some groups and individuals are urging palm oil importers in India to refrain from buying the commodity from Malaysia. The Solvent Extractors Association of India, India’s top vegetable oil trade body is one such outfit. Apparently, this boycott is a sort of “punishment” for Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s remarks on Kashmir at the United Nations General Assembly on 27^th September 2019.

The Indian government has reportedly protested against Dr Mahathir’s criticism of Indian action in Kashmir. However so far it has not voiced support for the call to boycott Malaysian palm oil. There are also groups such as the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee that have come out against  the reduction of Malaysian palm oil imports by India because of the possibility of retaliatory measures that could impact adversely upon workers from Tamil Nadu employed in the information technology sector and restaurant business in Malaysia.

This is one of the dangers of trade boycotts and the like in bilateral relations. They escalate quite easily doing irreparable damage to ties that have been cultivated over a long period of time. It is commendable that the two governments have displayed a degree of restraint. Vested interests, political parties and civil society groups in India and Malaysia should also demonstrate their maturity and approach the issue at hand in a balanced manner.

Since both countries are practising democracies, criticisms of certain aspects of the policies and practices of one another should be viewed as integral to their underlying value system. A democracy does not overact to a critical comment about its policy or practice. This is especially so if the state in question is also the world’s largest democracy.

Besides, one should examine the view expressed by Mahathir without any blinkers. Its main thrust was that the longstanding Kashmir conflict should be resolved “by peaceful means.”  UN resolutions on Kashmir should not be disregarded. This is a position that a number of other governments have also expressed from various platforms.

At the crux and core of the UN’s stand on Kashmir is the solemn recognition that the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir should be accorded primacy. This is why right from the outset the UN had urged all sides involved in the conflict to allow for a UN supervised plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir which would decide the destiny of the people of that region. In other words, the people of Jammu and Kashmir should exercise their sacred right of self-determination.

In the early decades, self-determination was understood as the people of Jammu and Kashmir joining either India or Pakistan. In recent years, a new dimension has emerged.  Self-determination in the real sense must also mean the people’s right to establish their own independent, sovereign state of Jammu and Kashmir which is part of neither Pakistan nor India.

Whatever the eventual goal, self-determination as a principle has not only been ignored but often suppressed. Uprisings by the people have been mercilessly crushed, the most infamous of which was the Jammu Massacre of 6^thNovember 1947. It is alleged that Indian occupation forces alongside Dogra forces and RSS militants killed around half a million Kashmiri Muslims. Killings have continued in the last seven decades. It was this that Mahathir alluded to in his UN speech.

It is important to emphasise that these massacres have spawned the rise of militants and militancy in Kashmir. While militancy in Kashmir is largely home-grown and is intimately interwoven with the legitimate struggle for self-determination, it is quite conceivable that it receives material and moral support from elements in the Pakistani power stratum. This support and the militancy itself have now complicated the quest for a just solution to the conflict.

Sometimes political decisions made by New Delhi intensify — perhaps unwittingly — militancy among Kashmiris. The recent revocation of Kashmir’s special status through the abrogation of Article 370 in the Indian Constitution on the 5^th of August 2019 is a case in point.  A portion of Kashmiris will interpret the revocation and all that it implies in terms of ownership of land, the right of settlement and the alteration of ethnic and religious demographics as the wilful annexation of Indian occupied Kashmir into the Indian Union and therefore a clear repudiation of the desire of the Kashmiri people to determine their own future.

It appears that the abrogation of Article 370 will only perpetuate the violence and the bloodshed associated with one of the longest political conflicts in modern times.

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Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). he is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

In December, 1990, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 678, which “authorized” the devastating saturation bombing of Iraq (at one point the UK dropped one bomb per minute on Baghdad, according to the NY Times), which “destroyed the infrastructure necessary to support human life in Iraq,” and, as described by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who visited Iraq following the UN authorized massacre of Iraqis, left the formerly developed country in such horrific ruins that hospitals had no electricity and surgeons operated by candlelight;  Clark witnessed a 17 year old girl whose leg was so mangled by the bombings that it had to be amputated without anaesthesia, which was no longer available as a result of the bombings.

Though war was abhorrent to Malaysia and Columbia, their acquiescence to the War Resolution 678 was obtained by coercion of their Foreign Ministers by US Secretary of State James Baker; the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, and lacked the strength to veto the resolution, and China was not yet the world power it became in the next 25 years.  Formerly stable Iraq has become destitute, and the incubator of terrorism.

In March, 2011, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973 “authorizing” the bombing of Libya, and under Medvedev, the Russian Federation abstained in the voting, and the Resolution passed.  Though Russia claimed it did not anticipate the complete destruction of the Libyan state, which became destitute, and another incubator of terrorism, it is difficult to believe that Russia was so naïve.  China also abstained, allowing the abhorrent resolution to pass. Libya’s leader of a previously fully functioning state, Omar Khadafy, was captured, tortured to death, sodomized with a bayonet

With these “successes” in transforming the UN into an instrument of war, in complete betrayal of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s purpose in founding the UN, and with the West’s success in “legitimizing” the destruction of oil producing states, leaving them barren of protection of their national resources, and ripe for plunder of their natural patrimony, barely four months had passed when suddenly the condition of “human rights” in Syria became the obsession of the UN Security Council, and President Assad was demonized, as formerly Saddam Hussein and Khadafi had been prior to UN “authorized” slaughter.  Once again, the West tried to force another Chapter VII War Resolution through the Security Council, but this time, Russia no longer pretended ignorance of the horrors such a resolution would inflict,  China had seen enough of this now predictable abuse of the Security Council, and during ensuing years through 2013, each time the West tried to force through another war resolution both Russia and China vetoed this, three times in succession, and it became clear that the game was over.  Though Russia and China were, of course, blamed for the Security Council’s “paralysis,” in fact, they saved Syria from the genocidal Chapter VII Resolutions. The trajectory of slaughter, from Iraq to Libya and onward was broken, and Syria and its government were saved from the horrors of Security Council “authorized” massacres.

Nevertheless, by numerous devices, the war in Syria continued until today, as the West tried to obliterate President Assad’s government by all methods of disinformation, propaganda, training and funding and incitement of terrorists from throughout the world, attacking the Syrian government, until, finally both Russia and the United States were drawn directly into the crucible of Syria.  On October 19, 2019 two draft resolutions were put to a vote at the Security Council.  The first, submitted by Belgium, Germany and Kuwait, and opening the door to a follow-up War Resolution under Chapter VII was vetoed by Russia and China, following a brilliant speech by Russian Ambassador Nebenzia, exposing the hypocrisy and ulterior motivation of that draft resolution.  The second draft resolution submitted by Russia and China S/2019/757 was opposed by the US, the UK, France and six other members of the Council, with four abstentions, including Indonesia and South Africa. The UK was particularly defamatory and venal in their accusations against China.  Pathological Russophobia is now a given, throughout the West, in a new McCarthyism, possibly more dangerous than the original one.

Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari ended the meeting with one of the most powerful statements in memory:

“Once again, we find ourselves in the Security Council, facing a surreal, absurd scene that the three Western Permanent members of the Council keep repeating as they don the mantle of the humanitarian penholders…It is now confirmed that the ink of that pen dries up when it comes to the war crimes and crimes against humanity that were committed and are still being committed by what is called the international coalition, led by the United States and its proxies from terrorist organizations and affiliated illegitimate militias….We also have tens of thousands of documents that we have obtained from terrorist hideouts, documents written by terrorists, containing vast amounts of information demonstrating that certain Gulf parties are complicit in sponsoring terrorism in Syria….Support is being provided to terrorism in Syria and Iraq.  Did Daesh and the Al-Nusra Front, this human garbage, appear out of thin air?  Who sponsored those terrorists and issued them visas?  Who allowed them to move across international capitals?  Who gave $2,500 to each terrorist in order to work as a sniper and kill Syrians?  Who trained them?  How are they being redeployed from Idlib to Nigeria, Algeria, Afghanistan and Yemen?…What we are suffering today will hit others tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. If Council members are negligent about fighting terrorism in Syria, terrorism will beset them all.  Monsters have come to us from Europe, Arab States and Central Asia.  They are human-shaped monsters.  They must be returned to their homes if international humanitarian law is to be enforced.  Let the monsters return to the countries and capitals they came from.  We do not want them.  We have the right to fight them until the very last among them.  It is a matter of sovereignty under international law.”

The West, having failed to get Security Council “authorization” to attack Syria militarily, using “all necessary means, thanks to the sanity and genuine humanitarian concerns of Russia and China, has, for the past half-decade attempted to totally dismember Syria by “all other means,” either directly, or through its proxy, Saudi Arabia, using the most barbarous terrorists, imported, trained and funded indirectly.

This was denounced on yet another Security Council meeting, September 30:

Mr. Seifi Pargou (Islamic Republic of Iran):

“It is very unfortunate that, not just in this meeting but in each and every meeting, the Saudis are trying to divert people’s attention from the realities in our region.  It is a fact that Saudi Arabia is the major problem; it is the main source of instability in our region.  Look at the seminaries from Central Asia to Libya. Who is nourishing them?  Who provides financial assistance to the seminaries who train the takfiri and other extremists who have spread throughout the region and elsewhere, destabilizing them entirely?  I do not want to go into our history with Saudi Arabia, but it is well known that its hostility towards Iran is boundless–$110 billion dollars during the course of the war to kill and maim around 1 million Iranians—or for terrorism in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.  Who provides those terrorists with arms?  They make accusations against us with regard to human rights, inter alia, while their dark human rights record is so well known.  Eleven out of fifteen of the perpetrators of the crimes on 11 September 2001 here in the United States were Saudi Citizens.”

Today the U.S. military is ostensibly leaving Syria.  Turkey is now engaged, and the Kurds may be switching alliance to the Syrian government. It is impossible to predict future developments within a world today convulsed by riots against austerity measures and deteriorating living standards, from Chile to Lebanon, Spain, Egypt, Iraq, India, etc. etc.  On October 21 the Financial Times reported fears of recession and a background outlook of gloom at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington.  Is the last crisis of capitalism imminent, or will an army of “Killer Robots” programmed by the financial elites crush global protest against this obscene level of inequality potentially leading to global fascism?

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y. she is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Neoliberalism is all about serving privileged interests at the expense of ordinary people, exploiting them so the wealthy and powerful can benefit.

It’s about dominance over democracy, profits over populism, and private interests over the public welfare – a zero-sum game benefitting monied interests over all others, societies made unsafe and unfit to live in for ordinary people.

Adam Smith long ago said governments are “instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor.”

Ruling authorities and business partner for their own self-interest at the expense of the rights and welfare of working class people — notably in the West and its client states.

For the past two weeks, millions of Chileans have been protesting against exploitive neoliberal harshness, inequality, and deep-seated corruption  — in Santiago, the nation’s capital, and elsewhere in the country.

They demand billionaire/fascist president Sebastian Pinera’s resignation, new ruling authorities replacing him and his cronies, better wages, education, healthcare, and pension reforms, along with a new constitution, stressing equity and justice for all Chileans.

After declaring a state of emergency on October 18, a greater Santiago area curfew a day later, Pinera deployed military forces to the streets for the first time since Pinochet’s fascist rule replaced Salvador Allende’s social democracy.

Pinochet’s 17-year reign of terror (1973-1990) included mass arrests, disappearances, torture and murder. Opposition government officials, academics, union heads, independent journalists, student leaders, activists, and other suspected regime opponents were targeted for elimination.

On 9/11/73, tanks, troops and warplanes attacked government buildings, Pinochet elevated to power with CIA help.

Blood in the streets, the presidential palace in flames, and Allende’s elimination ended the most vibrant democracy in the Americas.

A state of siege and “caravan of death” followed. Chicago School fundamentalism triumphed, its brave new world forcefully imposed on Chileans, nonbelievers targeted for elimination.

Neoliberal harshness followed, including mass privatizations, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, corporate tax breaks, trade union crackdowns, and fascist tyranny replacing Chile’s model social democracy.

In Pinochet’s first year in office, inflation hit 375%, thousands lost jobs, US and other Western imports forced closure of local businesses. Hunger, homelessness, poverty, and deprivation replaced equity and justice for all.

Pinochet’s Chile featured repression and unfairness. Unfettered capitalism replaced social safety net protections.

By the late 1980s, nearly half of Chilean households were impoverished. Privileged elites benefitted hugely.

Inequality remains extreme today. Chile is one of Latin America’s most unequal societies. Longstanding policies shifted wealth to its privileged class at the expense of its ordinary people.

Predatory capitalism creates wastelands. Chile remains a model of economic unfairness, its working class exploited so its ruling class and monied interests can benefit.

Promises made by ruling authorities to cool mass outrage are hollow, largely ignored and forgotten when calm is restored.

From the other 9/11 in 1973 to today, ordinary Chileans have been exploited to benefit its privileged class and the West.

Since protests began, Pinera declared war on long-suffering Chileans, wanting equity and justice they’re denied.

They want governance serving everyone, not just the privileged few. Chilean inequality created a wasteland for its working class, the way its been for decades.

Pinochet is gone. His ghost remains. Sebastian Pinera was a firm supporter of the Pinochet regime. Chileans want it exorcised – similar protests for social justice ongoing in France, Haiti, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Gaza, and elsewhere. They can erupt wherever injustice exists.

Notably in Chile and Lebanon, millions are involved against decades of social injustice, controlling the streets, going on strike, engaging in disruptive civil disobedience.

They’re undeterred by police state tactics, staying the course, demanding long denied equity and justice.

In response, Pinera arrogantly declared: “We are in a war against a powerful enemy…one that does not respect anything and is willing to use violence and delinquency without limits.”

Dominant local and Western media echo his false narrative, supporting privileged interests over the rights and welfare of long-exploited Chileans.

Reportedly on Saturday, Pinera asked his ministers to resign. The military ended days of curfew.

According to Reuters, a document it obtained “suggested Pinera was considering replacing the heads of at least nine ministries, including the ministries of interior, defense, economy, transportation and environment.”

Chileans was him and all ruling authorities gone, a clean sweep for change.

The struggle for the nation’s soul continues, what’s needed throughout the hemisphere, the West, and elsewhere.

Positive change never comes top down, always bottom up, popular revolution the only way to achieve 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.

The Opening Scene

The 14^th September 2019 attack which had caused significant damage to Saudi based Aramco Oil plants in Abqaiq and Khurais, was the trigger for much of the recent rise in regional tension  at least when it comes to Saudi- Iran relations.

However, given the way that recent events have unfolded, it seems that a commitment to a comprehensive and fair investigation is not exactly on the agenda.

If anything, there seems to be a more concerted effort in doubling down on a narrative that Iran is responsible for the attack despite the mind-boggling irrationality of why Iran would commit such an aggressive action where it stands to gain almost nothing from it.

Iran doesn’t need to worry about competing with Saudi Arabia over oil markets given the ridiculously draconian economic sanctions placed upon it by the U.S. To attack Saudi Arabia in such an open fashion would only result in loss of global political standing while risking retaliation and antagonism which opens up more avenues for potential conflict which Iran, given its historical experience dealing with the global hegemonic warmongering engine that is the U.S, does not want to risk entering.

In short from a geo-political strategic standpoint, Iran doesn’t benefit at all, from such a move.

So why would it commit such a bold and brazen attack?

Mystery and Misdirection

Nonetheless, various officials from the United States of America, almost without hesitation have jumped into a murky pool of unsubstantiated conjectures while hyping up the sensationalized fictional bogeyman of Iran. Their primary motivation is nothing more than their own antagonistic foreign policy stance and agenda against the Iranian state.

Even when Yemen’s Houthi rebels’ armed forces, claimed responsibility for the attack, as payback for Saudi Arabia’s continuous aggression towards the Yemeni people (which is completely backed and supported by the US government) their claim was dismissed with the argument that the 10 unmanned drone operation of 14^th September was something far beyond the capabilities of the Yemeni people.  The attack, US officials and others alleged, was far more effective and too “neat” compared to previous attempts by the rebels and “likely originated from Iraq”.[1]

It should also be mentioned that this attack is also a significant embarrassment for the Saudis and the U.S. as the Saudi government had spent a significant amount to purchase the U.S. air defence system which had failed to defend their oil installations

Analysis of the drone parts however, revealed some interesting factors, namely that the drone parts developed was beyond the technological capability of both Yemen and Iran. Historically speaking, Iran’s missile arsenal, while formidable in its own right, has long been plagued by poor reliability and guidance problems. This fact alone would debunk the Saudi narrative.  The logistical and technological assets are just not in the capabilities of the Iranians at this time.

The missiles on the other hand which were shown through pictures supplied by the Saudi Defence Ministry itself had indicated through the number MC 79050 a Joint Electronics Type Designation System (JETDS). This particular missile type is one of many developed by the Counter Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), all of which were confirmed by the Saudis to have been fired from the Iraq-Kuwait border. The missiles themselves were speculated to have been supplied from Ukraine. Some have even gone on to suggest that it may have been the work of rogue U.S. elements [2]

However with the Saudis bullishly pushing through this narrative, it becomes clearer, that the agenda here is to implicate Iran as the instigator, wilfully ignoring the lack of evidence and the lack of plausible motive while simultaneously not giving credence to the plight faced by the Yemeni people.

Even when China’s own Xi Jinping, expressing concern over the issue as the attack had caused quite a stir within the International energy market, called for a comprehensive and just investigation into the incident[3]  — a fairly standard and sensible approach to calming the tensions between the Saudis and the Iranian state for the sake of international energy security — China was rewarded with new rounds of American sanctions against it for dealing with Iran on oil.

Considering all these factors, one begins to wonder about a few things.

Firstly why is there such an insistence that Iran be painted as the criminal in this story despite the poor foundation of the accusations?

Second, as we have shown, Iran does not stand to benefit from this event, which is why the question has to be asked: who benefits the most from this whole debacle?

The answers are found among the role-players themselves who are now in a situation that can only be called grand geo-political theatrics with the protagonists being the U.S. and its allies, Saudi Arabia the hapless victim, and Iran, the proverbial bad guy.

Heroes, Villains and Victims

Saudi Arabia has called for retaliation against the Iranian state and has played its role as a victim of aggression. Saudi Arabia play-acting is what is perhaps best described as bad comedy and to many who have followed the issue, the irony is not lost. Since 2015, the Saudis have been massacring the civilian population of Yemen. According to data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, 67 percent of all reported civilian casualties in Yemen have been caused by Saudi-led coalition air strikes making them the “most responsible for civilian deaths” in Yemen since 2015. The current death toll now exceeds over 90,000 with many more suffering from treatable diseases in the midst of crumbling social infrastructure due to the on-going hostilities by the Saudis.[4]

The leading role of the hero will most likely be the U.S. and its allies who not only perpetuate the narrative against Iran but also, as we have noted, militarily support the brutal war against the Yemeni people, one of the poorest people on earth. Apart from supplying arms to the unpopular Yemeni government, the US is also helping to enforce a naval blockade. A recent article by Amnesty International observes that a laser guided bomb manufactured by US company Raytheon, was used in a Saudi-led attack which killed six Yemeni civilians, three of whom were children.[5] In addition to this mess, the United Kingdom government has come out saying that it “unreservedly” apologised for authorising arms deals to Saudi Arabia in breach of a court ruling against the sale of weapons that could be used in the war in Yemen.[6]

With the U.S. and the Saudi state fanning the flames, one should also ask: what would be their motive for perpetuating and escalating conflict in the region?

Some have laid the blame directly at the U.S. administration and President Donald Trump, accusing the president of going back on his election promise to end US involvement in military conflicts in West Asia.

But is that true?

Trump, despite many other failings, has shown considerable restraint by rejecting demands to launch major attacks on Iran. If his previous actions are any indication of what his stance on conflict escalation is, notably on wanting to draw down forces from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria (his decision to pull out of Syria resulted in the resignation of his then Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis), Trump is more inclined to avoid getting caught in another costly war.  He would rather strike a deal with his foe.

One simply has to recall during the previous Presidential Election Campaign when Trump adamantly labelled the entire Middle East Wars as “stupid” and given that he is aiming to contest for the U.S. Presidential election next year, it makes little to no sense to commit American lives to another senseless war. It also goes without saying that should the US involve itself in a military operation against Iran, it will only expose its forces in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan Somalia and other places in the region to hostilities and possible Iranian guerrilla attacks[7].

So while it may be an admittedly contestable conjecture at this point, if we entertain the idea that this whole scenario was a false flag operation (something the U.S. has been historically known to do to attack sovereign foreign governments), it stands to reason it is not Trump’s administration that is directly coordinating these events in recent weeks and in fact there may be those within the U.S. government that seek to oppose the President on his own foreign policy stance.

The murky swamp that is the deep state of the U.S. largely controlled by the neocons, has always been the lever  of power within the U.S. administration and many in it have served to advance the Zionist project of the Israeli State. Exemplifying this is perhaps people like prolific warmonger John Bolton, who unlike Trump, seeks very much to enter into military conflict with Iran. He was quoted in 2017 by the Mujahedeen Khalq, MEK, which is represented by members of the Iranian exile group, as saying that the Trump Administration should embrace their goal of “regime change” in Iran and that before 2019, they will “celebrate in Tehran”.

Lest we forget, it was John Bolton, who vigorously campaigned against Tehran, and he was the one who ultimately demolished the hard and long struggle for the Iran Nuclear deal, tearing it to pieces and causing further rifts between Iran and the U.S. and essentially damaging U.S. foreign policy for the Trump Administration.

Bolton succeeded to some extent but in early September 2019, he was asked by President Donald Trump to resign as the National Security Advisor, noting that he “strongly disagrees” with many of Bolton’s suggestions “as did others in the administration”[8].

Perhaps it is coincidental, but one cannot help but draw a connection between Bolton’s resignation, and the Saudi oil plant attack as it had occurred soon afterwards.

With all that was mentioned previously, it would seem that the U.S. and Donald Trump’s Administration would benefit very little from this event and may face more backlash from it. Why then does the U.S. insist on pushing this poorly structured narrative of Iran’s involvement in the September 14 attack?

Does Bolton and his neo-con friends in the deep state have anything to do with this attack, and if so why and what would they have to gain?

Perhaps at this stage we must look beyond the theatrical show being presented to us and have a peek behind the proverbial red curtain and follow the puppet strings that are being pulled.

Hidden Hands Behind the Curtain

President Donald Trump’s call for John Bolton’s resignation via twitter had sent some shockwaves within the bureaucracy of the U.S. Administration, especially with Trump now having gone through a total of three National Security Advisers, H.R. McMaster, Michael Flynn and now Bolton.

Bolton’s dismissal brings us back to the question of who stands to gain?

To encapsulate, there is no credible evidence to suggest Iranian involvement. The Trump Administration gains almost nothing from the attack. So who stands to benefit from it?

One suspect is the Saudi elite with its prolonged proxy war against the state of Iran, more commonly known as the Iran-Saudi proxy conflict. The Saudi elite sees itself as a regional power. It views Iran as a direct challenge to that ambition.  This conflict is primarily political and economic in practice, but there have been attempts to exacerbate religious tensions especially between the Sunni and Shia sects within the Muslim Ummah.  This has repercussions beyond West Asia. Its impact upon Malaysia is an example. Influential Saudi trained preachers continue to demonize and vilify Shia groups and religious practices. Though there is hardly an indigenous Shia community in Malaysia, this vilification obviously serves the larger Saudi agenda of marginalising Shias and Iran.

However if we do not wish to entertain the idea that Saudi Arabia is willing blow up its own oil infrastructure to begin a false flag  operation to justify military action against Iran, then we have to abandon “the  Saudis did it theory”. Besides, the attack as we have acknowledged was a sophisticated technological exercise beyond Saudi capabilities. Even a false flag operation would play into the hands of the local Shia population that inhabits that particular geographical area in Saudi Arabia and for that reason would undermine the interests of the Sunni helmed Saudi state.

This leaves us with one other country that fits the proverbial bill and perhaps stands to gain the most from the deliberate targeting of Iran. It is the Zionist state of Israel.

Israel’s link to the lobbyist movement in America, its relationship with the neo-cons and its close historical ties with the deep state are all embodied in its intimate tie with John Bolton.

The Israeli government, in particular Benjamin Netanyahu, had hoped that by working through Bolton, there would be a more vigorous US policy against Iran, especially as mentioned before, Bolton clearly had been campaigning for maximum pressure against Iran, with him calling for more sanctions and the cancellation of the Iran Nuclear Deal as soon as he became National Security Adviser in April 2018.

All for the state of Israel.

Upon John Bolton’s dismissal from the Trump government, there were definitely segments in the Israeli Administration that were left uneasy by his departure. As a case in point, Amos Yadlin, the head of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv stated that “There’s no doubt that there’s sadness in Jerusalem” as John Bolton had “greatly amplified the Prime Minister’s position [on the issue]. But even with Bolton, Washington’s Iran Policy wasn’t heading in a direction that Netanyahu wanted.” [9]

Much like how the attacks at the Saudi Oil Plant happened a few days after Bolton’s dismissal, it is also coincidental that the attack had occurred around the same time as Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to annex more Palestinian land, especially Palestine’s Jordan Valley.

The biggest fear for Israel, is that if the Trump Administration, suddenly favours détente with Iran, Israel may have to stand alone against Iran, something it has never had to do being backed by US   Administrations all along.

So perhaps this whole incident may have been a response to that. Escalation of military tensions, justifying military aggression towards Iran, will not benefit Saudi Arabia and the U.S. but it will benefit Israel’s agenda centring around its perpetual quest for continuous land annexation, expansion of  power and enhanced control over the region. The one country that seeks to counter this parasitic drive for power and control is Iran. Iran’s presence in the region balances Israel’s and the U.S’s . hegemonic expansionism and quest for total dominance. Because the Iranian people have suffered so much from decades old US sanctions and Israeli manipulations, they are determined to protect their sovereignty, independence and dignity at all costs.

Seen from this perspective, the Saudi oil attack may have been an Israeli ploy to draw the US and the Saudi government into a more serious conflict with Iran. It is a misstep because the ploy has not worked. Both the US and the Saudis are very much aware of the dangers of a military conflict with Iran.

In fact, the whole 14^th September episode reveals how complex the geopolitical game in West Asia is. We don’t know how the game will end. We only hope that the theatrics that we have witnessed so far will not culminate in a huge tragedy for the people of West Asia and indeed for the entire human family

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Hassanal Noor Rashid is JUST Programme Coordinator, Kuala Lumpur

Notes

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/14/middleeast/yemen-houthi-rebels-drone-attacks-saudi-aramco-intl/index.html

[2] Eric Margolis Eric Margolis (2019), Who launched that Mystery Attack, 24 September 2019

[3] Xinhua (2019) Xi Condemns Saudi Oil Strike

[4] Matthias Sulz (2019) Political Violence &Protes Events, Yemen, January 2015-June 2019, https://www.acleddata.com/2019/06/18/yemen-snapshots-2015-2019/

[5] Amnesty International (2019) https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190926-amnesty-us-arms-used-to-kill-civilians-in-yemen/

[6] Middle East Eye (2019) UK apologises for Saudi arms sales in breach of court ruling, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-government-apologizes-inadvertent-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-breach-court-ruling

[7] Eric Margolis (2019), Who launched that Mystery Attack, 24 September 2019

[8] Zachary Cohen, Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Piptak (2019) Trump Fires John Bolton,  https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/10/politics/trump-john-bolton-out/index.html

[9] Neri Zelber (2019), What Bolton’s Departure Means for Israel, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/12/what-john-bolton-departure-means-for-israel-netanyahu-iran-trump/

A popular anecdote is currently doing the rounds on Twitter:

“The year is 2192. The British Prime Minister visits Brussels to ask for an extension of the Brexit deadline.  No one remembers where this tradition originated, but every year it attracts many tourists from all over the world.”

It may be a joke, but it expresses something of the helplessness of the current Brexit gridlock, which has no end in sight. With Parliament passing a motion to delay the vote on Boris Johnson’s recently negotiated Brexit deal to allow proper scrutiny and debate, and the EU considering whether or not to grant an extension to the negotiation period, we seem no closer to a Brexit date than we were three years ago.

The EU looks set to grant a further extension to the negotiation period, as Boris Johnson was forced by parliament to write a letter asking for a further delay last week. It’s not clear however how long for, although at the moment the likelihood is it will be till the end of January, according to European Council President Donald Tusk. Tusk is reported to have phoned the leaders of the 27 member states this week to ask their thoughts on giving a further extension and also to establish whether they would be happy ratifying such an extension without coming to Brussels (as is normally required). So far, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has endorsed Tusk’s proposal, with doubts only being expressed about view of France’s President Macron, who in the past has indicated he would not support a further extension. In any case it seems that critical to the EU’s decision will be whether or not the UK government can explain a reason for delaying Brexit further, and given the fact that Johnson himself does not want an extension, it’s not clear whether such information will be provided to the EU.

We’re somehow getting used now to the dual narrative coming out Number 10; for months the Prime Minister has said he wanted a Brexit deal with the EU, but all other indications suggested he was holding out for a No Deal Brexit on 31st October. Even as recently as Wednesday, despite having negotiated a deal with the EU, and likely to be gifted an extension, he stated that he still wanted the UK to leave the EU on 31st October. However Johnson has now been forced to abandon this idea once and for all; writing to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on Thursday night to say he would give parliament one last opportunity to examine his withdrawal agreement bill and ‘get Brexit done’ by 6th November. In exchange for this he is tabling a motion under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act for Monday which will ask for a general election. Such a motion requires the backing of two-thirds of MPs – 434 altogether.

In his letter to Corbyn, the PM wrote: ‘An election on 12th December will allow a new parliament and government to be in place by Christmas. If I win a majority in this election, we will then ratify the great new deal that I have negotiated, get Brexit done in January and the country will move on’. However, although he may get the support of the Scottish Nationalists for this, both the Labour opposition and Liberal Democrats have indicated they will not support such an election until the EU has given its verdict on an extension. But Labour have said they won’t make any final decision till the EU have said whether they will grant an extension and it’s been reported Labour MPs have been instructed either to abstain from Monday’s general election vote or vote against it.

As yet, the EU have not announced their verdict on granting an extension, and there is no evidence that they will be speedy in delivering their response. According to The Guardian, sources said the French government wants to see the outcome of Monday’s vote before deciding whether to allow a further delay, reportedly because they don’t want to be seen to influence UK politics. On Friday it was reported that Michel Barnier said they would grant an extension, but so far the EU has not confirmed how long for. It has to be said the organisation has been extremely long-suffering in what has been 3 years of stalemate and fruitless talks. Nevertheless, it’s clear that patience is running thin with the UK’s indecisiveness. Last week, President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker said Brexit was a ‘waste of time and energy’ as he expressed regret for how much time he had spent on it. Such Brexit fatigue will only play into Boris Johnson’s hands as we head towards a general election…

There are also a number of falsehoods being spun at present which muddy the waters even further. Boris Johnson has repeatedly said his withdrawal deal has been ‘passed by parliament’ when in fact it hasn’t – it’s only just passed its second reading. This is not the first time Johnson has been creative with the truth since he came to office, and while his motivation may be to boost the government’s position, it has the effect of sowing further mistrust in the Prime Minister and his cabinet. However, Labour MPs are also not blameless, as they continue to repeat that they will not vote for a general election till ‘No Deal’ is taken off the table. Indeed they must know that in order for No Deal to be ruled out, a general election would have to be called.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist.

In this post, I make a preliminary attempt at assessing the provision made in the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill – or WAB – for the scrutiny of the legislative powers which it delegates to the executive.  My conclusions are not positive.  The scrutiny procedures it seeks to enact are inadequate – so inadequate that it would be a constitutional mistake for Parliament to approve this aspect of the WAB without significant amendment.  At the very least (or so I suggest) the Bill ought to be amended to incorporate the so-called “sifting process” developed for equivalent delegated powers under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (EUWA).  Better still, this should be seen as an opportunity to embrace further incremental improvements on that process.

The scrutiny provisions in the WAB are comparable to – indeed they are partly modelled on – the arrangements initially proposed for delegated legislation under EUWA as originally published.  But in that original form, those proposals did not survive parliamentary scrutiny.  They were widely condemned as an inappropriate transfer of power to the executive, emphatically criticised by multiple parliamentary committee inquiries, and ultimately amended.  In other words, the scrutiny arrangements in WAB are an attempt to revisit an approach to scrutinising delegated legislation which Parliament has already recently rejected and amended.   Enacting them would be a regrettable step backwards in terms of scrutiny of executive legislative activity, and would contradict the considered Parliamentary verdict on this issue elaborated during the passage of the 2018 Act.

At the time of writing, the government’s first programme motion – which proposed an extremely compressed timetable for scrutiny of the Bill – has been rejected by the House of Commons.  But it remains government policy to pursue an extremely fast passage through Parliament for the WAB, certainly fast enough to inhibit thorough scrutiny of its proposals.  With that accelerated context in mind, this post is not comprehensive – I generalise a little, I omit discussion of some important delegations and some nuances, I necessarily speculate on the full substantive importance of some clauses, and I have undoubtedly missed things (particularly but not exclusively connections between various aspects of the overall scheme in the Bill).

Still, the structure of the key elements of the Bill’s approach to delegated legislation is relatively clear.  Alongside many discrete delegations (which I do not discuss here) two significant bundles of delegations can be discerned.  All of the powers in each of these two bundles are “Henry VIII” powers – i.e. they extend to the amendment of primary legislation.  And moreover (because they each rely on the definition of “enactment” in clause 37) all are prospective Henry VIII clauses.  That is, these two main bundles of delegated powers in the WAB both empower the executive to amend primary legislation, including primary legislation passed after the passage of the WAB itself.

The first group, which I will call the Implementation Powers, consists of provisions concerning the domestic regulation of the Implementation Period.  These take the form of insertions by the WAB into EUWA (in particular new sections 8A, 8B and 8C, which themselves take effect alongside and can be used to moderate the application of new sections 7A and 7B).  Now, the substantive scope of the first two of these powers is not necessarily clear on the face of the Act.  Section 8A would empower the executive to modify how provisions of EU law (saved from the repeal of the ECA by section 1A) are read in domestic law. And Section 8B empowers the executive to implement Part 3 of the Withdrawal Agreement, that is the “Separation Provisions” concerning the winding down of the application of EU law in the domestic legal order and the disentanglement at the end of the implantation period, including the regulation of the continued circulation of goods placed on the market before separation, ongoing customs procedures, taxation, intellectual property and police cooperation.  It is hard to confidently anticipate the possible uses of this kind of power.   This substantive opacity of these delegations is comparable to the similar characteristic of EUWA s8.  And as the use of s8 for a remarkably broad range of policy interventions has demonstrated, this kind of substantively opaque delegation has the potential for staggering scope (for discussion and examples, see here and here).  It would be unwise to assume that these powers are tightly constrained by the Treaty they are designed to implement and sensible to anticipate that as the substantive scope of s8A and s8B emerges, they will have the potential to be used in similar ways, and with similar range, to the s8 power.   On the other hand, Section 8C is a remarkable clause whose substantive potential is plain on its face – it delegates to the executive essentially full authority over the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Proper scrutiny of that task – which has been at the heart of negotiations throughout, and whose resolution remains delicate – is fundamental to the legitimacy of the withdrawal process.

The scrutiny requirements for the exercise of these Implementation Powers are – consistent with the existing logic of the EUWA – inserted into Schedule 7 of that Act.  Schedule 7’s existing provisions famously (following the amendments secured in Parliament during that Act’s passage) include the “sifting mechanism” through which dedicated committees (in each House) can recommend that some statutory instruments which would otherwise be subject only to negative procedures be upgraded to affirmative procedures.  Whilst those recommendations are not binding, they have generally been followed by the government.  And the institutionalisation of that process has resulted in the development of a parliamentary practice of case-by-case reflection on the appropriate scrutiny level for different instances of delegated legislation and an increasingly sensitive engagement with the underlying question of what kinds of delegated legislation ought to be subject to what kinds of scrutiny.  Unfortunately, the WAB’s insertion into Schedule 7 of scrutiny requirements for the Implementation Powers does not tie into this sifting mechanism.  Instead, it simply repeats precisely the approach which Parliament had previously judged inadequate.  The scrutiny requirements for each of ss8A, 8B and 8C are organised around the simple formulaic presumption (which appears again and again, not just here but throughout the WAB) that instruments be subject to negative procedures unless they amend primary legislation (or, roughly equivalent, what is known in the withdrawal scheme as “principal EU legislation”).  That is, the use of these powers as Henry VIII powers is the primary trigger for affirmative parliamentary scrutiny.  But this is a problematic presumption – the use of delegated powers to amend primary legislation is, of course, an important activity which needs proper scrutiny.  But the prominence of this presumption risks masking the – often equally significant – uses to which delegated legislation can be put without altering primary legislation.  Some other specific substantive uses of these powers do also trigger affirmative scrutiny – in particular, 8C (the NI protocol implementation power) cannot be used to reform public authorities, impose fees, create new criminal offences, create legislative powers, or modify market access rules without parliamentary approval.  But the bulk of legislative activity under these clauses will, under the scheme as published, be subject only to negative procedures in Parliament. In summary: 8A, 8B, and 8C empower the executive to legislate with significant scope in important policy areas, and a substantial proportion of exercises of those power – certainly much higher than under comparable delegations in the EUWA – will not be subject to affirmative scrutiny in Parliament and cannot be upgraded to undergo such scrutiny.

The second significant group of delegated powers, which I will call the Citizens’ Rights powers, are created in WAB clauses 7-14.  They empower the executive to implement the whole range of provisions in the Withdrawal Agreement for citizens’ rights including residence, entry, frontier workers, recognition of professional qualifications, social security coordination, discrimination and employment rights, and the creation and administration of appeals or review mechanisms against some decisions taken in those contexts.  In contrast to the Implementation Powers, this bundle is far from opaque.  The substantive significance of this delegation of legislative power is plain to see; it covers essentially the entirety of one of the broadest, most sensitive and most important policy areas in the withdrawal process.  And, again, whilst they are undoubtedly subject to some constraints in that they are limited to the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement, they clearly empower extensive intervention by the government.

The scrutiny requirements for these Citizens’ Rights powers are set out in WAB Schedule 6.  They follow the same formulaic pattern that we saw applied to the Implementation Powers above:  the starting point is that their use as Henry VIII powers is subject to affirmative scrutiny.  The first uses of each of the cl.7-9 powers (which need not be far-reaching) are also subject to affirmative scrutiny.  But other and subsequent exercises of these powers (which certainly could be far-reaching) will be subject only to negative scrutiny, again with no provision made for any mechanism to upgrade the scrutiny given to negative instruments.

The WAB’s provisions for the scrutiny of delegated legislative power are, then, consistently arranged around an inadequate formulaic approach, which guards mainly against the abuse of delegated powers as Henry VIII clauses, but (due to the limitations of the prevailing negative procedures) leaves most other exercises of these powers essentially unscrutinised.  Furthermore, the combination of formulaic criteria with the absence of a sifting mechanism means that the allocation of scrutiny mechanisms to these powers is wholly inflexible – no provision is made to enable the upgrading to affirmative procedures of significant exercises of the delegated powers which would otherwise be subject only to annulment; and it would in effect require subsequent primary legislation to introduce any such flexibility into the scheme.  The range of policy areas to be subjected to this inflexible and inadequate framework – and thus left to the executive shielded from effective Parliamentary scrutiny – is extremely broad. On its face, it encompasses two of the most significant policy arenas of the whole withdrawal process, the Northern Ireland protocol and Citizens’ Rights.  And the Implementation Powers will undoubtedly be used to legislate in other important policy areas.

What amendments ought to be made is, however, an awkward problem given that time pressures are suppressing the usual institutional mechanisms for exploring this kind of problem and carefully proposing alternative approaches.  In normal circumstances (and using the passage of EUWA as a guide) this issue would be tackled, drawing on a wide range of expertise, by multiple parliamentary committees, likely including (in the House of Commons) the Procedure Committee and (in the House of Lords) the Constitution Committee and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.  And the committees involved in the sifting process under EUWA – the European Statutory Instruments Committee and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the Commons and Lords respectively – might also take the opportunity to share their experiences with that scheme. The probable bypassing of this aspect of the normal legislative process on the WAB is a startling illustration of the scrutiny gap between this Bill and more typically timetabled legislation.

On the substance, the starting point for amendments on this issue must be an acknowledgement that under-scrutiny of delegated legislation is a standing problem in the UK constitution.  Accordingly, statutes delegating significant substantive powers to legislate (like the WAB, but also more generally) should incrementally innovate in order to improve the situation.  Yet as published, the WAB proposes a step backwards.  And even the sifting process in EUWA represented only modest progress.  On the one hand, section 8 instruments are among the best scrutinised in the UK constitution.  But on the other hand, experience has shown that there are still important (but in principle avoidable) limitations on the effectiveness of even that scrutiny process:  far-reaching policy changes are still subject to little or no proper scrutiny even under the sifting mechanism.  So at the very least, WAB should maintain the standards set in EUWA:  the provisions on scrutiny of the Implementation Powers and the Citizen’s Rights powers should be amended in order to bring legislation made under those powers into the regime of the sifting mechanism.  On further examination, this is likely also to be the case for other powers which I have not covered here.  Ideally, amendments would go further still, in the light of the experience of that sifting mechanism. In particular, consideration should be given to making the recommendations of the sifting committees binding (or perhaps, at the very least, more difficult to circumvent) and to ways of enabling them to prompt better informed and more far-reaching debate (where appropriate) on the floor of the House.

The scale of the withdrawal process makes large scale delegation inevitable; its very nature entails a shift of authority towards the executive.  This issue needs careful management – yet the approach to scrutiny taken in the WAB is wholly unsatisfactory.  It was rejected by Parliament last time it was proposed.  It should be rejected again in favour of more intrusive scrutiny techniques.

I am grateful to Mike Gordon, Alexandra Sinclair and Joe Tomlinson who generously commented on earlier drafts of this post at – obviously – very short notice.

Adam Tucker, University of Liverpool

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The Western media is reporting that US military forces have killed the supposed leader of the so-called “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) in Syria’s northern governorate of Idlib.

Newsweek in its article, “Trump Approves Special Ops Raid Targeting ISIS Leader Baghdadi, Military Says He’s Dead,” claimed:

The United States military has conducted a special operations raid targeting one of its most high-value targets, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), Newsweek has learned. President Donald Trump approved the mission nearly a week before it took place. 

The article also claimed:

Amid reports Saturday of U.S. military helicopters over Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, a senior Pentagon official familiar with the operation and Army official briefed on the matter told Newsweek that Baghdadi was the target of the top-secret operation in the last bastion of the country’s Islamist-dominated opposition, a faction that has clashed with ISIS in recent years.

Newsweek would include “details” of the supposed raid worthy of a Hollywood action movie finale, claiming:

The senior Pentagon official said there was a brief firefight when U.S. forces entered the compound and that Baghdadi then killed himself by detonating a suicide vest. Family members were present. According to Pentagon sources, no children were harmed in the raid but two Baghdadi wives were killed, possibly by the vest detonation.

As with most every claim the Western media or the US military makes without any sort of evidence, this most recent story cannot or shouldn’t be trusted, especially when there’s little to nothing that can be verified about it.

Timing is Everything 

The supposed military operation – unfolding just miles from the Syrian-Turkish border – comes at a time when the prospects of America’s proxy war in Syria have reached all time lows.

First – US proxy forces jointly armed and aided by Turkey as well as other US allies – have been all but eliminated from the battlefield with their remnants residing in Idlib, increasingly encircled by Syrian forces.

Attempts by the US to intervene in Syria directly to oversee the overthrow of the government in Damascus was also thwarted by Russia’s military intervention beginning in 2015.

US forces have most recently retreated from the Syrian-Turkish border in Syria’s northeast, setting the stage for a joint Russian-Turkish agreement that appears poised to see the disarmament of Kurdish militants or their possible integration into Syria’s security forces. The deal also aims at fully restoring Syria’s territorial integrity – fully derailing Washington’s secondary plans to “Balkanize” Syria.

The Russian-Turkish deal comes at a time when US-Turkish relations are particularly shaky, with Ankara realigning itself within a Middle East emerging out from under decades of US hegemony.

Despite alleged ISIS leader al Baghdadi lurking about Syria and Iraq throughout the duration of Syria’s war – why has the US with all its vast resources only now been able to “find” and “eliminate” him? The timing and location couldn’t have been better for the US if the entire incident was staged.

And regardless of whether the US staged the operation or not – the truth about who truly created and directed ISIS throughout the duration of the Syrian war – resigns al Baghdadi’s death ultimately as theater.

The US Created ISIS to Begin With… 

The US has admittedly spent billions of dollars arming militants throughout the duration of the Syrian war.

Articles like Foreign Policy’s, “The Pentagon Is Spending $2 Billion Running Soviet-Era Guns to Syrian Rebels,” or the New York Times,’ “C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say,” in headlines alone indicate the extensive nature of US efforts to arm militants fighting against the Syrian government from 2011 onward.

If the US and its allies were providing billions in weapons, equipment, and other forms of support to militants claimed to be “moderates,” who was providing even more weapons, equipment, and other forms of support allowing extremist organizations like ISIS to rise to prominence and even supposedly displace or lure over US-backed militants?

The answer is simple – the US – as it has in all of its other wars of aggression – simply lied. There were never any “moderate” militants. The US deliberately misled the public about the nature of its proxy war in Syria. From the beginning – in fact long before the beginning of the Syrian war – the US was knowingly funneling aid into the hands of extremists with ties to groups like Al Qaeda and its various affiliates.

Far from mere speculation, it was the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) itself in a 2012 leaked memo that admitted, “the West, Gulf monarchies, and Turkey” were behind the rise of a what at the time was being called a “Salafist principality.”

The leaked 2012 report states (emphasis added):

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

To clarify precisely who these “supporting powers” were that sought the creation of a “Salafist” (Islamic) principality” (State), the DIA report explains:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

In other words, the US, its European allies, and its closest allies in the Middle East, sought the rise of a “Salafist” (Islamic) “principality” (State) in eastern Syria, precisely where ISIS eventually manifested itself.

Stories like USA Today’s “The U.S. bought weapons for Syrian rebels — and some wound up in the hands of ISIS terrorists,” sought to incrementally spin how ISIS suddenly found itself awash with weapons and in a dominate position among Syria’s “opposition” alongside other Al Qaeda affiliates like Al Nusra.

In reality – as journalist like Seymour Hersh warned as early as 2007 in the pages of the New Yorker – US plans from the beginning centered around the arming and unleashing of extremists against Syria and its allies.

What is the Meaning of the Baghdadi Raid? 

Thus – at best – a US military operation eliminating the figurehead of ISIS is more akin to liquating one’s own assets rather than any sort of “victory.” Much more likely still – is that the operation is mere theater – with the US seeking relevance and leverage amid the conflict it itself engineered, triggered, and deliberately perpetuated – but now finds itself being evicted from.

While the world waits for evidence – if any evidence even emerges – analysts and interested parties alike would benefit more from looking at how the US plans to leverage and move onward from this supposed “raid” rather than obsessing over the supposed details of it.

One may hope the US uses it as a spectacular finale before fully withdrawing from Syria – including from its oilfields – and allowing the nation and its people to finally and fully restore order while undertaking the long process of reconstruction.

The proximity to Turkey’s border and recent rhetoric coming out of Washington suggests it may be leveraged to prolong the conflict further.

One may also hope diplomatic efforts by Syria’s allies are underway to coax Washington toward adopting the former option instead of the latter.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the alleged leader of ISIS is dead.

President Trump confirmed that he was under surveillance and that he had ordered his execution.

“He died like a dog, he died like a coward,”

The President said he watched the operation from the Situation Room but would not give more details of what type of feed it was.

Who is Al Baghdadi, leader of the ISIS? Was he an asset of Western intelligence?

Relevant article first published by GR on December 28, 2015.

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The visit took place on May 27, 2013.

According to news reports:

Arizona Senator McCain crossed into Syria form Turkey with General Salem Idris, who leads the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, and stayed there for several hours before returning back.

The senator met with assembled leaders of Free Syrian Army units in both Turkey and Syria.

According to AP, McCain crossed the border near Kilis, Turkey, and spent two hours meeting with ‘rebel leaders’ near Idlib, Syria. The article further states that McCain made the trip in order to demand “aggressive military action in the 2-year-old Syrian civil war, calling for the establishment of a no-fly zone and arming the rebels”.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/john-mccain-syrian-rebels_n_3368036.html

Presidential Spokesman Jay Carney said “the White House was aware in advance of McCain’s plans to travel to Syria. Carney declined to say whether McCain was carrying any message from the administration, but he said White House officials looked forward to hearing about his trip”.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/john-mccain-syria_n_3346886.html

Here is an ABC News report on the visit, posted to YouTube: it speaks for itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbfsTcJCKDE

McCain’s two-hour visit has garnered a lot of attention because some bloggers claim that two of the rebel leaders seen in the photos that McCain posted to his Twitter account look very much like leaders of the Islamic State: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Muahmmad Noor.

https://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/senator-john-mccains-whoops-moment-photographed-chilling-with-isis-chief-al-baghdadi-and-terrorist-muahmmad-noor/

The New York Times, on Sept. 11, 2014 mentioned the blog Socioeconomic History in an article  that attempted to help McCain by simply claiming that the Internet “rumors” were “false”; however the Times didn’t provide any details: only a denial by McCain’s communications director and another denial by the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a DC lobbying organization led by a Palestinian employee of AIPAC, which arranged the senator’s visit.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article185085.html

(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/world/middleeast/try-as-he-may-john-mccain-cant-shake-falsehoods-about-ties-to-isis.html)

While information about Muahmmad Noor is hard to find, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the alleged leader of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh).

Other blogs have denied that the man seen talking to McCain is al-Baghdadi, pointing to decoy photographs provided afterwards by the US and the Iraqi government.

However, the photographs that McCain posted to his Twitter account and a video published by the IS on July 5, 2014, in which al Baghdadi is leading Friday prayers in Mosul, are eerily alike.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SZJMMdWC6o)

Not only that, the man in the first photograph of Al-Baghdadi released by the U.S. in 2011 looks identical to the man who met with McCain.

The United States held al-Baghdadi in a military prison in Iraq named Camp Bucca from 2005 to 2009 (or 2010) and then released him, allegedly at the request of the Iraqi government. As he was being turned over to the custody of the Iraqi government, he reportedly told his US military captors, “I’ll see you in New York”. (quoted by Fox News)

http://insider.foxnews.com/2014/06/13/next-bin-laden-isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi

Camp Bucca is worth more attention, as it may have been a recruiting and training center for fighters who would go on to lead the IS.

Right after al-Baghdadi was freed, the Islamic State emerged out of nowhere and rapidly took over important swaths of Iraq and Syria. The U.S. officially designated al-Baghdadi a terrorist on October 4, 2011, and offered the $10 million reward for his capture or killing. This was when the U.S. released its first photograph of its former prisoner.

Subsequently, the U.S. released another mug shot from Camp Bucca, which doesn’t look like the first, partly because the man has glasses and a heavy beard. A really bad photograph released by the Iraqi Interior Ministry, like the second US mug shot, also seems to be a decoy intended to cover up al-Baghdadi’s connections with the U.S. government. It doesn’t appear to be the same man.

The details about al-Baghdadi’s background are as blurry as the Iraqi Interior photograph. He is reported to have been born in Samarra, north of Baghdad, on July 28, 1971. According to an article in The Telegraph, he was a Salafi, who became al-Qaeda’s point man in Qaim in Iraq’s western desert. The article states:

“Abu Duaa was connected to the intimidation, torture and murder of local civilians in Qaim”, says a Pentagon document. “He would kidnap individuals or entire families, accuse them, pronounce sentence and then publicly execute them.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10566001/Meet-al-Qaedas-new-poster-boy-for-the-Middle-East.html

Al-Baghjdadi would be only 43 when he was filmed leading prayers in Mosul in 2014, and 42 when he met with John McCain in 2013. The McCain photos and the Mosul videos show a man of about that age.

Senator McCain has a long relationship with the CIA as the president of the State Department-funded International Republican Institute. The IRI organized the overthrow of Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004, and has been involved in many other overthrow operations, including the coup in Ukraine.

According to journalist Thierry Meyssan, who is based in Damascus, McCain participated in every color revolution over the past 20 years. Also according to Meyssan, McCain chaired a meeting held in Cairo on February 4, 2011, which NATO had organized to launch the “Arab Spring” in Libya and Syria. The so-called uprising in Syria began shortly afterward. http://www.voltairenet.org/article185085.html

Meyssan’s claim that McCain is intimately involved with CIA-organized overthrows makes lot more sense than the fiction that nobody knows who Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is or how this violent Iraqi al-Qaeda leader ended up meeting of ‘Syrian rebels’ with the senator inside of Syria. The inescapable conclusion is that all of the men at the meeting, including al-Baghdadi are CIA assets, and that IS is a CIA creation.

GR. Editor’s Note: The author of this article has requested that his name not appear due to the sensitive nature of this text.  While GR has verified the sources and evidence presented herewith, the usual disclaimer applies (see below). 

276 more Russian Military Police officers and 33 additional equipment pieces will be deployed in Syria, Russia’s state media reported. These forces will likely participate in security operations along the Syrian-Turkish border to the east of the Euphrates River.

Additionally to the deployment in Kobane, the Russian Military Police already started carrying out patrols near the city of Qamishly.

On October 24, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin announced that Kurdish forces had started withdrawal from the border area.

Watch the video here.

Nonetheless, the implementation of the ceasefire is not going without difficulties. On October 24 afternoon, the Syrian Army repelled an attack by Turkish-backed militants near the villages of al-Kozleya and Tell al-Laban in northern al-Hasakah. Clashes between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Turkish-backed groups also took place near the villages of Assadiya, Mishrafa and Manajer.

Pro-Turkish sources say that these attacks were conducted in response to ceasefire violations by Kurdish militias. The Turkish Defense Ministry revealed that 5 soldiers were injured in the Syrian province of al-Hasakah on October 24 in a series of attacks by Kurdish forces. However, the official Turkish version claims that its forces do not violate the ceasefire regime.

The SDF are ready to discuss the idea of joining the Syrian military once a political solution is reached in the war-torn country, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led group, Mustafa Bali, told Russian media. Bali claimed that “all parties must recognize that there is a political crisis that needs to be resolved by political means”. This kind of statements is quite different from the language of ultimatums, which the SDF used when US troops were present in northern Syria. This change indicates that a political solution is in fact can be reached.

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After nearly eight and a half years of conflict, the Syrian government and the country’s armed forces finally seems to be consolidating a victory over the Islamic State and other opposition forces that had formerly dominated the bulk of the land area of the West Asian country.

By the end of August, the Syrian military forces’ had recaptured a former rebel stronghold – the strategic town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province – a major victory in its efforts to re-establish control of Syrian territory.

Shortly after, at the beginning of October, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that his country’s military would be launching a military assault in the northeast section of Syria, a region controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish militia. The Trump Administration then announced it would be withdrawing troops stationed in the region in the face of bipartisan outrage and concern that America’s allies in the area, the Syrian Kurds, would be left at the mercy of the attacking Turkish army.

As of this writing, a new peace agreement, secured by Russian President Putin and Turkish President Erdogan, has halted the Turkish offensive.

The larger picture, however, is that Syria, like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya before it, has been targeted by the U.S. for regime change. A sophisticated propaganda apparatus has concealed this agenda of conquest behind the benign aphorism of ‘humanitarian intervention’ – protecting vulnerable freedom loving Syrians from a brutal dictatorial leader.

Consequently, elements of the anti-imperialist Left have accepted the demonization of Assad, and have condemned Trump’s U.S. troop withdrawal even though U.S. Force presence in Syria is illegal. The Kurds, for their part have attracted the sympathies of the American mainstream, as well as the anarchist and feminist Left.

Debunked claims about the use by Assad of chemical weapons against his own people or the ‘heroic’ White Helmets rescuing civilians from the rubble of the Syrian war go unchallenged.

This week’s Global Research News Hour radio program examines and deconstructs some leading pro-war Syrian narratives as the Russia-Turkish peace deal takes effect.

In our first half hour, we hear from Laith Marouf. This political commentator and Middle East analyst provides some historical context for the recent Turkish incursion and the agreement brokered recently to resolve that situation. We next hear from a member of the Syrian diaspora in Canada, Majd Zooda, about the removal of Waseem Ramli from a high profile Syrian representative post in Montreal and what it means for Syrian and non-Syrian Canadians. Finally, we re-air part of an interview by Chris Cook of CFUV’s Gorilla-Radio with Journalist Vanessa Beeley about her August article on Canadian human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler and his championing of the White Helmets.

Laith Marouf is a long time multimedia consultant and producer and currently serves as Senior Consultant at the Community Media Advocacy Centre (www.cmacentre.org) and the coordinator of ICTV, a project to secure a national multi-ethnic news television station in Canada (www.tele1.ca). Laith derives much of his understanding of Middle Eastern Affairs from his ancestral background of being both of Palestinian and of Syrian extraction. He is currently based in Beirut.

Majd Zooda is a Ph.D. Candidate in science education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She was born in Kuwait but moved to Damascus in 2005 where she lived until 2012 before moving to Canada.

Vanessa Beeley is an independent investigative journalist and photographer. She is associate editor at 21st Century Wire. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 274)

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This article was first published on May 11, 2019

With US-backed militants having already reached the full extent of their gains on the battlefield and now facing incremental but inevitable defeat – the US appeared to be out of time and out of options.

Then suddenly – as if on cue – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – alleged leader of the so-called “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) was resurrected after US claims he had died years early, and provided the US with the perfect pretext to militarily intervene in Syria anyway.

A July 2014 BBC article titled, “Isis chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appears in first video,” would claim:

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamist militant group Isis, has called on Muslims to obey him, in his first video sermon. 

Baghdadi has been appointed caliph by the jihadist group, which has seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria.

The sudden wave of violence unleashed by ISIS across Iraq and Syria was on such a scale that only state sponsorship could have accounted for it.

Creating the Perfect Enemy 

In fact – the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as early as 2012 had even noted (PDF) a Western and Persian Gulf-led conspiracy to create what it called at the time a “Salafist” [Islamic] “principality” [State] precisely in eastern Syria where ISIS would eventually find itself based.

The DIA document would explain (emphasis added):

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

On clarifying who these supporting powers were, the DIA memo would state:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

The goal had been to further isolate the Syrian government in aid of Washington’s ultimate goal of overthrowing Damascus. When growing numbers of extremists failed to do this, the US then used the presence of ISIS as a pretext for a revised version of the direct military intervention Russia had thwarted just a year earlier.

For one year the US posed as fighting ISIS while simultaneously seizing Syria’s oil fields and building an army of militants it had hoped to use to both push ISIS into Syrian government-held territory, and with which to fight the Syrian government itself.

By 2015, Russia began its own military intervention. It immediately targeted ISIS supply lines leading out of NATO-member Turkey – something the US has failed to do up to and including today, isolating the terrorist group within Syrian territory before Russian air power along with Syrian, Iranian, and Hezbollah ground forces encircled and eliminated them along with Al Nusra and other extremist groups everywhere west of the Euphrates River.

On the American-occupied side of the Euphrates, ISIS persisted until just this year and at times was even protected from pursuing Syrian and Russian forces by a US-declared exclusion zone.

It is now clear US efforts to overthrow the Syrian government have failed. It is also clear that Washington’s pretext for illegally occupying Syrian territory is no longer politically tenable.

Just as America’s presence in Syria was becoming increasingly awkward and unsustainable, al-Baghdadi has again emerged – just in time – to grant the US victory in eastern Syria but to also remind the global public that ISIS is still an enduring threat that will require America’s continued presence in the region.

The US response to al-Baghdadi’s reemergence was telling, even complimentary. An AFP/New York Times article titled, “ISIS releases first videotape of Baghdadi in five years, US vows to track down surviving leaders of militant group,” would report:

The United States vowed on Monday (April 29) that it would track down and defeat surviving leaders of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) movement after its elusive supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appeared to speak in a newly released videotape. 

The US-led coalition against the group will fight across the world to “ensure an enduring defeat of these terrorists and that any leaders who remain are delivered the justice that they deserve”, a State Department spokesman said.

US hegemony requires the US military to maintain a presence around the globe – which in turn requires a perpetual pretext to do so. Just as the US deliberately created ISIS to serve as a pretext for illegally occupying Syrian territory remain there indefinitely – it has and will continue to use ISIS’ convenient expansion worldwide to justify a continued, global US military presence worldwide as well.

Washington Couldn’t Create a more Convenient Villain 

Students of history would be hard pressed to find similar examples of a military or political leader like al-Baghdadi who openly, even eagerly conceded defeat and grant a supposed adversary a massive political victory. So convenient and artificial is al-Baghdadi’s most recent reappearance and all of his alleged activities in the past that many around the globe are questioning the veracity of the video and of al-Baghdadi himself.

Considering America’s own Defense Intelligence Agency has all but admitted the US deliberately created ISIS in the first place – it takes no stretch of the imagination to conclude they created al-Baghdadi as well.

The summation of ISIS’ fighting capacity is drawn from its admitted state sponsors – both Saudi Arabia and Qatar – as admitted by US politicians themselves, the UK Independent would report.

Riyadh, Doha, and in turn, those underwriting both regimes in Washington – are the true “leaders” of ISIS – arming, funding, and directing the terrorist organization – with al-Baghdadi a mere figurehead who emerges when the needs of Western foreign policy and propaganda require.

If the US could create a villain to consistently serve Washington’s interests both in Syria and around the globe, they would have difficulty creating one more ideal than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Tony Cartalucci is Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from NEO

“Da un quarto di secolo”, scrive Michel Raimbaud, “questo amabile paese figura in primo piano nella lista dell’Asse del Male (nelle parole dell’ineffabile Debeliou, imperatore dei bigotti e capo progettista di massacri seriali). Uno Stato canaglia, uno Stato paria, uno Stato “preoccupante” (a scelta), viene accostato all’Iran, all’Iraq di Saddam, alla Libia di Gheddafi, a Cuba, alla Corea del Nord, all’ex Unione Sovietica e la Russia di oggi, la Cina di sempre. “

Per i neoconservatori è necessario “dissanguare lentamente la Siria”

L’autore cita un articolo premonitore, pubblicato nel febbraio 2000, un mese prima del vertice Clinton-Assad, firmato dal neoconservatore David Wurmser. Quest’ultimo chiede inequivocabilmente di non dare tregua alla Siria, di intrappolarla in un conflitto in cui “sanguinerà lentamente fino alla morte”! Tutto un programma …

‘Le guerre di Siria’ dà al lettore un’analisi storica e geopolitica senza precedenti per la sua chiarezza, la sua profondità geostrategica e il suo spirito di sintesi e dialettica, spiegando senza mezzi termini le vere ragioni dell’accanimento occidentale in generale e degli Stati Uniti in particolare contro questo paese chiave. È in linea con il suo precedente libro geopolitico, “Tempesta sul Grande Medio Oriente”, pubblicato nel 2015, ristampato nel 2017, tradotto in arabo con la prefazione di Richard Labévière. Attraverso la guerra contro la Siria, iniziata nel febbraio-marzo 2011, sulla scia delle mal soprannominate primavere arabe, made in USA, come dimostra il nostro amico Ahmed Bensaada nella sua magistrale indagine “Arabesque$” sul ruolo degli Stati Uniti nelle rivolte arabe (la prima edizione risale al 2011, una seconda edizione ampliata è stata pubblicata a Bruxelles e Algeri nel 2016), Michel Raimbaud rivela una moltitudine di guerre, almeno quindici: una guerra dell’Impero contro gli Stati recalcitranti; una guerra al servizio di Israele; una guerra per il controllo delle vie energetiche; una guerra contro la Russia, la tradizionale alleata (di Damasco ndt), che ha ritrovato, grazie alla resilienza di Damasco, la sua grandezza e il suo ruolo di protagonista nella scena internazionale; una guerra contro l’Iran, l’altro Stato paria, e contro la resistenza libanese, che, grazie in particolare alla Siria, ha somministrato una umiliante sconfitta all’occupante israeliano; una guerra mediatica senza precedenti nella storia e, ultimo ma non meno importante, una guerra contro l’internazionale jihadista sostenuta dalla Turchia, dalle monarchie del Golfo e dall’Occidente, senza tuttavia nascondere la guerra civile stessa.

Autopsia di un “complotto confessato”.

Con prefazione dello scrittore Philippe de Saint Robert, un gollista che fu al centro dell’elaborazione della politica araba della Francia sotto de Gaulle e Pompidou, oggi svanita, il libro è composto da 15 capitoli, densi, ricchi, didattici, e spiega le radici di queste guerre, addita i loro attori, analizza i loro metodi operativi e analizza, alla fine, le vere ragioni della sconfitta di questa vasta impresa criminale. Si va dalla “vecchia ossessione” di distruzione della Siria che ha guidato i passi dei suoi numerosi nemici, allo svolgersi della guerra stessa, alla creazione di un’opposizione esterna, al progetto che i neoconservatori stanno alimentando per l’asservimento della Siria, alla guerra dei media, alla strumentalizzazione del terrorismo per abbattere un potere secolare, alla genesi dell’asse di resistenza e, infine, alla guerra per la pace, la riconciliazione e la ricostruzione.

In tutti i capitoli, l’autore che aborrisce le principali tesi dei media mainstream che si sono distinti nell’arte di mascherare la realtà e di prendere i desideri dei loro sponsor per la realtà, chiama le cose con il loro nome. È uno dei rari geopolitologi che non si sono lasciati intimidire dai media, dagli esperti, dai politologi da operetta che, in una unanimità che non sopporta alcuna contraddizione, avevano profetizzato troppo rapidamente per lo Stato siriano un crollo certo e imminente. Ebbene, sono stati miseramente smentiti. La Siria, dopo nove anni di guerra che è durata più a lungo delle due grandi guerre mondiali messe insieme, è certamente ancora sanguinante, martirizzata, distrutta, assediata, ma ancora in piedi. Senza aspettare la liberazione delle ultime parti ancora occupate del suo territorio dagli Stati Uniti e dai loro ausiliari europei, la Turchia e i suoi burattini, daechisti e qaidisti, sta già iniziando a lavorare.  Ad Aleppo, Homs, Palmyra e ovunque siano stati spazzati via i parassiti terroristi, sono iniziati i cantieri di ricostruzione, senza attendere la revoca delle sanzioni occidentali, che sono criminali oltre che essere controproducenti. Il popolo siriano, che ha stupito il mondo per la sua capacità di resilienza, senza dubbio lo sorprenderà maggiormente per la sua capacità di ricostruirsi e ricostruire il suo paese contando prima di tutto su se stesso ma anche sui suoi alleati (Russia, Cina, Iran …). Vale la pena ricordare che la Siria, sin dalla sua indipendenza, si è costruita e sviluppata senza l’aiuto dell’Occidente, perfino malgrado esso… La diga dell’Eufrate, i principali progetti di ristrutturazione sono stati completati contando innanzitutto sulle capacità e sul dinamismo del popolo siriano stesso con il sostegno dei suoi veri amici dei paesi orientali e dei non allineati.

Questo libro, afferma Michel Raimbaud “fornirà alcune idee, forse rispondendo alle domande di coloro che vorrebbero capire. È anche dedicato agli ‘spiriti forti’ a cui “non la si fa”, agli scettici che dopo tutto questo tempo ‘non si pronunciano’ tra “il massacratore” e “l’opposizione pacifica” che ha preso le armi in Siria, alle “anime belle” normalmente incredule quando si evoca di fronte a loro l’attivismo delle nostre “grandi democrazie”. “Speriamo”, scrive ancora, “che sarà in grado di aumentare la cultura dei fruitori del dibattito televisivo, di alimentare le informazioni degli intervistati del micro-marciapiede. Sarà utile ai manichini tentati dal riciclaggio, agli intellettuali bloccati nel loro schema “rivoluzionario”, ai produttori di notizie rinchiuse nella loro menzogna, a coloro che avranno la memoria che vacilla e fingono di non ricordare molto bene. ”

Il merito di questo libro non si limita all’informazione e all’analisi, alle confutazioni, che mettono le cose in chiaro sulla realtà della guerra contro la Siria. L’immensa qualità di questo libro risiede nel coraggio del suo autore, che attraverso i suoi scritti precedenti e in particolare il suo libro di riferimento sulle questioni geopolitiche di questo conflitto (Tempesta sul Grande Medio Oriente), è stato in grado di opporsi alla follia politico-mediatica e alla cecità collettiva riguardo alla Siria. Dallo scoppio della guerra mondiale contro la Siria nel febbraio-marzo 2011, poche persone stavano scommettendo un copeco sulla possibilità che lo Stato siriano emergesse vittorioso. Noi facevamo parte della redazione di Africa-Asia, questa minoranza che aveva scelto con lucidità, argomentazioni a sostegno, di smentire tutte le “Cassandre”. Michel Raimbaud era uno di questi. Proprio come il nostro amico Richard Labévière, uno dei pochi geopolitici francesi ad aver analizzato a fondo i dettagli della “guerra globale” contro la Siria, in particolare dal punto di vista della lotta contro il terrorismo, e che ha pagato un pesante tributo per il suo impegno per la verità, che aveva messo in guardia in una famosa cronaca pubblicata nel numero di febbraio 2015 di Afrique-Asie con il titolo premonitore: “Terrorismo e diplomazia: diritti contro il muro suonando il clacson”. Fondatore e capo-redattore del quotidiano online Proche et MoyenOrient, è anche uno specialista in relazioni internazionali e in particolare della Siria a cui ha dedicato molti libri, tra cui Le Grand Retournement. Baghdad-Beirut, dove descrive il travisamento della diplomazia francese e il suo cieco allineamento con i neoconservatori americani e annuncia, premonitore (il libro è stato pubblicato nel 2006), la futura guerra globale contro la Siria.

Come non menzionare anche i rari harakiri di chi aveva osato opporsi al linciaggio isterico sulla Siria, come nel caso di Frederic Pichon, autore di “Siria, perché l’Occidente aveva torto”, o Bruno Guigue, che aveva dedicato innumerevoli analisi per stigmatizzare le menzogne e la truffa intellettuale di coloro che si erano costituiti come “siriologhi” (leggi in www.afrique-asie.fr la sua analisi “Disinformazione: le migliori perle dei ciarlatani della Rivoluzione siriana, settembre 2016).

“Le guerre di Siria” appare nel momento in cui l’esito vittorioso, ma così doloroso, del conflitto non è più in dubbio. Le edizioni Glyphe, che hanno avuto il coraggio di pubblicarlo, testimoniano la propria nobiltà di editori, che non esitano a rischiare a costo di offendere i detentori del pensiero unico. Rischiano al servizio della verità e della libertà di espressione; in breve: al servizio della democrazia.

Un libro indispensabile, magistrale. Da leggere e far leggere assolutamente. * Le guerre di Siria , di Michel Raimbaud, prefazione di Philippe de Saint Robert, edizioni Glyphe, Parigi 2019.

Of relevance to the political crisis in Bolivia, first published by Global Research in August 2016

So I was scanning Telesur’s website the other day and a pretty interesting story caught my eye. It said that Bolivia had begun exporting 10 tons of lithium to China as the start of what the country hopes will flourish into a multimillion-dollar partnership in the near future.

The reason why this is such a big deal and I’m talking about it with you all is because lithium is an integral component of most of our cell phones and electric car batteries, and estimates vary over the size of Bolivia’s deposits, with the article saying that the government says it holds 70% of the global total, while the US retorts that this is just about 7%, or 10x less. Regardless of what the actual number really is, the fact that China – the factory of the world – is able to diversify its imports of this rare earth mineral strengthens Beijing’s supply strain security with this strategic commodity, and it also pairs well with the billion-dollar coltan investment that it made in the Congo a few months back and which I also covered at the time on Context Countdown. Taken together, China is positioning itself for dominance in the cell phone and electric car industries, which will make it a future leader in these industries.

So what Bolivia is doing is very helpful for the emerging Multipolar World Order in general, and since we’re on the topic of the country’s contribution to geopolitics, it’s worthwhile including a few of its other projects that are just as helpful. Russia is deepening its cooperation with the Andean state in the oil, gas, and nuclear energy industries, and Russian representatives have said that they’re interested in military exports to the country and in boosting bilateral commercial trade. Furthermore, China and Bolivia have signed agreements on military cooperation too, particularly for Beijing to send it new armored personnel carriers which it just made good on a few weeks ago.

Everywhere we turn, it seems, it looks like Bolivia is more and more becoming the latest joint project of the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership in helping to construct a multipolar world, but precisely for that reason, we need to watch out for Hybrid War threats against the plurinational state, as Bolivia is officially called. These include the threat of foreign-provoked conflict between the 38 ethnic groups in the country, militarized labor unrest such as the mining strikes that are ongoing right now, transnational drug cartels that operate along the Brazilian and Paraguayan borders, a traditional Color Revolution, and the possibility of a ‘regime reboot’ campaign to promote the divisive Bosnification of Bolivia into an Identity Federation of quasi-independent statelets that the US could more easily divide and rule. Bolivia had better watch out, because the more that it bravely stands up to the US by embracing the multipolar leaders of Russia and China, the bigger the bullseye on its back becomes.

The following is a preview of a chapter by Prof. Claudia von Werlhof in  “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.”  (2009).

To read more, order the book online. Help us spread the word: “like” the book on Facebook and share with your friends!

***

Is there an alternative to plundering the earth?

Is there an alternative to making war?

Is there an alternative to destroying the planet?

No one asks these questions because they seem absurd. Yet, no one can escape them either. Until the onslaught of the global economic crisis, the motto of so-called “neoliberalism” was TINA: “There Is No Alternative!”

No alternative to “neoliberal globalization”?

No alternative to the unfettered “free market” economy?

What Is “Neoliberal Globalization”?

Let us first clarify what globalization and neoliberalism are, where they come from, who they are directed by, what they claim, what they do, why their effects are so fatal, why they will fail and why people nonetheless cling to them. Then, let us look at the responses of those who are not – or will not – be able to live with the consequences they cause.

This is where the difficulties begin. For a good twenty years now we have been told that there is no alternative to neoliberal globalization, and that, in fact, no such alternative is needed either. Over and over again, we have been confronted with the TINA-concept: “There Is No Alternative!” The “iron lady”, Margaret Thatcher, was one of those who reiterated this belief without end.

The TINA-concept prohibits all thought. It follows the rationale that there is no point in analyzing and discussing neoliberalism and so-called globalization because they are inevitable. Whether we condone what is happening or not does not matter, it is happening anyway. There is no point in trying to understand. Hence: Go with it! Kill or be killed!

Some go as far as suggesting that globalization – meaning, an economic system which developed under specific social and historical conditions – is nothing less but a law of nature. In turn, “human nature” is supposedly reflected by the character of the system’s economic subjects: egotistical, ruthless, greedy and cold. This, we are told, works towards everyone’s benefit.

The question remains: why has Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” become a “visible fist”? While a tiny minority reaps enormous benefits from today’s neoliberalism (none of which will remain, of course), the vast majority of the earth’s population suffers hardship to the extent that their very survival is at stake. The damage done seems irreversible.

All over the world media outlets – especially television stations – avoid addressing the problem. A common excuse is that it cannot be explained.[1] The true reason is, of course, the media’s corporate control.

What Is Neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism as an economic policy agenda which began in Chile in 1973. Its inauguration consisted of a U.S.-organized coup against a democratically elected socialist president and the installment of a bloody military dictatorship notorious for systematic torture. This was the only way to turn the neoliberal model of the so-called “Chicago Boys” under the leadership of Milton Friedman – a student of Friedrich von Hayek – into reality.

The predecessor of the neoliberal model is the economic liberalism of the 18th and 19th centuries and its notion of “free trade”. Goethe’s assessment at the time was: “Free trade, piracy, war – an inseparable three!”[2]

At the center of both old and new economic liberalism lies:

Self-interest and individualism; segregation of ethical principles and economic affairs, in other words: a process of ‘de-bedding’ economy from society; economic rationality as a mere cost-benefit calculation and profit maximization; competition as the essential driving force for growth and progress; specialization and the replacement of a subsistence economy with profit-oriented foreign trade (‘comparative cost advantage’); and the proscription of public (state) interference with market forces.[3]

Where the new economic liberalism outdoes the old is in its global claim. Today’s economic liberalism functions as a model for each and everyone: all parts of the economy, all sectors of society, of life/nature itself. As a consequence, the once “de-bedded” economy now claims to “im-bed” everything, including political power. Furthermore, a new twisted “economic ethics” (and with it a certain idea of “human nature”) emerges that mocks everything from so-called do-gooders to altruism to selfless help to care for others to a notion of responsibility.[4]

This goes as far as claiming that the common good depends entirely on the uncontrolled egoism of the individual and, especially, on the prosperity of transnational corporations. The allegedly necessary “freedom” of the economy – which, paradoxically, only means the freedom of corporations – hence consists of a freedom from responsibility and commitment to society.

The maximization of profit itself must occur within the shortest possible time; this means, preferably, through speculation and “shareholder value”. It must meet as few obstacles as possible. Today, global economic interests outweigh not only extra-economic concerns but also national economic considerations since corporations today see themselves beyond both community and nation.[5] A “level playing field” is created that offers the global players the best possible conditions. This playing field knows of no legal, social, ecological, cultural or national “barriers”.[6] As a result, economic competition plays out on a market that is free of all non-market, extra-economic or protectionist influences – unless they serve the interests of the big players (the corporations), of course. The corporations’ interests – their maximal growth and progress – take on complete priority. This is rationalized by alleging that their well-being means the well-being of small enterprises and workshops as well.

The difference between the new and the old economic liberalism can first be articulated in quantitative terms: after capitalism went through a series of ruptures and challenges – caused by the “competing economic system”, the crisis of capitalism, post-war “Keynesianism” with its social and welfare state tendencies, internal mass consumer demand (so-called Fordism), and the objective of full employment in the North. The liberal economic goals of the past are now not only euphorically resurrected but they are also “globalized”. The main reason is indeed that the competition between alternative economic systems is gone. However, to conclude that this confirms the victory of capitalism and the “golden West” over “dark socialism” is only one possible interpretation. Another – opposing – interpretation is to see the “modern world system” (which contains both capitalism and socialism) as having hit a general crisis which causes total and merciless competition over global resources while leveling the way for investment opportunities, i.e. the valorization of capital.[7]

The ongoing globalization of neoliberalism demonstrates which interpretation is right. Not least, because the differences between the old and the new economic liberalism can not only be articulated in quantitative terms but in qualitative ones too. What we are witnessing are completely new phenomena: instead of a democratic “complete competition” between many small enterprises enjoying the freedom of the market, only the big corporations win. In turn, they create new market oligopolies and monopolies of previously unknown dimensions. The market hence only remains free for them, while it is rendered unfree for all others who are condemned to an existence of dependency (as enforced producers, workers and consumers) or excluded from the market altogether (if they have neither anything to sell or buy). About fifty percent of the world’s population fall into this group today, and the percentage is rising.[8]

Anti-trust laws have lost all power since the transnational corporations set the norms. It is the corporations – not “the market” as an anonymous mechanism or “invisible hand” – that determine today’s rules of trade, for example prices and legal regulations. This happens outside any political control. Speculation with an average twenty percent profit margin edges out honest producers who become “unprofitable”.[9] Money becomes too precious for comparatively non-profitable, long-term projects,

or projects that only – how audacious! – serve a good life. Money instead “travels upwards” and disappears. Financial capital determines more and more what the markets are and do.[10] By delinking the dollar from the price of gold, money creation no longer bears a direct relationship to production”.[11] Moreover, these days most of us are – exactly like all governments – in debt. It is financial capital that has all the money – we have none.[12]

Small, medium, even some bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market, forced to fold or swallowed by transnational corporations because their performances are below average in comparison to speculation – rather: spookulation – wins. The public sector, which has historically been defined as a sector of not-for-profit economy and administration, is “slimmed” and its “profitable” parts (“gems”) handed to corporations (privatized). As a consequence, social services that are necessary for our existence disappear. Small and medium private businesses – which, until recently, employed eighty percent of the workforce and provided normal working conditions – are affected by these developments as well. The alleged correlation between economic growth and secure employment is false. When economic growth is accompanied by the mergers of businesses, jobs are lost.[13]

If there are any new jobs, most are precarious, meaning that they are only available temporarily and badly paid. One job is usually not enough to make a living.[14] This means that the working conditions in the North become akin to those in the South, and the working conditions of men akin to those of women – a trend diametrically opposed to what we have always been told. Corporations now leave for the South (or East) to use cheap – and particularly female – labor without union affiliation. This has already been happening since the 1970s in the “Export Processing Zones” (EPZs, “world market factories” or “maquiladoras”), where most of the world’s computer chips, sneakers, clothes and electronic goods are produced.[15] The EPZs lie in areas where century-old colonial-capitalist and authoritarian-patriarchal conditions guarantee the availability of cheap labor.[16] The recent shift of business opportunities from consumer goods to armaments is a particularly troubling development.[17]

It is not only commodity production that is “outsourced” and located in the EPZs, but service industries as well. This is a result of the so-called Third Industrial Revolution, meaning the development of new information and communication technologies. Many jobs have disappeared entirely due to computerization, also in administrative fields.[18] The combination of the principles of “high tech” and “low wage”/”no wage” (always denied by “progress” enthusiasts) guarantees a “comparative cost advantage” in foreign trade. This will eventually lead to “Chinese wages” in the West. A potential loss of Western consumers is not seen as a threat. A corporate economy does not care whether consumers are European, Chinese or Indian.

The means of production become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, especially since finance capital – rendered precarious itself – controls asset values ever more aggressively. New forms of private property are created, not least through the “clearance” of public property and the transformation of formerly public and small-scale private services and industries to a corporate business sector. This concerns primarily fields that have long been (at least partly) excluded from the logic of profit – e.g. education, health, energy or water supply/disposal. New forms of so-called enclosures emerge from today’s total commercialization of formerly small-scale private or public industries and services, of the “commons”, and of natural resources like oceans, rain forests, regions of genetic diversity or geopolitical interest (e.g. potential pipeline routes), etc.[19] As far as the new virtual spaces and communication networks go, we are witnessing frantic efforts to bring these under private control as well.[20]

All these new forms of private property are essentially created by (more or less) predatory forms of appropriation. In this sense, they are a continuation of the history of so-called original accumulation which has expanded globally, in accordance with to the motto: “Growth through expropriation!”[21]

Most people have less and less access to the means of production, and so the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases. The destruction of the welfare state also destroys the notion that individuals can rely on the community to provide for them in times of need. Our existence relies exclusively on private, i.e. expensive, services that are often of much worse quality and much less reliable than public services. (It is a myth that the private always outdoes the public.) What we are experiencing is undersupply formerly only known by the colonial South. The old claim that the South will eventually develop into the North is proven wrong. It is the North that increasingly develops into the South. We are witnessing the latest form of “development”, namely, a world system of underdevelopment.[22] Development and underdevelopment go hand in hand.[23] This might even dawn on “development aid” workers soon.

It is usually women who are called upon to counterbalance underdevelopment through increased work (“service provisions”) in the household. As a result, the workload and underpay of women takes on horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid work inside their homes and poorly paid “housewifized” work outside.[24] Yet, commercialization does not stop in front of the home’s doors either. Even housework becomes commercially co-opted (“new maid question”), with hardly any financial benefits for the women who do the work.[25]

Not least because of this, women are increasingly coerced into prostitution, one of today’s biggest global industries.[26] This illustrates two things: a) how little the “emancipation” of women actually leads to “equal terms” with men; and b) that “capitalist development” does not imply increased “freedom” in wage labor relations, as the Left has claimed for a long time.[27] If the latter were the case, then neoliberalism would mean the voluntary end of capitalism once it reaches its furthest extension. This, however, does not appear likely.

Today, hundreds of millions of quasi-slaves, more than ever before, exist in the “world system.”[28] The authoritarian model of the “Export Processing Zones” is conquering the East and threatening the North. The redistribution of wealth runs ever more – and with ever accelerated speed – from the bottom to the top. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. The middle classes disappear. This is the situation we are facing.

It becomes obvious that neoliberalism marks not the end of colonialism but, to the contrary, the colonization of the North. This new “colonization of the world”[29] points back to the beginnings of the “modern world system” in the “long 16th century”, when the conquering of the Americas, their exploitation and colonial transformation allowed for the rise and “development” of Europe.[30] The so-called “children’s diseases” of modernity keep on haunting it, even in old age. They are, in fact, the main feature of modernity’s latest stage. They are expanding instead of disappearing.

Where there is no South, there is no North; where there is no periphery, there is no center; where there is no colony, there is no – in any case no “Western” – civilization.[31]

Austria is part of the world system too. It is increasingly becoming a corporate colony (particularly of German corporations). This, however, does not keep it from being an active colonizer itself, especially in the East.[32]

Social, cultural, traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned and give way to a mentality of plundering. All global resources that we still have – natural resources, forests, water, genetic pools – have turned into objects of utilization. Rapid ecological destruction through depletion is the consequence. If one makes more profit by cutting down trees than by planting them, then there is no reason not to cut them.[33] Neither the public nor the state interferes, despite global warming and the obvious fact that the clearing of the few remaining rain forests will irreversibly destroy the earth’s climate – not to mention the many other negative effects of such actions.[34] Climate, animal, plants, human and general ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests of the corporations – no matter that the rain forest is not a renewable resource and that the entire earth’s ecosystem depends on it. If greed, and the rationalism with which it is economically enforced, really was an inherent anthropological trait, we would have never even reached this day.

The commander of the Space Shuttle that circled the earth in 2005 remarked that “the center of Africa was burning”. She meant the Congo, in which the last great rain forest of the continent is located. Without it there will be no more rain clouds above the sources of the Nile. However, it needs to disappear in order for corporations to gain free access to the Congo’s natural resources that are the reason for the wars that plague the region today. After all, one needs diamonds and coltan for mobile phones.

Today, everything on earth is turned into commodities, i.e. everything becomes an object of “trade” and commercialization (which truly means liquidation, the transformation of all into liquid money). In its neoliberal stage it is not enough for capitalism to globally pursue less cost-intensive and preferably “wageless” commodity production. The objective is to transform everyone and everything into commodities, including life itself.[35] We are racing blindly towards the violent and absolute conclusion of this “mode of production”, namely total capitalization/liquidation by “monetarization”.[36]

We are not only witnessing perpetual praise of the market – we are witnessing what can be described as “market fundamentalism”. People believe in the market as if it was a god. There seems to be a sense that nothing could ever happen without it. Total global maximized accumulation of money/capital as abstract wealth becomes the sole purpose of economic activity. A “free” world market for everything has to be established – a world market that functions according to the interests of the corporations and capitalist money. The installment of such a market proceeds with dazzling speed. It creates new profit possibilities where they have not existed before, e.g. in Iraq, Eastern Europe or China.

One thing remains generally overlooked: the abstract wealth created for accumulation implies the destruction of nature as concrete wealth. The result is a “hole in the ground” and next to it a garbage dump with used commodities, outdated machinery and money without value.[37] However, once all concrete wealth (which today consists mainly of the last natural resources) will be gone, abstract wealth will disappear as well. It will, in Marx’s words, “evaporate”. The fact that abstract wealth is not real wealth will become obvious, and so will the answer to the question of which wealth modern economic activity has really created. In the end it is nothing but monetary wealth (and even this mainly exists virtually or on accounts) that constitutes a monoculture controlled by a tiny minority. Diversity is suffocated and millions of people are left wondering how to survive. And really: how do you survive with neither resources nor means of production nor money?

The nihilism of our economic system is evident. The whole world will be transformed into money – and then it will disappear. After all, money cannot be eaten. What no one seems to consider is the fact that it is impossible to re-transform commodities, money, capital and machinery into nature or concrete wealth. It seems that underlying all “economic development” is the assumption that “resources”, the “sources of wealth”,[38] are renewable and everlasting – just like the “growth” they create.[39]

The notion that capitalism and democracy are one is proven a myth by neoliberalism and its “monetary totalitarianism”.[40]

The primacy of politics over economy has been lost. Politicians of all parties have abandoned it. It is the corporations that dictate politics. Where corporate interests are concerned, there is no place for democratic convention or community control. Public space disappears. The res publica turns into a res privata, or – as we could say today – a res privata transnationale (in its original Latin meaning, privare means “to deprive”). Only those in power still have rights. They give themselves the licenses they need, from the “license to plunder” to the “license to kill”.[41] Those who get in their way or challenge their “rights” are vilified, criminalized and to an increasing degree defined as “terrorists” or, in the case of defiant governments, as “rogue states” – a label that usually implies threatened or actual military attack, as we can see in the cases of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and maybe Syria and Iran in the near future. U.S. President Bush had even spoken of the possibility of “preemptive” nuclear strikes should the U.S. feel endangered by weapons of mass destruction.[42] The European Union did not object.[43]

Neoliberalism and war are two sides of the same coin.[44] Free trade, piracy and war are still “an inseparable three” – today maybe more so than ever. War is not only “good for the economy” but is indeed its driving force and can be understood as the “continuation of economy with other means”.[45] War and economy have become almost indistinguishable.[46] Wars about resources – especially oil and water – have already begun.[47] The Gulf Wars are the most obvious examples. Militarism once again appears as the “executor of capital accumulation” – potentially everywhere and enduringly.[48]

Human rights and rights of sovereignty have been transferred from people, communities and governments to corporations.[49] The notion of the people as a sovereign body has practically been abolished. We have witnessed a coup of sorts. The political systems of the West and the nation state as guarantees for and expression of the international division of labor in the modern world system are increasingly dissolving.[50] Nation states are developing into “periphery states” according to the inferior role they play in the proto-despotic “New World Order”.[51] Democracy appears outdated. After all, it “hinders business”.[52]

The “New World Order” implies a new division of labor that does no longer distinguish between North and South, East and West – today, everywhere is South. An according International Law is established which effectively functions from top to bottom (“top-down”) and eliminates all local and regional communal rights. And not only that: many such rights are rendered invalid both retroactively and for the future.[53]

The logic of neoliberalism as a sort of totalitarian neo-mercantilism is that all resources, all markets, all money, all profits, all means of production, all “investment opportunities”, all rights and all power belong to the corporations only. To paraphrase Richard Sennett: “Everything to the Corporations!”[54] One might add: “Now!”

The corporations are free to do whatever they please with what they get. Nobody is allowed to interfere. Ironically, we are expected to rely on them to find a way out of the crisis we are in. This puts the entire globe at risk since responsibility is something the corporations do not have or know. The times of social contracts are gone.[55] In fact, pointing out the crisis alone has become a crime and all critique will soon be defined as “terror” and persecuted as such.[56]

IMF Economic Medicine

Since the 1980s, it is mainly the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and the IMF that act as the enforcers of neoliberalism. These programs are levied against the countries of the South which can be extorted due to their debts. Meanwhile, numerous military interventions and wars help to take possession of the assets that still remain, secure resources, install neoliberalism as the global economic politics, crush resistance movements (which are cynically labeled as “IMF uprisings”), and facilitate the lucrative business of reconstruction.[57]

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher introduced neoliberalism in Anglo-America. In 1989, the so-called “Washington Consensus” was formulated. It claimed to lead to global freedom, prosperity and economic growth through “deregulation, liberalization and privatization”. This has become the credo and promise of all neoliberals. Today we know that the promise has come true for the corporations only – not for anybody else.

In the Middle East, the Western support for Saddam Hussein in the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, and the Gulf War of the early 1990s, announced the permanent U.S. presence in the world’s most contested oil region.

In continental Europe, neoliberalism began with the crisis in Yugoslavia caused by the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and the IMF. The country was heavily exploited, fell apart and finally beset by a civil war over its last remaining resources.[58] Since the NATO war in 1999, the Balkans are fragmented, occupied and geopolitically under neoliberal control.[59] The region is of main strategic interest for future oil and gas transport from the Caucasus to the West (for example the “Nabucco” gas pipeline that is supposed to start operating from the Caspian Sea through Turkey and the Balkans by 2011.[60] The reconstruction of the Balkans is exclusively in the hands of Western corporations.

All governments, whether left, right, liberal or green, accept this. There is no analysis of the connection between the politics of neoliberalism, its history, its background and its effects on Europe and other parts of the world. Likewise, there is no analysis of its connection to the new militarism.

NOTES

[1] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 23, 36.

[2] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Part Two, New York, Oxford University Press, 1999.

[3] Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen. Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005, p. 34.

[4] Arno Gruen, Der Verlust des Mitgefühls. Über die Politik der Gleichgültigkeit, München, 1997, dtv.

[5] Sassen Saskia, “Wohin führt die Globalisierung?,” Machtbeben, 2000, Stuttgart-München, DVA.

[6] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 24.

[7] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, 1979, Suhrkamp; Immanuel Wallerstein (Hg), The Modern World-System in the Longue Durée, Boulder/ London; Paradigm Publishers, 2004.

[8] Susan George, im Vortrag, Treffen von Gegnern und Befürwortern der Globalisierung im Rahmen der Tagung des WEF (World Economic Forum), Salzburg, 2001.

[9] Elmar Altvater, Das Ende des Kapitalismus, wie wir ihn kennen, Münster, Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2005.

[10] Elmar Altvater and Birgit Mahnkopf, Grenzen der Globalisierung. Ökonomie, Ökologie und Politik in der Weltgesellschaft, Münster, Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1996.

[11] Bernard Lietaer, Jenseits von Gier und Knappheit, Interview mit Sarah van Gelder, 2006, www.transaction.net/press/interviews/Lietaer 0497.html; Margrit Kennedy, Geld ohne Zinsen und Inflation, Steyerberg, Permakultur, 1990.

[12] Helmut Creutz, Das Geldsyndrom. Wege zur krisenfreien Marktwirtschaft, Frankfurt, Ullstein, 1995.

[13] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 7.

[14] Barbara Ehrenreich, Arbeit poor. Unterwegs in der Dienstleistungsgesellschaft, München, Kunstmann, 2001.

[15] Folker Fröbel, Jürgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye, Die neue internationale Arbeitsteilung. Strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit in den Industrieländern und die Industrialisierung der Entwicklungsländer, Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1977.

[16] Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Maria Mies, and Claudia von Werlhof, Women, The Last Colony, London/ New Delhi, Zed Books, 1988.

[17] Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization. The Truth Behind September 11th, Oro, Ontario, Global Outlook, 2003.

[18] Folker Fröbel, Jürgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye, Die neue internationale Arbeitsteilung. Strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit in den Industrieländern und die Industrialisierung der Entwicklungsländer, Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1977.

[19] Ana Isla, The Tragedy of the Enclosures: An Eco-Feminist Perspective on Selling Oxygen and Prostitution in Costa Rica, Man., Brock Univ., Sociology Dpt., St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada, 2005.

[20] John Hepburn, Die Rückeroberung von Allmenden – von alten und von neuen, übers. Vortrag bei, Other Worlds Conference; Univ. of Pennsylvania; 28./29.4, 2005.

[21] Claudia von Werlhof, Was haben die Hühner mit dem Dollar zu tun? Frauen und Ökonomie, München, Frauenoffensive, 1991; Claudia von Werlhof, MAInopoly: Aus Spiel wird Ernst, in Mies/Werlhof, 2003, p. 148-192.

[22] Andre Gunder Frank, Die Entwicklung der Unterentwicklung, in ders. u.a., Kritik des bürgerlichen Antiimperialismus, Berlin, Wagenbach, 1969.

[23] Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005.

[24] Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Maria Mies, and Claudia von Werlhof, Women, the Last Colony, London/New Delhi, Zed Books, 1988.

[25] Claudia von Werlhof, Frauen und Ökonomie. Reden, Vorträge 2002-2004, Themen GATS, Globalisierung, Mechernich, Gerda-Weiler-Stiftung, 2004.

[26] Ana Isla, “Women and Biodiversity as Capital Accumulation: An Eco-Feminist View,” Socialist Bulletin, Vol. 69, Winter, 2003, p. 21-34; Ana Isla, The Tragedy of the Enclosures: An Eco-Feminist Perspective on Selling Oxygen and Prostitution in Costa Rica, Man., Brock Univ., Sociology Department, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada, 2005.

[27] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1979.

[28] Kevin Bales, Die neue Sklaverei, München, Kunstmann, 2001.

[29] Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005.

[30] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1979; Andre Gunder Frank, Orientierung im Weltsystem, Von der Neuen Welt zum Reich der Mitte, Wien, Promedia, 2005; Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, Women in the International Division of Labour, London, Zed Books, 1986.

[31] Claudia von Werlhof, “Questions to Ramona,” in Corinne Kumar (Ed.), Asking, We Walk. The South as New Political Imaginary, Vol. 2, Bangalore, Streelekha, 2007, p. 214-268

[32] Hannes Hofbauer, Osterweiterung. Vom Drang nach Osten zur peripheren EU-Integration, Wien, Promedia, 2003; Andrea Salzburger, Zurück in die Zukunft des Kapitalismus, Kommerz und Verelendung in Polen, Frankfurt – New York, Peter Lang Verlag, 2006.

[33] Bernard Lietaer, Jenseits von Gier und Knappheit, Interview mit Sarah van Gelder, 2006, www.transaction.net/press/interviews/Lietaer 0497.html.

[34] August Raggam, Klimawandel, Biomasse als Chance gegen Klimakollaps und globale Erwärmung, Graz, Gerhard Erker, 2004.

[35] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1979.

[36] Renate Genth, Die Bedrohung der Demokratie durch die Ökonomisierung der Politik, feature für den Saarländischen Rundfunk am 4.3., 2006.

[37] Johan Galtung, Eurotopia, Die Zukunft eines Kontinents, Wien, Promedia, 1993.

[38] Karl Marx, Capital, New York, Vintage, 1976.

[39] Claudia von Werlhof, Loosing Faith in Progress: Capitalist Patriarchy as an “Alchemical System,” in Bennholdt-Thomsen et.al.(Eds.), There is an Alternative, 2001, p. 15-40.

[40] Renate Genth, Die Bedrohung der Demokratie durch die Ökonomisierung der Politik, feature für den Saarländischen Rundfunk am 4.3., 2006.

[41] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 7; Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005.

[42] Michel Chossudovsky, America’s “War on Terrorism,” Montreal, Global Research, 2005.

[43] Michel Chossudovsky, “Nuclear War Against Iran,” Global Research, Center for Research on Globalization, Ottawa 13.1, 2006.

[44] Altvater, Chossudovsky, Roy, Serfati, Globalisierung und Krieg, Sand im Getriebe 17, Internationaler deutschsprachiger Rundbrief der ATTAC – Bewegung, Sonderausgabe zu den Anti-Kriegs-Demonstrationen am 15.2., 2003; Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005.

[45] Hazel Hendersen, Building a Win-Win World. Life Beyond Global Economic Warfare, San Francisco, 1996.

[46] Claudia von Werlhof, Vom Wirtschaftskrieg zur Kriegswirtschaft. Die Waffen der, Neuen-Welt-Ordnung, in Mies 2005, p. 40-48.

[47] Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars. The New Landscape of Global Conflict, New York, Henry Holt and Company, 2001.

[48] Rosa Luxemburg, Die Akkumulation des Kapitals, Frankfurt, 1970.

[49] Tony Clarke, Der Angriff auf demokratische Rechte und Freiheiten, in Mies/Werlhof, 2003, p. 80-94.

[50] Sassen Saskia, Machtbeben. Wohin führt die Globalisierung?, Stuttgart-München, DVA, 2000.

[51] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 2001; Noam Chomsky, Hybris. Die endgültige Sicherstellung der globalen –Vormachtstellung der USA, Hamburg-Wien, Europaverlag, 2003.

[52] Claudia von Werlhof, Speed Kills!, in Dimmel/Schmee, 2005, p. 284-292

[53] See the “roll back” and “stand still” clauses in the WTO agreements in Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003.

[54] Richard Sennett, zit. “In Einladung zu den Wiener Vorlesungen,” 21.11.2005: Alternativen zur neoliberalen Globalisierung, 2005.

[55] Claudia von Werlhof, MAInopoly: Aus Spiel wird Ernst, in Mies/Werlhof, 2003, p. 148-192.

[56] Michel Chossudovsky, America’s “War on Terrorism,” Montreal, Global Research, 2005.

[57] Michel Chossudovsky, Global Brutal. Der entfesselte Welthandel, die Armut, der Krieg, Frankfurt, Zweitausendeins, 2002; Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen. Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005; Bennholdt-Thomsen/Faraclas/Werlhof 2001.

[58] Michel Chossudovsky, Global Brutal. Der entfesselte Welthandel, die Armut, der Krieg, Frankfurt, Zweitausendeins, 2002.

[59] Wolfgang Richter, Elmar Schmähling, and Eckart Spoo (Hg), Die Wahrheit über den NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien, Schkeuditz, Schkeuditzer Buchverlag, 2000; Wolfgang Richter, Elmar Schmähling, and Eckart Spoo (Hg), Die deutsche Verantwortung für den NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien, Schkeuditz, Schkeuditzer Buchverlag, 2000.

[60] Bernard Lietaer, Jenseits von Gier und Knappheit, Interview with Sarah van Gelder, 2006, www.transaction.net/press/interviews/Lietaer0497.html.

From our archives. This important article first published by GR in August 2004 brings  to the forefront the role of Psychotronic weapons as an instrument of modern warfare.

It should be understood, that Electromagnetic and Informational Weapons are fully operational and could be used by US-NATO in their wars in different parts of the World.   

***

In October 2000, Congressman Denis J. Kucinich introduced in the House of Representatives a bill, which would oblige the American president to engage in negotiations aimed at the ban of space based weapons.

In this bill, the definition of a weapons system included:

“any other unacknowledged or as yet undeveloped means inflicting death or injury on, or damaging or destroying, a person (or the biological life, bodily health, mental health, or physical and economic well-being of a person)… through the use of land-based, sea- based, or space-based systems using radiation, electromagnetic, psychotronic, sonic, laser, or other energies directed at individual persons or targeted populations for the purpose of information war, mood management, or mind control of such persons or populations“(15).

As in all legislative acts quoted in this article, the bill pertains to sound, light or electromagnetic stimulation of the human brain.

Psychotronic weapons belong, at least for a layman uninformed of secret military research, in the sphere of science fiction, since so far none of the published scientific experiments has been presented in a meaningful way to World public opinion.

That it is feasible to manipulate human behavior with the use of subliminal, either by sound or visual messages, is now generally known and acknowledged by the scientific community.

This is why in most countries, the use of such technologies, without the consent of the individual concerned, is in theory banned. Needless to say, the use of these technologies is undertaken covertly, without the knowledge or consent of targeted individuals.

Devices using light for the stimulation of the brain constitute another mechanism whereby light flashing under certain frequencies could be used to manipulate the human psychic.

As for the use of sound, a device transmitting a beam of sound waves, which can be heard only by persons at whom the beam of sound waves is targeted, has been reported in several news media.  In this case, the beam is formed by a combination of sound and ultrasound waves which causes the targeted person to hear the sound inside his head. Such a procedure could affect the mental balance of  the targeted individual as well as convince him that he is, so to speak, mentally ill.

This article examines the development of technologies and knowledge pertaining to the functioning of the human brain and the way new methods of manipulation of the human mind are being developed.

Electromagnetic energy

One of the main methods of manipulation is through electromagnetic energy.

In the declassified scientific literature only some 30 experiments have been published supporting this assumption (1),(2). Already in 1974, in the USSR, after successful testing within a military unit in Novosibirsk, the Radioson (Radiosleep) was registered with the Government Committee on Matters of Inventions and Discoveries of the USSR, described as a method of induction of sleep by means of radio waves (3), (4), (5).

In the scientific literature, technical feasibility of inducing sleep in a human being through the use of radio waves is confirmed in a book by an British scientist involved in research on the biological effects of electromagnetism (6). A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on nonionizing radiation published in 1991 confirms that:

“many of biological effects observed in animals exposed to ELF fields appear to be associated, either directly or indirectly, with the nervous system…” (2).

Among the published experiments, there are those where pulsed microwaveshave caused the synchronization of isolated neurons with the frequency of pulsing of microwaves. Ffor example, a neuron firing at a frequency of 0.8 Hz was forced in this way to fire the impulses at a frequency of 1 Hz. Moreover, the pulsed microwaves contributed to changing the concentration of neurotransmitters in the brain (neurotransmitters are a part of the mechanism which causes the firing of neurons in the brain) and reinforcing or attenuating the effects of drugs delivered into the brain (1).

The experiment where the main brain frequencies registered by EEG were synchronized with the frequency of microwave pulsing (1,2) might explain the function of the Russian installation Radioson. Microwaves pulsed in the sleep frequency would cause the synchronization of the brain’s activity with the sleep frequency and in this way produce sleep.

Pulsing of microwaves in frequency predominating in the brain at an awakened state could, by the same procedure, deny sleep to a human being.

A report derived from the testing program of the Microwave Research Department at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research states

“Microwave pulses appear to couple to the central nervous system and produce stimulation similar to electric stimulation unrelated to heat”.

In a many times replicated experiment, microwaves pulsed in an exact frequency caused the efflux of calcium ions from the nerve cells (1,2). Calcium plays a key role in the firing of neurons and Ross Adey, member of the first scientific team which published this experiment, publicly expressed his conviction that this effect of electromagnetic radiation would interfere with concentration on complex tasks (7).

Robert Becker, who had share in the discovery of the effect of pulsed fields at the healing of broken bones, published the excerpts from the report from Walter Reed Army Institute testing program. In the first part “prompt debilitation effects” should have been tested (8). Were not those effects based on the experiment by Ross Adey and others with calcium efflux?

British scientist John Evans, working in the same field, wrote that both Ross Adey and Robert Becker lost their positions and research grants and called them “free-thinking exiles” (6). In 1975, in the USA, a military experiment was published where pulsed microwaves produced, in the brain of a human subject, an audio perception of numbers from 1 to 10 (9). Again the possibility to convince an individual that it is mentally ill is obvious. The testing program of American Walter Read Army Institute of Research, where the experiment took place, counts with “prompt auditory stimulation by means of auditory effects” and finally aims at “behavior controlled by stimulation” (8).

Let us assume that the words delivered into the brain were transcribed into ultrasound frequencies. Would not then the subject perceive those same words as his own thoughts?

And would this not imply that that his behavior was being controlled in this way through the transmission of ultrasound frequencies? In this regard, the American Air Force 1982 “Final Report On Biotechnology Research Requirements For Aeronautical Systems Through the Year 2000” states:

“While initial attention should be toward degradation of human performance through thermal loading and electromagnetic field effects, subsequent work should address the possibilities of directing and interrogating mental functioning, using externally applied fields…” (10).

Several scientists have warned that the latest advances in neurophysiology could be used for the manipulation of the human brain.

In June 1995, Michael Persinger, who worked on the American Navy’s project of Non-lethal electromagnetic weapons, published a scientific article where he states:

“the technical capability to influence directly the major portion of the approximately six billion brains of the human species without mediation through classical sensory modalities by generating neural information within a physical medium within which all members of the species are immersed… is now marginally feasible“ (11).

In 1998, the French National Bioethics Committee warned that  “neuroscience is being increasingly recognized as posing a potential threat to human rights“ (12). In May 1999 the neuroscientists conference, sponsored by the UN, took place in Tokyo. Its final declaration formally acknowledges that :

“Today we have intellectual, physical and financial resources to master the power of the brain itself, and to develop devices to touch the mind and even control or erase consciousness…We wish to profess our hope that such pursuit of knowledge serves peace and welfare” (13).

On the international political scene, in the last few years, the concept of remote control of the human brain has become  a matter of international and intergovernmental negotiation. In January 1999, the European Parliament passed a resolution where it called  “for an international convention introducing a global ban on all developments and deployments of weapons which might enable any form of manipulation of human beings.“ (14)

Already in 1997, nine states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) addressed the UN, OBSE and the states of the Interparliamentary Union with the proposal to place at the agenda of the General Assembly of the United Nations, the preparation and adoption of an international convention “On Prevention of Informational Wars and Limitation of Circulation of Informational Weapons” (16), (3).

Informational Weapons

The initiative was originally proposed, in the Russian State Duma, by Vladimir Lopatin (3). V. Lopatin worked, from 1990 to 1995, in sequence, in the standing committees on Security respectively of the Russian Federation, Russian State Duma and of the Interparliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), specializing in informational security.(3). The concept of informational weapon or informational war is rather unknown to the world general public. In 1999, V. Lopatin, together with Russian scientist Vladimir Tsygankov, published a book „Psychotronic Weapon and the Security of Russia“ (3). There we find the explanation of this terminology:

 “In the report on the research of the American Physical Society for the year 1993 the conclusion is presented that psychophysical weapon systems…can be used… for the construction of a strategic arm of a new type (informational weapon in informational war)…”

Among many references on this subject, we refer to Materials of the Parliament Hearings “Threats and Challenges in the Sphere of Informational Security”, Moscow, July 1996, “Informational Weapon as a Threat to the National Security of the Russian Federation” (analytical report of the Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation), Moscow, 1996 and a material “To Whom Will Belong the Conscientious Weapon in the 21st Century”, Moscow, 1997. (17).

In 2000 V. Lopatin introduced, after two other authors, the third in order bill on the subject of  “Informational and Psychological Security of the Russian Federation“. Lopotin’s findings were reviewed by the Russian newspaper Segodnya:

“…Means of informational-psychological influence are capable not only of harming the health of an individual, but, also of causing, according to Lopatin, ‘the blocking of freedom of will of human being on the subliminal level, the loss of the ability of political, cultural and social self identification, the manipulation of societal consciousness, which could lead to   the destruction of a sense of collective identify by the Russian people and nation’“ (16).

In the book “Psychotronic Weapons and the Security of Russia”, the authors propose among the basic principles of the Russian concept of defense against the remote control of the human psyche not only the acknowledgement of its existence, but also the fact that the methods of informational and psychotronic war are fully operational (“and are being used without a formal declaration of war”) (18). They also quote the record from the session of the Russian Federation’s Federal Council where V. Lopatin stated that psychotronic weapon can

“cause the blocking of the freedom of will of a human being on a subliminal level” or “instillation into the consciousness or subconsciousness of a human being of information which will trigger a faulty or erroneous perception of reality” (19).

In that regard, they proposed the preparation of national legislation as well as the establishment of legal international norms “aimed at the defense of human psyche against subliminal, destructive and informational manipulations” (20).

Moreover, they also propose the declassification of all analytical studies and research on the various technologies. They warned that, because this research has remained classified and removed from the public eye, it has allowed the arms race to proceed unabated. It has thereby contributed to increasing the possibility of psychotronic war.

Among the possible sources of remote influence on human psyche, the authors list the “generators of physical fields“ of “known as well as unknown nature” (21). In 1999 the STOA (Scientific and Technological Options Assessment), part of the Directorate General for Research of the European Parliament published the report on Crowd Control Technologies, ordered by them with the OMEGA foundation in Manchester (UK) (22,  http://www.europarl.eu.int/stoa/publi/pdf/99-14-01-a_en.pdf ).

One of four major subjects of the study pertained  to the so-called “Second Generation“ or “non lethal” technologies:

 “This report evaluates the second generation of ‘non-lethal’ weapons which are emerging from national military and nuclear weapons laboratories in the United States as part of the Clinton Administration’s ‘non-lethal’ warfare doctrine now adopted in turn by NATO. These devices include weapons using… directed energy beam,…radio frequency, laser and acoustic mechanisms to incapacitate human targets” (23) The report states that „the most controversial ‚non-lethal‘ crowd control … technology proposed by the U.S., are so called Radio Frequency or Directed Energy Weapons that can allegedly manipulate human behavior… the greatest concern is with systems which can directly interact with the human nervous system“ (24). The report also states that „perhaps the most powerful developments remain shrouded in secrecy“ (25).

 The unavailability of official documents confirming the existence of this technology may be the reason why the OMEGA report is referencing, with respect to mind control technology, the internet publication of the author of this article (26 http://www.europarl.eu.int/stoa/publi/pdf/99-14-01-a_en.pdf ).

 Similarly, the internet publication of the director of the American Human Rights and Anti-mind Control Organization (CAHRA), Cheryl Welsh, is referenced by the joint initiative of the Quaker United Nations Office, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, and Programme for Strategic and International Security Studies, with respect to non-lethal weapons (27).

On September 25th, 2000, the Committee on Security of the Russian State Duma discussed the addendum to the article 6 of the Federal law On Weapons. In the resolution we read:

“The achievements of contemporary science… allow for creation of measured methods of secret, remote influencing on the psyches and physiology of a person or a group of people“ (28). The committee recommended that the addendum be approved. The addendum to the article 6 of the Russian Federation law “On Weapons“ was approved on July 26, 2001. It states:

“within the territory of the Russian Federation is prohibited the circulation of weapons and other objects… the effects of the operation of which are based on the use of electromagnetic, light, thermal, infra-sonic or ultra-sonic radiations…“ (29).

In this way, the Russian government made a first step to stand up to its dedication to the ban of mind control technology.

In the Doctrine of Informational Security of the Russian Federation, signed by president Putin in September 2000, among the dangers threatening the informational security of Russian Federation, is listed

“the threat to the constitutional rights and freedoms of people and citizens in the sphere of spiritual life… individual, group and societal consciousness“ and “illegal use of special means affecting individual, group and societal consciousness” (30). Among the major directions of the international cooperation toward the guaranteeing of the informational security is listed „the ban of production, dissemination and use of ‘informational weapon‘ “ (31).

The foregoing statement should be interpreted as the continuing Russian commitment to the international ban of the means of remote influencing of the activity of the human brain.

Similarly, in the above mentioned report, published by the STOA, the originally proposed version of the resolution of the European Parliament calls for:

“an international convention for a global ban on all research and development… which seeks to apply knowledge of the chemical, electrical, sound vibration or other functioning of the human brain to the development of weapons which might enable the manipulation of human beings, including a ban of any actual or possible deployment of such systems.“(32)

Here the term “actual” might easily mean that such weapons are already deployed.

Among the countries with the most advanced military technologies is the USA which did not present any international initiative demanding the ban of technologies enabling the remote control of human mind. (The original version of the bill by Denis J. Kucinich was changed.)

All the same, according to the study published by STOA, the US is the major promoter of the use of those weapons. Non lethal technology was included into NATO military doctrine due to their effort:  “At the initiative of the USA, within the framework of NATO, a special group was formed, for the perspective use of devices of non-lethal effects” states the record from the session of the Committee on Security of the Russian State Duma (28).

The report published by STOA states: “In October 1999 NATO announced a new policy on non-lethal weapons and their place in allied arsenals” (33). “In 1996 non-lethal tools identified by the U.S. Army included… directed energy systems” and “radio frequency weapons” (34) – those weapons, as was suggested in the STOA report as well, are being associated with the effects on the human nervous system.

According to the Russian government informational agency FAPSI, in the last 15 years,U.S. expenditures on the development and acquisition of the means of informational war has increased fourfold, and at present they occupy the first place among all military programs (17),(3).

Though there are possible uses of informational war, which do not imply mind control, the US Administration  has been unwilling to engage in negotiations on the ban on all forms of manipulation of the human brain. This unwillingness might indeed suggest that the US administration intends to use mind control technologies both within the US as well as internationally as an instrument of warfare.

One clear consequence of the continuation of the apparent politics of secrecy surrounding technologies enabling remote control of the human brain is that the governments, who own such technologies, could use them without having to consult public opinion. Needless to say, any meaningful democracy in today’s world could be disrupted, through secret and covert operations.  It is not inconceivable that in the future, entire population groups subjected to mind control technologies, could be living in a “fake democracy” where their own government or a foreign power could broadly shape their political opinions by means of mind control technologies.

Mojmir Babacek is the founder of the International Movement for the Ban of the Manipulation of the Human Nervous System by Technical Means,  He is the author of numerous articles on the issue of mind manipulation. 

Notes

1) Handbook of Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields, 1996, CRC Press Inc., 0-8493-0641-8/96, – pg. 117, 119, 474- 485, 542-551, 565 at the top and third and last paragraph

2) World Health Organization report on non-ionizing radiation from 1991, pg. 143 and 207-208

3) V. Lopatin, V Cygankov: „Psichotronnoje oružie i bezopasnost Rossii“, SINTEG, Russian Federation, Moscow, ISBN 5-89638-006-2-A5-2000-30, list of the publications of the publishing house you will find at the addresshttp://www.sinteg.ru/cataloghead.htm

4) G. Gurtovoj, I. Vinokurov: „Psychotronnaja vojna, ot mytov k realijam“, Russsian Federation, Moscow, „Mysteries“, 1993, ISBN 5-86422-098-1

5) With greatest likelihood as well the Russian daily TRUD, which has organized the search for the documents, Moscow, between August 1991 and end of 1992 6) John Evans: Mind, Body and Electromagnetism, the Burlington Press, Cambridge, 1992, ISBN 1874498008, str.139

7) Robert Becker: “Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life”, William Morrow and comp., New York, 1985, pg. 287

8) Robert Becker: “Cross Currents, teh Startling Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation on your Health”, 1991, Bloomsburry Publishing, London, Great Brittain, ISBN 0- 7475-0761-9, pg. 304, Robert Becker refers to Bioelectromagnetics Society Newsletter, January and February 1989

9) Don R. Justesen, 1975, Microwaves and Behavior, American Psychologist, March 1975, pg. 391 – 401

10) Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Maning: “Angels Don’t Play This HAARP, Advances in Tesla Technology”, Earthpulse Press, 1995, ISBN 0-9648812–0-9, pg. 169

11) M. A. Persinger: „On the Possibility of Directly Lacessing Every Human Brain by Electromagnetic Induction of Fundamental Algorythms“, Perception and Motor Skills, June1995,, sv. 80, str. 791-799

12) Nature, vol.391, 22.1.1998,str.316, „Advances in Neurosciences May Threaten Human Rights“

13) Internet reference at the site of the United Nations University and Institute of Advanced Studies in Tokyo does not work any more, to verify the information it is necessary to find the document from the 1999 UN sponsored conference of neuroscientists in Tokyo, you may inquire at the address [email protected] 14)http://www.europarl.eu.int/home/default_en.htm?redirected=1 . click at Plenary sessions, scroll down to Reports by A4 number –click, choose 1999 and fill in 005 to A4 or search for Resolution on the environment, security and foreign policy from January 28, 1999

15) http://thomas.loc.gov./ and search for Space Preservation Act then click at H.R.2977

16) Russian daily Segodnya, 11. February, 2000, Andrei Soldatov: „Vsadniki psychotronitscheskovo apokalypsa” (Riders of Psychotronic Apokalypse)

17) See ref. 3), pg. 107

18) See ref. 3) pg. 97

19) See ref. 3), pg. 107

20) See ref. 3), pg. 108

21) See ref. 3) pg. 13

22) http://www.europarl.eu.int/stoa/publi/pdf/99-14-01-a_en.pdf

23) see ref. 22 pg. XIX or 25

24) see ref. 22 pg. LIII or 69

25) see ref. 22 pg. XLVII or 63, aswell pg. VII-VIII or 7-8, pg. XIX or 25, pg. XLV or 61

26) see ref. 22) pg. LIII or 69, note 354

27) http://www.unog.ch/unidir/Media%20Guide%20 CAHRA and Cheryl Welsh are listed at the page 24

28) Document sent by Moscow Committee of Ecology of Dwellings. Telephone: Russian Federation, Zelenograd, 531-6411, Emilia Tschirkova, directrice

29) Search www.rambler.ru , there “poisk” (search) and search for “gosudarstvennaja duma” (State Duma) (it is necessary to type in Russian alphabet), at the page which appears choose “informacionnyj kanal gosudarstvennoj dumy” (Informational Channel of the Russian State Duma), there “federalnyje zakony podpisanyje prezidentom RF” (Federal laws signed by president of the Russian Federation), choose year 2001 and search 26 ijulja, è. N 103-F3 (July 26, 2001, number N 103- F3) , “O vnesenii dopolnenija v statju 6 federalnogo zakona ob oružii” (addendum to the article 6 of the Federal law on weapons)

30) Search www.rambler.ru and then (type in Russian alphabet) “gosudarstvennaja duma”, next “informacionnyj kanal gosudarstvennoj dumy” (informational channel of the State Duma), next search by use of “poisk” (search) Doktrina informacionnoj bezopasnosti Rossii” “Doctrine of the Informational Security of the Russian Federation) there see pg. 3 “Vidy informacionnych ugroz bezopasnosti Rossijskkoj federacii” (Types of Threats to the Informational Security of the Russian Federation)

31) See ref. 30, pg. 19, “Mìždunarodnoje sotrudnièestvo Rossijskoj Federacii v oblasti obespeèenija informacionnoj bezopasnoti” (International Cooperation of the Russian Federation in Assuring the Informational Security”

32) See ref.22, pg. XVII or 33

33) See ref.22, pg. XLV or 61

34) See ref.22 pg. XLVI or 62

The following text is the forward to Ernst Wolff‘s book entitled : Pillaging the World. The History and Politics of the IMF, Tectum Verlag Marburg, 2014, www.tectum-verlag.de. The book is available in English and German. First posted on Global Research in January 2016

***

No other financial organization has affected the lives of the majority of the world’s population more profoundly over the past fifty years than the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Since its inception after World War II, it has expanded its sphere of influence to the remotest corners of the earth. Its membership currently includes 188 countries on five continents.

For decades, the IMF has been active mainly in Africa, Asia and South America. There is hardly a country on these continents where its policies have not been carried out in close cooperation with the respective national governments. When the global financial crisis broke out in 2007, the IMF turned its attention to northern Europe. Since the onset of the Euro crisis in 2009, its primary focus has shifted to southern Europe.

Officially, the IMF’s main task consists in stabilizing the global financial system and helping out troubled countries in times of crisis. In reality, its operations are more reminiscent of warring armies. Wherever it intervenes, it undermines the sovereignty of states by forcing them to implement measures that are rejected by the majority of the population, thus leaving behind a broad trail of economic and social devastation. 

In pursuing its objectives, the IMF never resorts to the use of weapons or soldiers. It simply applies the mechanisms of capitalism, specifically those of credit. Its strategy is as simple as it is effective: When a country runs into financial difficulties, the IMF steps in and provides support in the form of loans. In return, it demands the enforcement of measures that serve to ensure the country’s solvency in order to enable it to repay these loans.

Because of its global status as “lender of last resort” governments usually have no choice but to accept the IMF’s offer and submit to its terms – thus getting caught in a web of debt, which they, as a result of interest, compound interest and principal, get deeper and deeper entangled in. The resulting strain on the state budget and the domestic economy inevitably leads to a deterioration of their financial situation, which the IMF in turn uses as a pretext for demanding ever new concessions in the form of “austerity programs”.

The consequences are disastrous for the ordinary people of the countries affected (which are mostly low-income) because their governments all follow the same pattern, passing the effects of austerity on to wage earners and the poor.

In this manner, IMF programs have cost millions of people their jobs, denied them access to adequate health care, functioning educational systems and decent housing. They have rendered their food unaffordable, increased homelessness, robbed old people of the fruits of life-long work, favored the spread of diseases, reduced life expectancy and increased infant mortality.

At the other end of the social scale, however, the policies of the IMF have helped a tiny layer of ultra-rich increase their vast fortunes even in times of crisis. Its measures have contributed decisively to the fact that global inequality has assumed historically unprecedented levels. The income difference between a sun king and a beggar at the end of the Middle Ages pales compared to the difference between a hedge fund manager and a social welfare recipient of today.

Although these facts are universally known and hundreds of thousands have protested the effects of its measures in past decades, often risking their lives, the IMF tenaciously clings on to its strategy. Despite all criticism and despite the strikingly detrimental consequences of its actions, it still enjoys the unconditional support of the governments of all leading industrial nations.

Why? How can it be that an organization that causes such immense human suffering around the globe continues to act with impunity and with the backing of the most powerful forces of our time? In whose interest does the IMF work? Who benefits from its actions?

It is the purpose of this book to answer these questions.

The Bretton Woods Conference:

Starting out with Blackmail

While the Second World War was still raging in Europe, in July 1944, the United States invited delegations from 44 countries to the small ski resort of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The official aim of the conference, held for three weeks in the luxurious “Mount Washington” hotel, was to define the basic features of an economic order for the post-war period and to provide the cornerstones of a system that would stabilize the world economy and prevent a return to the situation that had existed between the two world wars. The 1930s in particular were distinguished by high inflation, trade barriers, strongly fluctuating exchange rates, gold shortages and a decline in economic activity by more than 60 %. Furthermore, social tensions had constantly threatened to break down the established order.

The conference had been preceded by several years of secret negotiations between the White House and Downing Street which had already been working on plans for a new world monetary order since 1940. A recorded comment from the head of the British delegation, the economist Lord Keynes, sheds light on the former elite’s attitude towards the interests and concerns of smaller countries: “Twenty-one countries have been invited which clearly have nothing to contribute and will merely encumber the ground… The most monstrous monkey-house assembled for years.”

It did not take long before their contemptuous attitude rebounded on Lord Keynes and his compatriots. During the course of the conference, it became increasingly clear how much the global balance of power had shifted to the disadvantage of Great Britain. Excessive war spending had turned the country, already severely weakened by the First World War, into the world’s biggest debtor and pushed it to the brink of insolvency. Great Britain’s economy was on its knees and the rise of the liberation movements around the world already heralded the final breakup of its once global colonial empire.

The undisputed victor of the Second World War, however, was the United States. Having become the largest international creditor, it held nearly two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves and commanded half of all global industrial production. In contrast to most European countries its infrastructure was intact and while its delegation engaged in negotiations at Bretton Woods, the US army’s general staff planned a nuclear assault on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to emphasize America’s claim to global dominion.

As a result of this new balance of power, Lord Keynes’ plan for a new economic order was flatly rejected. Representing a country with substantial balance of payments problems, he had proposed an “international payments union” that would have given countries suffering from a negative balance of payments easier access to loans and introduced an international accounting unit called “Bancor” which would have served as a reserve currency.

The US, however, was unwilling to take on the role of a major creditor that Keynes’ plan had foreseen for it. The leader of their delegation, economist Harry Dexter White, in turn presented his own plan that was finally adopted by the conference. This “White Plan” conceptualized a world currency system never before seen in the history of money. The US dollar was to constitute its sole center and was to be pegged to all other currencies at a fixed exchange rate while its exchange relation to gold was to be set at $ 35 per ounce of fine gold. The plan was supplemented by US demands for the establishment of several international organizations designed to monitor the new system and stabilize it by granting loans to countries facing balance of payments problems.

After all, Washington, due to its size and rapid economic growth, had to move ahead in order to obtain access to raw materials and create global sales opportunities for its overproduction. This required replacing the hitherto most widely used currency, the British pound, by the dollar. Also, time seemed ripe for replacing the City of London by Wall Street, thus establishing the US in its new position as the focal point of international trade and global finance.

The gold-dollar peg and the establishment of fixed exchange rates partially reintroduced the gold standard, which had existed between 1870 and the outbreak of World War I – albeit under very different circumstances. By fixing all exchange rates to the US dollar, Washington deprived all other participating countries of the right to control their own monetary policy for the protection of their domestic industries – a first step towards curtailing the sovereignty of the rest of the world by the now dominant United States.

The distribution of voting rights suggested by the US for the proposed organizations was also far from democratic. Member countries were not to be treated equally or assigned voting rights according to the size of their population, but rather corresponding to the contributions they paid – which meant that Washington, by means of its financial superiority, secured itself absolute control over all decisions. The fact that South Africa’s racist apartheid dictatorship was invited to become a founding member of the IMF sheds a revealing light on the role that humanitarian considerations played in the process.

The US government sensed that it would not be easy to win over public opinion for a project so obviously in contradiction with the spirit of the US constitution and many Americans’ understanding of democracy. The true goals of the IMF were therefore obfuscated with great effort and glossed over by empty rhetoric about “free trade” and the “abolition of protectionism”. The New York Herald-Tribune spoke of the “most high-powered propaganda campaign in the history of the country.”

The IMF’s first task was to scrutinize all member states in order to determine their respective contribution rates. After all, the Fund was to exert a long-term “monitoring” function for the system’s protection. The US thus claimed for itself the right to be permanently informed about the financial and economic conditions of all countries involved.

When half a year after the conference the British insisted on an improvement in their favor to the contracts, they were unambiguously made aware of who was in charge of the IMF. Without further ado Washington tied a loan of $ 3.75 billion, urgently needed by the U.K. to repay its war debts, to the condition that Great Britain submit to the terms of the agreement without any ifs, ands, or buts. Less than two weeks later Downing Street gave in to Washington’s blackmail and consented.

On December 27, 1945, 29 governments signed the final agreement. In January 1946, representatives of 34 nations came together for an introductory meeting of the Board of Governors of the IMF and the World Bank in Savannah, Georgia. On this occasion, Lord Keynes and his compatriots were once again left empty-handed: Contrary to their proposal to establish the headquarters of the IMF, which had in the meantime been declared a specialized agency of the United Nations, in New York City, the US government insisted on its right to determine the location solely by itself. On March 1, 1947, the IMF finally took up its operations in downtown Washington.

The rules for membership in the IMF were simple: Applicant countries had to open their books and were rigorously screened and assessed. After that they had to deposit a certain amount of gold and pay their financial contribution to the organization according to their economic power. In return, they were assured that in the case of balance of payments problems they were entitled to a credit up to the extent of their contribution – in exchange for interest rates determined by the IMF and the contractually secured obligation of settling their debts to the IMF before all others.

The IMF finally received a starting capital of $ 8.8 billion from shares of its member states who paid 25 % of their contributions in gold and 75 % in their own currency. The United States secured itself the highest rate by depositing $ 2.9 billion. The amount was twice as high as Great Britain’s and guaranteed the United States not only double voting rights, but also a blocking minority and veto rights.

The IMF was run by a Board of Governors, to whom twelve executive directors were subordinated. Seven were elected by the members of the IMF, the other five were appointed by the largest countries, led by the US. The offices of the IMF as well as those of its sister organization, the World Bank, were set up on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington within walking distance from the White House.

The original statutes of the IMF state that the organization’s objectives were, among others,

• To promote international cooperation in the field of monetary policy,
• To facilitate the expansion and balanced growth of international trade,
• To promote exchange rate stability and assist in the establishment of a multilateral system of payments,
• To provide member countries facing balance of payments difficulties with temporary access to the Fund’s general resources and under adequate safeguards,
• To shorten the duration and lessen the degree of disequilibrium in the international balances of payments of member countries.

These official terms make it seem as if the IMF is an impartial institution, placed above nations and independent of political influences, its main objective consisting in running the global economy in as orderly a manner as possible, swiftly correcting malfunctions. This is no coincidence. This impression was intended by the authors and has in fact achieved its desired effect: It is exactly this notion that has been conveyed to the global public for more than six decades by politicians, scientists and the international media.

In actual fact, the IMF has, from the very beginning, been an institution launched by, controlled by, and tailored to the interests of the United States, designed to secure the new military superpower economic world domination. To conceal these intentions even more effectively, the founding fathers of the IMF in 1947 started a tradition which the organization has held to this day – appointing a non-American to the post of managing director.

The first foreigner, selected in 1946, was Camille Gutt from Belgium. As finance minister of his country during World War II, the trained economist had helped the British cover their war expenses by lending them Belgian gold. He had aided the war effort by supplying his government’s allies with cobalt and copper from the Belgian colony of Congo and supporting the US government with secret deliveries of Congolese uranium for its nuclear program. In 1944 he had carried out a drastic currency reform (later known as the “Gutt operation”) that had cost the working population of Belgium large amounts of their savings.

Gutt headed the IMF from 1946 to 1951. During his time in office he largely focused on the implementation and monitoring of fixed exchange rates, thus ushering in a new era of hitherto unknown stability for US and international corporations when exporting goods and purchasing raw materials. He also paved the way for major US banks seeking to deal in credits on an international scale and opened up markets all over the world for international finance capital searching for investment opportunities.

The world’s major political changes after World War II caused considerable headaches for the IMF, because they limited the scope of the organization. Above all, the Soviet Union took advantage of the post-war situation, characterized by the division of the world among the major powers and the drawing of new borders in Europe. Still relying on the socialization of the means of production by the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stalin’s officials sealed off the so-called “Eastern bloc” from the West in order to introduce central economic planning in these countries. The Soviet bureaucracy’s primary objective, however, was not to enforce the interests of working people, but to assure the subordination of the Eastern Bloc under its own interests for the purpose of pillaging these countries. In any case, the fragmentation of Eastern Europe meant that Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and several other markets became blank areas for international financial capital.

The seizure of power by Mao Zedong in 1949 and the introduction of a planned economy in China by the Communist Party deprived Western investors of another huge market and eventually led to the Korean War. Implementing their policy of “containment” of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence, the US tacitly accepted the loss of four million lives only to deliver a clear message to the rest of the world: that the largest economic power on earth would no longer remain passive if denied access to any more global markets.

The Post-War Boom: The IMF Casts its Net

The post-war years were characterized by the rapid economic growth of all leading industrial nations, referred to as the “Wirtschaftswunder” (“economic miracle”) in Germany. Although IMF lending played only a minor role during this time, the organization’s leadership did not remain inactive. On the contrary: the second IMF chief Ivar Rooth, a former Governor of the Swedish Central Bank and ex-Director of the Basel Bank for International Settlements, set out on a course that was to acquire major significance in the later history of the organization – introducing conditionality, i.e. establishing obligatory requirements for granting loans.

Harry Dexter White had already made a proposal along these lines at the Bretton Woods Conference, but encountered fierce resistance from the British. Meanwhile, however, Britain’s position had continued to deteriorate. Former colonies, mainly in Africa, were fighting for their independence, and in the Middle East the Suez crisis was looming – providing the US with an opportunity to advance its own interests in the IMF more forcefully.

By establishing so-called “stand-by arrangements”, Ivar Rooth added the principle of “conditionality” to the IMF’s toolbox. The granting of loans was now subjected to conditions that went far beyond the specification of loan deadlines and the level of interest rates.

In implementing these measures, which were tightened after Britain’s defeat in Suez led to a rise of tensions in Anglo-American relations, the IMF’s strategists developed a strategy that helped them to cleverly deceive the public. Starting in 1958, they obliged the governments of debtor countries to draw up “letters of intent” in which they had to express their willingness to undertake “reasonable efforts” to master their balance of payments problems. This made it seem as though a country had itself proposed the measures that were actually required by the IMF.

But even that did not go far enough for the IMF. As a next step, loans to be disbursed were sliced into tranches (“phasing”) and thus made conditional upon the respective debtor country’s submissiveness. In addition, the IMF insisted (and still insists) that agreements between the IMF and its debtors should not be considered international treaties and therefore should not be subject to parliamentary approval. Finally, the IMF decreed that any agreements with it were not intended for the public eye and had to be treated as classified information – a scheme that applies to this day.

Conditions were to be continually tightened in the course of the IMF’s history and would prove to be a crucial mechanism for increasing foreign domination of developing countries. They also contributed to the growing power of the IMF, because the World Bank, most governments and the vast majority of international commercial banks from now on only granted loans to those countries which, on the basis of the fulfillment of the IMF’s criteria, had received its “seal of approval”.

In 1956 a meeting was held in Paris that was to win landmark importance for the later development of the IMF. Struggling to repay a loan, Argentina had to sit down with its creditor countries and representatives of the IMF in order to have new conditions dictated to it. The meeting took place in the offices of French Finance Minister Pierre Pflimlin, who also chaired it. It did not remain the only one of its kind. In subsequent years, meetings between IMF representatives, creditors and debtors were held frequently in the same place, gradually developing into fixed monthly conferences that were to become known as the “Paris Club”. A scope of extremely important decisions were taken within this framework – without parliamentary consent and hidden from the eyes of the public. Commercial banks around the world soon recognized the importance of these conferences, and therefore started their own “London Club”, whose meetings usually took (and still take) place simultaneously with those of the Paris Club.

Barely noticed by the global community, the IMF subsequently turned to a field of activity that was to boost its power massively in a relatively short time. The wave of declarations of independence by African states at the beginning of the 1960s marked the beginning of a new era. Countries that had been plundered for decades by colonialism and lay in tatters economically, now had to find their proper place in the world and especially in the world economy under rapidly changing conditions. Their governments therefore needed money. Since most of these countries offered commercial banks too little security due to social tensions, political unrest and barely existing infrastructure, the IMF took advantage of the situation and offered its services as a creditor.

Although most African countries were so poor that they were only granted relatively modest sums, even these had consequences. The maturity dates of interest and principal payments relentlessly ensured that states that had just escaped from colonial dependence were seamlessly caught in a new network of financial dependence on the IMF.

As credit lending required the debtor’s membership in the IMF, the organization, whose founding members had only included three African countries – Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Africa – was joined by more than 40 additional African states between 1957 and 1969. In 1969, 44 out of 115 members were African. Although they made up more than one third of the overall organization, their voting rights that same year amounted to less than 5 %.

Chile 1973:

Embarking upon the Path of Neoliberalism

The beginning of the 1970s marked the end of the post-war boom, a twenty-five year period of economic expansion in which workers in the leading industrial nations had been granted great social concessions and experienced a hitherto unknown improvement of their living standards. It was the internal disintegration of the Bretton Woods system that brought about the end of that period. As a result of rising US investment abroad and escalating military spending – particularly for the Vietnam War – the amount of dollars globally in circulation had continually increased. All attempts by the US government to bring this proliferation under control had failed because US capital had blended with foreign capital and no nation on earth was capable of reining in this massive concentration of financial power.

In 1971, the United States, for the first time in its history, ran a balance of payments deficit. At the same time the imbalance between the global dollar supply and US gold reserves stored in Fort Knox assumed such dimensions that even raising the gold price to $ 38.00 and then to $ 42.20 could no longer guarantee its exchange against an ounce of gold. On August 15, 1971, US President Nixon pulled the brakes and severed the link between gold and the dollar, displaying the typical arrogance of a superpower by not consulting a single ally.

In December 1971, a conference of the G10 group, founded in 1962 by the world’s top ten industrialized nations, decided on an alignment of exchange rates, which brought about a readjustment of the dollar’s value against other currencies. This led to a devaluation of the dollar, ranging from 7.5 % against the weak Italian lira to 16.9 % against the strong Japanese yen. In February 1973, the dollar was devalued again, but it soon became clear that the system of fixed exchange rates could no longer be upheld. In March 1973, the G10 and several other industrialized countries introduced the system of flexible exchange rates to be established by the central banks – without consulting a single country outside the G 10 and despite the fact that the new regime blatantly contradicted article 6 of the founding document of the IMF on fixed exchange rates and monetary stability.

The abolition of fixed exchange rates historically terminated the core tasks of the IMF. The only role left for it was that of a lender in charge of the allocation of funds and their conditionality, entitled to inspect the accounts of applicants and thus exercise direct influence on their policies. However, it was exactly this function for which extremely favorable conditions would soon arise.

In 1973, the members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which had been founded in 1960, used the Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel to curb the amount of oil supplied to the West (“oil embargo”) and drastically raise oil prices. This led to a huge increase in the profits of oil companies and oil-producing countries. These gains ended up in commercial banks, which in turn tried to use them for profitable investments. As the global economy slipped into a recession in 1974 / 75 and investment opportunities in industrialized countries dwindled, the lion’s share of the money took on the form of loans to third world countries in Asia, Africa and South America, which – due to their increased expenditures after the rise in oil prices – urgently needed money. The IMF itself responded to the increased credit needs of developing countries by introducing the “Extended Fund Facility” in 1974, from which member countries could draw loans of up to 140 % of their quota with terms of four and a half to ten years.

Although the facility had been specifically set up to finance much-needed oil imports, the IMF – as well as the banks – cared little about what the money was actually spent on. Whether it went straight into the pockets of dictators such as Mobutu in Zaire, Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Suharto in Indonesia – who either squandered it, transferred it to secret foreign accounts or used it for military purposes, in each case driving up the national debt – did not matter to the IMF and the banks as long as they received their interest payments regularly.

However, the situation changed abruptly when Paul Volcker, the new chairman of the US Federal Reserve, raised its prime rate (the interest rate at which commercial banks can obtain money from central banks) by 300 % in order to reduce inflation in 1979. The United States slipped into another recession, which meant that fewer raw materials were needed due to lower economic activity.

For many developing countries the combination of receding demand, falling raw material prices and skyrocketing interest rates meant that they could not meet their payment obligations to international banks. A massive financial crisis loomed. The debt burden of developing countries at the beginning of 1980 amounted to a total of $ 567 billion. A payment default of this magnitude would have led to the collapse of many Western banks and therefore had to be prevented at all costs.

It was at this point that the IMF was given its first great chance to enter the stage as a lender of last resort. While its public relations department spread the news that the organization was working on bail-outs in order to “help” over-indebted countries, the Fund took advantage of its incontestable monopoly position and tied the granting of loans to harsh conditions. In doing so, it was able to draw on two different experiences gained in the preceding years.

Firstly, a CIA-supported military coup in Chile in September 1973 had ended socialist president Salvador Allende’s rule and brought fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet to power. Pinochet had immediately reversed Allende’s nationalizations, but found no remedy against galloping inflation. In an attempt to regain control of the situation, he had turned to a group of 30 Chilean economists (known as the “Chicago Boys” because they had studied at the Chicago School of Economics under Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman) and proposed to them a clearly defined division of labor: He would provide for the suppression of any kind of political and trade union opposition and crush all labor disputes, while they were to carry out a radical austerity program on the basis of neoliberal ideas.

Within a few weeks an extensive catalog of measures was developed. It called for a drastic limitation of money supply, cuts in government spending, layoffs in the public sector, privatization in health care and education, wage cuts and tax increases for working people, while at the same time lowering tariffs and corporate taxes. The program was openly referred to as a “shock therapy” by either side.

Both Pinochet and his partners, who were presented to the public as a “government of technocrats”, fulfilled their side of the agreement to the hilt. While the dictator violently smashed any opposition to the government’s drastic measures and ensured that many political dissidents disappeared forever, the “Chicago Boys” launched a frontal assault on the working population. They drove up unemployment, which had stood at 3 % in 1973, to 18.7 % by the end of 1975, simultaneously pushing inflation to 341 % and plunging the poorest segments of the population into even deeper poverty. The impacts of the program actually aggravated the problem of social inequality for decades to come: In 1980, the richest 10 % of the Chilean population amassed 36.5 % of the national income, expanding their share to 46.8 % in 1989, while at the same time that of the poorest 50 % fell from 20.4 % to 16.8 %.

During his bloody coup, Pinochet had fully relied on the active support of the CIA and the US Department of State under Henry Kis­singer. When implementing the toughest austerity program ever carried out in a Latin American country, the “Chicago Boys” received the full backing of the IMF. Regardless of all human rights violations, IMF loans to Chile doubled in the year after Pinochet’s coup, only to quadruple and quintuple in the following two years.

The IMF’s other experience concerned the UK. Great Britain’s inexorable economic decline over two and a half decades had made the country the IMF’s largest borrower. From 1947 to 1971, the government in London had drawn loans totaling $ 7.25 billion. After the recession of 1974 / 75 and speculative attacks on the pound, it had come under even greater pressure. When in 1976, the British government once again turned to the IMF for help, the United States seized the opportunity to demonstrate their power. Allying themselves with the resurgent Germans, they forced the Labour government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson to limit public spending, impose massive cuts in social programs, pursue a restrictive fiscal policy, and refrain from import controls of any kind. This drastic intervention represented a hitherto unknown encroachment on the sovereignty of a European borrower country, resulting in the fact that no leading Western industrialized country ever again applied for an IMF loan.

“The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs.

This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements. . . .”

First published by the Oriental Review and Global Research on May 17, 2015

See Part I: 

Roosevelt’s World War II Lend-Lease Act: America’s War Economy, US “Military Aid” to the Soviet Union By Evgeniy Spitsyn, May 13, 2015

Nonlethal lend-lease aid

Besides weapons, other supplies were also provided under lend-lease. And those figures are absolutely indisputable indeed.

Specifically, the USSR received 2,586,000 tons of aviation fuel, an amount equal to 37% of what was produced in the Soviet Union during the war, plus almost 410,000 automobiles, making up 45% of the Red Army’s vehicle fleet (not counting cars captured from the enemy). Food shipments also played a significant role, although very little was provided during the first year of the war, and the US supplied only about 15% of the USSR’s canned meat and other nonperishables.

This support also included machine tools, railway tracks, locomotives, rail cars, radar equipment, and other useful items without which a war machine can make little headway.

Of course this list of lend-lease aid looks very impressive, and one might feel sincere admiration for the American partners in the anti-Hitler coalition, except for one tiny detail: US manufacturers were also supplying Nazi Germany at the same time …

For example, John D. Rockefeller Jr. owned a controlling interest in the Standard Oil corporation, but the next largest stockholder was the German chemical company I. G. Farben, through which the firm sold $20 million worth of gasoline and lubricants to the Nazis. And the Venezuelan branch of that company sent 13,000 tons of crude oil to Germany each month, which the Third Reich’s robust chemical industry immediately converted into gasoline. But business between the two nations was not limited to fuel sales – in addition, tungsten, synthetic rubber, and many different components for the auto industry were also being shipped across the Atlantic to the German Führer by Henry Ford. In particular, it is no secret that 30% of all the tires produced in his factories were used by the German Wehrmacht.

The full details of how the Fords and Rockefellers colluded to supply Nazi Germany are still not fully known because those were strictly guarded trade secrets, but even the little that has been made public and acknowledged by historians makes it clear that the war did not in any way slow the pace of the US trade with Berlin.

Lend-lease was not charity

There is a perception that lend-lease aid was offered by the US out of the goodness of its heart. However, this version does not hold up upon closer inspection. First of all, this was because of something called “reverse lend-lease.” Even before the Second World War had ended, other nations began sending Washington essential raw materials valued at nearly 20% of the materials and weapons the US had shipped overseas. Specifically, the USSR provided 32,000 tons of manganese and 300,000 tons of chrome ore, which were highly prized by the military industry. Suffice it to say that when German industry was deprived of the manganese from the rich deposits in Nikopol as a result of the Soviet Nikopol–Krivoi Rog Offensive in February 1944, the 150-mm frontal armor on the German “Royal Tiger” tanks turned to be much more vulnerable to Soviet artillery shells than the 100-mm armor plate previously found on the ordinary Tiger tanks.

In addition, the USSR paid for the Allied shipments with gold. In fact, one British cruiser, the HMS Edinburgh, was carrying 5.5 tons of that precious metal when it was sunk by German submarines in May 1942.

The Soviet Union also returned much of the weaponry and military equipment after the war, as stipulated under the lend-lease agreement. In exchange they were issued an invoice for $1,300 million. Given the fact that lend-lease debts to other nations had been written off, this seemed like highway robbery, and Stalin demanded that the “Allied debt” be recalculated.

Subsequently the Americans were forced to admit their error, but they inflated the interest owed in the grand total, and the final amount, including that interest, came to $722 million, a figure that was accepted by the USSR and the US under a settlement agreement signed in Washington in 1972. Of this amount, $48 million was paid to the US in three equal installments in 1973, but subsequent payments were cut off when the US introduced discriminatory practices in their trade with the USSR (in particular, the notorious Jackson-Vanik Amendment).

The parties did not return to the discussion of lend-lease debt until June 1990, during a new round of negotiations between Presidents George Bush Sr. and Mikhail Gorbachev, during which a new deadline was set for the final repayment – which would be in 2030 – and the total outstanding debt was acknowledged to be $674 million.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, its debts were categorized as either sovereign debt (the Paris Club) or debts to private banks (London Club). The lend-lease debt was a liability owed to the US government and is part of the Paris Club debt, which Russia repaid in full in August 2006.

Direct speech

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt explicitly stated that aid to Russia was money well spent, and his successor in the White House, Harry Truman, was quoted in the pages of New York Times in June 1941 as saying,

“If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible …”

Nikolay Voznesensky (1903-1950)

The first official assessment of the role played by lend-lease aid in the larger victory over Nazism was provided by the chairman of Gosplan, Nikolai Voznesensky, in his work Voennaya Ekonomika SSSR v Period Otechestvennoi Voiny [Soviet military complex during the Great Patriotic War] (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1948), where he wrote,

“If one compares the quantity of industrial goods sent by the Allies to the USSR with the quantity of industrial goods manufactured by socialist factories in the Soviet Union, it is apparent that the former are equal to only about 4% of what was produced domestically during the years of the war economy.”

American scholars and military and government officials themselves (Raymond Goldsmith, George Herring, and Robert H. Jones) acknowledge that allthe Allied aid to the USSR was equal to no more than 1/10 of the Soviets’ own arms production, and the total quantity of lend-lease supplies, including the familiar cans of Spam sarcastically referred to by the Russians as the “Second Front,” made up about 10-11%.

Moreover, the famous American historian Robert Sherwood, in his landmark book, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Grossett & Dunlap, 1948), quoted Harry Hopkins as claiming the Americans “had never believed that our Lend Lease help had been the chief factor in the Soviet defeat of Hitler on the eastern front. That this had been done by the heroism and blood of the Russian Army.”

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once called lend-lease “the most unselfish and unsordid financial act of any country in all history.” However, the Americans themselves admitted that lend-lease brought in considerable income for the US. In particular, former US Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones stated that the US had not only gotten its money back via supplies shipped from the USSR, but the US had even made a profit, which he claimed was not uncommon in trade relations regulated by American state agencies.

His fellow American, the historian George Herring just as candidly wrote that lend-lease was not actually the most unselfish act in the history of mankind, but rather an act of prudent egotism, with the Americans fully aware of how they could benefit from it.

And that was indeed the case, as lend-lease proved to be an inexhaustible source of wealth for many American corporations. In fact, the United States was the only country in the anti-Hitler coalition to reap significant economic dividends from the war.There’s a reason that Americans often refer to WWII as “the good war,” as evidenced, for example, in the title of the book by the famous American historian Studs Terkel: The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (1984). With unabashed cynicism he quoted, “While the rest of the world came out bruised and scarred and nearly destroyed, we came out with the most unbelievable machinery, tools, manpower, money … The war was fun for America. I’m not talking about the poor souls who lost sons and daughters. But for the rest of us the war was a hell of a good time.”

Evgeniy Spitsyn is a Russian historian and author.

Source in Russian: Ukraina.ru

Adapted and translated by ORIENTAL REVIEW.

First published in May 2014

Of relevance to the current debate on Heroin addiction and opioids in the USA.

Narcotics is big business.

90 percent of the heroin consumed in the US comes from Afghanistan

***

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Source: Top-Criminal-Justice-Schools.net

How Big Is the Drug Trade?

With the recent capture of “El Chapo,” the richest drug cartel leader in the world, let’s take a look at what he was known for — a global drug trade.

It’s a big question.
There’s a world of drugs out there:
Methamphetamine
Amphetamines
Cannabis
Heroin
Opium
Cocaine
Ecstasy
Hallucinogens

And a world of drug users…

Drug Users by Region:

Africa:

Cannabis Users-
Lower estimate-27,680,000
Upper estimate-52,790,000
Average-16,735,000

Opiate Users-
Lower estimate-680,000
Upper estimate-2,930,000
Average-1,805,000

Cocaine Users-
Lower estimate-1,020,000
Upper estimate-2,670,000
Average-1,845,000

Amphetamine Users-
Lower estimate-1,550,000
Upper estimate-5,200,000
Average-3,375,000

Ecstasy users-
Lower estimate-350,000
Upper estimate-1,930,000
Average-1,140,000

The Americas:
North America:
Cannibis Users-
Lower estimate-29,950,000
Upper estimate-29,950,000
Average-29,950,000

Opiate Users-
Lower estimate-1,290,000
Upper estimate-1,380,000
Average-1,335,000

Cocaine Users-
Lower estimate-6,170,000
Upper estimate-6,170,000
Average-6,170,000

Amphetamine Users-
Lower estimate-3,090,000
Upper estimate-3,200,000
Average-3,150,000

Ecstasy Users-
Lower estimate-2,490,000
Upper estimate-2,490,000
Average-2,490,000

Caribbean and South/Central America:

Cannabis Users-
Lower estimate-8,260,000
Upper estimate-10,080,000
Average-9,170,000

Opiate Users-
Lower estimate-1,000,000
Upper estimate-1,060,000
Average-1,030,000

Cocaine Users-
Lower estimate-2,550,000
Upper estimate-2,910,000
Average-2,732,500

Amphetamine Users-
Lower estimate-1,670,000
Upper estimate-2,690,000
Average-2,180,000

Ecstasy Users-
Lower estimate-550,000
Upper estimate-3,031,000
Average-1,790500

Asia:

Cannabis Users-
Lower estimate-31,510,000
Upper estimate-64,580,000
Average-48,045,000

Opiate Users-
Lower estimate-6,446,000
Upper estimate-12,540,000
Average-9,493,000

Cocaine Users-
Lower estimate-430,000
Upper estimate-2,270,000
Average-1,350,000

Amphetamine Users-
Lower estimate-4,430,000
Upper estimate-37,990,000
Average-21,210,000

Ecstasy Users-
Lower estimate-2,370,000
Upper estimate-15,620,000
Average-8,995,000

Europe:

Cannabis Users-
Lower estimate-29,370,000
Upper estimate-29,990,000
Average-29,680,000

Opiate Users-
Lower estimate-3,290,000
Upper estimate-3,820,000
Average-3,555,000

Cocaine Users-
Lower estimate-4,570,000
Upper estimate-4,970,000
Average-4,770,000

Amphetamine Users-
Lower estimate-2,500,000
Upper estimate-3,190,000
Average-2,845,000

Ecstasy Users-
Lower estimate-3,850,000
Upper estimate-4,080,000
Average-3,965,000

Global Numbers:

Cannabis Users-
Lower estimate-128,910,000
Upper estimate-190,750,000
Average-159,830,000

Opiate Users-
Lower estimate-12,840,000
Upper estimate-21,880,000
Average-17,360,000

Cocaine Users-
Lower estimate-15,070,000
Upper estimate-19,380,000
Average-17,225,000

Amphetamine Users-
Lower estimate-13,710,000
Upper estimate-52,900,000
Average-33,305,000

Ecstasy Users-
Lower estimate-10,540,000
Upper estimate-25,820,000
Average-18,180,000

Which equals A LOT of dough

Estimated annual value of global criminal markets in the 2000′s
Cocaine: $88 billion USD
Opiates: $65 billion USD
By comparison, only $1 billion in criminal firearms markets.
That’s 153 times bigger than the criminal firearms trade.
– (And that’s only counting Cocaine and Opiates)

By Value, most drugs originate in 3 nations.

Afghanistan, Colombia, and Peru manufacture a majority of cocaine and heroine.

Top destinations for Afghani Heroin:

1. Europe
2. Russian Federation
3. China
4. The Americas
5. Africa

Top destinations for Afghani Opium

1. Iran
2. Europe
3. Afghanistan
4. Pakistan
5. Africa

Top destinations for Peruvian and Colombian Cocaine:

1. North America (40% of global annual users)
2. EU
3. South America/Central America/Caribbean
4. Africa
5. Asia

Once the money gets rolling…

Cocaine:
Pan-American Route:
With drugs, you pay for risk, as much as the product itself.
1 kilo = $2,000 in Colombia or Peru
1 kilo = $10,000 in Mexico
1 kilo = $30,000 in the U.S.
Or broken up into grams = $100,000 in U.S.

There’s no stopping it.

Even with a wall at the border drug traffickers use:
Catapults (to throw packages over the wall)
Planes (over the wall)
-Cesnas to 747′s.[2]
(747′s can carry 13 tons of cocaine)
(that’s $1.179 billion in cocaine once it’s in America and parceled out)
Boats (around the wall)
Tunnels (below the wall)
Sandbag Bridges (over rivers)

When your trafficking a 100 kilos, a wrecked Cesna, a sunk boat, or a broken tunnel is a cost you can deal with.

The U.S. is the single largest customer base of drugs worldwide.

Estimates for US drug expenditures:[in billions USD]
Cocaine: 28
Heroin: 27
Marijuana: 41
Meth: 13

Former Mexican President Porfirio Diaz–“Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” [2]

Colombian and Mexican Cartels take in $18-$39 billion from US sales each year.
$6.6 billion = Mexican Cartel gross revenue.
50% of this is made by the Sinaloa Cartel
Equals $3 billion in revenue.
About 1/2 of Facebook’s revenue
Close to Netflix’s revenue
And that’s just the cartels of two countries.

These are some massive players.
With several drug kingpins landing on Forbes richest in the world list in recent years.

Drug Kingpins:

El Chapo Guzman:[2]
Forbes billionaire list: 2009-2012
Chicago’s Public Enemy No. 1
Notable Achievements:
1st to traffic drugs through tunnel underneath border.
Known for using a catapult to throw drugs over the border.
Had a large pot farm guarded by armed guards in northern Wisconsin.
Escaped from a high security Mexican prison in a laundry basket.
Saw the future with methamphetamine, gave it away for free to establish a customer base.

Zhenli Ye Gon[2]
A Chinese-Mexican businessman believed to have sold precursors of meth to cartels.
And this is a lot of meth.
Meth ingredient seizures at ports:
22 tons in October 2009; 88 tons in May 2010; 252 tons December 2012

Zhenli is a notorious gambler. [2]
Losing so much at a casino that they gifted him a Rolls-Royce.
How much do you have to lose to be given a Rolls-Royce?
$72 million was how much Zhenli lost at one casino that year.

Pablo Escobar:[4]
At his height had a fleet of:
16 planes
1 Learjet
6 helicopters
Boats
Remote control submarines.

Largest load: sent 25 tons of cocaine on a boat.

Spent $2,500 a month on rubber bands to stack money.
Wrote off 10% of income from “spoilage” by rats nibbling at stacks of money.

This is too much money to ignore. In the drug trade, if you can make it, users will always come.

Copyright top-criminal-justice-schools.net, 2014

Citations:

1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2012/03/13/billionaire-druglords-el-chapo-guzman-pablo-escobar-the-ochoa-brothers/
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html?pagewanted=all&_r=3&
3. https://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2010/World_Drug_Report_2010_lo-res.pdf
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar
5. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp/policy-and-research/wausid_results_report.pdf

Incisive and provocative analysis first published by Global Research in August 2003.

You might think that reading about a Podunk University’s English teacher’s attempt to connect the dots between the poverty of American education and the gullibility of the American public may be a little trivial, considering we’ve embarked on the first, openly-confessed imperial adventure of senescent capitalism in the US, but bear with me. The question my experiences in the classroom raise is why have these young people been educated to such abysmal depths of ignorance.

“I don’t read,” says a junior without the slightest self-consciousness. She has not the smallest hint that professing a habitual preference for not reading at a university is like bragging in ordinary life that one chooses not to breathe. She is in my “World Literature” class. She has to read novels by African, Latin American, and Asian authors. She is not there by choice: it’s just a “distribution” requirement for graduation, and it’s easier than philosophy -she thinks.

The novel she has trouble reading is Isabel Allende’s “Of Love and Shadows,” set in the post-coup terror of Pinochet’s junta’s Nazi-style regime in Chile, 1973-1989. No one in the class, including the English majors, can write a focused essay of analysis, so I have to teach that. No one in the class knows where Chile is, so I make photocopies of general information from world guide surveys. No one knows what socialism or fascism is, so I spend time writing up digestible definitions. No one knows what Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is, and I supply it because it’s impossible to understand the theme of the novel without a basic knowledge of that work – which used to be required reading a few generations ago. And no one in the class has ever heard of 11 September 1973, the CIA-sponsored coup which terminated Chile’s mature democracy. There is complete shock when I supply US de-classified documents proving US collusion with the generals’ coup and the assassination of elected president, Salvador Allende.

Geography, history, philosophy, and political science – all missing from their preparation. I realize that my students are, in fact, the oppressed, as Paulo Freire’s “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” pointed out, and that they are paying for their own oppression. So, I patiently explain: no, our government has not been the friend of democracy in Chile; yes, our government did fund both the coup and the junta torture-machine; yes, the same goes for most of Latin America. Then, one student asks, “Why?” Well, I say, the CIA and the corporations run roughshod over the world in part because of the ignorance of the people of the United States, which apparently is induced by formal education, reinforced by the media, and cheered by Hollywood. As the more people read, the less they know and the more indoctrinated they become, you get this national enabling stupidity to attain which they go into bottomless pools of debt. If it weren’t tragic, it would be funny.

Meanwhile, this expensive stupidity facilitates US funding of the bloody work of death squads, juntas, and terror regimes abroad. It permits the war we are waging – an unfair, illegal, unjust, illogical, and expensive war, which announces to the world the failure of our intelligence and, by the way, the creeping weakness of our economic system. Every man, woman, and child killed by a bomb, bullet, famine, or polluted water is a murder – and a war crime. And it signals the impotence of American education to produce brains equipped with the bare necessities for democratic survival: analyzing and asking questions.

Let me put it succinctly: I don’t think serious education is possible in America. Anything you touch in the annals of knowledge is a foe of this system of commerce and profit, run amok. The only education that can be permitted is if it acculturates to the status quo, as happens in the expensive schools, or if it produces people to police and enforce the status quo, as in the state school where I teach. Significantly, at my school, which is a third-tier university, servicing working-class, first-generation college graduates who enter lower-echelon jobs in the civil service, education, or middle management, the favored academic concentrations are communications, criminal justice, and social work–basically how to mystify, cage, and control the masses.

This education is a vast waste of the resources and potential of the young. It is boring beyond belief and useless–except to the powers and interests that depend on it. When A Ukranian student, a three-week arrival on these shores, writes the best-organized and most profound essay in English of the class, American education has something to answer for–especially to our youth.

But the detritus and debris that American education has become is both planned and instrumental. It’s why our media succeeds in telling lies. It’s why our secretary of state can quote from a graduate-student paper, claiming confidently that the stolen data came from the highest intelligence sources. It’s why Picasso’s “Guernica” can be covered up during his preposterous “report” to the UN without anyone guessing the political significance of this gesture and the fascist sensibility that it protects.

Cultural fascism manifests itself in an aversion to thought and cultural refinement. “When I hear the word ‘culture,'” Goebbels said, “I reach for my revolver.” One of the infamous and telling reforms the Pinochet regime implemented was educational reform. The basic goal was to end the university’s role as a source of social criticism and political opposition.

The order came to dismantle the departments of philosophy, social and political science, humanities and the arts–areas in which political discussions were likely to occur. The universities were ordered to issue degrees only in business management, computer programming, engineering, medicine and dentistry – vocational training schools, which in reality is what American education has come to resemble, at least at the level of mass education. Our students can graduate without ever touching a foreign language, philosophy, elements of any science, music or art, history, and political science, or economics.

In fact, our students learn to live in an electoral democracy devoid of politics – a feature the dwindling crowds at the voting booths well illustrate.

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that, in the rapacity that the industrial revolution created, people first surrendered their minds or the capacity to reason, then their hearts or the capacity to empathize, until all that was left of the original human equipment was the senses or their selfish demands for gratification. At that point, humans entered the stage of market commodities and market consumers–one more thing in the commercial landscape. Without minds or hearts, they are instrumentalized to buy whatever deadens their clamoring and frightened senses–official lies, immoral wars, Barbies, and bankrupt educations.

Meanwhile, in my state, the governor has ordered a 10% cut across the board for all departments in the state – including education.

Luciana Bohne teaches film and literature at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. Please send your comments/feedback/discussion on this article to [email protected] .

For years there has been widespread and growing support for Julian Assange in many parts of the world. This I have learned from a variety of sources, including so-called alternative media, and queries addressed to me in consequence of my own modest efforts to inform (see this and this).

Recently, for example, two correspondents in France inquired if I had any opinion of or additional knowledge relating to an article containing brutal criticism of Julian’s lawyers. Both women expressed what one referred to as ”my frustration and sense of powerlessness” concerning Julian’s predicament.

Such sentiments are far from uncommon, and may in large measure be explained by the sorrowful fact that Julian’s supporters worldwide — who at this point number in the millions and are clearly prepared to contribute time, energy and money — have been left unorganised and poorly informed.

That observation is in no way meant to disparage or trivialise the efforts of individuals like John Pilger, who for years has been conducting an extensive one-man information service, making himself available to all sorts of media for interviews, etc. — while donating large amounts of time and energy that he might devote to more personal matters if there were equally knowledgeable, accessible and responsive additional sources to share the burden. I, for one, have not discovered any.

Discouraging initiative

It was due to my great respect for John Pilger, both for his unflagging support to Julian Assange and for his many journalistic achievements, that I unhesitatingly assented when he earlier this year asked me to help with a project in Sweden.

The objective, at least initially, was to gather a respectable number of endorsements for a statement in support of Julian Assange to be published in Swedish media, commissioned and financed by the WikiLeaks organization. The name-gathering began on 22 May and soon everything was arranged for full-page ads to be published in two leading Swedish newspapers on Monday, June 3rd, with a statement endorsed by over 100 citizens in various walks of life.

But a few days before scheduled publication, WikiLeaks leaders informed John that it had decided not to go ahead with publication ”at this time”. No discussion. No consultation. No explanation. Only some vague noises about publication at some unspecified later date which became increasingly vague and less specific as the days passed. In the end, under mounting pressure from endorsers to act upon their eagerness to openly declare their support of Julian, the statement was published on a website established for that purpose. (More detailed account here.)

To put it mildly, this episode indicated a state of disarray or worse among the presumptive leaders of Julian’s most crucial and well-informed support in London. It also seemed to express a dismal lack of respect for John Pilger, who through the years has contributed so much. And, of course, it demonstrated an utter disregard for all the Swedes who donated their time, energy and good names to the project.

It would be difficult to devise a more effective method for repelling adherents and discouraging initiative.

What’s happening, how to know?

The arbitrary cancellation of the Swedish initiative is one of many signs that a coherent, well-organised campaign in support of Julian Assange is notable by its absence. Much the same can be said of the information available to those who may wish to participate in such campaign. For an uninitiate in Saskatchewan, Sweden or Sri Lanka wanting to learn and help, where to turn for enlightenment?

One obvious place to start, of course, is with the organisation that Julian is world famous for having founded. But a visit to the WikiLeaks website does not have much to say about his persecution. There is nothing about it on the home page at www.wikileaks.org. In the ”News” subsection there are a couple of related articles, the most recent dated June 7 of this year. Those who seek further under the ”About” heading will, toward the end of the page, find this reference: ”Julian Assange’s ongoing detention without charge is best described here”

That’s all there is to learn about the Assange case from the WikiLeaks website.

Not so incidentally, the link to the justice4assange website does not appear to be functioning. When I yesterday and today clicked on that link with both Firefox and Chrome, I got either a blank page or this message: ”Error. Bad request or the file you have requested does not exist. Please wait few minutes and try again.”

Those who know what to do next may be able to access the Justice for Assange website via its home page at https://justice4assange.com — but often first after receiving and complying with the ”Bad request” error message. If they eventually succeed, they are greeted with this sight:

The video is a 37-second excerpt from a statement on 5 February 2016 by Christophe Peschoux, identified only as ”UN working group secretary”.

The group in question is presumably the UNWGAD. Note that the date is Feb. 2016, more than 3½ years ago. Among many other things not mentioned is the far more powerful statement by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture from May of this year.

Beneath the video are some Frequently Asked Questions which include ”When did Assange enter the embassy, and why is he there?”, indicating that the website has not been updated since before Julian’s arrest in April this year.

Otherwise, the site does not appear to be functioning well or at all. Clicking on the section headings in the top menu (Action, Statements, etc.) has no effect, i.e. one remains on the home page. But it does produce some mixed headings in the menu, for example:

These and other problems, including the frequent reappearance of the ” Bad request” error message, render this website of little or no use. Yet it is recommended by WikiLeaks as the source where “Julian Assange’s ongoing detention without charge is best described”.

Defending WikiLeaks — not Julian Assange

Apparently some person(s) decided several years ago that the principal source of information about the Assange case on the Internet should be the website entitled ”Defend WikiLeaks” (not ”Defend Assange”). It may, however, be questioned how widely that is understood or agreed.

I routinely explore a broad range of sources via the Internet for information about Julian Assange and many other subjects, but rarely come across any reference to Defend WikiLeaks.   WikiLeaks’ own website makes no mention of its Defender, but instead links readers to the error-prone site of Justice for Assange.

The Defend WikiLeaks website seems to be equally prone to the “Bad request” error message. Those who succeed in gaining access see this home page:

The top menu clearly indicates that ”Julian” is a subsidiary issue.

There is no photo or other image of Julian on this, the opening page of the section labelled ”Julian” on the Defend WikiLeaks website.

The banner headline seems to suggest that the arrest of Julian was a recent event, not something that occurred over half a year ago.

The 45-second video was apparently produced by the British Labour Party. After a half-second with the puzzling opening image — apparently taken during the arrest of Julian in April — the video segues to a statement in support of Julian recited by an unidentified but presumably Labour politician, accompanied by excerpts from the infamous ”Collateral Murder” video.   WikiLeaks’ own website makes no mention of its Defender, but instead links readers to the error-prone site of Justice for Assange.

In relation to Julian’s current predicament, the relevance of the video and the quote beginning ”Congress shall make no law” is not immediately evident.

The appeal for money is very clear, however.

Visitors — presumably from all over the world and with many different native tongues that are not English — are apparently expected to understand what ”Liveblog” means, and that in this case it involves current news about the Assange case. Those who, for whatever reason, choose to click on the Liveblog link are at risk of being met with the ”Bad request” error message. If and when they do gain access to that page, they will probably find it difficult to navigate — sluggish and erratic, as appears to be the case with navigation within and between most pages of the website.

How much life there is in the Liveblog is open to question; the most recent entry is from October 16, three days ago. The lead headline is ” Julian Assange Arrested, Donate to the campaign now”. Beneath that is a small subhead: ”Arrest info and how else to get involved here”. Clicking on that link opens either the ”Bad request” error message or a page headlined ”Emergency: Julian Assange has been arrested”. That again.

There is some mention of his imprisonment in ”About Julian Assange” — 142 of the 2519 words on that page touch upon the subject. The ”Prison Updates” page contains two entries with a total of 491 words, the most recent dated 30 September 2019.

The section labelled ”Take Action” opens with another appeal to ”Donate”. That is followed by some fairly self-evident suggestions about what one might do to help. It is noted that ”There are numerous local groups and campaigns that have sprouted up in support of Julian Assange around the world”. But no effort has been made to unite them into a coherent force, or even to document them and their activities.

Then there is the question of the website’s visual appeal. Design is a matter of taste, of course. But I am fairly confident that if a random sample of Internet uses were asked to compare this website with just about any other — www.wikileaks.org or www.julian-assange.se, for example — the harsh yellow-blackness of defend.wikileaks.org would not be seen as especially inviting.

Clearly inadequate

Etc., etc.… In short, the website designated by some obscure process to serve as the primary Internet source of information about the Assange case is clearly inadequate. Among other things, I have never before encountered a website that performs so poorly from a purely technical standpoint — more than slightly perplexing, given the technical expertise of those associated with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. The failure to provide vital, up-to-date information is even more perplexing, to indulge in understatement.

Of course, it can be and has been reasoned that there are many other sources available among alternative and even mainstream media, some of which are referenced on the Defend WikiLeaks website. But how to interpret and choose among them?

To take one of countless examples: Some media have recently reported that Julian is in very poor health, others that he is in good health. Which to believe? What is very much needed is an authoritative source, acting on Julian’s behalf, which provides reliable fresh information while resolving the contradictions, confusions and inaccuracies of media and other reports. That would appear to be a precondition for any global campaign to secure his freedom.

Needless to say, such a campaign would be very difficult to organise and coordinate. But difficult tasks have been accomplished before — by Julian Assange, for example. It may well be that those who have been leading current efforts, whoever they are, have been doing their very best. If so, their efforts are to be gratefully acknowledged.

But in a situation like Julian’s, the need for dedicated and effective leadership does not dissipate just because certain individuals are unable to provide it. The time to identify and recruit such leadership is long overdue, and that will no doubt require some blunt and open discussion.

Initial suggestions

By way of imitating such a discussion, here are a few suggestions about what needs to be done:

• Launch an independent global campaign dedicated solely to the release of Julian Assange from captivity, with an appropriate title such as ”Assange Freedom Now!”
• Recruit a qualified steering committee to lead and legitimise the campaign. Names like Mairead Maguire, Craig Murray and Ray McGovern come to mind. So does John Pilger’s, of course; but he has already done so much that it seems impertinent to contemplate asking.
• Establish an adequately staffed and funded campaign headquarters, presumably in London but possibly elsewhere, to carry out tasks including:

Create and constantly maintain an attractive, easily read and technically efficient website to provide continual and authoritative reports on Julian’s current situation and related matters, correct errors in other media, answer reader enquiries, etc.

Develop and maintain a comprehensive list of solidarity groups around the world, document their actions, respond to their requests for information and guidance, etc.

Help plan, organise and execute major actions.

This text was originally posted on nne.se

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Time and again, things aren’t as they seem, Trump’s ordered withdrawal of US forces from northern Syria the latest example — saying one thing, then going another way, going along with his geopolitical team’s permanent war agenda.

Commenting on the situation in Syria’s north, Trump said “a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil. And we’re going to be protecting it (sic), and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future (sic).”

He ignored illegal US occupation of sovereign Syrian territory, stealing its resources, committing Nuremberg-level high crimes against the state and its people.

On Thursday, a Pentagon statement said additional (heavily armed) US forces will be sent to northern Syria to “reinforce” control of its oil fields — on the phony pretext of preventing them from “falling back into the hands of ISIS or other destabilizing actors,” controlled by the US not explained.

According to the WSJ, “about 500 US troops,” along with “dozens of battle tanks and other equipment” apparently will be deployed in northern Syria — “a reversal from” Trump’s withdrawal order.

What’s going on? Withdrawal of US forces from Syria appears more illusion than reality. Unknown numbers of Pentagon troops continue to occupy southern Syrian territory near Iraq and Jordan.

Trump’s withdrawal order from the country’s north excluded unclear numbers remaining, including at an illegal Pentagon airbase, one of its platforms for terror-bombing Syrian infrastructure and populated civilian areas.

US forces invaded Syria illegally to stay. Bipartisan dark forces in Washington want endless war on the country continued.

Restoration of peace and stability to US war theaters defeats its imperial aims, served by forever wars, instability and chaos.

The myth persists about combatting the scourge of ISIS created, supported and controlled by the Pentagon and CIA, used as proxy troops in US war theaters.

The October 17 US/Turkish deal in Ankara makes no mention of halting Pentagon/IDF terror-bombing of Syrian targets — to continue at their discretion.

US warplanes, attack helicopters and armed drones continue controlling portions of Syrian airspace, including areas bordering Turkey, Iraq and Jordan — facilitating Israeli strikes on Syrian targets.

Separately on Wednesday, Erdogan told Trump his military offensive in northern Syria ended while his forces continue attacking Kurdish fighters, Syrian troops in the area struck as well.

On Thursday, Syrian media reported attacks by Turkey and its terrorist proxies on government forces, killing some soldiers, wounding others near Tal Tamr, a clear ceasefire breach.

Kurdish YPG fighters reported the same thing, saying a large-scale Turkish offensive on Thursday attacked three northern Syrian villages where their troops are located, adding Ankara is responsible for the “deterioration of the ceasefire process.”

It’s shaky at best because of Erdogan’s revanchist aims and continued illegal US occupation of northern and southern Syrian territory, including its airspace.

According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on Thursday, government troops “confronted…an attack by forces affiliated to the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries of terrorists on Kowzaliyah and Tal Laban in Tal Tamer region in Hasaka north-western countryside,” adding:

“Turkish occupation troops continued their aggression on Syrian territories and occupied al-Manajir village in Tal Tamer region after shelling the area with artillery and heavy weapons.”

The situation in occupied Syria remains fluid. Sporadic clashes between Turkish forces and its jihadist proxies against Kurdish fighters and government troops continue.

Restoration of peace and stability to the country remains unattainable because consensus in Washington rejects the idea — endless wars in multiple theaters supported by the NYT and other establishment media.

Majority Republicans and undemocratic Dems are committed to regime change in Syria, wanting Assad replaced by US-controlled puppet rule.

They want Iran isolated regionally, economic terrorism on the country continuing, aiming to topple its legitimate government.

Time and again, geopolitical know-nothing Trump is manipulated to go along with what dark forces surrounding him want pursued.

It’s not a pretty picture nor encouraging for what may lie ahead.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

On October 23rd, Bolivian president Evo Morales gave a press-conference in which he stated that a right-wing coup d’etat was underway in the country. With victory practically assured in the first round of the presidential election, the returning incumbent claimed that widespread right-wing extremist violence was being used in an attempt to interfere with vote counting and certification of the election’s results.

Morales said

“A coup is underway, carried out by the right-wing with foreign support…what are the methods of this coup attempt? They’re not recognizing or waiting for election results, they’re burning down electoral courts, they want to proclaim the second-place candidate as the winner.”

This bears many parallels with Bolivia’s regional geo-strategic partner, Venezuela. Following the clear victory of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in his 2018 bid for re-election, the US regime-change machine went into fifth gear, with the attempt to install the usurper Juan Guaidó as president through a combination of right-wing extremist violence and quasi-legal subterfuge. Both countries possess extremely valuable natural resource deposits which make them compelling targets for American neo-imperialism in what many American foreign policy thinkers (including, most famously, John Bolton) see as “our hemisphere.”

Morales also stated that one of the strategies of right-wing extremists attempting to disrupt the election was to find ways of rendering the votes of rural and indigenous communities uncountable or otherwise irrelevant. He has always received the overwhelming electoral support of rural and indigenous communities. This is entirely predictable, considering that rural and indigenous communities in Bolivia have been the principal economic beneficiaries of the revolution which has been undertaken since Morales was first elected president in 2006.

It is indisputable that Bolivia’s politico-economic spectrum has an ethnic dimension, just as Venezuela’s does. Both countries are highly multi-ethnic, but the overwhelming majority of right-wing extremists using violence in an attempt to unseat Maduro and Morales have been urban, middle-class and, broadly-speaking “white.” In Bolivia, some of these elements resent the effects of Morales’ revolution, which has been to redistribute wealth to rural and indigenous communities through land-reform, but also through the state-sponsored modernization of agriculture. Poverty has been cut in half since 2006.

The seed-capital for this modernization of agriculture was generated by the nationalization of certain strategic industries, including the country’s natural gas sector, lithium-mining, telecom, public transport, airlines, airports and some manufacturing. The profits generated from these nationalized industries have totalled $74 billion since 2006, money which has been invested in infrastructural development (including renewable energy) and agriculture, both of which have immensely benefitted rural and indigenous Bolivians. Significant investments have also been made in public healthcare and education, both of which the government classifies not as “services,” but as matters of national security.

The next phase in Bolivia’s plan for economic “self-strengthening” will be to seed industrialization, making it possible to create a more value-added economy. High-end processing of natural resources at home is by far preferable to the export of raw materials. It is this development, wherein Bolivia creates its own value-added industrial economy rather than simply continuing as an economic colony for cheap resource-extraction, which threatens US economic interests more than any previous development over the timeline of Morales’ 13-year revolutionary process.

However, more broadly, it is the success of this economic model which poses an immense ideological threat to American imperial interests throughout South America. Unlike Venezuela, Bolivia has a high degree of food-security, making it much more difficult for international agri-business conglomerates to attempt to starve the population into submission in an effort to dissuade them from the revolutionary path. As with Venezuela, 2 of the factors which would make direct US military intervention extremely difficult are Bolivia’s physical geography and logistics. While the US has client-states in the region, none of them have signaled that they would be willing to allow their territories to be used as staging-areas for a US invasion. In the case of Venezuela, the availability of almost 2 million well trained and ideologically committed military reservists is another factor.

Therefore, regarding Bolivia, the Americans are left with no other strategy but to sponsor low-level terrorism, enacted by domestic reactionary elements, which the western media refer to as “civil society organizations.” However, this is combined with quasi-legal methods, insofar as the purpose of the terrorism is to prevent the counting of votes and the certification of election-results. This combination of legal and illegal methods in synthesis has always been a hallmark of fascist movements worldwide, going all the way back to the 1930’s – they use violence to seize power, but always attempt to construct a veneer of legality while doing so. As a methodology, the “quasi-legal coup d’etat” is a historically defining characteristic of fascism.

This attempt to invalidate the election’s results is conducted in coordination with an international component, which then pushes for another election or refuses to recognize the election-result. The US-controlled Organization of American States, headquartered in Washington DC, has stated that there should be a run-off if Morales’ margin of victory in the election’s first round was not more than 10% of the vote. In similar fashion, regarding Venezuela, the OAS voted in April to recognize the “ambassador” chosen by Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s official representative to the organization.

On that basis, we should not be so surprised if the United States and its allies and clients choose to arbitrarily declare that they recognize Morales’ defeated opponent, Carlos Mesa, as president. Mesa’s party (the so-called “Revolutionary Left Front”) sold out to Bolivia’s land-owning class decades ago, and he has spent several years moonlighting in Washington DC-based think-tanks. He’s Uncle Sam’s boy in La Paz. The Bolivian government’s non-compliance with these international quasi-legal diktats would then be used as a pretext for economic terrorism and the imposition of economic sanctions.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Padraig McGrath is a political analyst.

More than 46 years of initially military imposed neoliberalism has finally exploded into widespread frustration, protest and violence. This neoliberalism culminated in 2017 with twelve businessmen, among them Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, monopolizing at least 17% of the national GDP, demonstrating the huge gap in wealth equity. There is little doubt why the latest protests have exploded violently, with 18 dead so far – Piñera had declared war on his own people to protect his lucrative monopoly racket.

It is without surprise he had declared war. The aggressive neoliberalism that has dominated Chile since the 1973 Chilean coup d’état when socialist President Salvador Allende was killed and eventually replaced by neoliberal Augusto Pinochet, with the backing and blessing of U.S. President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, the CIA and the so-called “Chicago Boys” neoliberal economic team.

Although the so-called communist threat was defeated in Chile, it was not until 1990 for the kinder face of neoliberalism to return to the country, with the first democratic election taking place since the coup. The return to democracy had not meant any differences to the economic system.

The appearance of GDP growth in the South American country created the mythology of the Chilean miracle, ‘thanks’ to the Chicago Boys, the group of young Chilean economists who studied at the University of Chicago under the adviser to U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, professor Milton Friedman. They were the so-called economic liberators and advised Pinochet on applying complete free-market policies, essentially to privatize state-owned industries and companies, and to open the economy.

The pernicious globalist model was applied and deemed a miracle because of significant GDP growth. However, this is only to the benefit of shareholders and private companies and does not reflect on the average Chilean experience. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Gini coefficient value, a method to measure wealth distribution, stood at a record 0.50 in 2017, one of the highest inequality coefficients in the world.

This is because the incomes of the richest 10 percent of Chile are 26 times higher than the incomes of the poorest 10 percent of the population. This is partly also due because the of an unfair taxation system that creates a massive tax burden on the poor as Chile’s government earns less from income taxes than any other country in the 35-member OECD. Despite praises of the supposed fantastic economic performance, almost a third of Chilean workers are employed in part-time jobs, with one in two Chileans having low literacy skills, according to the OECD.

And now as Chile literally burns and 18 people are dead, we cannot forget that former president Michelle Bachelet grotesquely dedicated lessons on “human rights” against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Although Piñera apologized, it was not for his declaration of war against the people, but rather for the decades of unresolved problems, followed by an announcement for a new social and economic program.

A reversal of the crippling neoliberal economic system? Highly doubtful and probably more a Band-Aid option.

Neoliberal propagandist Enrique Krauze Kleinbort – accused of the coup attempt to overthrow Mexican President López Obrador – proclaimed that Chile was ‘the role model’ for Latin American economic growth. If the inequality is considered a ‘role model,’ it shows that the oligarchs of Latin America have not realized a growing trend of violent opposition to neoliberalism, as the recent case in Ecuador demonstrates.

The very fact that Piñera attempted to increase transportation and energy costs in Chile demonstrates his lack of knowledge on international outrage to neoliberalism. The French Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France began their actions 12 months ago, which also spread across Europe, when neoliberal President Emmanuel Macron attempted to increase gasoline taxes. In 2018, Brazilian truck drivers blocked roads in a demand for a decrease in diesel prices. Mexico in 2017 saw a 20% rise in fuel prices that exploded into riots.

However, the attempted increase in transportation and energy costs was only the spark that lit the fire. As Piñera, the man part of a monopoly over the Chilean economy, was forced to admit this is an explosion after decades worth of frustration, neglect and abuse. Candida Cecilia Morel, the wife of the billionaire Piñera, sent a WhatsApp message that was leaked in the media, in which she comments on the violence and the protests shaking her country – and it certainly does show the disconnect that the elite of Chile have with the common Chilean. The message said that “we are absolutely overwhelmed, it is like a foreign invasion, alien,” and that “we will have to decrease our privileges and share with others.” Her suggestion to decrease “privileges and shares” is a stark reminder of Charles Dickens 1800’s Britain.

With such elitist comments and referring to Chileans as aliens, there is little wonder that there has been little calm despite Piñera’s half-done apology and promises of more neoliberalism with a softer punch.  Although circles close to the Chilean Presidency affirm that the disturbances and destabilization are orchestrated from abroad, it is unlikely to be true. We can of course expect that Venezuela will be the scape goat by some Chilean oligarchs, just as the oligarchs in Ecuador and Colombia do, but there remains little evidence that this is the case.

Rather, as Piñera has had to attest, decades of neoliberalism is the cause of this. However, perhaps inspired by events in Ecuador, it appears that the Chilean people are finally exercising the neoliberal ghost of Pinochet from its country. It appears that the violence will not end unless the Chilean president makes drastic changes to the Chilean economy. Whether he does this or not remains to be seen.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

On Tuesday, exactly two weeks after Ankara launched its cross border military operation “Operation Peace Spring”, in northern Syria east of the Euphrates River, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Sochi for what proved to be a lengthy diplomatic discussion that resulted in an agreement that sets the stage for de-escalating tensions in that region.

The Russian-Turkish memorandum published by the Kremlin covers ten mutually agreed upon points. Many of the same issues that were addressed but not resolved by the United States and Turkey during their recent agreements were mentioned.

The agreement begins with reiterating the importance of maintain Syria’s political unity and territorial integrity and the protection of Turkey’s national security as well.

Both parties also confirmed their commitment and emphasized their determination to combating all forms of terrorism and to not allow separatist agendas to prosper, this of course is referring to the US-backed Kurdish militia’s and their so-called self-administration policies which are illegitimate.

The importance of the 1998 Adana Agreement which was created as a security pact between Ankara and Damascus and ensures the PKK will not be allowed to regain momentum in Syria and if it does Turkey reserves the right to carry cross border military operations against them. Although Syria never denounced the pact, diplomatic relations during the conflict were severely damaged and after the PKK was squashed it re-emerged as the PYD, and Turkey views the PYD, YPG, and the newest US created rebranding the SDF all to be Syrian offshoots of the PKK.

Wednesday at noon a new deadline for the Kurdish militias to leave with their weapons started, giving them 150 hours to leave from the 30km Turkish-Syrian border. Syrian border guards along with Russian military police will enter to facilitate the removal of YPG members. After the deadline Russian and Turkish patrols will start in a 10km deep area in the west and the east of the area surrounding the area covered by “Operation Peace Spring” except for Qamishli.

In addition to the YPG elements in the previously stated areas, all Kurdish fighters and their weapons must be removed from Manbij and Tal Rifat. Measures will be taken to prevent infiltrations of terrorist elements.

As for the refugees, joint efforts will be launched to safely and voluntarily return them. Joint monitoring and verification mechanisms will also be established to coordinate and oversee that all parts of this memorandum are effectively implemented.

Both Russia and Turkey will continue to work on finding a lasting political solution to the Syrian conflict within Astana Mechanism and will support the activity of the Constitutional Committee taking place next week.

The issue of ISIS prisoners was also brought up, and the importance of preventing detainees from escaping.

Turkey is accomplishing its goal of removing Kurdish militias from its border by stating they are a threat to its national security. Regardless, it’s operation and support for terrorist factions is illegal and NATO’s pretentious concern is unavailing.

However, there’s another incentive to discontinuing its cross-border military operation, the US lifted sanctions which were imposed on October 14th and this will drastically improve Turkey’s aching economy.

President Trump was up against bipartisan disapproval for his decision to withdrawal US troops and end military support for the Kurdish factions, and he stood his ground. And lest we forget, America’s number one ally in the region, Israel, is the biggest supporter of separatist Kurdish factions in Iraq and Syria, the independent Kurdistan project is conveniently aligned with the Greater Israel project. Standing up to both Capital Hill and Israel is a bold move.

As for the Israeli-Kurdish relationship, not much has changed since I originally reported on their mutually beneficial dealings a few years ago. Israel’s selfish interests in supporting Kurdish independence remain two-fold, oil and to counter supposed “increased Iranian influence” in the region.

President Trump is trying to end what the Obama administration began with their failed “regime change” efforts in Syria. As Trump mentioned, Washington has wasted 8 Trillion dollars in Middle Eastern wars, which brought forth nothing but death and destruction to the region, killing millions and displacing many more millions of innocent people.

Immediately following his lengthy meeting with Erdogan, Putin spoke with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al Assad who expressed support for the memorandum and confirmed Syrian border guards were ready to work with the Russian military police.

The Kremlin reiterated the need for all illegal foreign military presence to leave Syria. Also, the Syrian government needs to regain control of all the oil facilities in northeastern Syria.

Russia wants a broad dialogue to take place between the Syrian government and the Kurds living in northeastern Syria. The constitutional committee in cooperation with the United Nations will also work towards peaceful political process in Syria. US troops are guarding some of the oil fields and President Trump has even suggested that Kurds should move to these oil rich areas.

With the Syrian army establishing 15 observation posts on the Turkish Syrian border east of the Euphrates and the Kurdish militias being forced to move south outside of the “safe zone” and Syrian refugees returning to northern Syria, it’s only a matter of time before the US/Kurdish militias lose their grip on these oil fields. US troops are currently guarding some of them, Trump even insinuated on Thursday that Kurds should move into these oil rich areas.

President Erdogan needs to immediately rein in the so-called Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) militants which consist mostly of Free Syrian Army terrorists and other factions that merged immediately prior to the “Peace Spring Operation”. Even with the ongoing Turkish-Russian “safe zone” agreement in place, the SNA has launched several attacks south and southeast of Ras al-Ayn while attempting to expand their presence in the area.

This article was originally published by Infobrics

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UK Prime Minister Johnson’s do-or-die aim to leave the EU by end of October failed, a snap election is his fallback option.

He’s hoping to regain a parliamentary majority — lost after expelling 21 Tories in September for opposing his Brexit agenda.

On Thursday, he asked MPs to approve a December 12 general election. According to Britain’s Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA), a two-thirds House of Commons majority is needed for approval.

Since taking office on July 23, he sought new elections three times, defeated earlier, Thursday his latest attempt — opposed by Labor.

Party whip Nick Brown said Labor was united against Johnson’s aim for new elections to try forcing adoption of his no-Brexit/Brexit deal if able to win a ruling majority, adding:

Labor will agree to snap elections once leaving the EU without a deal is off the table, party leader Jeremy Corbyn saying:

“Take no-deal off the table and we absolutely support a general election. I’ve been calling for an election ever since the last one because this country needs one to deal with all the social injustice issues – but no-deal must be taken off the table. The EU will decide whether there is an extension…and then we can decide.”

Shadow cabinet official Jon Trickett tweeted:

“Let’s be absolutely clear. Getting rid of this awful Tory government is our top priority. Our troops are ready, the party is fully prepared. Let’s get at them!!”

Pro-Labor Momentum group national coordinator Laura Parker said: Bring it on…(I)n 2017, Momentum’s campaign swung key seats for Labour. This time we’re going to run the biggest people-powered campaign the country has ever seen.”

It’s unclear how many MPs back a snap election without resolution of Brexit or a new referendum.

Current developments followed advancement of Johnson’s no-Brexit/Brexit deal last Tuesday, majority MPs rejecting its timetable, leaving the issue in limbo for further debate and possible revisions.

On October 19 as mandated by law, Johnson sought a Brexit delay from Brussels beyond the current October 31 deadline.

EU officials are considering whether to extend it to January 31, perhaps a shorter or longer period, some extension likely, perhaps announced Friday or early next week.

Unnamed Downing Street sources said if MPs reject a snap election, Johnson will continue campaigning for one, urging public support to try gaining enough parliamentary support.

Separately, Corbyn said Labor isn’t “resisting the chance to have an election. We want an election because we want to take our case to the people of this country but we do not want this country to be in any danger of crashing out of the EU without a deal because of all the damage that will do to jobs, services and trade all over this country.”

New elections are likely ahead once leaving the EU without a deal is ruled out.

A Final Comment

In response to Johnson’s threat to pull the unresolved Brexit deal if Labor rejects a snap election, Brussels may delay offering an extension beyond the October 31 deadline.

Unnamed EU sources said France wants resolution up or down on whether they’ll be a snap election before agreeing to one, the other bloc states ready to grant it to January 31.

Given Brexit impasse with the October 31 deadline fast approaching, EU states will likely extend the deadline no later than early next week.

Note: On Friday, Reuters reported that Brussels agreed in principle to a Brexit delay, announcing to what date delayed until next week.

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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.

Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo are the top 3 most identified companies in global brand audits for the second year in a row, according to a new report “BRANDED Volume II: Identifying the World’s Top Corporate Plastic Polluters.”

Four hundred and eighty-four cleanups in over 50 countries and 6 continents, organised by the Break Free From Plastic movement in September, identified the top polluting companies. The rest of the companies rounding out the top 10 polluters are Mondelēz International, Unilever, Mars, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Phillip Morris, and Perfetti Van Melle.

“This report provides more evidence that corporations urgently need to do more to address the plastic pollution crisis they’ve created. Their continued reliance on single-use plastic packaging translates to pumping more throwaway plastic into the environment. Recycling is not going to solve this problem. Break Free From Plastic’s nearly 1,800 member organizations are calling on corporations to urgently reduce their production of single-use plastic and find innovative solutions focused on alternative delivery systems that do not create pollution,” said Von Hernandez, global coordinator of the Break Free From Plastic movement.

This year’s most frequently identified companies in the brand audits – Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo – have offered mostly false solutions to the plastics crisis, underscoring how important it is for voices from beyond the consumer goods sector to demand accountability and call for an end to single-use plastics. The list of top polluters is again filled with some of the world’s most commonly known brands.

“Recent commitments by corporations like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo to address the crisis unfortunately continue to rely on false solutions like replacing plastic with paper or bioplastics and relying more heavily on a broken global recycling system. These strategies largely protect the outdated throwaway business model that caused the plastic pollution crisis, and will do nothing to prevent these brands from being named the top polluters again in the future,” said Abigail Aguilar, Greenpeace Southeast Asia plastic campaign coordinator.

“The products and packaging that brands like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo are churning out is turning our recycling system into garbage. China has effectively banned the import of the US and other exporting countries’ ‘recycling,’ and other countries are following suit. Plastic is being burned in incinerators across the world, exposing communities to toxic pollution. We must continue to expose these real culprits of our plastic and recycling crisis,” said Denise Patel, US Coordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).

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Sources

1. This report is published under the responsibility of Greenpeace Philippines: BRANDED Volume II: Identifying the World’s Top Corporate Plastic Polluters. (2019)

2. 2018 Brand audit report:  Branded: In Search of the World’s Top Corporate Plastic Polluters, volume 1 (2018)

3. A Greenpeace USA report titled Throwing Away the Future: How Companies Still Have It Wrong on Plastic Pollution “Solutions,”recently called out companies for opting for false solutions.

American defence officials with knowledge of Special Operations Forces activities in Syria are concerned that their secrets may fall into the hands of the Russians, as the Kurds switch their allegiance to the Moscow-backed Syrian government.

IntelNews reports that members of the United States Special Operations Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have had a presence in Kurdish-dominated northern Syria since at least 2012. Following the rise of the Islamic State in 2014, the Americans have worked closely with the Kurds in battling the Islamist group throughout the region.

Throughout that time, US Special Operations Forces have trained members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a political and military umbrella of anti-government Syrian groups, which is led by the Kurdish-dominated People’s Protection Unit (YPG) militias. Until recently, the SDF and the YPG were almost exclusively funded, trained and armed by the US through its Special Operations Forces units on the ground in northern Syria.

US Special Operations Forces were also behind the creation in 2014 of the SDF’s most feared force, the Anti-Terror Units. Known in Kurdish as Yekîneyên Antî Teror‎, these units have been trained by the US in paramilitary operations and are tasked with targeting Islamic State sleeper cells.

As of last week, however, the SDF and all of its US-trained militias have switched their allegiance to the Russia-backed government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The dramatic move followed the decision of the White House earlier this month to pull its Special Operations Forces troops from northern Syria, effectively allowing the Turkish military to invade the region. According to the American defence news website Military Times, US Pentagon officials are now worried that the SDF may surrender to the Russians a long list of secrets relating to US Special Operations Forces’ “tactics, techniques, procedures, equipment, intelligence gathering and even potentially names of operators”.

One former US defence official told The Military Times that SDF “may be in survival mode and will need to cut deals with bad actors” by surrendering US secrets. Another source described this scenario as “super problematic” and a symptom of the absence of a genuine American strategy in the wider Middle East region. The website also cited US Marines Major Fred Galvin (ret.), who said that Special Operations Forces tend to reveal little about themselves and their capabilities when working with non-US actors. However, this is uncharted territory for them, said Galvin, since “we’ve never had a force completely defect to an opposition like this before”.

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Featured image is from TP