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Acting in response to public statements from the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, on the need to open up indigenous lands in the Amazon Basin to extractive industries, an estimated 20,000 illegal miners are reported to have invaded the lands of the Yanomami peoples in Brazil. Although the 9.7 million hectare area was established as an Indigenous Park in 1992, meaning it could only be exploited for mining subject to special decisions in the national legislature, over the past 20 years it has been repeatedly threatened by mining invasions which have caused epidemics and violent clashes.

Concerns have also been raised about copycat invasions of Yanomami lands across the border in Venezuela, where the Government of President Maduro has announced plans for a Mining Arc embracing the whole of the south of the country. Currently, owing to a nation-wide gasoline shortage, illegal mining in the Upper Orinoco and Caura rivers in Venezuela have been scaled back.

The American Association of Anthropologists has also appealed to human rights organisations to demand the protection of the Yanomami’s rights.

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Featured image is from Forest Peoples Programme

Legendary journalist John Pilger has been to see Assange in Belmarsh Prison in London and his report is not encouraging.

Journalist John Pilger visited imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday and has raised an alarm about Assange’s “deteriorated” health.

Pilger said in a Tweet on Wednesday that Assange is “isolated” and treated “worse than a murderer.”

“I now fear for him,” Pilger wrote.

Do not forget Julian #Assange. Or you will lose him.
I saw him in Belmarsh prison and his health has deteriorated. Treated worse than a murderer, he is isolated, medicated and denied the tools to fight the bogus charges of a US extradition. I now fear for him. Do not forget him.

— John Pilger (@johnpilger) August 7, 2019

Assange is suffering from an undisclosed ailment and has been confined to the hospital ward at the maximum security prison for several weeks.  He was arrested on April 11 by British police who were called by the Ecuadorian government into its London embassy in apparent violation of international asylum law. Assange had been granted political asylum by Ecuador in 2012. He had been suffering health problems in the embassy but British authorities refused to allow him to leave the embassy for treatment and return without being arrested.

Almost immediately after his eventual arrest the United States unveiled an indictment against him for alleged intrusion into a government computer although the indictment itself describes normal procedures of investigative journalism:  encouraging a source to provide more information and working to protect the source’s identity.

On May 23, Assange was charged under the U.S. Espionage Act for possession and dissemination of classified information given to him by WikiLeak‘s source, Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. army intelligence analyst. It was the first time the Espionage Act was used against a journalist for publishing classified information.

Manning, meanwhile, is imprisoned in Alexandria, VA for refusing to testify to a grand jury on Assange’s case. Since Assange has already been twice indicted, it is not clear if a new indictment against him is being prepared. On Wednesday, the judge in Manning’s case denied her a hearing and said $1,000-a-day fines against her did not amount to “punishment.”

Assange is now fighting an extradition request from the United States as he serves a 50-week sentence in Belmarsh for having skipped bail in an unrelated Swedish investigation into sexual assault allegations, which had been dropped twice before by Swedish authorities, but was revived after his arrest. Assange had sought asylum in the Ecuador embassy because he feared extradition to the United States, fears that have been borne out by events.

He faces 175 years in prison in the U.S.

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With the US decision to impose added tariffs on more than $300 billion of China trade, and the US Treasury declaring China a “currency manipulator”, global financial markets have reacted with sharp selling. The question is whether this is the beginning of a genuine currency war that will trigger a new Financial Tsunami as bad if not worse than that of the Lehman Crisis in 2008. The timing also coincides with escalation of geopolitical clashes between Washington and Venezuela, between India and China and Pakistan over Kashmir, between Turkey with Syria and with Cyprus, as well as the escalating tensions between Hong Kong and Beijing. Are we on the verge of a so-called “perfect storm” that will transform the post-1945 global order?

After the breakoff of talks between Washington and Beijing at end of July, US President Trump announced his decision to impose added tariff sanctions on another $300 billion of China products. At that point the Peoples’ Bank of China (PBOC) let the exchange rate of the yuan fall below a psychological resistance level of 7.0 to the US dollar. It had kept the currency above 7.0 for more than a decade to stabilize US trade flows. US stocks reacted with one-day falls of well over 3%, paper losses over $1 trillion and a sharp rise in gold, as investors began to prepare for what could become a dangerous currency war with the world’s second largest economy. In addition, reneging on previous pledges to import more US agriculture products, the Beijing government ordered state buyers to stop all US agriculture purchases at the same time. As well, evidence grows that Beijing is making business more difficult for certain foreign firms in China.

Renminbi Currency Reserves

Although the PBOC over the next two days moved to stop the fall of the Renminbi (RMB), easing fears of all-out currency wars, as of this writing the China currency is poised to fall significantly, putting major pressure on other Asian export countries such as Japan and South Korea and India. At the same time China’s special financial window to the Western markets, Hong Kong, stands on the brink of a possible martial law and military crackdown from the PLA troops of the mainland, to end weeks of huge popular protest against new laws that would weaken agreed provisions of Hong Kong autonomy. Martial law in one of Asia’s major financial centers would not be positive for China’s efforts to get the China currency accepted as a major reserve currency for trade, a cornerstone of the government’s long term strategy. It would also not help China attract hundreds of billions of foreign investment in its own bond and stock markets.

What is not yet clear is whether this series of events portends the end of the globalization of the world economy on which China has built its impressive economic expansion on for the past three decades or so. One key issue is what impact the latest escalation of economic tensions between Washington and Beijing will have on the long-term strategy of making the China currency a major world reserve currency, a critical step for their future ability to fully integrate with global capital markets and expand their ambitious Belt Road Initiative. Here is where signs are that the latest moves to allow the Renminbi to break the critical 7.0 level may be more psychological warfare than actual full financial warfare.

After years of trying, China finally won acceptance of the Renminbi as one of only five world currencies composing the IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDR) currency basket along with the US dollar, British Pound, Japan Yen, and Euro in beginning of 2016. The aim has been that the Renminbi could begin to partly replace the dollar in world trade. Were that to happen it would be a major gain for China as a global financial factor and a major reduction of the role of the US dollar and US influence. Since 1945 US global hegemony has rested on two pillars–the US military as dominant and the dollar as world reserve.

Since the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, the US dollar has been the dominant currency in world trade and also in world central bank reserves. With introduction of the Euro almost two decades ago, many predicted the dominance of the dollar would end and with it, an enormous advantage the US has to run US budget deficits financed by others including China whose trade surplus dollars inevitably go to buy US Treasury and related debt. Since the Greek crisis after 2010 exposed major flaws in the Euro architecture and the weakness of EU banks, the challenge from the Euro as alternative to the dollar has stagnated.

Latest IMF data show the dollar still holds some 61% of the world central bank reserves and still dominates world trade currencies with 40% of all payments in dollars while 30% are in Euro including the large intra-EU trade. As of 2018 the China RMB accounted for less than 2% of all global payments and around 1% of world central bank reserve holdings. This will become of vital importance to China now as it sees 25 years of unprecedented trade and balance of current account surpluses turn to deficit beginning this year or next.

China Surplus Falling

Current account surplus has defined China’s economic rise and her status as major source of global credit as the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) invested record export surpluses into foreign assets, mainly government bonds, and much of that US government bonds. Some economists warn that the PBOC could deploy its financial weapon against US pressure by dumping an estimated $1.3 trillion of US bonds, likely collapsing the US economy in the process. Such dramatic action is however unlikely as China would become a major loser in the process. Not only would the value of China US bonds collapse, also China’s ability to attract hundreds of billions of foreign investment in China bond markets would be at high risk.

This year for the first time in 25 years China is likely to run a deficit in its current account. Current account, the sum of trade balances and capital flows, has been hugely positive for China since the mid-1990s as it became the cheap labor “workshop of the world.”

China Needs Foreign Investors

This year for the first time in nearly 25 years China is expected to have a deficit on its Current Account. This is no small matter. A new report by Wall Street bank, Morgan Stanley, estimates that to balance this growing deficit China will need to attract billions in foreign investment. The report states, “Due to the ongoing transition to a consumption-led economy and a decline in savings amid an aging population, China’s annual current-account deficit could reach as much as 1.6% of GDP—or $420 billion—by 2030.” If true, that is a huge shift in dependence for China. In terms of surplus in goods exports, China has already gone from a surplus of 10% of GDP in 2007 before the major financial crisis, to 2.9% in 2018. This year could be a small deficit.

Today foreign investment in China bonds is small at about $35 billion. Morgan Stanley estimates the size of China’s bond market, the heart of the debt system, to be over $12 trillion, third behind Japan with $13 trillion and USA with $40 trillion, but larger than say UK or France.

As China’s economy undergoes a major shift to current account deficit over the next few years, it must be able to attract new inflows of investment in its debt from outside. This is a huge problem potentially. This also explains a major reason behind China’s push to develop state-of-the-art advanced industry in its Made in China 2025 strategy that is the true target of Washington trade pressure.

At this juncture it looks like a high-risk game of financial chicken between Beijing and Washington. It appears clear that Xi Jinping has decided to hunker down and hold out until the US elections next year in hopes Trump will lose to a pro-China Democrat. What is clear is that this is about far more than any imbalance in China’s trade with the USA.

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

Featured image is from NEO

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

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

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

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

When the Royal Marines seized the Iranian-owned Grace 1 supertanker off Gibraltar on July 4th, then British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt hailed the seizure as a sign that Iran had “no place to hide.” On July 19th, when the Iranian government retaliated by authorizing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to seize the Swedish-owned, British-registered tanker Stena Impero in Hormuz, Hunt described it as an act of “state-piracy.”

Now, at first glance, this looks like just another tedious example of the blatant double-standards which we’ve come to expect from western politicians in relation to non-vassal states, and it is certainly that. This is not the first article in which I have drawn attention to Hunt’s tendency to practice blatant double-standards such as these. However, it has subsequently transpired that Jeremy Hunt’s recent campaign for the leadership of the British Conservative Party was largely financed by a close associate of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. The South African banker and philanthropist Ken Costa has been described in some quarters as Bin Salman’s “point-man” in the UK.

Or bagman, if you prefer.

It is unsurprising, then, that Hunt publicly bats for Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) at every available opportunity, for example in deflecting criticism regarding the Saudi role in the precipitation of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and also in consistently demonstrating hostility toward Iran.

On August 7th, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry met with Saudi Minister for Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources Khalid Al-Falih. They are reported to have discussed ways of countering what they see as Iranian attempts to “destabilize” world-oil markets, with Al-Falih indicating that KSA favours the policy of increasing oil-production to moderate any surges in the world-price of crude.

Well, when the US withdraws from the JCPOA as a pretext for unilaterally imposing new sanctions on Iranian oil, “destabilization” is inevitable, but there wouldn’t be any point in making that argument to someone to whom it was not already self-evident.

It turns out that Perry also has a lot of Saudi grit under his fingernails. The US Senate House Oversight Committee has just published a report which is extremely critical of Perry’s role in advocacy for the sale of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. Attempts have been made by IP3, an energy-consulting firm, to persuade the US Department of Energy to facilitate the sale without requiring the Saudis to sign a Section 123 agreement, which would be a commitment regarding the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Can you imagine Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons?

Not that these dubious Saudi entanglements mark the Trump administration in particular, of course. Enormous Saudi funding for the Clinton Foundation prior to 2016 was well documented. During Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, US arms-sales to Saudi Arabia increased by 97%, including a $29.4 billion sale of over 80 F-15 fighters to KSA, and her 2016 campaign-manager John Podesta’s consulting firm was paid $140,000 per month to lobby on behalf of the KSA government. The Clinton Foundation itself also received about $10 billion in donations from the Saudi government while Clinton was Secretary of State.

And let’s not even talk about the Bush family’s history with the Saudis.

So we see, then, that the level of penetration which the Saudi government has achieved in the west’s political systems transcends both nationalities and ideological boundaries. British and American hostility toward the Islamic Republic of Iran is usually analyzed as being primarily ideologically driven. This interpretation is certainly valid on a number of levels.

The Iranian Islamic revolution has been one of the most stunningly resilient and successful anti-colonial movements in history, and therefore many imperial strategists see it as an imperative that the Islamic revolution must be crushed, not simply in order for Iran’s immense natural resources to be looted as they were before 1979, but also for the same strategic-ideological reasons that the western geo-strategic perspective has historically seen it as an imperative that all revolutionary societies be crushed.

Furthermore, we can discern a deeper ideological confluence between Saudi Wahhabism and liberal universalism, currently the Occident’s dominant (but rapidly decaying) ideological paradigm. Both are rooted in 18th century excessively transcendental thought, in an explicitly ahistorical, anti-historical or post-historical way of thinking. Both explicitly reject historical comparison or collective historical experience as a normative basis for the evaluation of social, political, ideological or ethical questions.

While the French philosophers of the 18th century sought to ground their worldview in something which they called “pure reason,” unburdened by any considerations of historical embeddedness or context (a form of philosophical naiveté thankfully not shared by any of the most notable figures in the German enlightenment), Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab sought to rediscover a “pure” version of Islam, unburdened by the allegorical Koranic hermeneutics of sophisticated Persian intellectuals.

In an Inforos column on August 1st, my colleague Sarah Abed argued that the United States’ ultimate objective in Iran remains regime-change, hence the willingness to use any spurious pretext whatsoever in order to re-impose sanctions. She argues that there is a strategy of continuing to economically pressure the Iranian state until it collapses in its current form.

I certainly agree with this analysis, but in breaking down the various motivating factors behind it, our broadly justified emphasis on ideological and geo-strategic issues sometimes blinds us to the role of straightforward corruption and influence-peddling in the process. Saudi financial power has led to a situation wherein KSA exerts very arguably more influence on the foreign policies of western governments than any other foreign entity.

Paranoid liberal fantasies about the Kremlin’s influence in subverting the internal political processes of western countries used to make us laugh, but by now they are simply tedious, and paranoid fantasies about pervasive Israeli influence are almost as tedious. We overlook the point that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has arguably more raw bribery-power than any other nation-state.

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A recent report issued by the U.S. Pentagon’s Inspector General warns of conditions in Syria and Iraq which potentially could allow for ISIS to spread once again. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had not read the report but recalled the U.S. defeat of ISIS. The report warned of an ISIS goal to create turmoil in areas it had previously lost in Iraq and Syria.

The Iraqi government forces have continued to fight terrorism, and have conducted raids in Northern Iraq for ISIS sleeper cells. The military track is not the only way to fight ISIS, which espouses Radical Islam, which is a political ideology and is not a religion or a sect. Education is the key to eradicating Radical Islam. The Iraqi government must develop a program in rural areas, as well as the cities, which will educate young and old to transform hearts and minds away from terrorism. Some experts had dubbed Radical Islam as a “Death Cult”.

The regional governments should also shut down access to satellite TV channels which preach Radical Islam and Jihad. Almost every home in Syria and Iraq has a satellite dish on their roof, and reception is free for hundreds of channels. TV has become the main source of religion, politics, and entertainment. Many channels are exclusively promoting, teaching and brainwashing viewers into Radical Islamic edicts, promoting Jihad in Syria, and are most frequently broadcast from the Arab Gulf countries, and receive their funding from Saudi Arabia and others who export Radical Islamic ideology, such as Qatar.

The regional governments must stop the transfers of funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other sources to groups promoting Radical Islam. Experts agree that Saudi Arabia has been a state sponsor of Radical Islamic ideology across the globe, dating back to the 1960s, during which time they began missionary efforts in Europe and the U.S.

The defeat of ISIS  was accomplished by the Iraqi military on the Eastern side, and by the Syrian Arab Army and their Russian allies from the Western side. The U.S. played a very limited role in the defeat of ISIS, by focusing on an air campaign at Raqqa, which ended in its destruction. The U.S. focused on capturing and occupying the Syrian oil wells, which are still in their hands, under their mercenary Kurdish militia (SDF, YPG, PKK). When Russia entered Syria to fight terrorism in 2015, they began by attacking ISIS positions. They bombed oil tanker convoys taking the stolen Syrian oil to be sold in Turkey and then re-sold to European Union countries.

The Pentagon report points out that there are domestic disputes between the Iraqi government at Baghdad and the Kurdish administration in the North at Erbil. This internal rift between the two groups can be exploited by ISIS, as they prey upon the weakness of disunity. The Kurds must face reality, that the U.S. is not loyal to allies; for example, Ben Ali of Tunisia, Mubarak of Egypt, Gaddafi of Libya, Erdogan of Turkey.

Iraqi Kurdistan is the Kurdish-populated region incorporated into Iraq, and first gained autonomous status in a 1970 agreement with the Iraqi government and has a population of approximately 5.8 million people. The Kurds in Syria are occupying the North East section of Syria, and are supported by the U.S. military occupation of Syria.

The U.S. has used the Kurds to create chaos and division in Iraq, and Syria. The Kurds today are getting support from the Israeli occupation government, as they have business and oil deals with them. The U.S. views the Israeli occupation government as their closest and strongest ally in the Middle East. Israel is benefiting from the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, as they buy oil from them, and it is transported through the port at Ceyhan in Turkey. The Syrian oil is stolen from wells occupied by the Kurds and the U.S.

The Kurds could negotiate with officials in Baghdad, and Damascus, to preserve their interests and future through unity with their region, instead of being a U.S. satellite state surrounded by enemies. The Kurdish goal should be to fight terrorism in the entire region, not just in their small conclave of occupied lands. They should be full partners with Iraq and Syria in defeating terrorism and the ideology. As long as the Kurds of Syria and Iraq consider themselves as special, different, and above the law, the terrorists will target them, because their disunity and isolationism will cause them to be permanently weak, and exposed to attack and infiltration.

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On the morning of August 7, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the Tiger Forces advanced on positions of radical militants in northwestern Hama. During the day, units of the SAA and the Tiger Forces liberated the villages of Arbeen and al-Zakah.

Government troops also cut off the supply line between the militant-held towns of Kafr Zita and al-Lataminah and increased artillery and air strikes on positions in this area.

Kafr Zita and al-Lataminah are the key strong points of Jaysh al-Izza and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) in this part of the so-called Idlib de-escalation zone.

On August 5, the Syrian Armed Forces released a warning to militants that, if they continue to violate the ceasefire regime, the SAA would have to resume military operations. On August 6, violations continued. So, since August 7, the SAA has been conducting active actions to push radical militants out of the supposed demilitarized zone around Idlib.

It’s expected that in the coming days he SAA will continue its advance aiming to liberate Kaf Zita and then al-Lataminah.

On August 7. Russian warplanes destroyed two militant early warning posts, known as the 20th post and the Eagle post, in northern Hama. Opposition activists acknowledged that four militants, including two commanders known as Abu Jalbib and Abdo al-Nasan, were killed in the strike.

Such posts are usually stationed in plain sights. They are used to monitor flights of Russian and Syrian warplanes and warn militants throughout Greater Idlib of possible airstrikes on their positions.

On August 6, a Kurdish rebel group, the Afrin Liberation Forces, announced that its forces had killed 13 Turkish-backed militants in operations near the town of Marea and the village of Brad. Over the past month, the AFL has carried out a series of successful operations against Turkey-led forces in the Afrin region.

Turkey and U.S. have concluded their talks on northeastern Syria with an agreement to establish a “peace corridor” in the US-occupied region, the two countries announced in a joint statement on August 7.

The sides agreed on the following steps:

• “the rapid implementation of initial measures to address Turkey’s security concerns;
• to set up as soon as possible a joint operations center in Turkey to coordinate and manage the establishment of the safe zone together;
• that the safe zone shall become a peace corridor, and that any additional measures shall be taken for our displaced Syrian brothers to return to their country.”

The Turkish Anadolu Agency claimed that the joint “peace corridor” will be 30 to 40 kilometers deep in northeastern Syria. The state-run agency said that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) will be moved out of the “peace corridor” and forced to surrender their heavy weapons. The irony of the situation is that these two groups, very hostile towards Turkey, are the core of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces that technically control the region. Therefore, the implementation of the agreement will likely face some serious difficulties.

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The historically unstable Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan was suddenly thrown into yet another crisis after the former president and his supporters opened fire on the special forces that were dispatched to serve a warrant for his arrest on corruption charges following his refusal to comply with earlier requests for his surrender, with the latest violence threatening to spiral into a Color Revolution or even a civil war in the worst-case scenario.

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Russia’s CSTO mutual defense ally and fellow Eurasian Union member Kyrgyzstan has been suddenly thrown into yet another crisis earlier this week after a long-simmering power struggle between the current and former presidents finally turned violent. Former President Atambayev was stripped of immunity earlier this summer and charged with corruption by incumbent President Jeenbekov, his former protege, but he refused to comply with previous requests for his surrender. The authorities therefore dispatched special forces to serve a warrant for his arrest but they were met with gunfire at Atambayev’s compound outside the capital. The initial operation ended in a total failure but he finally agreed to give himself up the day after. The former leader claimed that he’s a victim of political repression, while the current one says that his predecessor just blatantly violated the constitution by resisting arrest, among his other alleged offenses, especially after he admitted to firing on the forces that were sent to arrest him. In turn, Atambayev called on his supporters to protest in Bishkek, raising fears that the latest violence might spiral into a Color Revolution or even a civil war in the worst-case scenario given the unstable Central Asian country’s history of unrest in recent years.

The core of the current problem appears to be that Atambayev assumed that he’d be able to control Jeenbekov and therefore continue to exercise indirect influence over the state indefinitely, but his successor had other plans and decided to assert his independence by holding his former patron to account for his alleged violations of the law. The incumbent might have done so as part of a genuine anti-corruption drive, but he could very well have also had political motives in dismantling the shadow network that his predecessor had established and which might have been functioning as a “state-within-a-state”. After all, earlier constitutional changes made it so that Kyrgyz Presidents can only serve one six-year term in office, so it’s possible that Atambayev wanted to continue functioning as the de-facto head of state through various proxies, both official ones like Jeenbekov and unofficial ones like the armed supporters who had already assembled at his compound when the first unsuccessful raid was attempted. So influential was Atambayev even after serving his term that he still maintained ties with Putin and even visited him in Moscow late last month in a last-ditch Russian-mediated attempt to avoid what ended up being the inevitable standoff that just took place.

Casual observers might not be aware of this, but Kyrgyz political culture is still largely centered on clans, which is why the latest situation is so potentially explosive because two Color Revolutions already happened in less than 15 years after dissatisfied clansmen took to the streets to protest in 2005 and 2010. Per the traditional Color Revolution template, the police responded to various provocations at those times and the situation quickly escalated to the point where the incumbent was eventually removed from office, with the latest regime change being especially bloody following inter-ethnic clashes between the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the Fergana Valley. That’s why Atambayev’s request that his supporters rally in the capital in his support was so inflammatory because it could very well trigger a repeat of those two previous scenarios, as was unsuccessfully attempted Thursday night after the former head of state’s ultimate surrender. It’ll remain to be seen whether that’ll still be the case during the coming weekend or not, but the security services seem prepared to deal with another Color Revolution attempt if active efforts are made to return the country to its recent history of unrest.

Looking forward, the only sustainable solution is for Kyrgyzstan to reduce and ultimately eliminate the influence that clan-centric shadow networks play in its “national democracy”, so in hindsight this week’s dramatic operation against the former head of state had to have happened sooner or later in the interests of the country’s long-term stability. It might very well prove to be an uphill battle that the state itself might not be properly prepared to handle given the likelihood that elements of its security and other apparatuses could already be infiltrated by those said networks. Therefore, one can simplify the challenge ahead by saying that Kyrgyzstan must “cleanse” its “deep state” (permanent bureaucracy) simultaneously with cracking down on organized crime (which is sometimes affiliated with some “deep state” forces), but this might lead to serious societal disruptions depending on how entrenched the problem might be. That could explain why it hasn’t been seriously attempted before, though it’s more likely that previous leaders and influencers preferred to exploit the preexisting system in place for their own benefit than reform it and risk losing out on their self-interested perks. As such, Kyrgyzstan probably has some tough times ahead of itself and should therefore be kept an eye.

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

We’re told that the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty singed in 1987 between the US and Soviet Union was based on claims that Russia had violated it.

While we continue waiting for Washington to provide evidence to prove these claims, the US itself admitted it had already long begun developing missiles that violated the treaty.

A February 2018 Defense One article titled, “Pentagon Confirms It’s Developing Nuclear Cruise Missile to Counter a Similar Russian One,” admitted that:

The U.S. military is developing a ground-launched, intermediate-range cruise missile to counter a similar Russian weapon whose deployment violates an arms-control treaty between Moscow and Washington, U.S. officials said Friday. 

The officials acknowledged that the still-under-development American missile would, if deployed, also violate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Just as the US did when it unilaterally walked away from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, the goal is to blame Russia for otherwise indefensible and incremental provocations aimed at Moscow. For example, after the US walked away from the ABM Treaty in 2002, the US began deploying anti-missile systems across Europe.

But if Russia is the problem, why did the US also begin deploying similar missiles in Asia?

It is Washington’s goal of hemming in its competitors anywhere and everywhere that is at the heart of these serial treaty terminations, not any particular “violation” on Moscow’s part.

China Too   

That the US already had missiles under development that would undoubtedly violate the INF Treaty before it accused Russia of such violations, is one indicator of Washington’s true intentions. Another is the fact Washington is rushing to encircle China with both defensive and offensive missile systems as well.

China is not a signatory of either the ABM Treaty or the INF Treaty. Its missiles are deployed strictly within its mainland territory with no plans by Beijing to deploy them anywhere else in the future.

The only threat they pose is to any nation that decides to wage war on China, in or around Chinese territory.

Washington’s behavior post-INF Treaty indicates that it was its intent to violate the treaty all along, creating the same precarious security crisis in Asia the treaty sought to prevent in Europe.

The New York Times in its article, “U.S. Ends Cold War Missile Treaty, With Aim of Countering China,” would explain:

The United States on Friday terminated a major treaty of the Cold War, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement, and it is already planning to start testing a new class of missiles later this summer. 

But the new missiles are unlikely to be deployed to counter the treaty’s other nuclear power, Russia, which the United States has said for years was in violation of the accord. Instead, the first deployments are likely to be intended to counter China, which has amassed an imposing missile arsenal and is now seen as a much more formidable long-term strategic rival than Russia. 

The moves by Washington have elicited concern that the United States may be on the precipice of a new arms race, especially because the one major remaining arms control treaty with Russia, a far larger one called New START, appears on life support, unlikely to be renewed when it expires in less than two years.

Here, the NYT admits that despite Washington claiming its termination of the INF Treaty was prompted by Moscow, its own actions since indicate Washington was already well underway of violating it itself. It did so not only to threaten Russia, but also to threaten China.

After months of accusing Russia of undermining the INF Treaty, the NYT itself reveals it was Washington who solely benefited from it, and specifically in terms of targeting China:

…the administration has argued that China is one reason Mr. Trump decided to exit the I.N.F. treaty. Most experts now assess that China has the most advanced conventional missile arsenal in the world, based throughout the mainland. When the treaty went into effect in 1987, China’s missile fleet was judged so rudimentary that it was not even a consideration.

The prospects of the US signing a new treaty with either Russia or China (or both) are nonexistent. The NYT article also reported that:

Chinese officials have also balked at any attempt to limit their missiles with a new treaty, arguing that the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia are much larger and deadlier.

The NYT fails to mention the other, and perhaps most important factor preventing Beijing from signing any treaty with Washington; Washington has already demonstrated categorically that it cannot be trusted. It just walked away from the INF Treaty based on deliberate lies implicating Russia while Washington all along was developing missiles it planned to deploy around the globe to hem in both Russia and China.

Dangerous Desperation 

While the Cold War is remembered as a precarious time, it was a time when agreements like the ABM and INF treaties were not only possible, they were signed and for the most part adhered to by two global powers who could agree an uneasy balance of global power was preferable to large scale war (nuclear or not) between the two.

During the Cold War, Washington was confident that it could not only maintain that balance of power, but eventually tip it in its favor, resulting in global hegemony. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the US invasion of Iraq certainly seemed to prove those behind this mindset right. But the window was already closing on the establishment of an uncontested US-led international order.

Today, Russia, China and a number of other emerging regional and global powers have all but assured US hegemony is no longer a viable geopolitical objective. The confidence that allowed the US to sign previous treaties and uphold them along with their Soviet counterparts no longer exists.

We live in a world today where the US has become a tremendous danger to global peace and security. The inability of treaties to exist that were even possible during the tense days of the Cold War takes us into unprecedented and dangerous territory.

Only time will tell if both Moscow and Beijing can find other mechanisms to avoid a dangerous and wasteful arms race in their backyards as a stubborn United States not only refuses to leave, but insists on bringing in incredibly dangerous weapons that will wreck havoc not on the territorial United States, but on the nations of Europe and East Asia should Washington’s desperation progress even further amid its wanning global power.

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Gunnar Ulson is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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The blinkered security establishment is standard fare in politics.  From Washington to Manila, we hear of terrors and concerns which tend to more spectral than not.  Legitimate concerns such as catastrophic environmental failure, or a nuclear accident, are treated with a sigh, its warners doomsday advocates rather than reasoned citizens.  It is the unseen demon that preoccupies. 

One such blinkered devotee is Andrew Hastie, an Australian member of parliament who prides himself as something of a security sage.  (Suffice to say that experience serving as a member of the Special Air Services Regiment does not necessarily qualify you as an expert in world politics.)  He chairs the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security, a grouping of parliamentarians that has done more harm to Australian civil liberties than most institutions.  Lacking an inner cabinet role, he has the freedom to mouth some of his richer views, possibly with promptings from the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison.  Best get the lowly man to do the damage if you want a view known widely. 

Being no Sinophile, Hastie has deemed the People’s Republic of China the great Satan of international politics, something that will earn him a fan base in certain circles in the Washington cocktail set.  In doing so, he reiterates fears of Yellow-Red horde coursing its way through Asia to the idyllic, peaceful antipodes.  He scolds Australians for not appreciating the “ideology” of the Chinese Communist Party.  This is the new domino effect, and like that haphazard assessment formulated during the Eisenhower years, it is equally unconvincing. 

In The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday, Hastie expressed an opinion dressed up in the language of urgency, an attempt to awaken a certain consciousness.  In that sense, he is an options shop, hand-me-down George Kennan, who penned his famous Long Telegram as US chargé d’affaires in Moscow warning of the Soviet mindset.

“At bottom of Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity,” he noted. 

Hastie makes no mention of Kennan, preferring, instead, the convenient findings of Stephen Kotkin of Princeton to disabuse those silly sods who thought that “Stalin’s decisions were the rational actions of a realist great power.”  In Kotkin’s views, it turned out that the embroidering of Marxist terms through meetings, discussions and policies in the Kremlin were really due to one tendency: “the Communists were Communists!”

For Hastie, the planes finding their incendiary conclusion in the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon did not supply the defining “geopolitical moment” of the 21^st century.  That dubious honour went to the colliding encounter between a J-8 fighter jet of the People’s Liberation Army Navy and a US Navy EP-3 signals intelligence aircraft off Hainan Island that same year.  The PLAN pilot perished; the 24 crew of the EP-3 were subsequently held by the PRC for 11 days.  The aircraft was duly stripped and examined, and returned in parts. 

“The Hainan Island incident laid down the contours for the present challenge facing Australia. It portended the agonising security and economic balancing act we must now perform.”

Hastie is less anthropological, and more reactionary than Kennan. 

“Right now,” writes Hastie, “our greatest vulnerability lies not in our infrastructure, but our thinking.” 

This is nothing less than an “intellectual failure” rendering Australia and other states “institutionally weak.  If we don’t understand the challenge ahead for our civil society, in our parliaments, in our universities, in our private enterprises, in our charities – our little platoons – then choices will be made for us. Our sovereignty, our freedoms, will be diminished.”  Strong language from a politician in the service of a country whose sovereignty has always been susceptible to modification, being an annex of Washington’s imperium.

What was needed, in the view of a worried Hastie, was for Australians to accept and duly respond “to the reality of the geopolitical struggle before us – its origins, its ideas and its implications for the Indo-Pacific region”.  Australia found itself facing “every strategic and economic question […] refracted through the geopolitical competition of the US and the PRC.”  The solution?  Continue to trade with the PRC for reasons of prosperity, yet maintain a firm security posture against it.   

Shaky historical comparisons make their way into the piece.  Australia, he insisted, found itself in the same position as those French strategists worried about the rise of Nazi Germany.  The “Maginot Line” built to protect France against Germany prior to the Second World War finds a modern equivalent in the theory that “economic liberalisation would naturally lead to democratisation in China.”  The French failed against the German panzers; Australia has, in turn, “failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbour has become.”  

The extrapolations are inevitable: the Munich analogy that corrupted so much thinking in US foreign policy, leading to defeat in Vietnam; the need to take steps to avert disaster and avoid appeasing authoritarianism. Many an idiotic policy has arisen from shonky historical analogies.

The Chinese response was curt, coming in a statement from the embassy. 

“We strongly deplore the Australian federal MP Andrew Hastie’s rhetoric on ‘China threat’ which lays bare his Cold War mentality and ideological bias.” 

Its assessment was conventional: there was a “world trend of peace, co-operation and development” that was undermined by such remarks. 

Hastie has his glum faced backers unnerved by the “might is right” view of the world order, be it US President Donald Trump’s penchant for tearing up treaties, Russian disruptions, strong man popularity or disunity in Europe.  Anne-Marie Brady, based at the University of Canterbury, defers to the MP’s wisdom, making the common mistake about a joint parliamentary committee that often sees haunting forms rather than substantive matters.  That committee, after all, “helped pass the new counter-foreign interference legislation which will help address the Chinese Communist Party’s aggressive united front work activities in Australia”.    

We have seen this in history: the hysterical prophet who insists on self-fulfilling prophecies. If you proclaim the end of the world is nigh, you might just get what you wish for.  Terrifying your opponents, unsettling them into something rash, is the stuff historical blunders are made from.  The march of history is not that of an orderly, planned sequence, but a messy stumble occasioned by blundering leaders.  With individuals like Hastie, a reasoned balance will not be struck.  Those in Washington will remain confident that they have Australia on their side in any future skirmish.

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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]

When the Federal Reserve cut interest rates on July 31^st for the first time in more than a decade, commentators were asking why. According to official data, the economy was rebounding, unemployment was below 4%, and GDP growth was above 3%. If anything, by the Fed’s own reasoning, it should have been raising rates.

The explanation of market pundits was that we’re in a trade war and a currency war. Other central banks were cutting their rates and the Fed had to follow suit, in order to prevent the dollar from becoming overvalued relative to other currencies. The theory is that a cheaper dollar will make American products more attractive on foreign markets, helping our manufacturing and labor bases.

Over the weekend, President Trump followed the rate cuts by threatening to impose a new 10% tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese products effective September 1^st. China responded by suspending imports of U.S. agricultural products by state-owned companies and letting the value of the yuan drop. On Monday, August 5, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 770 points, its worst day in 2019. The war was on.

The problem with a currency war is that it is a war without winners. This was demonstrated in the beggar-thy-neighbor policies of the 1930s, which just prolonged the Great Depression. As economist Michael Hudson observed in a June 2019 interview with Bonnie Faulkner, making American products cheaper abroad will do little for the American economy, because we no longer have a competitive manufacturing base or products to sell. Today’s workers are largely in the service industries – cab drivers, hospital workers, insurance agents and the like. A cheaper dollar abroad just makes consumer goods at Walmart and imported raw materials for US businesses more expensive. What is mainly devalued when a currency is devalued, says Hudson, is the price of the country’s labor and the working conditions of its laborers. The reason American workers cannot compete with foreign workers is not that the dollar is overvalued. It is due to their higher costs of housing, education, medical services and transportation. In most competitor countries, these costs are subsidized by the government.

America’s chief competitor in the trade war is obviously China, which subsidizes not just worker costs but the costs of its businesses. The government owns 80% of the banks, which make loans on favorable terms to domestic businesses, especially state-owned businesses. Typically, if the businesses cannot repay the loans, neither the banks nor the businesses are put into bankruptcy, since that would mean losing jobs and factories. The non-performing loans are just carried on the books or written off. No private creditors are hurt, since the creditor is the government, and the loans were created on the banks’ books in the first place (following standard banking practice globally).

As observed by Jeff Spross in a May 2018 Reuters article titled “China’s Banks Are Big. Too Big?”:

[B]ecause the Chinese government owns most of the banks, and it prints the currency, it can technically keep those banks alive and lending forever.…

It may sound weird to say that China’s banks will never collapse, no matter how absurd their lending positions get. But banking systems are just about the flow of money.

Spross quoted former bank CEO Richard Vague, chair of The Governor’s Woods Foundation, who explained,

“China has committed itself to a high level of growth. And growth, very simply, is contingent on financing.” Beijing will “come in and fix the profitability, fix the capital, fix the bad debt, of the state-owned banks … by any number of means that you and I would not see happen in the United States.”

To avoid political and labor unrest, Spross wrote, the government keeps everyone happy by keeping economic growth high and spreading the proceeds to the citizenry. About two-thirds of Chinese debt is owed just by the corporations, which are also largely state-owned. Corporate lending is thus a roundabout form of government-financed industrial policy – a policy financed not through taxes but through the unique privilege of banks to create money on their books.

China thinks this is a better banking model than the private Western system focused on short-term profits for private shareholders. But U.S. policymakers consider China’s subsidies to its businesses and workers to be “unfair trade practices.” They want China to forgo state subsidization an it’s d other protectionist policies in order to level the playing field. But Beijing contends that the demanded reforms amount to “economic regime change.” As Michael Hudson puts it:

This is the fight that Trump has against China.  He wants to tell it to let the banks run China and have a free market.  He says that China has grown rich over the last fifty years by unfair means, with government help and public enterprise.  In effect, he wants the Chinese to be as threatened and insecure as American workers.  They should get rid of their public transportation.  They should get rid of their subsidies.  They should let a lot of their companies go bankrupt so that Americans can buy them.  They should have the same kind of free market that has wrecked the US economy. [Emphasis added.]

Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan, writing on August 1^st in Foreign Affairs (the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations), call it “an emerging contest of models.”

An Economic Cold War

In order to understand what is happening here, it is useful to review some history. The free market model hollowed out America’s manufacturing base beginning in the Thatcher/Reagan era of the 1970s, when neoliberal economic policies took hold. Meanwhile, emerging Asian economies, led by Japan, were exploding on the scene with a new economic model called “state-guided market capitalism.” The state determined the priorities and commissioned the work, then hired private enterprise to carry it out. The model overcame the defects of the communist system, which put ownership and control in the hands of the state.

The Japanese state-guided market system was effective and efficient – so effective that it was regarded as an existential threat to the neoliberal model of debt-based money and “free markets” promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to William Engdahl in A Century of War, by the end of the 1980s Japan was considered the leading economic and banking power in the world. Its state-guided model was also proving to be highly successful in South Korea and the other “Asian Tiger” economies. When the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the Cold War, Japan proposed its model for the former communist countries, and many began looking to it and to South Korea as viable alternatives to the U.S. free-market system. State-guided capitalism provided for the general welfare without destroying capitalist incentive. Engdahl wrote:

The Tiger economies were a major embarrassment to the IMF free-market model.  Their very success in blending private enterprise with a strong state economic role was a threat to the IMF free-market agenda.  So long as the Tigers appeared to succeed with a model based on a strong state role, the former communist states and others could argue against taking the extreme IMF course.  In east Asia during the 1980s, economic growth rates of 7-8 per cent per year, rising social security, universal education and a high worker productivity were all backed by state guidance and planning, albeit in a market economy – an Asian form of benevolent paternalism.

Just as the US had engaged in a Cold War to destroy the Soviet communist model, so Western financial interests set out to destroy this emerging Asian threat. It was defused when Western neoliberal economists persuaded Japan and the Asian Tigers to adopt the free-market system and open their economies and their companies to foreign investors. Western speculators then took down the vulnerable countries one by one in the “Asian crisis” of 1997-98. China alone was left as an economic threat to the Western neoliberal model, and it is this existential threat that is the target of the trade and currency wars today.

If You Can’t Beat Them …

In their August 1^st Foreign Affairs article, titled “Competition without Catastrophe,” Campbell and Sullivan write that the temptation is to compare these economic trade wars with the Cold War with Russia; but the analogy, they say, is inapt:

China today is a peer competitor that is more formidable economically, more sophisticated diplomatically, and more flexible ideologically than the Soviet Union ever was. And unlike the Soviet Union, China is deeply integrated into the world and intertwined with the U.S. economy.

Unlike the Soviet Communist system, the Chinese system cannot be expected to “crumble under its own weight.” The US should not expect or want to destroy China, say Campbell and Sullivan. Rather, we should aim for a state of “coexistence on terms favorable to U.S. interests and values.”

The implication is that China, being too strong to be knocked out of the game as the Soviet Union was, needs to be coerced or cajoled into adopting the neoliberal model. It needs to abandon state support of its industries and ownership of its banks. But the Chinese system, while obviously not perfect, has an impressive track record for sustaining long-term growth and development. While the U.S. manufacturing base was being hollowed out under the free-market model, China was systematically building up its own manufacturing base, investing heavily in infrastructure and emerging technologies; and it was doing this with credit generated by its state-owned banks. Rather than trying to destroy China’s economic system, it might be more “favorable to U.S. interests and values” for us to adopt its more effective industrial and banking practices.

We cannot win a currency war by competitive currency devaluations that trigger a “race to the bottom,” and we cannot win a trade war by competitive trade barriers that simply cut us off from the benefits of cooperative trade. More favorable to our interests and values than warring with our trading partners would be to cooperate in sharing solutions, including banking and credit solutions. The Chinese have proven the effectiveness of their public banking system in supporting their industries and their workers. Rather than seeing it as an existential threat, we could thank them for test-driving the model and take a spin in it ourselves.

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This article was first posted on Truthdig.com.

Ellen Brown chairs the Public Banking Institute and has written thirteen books, including her latest, Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Think tanks sprout like weeds in Washington. The latest is the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which is engaged in a pre-launch launch and is attracting some media coverage all across the political spectrum. The Institute is named after the sixth US President John Quincy Adams, who famously made a speech while Secretary of State in which he cautioned that while the United States of America would always be sympathetic to the attempts of other countries to fight against dominance by the imperial European powers, “she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

The Quincy Institute self-defines as a foundation dedicated to a responsible and restrained foreign policy with the stated intention of “mov[ing] US foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace.” It is seeking to fund an annual budget of $5-6 million, enough to employ twenty or more staffers.

The Quincy Institute claims correctly that many of the other organizations dealing with national security and international affairs inside the Beltway are either agenda driven or neoconservative dominated, often meaning that they in practice support serial interventionism, sometimes including broad tolerance or even encouragement of war as a first option when dealing with adversaries. These are policies that are currently playing out unsuccessfully vis-à-vis Venezuela, Iran, Syria and North Korea.

The Quincies promise to be different in an attempt to change the Washington foreign policy consensus, which some have referred to as the Blob, and they have indeed collected a very respectable group of genuine “realist” experts and thoughtful pundits, including Professor Andrew Bacevich, National Iranian American Council founder Trita Parsi and investigative journalist Jim Lobe. But the truly interesting aspect of their organization is its funding. Its most prominent contributors are left of center George Soros and right of center and libertarian leaning Charles Koch. That is what is attracting the attention coming from media outlets like The Nation on the progressive side and Foreign Policy from the conservatives. That donors will demand their pound of flesh is precisely the problem with the Quincy vision as money drives the political process in the United States while also fueling the Establishment’s military-industrial-congressional complex that dominates the national security/foreign policy discussion.

There will be inevitably considerable ideological space between people who are progressive-antiwar and those who call themselves “realists” that will have to be carefully bridged lest the group begin to break down in squabbling over “principles.” Some progressives of the Barack Obama variety will almost certainly push for the inclusion of Samantha Power R2P types who will use abuses in foreign countries to argue for the US continuing to play a “policeman for the world” role on humanitarian grounds. And there will inevitably be major issues that Quincy will be afraid to confront, including the significant role played by Israel and its friends in driving America’s interventionist foreign policy.

Nevertheless, the Quincy Institute is certainly correct in its assessment that there is significant war-weariness among the American public, particularly among returning veterans, and there is considerable sentiment supporting a White House change of course in its national security policy. But it errs in thinking that America’s corrupted legislators will respond at any point prior to their beginning to fail in reelection bids based on that issue, which has to be considered unlikely. Witness the current Democratic Party debates in which Tulsi Gabbard is the only candidate who is even daring to talk about America’s disastrous and endless wars, suggesting that the Blob assessment that the issue is relatively unimportant may be correct.

Money talks. Where else in the developed world but the United States can a multi-billionaire like Sheldon Adelson legally and in the open spend a few tens of millions of dollars, which is for him pocket change, to effectively buy an entire political party on behalf of a foreign nation? What will the Quincies do when George Soros, notorious for his sometimes disastrous support of so-called humanitarian “regime change” intervention to expand “democracy movements” as part his vision of a liberal world order, calls up the Executive Director and suggests that he would like to see a little more pushing of whatever is needed to build democracy in Belarus? Soros, who has doubled his spending for political action in this election cycle, is not doing so for altruistic reasons. And he might reasonably argue that one of the four major projects planned by the Quincy Institute, headed by investigative journalist Eli Clifton, is called “Democratizing Foreign Policy.”

Why are US militarism and interventionism important issues? They are beyond important – and would be better described as potentially life or death both for the United States and for the many nations with which it interacts. And there is also the price to pay by every American domestically, with the terrible and unnecessary waste of national resources as well human capital driving American ever deeper into a hole that it might never be able to emerge from.

As Quincy is the newcomer on K Street, it is important to recognize what the plethora of foundations and institutes in Washington actually do in any given week. To be sure, they produce a steady stream of white papers, press releases, and op-eds that normally only their partisan supporters bother to read or consider. They buttonhole and talk to congressmen or staffers whenever they can, most often the staffers. And the only ones really listening among legislators are the ones who are finding what they hear congenial and useful for establishing a credible framework for policy decisions that have nothing to do with the strengths of the arguments being made or “realism.” The only realism for a congress-critter in the heartland is having a defense plant providing jobs in his district.

And, to be sure, the institutes and foundations also have a more visible public presence. Every day somewhere in Washington there are numerous panel discussions and meetings debating the issues deemed to be of critical importance. The gatherings are attended primarily by the already converted, are rarely reported in any of the mainstream media, and they exist not to explain or resolve issues but rather to make sure their constituents continue to regard the participants as respectable, responsible and effective so as not to interrupt the flow of donor money.

US foreign policy largely operates within narrow limits that are essentially defined by powerful and very well-funded interest groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Hudson Institute, the Brookings Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), but the real lobbying of Congress and the White House on those issues takes place out of sight, not in public gatherings, and it is backed up by money. AIPAC, for example, alone spends more than $80 million dollars per year and has 200 employees.

So, the Quincy Institute intention to broaden the discussion of the current foreign policy to include opponents and critics of interventionism should be welcomed with some caveats. It is a wonderful idea already explored by others but nevertheless pretty much yet another shot in the dark that will accomplish little or nothing beyond providing jobs for some college kids and feel good moments for the anointed inner circle. And the shot itself is aimed in the wrong direction. The real issue is not foreign policy per se at all. It is getting the corrupting force of enormous quantities of PAC money completely removed from American politics. America has the best Congress and White House that anyone’s money can buy. The Quincy Institute’s call for restraint in foreign policy, for all its earnestness, will not change that bit of “realism” one bit.

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Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Other articles by Giraldi can be found on the website of the Unz Review. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The US is hostile toward all nations it doesn’t control, waging war on them by naked aggression and other means, including against China.

Pressuring and bullying the country to bend to its interests failed, what Trump and hardliners surrounding him don’t understand.

If his counterproductive policies escalate things toward recession, possibly a long overdue stiff protracted one after a decade of fiscal and monetary excess, he may learn the hard way by electoral defeat in November 2020.

China has lots of ways to counter hostile US policies, including by letting its currency weaken to offset unacceptable US tariffs, perhaps heading for 25% on all Chinese imports.

Last week, Trump said he intends to impose 10% tariffs on another $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, effective September 1, the levies to hit cell phones, computers, and other consumer goods.

China retaliated by suspending purchases of US soybeans and other agricultural products, along with letting its yuan fall, making its exports cheaper.

According to economist Gregory Daco, what’s going on “add(s) further stress to an already stressed trade environment, (risking) a very significant slowdown in economic growth,” adding:

A 10% tariff on all remaining Chinese imports could rise to 25% in the coming months. Along with duties on European auto imports, a late 2019 or early 2020 recession is most likely.

As Trump regime toughness on China escalates, its ruling authorities may let the yuan weaken further and take other steps to offset the damage, including by increased trade with Russia.

In July, Chinese and Russian commerce ministers met to discuss ways to increase bilateral trade. Each country considers the other a reliable political, economic, financial, trade, and military partner.

Agreement was reached on increasing trade in soybeans and other agricultural products. In June at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping agreed to increase bilateral trade from $107 billion in 2018 to $200 billion ahead.

On Wednesday, the White House banned federal agencies from buying products and services from Huawei and other Chinese tech companies.

Citing national security reasons is pure deception. The action is part of longstanding US policy to undermine China’s developmental aims, Trump doubling down on earlier actions.

The announcement came a year ahead of congressionally mandated August 2020 cessation of business relations with Chinese tech companies by federal contractors — reflecting bipartisan US hostility toward the country.

Republicans and Dems consider China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and other sovereign independent countries the US doesn’t control as “adversaries.”

A Huawei spokesman responded to the latest announcement, saying:

“The news today was not unexpected…Huawei continues to challenge the constitutionality of the ban in federal court,” adding:

It “will do nothing to ensure the protection of US telecoms networks and systems and rather is trade barrier-based on country of origin, invoking punitive action without any evidence of wrongdoing.”

“Ultimately, it will be rural citizens across the US that will be most negatively impacted as the networks they use for digital connectivity rely on Huawei.”

Trump regime rage to undermine China’s aim to be a leading industrial, economic, and technological power is heading things toward full-blown war on the country by other means.

Its actions come at a time of growing economic weakness and geopolitical tensions in the Indo/Pacific, Middle East and Latin America — mainly because of hostile US policies toward nations on its target list for regime change.

A Final Comment

On Tuesday, China slammed US war secretary Mark Esper’s unacceptable accusation — falsely claiming Beijing is destabilizing the Indo/Pacific region, its Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying saying:

“It’s crystal clear who is undermining regional stability in the Asia-Pacific region” — and other parts of the world she could have added.

China is at peace with other nations, threatening none. The US is at war with humanity, Hua stressing the following:

“We develop military power out of self-defense purpose. We do not intend to and will not pose a threat to any country.”

“All of China’s land-based short- and intermediate-range missiles are deployed within our territory, which testifies to the defensive nature of our defense policy.”

“(I)f the United States deploys intermediate-range missiles in Asia-Pacific, especially around China, its aim will apparently be offensive.”

“China will not just sit idly by and watch our interests being compromised. What’s more, we will not allow any country to stir up troubles at our doorstep. We will take all necessary measures to safeguard national security interests.”

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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.

Venezuela Vice President Delcy Rodriguez

Under both extremist right wings of the US war party, the incremental Nazification of America may become full-blown in our lifetimes if not strongly challenged by the world community.

The Trump regime exceeds the worst of its predecessors. Based on the trend since the 1980s, whatever leadership succeeds it is likely to be even more contemptuous of world peace, equity and justice.

Abandoning the JCPOA and INF Treaty, waging war on China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and other nations by other means, entirely discarding the rule of law, fostering destabilization worldwide, substituting brute force for diplomacy, along with its rage for global dominance ups the stakes for possible nuclear war against one or more nations.

In 1992, future secretary of state Madeleine Albright, relatively less hardline than her successors, once asked Joint Chief’s chairman General Colin Powell

“(w)hat’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

Perhaps she meant including its super-weapons to accomplish  geopolitical objectives unable to be achieved another way.

Trump regime hardliners are waging all-out war by other means on Iran and Venezuela, heading toward a similar policy against China.

Their latest shoe to drop against the Bolivarian Republic occurred Wednesday.

A vessel carrying 25,000 tons of soy cake for Venezuelan food production was illegally seized when passing through the Panama Canal, according Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.

The ship is “being kept in the Panama Canal due to the criminal blockade imposed by” the Trump regime, she explained, adding:

“Venezuela calls on the UN to stop this serious aggression by Donald Trump’s govt against our country, which constitutes a massive violation of the human rights of the entire Venezuelan people, by attempting to impede their right to food.”

US Security Council veto power prevents the body from censuring the Trump regime’s crime against humanity.

US establishment media are either largely or entirely silent about what happened, supporting Trump regime high crimes against sovereign Venezuela and its population based on Big Lies.

Its unlawful seizure (a maritime piracy act) followed Trump’s Tuesday executive order, illegally imposing an embargo on Venezuela, his hostile action constituting a crime against humanity.

Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, “inhumane acts…intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health” constitute crimes against humanity.

The US is guilty of these high crimes repeatedly, its criminal class considered hostis humani generis – enemies of mankind. Their high crimes against peace violate the jus gentium – the law of nations.

Time and again with no letup, its actions breach fundamental UN Charter principles, other international laws, and the US Constitution.

The Nuremberg Tribunal established fundamental Principles, holding that

“(a)ny person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment…

“Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit (them) can the provisions of international law be enforced.”

The Rome Statute’s Article 25 of the International Criminal Court (ICC) codified this principle, affirming the culpability of persons committing crimes of war and against humanity.

Commanders and their superiors are specifically culpable if they “either knew or, owing to the circumstances at the time, should have known that the forces were committing or about to commit such crimes, (and) failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures within his or her power to prevent or repress their commission or to submit the matter to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecutions.”

Nuremberg established that immunity is null and void, including for heads of state, other top officials, and top commanders.

Genocide, crimes of war and against humanity are so grave that statute of limitation provisions don’t apply.

On Wednesday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying denounced the Trump regime’s illegal embargo on Venezuela, calling it “gross interference,” a major breach of international law.

Beijing will continue to maintain cooperative relations with the Bolivarian Republic “no matter how the situation changes,” she stressed.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called Trump regime actions against Venezuela “economic terror…in its customary cowboy manner.”

“These steps have no legal justification from the standpoint of international law and domestic Venezuelan law,” she stressed, adding:

“Clearly, the Trump regime “ miscalculated the level of popular support for the legitimate President and his readiness to defend the genuine independence of his country.”

Its hardliners are enforcing “efforts to aggravate the socioeconomic situation, (including by) brutal indiscriminate restrictions (against) senior citizens, unwell people and children.”

Separately, Moscow vowed to continue “military-technical,” political and economic relations with the Bolivarian Republic, including oil deals regardless of US threats.

The Trump regime is waging war on the Venezuelan economy and people. Blocking a vessel with food for the country shows it wants them starved into submission.

The human toll is of no consequence to US policymakers in pursuit of their aims. Their endless war on humanity at home and abroad threatens everyone everywhere.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Until literally a couple of years ago, courtesy of its enviable position in Asia Minor positioned in direct proximity of USSR (during the Cold War), Iran (after the Islamic Revolution), Iraq, and of course Syria in most recent years, Turkey enjoyed remarkably positive press as “NATO’s Number 2 Army” and in general a stalwart and reliable ally.

Greece, by contrast, even though a member of the same NATO alliance and the European Union to boot, and a country whose political institutions were more similar to those of the European members of NATO, was a neglected backwater. Whereas Greece currently has only one US military base, namely the Souda naval base on the island of Crete, Turkey boasts Izmir and Incirlik airbases, the latter of which having a nuclear weapons’ storage facility. One only needs to look back to the shoot-down of a Russian Su-24 bomber by a Turkish F-16, an event that was triumphantly reported by the English-speaking world media, perhaps as a portent of things to come, to realize just how important Turkey was to the implementation of NATO military plans in the Middle East.

However, in what surely ranks as one of the most egregious cases of NATO’s “White Privilege” in recent decades, the alliance made the grievous error in assuming that while Turkey was obliged to be at the beck and call of Washington and Brussels, the reverse was not true. Turkey had no interests NATO key players, first and foremost the United States, felt bound to respect. Therefore it’s little wonder Turkey’s leadership grew dismayed by the threat to their country’s national security posed by the war in Syria, the ignoring of what it viewed as its vital interests in the form of preventing a Kurdish autonomy from appearing anywhere in the Middle East, not to mention the abortive military coup against Turkey’s president Erdogan which was viewed with curious equanimity by NATO countries.

Beware of Greeks Bearing Grudges

Turkey’s NATO “rebellion” had the effect of increasing the importance of Greece to the NATO leadership. It didn’t hurt that the Greek political elite appears to have made a decision to pursue policies that are entirely opposite to that of Turkey’s, namely never challenging Western policies no matter what effect they have on Greece. Their country’s economic suffering notwithstanding, Greek political leaders show no sign of resisting the disastrous economic policies imposed on the country, in the form of EU-pushed “fiscal austerity” whose main aim is rescuing Western European (mainly German and French) financial institutions. The list of recent Greek decisions bound to please the West include the ending of its 27-year opposition to the Republic of Macedonia’s use of the term “Macedonia”, thus allowing the country, now officially called the Republic of Northern Macedonia, to begin the NATO accession process. Greece also partook of the “Russian meddling” craze, expelling four Russian diplomats for alleged efforts to prevent the Macedonia agreement from taking place.

To a considerable extent, the Greek wooing of the Western favor is rooted in the ancient rivalry with Turkey, rivalry which shared NATO membership did nothing to quell. Much as the post-WW1 Greece attempted to capitalize on the Ottoman Empire’s defeat by launching an invasion of Turkey which eventually ended in defeat at the hands of Kemal Pasha Ataturk, so today’s Greece hopes to capitalize on the growing rift between Turkey and the West to fulfill its own national objectives. Greek officials and commentators were among the most vocal in demanding that Turkey not be allowed to procure F-35 combat aircraft from the United States following Ankara’s decisions to acquire the Russian S-400 air defense batteries. For its part, Greece is actively considering procuring F-35s of its own, possibly the very same aircraft that were originally built for Turkey, in order to tip the balance of power in favor of the Greek Air Force in case the two countries clash again in the Aegean.

The Cyprus Card

One of the areas of dispute between Greece and Turkey is the island of Cyprus which, following the Greek military junta’s attempt to annex it to Greece in 1973, was invaded by Turkey which then established the Turkish-Cypriot administered area in the north of the island which does not answer to the official Cypriot government. Further complicating matters, Cyprus is a member of the European Union with all the rights and obligations that entails (though the Turkish zone is not subject to EU laws, pending reunification), and there are two British “sovereign base areas” of Akrotiri and Dhekelia on the island. While Western powers have not recognized Turkey’s de-facto control over half of Cyprus, they also have not made active efforts to force Turkish forces off the island. As noted above, Turkey was too important a partner to NATO to warrant disrupting the relationship for the sake of satisfying Greek demands. But now that the Turkey-West relationship has changed for the worse, there are signs the West will join Greece in actively opposing Turkish designs on Cyprus.

Turkey’s growing divergence from the West has resulted in what amounts to a still-mild version of the “maximum pressure” campaigns the United States is pursuing against Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea. While the Trump Administration is yet to “pull the trigger” and do irreparable harm to US-Turkish relations, there is the unmistakable combination of economic, political, and even military measures aimed at isolating and weakening Turkey. 

In what may have been a message intended not only for Syria and Russia but also Turkey, Great Britain briefly deployed a squadron of F-35 fighters to the Akrotiri air base in Cyprus for a training mission. A number of sources reported that the United States are exploring options on expanding military cooperation with Cyprus, possibly including the establishment of a US military base or at least permanent presence at one of  the British bases, prompted a negative reaction from the Russian government warning Cyprus against adopting anti-Russian policies.

To drill or not to drill?

It would seem no international crisis can be complete without a major stash of hydrocarbons resting somewhere under a hotly contested piece of real estate, and Cyprus certainly is not bucking that trend. The continental shelf around Cyprus is believed to hold huge reserves of natural gas, and that kind of store of prospective wealth has already led to an escalation of tensions. On a few occasions, exploratory vessels belonging to drilling firms contracted by the Cyprus government were chased off by Turkish gunboats, though on at least one occasion in 2018 a US Navy-escorted ExxonMobil vessel was allowed to perform its studies unmolested.

For its part, Turkey is also gearing up to drill off the coast of the Turkish portion of the island, prompting a negative reaction from virtually every member of the European Union. The European Council went so far as to suspend the high-level EU-Turkey dialogue and negotiations on an air transport agreement, and to reduce pending pre-accession funds for Turkey until Ankara abandons its plans to drill for natural gas. While the United States urged restraint, it also demanded Ankara stop its natural gas exploration off Cyprus.

Russia, in contrast, limited itself to issuing a note of concern, but without even hinting at any possible negative impact on Russia-Turkey relations. At the same time, Moscow did not endorse Turkey’s actions either. Adopting any other course of action at this point would be pointless, since Turkey, NATO, and the EU are in a midst of a complex process of renegotiating their political, military, and economic relationships. To put it more plainly, Erdogan simply wants the West to take Turkey seriously. It is yet plausible the West will take the hint and back down on matters of vital interest to Turkey, even at the cost of sacrificing US, British, and French interests in the region. Should that happen, Turkey would be back in NATO’s fold as the important pillar of the alliance in the Eastern Mediterranean it once was.

Still, Moscow’s public restraint notwithstanding, the fact that Russia has lodged no objections to active Turkish activities so close to Russia’s military bases in Turkey suggests the two countries are already conducting high-level consultations on the future of Turkey’s natural gas exploration off Cyprus, adding this to the already impressive list of joint projects which include the “Turkish Stream” pipeline, the prospective nuclear power plant in Turkey, the aforementioned S-400 purchase and discussions on Su-35 and/or Su-57 fighters, and the growth of bilateral trade in general.

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Readers from myriad latitudes have been asking me about Hong Kong. They know it’s one of my previous homes. I developed a complex, multi-faceted relationship with Hong Kong ever since the 1997 handover, which I covered extensively. Right now, if you allow me, I’d rather cut to the chase.

Much to the distress of neocons and humanitarian imperialists, there won’t be a bloody mainland China crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong – a Tiananmen 2.0. Why? Because it’s not worth it.

Beijing has clearly identified the color revolution provocation inbuilt in the protests – with the NED excelling as CIA soft, facilitating the sprawl of fifth columnists even in the civil service.

There are other components, of course. The fact that Hong Kongers are right to be angry about what is a de facto Tycoon Club oligarchy controlling every nook and cranny of the economy. The local backlash against “the invasion of the mainlanders”. And the relentless cultural war of Cantonese vs. Beijing, north vs. south, province vs. political center.

What these protests have accelerated is Beijing’s conviction that Hong Kong is not worth its trust as a key node in China’s massive integration/development project. Beijing invested no less than $18.8 billion to build the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, as part of the Greater Bay Area, to integrate Hong Kong with the mainland, not to snub it.

Now a bunch of useful idiots at least has graphically proven they don’t deserve any sort of preferential treatment anymore.

The big story in Hong Kong is not even the savage, counter-productive protests (imagine if this was in France, where Macron’s army is actually maiming and even killing Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests). The big story is the rot consuming HSBC – which has all the makings of the new Deutsche Bank scandal.

HSBC holds $2.6 trillion in assets and an intergalactic horde of cockroaches in their basement – asking serious questions about money laundering and dodgy deals operated by global turbo-capitalist elites.

In the end, Hong Kong will be left to its own internally corroding devices – slowly degrading to its final tawdry status as a Chinese Disneyland with a Western veneer. Shanghai is already in the process of being boosted as China’s top financial center. And Shenzhen already is the top high-tech hub. Hong Kong will be just an afterthought.

Brace for blowback

While China identified “Occupy Hong Kong” as a mere Western-instilled and instrumentalized plot, India, for its part, decided to go for Full Occupy in Kashmir.

Curfew was imposed all across the Kashmir valley. Internet was cut off. All Kashmiri politicians were rounded up and arrested. In fact all Kashmiris – loyalists (to India), nationalists, secessionists, independentists, apolitical – were branded as The Enemy. Welcome to Indian “democracy” under the crypto-fascist Hindutva.

“Jammu and Kashmir”, as we know it, is no more. They are now two distinct entities. Geologically spectacular Ladakh will be administered directly by New Delhi. Blowback is guaranteed. Resistance committees are already springing up.

In Kashmir, blowback will be even bigger because there will be no elections anytime soon. New Delhi does not want that kind of nuisance – as in dealing with legitimate representatives. It wants full control, period.

Starting in the early 1990s, I’ve been to both sides of Kashmir a few times. The Pakistani side does feel like Azad (“Free”) Kashmir. The Indian side is unmistakably Occupied Kashmir. This analysis is as good as it gets portraying what it means to live in IOK (Indian-occupied Kashmir).

BJP minions in India scream that Pakistan “illegally” designated Gilgit-Baltistan – or the Northern Areas – as a federally administered area. There’s nothing illegal about it. I was reporting in Gilgit-Baltistan late last year, following the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Nobody was complaining about any “illegality”.

Pakistan officially said it “will exercise all possible options to counter [India’s] illegal steps” in Kashmir. That’s extremely diplomatic. Imran Khan does not want confrontation – even as he knows full well Modi is pandering to Hindutva fanatics, aiming to turn a Muslim-majority province into a Hindu-majority province. In the long run though, something inevitable is bound to emerge – fragmented, as a guerrilla war or as a united front.

Welcome to the Kashmiri Intifada.

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Palestinian journalists covering the weekly protests against the decades-long Israeli occupation are complaining of being the target of Israeli snipers stationed along the border of the blockaded territory. 

Since the protests began in March of last year, two journalists have been shot dead and dozens injured by Israeli gunfire near Gaza-Israel buffer zone.

Last week, two journalists were shot injured as they were covering protests against the Israeli occupation, according to the Journalist Support Committee (JSC) in Palestine.

Osama Al-Kahlout, a photojournalist, was shot in the leg with a live bullet while Hatem Omar, working for China’s Xinhua news agency, was injured by a rubber bullet.

“No one has immunity along Gaza border,” Al-Kahlout, 33, who was shot east of al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, told Anadolu Agency.

“The [Israeli] occupation forces target journalists, paramedics, citizens and even the handicapped,” he said. “Everyone is within the target of Israeli snipers.”

Al-Kahlout said he had received a phone call from an unknown number before being shot in the leg.

The photojournalist believes that

“the call was from the Israeli army so that he could be accurately located and targeted directly”.

He confirmed that he was wearing a shield bearing a press badge and was working in an area relatively far from the demonstrators.

Israeli crimes

According to al-Kahlout, four journalists had previously been injured while covering the weekly protests in the same area where he was shot east of al-Bureij refugee camp.

“Israeli forces target journalists in an attempt to prevent them from exposing their crimes and violations against peaceful protesters to the world,” he said.

Xinhua news agency’s Omar was also shot by a rubber bullet while covering demonstrations east of Khan Younis city in the southern Gaza Strip.

“I was shot by two rubber bullets in both legs, although I was wearing a press shield and working in an area far from the demonstrators,” Omar told Anadolu Agency.

Accusing the Israeli army of internationally targeting journalists in Gaza, Omar said:

“In many incidents, groups of journalists were targeted by teargas or bullets while working in areas away from the demonstrators.”

Ahmed Ghanem, a correspondent for Al-Mayadin television, said the Israeli army targets journalists “to prevent them from carrying out their duty”.

“Palestinian journalists have proven their strength and ability to expose the crimes of the occupation and to convey the message of the Palestinian people in Gaza to the world,” he said. “This disturbs Israel and embarrasses it before the international community.”

Hit himself by an Israeli gas shell while covering the demonstrations in January, Ghanem called on human rights organizations to “provide protection to Palestinian journalists from the ongoing Israeli attacks”.

Prosecution

Tahseen al-Astal, vice president of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, said his organization was preparing “legal files on Israeli violations against journalists, to be lodged with international courts to prosecute Israeli leaders”.

He said the Journalists Syndicate has sent letters to the International Federation of Journalists, the Union of Arab Journalists, and the UNESCO “to brief them on Israeli violations against journalists”.

According to Salama Maarouf, a government spokesman in Gaza, around 360 journalists have been injured by Israeli army fire since the Gaza rallies began in March 2018.

Demonstrators demand an end to Israel’s 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has shattered the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its two million inhabitants of many basic amenities.

Since the Gaza rallies began last year, nearly 270 protesters have been martyred — and thousands more wounded — by Israeli troops deployed near the buffer zone.

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The Mainstream Media reported earlier this month on an intelligence bulletin released by the FBI’s Phoenix office back in May alleging that a connection exists between so-called “conspiracy theories” and domestic terrorism, and while there have veritably been some people who hold such controversially defined beliefs and then ended up killing others, it’s anti-American to suspect that people who don’t believe the official narrative about various events automatically qualify as potential terrorists.

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The de-facto criminalization of free speech is an ongoing trend in American society that’s already pressured a lot of people to self-censor their beliefs in public in order to avoid official scrutiny from the authorities or harassment by their political opponents, but an intelligence bulletin released by the FBI’s Phoenix office back in May and only reported on by the Mainstream Media earlier this month might spread the dragnet even further by de-facto criminalizing the online pursuit of additional information that contradicts the official narrative about various events.

The “secret police” (as they’d be described by the Mainstream Media if any other country’s version of the FBI was being reported on) believe that a connection exists between so-called “conspiracy theories” and domestic terrorism, and while there have veritably been some people who hold such controversially defined beliefs and ended up killing others, it’s anti-American to suspect that anyone engaged in seeking out all sides of every story (no matter how possibly implausible) automatically qualifies as a potential terrorist.

Screenshot of FBI document

Appendix B of the document says that

“the conspiracy theories referenced in this intelligence bulletin have been categorized as anti-government, identity based, or fringe political because they assert selective, malevolent acts either by an allegedly hostile and tyrannical federal government, by racial, religious, or social minority groups, or by political opponents.”

The examples given for each category are “NWO”, “UN”, and “False Flags”; Zionist Occupied Government” and “Islamberg”; and “Pizzagate” and “QAnon”, respectively, followed by a very brief description of each one. What’s so dangerous about these categorizations is that some of them are broad enough to be applicable to practically anyone who’s skeptical about recent events, which in turn could put these individuals on terrorist watch lists and possibly even result in restrictions on their civil liberties, such as their right to exercise the Second Amendment if so-called “red flag laws” are applicable in their state and Big Tech companies inform the authorities that someone was researching or discussing such unofficial narratives online.

For instance, the FBI describes the “NWO” “conspiracy theory” as asserting that “a group of international elites controls governments, industry, and media organizations, instigates major wars, carries out secret staged events, and manipulates economies with the goal of establishing global rule”, which basically summarizes the modus operandi of the American-led neoliberal system.

By the Bureau’s own definition, anti-war dissidents who expressed their belief that the US’ 2003 War on Iraq was launched on the media-driven manufactured pretext of non-existent “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in order to advance American influence in the tri-continental geopivotal and energy-rich region of the Mideast would be classified as “conspiracy theorists” who would then be suspected of being at risk of committing “domestic terrorism”. That so-called “conspiracy theory”, however, has since been vindicated as “conspiracy fact”, though in the contemporary context, those tarred and feathered as “conspiracy theorists” for believing modern-day analogues such as the US and its allies manufacturing fake pretexts to “contain” Russia, China, and Iran might soon be seen as unofficial enemies of the state.

For another perfect example of just how potentially all-encompassing the FBI’s alleged “conspiracy theorist”-terrorist connection is, one need look no further than its description of the “UN” “conspiracy”, which it describes as asserting that “the UN is being used by an evil global cabal to erode American sovereignty, strip away individual liberties, and bring foreign troops to American soil in order to replace democracy with global tyranny.”

None other than the sitting US President himself has publicly questioned the UN’s role in eroding American sovereignty, as have most of his supporters, yet the FBI’s bulletin classifies that belief as a “conspiracy theory” that could potentially indicate a “terrorist” in the making. Many more such examples could be shared about how the “secret police” could easily use the Phoenix office’s definition of “conspiracy theories” to “justify” unethical surveillance of domestic targets for political reasons, which is anti-American to the core even though it’s taken for granted that this is already going on to an uncertain extent. If “red flag laws” are expanded nationwide, then Trump’s own supporters might find themselves forcibly disarmed just for agreeing with him.

The Democrats should be concerned too because they might also find themselves on government watch lists as “conspiracy theorists” just like their rival Republicans if they simply go to the “wrong” website that questions official narratives. That could potentially be Russian international media like RT or even independent/ alternative American online outlets, it just depends on how “conspiracy theories” are defined by internet service providers, which sites they “flag” as “suspicious”, and whether or not the user is being tracked by cookies to link them to that page.

Democrats might not worry too much about having their Second Amendment rights restricted through “red flag laws”, but they could come under other forms of targeted state harassment as well on a selective basis dependent on the “secret police’s” subjective whims. It’s for these reasons that opposition to the FBI’s de-facto criminalization of online research (which builds upon the already de-facto criminalized expression of free speech in many instances) should be a bipartisan issue because it goes against everything that the US purports to stand for.

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

Arab Bedouins living in the “unrecognised” village of Al-Araqeeb have been ordered to pay 1.6 million shekels ($0.46 million) to cover the cost of the Israeli occupation’s demolition of their homes 149 times.

Al-Araqeeb was demolished for the 149th time yesterday, the third such demolition in the space of two weeks. This time, Israeli police stormed the village and dismantled the residents’ tents and threw them into their four-wheel-drive vehicles. They did not bring bulldozers or demolition vehicles.

The demolition forces left the village after it was confirmed that all the tents belonging to the residents had been demolished, destroyed and removed.

Forces returned this morning to arrest one of Al-Araqeeb’s residents, Salim Mohammed Al-Turi Abu Medegham.

Located in the Negev (Naqab) desert, the village is one of 51 “unrecognised” Arab villages in the area and is constantly targeted for demolition ahead of plans to Judaise the Negev by building homes for new Jewish communities. Israeli bulldozers, which Bedouins are charged for, have demolished everything, from the trees to the water tanks, but Bedouin residents have tried to rebuild it every time.

Bedouins in the Negev must abide by the same laws as Jewish Israeli citizens. They pay taxes but do not enjoy the same rights and services as Jews in Israel and the state has repeatedly refused to connect the towns to  the national grid, water supplies and other vital amenities.

In its ruling the court said the villagers had “broken into state-owned land” by rebuilding their demolished homes.

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Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez denounced Wednesday that a ship containing 25 thousand tons of soy-made products has been seized in the Panama Canal due to the U.S. blockade while calling on the United Nations to take action against the “serious aggression” that impede Venezuela “right to food”.

“Venezuela denounces before the world that a boat that holds 25 thousand tons of soy, for food production in our country, has been seized in the Panama Canal, due to the criminal blockade imposed by Donald Trump,” the vice president said in a tweet.

“Venezuela calls on the UN to stop this serious aggression by Donald Trump’s govt against our country, which constitutes a massive violation of the human rights of the entire Venezuelan people, by attempting to impede their right to food.”

In a subsequent tweet, the Venezuelan senior official explained that the owner of the vessel carrying the merchandise of food was informed by the insurance company that it was prevented from moving that cargo to Venezuela.

The shipment seizure comes just days after Trump signed an executive order Monday that imposes a near-total blockade on government assets in that country, which includes an embargo against food suppliers, among other basic inputs. This is the first time in 30 years that Washington has taken such an action against a sovereign country.

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There are striking structural similarities between Kashmir and Crimea that should make Russian decision makers think twice before endorsing the unilateral actions of their decades-long Indian partners if they want to remain politically consistent.

Kashmir and Crimea share many structural similarities that most observers might have missed upon first glance or if they were earlier influenced by the anti-Pakistani and -Russian infowars waged by their geopolitical opponents, but both countries should be aware of them and use these commonalities to take their strategic partnership even further in the future. These two highly geostrategic regions were left out of those two Great Powers as part of the legacy of subjectively defined administrative borders carved out by political entities that no longer exists, which were the British Raj and the USSR respectively. Had Kashmir and Crimea’s people been able to vote on their political futures in 1947 and 1991, they’d have joined Pakistan and Russia, but both of them were denied their UN-enshrined rights to self-determination and instead found themselves unwilling parts of India and Ukraine.

They key difference, however, is that the UNSC mandated that a plebiscite be held in Kashmir, while the global body never issued such a recommendation when it came to Crimea. It’s already been seven decades and the Kashmiris still haven’t been able to vote on their future, yet the Crimeans were able to assemble a referendum in roughly seven days owing to the urgent threat of ethnic cleansing that they were facing in 2014 from the new fascist authorities of post-coup Ukraine. The Kashmiris are also facing a similar such threat nowadays too, as Pakistani Prime Minister Khan recently warned, yet they’re unable to hold their planned plebiscite owing to the much worse degree of Indian military occupation that they’re presently under when compared to the relatively weaker Ukrainian one that the Crimeans were subjugated to at the time.

It’s here where Russia has the chance to show the world that it’s politically consistent in supporting what structurally amounts to Pakistan’s Crimea of Kashmir by at the very least not openly endorsing the unilateral actions of its Indian partners earlier this week. New Delhi might nevertheless order its international perception managers to frame Moscow’s silence as tacit approval, though, which is why Russia should consider speaking out against India’s violation of international law and especially what The Times of India quoted Home Minister Amit Shah as saying on Tuesday. The Cabinet official also serves as the President of India’s ruling BJP religious extremists and was on record telling parliament that

“Kashmir is an integral part of India, there is no doubt over it. When I talk about Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan occupied Kashmir and Aksai Chin are included in it and can die for it”.

Russia routinely criticizes Ukrainian officials whenever they claim that they’re willing to retake Crimea by force, so it should in the interests of political consistency also do the same when one of the most influential men in the nuclear-armed state of India threatens to kill people in the parts of Kashmir currently under Pakistan and China’s control, especially seeing as how both similarly nuclear-armed states are SCO members together with Russia and the second-mentioned one is a part of BRICS too. Moscow, however, might be wary of New Delhi weaponizing their military-industrial ties and more rapidly pivoting towards Western suppliers as punishment for Russia refusing to tow its narrative line or even outright rejecting it, which could contribute to the Eurasian Great Power possibly sacrificing its soft power for the sake of not disrupting its budgetary revenue in that scenario.

That said, Russia has earned the envied reputation among Western and non-Western audiences alike of solidly standing up for the rules-based international order as defined by the UN Charter, so it might not want to ruin this intangible strategic benefit no matter how high the financial costs are that India could impose on it. In fact, India might not even be able to use those current and future contracts as economic blackmail because its armed forces can’t rapidly transition away from Soviet- and Russian-provided equipment, so any fears that Moscow’s decision makers might have in this respect could turn out to be overblown fearmongering peddled by New Delhi’s “agents of influence” in their “deep state”. Russia’s “Return to South Asia” has seen it trying to carefully “balance” the region, but it could all be for naught if it takes a partisan approach by backing India’s illegal actions, which is why it should think twice before falling for the temptation to reactively do so.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from Cafe Dissensus Everyday blog

Consider the following facts as you wend your way to the Guggenheim Museum and its uppermost gallery, where you will presently find The Death of Michael Stewart (1983), Basquiat’s gut-punching tribute to a slain artist, and the centerpiece for an exhibition that could hardly be more timely. Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people. According to mappingpoliceviolence.org in 2014, fewer than one in three black people killed by police in the U.S. were suspected of a violent crime and allegedly armed. As American pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock once observed,

“Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.”

Such brutality is the focal point for Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story, an exhibition that commences from a painting created by Jean-Michel Basquiat in honor of a young, black artist – Michael Stewart – who met his tragic end when he was supposedly caught by the New York City Transit Police tagging a wall in an East Village subway station during the early morning hours of September 15, 1983. What precisely transpired that night remains unsettled to this day, but what is sufficiently known is that the twenty-five year old Stewart was handcuffed, beaten and strangulated by a chokehold with a nightstick – likely causing a massive brain hemorrhage, whereby he fell into a coma and never regained consciousness, dying two weeks later.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983. © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat / ADAGP, Paris / ARS, New York 2016.

Other artists, among them Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, responded to Stewart’s death with commemorative works of their own, which are featured in the exhibition. Also included is a yellow flyer created by David Wojnarowicz – portraying the officers with vicious, skeletal faces –  to announce a September 26, 1983, rally in Union Square in protest of Stewart’s “near-murder”, when the young man was still languishing in a coma, “suspended between life and death”. In fact, Basquiat must have seen Wojnarowicz’s poster (which was taped “all over” downtown, as another artist recalls), and apparently it served as a direct source for the composition of Basquiat’s painting.  The Death of Michael Stewart (informally known as Defacement) was originally painted directly onto the drywall of Haring’s Cable Building studio; later cut out of the wall and placed within an ornate gilded frame which Haring hung immediately above his bed. There the painting remained until Haring’s death from AIDS-related illness in February 1990.

Two positively ravenous officers – with pink flesh and blue uniforms – wield their nightsticks above a solitary, black and haloed figure fixed motionlessly between them. In the upper register of the painting, above the trio of figures is the word ¿DEFACEMENTO? – a word that during the 1980s was often used as a term for graffiti. In the context of the painting, the artist draws our attention to the reality that what was truly being defaced was not a piece of property but a life: it is the police officers, teeth bared and thirsty for blood, who are committing the act of defacement, of disfigurement. Basquiat’s art was constantly in dialogue with the history of Western painting; and in this case, his work may in fact be seen as revisiting and restaging a classic theme – namely, the flagellation of Christ.

The exhibition includes several other works by Basquiat, dealing with closely related subjects that occupied him throughout his relatively short but intense and extraordinarily prolific career. Irony of a Negro Policeman (1981), La Hara (1981) and Untitled (Sheriff) (1981), all take up the themes of white power, authority and law enforcement – generally portraying the police as frightening and monstrous.  La Hara is an especially mesmerizing work, the title of which – repeated four times in the upper left-hand portion – refers to a Nuyorican/Boricua slang term for a police officer; derived from O’Hara, since at one time a large contingent of New York City law enforcement was Irish. The officer in this work is downright scary: with a ghostly white complexion, blood shot eyes and crooked, menacing teeth, set within a jaw that is open wide enough for the figure to be talking to us  – all of which serves to convey a kind of seething rage, ready to explode in violence at the slightest provocation. As with many of his figures, Basquiat has painted this officer with his rib cage exposed, and in certain areas we can see right through him to the fire-engine red background. In other words, what we have is a skeletal figure, whose bleached white bones invoke a kind of living dead: not simply a monster but an abomination.

Charles the First (1982) and CPRKR (1982), both references to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, are among the paintings of Basquiat to champion and glorify the father of bebop – granting him, in fact, the stature of a king. These two works, different as they are from Defacement, nevertheless share with it certain themes. At a basic level, all three works are concerned with death, and precisely the death of the young, black, male artist. CPRKR is a kind of grave marker for Parker who was dead at thirty-five: a minimalist work consisting almost entirely of the initials in the title, references to the place (“THE STANHOPE HOTEL”) and year of Charlie Parker’s death (“NINETEEN FIFTYFIVE”), and a cross. At the bottom of the work, Basquiat has printed the name “CHARLES THE FIRST”.

Charles the First abounds with references to the life and work of the great musician; but two features are particularly notable in the present context: at the painting’s top left corner is the word “HALOES” – indicating that in Basquiat’s scheme of things Parker is also a kind of saint, one of a number characteristics he shares with the Stewart of Defacement.  At the bottom of the painting, Basquiat issues the warning “MOST YOUNG KINGS GET THEIR HEADS CUT OFF” – which at the very least reminds us that, for Basquiat, a premature death is the price that the black artist pays for genius. Basquiat himself died in 1988 at the age of twenty-seven from a heroin overdose.

The Guggenheim’s glance back to 1983 and the death of Michael Stewart accomplishes what art exhibitions should, but all too rarely do – it grants us perspective on our present moment; a way of confronting the reality that we are currently living and navigating. We all know the names of unarmed black men who recently had their lives cut short – Trayvon Martin (killed in 2012), Eric Garner (killed in 2014, by an illegal chokehold like the one that killed Stewart), twelve-year old Tamir Rice (shot dead in 2014 by white police officer Timothy Loehmann), eighteen-year old Michael Brown (also shot dead by white Ferguson police officer Daren Wilson), Philando Castile (killed in 2016) – and the list goes on. The show does not allow us to forget that this violence has a long, painful history in America. Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story does what exhibitions should do – it tells us a story we don’t want to hear but need to hear.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.

On July 30 and 31 the attention of the national media in the United States was focused on the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit where 20 Democratic Party candidates for the presidency debated various issues presented to them by anchors from the Cable News Network (CNN).

What went largely unmentioned by CNN and other corporate and government-sponsored media outlets were the events taking place in the surrounding blocks near the debate venue.

On Tuesday July 30, several organizations led by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), along with a number of environmental and social justice groups, held a rally at Cass Park beginning four hours before the commencement of the first night of the debate. SEIU workers began to arrive before 4:00pm in buses deployed from cities as far away from Detroit as Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Chicago, Flint, among other municipalities.

Detroit demonstration of workers, environmentalists and community activists outside the Democratic Party debate on July 30, 2019.

The members wore t-shirts which said “Unions for All.” The SEIU organizes low-wage employees such as janitors, security guards, restaurants and fast food workers.

Speakers from the podium discussed issues involving the need for a $15 per hour minimum wage and the right to union representation for the purposes of collective bargaining. Other speakers were invited by a coalition of largely non-profit organizations known as “Frontline Detroit.”

Sunrise, a nationwide group said to have been inspired by the newly-elected New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had in conjunction with SEIU, put together the alliance which sponsored the rally. An entry on the Sunrise website says of the group that:

“We’re building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people…. We are not looking to the right or left. We look forward. Together, we will change this country and this world, sure as the sun rises each morning.”

Many of the rally participants held signs calling for the implementation of the “Green New Deal”, a campaign which in broad generalities proposes the conversion of some aspects of the productive capacity in the U.S. to environmentally safe industries curbing the utilization of fossil fuels, a major component in the rapid process of climate change. Nonetheless, there were no specific demands from the July 30 rally proponents of the “Green New Deal” urging the transformation of the U.S. economy from capitalism to socialism, a prerequisite for genuine change towards social equality, the economic empowerment of working people and the nationally oppressed.

Detroit activists block the entrance and exit to the tunnel to Windsor Canada near the Democratic Party debate on July 31, 2019

Climate Change and Imperialist War

Of all the various organizations which spoke from the podium and marched in the demonstration from Cass Park to Grand Circus Park, just one block south of the Fox Theater, only the Detroit-based Moratorium NOW! Coalition and the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI) staffed a literature table which distributed leaflets, pamphlets, placards and t-shirts which attacked the role of the Pentagon budget, the imperialist wars fought against peoples around the world, and the prominent role of the Defense Department in fostering environmental degradation internationally.

A two-sided flyer circulated by Moratorium NOW! Coalition and MECAWI pointed out that:

“The U.S. military is the world’s largest institutional consumer of Fossil fuels and the world’s worst producer of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and many other toxic pollutants. The U.S. military accounts for almost 80% of the federal government’s fossil fuel consumption. If the Pentagon were a country, it would rank 47^th in annual fossil fuel consumption, it would rank 47^thin annual fossil fuel consumption, ahead of 140 countries.”

Moratorium NOW! Coalition and MECAWI members felt that it was essential to raise these issues in any discussion of the impending global environmental catastrophe. The failure to criticize the imperialist war machine renders the demands for any reforms aimed at the reversal of climate change insufficient and even superfluous.

On the second side of the same flyer the organizations take on the failure of liberal Democrats and even “Social Democrats” to firmly oppose military interventions in various geo-political regions of the world including the Middle East. The statement warns of the impending threat of a full blown war against Iran by Washington and its allies. In addition, the leaflet expresses solidarity with the people of Palestine who have been subjected to Israeli occupation for 71 years. The funding of Israel by the U.S. represents an affront not only to the people of the Middle East, notwithstanding the peace and freedom loving masses of this country.

The Moratorium NOW! Coalition and MECAWI statement concluded in part by saying:

“Overall we want to express our solidarity with the oppressed and struggling peoples of the region in their fight for liberation, social justice, peace and prosperity. Our plight in the U.S. as oppressed and working class people has worsened as a direct by-product of the imperialist militarism of the White House and Wall Street. Every allocation for weapons, fighter jets, military occupations and destabilization efforts takes away potential funding for good jobs, guaranteed incomes, quality schools, environmental justice, public services, water resources, housing and other necessities for working, oppressed and poor people.”

Immigration and National Oppression

On the second night of the debate (July 31), a demonstration in solidarity with the targeted immigrant communities from Latin America and other regions of the world populated by people of color took place beginning at Hart Plaza. The plight of migrant workers on the southern border seeking asylum was not raised at all from the podium by the sponsoring groups on the previous night.

Detroit activist Renla Sessions holds sign summing the sentiment of many outside the Demoratic Party debate beginning on July 30, 2019.

The focus on immigrant rights was led by Movimiento Cosecha of Michigan and supported by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition, MECAWI, as well as several other local organizations in Detroit. This manifestation began with a rally and later march to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, a major border crossing separating the U.S. and Canada.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border and Customs Patrol (CBP) are very active in Detroit targeting communities of Mexican, Central American, Middle Eastern and African populations. When the several hundred protesters arrived at the tunnel entrance and exit, 21 people blocked the area by sitting down and refusing to move. Traffic was blocked at the extremely busy border crossing during rush hour.

Detroit police, who were largely deployed at the Fox where the debate was scheduled to take place soon, were caught off guard and took at least 15 minutes to arrive at the scene. CBP agents were seen in the background when police arrived. After three warnings, the 21 activists blocking the tunnel were immediately arrested and taken into custody. They are to be charged with both misdemeanors and civil infractions and were released from detention within 90 minutes.

Hundreds of other demonstration participants marched back to Hart Plaza and then north on Woodward Avenue to Grand Circus Park near the site of the Democratic debate. Activists were seeking to expose the role of corporate media-designated Democratic Party presidential frontrunner Sen. Joe Biden who served as Vice President in the administration of the previous head-of-state President Barack Obama. The Obama administration deported three million people from the U.S., the largest expulsion of people from the country in history.

The Need for an Independent Political Party of the Workers and Oppressed

Of course the CNN-orchestrated debate on both nights failed to even remotely address the concrete issues impacting Detroit and other urban areas in Michigan as well as throughout the U.S. There was no specific discussion of the current crises in housing affordability and displacement, water shut-offs and contamination, the collapse of public education systems, the phenomenon of corporate capture of tax resources, mass impoverishment, racial violence, police terrorism, the evisceration of local democratic governance, environmental deterioration, inadequate public transportation and healthcare along with community security.

There was much emphasis placed on the necessity to defeat the current President Donald Trump based upon his vile racism and anti-immigrant policies, misogyny, attacks on the Affordable Care Act, etc. Yet while the Democratic candidates viciously criticized and attacked each other on stage, many people both inside and outside the Fox, felt frustrated due to the total absence of a concrete program to empower the majority of working and nationally oppressed peoples in the U.S.

The reality is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can provide a solution to the monumental domestic and global crises of politics, economics, the environment and imperialist militarism. On the first night of the debate, the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and MECAWI carried a banner in the march which summed up the current situation emphasizing in part that:

“Trump and the Democrats Support Wall Street Wars; U.S. Hands off Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Africa, North Korea, Free Palestine from the River to the Sea; Money for People’s Needs, Not the Pentagon.”

Establishment Democratic Party candidate in 2016, former Secretary of State and Sen. Hillary Clinton, lost Michigan in both the primary (to Sen. Bernie Sanders) and the runoff elections (to now President Trump). This represented the contradiction facing the Democratic Party which is a capitalist organization that differs only in the composition of its constituencies (workers, liberals, progressives, nationally oppressed) to the Republicans.

The Democrats could very well lose again in 2020 despite the widespread hatred of Trump in the U.S. Deep divisions in rhetoric and style between the so-called Left-wing of the party and moderates poses a major challenge in the electoral arena. If the Democrats cannot select a candidate who can spark enthusiasm among broad sections of the population they will not be able to succeed in recapturing the White House and the Senate.

Moreover, what is desperately needed is a party of the masses of workers and people of color communities, organized independent of the Democrats and Republicans, which speaks in its own name with a genuine commitment to full equality, worker empowerment, self-determination and socialist construction. Until this imperative is realized, the people will remain pawns in a vicious political game of the two ruling class parties which are incapable of addressing the needs of the masses in their need for revolutionary liberation.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

All images in this article are from the author

After years of being kept in the doldrums by orchestrated short selling described on this website by Roberts and Kranzler, gold has lately moved up sharply reaching $1,510 this morning.  The gold price has continued to rise despite the continuing practice of dumping large volumes of naked contracts in the futures market.  The gold price is driven down but quickly recovers and moves on up.  I haven’t an explanation at this time for the new force that is more powerful than the short-selling that has been used to control the price of gold.

Various central banks have been converting their dollar reserves into gold, which reduces the demand for dollars and increases the demand for gold.  Existing stocks of gold available to fill orders are being drawn down, and new mining output is not keeping pace with the rise in demand.  Perhaps this is the explanation for the rise in the price of gold.

During the many years of Quantitative Easing the exchange value of the dollar was protected by the Japanese, British, and EU central banks also printing money to insure that their currencies did not rise in value relative to the dollar. The Federal Reserve needs to protect the dollar’s exchange value so that it continues in its role as the world’s reserve currency in which international transactions are conducted.  If the dollar loses this role, the US will lose the ability to pay its bills by printing dollars.  A dollar declining in value relative to other countries would cause flight from the dollar to the rising currencies.  Catastrophe quickly occurs from increasing the supply of a currency that central banks are unwilling to hold.

One problem remained. The dollar was depreciating relative to gold.  Rigging the currency market was necessary but not sufficient to stabilize the dollar’s value. The gold market also had to be rigged. To stop the dollar’s depreciation, naked short selling has been used to artificially increase the supply of paper gold in order to suppress the price.  Unlike equities, gold shorts don’t have to be covered. This turns the price-setting gold futures market into a paper market where contracts are settled primarily in cash and not by taking delivery of gold.  Therefore, participants can increase the supply of the paper gold traded in the futures market by printing new contracts. When large numbers of contracts are suddenly dumped in the market, the sudden increase in paper gold supply drives down the price. This has worked until now.

If flight from the dollar is beginning, it will make it difficult for the Federal Reserve to accommodate the growing US budget deficit and continue its policy of lowering interest rates. With central banks moving their reserves from dollars (US Treasury bonds and bills) to gold, the demand for US government debt is not keeping up with supply.  The supply will be increasing due to the $1.5 trillion US budget deficit.  The Federal Reserve will have to take up the gap between the amount of new debt that has to be issued and the amount that can be sold by purchasing the difference.  In other words, the Fed will print more money with which to purchase the unsold portion of the new debt.  

The creation of more dollars when the dollar is experiencing pressure puts more downward pressure on the dollar.  To protect the dollar, that is, to make it again attractive to investors and central banks, the Federal Reserve would have to raise interest rates substantially.  If the US economy is in recession or moving toward recession, the cost of rising interest rates would be high in terms of unemployment.  

With a rising price of gold, who would want to hold debt denominated in a rapidly depreciating currency when interest rates are low, zero, or negative?

The Federal Reserve might have no awareness of the pending crisis that it has set up for itself.  On the other hand, the Federal Reserve is responsive to the elite who want to rid themselves of Trump.  Collapsing the economy on Trump’s head is one way to prevent his reelection.

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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.

In 2019, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF will be 75 years old. These two international financial institutions (IFI), founded in 1944, are dominated by the USA and a few allied major powers who work to generalize policies that run counter the interests of the world’s populations.

The WB and the IMF have systematically made loans to States as a means of influencing their policies. Foreign indebtedness has been and continues to be used as an instrument for subordinating the borrowers. Since their creation, the IMF and the WB have violated international pacts on human rights and have no qualms about supporting dictatorships.

A new form of decolonization is urgently required to get out of the predicament in which the IFI and their main shareholders have entrapped the world in general. New international institutions must be established. This new series of articles by Éric Toussaint retraces the development of the World Bank and the IMF since they were founded in 1944. The articles are taken from the book The World Bank: a never-ending coup d’état. The hidden agenda of the Washington Consensus, Mumbai: Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, 2007, or The World Bank : A critical Primer Pluto, 2007.

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Robert McNamara and president Luis Echeverria (1970-1976) were thick as thieves. The Mexican president had cracked down on the radical left. From 1973 on, Mexico’s foreign currency revenue soared thanks to the tripling of oil prices. This increase in currency revenue should have prevented Mexico from borrowing. However the volume of WB loans to Mexico rose sharply: it quadrupled from 1973 to 1981 (from USD 118 million in 1973 to 460 million in 1981). Mexico also borrowed from private banks with the World Bank’s backing. The volume of loans from private banks to Mexico multiplied by 6 between 1973 and 1981. US banks led the field, followed in decreasing order by banks from the UK, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, and Switzerland. The amounts loaned by private banks were ten times those borrowed from the World Bank. When the crisis broke in 1982, there were no less than 550 banks to which the Mexican government owed money! Lending money to Mexico was the World Bank’s way of keeping its hold on Mexican authorities. From 1974 to 1976, the predicament of Mexican public finances seriously worsened. Yet the World Bank insisted that Mexico should contract more debts while the alarm signals were flashing.

On 3 February 1978 the World Bank boldly projected a rosy future:

“The Mexican government almost certainly will experience a large increase in the resources at its disposal by the early 1980s. Our most recent projections show that … the balance of payments will show a surplus on current account by 1982… large increases in export revenues, mainly from petroleum and products, should make both the foreign debt problem and the management of public finance much easier to manage by the 1980s. The debt service ratio of 32.6% (of export revenue) in 76, will increase progressively to 53.1% en 78, and thereafter will decline to 49.4% in 1980 and about 30% in 1982.” [1]

The exact opposite was to occur. Every word of this prediction was contradicted by facts!

In October 1979, when Paul Volcker, then chairman of the US Federal Reserve, decided on a steep rise in interest rates that would inevitably lead to the debt crisis (which was to start in Mexico), the World Bank had reassuring words. On 19 November 1979 we read: “Both the increase in Mexico’s external public debt and especially the increase in the debt service ratio, which in 1979 may become as high as 2/3 of its exports (…), suggest a very critical situation. In fact, the truth is exactly the opposite.” (author’s emphasis). [2] This is quite simply astounding.

The World Bank’s message consists of repeating that even when everything suggests there is cause for alarm, actually all is well, the situation is excellent, and you should just contract further debts. What would we think of a crossing-keeper who would tell pedestrians they should cross the railway lines when a red light clearly indicates that a train is arriving? What would a court say if such behaviour had resulted in loss of life?

Private banks of the North loaned exponentially higher amounts to developing countries, starting with Mexico.

One of the Bank’s economists in charge of monitoring the situation sent a most alarming report on 14 August 1981. [3] He explained that he disagreed with the optimistic view held by the Mexican government and its representative Carlos Salinas de Gortari, minister of Planning and Budget. [4] He later had serious problems with his hierarchy, and even decided to lodge a lawsuit against the WB (which he won). [5] In 1981 the World Bank granted Mexico a 1.1 billion dollar loan (scheduled over several years): it was by far the largest loan granted by the WB since 1946. In the early months of 1982 the World Bank still claimed that the increase in the Mexican GDP would average 8.1% a year between 1983 and 1985. On 19 March 1982, i.e. six months before the crisis, the president of the World Bank, Alden W. Clausen, sent the following letter to the Mexican president José Lopez Portillo: [6]

“Our meeting in Mexico City with your top aides reinforced my confidence in the economic leaders of your country. You, Mr. President, can be rightfully proud of the achievements of the last five years. Few countries can claim to have achieved such high growth rates, or have created so many jobs… I wish to congratulate you on the many successes already achieved. As I stated during our meeting, the recent setback for the Mexican economy is bound to be transient, and we will be happy to be of assistance during the consolidation process” (author’s emphasis). [7]

Less than a year earlier, Alden W. Clausen still chaired the Bank of America, which was busy providing loan on loan to Mexico.

On 20 August 1982 Mexico, which had paid back considerable amounts over the first seven months of the year, stated that it could not pay any more. It decreed a six month moratorium (August 1982 to January 1983). It had only 180 million dollars in reserve and was expected to pay 300 million on 23 August. Already in early August Mexico had told the IMF that its currency reserve was down to 180 million dollars. At the end of August the IMF convened with the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Bank of England. The director of the IMF, Jacques de Larosière, told the Mexican authorities that the IMF and the BIS were willing to grant currency loans in December 1982 on the twofold condition that the money be used to refund private banks and that Mexico implement drastic structural adjustment measures. Mexico accepted. It steeply devalued its national currency, considerably increased domestic interest rates, saved Mexican private banks from bankruptcy by nationalizing them and taking over their debts. In exchange, it seized the 6 billion dollars cash they had on hand. President José Lopez Portillo presented this measure to the Mexican people as though it were a nationalist move. He of course refrained from divulging that the 6 billion dollars would be used to pay back foreign bankers.

Who was really responsible for the Mexican debt crisis? Did Mexico start it?

Generally speaking, the reasons are obvious: a rise in interest rates decided in Washington, plummeting oil revenues and a huge debt are the structural causes. The first two are external factors and Mexico was helpless against them. The third one results from choices made by the Mexican leaders, whom the WB and private bankers encouraged to take on enormous loans.

Beyond these structural causes, which are fundamental, an analysis of how one thing led to another shows that private banks of the North started the crisis in that they significantly reduced the loans granted to Mexico in 1982. Aware that almost all available currency in the Mexican Treasury had been used to pay back the debt, they considered it was time to reduce their loans. In this way they brought one of the world’s largest indebted countries to its knees. Seeing that Mexico was facing the combined effects of a rise in interest rates – from which they profited – and a fall in its oil revenues, they chose to act first and move out. An aggravating circumstance was that foreign bankers had aided and abetted Mexican ruling circles (CEOs and leaders of the party-State called the Institutional Revolutionary Party) who were frantically transferring their capital abroad in order to invest it safely. It is estimated that in 1981-1982, no less than 29 billion dollars left Mexico as capital flight. [8] After precipitating the crisis private bankers then further benefited from it – and left it for others to mend matters. The evidence can be seen in the following tables.

Table 1. Foreign banks’ loans without any state guarantee and repayments to the banks (in million dollars)

Source: World Bank, Global Development Finance, 2005

The table traces the evolution of loans granted by private foreign banks without any guarantee by the state. We note that after a huge increase from 1978 to 1981, loans fell drastically in 1982. On the other hand repayments did not decrease. On the contrary they increased by close to 40% in 1982. In 1983 bank loans had completely stopped. Yet repayments were still well underway. The evolution of debt net transfer, which had been positive until 1981, became seriously negative from 1982 on. All in all, between 1978 and 1987, negative net transfer accounted for more than 10 billion dollars in profits for the bankers.

Table 2. Foreign banks’ loans with state guarantee and repayments to the banks (in million dollars)

Source: World Bank, Global Development Finance, 2005

Table 2 shows the evolution of loans from foreign private banks that were guaranteed by the Mexican state. We note the increase in loans from 1978 to 1981. In 1982 loans decreased by 20% while repayments increased. Bank loans decreased sharply until 1986. By contrast repayments by the Mexican state continued at a very high level. Net transfer on the public debt to foreign banks contracted with a state guarantee, which had been positive from 1978 to 1982, became very seriously negative from 1983. All in all, the net negative transfer between 1978 and 1987 accounts for over 10 billions dollars in profits for the banks.

If we add up negative transfers in the two tables we reach a sum of over 20 billion dollars. Private banks in the North extracted juicy benefits from the Mexican people.

Table 3. WB loans to Mexico and repayments (in million dollars)

Source: World Bank, Global Development Finance, 2005

Table 3 shows the evolution of World Bank loans to Mexico. We note a sharp increase from 1978 to 1981. The WB was then frantically competing with private banks. In 1982 and 1983 we note a moderate decrease. Loans increased again from 1984 on. The Bank behaved as a last resort lender. Loans were conditioned on the Mexican state repaying private banks, a majority of which were North American. Net transfer remained positive because Mexico did use WB loans to repay private banks.

Table 4. IMF loans to Mexico and repayments (in million dollars)

Source: World Bank, Global Development Finance, 2005

Table 4 shows the evolution of IMF loans to Mexico. There were none between 1978 and 1981. Yet in those years Mexico repaid old loans. From 1982 on the IMF loaned massive amounts on two conditions: 1) the money had to be used to repay private banks; 2) Mexico had to implement a structural adjustment policy (reduction of social expenditure and of expenditure for infrastructures, privatization, rise in interest rates, increase in indirect taxation, etc.). Net transfer remained positive because Mexico did use IMF loans to repay private banks.

Table 5. Loans from countries of the North to Mexico and repayments (in million dollars)

Source: World Bank, Global Development Finance, 2005

Table 5 shows the evolution of loans granted by the most industrialized countries. Like private banks and the World Bank, countries of the North sharply increased their loans to Mexico from 1978 to 1981. Then they did more or less what the WB and the IMF were doing. While private banks reduced their loans, they followed the IMF and the WB in loaning to Mexico in order to make sure that it could repay private banks and that it would implement the structural adjustment programme.

Table 6. Evolution of the Mexican external debt from 1978 to 1987 (in million dollars)

Source: World Bank, Global Development Finance, 2005

Table 6 shows the evolution of Mexico’s total external debt. It multiplied by 3 from 1978 to 1987. During this period the amounts that were paid back were 3.5 times the amount owed in 1978. Total negative net transfer accounts for over 26 billion dollars.

Since 1982 the Mexican people have been bled dry to assuage their various creditors. Indeed the IMF and the World Bank have exacted the last cent back from what they loaned to the country so that it could pay private banks. Mexico has been forcefully subjected to the logic of structural adjustment. The shock of 1982 first led to a steep recession, massive layoffs and a dramatic drop in purchasing power. Next structural measures resulted in hundreds of publicly owned companies being privatized. The concentration of wealth and of a large part of the national assets in the hands of a few Mexican and foreign industrial and financial corporations is staggering. [9]

In a historical perspective it is evident that the road to overindebtedness in the 1960s and 1970s, the explosion of the debt crisis in 1982 and the way it was managed in the following years marked a radical break with the progressive policies implemented from the start of the Mexican revolution in 1910 to the 1940s with Lazaro Cardenas as president. From the revolution to the 1940s, living standards notably improved, Mexico made great strides in economic terms and adopted an independent foreign policy. From 1914 to 1946 Mexico did not pay back any debt and eventually won a resounding victory over its creditors when the latter agreed to give up 90% of the amount owed in 1914 without claiming any interest either. Since the 1982 crisis Mexico has lost control of its destiny. Historically, this has been the US’s objective since the 19^th century.

In 1970, Mexico’s public external debt amounted to USD 3.1 billion. 33 years later, in 2003, it had multiplied by 25, reaching 77.4 billion (public and private external debts together amounted to 140 billion). Meanwhile the Mexican government paid back 368 billion (120 times the amount owed in 1970). Net negative transfer from 1970 to 2003 amounts to USD 109 billion. From 1983 to 2003, i.e. over a period of 21 years, net transfer on the public external debt was positive only in 1990 and 1995.

We trust the day is approaching when the Mexican people will be able to win back their freedom to decide their own future.

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

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

Notes

Over 100 people gathered outside police headquarters in a suburban municipality east of Detroit to demonstrate against the failure of local authorities to hold several police officers accountable in the shooting death of 29 year old African American Theoddeus Gray.

Gray was shot six times from the rear while he was walking away from officers outside Lakeland Manor banquet hall in St. Clair Shores, Michigan on November 4, 2018.

Within a matter of two weeks Macomb County Sheriff Anthony Wickersham had cleared the law-enforcement personnel of any wrong doing. This decision follows a long held pattern in the United States where police routinely kill African Americans and other people of color without fear of disciplinary action let alone criminal prosecution.

A crowd composed of many family members and friends of Theo Gray rallied and marched at St. Clair Shores police headquarters on the afternoon of Saturday August 3. The group spoke out about the unjust use of lethal force and the distortions perpetuated by the police and the corporate media involving the circumstances of the incident on November 4.

Demonstration demanding justice for Theo Gray outside the St. Clair Shores police station on Aug. 3, 2019 (Photo by Abayomi Azikiwe)

Spokespersons for the family noted that the initial explanation for the shooting of Gray centered on the culpability for the death of a police dog identified as “Axe.” Law-enforcement officials claimed Gray had shot the dog prompting them to take down the young man in a hail of bullets.

This story was later changed by St. Clair Shores police and the Macomb County Sheriff. Relatives of the deceased say that all of the evidence leads to the conclusion that the law-enforcement officers had shot the animal to death themselves while firing at Gray.

Family members who were eyewitnesses to the killing said that the six wounds inflicted upon Gray were in the rear of his body including the head, back, thighs, legs and feet. They also emphasized that there was no threat posed to the officers by Gray therefore his death was completely unprovoked.

Five police officers fired 48 shots at Gray. He was pronounced dead at a hospital as a result of the six bullets which struck him.

Law-enforcement Review Seeks to Justify Killing

In order to address public concern about the killing of Gray, Wickersham and St. Clair Shores Police Chief Todd Woodcox held a press conference on November 28 at the Macomb County Sheriff’s office. Wickersham stated that a further ballistic investigation was needed to determine the cause of death of the police animal.

A public funeral was held for Axe at the Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in St. Clair Shores where tens of thousands of dollars were raised. No public apology or acknowledgment of wrongdoing was made by either the St. Clair Shores police or the Macomb County Sheriff’s office in regard to the brutal death of Gray.

According to an article published by the Detroit Free Press, citing statements by law-enforcement officials in Macomb County:

“After the dog was struck, he ran back toward Lakeland Manor and was found by a side door, Wickersham said. Axe was taken to an animal hospital and died. Wickersham said ballistics information is pending on bullet fragments found inside the police dog on its left front leg and right shoulder blade. Gray’s FN57 5.7mm pistol is believed to have jammed after he fired the first shot, Wickersham said. He said the gun was found under Gray, and that a loaded, AK47 semi-automatic rifle was found next to the banquet hall, though he released no additional details about that weapon.” (See this)

This same above-mentioned report presented the police rationale for the killing of Gray, noting:

“’There was gonna be a shootout in St. Clair Shores that night,’ Wickersham said. City police said officers responded to the hall after receiving calls of a man with a rifle outside. About 70 people were inside, police said. ‘Upon officer arrival, a male matching this description was observed standing outside the banquet hall,’ an initial news release from St. Clair Shores Police stated. ‘The male ignored several demands from officers and attempted to flee the scene on foot.’”

Family members of Gray were accused by police of refusing to participate in the investigation during the aftermath of the killing. Wickersham said during the press conference that through an attorney letters were sent to the family of Gray and no responses were received.

An attorney for the family, Vince Colella, said he had received no correspondence from the Macomb County Sheriff. Colella emphasized that it was up to law-enforcement to conduct the investigation and not the family of Gray.

Family Demands Justice

Members of the Gray family have contacted the newly-elected Democratic Attorney General for the State of Michigan Dana Nessel requesting another probe of the case. Nessel announced on August 2 that she would review the evidence for possible future legal action.

However, several members of the family and friends of Gray expressed skepticism related to the statement made by the State Attorney General. They want immediate action aimed at bringing the killers to justice.

A Facebook page has been set up entitled “Justice for Theo Gray.” Family spokesperson Oliver Gantt addressed the demonstration on August 3 at the St. Clair Shores police station stressing that further demonstrations will be held. (See this)

Members of the Detroit-based Moratorium NOW! Coalition attended the August 3 protest in St. Clair Shores providing a sound system which was utilized during the picket line and rally. An organizer for the Moratorium NOW! Coalition spoke to the crowd pledging unconditional support, along with inviting those present to the August 10 gathering in downtown Detroit commemorating the second anniversary of the Charlottesville, Virginia disturbances where neo-fascist and racists marched through the city advocating violence against oppressed people.

Heather Heyer, an anti-racist activist, was killed when neo-Nazi James Alex Fields, Jr. rammed his vehicle into a crowd of counter-protesters on August 12, 2017. Dozens of anti-racist activists were injured as a result of Field’s actions and other racists who had gathered that weekend to oppose the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.  Fields was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to life in imprison for his crimes.

The police killing of Gray and the subsequent exoneration of the law-enforcement officers in St. Clair Shores is by no means an isolated incident. Over the last five years, there have been countless demonstrations across the U.S. in response to police brutality and terrorism directed against African Americans and other people of color communities.

In a report published by The Root website which covers issues related to African American affairs, 1,165 people were killed by police in 2018. A large percentage of these victims were disproportionately African Americans.

This publication says in its conclusion to the article that:

“There were only 22 days in all of last year where police didn’t kill someone. Despite all the protests, marches, training seminars, thoughts and prayers, in 2018, cops killed 36 more people than they did the year before, according to Mapping Police Violence and the Washington Post. And despite being 12.6 percent of the U.S. population, Black people were 26.7 percent of the people killed by police where the race was known. The number of Black people killed by police in the last year (215) was more than all the police who died in the line of duty (148), U.S. servicemen killed in action (2) and Americans killed by Islamic terrorists (0) combined.” (See this)

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

All images in this article are from the author

The latest 13th round of talks in Astana between the Syrian state with Russia and Iran as its guarantors on one side, and Al-Qaeda and the Turkish regime as it guarantor on the other side, would have slowly but steadily resolved the odd situation in the Al-Qaeda occupied Idlib province through the agreements it reached and the acknowledgment by Turkey, finally, that there are terrorist groups in Idlib and not only civilians and hospitals.

Hours after the announcement of the truce from the latest round of talks at Nur-Sultan (Astana), the commander of Nusra Front, or whatever name his group has adopted recently, declared his group’s rejection to the ceasefire. Nusra Front is the dominant power in the last NATO’s stronghold of terror in Syria.

Dima Nassif, chief of Damascus bureau of Lebanese news channel Al-Mayadeen details further in this report, we added English subtitles to, and the English transcript of the translation below the video:

Transcript of the English translation of the above video report:

The Idlib truce could have passed peacefully had Nusra Front not declared its rejection of the ceasefire.

The Syrian optimism to give the agreement an opportunity to propose a solution that is in line with the Syrian situation, progressing even on the international conventions which allows the Syrian army to continue its operations on the fronts which involve armed groups participating in the agreement and the other rejecting it as the Nusra Front.

Despite that, the army froze its operations to strengthen the chances of a solution in Idlib on the basis of Ankara’s fulfillment of its obligations in the withdrawal of armed groups and its heavy and the medium weapons a distance of 20 kilometers and to isolate Nusra Front as stipulated by Sochi, which allows for the redeployment of Syrian forces and the adaptation of military operations to the remaining open fronts in the Lattakia and Aleppo countryside.

The military operations will not wait to resume again and to define its directions, and it will not wait for any political understanding with the parties sponsoring the talks of Astana and the Sochi agreement, for the first time, the Syrian army is issuing a statement announcing the resumption of the military resolution against terrorism in conjunction with its fighter jets hitting the strongholds of Nusra Front in the countrysides of southern Idlib and northern Hama.

Stopping the war on Idlib in order to balance the talks in Astana, was the strategy that Ankara bet on for a full year to secure an advantage for its factions represented in Astana’s political course and to enhance its bargaining ability politically and militarily in a province that it owns the decision and loyalty of all armed factions, including Al-Qaeda affiliates, and that is what the Syrian army will not allow being repeated.

Contrary to all the optimism that followed the Nur-Sultan (Astana) meeting, the cease-fire collapsed quickly although for the first time the talks put the political and military tracks on two parallel lines, and the absence of a reference to oversee the armed factions and Ankara’s lack of commitment to control it, reflect the fact that these factions retain a margin of maneuver or flip against any understanding or agreement whenever Ankara wants.

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Well, the Neo Con Dem party, lately much more the ‘Lesser of two evils’, was just given a gift.

The sad, tragically sad reality is that this most terrible example of white (and Christian) murder via hate in Texas can and should propel the Dems into the White House… and controlling the Senate too.

What transpired in El Paso, with the proof of the shooter’s rage against Latinos (representing to him the ones who are here undocumented – labeled by him as ‘Invaders’). He wrote that he was a Trump supporter whose main focus was building a wall at our Southern border. Did anyone realize that he drove 10 hours or so from Dallas to get to that Wal-Mart in a predominately Latino area? Well, politically, and of course for his many sins, morally, The Donald is Trumped!

One could write a book on all the times since 2015 that Donald Trump has played the ‘subhuman, evil, rapist, infestation, shithole’ and a slew of other cards to stir up his Base. When I say ‘Base’ I do NOT mean all those who voted for him in 2016. Many whites who picked him over ‘The Wicked Witch’ did so for a few different reasons.

Some hated Hillary and her phony husband for years, and would never support a Clinton. Others only cared about which candidate would increase better their financial portfolio. Some were ‘closet racists’ and wanted to end ‘entitlements’, not knowing that corporate Amerika and the War Economy got more of them by the mega $ billions!

Finally, many Soccer Moms and even ‘not too far out’ religious Christians were most concerned about family values and … and this is key …. Security for their kids!! They watched the (mostly) Fox News shows that played the infamous ‘Fear Card’ to make them worry about their kid’s safety outside of the home. Of course, their main motivation in voting for Republicans, and of course Trump, was, in all candor, To keep the n*****s and sp*cs away from my neighborhood and my kids!  It never dawned on them that craziness sometimes causes, as Donnie Rumsfeld always termed it, Collateral Damage. Automatic weapons can hit more than their target folks.

So, the Dems should remember the anniversary next week of the Charlottesville melee. This occurred  the day after young, male and female whites marched at night carrying Nazi era torches (image left), singing a Nazi mantra of ‘Blood and Soil’ and saying over and over ‘Jews will not replace us’. Let me repeat that: ‘Jews will not replace us’. Trump, as we know, did not immediately condemn this as a Neo Nazi action by white supremacists. No, he waffled and waited a few days to finally state that there were bad people on both sides but ‘There were some fine people on both sides’. This is something that the Dems should still be onto. They cannot. Why? Because then the Deep State’s media spinsters would associate the Dems with Antifa, the anti fascist group that battled with the white supremacists. That would totally push away any such white Soccer Mom and Bible thumping white Christian woman. You see, in today’s Neo Con Amerika, the term ‘Anti Fascist’ is the same as ‘Commie’… period!

Thus, the best course of action for this gutless Dem party is to, for the next 15 months, shower the media with the transparency of a president’s rants against people of color and the results of this. The El Paso tragedy becomes fodder for a ‘righteous, not just politically motivated, campaign to get this guy out of office… along with his minions.

Methinks that, regardless of whatever affection or lack of Robert G Bowers had for Trump, he must have heard about the Charlottesville incidents. Could it be that he realized  when a president of the USA does not condemn white supremacy, and of course the blatant anti Semitism of those marchers, then maybe his, Bowers, anti Semitism, is not so crazy? He then ‘lost it’ and killed 11 Jewish worshippers at that Pittsburgh synagogue last October 27th. It will be those white Soccer Moms and Family Values Christians that may realize that this president is not securing their lives and those of their kids. Factor that with the closet filled with sex scandals which follows Trump for years, and maybe those ‘Swing voters’ may just swing the other way in 2020 and realize that he does NOT represent family values.

If that happens, folks, it will be time for we true ‘lefties’ to get back on the streets and town squares (and politicians offices) and rattle those 2 Party/One Party cages. Elections are only the beginning.

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from Palácio do Planalto, Flickr

Syrian security units and Syrian Arab Army units operating in Hama northern countryside, northwest of Syria, and Daraa countryside, south of Syria, had a busy day busting, discovering, and confiscating large stashes of weapons, munition, gears, armored vehicles, illicit drugs and 1.5 million Captagon pills, courtesy of the Nusra Front and its affiliated terrorist groups, gifted to them by the ever-generous US taxpayers and other western citizens, not to forget the Gulfies.

The terrorists killing tools are shown in the following compiled video report by SANA and Syrian Ikhabriya news channel, details below the video:

In Hama northwestern countryside, the Syrian Arab Army units cleaning the region from NATO-sponsored terrorists discovered a large number of armored vehicles and weapons left by the Nusra Front terrorists, Turkistan anti-Islamic Islamist Party, and Izzat Army terrorists defeated in the area by the SAA. Hundreds of the terrorists were terminated, the rest retreated to safe zones under the protection of NATO-member state Turkey.

In the south of the country, in the province of Daraa, the birthplace of the Syrian version of the PNAC’s plan to destroy the Arab World aka Arab Spring, Syrian security forces securing the region after defeating NATO-terrorists foiled an attempt to smuggle 1.5 million Captagon pills (potentiated amphetamine) and bags of other illicit drugs.

The drugs shipment this time was heading to Jordan, in a weird twist of the usual route, where for years drugs were coming from Jordan, Lebanon, and NATO-member state Turkey to the terrorists in Syria. Either the stage is being prepared for Jordan’s episode of the Arab Spring, or the terrorists wanted to smuggle the quantities back to their warehouses.

Also in the southern region, Syrian security units confiscated US-made TOW anti-tank rockets, a Phantom 4 drone, assorted rifles and machine guns, and more than 200,000 rounds of bullets.

US journalists are mourning the back-to-back mass shootings of American civilians and are too busy to report on the confiscation of these major weapons that have been used to slaughter Syrian civilians and destroy their homes, schools, and work places.

Not confiscated in El Paso Texas or Dayton Ohio.

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All images in this article are from SANA

Maximum pressure is a Trump regime euphemism for unlawful political, economic and financial collective punishment against a sovereign state, its leadership and population — for not bending to Washington’s will.

Binding international law Fourth Geneva’s Article 33 prohibits it, stating:

“No (one) may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.”

“Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”

“Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against (individuals) and their property are prohibited.”

Fourth Geneva and other international laws to which the US is a signatory are automatically constitutional law.

The US under Republicans and undemocratic Dems operate by their own rules exclusively, time and again breaching the UN Charter and other binding international laws, norms and standards — by waging war on humanity at home and abroad.

Venezuela and Iran are in the eye of the Trump regime’s “maximum pressure” storm, the world community collectively and UN doing nothing to challenge its lawless actions.

In May 2018, Pompeo issued the following Orwellian statement, saying:

“The United States stands with the brave people of Venezuela as they strive for a return to dignity and democracy (sic).”

Fact: The Bolivarian Republic is the hemisphere’s preeminent social democracy, the majority of its revenues directed toward providing vital services to all its people — polar opposite how the US and other Western states operate.

Fact: US policy toward Venezuela from the Clinton co-presidency to Trump has been and continues aiming to replace its democratic rule with US-controlled fascist tyranny.

Fact: That’s what Trump and hardliners infesting his regime are going all out to institute short of hot war — so far. While unlikely, by no means is it ruled out.

Fact: Key for the US is controlling Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the world’s largest, along with sending a message to the world community that nations unwilling to bow to its will face the force of its wrath.

Effective August 5 by executive order, Trump unlawfully ordered an embargo of Venezuela, prohibited by international law unless ordered by the UN Security Council. No nations may legally take this action on their own.

Under Trump’s executive order, nations, entities or individuals maintaining normal relations with Venezuela, their legal right, face (unlawful) US sanctions and other harshness.

On Tuesday, neocon hardliner Bolton said

“(w)e are sending a signal to third parties that want to do business with (Maduro). Proceed with extreme caution.”

Anyone continuing normal relations with Venezuela “risk(s) (their) business interests with the United States.”

He called support for Maduro by Russia, China and other nations “intolerable.” He mocked talks between government representatives and opposition elements in Barbados as “buying time (sic),” adding:

“We will not fall for these old tricks (sic),” again stressing “all options are on the table.”

In July, Trump’s envoy for regime change in Venezuela Elliott Abrams said he’s “absolutely” confident of Maduro’s ouster by yearend.

Asked how Caracas intends to respond to Trump’s new executive order, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said:

“I’m going to paraphrase Donald Trump…All options are on the table.”

A Foreign Ministry statement said

“Washington has issued another executive order that aims to formalize the criminal economic, financial and trade embargo already underway, which has caused severe harm to Venezuelan society in recent years,” adding:

“The ruling elite in the United States aim to grant legal status to the embargo of all assets and properties belonging to the Venezuelan state.”

Venezuela’s UN envoy Samuel Moncada asked Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council to intervene against the Trump regime, saying:

“This is an act of war by the United States. Venezuela is not a threat to anyone and the United States is fabricating this aggression just to take the oil.”

On issues of war and peace, the UN is a virtual appendage of US imperial policies. US Security Council veto power prevents the body from censuring its unlawful actions.

Separately, Moncada denounced “the racist-ever (US regime) in the history of this continent…trying to fabricate a war on Venezuela,” adding:

“The militarization of the relations with Venezuela is one of the dangers that we are trying to expose.”

The Trump regime is an enemy of “international peace,” Bolton (and its other hardliners “enem(ies) of dialogue.”

On Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called new Trump regime actions against Venezuela “economic terror,” adding:

“Such steps have no legal basis either in terms of international or domestic Venezuelan law. Obviously, the White House is driven by the ideology of intolerance and dictatorship, which are put above the interests of Venezuelans.”

She stressed that Moscow will continue to support legitimate President Maduro.

Russia’s upper house Federation Council International Affairs chairman Konstantin Kosachev denounced Trump executive order on Venezuela, calling it an act of “international banditry.”

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi earlier warned that more sanctions on Venezuela “will only bring the law of the jungle…It is up to the people of a country to decide its internal affairs” — free from foreign interference.

Beijing supports Venezuela, Wang earlier saying the relationship with Maduro will be maintained “no matter how the situation evolves,” adding at the time:

“China will continue to support the search for a political solution in Venezuela through dialogue with the government and the opposition, so as to keep the country stable and the people safe.”

Trump’s action upped the stakes. His regime instituted similar actions against Iran.

In a letter by its UN envoy Takht-e Ravanchi to Secretary General Guterres, he said the following:

“Infatuated with rogue, unreasonable conducts at the international level, this well signifies that the US regime despises diplomacy, which is one of the greatest achievements of humanity to preserve and uphold peace and security among nations,” adding:

“It reveals the deeply-rooted hypocrisy of the United States’ authorities in their different but paradoxical claims.”

“The Islamic Republic of Iran deems such illegal action a flagrant infringement of the fundamental principles of diplomatic law, in particular the principle of inviolability and immunity of high-ranking foreign officials, including immunity of incumbent ministers of foreign affairs, as a universally accepted norm and rule of customary international law.”

“The US’ illegal action is also in brazen violation of Article 105(2) of the United Nations Charter regarding the privileges and immunities of representative of Member States in exercising their functions in connection with the United Nations.”

“In this context, any restriction on discharging the duties of Ministers of Foreign Affairs is also in contravention of the Convention on the Privileges and immunities of the United Nations, the well-established customary principles enshrined in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and the Agreement regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations.”

“Likewise, it is in contradiction with many relevant consensual resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly, the latest of which is resolution 73/212 that, by underlining the obligation of the United States for the observance of the privileges and immunities of the missions accredited to the United Nations, ‘which cannot be subject to any restrictions arising from the bilateral relations of the host country, urges the host country to remove without delay any restrictions applied (and) ensure respect for such privileges and immunities.”

“Coercing nations into complying with the United States’ illegal demands threatens multilateralism, as the foundation of international relations, and sets a dangerous precedent, paving the way for those who aspire to rather divide, not unite, nations.”

Ravanchi called on the international community and world body to condemn unlawful US actions — maybe someday, not any time soon.

Today is the most perilous time in world history because of US rage for dominion over planet earth, its resources and populations by whatever it takes to achieve its imperial objectives.

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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 Ministry of Defence’s two flagship drone projects – the ‘Protector’ programme to introduce the Certifiable Predator B drone into service with the Royal Air Force, and the Army’s Watchkeeper surveillance drone – continue to face ‘significant issues’ according to a government spending watchdog.

The latest annual report (published in July 2019) of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA),  an agency of the Cabinet Office and the Treasury, has highlighted continuing problems, delays, and failures to meet delivery targets in each of the two programmes.  According to the IPA the Protector programme “will deliver two years late and over original predicted cost” and the Watchkeeper programme, originally intended to be fully operational by 2010, is not expected to achieve “embodiment of final functionality” until the 2020/21 financial year.

Protector has been flagged with an Amber / Red programme rating by the IPA, which warns that that “successful delivery of the project is in doubt, with major risks or issues apparent in a number of key areas”.  Although this is an improvement from the Red rating awarded last year, urgent action is still deemed necessary to address the problems or assess whether it is feasible to resolve them.

Source: Ministry of Defence via Drone Wars UK

The IPA study reveals that the Protector programme has been ‘rebaselined’, pushing the target date for Interim Operating Capability for the aircraft back back until November 2023, and for Full Operating Capability to October 2025.  Delivery of Protector will now be two years late.

Civil servants have been forced to undertake a detailed financial review for the Protector programme, including adjustment of costs and renegotiation of contracts with suppliers.  Although the review has now been concluded, the Review Note has yet to be approved and a new Mandate will be required for the project under the MoD’s programme management procedures.

During the 2018/19 financial year, there was a considerable underspend on the Protector programme, representing 18% of the budget for the year, which was caused by an increase in Joint Forces Command infrastructure costings and changes in foreign exchange rates.  Despite this, the overall programme is predicted to come in at above the originally budgeted cost.

The woeful story of the Watchkeeper programme and the challenges it has faced has been well documented, but it seems that the difficulties, alas, have yet to be fully resolved.  Watchkeeper has been awarded an ‘Amber’ project status rating by the IPA – the same as for the previous three years – meaning that “successful delivery appears feasible but significant issues already exist, requiring management attention”.  However, the fact that the IPA study, published in July 2019, records the latest approved end date for the project as 3rd July 2017 speaks for itself.

The IPA report states that Watchkeeper finally achieved its Full Operating Capacity on 30th November 2018.  However, a letter from Stephen Lovegrove, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, to the Chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, Meg Hillier, in January 2018 indicated that Watchkeeper would not be granted release to service (RTS) clearance, also known as type certification, which is needed to show that it is safe and reliable enough to be used in routine training and operations.

“Despite this, the capability could be deployed operationally without formal Type Certification should the operational imperative warrant the necessary Operational Emergency Clearance,” Lovegrove wrote, somewhat alarmingly suggesting that the Army could be permitted to fly unsafe drones.

To date, no announcement has been made to indicate that Watchkeeper has been granted formal RTS certification, and until this happens the aircraft will only be able to fly under severe restrictions.

The IPA notes that remaining project deliverables for Watchkeeper are “ongoing” and that final functionality for the aircraft is expected in the 2020/21 financial year – ten years late.  Only costs for Full Operating Capability are covered in the IPA assessment, which states that it does not include costs for “mid life obsolescence work planned for the next decade”, raising questions about MoD’s plans for the future of Watchkeeper.

The IPA report presents a somewhat chequered scorecard for the Protector and Watchkeeper programmes, suggesting that the Ministry of Defence is still in the learning phase for the procurement of its military drone programmes.  Whether the learning will accelerate fast enough to ensure the successful delivery of Protector and future drone programmes remains to be seen.

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It is clear that the United Kingdom could not have thought this through.  Was it a touch of the Suez jitters, the haunting syndrome of 1956 leaving a false impression that the Old Empire still had it?  To taunt a power already under the watchful and punitive eye of the United States was never a recipe for equanimity and calm repose. But taunt they did, using 30 Royal Marines to detain an Iranian tanker Grace I in Gibraltar last month.

The official justification was unconvincing: the need to enforce European Union sanctions against the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.  The vessel had been supposedly on route to Syria. Some in the diplomatic fraternity were perplexed: it had not previously been UK policy to diligently pursue the impounding of vessels bound for Syria with Iranian cargo.

Local Spanish authorities sensed the hand of US pressure, of which squeezing oil revenue is one; as well as they might, given the unbridled joy expressed by President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton.

“Excellent news: UK has detained the supertanker Grace I laden with Iranian oil bound for Syria in violation of US sanctions.” The US and its allies would “continue to prevent regimes in Tehran & Damascus from profiting off this illicit trade.”

Former Swedish prime minister and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations outlined some of the inconsistencies in the UK approach.

“The legality of the UK seizure of a tanker heading for Syria with oil from Iran intrigues me.  One refers to EU sanctions against Syria, but Iran is not a member of the EU.  And the EU as a principle doesn’t impose its sanctions on others.  That’s what the US does.”

Becoming the US running dog on enforcement was not going to sit well with Iran.  The Mullahs are spoiling for a fight.  On May 20, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, cast an eye to historical examples of Persian resistance.  President Donald Trump would fail as others had in their efforts to subdue his country.  Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan had tried, and not succeeded.  (The foreign minister’s sense of history is only as good as his sense of relativity: the Persian entity was, for a time, conquered, but the conquest was never indefinite.)

The seizures of vessels constitute a recipe for a tit-for-tat calamity.  We are already seeing the bitter fruit of the harvest arising out of the seizure of Grace I. Two oil tankers – the UK registered Stena Impero, and the Mesdar, another Liberian registered vessel though British operated – were subsequently seized in the Strait of Hormuz.  The Mesdar’s detention was threatening though teasingly brief; the Stena Impero, on the other hand, was to be made an example of.

Another oil tanker has since fallen into the hands of the Iranian forces, one accused of smuggling some 700,000 litres of fuel to Arab states.

“The seizure of the oil tanker,” noted IRGC commander Ramezan Zirahi, “was in coordination with Iran’s judiciary authorities and based on their order.”

In all of this, the UK has made a fateful decision: the US is there to be supported in a policy to protect merchant ships against Iranian efforts.  But Washington has assisted in creating the problem for which it now claims to have the solutions.  It is the supplied choice of a current empire to a former one, and the current empire is keen on misbehaving.  The forces of the US imperium have been doing their bit to ensnare Iran in a troubling vice, be it from al-Asad airbase in Iraq, to Qatar.  At sea, the US Navy holds forth with its carrier strike group.  Sanctions have been ramped; the Iran nuclear deal dumped upon and exited.  The Trump administration persists in causing a certain modicum of mayhem.

Putting up your hands for an unconditional commitment to a US-led effort cuts against the grain for a united European-controlled mission in the strait.  European powers also feel they must be firm, just not in the Trump way. The result has seen hesitation and concern about whether Germany and France might be added to any cobbled coalition.  Farther afield, Australia has also fielded a request from Washington described as “serious and complex”, one that would see oil shipments from Iranian incursions being protected.  Australian Defence Minister Linda Reynolds has not been exactly forthcoming in any way on what qualifies the request as complex and serious, though, like a long retained servant to the lord of a manor, makes it sound grander than it is.

Now, Britain finds itself stretched, the rubber man of international relations keen to maintain shape, if only in distorted fashion.  Iran was bold, even brazen, but its forces feel they have every right to be.  The current conventions are for ditching; the protocols of old are being thrown out like stagnant dishwater.  Now, in with the new, the asymmetrical teasing, be it through sponsored agents in Yemen, allies in Iraq, or a chance to seize, if only arbitrarily, various assets in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranian actions have done their bit to strike a degree of consternation.  Moez Hayat, penning a view in The National Interest, exemplifies that consternation.  Iran struck when the UK lacked awareness and cogency.

“Functionally, Britain was leaderless as Iranian forces boarded the vessel.  Prime Minister Theresa May was a lame duck, unable to act as the Conservative Party elected a successor.”

The problems go far deeper than that, telling of European disunity and continued US bellicosity.  On this occasion, a simpler assessment is that Britain was caught in the strait, a true US set-up with continuing consequences.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

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The new ceasefire agreement designed to cease hostilities in northwestern Hama and southern Idlib has just collapsed.

On August 3, the leader of Hay’at Tahir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra), Abu Mohammad al-Julani, announced that his group would not withdraw “a single fighter or a weapon” from the demilitarized zone and vowed to recapture the areas, which had been liberated by the Syrian Army. The withdrawal of radicals from this demilitarized zone had been the key demand behind the establishment of the ceasefire.

On the same day, Abu al-Walid al-Tunisi, a senior commander of al-Qaeda-affiliated Horas al-Din, was killed in an improvised-explosive device (IED) explosion in Taftanaz in eastern Idlib. Some pro-militant sources immediately blamed Damascus.

On August 4, the al-Qaeda-linked coalition of militant groups, “Wa Harid al-Muminin”, shelled the town of Slanfah in northern Lattakia with rockets inflicting civilian casualties. The terrorists also claimed that they had foiled a Russian special operation near Khirbat al-Naqus in northwestern Hama. The coalition said that 2 of its fighters were killed in the clashes.

On August 5, Syria’s General Command of the Army and Armed Forces announced that militant groups in the Idlib de-escalation zone refused to abide by the ceasefire and continued attacking civilians in nearby areas. In the released statement, the General Command said that Syrian forces will resume combat operations against militants regardless of  the names that they are using and described the Turkish presence in the country as a destabilizing one. Syrian air and artillery strikes were reported in northwestern Hama and southern Idlib.

Earlier reports appeared that the Syrian Army may resume full-scale ground operations against militants after the end of Eid al-Adha on August 15 if they continue to violate the ceasefire.

According to the Damascus government, since the start of intervention in Syria, Turkey has deployed inside the country 10,655 military personnel, 166 battle tanks, 278 armored vehicles, 18 rocket launchers, 173 mortars, 73 vehicles armed with heavy machine guns, 41 anti-tank missile launchers, and around 280 policemen.

On August 4, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey is planning to enter northeastern Syria, currently controlled by US-backed Kurdish armed groups, and has already shared these plans with the US and Russia. On August 5, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army shelled positions of Kurdish groups east of the towns of Marea and Herbel.

Meanwhile, the Afrin Liberation Forces, a Kurdish insurgency organization created to carry out attacks on Turkish targets in the area of Afrin announced that the recent AFL operations resulted in the killing of 19 members of Turkish-backed factions. Tensions in the area are growing.

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Fidel Castro was an unparalleled leader. Although some of his adversaries had hoped that the ideals and objectives of the Cuban Revolution would die with him, they have in fact persevered, thereby supporting Fidel’s view that ‘a combatant may die, but not his ideas’.

Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez became President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers on April 19, 2018. While it might be a little too early to make a definitive statement on his ruling style, many of his remarks pertaining to domestic and international policies offer some insight into his beliefs and the possible direction of Cuban policy under his rule. Based on the contents of some of his speeches, interviews and social media posts, it would be reasonable to infer that president Díaz-Canel’s  domestic and foreign policy will be an extension of those implemented by Fidel and Raúl Castro before him.

On many occasions, Díaz-Canel has indicated that Venezuela can always count on Cuba’s support, while strongly condemning the recent interventions and sanctions aimed at reversing its Bolivarian Revolution. On April 29, 2019, he issued a tweet in response to the Trump Administration’s accusations that Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro is a ‘Cuban puppet’ and that ‘the Venezuelan military are risking their lives, and Venezuela’s future, for a man controlled by the Cuban military’, stating that:

With nearly 800 bases and hundreds of thousands of troops around the world, US is accusing Cuba of having military personnel in Venezuela. A mockery of the world. An insult to two sovereign nations. Bolton lies again and his purpose is criminal. Hands off Venezuela.

Then, on April 30, 2019, president Díaz-Canel tweeted that Cubans:

strongly reject threat by Trump of full and complete embargo against Cuba. There are no Cuban military operations or troops in Venezuela. We call upon the international community to stop dangerous and aggressive escalation and to preserve Peace. No more lies.

On May 8, 2019, president Díaz-Canel referenced the Monroe Doctrine when addressing the hostile policies of the Trump administration with the following tweet:

The statements by members of the US Government against Cuba and Venezuela have the same purpose and are part of the perverse, arrogant and Monroeist plan of the empire of the North. The dignified peoples will defend independence and sovereignty.

Subsequently, on May 23, 2019, president Díaz-Canel further demonstrated his country’s unwavering support for Venezuela by stating:

Fierce aggression against sister Venezuela continues. Cuba denounces and condemns approval by US Senate Foreign Relations Cmte. of a bill seeking more economic and commercial sanctions against the Bolivarian Republic.

Most recently, at the national commemoration of the 66^th anniversary of the assaults on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Garrisons, which took place on July 26, 2019, president Díaz-Canel stated that:

Venezuela under siege, robbed, literally assaulted with the approval or complicit silence of other powerful nations, and what is worse, with the shameful collaboration of Latin American governments, is today the most dramatic scene of the cruelty of the decadent empire’s policies that combine the work of the world’s policeman with that of the supreme court of the global village.[i]

In that same speech, Díaz-Canel also praised the ‘intelligent, heroic, exemplary resistance of Venezuela’s civic-military alliance, its government, and people to the non-conventional war, with which new methods to subjugate us are being rehearsed every day.’[ii] He also reaffirmed Cuba’s solidarity with Venezuela when he addressed the 73^rdGeneral Assembly of the United Nations on September 26, 2018, in addition to many other nations in South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East:

The current U.S. administration has proclaimed the relevance of the Monroe Doctrine and, in a new deployment of its imperial policy inthe region, is attacking Venezuela with special cruelty.

It is in this threatening context that we wish to reiterate our absolute support to the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution, the civic-military union of the Venezuelan people and its legitimate and democratic government, led by the constitutional president Nicolas Maduros Moros. We reject the intervention attempts and sanctions against Venezuela, aimed at suffocating her economically and hurting Venezuelan families.

We likewise reject the attempts at destabilizing the Nicaraguan government, a country of peace that has made remarkable social, economic and public safety progress in favor of its people.

We denounce the politically-motivated imprisonment of former president Luiz Incicio Lula da Silva, and the decision to prevent the people from voting and electing Brazil’s most popular leader to the Presidency.

We stand in solidarity with the Caribbean nations who demand legitimate reparation for the horrible effects of slavery as well as the fair, special and differential treatment that they deserve.

We reaffirm our historic commitment with the self-determination and independence of our brother people of Puerto Rico.

We support Argentina’s legitimate sovereignty claim over the Malvinas Islands, South Sandwich and South Georgia Islands.

We reaffirm our steadfast solidarity with the Saharan people, and support the search for a final solution to the question of Western Sahara, which will allow the exercise of self-determination and to live in peace in their territory.

We support the search for a peaceful and negotiated solution to the situation imposed in Syria, without foreign interference and with full respect for its sovereignty and territorial integrity. We reject any direct or indirect intervention, carried out without the legitimate authorities of the country[iii].

This speech clearly articulated Cuba’s opposition to foreign interference, pressure, retaliation, and militarisation, as well as the imposition of unilateral and unfair sanctions designed to destabilize national governments and impose the American political agenda in other countries. Instead, he calls for peaceful coexistence based on a mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, and advocates for negotiated resolutions to restore peace and security in the event of a conflict.

President Díaz-Canel consistently condemns the American trade embargo[iv] against Cuba, denouncing ‘the most lasting blockade in mankind history’[v] as inhumane and the most significant obstacle to the economic development of his country. He emphasized the point that the embargo represents the key mechanism by which Washington has been attempting overthrow the island’s socialist government for almost six decades. World opinion is clearly on the side of Díaz-Canel, as evidenced by the fact that a UN General Assembly resolution[vi] condemning the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba and calling for it to be lifted has passed with overwhelming support in each of the past 27 years. On May 14, 2019, he tweeted:

In face of US sanctions against Cuba, we have nearly unanimous support of the nations that every year demand the end of the blockade at the UN General Assembly and with their vote make evident the isolation of such cruel policy.

Washington’s hostility towards Cuba has been ramped up during the Trump Presidency, which began enforcing Titles III and IV of the Helms-Burton Act as of May 2, 2019. The Helms-Burton Act was enacted in 1996 to expand the U.S. commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, while Title III, which had previously not been enforced, allows for the ‘protection of property rights of United States nationals.’ More specifically, Title III permits Americans, ‘including naturalized Cuban-Americans, to sue any foreign company conducting business that involves properties that were owned by American citizens before being confiscated by the Cuban socialist government after the 1959 Revolution.’[vii] On April 26, 2019, president Díaz-Canel tweeted that:

The Helms-Burton Act is not a law. Its articles run counter to international law. It’s the blockade, condemned by 189 countries. It’s interference, extraterritoriality and a colonial plan. Cuba is a socialist State under rule of law.

On May 3, 2019, president Díaz-Canel elaborated further, explaining that:

The purpose of the Helms-Burton Act is economic suffocation and preventing the economic development of Cuba, attacking the sovereignty of third countries and destroying the Cuban Revolution. The implementation of the Helms-Burton Act will not put a stop on the march of Cubans.

President Díaz-Canel firmly believes that the Helms-Burton Act ‘goes against peace, solidarity, peaceful coexistence and friendship. It’s a law to neo-colonize and enslave.’ To that effect, on May 25, 2019, he tweeted that:

Our foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez and EU High Representative Federica Mogherini ratified their rejection to the US activation of the Helms-Burton Act, and the need to suspend the arbitrary law.

Additionally, on June 4,2019, the US government reinstated travel and trade restrictions that were previously lifted by the Obama[viii] administration, including visits for educational trips and cultural exchanges, on the basis that these policies only benefited Cuba’s ‘despotic and oppressive’ regime. That same day, president Díaz-Canel issued a defiant response via Twitter:

Cuba will not be frightened or distracted with new threats and restrictions. Work, creativity, efforts and resistance is our response. They haven’t been able to suffocate us. They won’t be able to stop us.[ix]

The following day, commented further on the new travel restrictions:

The US Government keeps at its perverse efforts to crush Cuba. New measures intensify the blockade and violate International Law. We strongly condemn this policy. They won’t be able to stop us: we’ll survive and we shall overcome.

Then, on June 20, 2019, he tweeted that:

The unjust, genocidal and cruel blockade of US being tightened with the Helms-Burton Act, may affect financial flows and resources but it will never block the principles, convictions, patriotism, independence and sovereignty of the Cuban people.

On July 13, 2019, president Díaz-Canel issued a tweet expressing his feelings about the current US National Security Advisor, who is suspected of having played a significant role in the decision to activate Titles III and IV of the Helms-Burton Act:

John Bolton is International Insecurity Advisor for interference and threats to those who don’t yield to the empire.

John Bolton began ‘his career as a cog in the machine of Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, helping his political action committees evade legal restrictions and federal fines. Helms, the most powerful reactionary in the Senate, sponsored Bolton’s rise to Reagan’s justice department.’[x] The Helms–Burton Act was named after Jesse Helms, one of its original sponsors, who sought to strengthen embargo against Cuba in 1995 by fortifying the 1992 Torricelli Act with new legislation. Bolton’s ideological views were shaped by Helms’ anti-Cuban policies, and it appears that he remains committed to achieving the objectives of the Helms-Burton Act.

In response the hostile actions and destructive policies of the Trump administration towards Cuba, president Díaz-Canel stated that Cubans ‘vigorously reject this new provocation, meddling, threatening and bullying, in violation of international law.’ Like Fidel and RaúlCastro before him, president Díaz-Canel maintainsthat Cuba is open to establishing normal relations with the United States, provided that Washington respects the island’s sovereignty as an independent nation on equal footing. President Díaz-Canelhas often reaffirmed that the principles, policies and goals of the Cuban revolution are non-negotiable in any resolution that might be reached with Washington. Such positions expressed by Cuba’s new president should dispel any notions that the island could possibly revert to its pre-revolution status as a US neo-colony under his leadership. President Díaz-Canel is very clear that there will be no regime change in Cuba, because the Cuban Revolution remains strong and Cubans are faithful to her principles. If he is correct, then Cuba will never voluntarily return to the social and economic slavery and exploitation that characterized it before the success of the revolution in 1959.

Based on his statements and policies[xi] since assuming the presidency of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel does not appear to represent a departure from the ideals of the Cuban Revolution. Instead, it seems that, under his presidency, Cuba will continue on its path of standing firm against ‘the most powerful empire on earth that sought to destroy’ its Revolution, while instituting reforms to improve its economic and social development, thereby allowing Cuba to remain a sovereign, independent, socialist, prosperous and sustainable state, free from ‘all foreign tutelage’. Like the Castros before him, Díaz-Canel wants Cuba to remain a symbol of global anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist movements by demonstrating that the government exists for the revolution, and the revolution exists for the people. However, by not demonstrating any inclination to dismantle the Cuban Communist regime, Díaz-Canel has made himself a candidate for regime change by the neo-imperialistTrump administration, which would prefer to have a corrupt and brutal dictator that they could influence, perhaps in the mold of Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973).

On the 60^th anniversary commemorating the independence of Cuba, which took place on January 1, 2019, Raul Castro indicated that the Cuban revolution was on the right track thanks to the efforts of president Díaz-Canel. In particular, he stated that:

The revolution has not aged, it remains young.

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Global Research contributor Dr. Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Ottawa.

Notes

[i] http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2019-07-29/the-world-will-see-what-we-are-capable-of-doing-and-the-world-will-join-us-in-our-resistance?fbclid=IwAR2-HC-TEjAkvUxSzBL41vXicE0oLKvKiYtfrhr67ar0iSSkIxB99l2vTNw

[ii] http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2019-07-29/the-world-will-see-what-we-are-capable-of-doing-and-the-world-will-join-us-in-our-resistance?fbclid=IwAR2-HC-TEjAkvUxSzBL41vXicE0oLKvKiYtfrhr67ar0iSSkIxB99l2vTNw

[iii] https://www.globalresearch.ca/cubas-president-miguel-diaz-canel-at-the-un-general-assembly-global-capitalism-triggers-war-and-poverty/5656218

[iv] Washington imposed a commercial, economic and financial embargo on Cuba in 1962, which ‘blocked virtually all trade between the two countries and banned U.S. citizens from travelling to Cuba. The U.S. administration regarded the trade embargo as the best mechanism to achieve its objectives’ (http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cuban-revolution-the-u-s-imposed-economic-blockade-and-us-cuba-relations/5433797).

[v] ‘It is well-known that the U.S. embargo has had tremendous consequences on the development of the Cuban economy. According to Havana, the direct economic damages to Cuba attributable to the embargo would exceed $1.1 trillion11 since 1962, “taking into account the depreciation of dollar against gold”, with specific damages including the loss of earnings, monetary and financial restrictions, and social damages with regards to health, education, culture, the availability of food, etc. Additionally, “the embargo penalizes the activities of the bank and finance, insurance, petrol, chemical products, construction, infrastructures and transports, shipyard, agriculture and fishing, electronics and computing.”’ (2015, https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cuban-revolution-the-u-s-imposed-economic-blockade-and-us-cuba-relations/5433797).

[vi] On November 1, 2018, 189 UN Member States voted in favour of this resolution, while only the US and Israel opposed it.

[vii] https://www.globalresearch.ca/enacting-title-iii-helms-burton-act-us-revisits-cold-war-era/5671648

[viii] ‘Under the Obama agreement, diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba were officially normalized on December 17, 2014. Additionally, a number of trade and travel agreements were signed between the two countries, including contracts for business deals between Havana and 60 American companies. These measures contributed a 60% increase in American tourism to the island between 2014 and 2016.’ (https://www.globalresearch.ca/enacting-title-iii-helms-burton-act-us-revisits-cold-war-era/5671648)

[ix] https://twitter.com/DiazCanelB/status/1136031607041789952

[x] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/10/usa.comment

[xi] President Díaz-Canel’s first major reform was to update the 1976 Constitution last February in a manner that benefits the Cuban people.

Within 13 hours, two mass shooting took place—in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio—killing 31 innocent people and injuring twice as many. We normally hear about these horrifying incidents, express sorrow and bewilderment, talk about gun control, and move on. Politicians, including Trump, dispatch their old and tired expressions of condolences and offer prayers to console the bereaved families of the victims. But then we go about our daily routine, knowing that the next mass shooting looms as if it were a natural phenomenon like a thunderstorm, in the face of which we can do nothing. And tragically, the vicious cycle continues.

This time, however, something far more sinister and profoundly troubling is at play. Race, guns, and immigration were so artfully combined by a racist president who is sworn not to pass meaningful gun control laws to please his base, promotes racism to divide the country, and calls Hispanic immigrants “invaders” to make them targets. During the past few months, Trump spent over a million dollars on Facebook ads with the word “invasion” in big letters to spread fear among his constituents and create an atmosphere ripe for violence against people of color.

In the first 216 days of this year, 251 mass shootings took place—killing over 520 people and injuring at least 2,000. Is it just a coincidence that of the ten worst mass shootings in American history, five took place since 2016? Can anyone suggest that Trump has nothing to do with it? Leave it of course to Trump to blame the press, mental illness, and even video games of being behind the frequency of mass shootings.

Darker and more ominous days await us. Mass shootings cannot be addressed in isolation but in the context of the general environment in which we are living. The country is politically divided, our values are being stomped on, racism is consuming our social fabric, white supremacists parade their bigotry with pride, and the president contributes to the epidemic of gun violence by spreading hate to promote his political agenda.

When a president makes racism and bigotry the order of the day, and Republican leaders condone it by virtue of their silence, it poisons our social and political organs and defies the very premise on which this country was founded.

The mass shooting in El Paso was explicitly motivated by hate, claiming there is a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”. It was a hate crime targeting Hispanics, whom Trump sees as alien, rapists and criminals, taking away jobs, sapping public resources, and above all changing the color of the country. This is the message that Trump is conveying to his white supremacist followers, that America is becoming ‘browner’ and something must be done to prevent that from happening, all while pointing the finger at Hispanic immigrants as the culprits.

True, mass shootings have occurred before and may continue for years after Trump leaves office. The degree to which mass shootings slow or escalate, however, depends not only on the passage of strict gun control laws but on the action or inaction from Trump and the Republican party, because they must bear the full responsibility for the sorry state of affairs in which we find ourselves. I do not hold my breath waiting for our racist-in-chief to do anything about it.

In fact, the precise opposite will happen. At a time of looming elections, Trump will continue to drum up his racism and dehumanizing of immigrants, and use toxic language against anybody who looks Hispanic. He believes that fomenting social division is a brilliant strategy to nurture his white supremacist base which listens to him and follows his preaching. The shooter in El Paso echoed precisely Trump’s sentiment. And while Trump is talking about some gun control legislation, neither he nor his submissive Republican Senate will consider or debate any such laws that may alienate any segment of his followers.

While the Democratic candidates for president continue to bicker about healthcare, taxes, and climate change, however important these issues maybe, they have not only ignored the need for gun control laws, but more important failed to address where the country is headed under Trump’s watch. While they labeled Trump as a racist, they have not focused on the implications of his racist utterances and how devastatingly that impacts America’s social cohesiveness and tolerance, which is the moral glue that keeps the country together.

The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to have totally abdicated their moral responsibility and resolved to enable Trump and use him to promote their socio-political and economic agenda. The fact that America’s international standing is at an all-time low and domestic social disintegration is alarmingly unfolding does not seem to bother the Republicans, who put their personal and party interest above the nation’s.

Just imagine what might happen if Trump loses the next election? Having polarized the country politically to the degree that he has, his poisonous rhetoric against people of color, concoction of a Hispanic invasion, alignment with white supremacists, and catering to his base has created an extraordinarily ominous environment that invites extremism and violence.

Although at this juncture enacting gun control laws remains critically important, they are not enough to remedy the damage that Trump has done to America. Under his watch, America has lost its soul. He has sown hatred, nurtured divisiveness, and pitted one segment of the American people against the other. Antisemitism has reached a new high, people of color are targets of disdain and discrimination, corruption and obstruction of justice is at the top, and alas, mass shootings are further escalating.

Trump will be damned by history for tearing the country apart, and as long as he is in power, we should expect that America’s values and its moral standing will continue to degrade potentially to a point of no return.

Trump is dangerous, and the American public must unseat him to save America’s soul before it’s too late.

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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. [email protected] Web: www.alonben-meir.com

Today, we are in the grip of a globalised system of capitalism which drives narcissism, domination, ego, anthropocentrism, speciesism and plunder. A system that is using up oil, water and other resources much faster than they can ever be regenerated. We have poisoned the rivers and oceans, destroyed natural habitats, driven wildlife species to (the edge of) extinction and have altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere with seemingly devastating effects.  

With its never-ending quest for profit, capitalism thrives on the exploitation of peoples and the environment. It strides the world hand in glove with militarism, with the outcome being endless destabilisations, conflicts and wars over finite resources and the capture of new markets.

This is sold to the masses as part of an ongoing quest to achieve human well-being, measured in terms of endless GDP growth, itself based on an ideology that associates such growth with corporate profit, boosted by stock buy-backs, financial speculation, massive arms deals, colonialism masquerading as philanthropy, manipulated and rigged markets, corrupt and secretive trade deals, outsourced jobs and a resource-grabbing militarism.

That such a parasitical system could ever bring about a ‘happy’ human condition for the majority is unfathomable.

Over the last 70 years, material living standards in the West have improved, but how that wealth was obtained and how it is then distributed is what really matters. Take the case of the UK.

While much of manufacturing has been outsourced to cheap labour economies, welfare, unions and livelihoods have been attacked. Massive levels of tax evasion/avoidance persist and neoliberal policies have resulted in privatisation, deregulation and the spiralling of national and personal debt. Moreover, the cost of living has increased as public assets have been sold off to profiteering cartels and taxpayers’ money has been turned into corporate welfare for a corrupt banking cartel.

Meanwhile, the richest 1,000 families in the UK saw their net worth more than double shortly after the 2008 financial crisis, the worst recession since the Great Depression, while the rest of the population is confronted with ‘austerity’, poverty, cutbacks, reliance on food banks and job insecurity.

But let’s not forget where much of the UK’s wealth came from in the first place: some $45 trillion was sucked from India alone according to renowned economist Utsa Patnaik.  Britain developed by underdeveloping India. And now the West and its (modern-day East India) corporations are in the process of ‘developing’ India by again helping themselves to the country’s public wealth and natural assets (outlined further on).

Under this system, it is clear whose happiness and well-being matters most and whose does not matter at all. According to researcher and analyst Andrew Gavin Marshall, it is the major international banking houses which control the global central banking system:

“From there, these dynastic banking families created an international network of think tanks, which socialised the ruling elites of each nation and the international community as a whole, into a cohesive transnational elite class. The foundations they established helped shape civil society both nationally and internationally, playing a major part in the funding – and thus coordinating and co-opting – of major social-political movements.”

Additional insight is set out by David Rothkopf in his 2008 book ‘Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making‘:

“The superclass constitutes approximately 0.0001 percent of the world’s population. They are the Davos-attending, Gulfstream/private jet-flying, money-incrusted, megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world, people at the absolute peak of the global power pyramid … They are from the highest levels of finance capital, transnational corporations, the government, the military… and other shadow elites.” 

These are the people setting the agendas at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, G-7, G-20, NATO, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. They decide which wars are to be fought and why and formulate global economic policy.

Tryst with destiny

In 1947, on the steps of the Red Fort in Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru spoke optimistically about India’s tryst with destiny. Free from the shackles of British colonialism, for many the future seemed bright.

But some 72 years on, we now see a headlong rush to urbanise (under World Bank directives – India is the biggest debtor nation in the history of that institution) and India’s cities are increasingly defined by their traffic-jammed flyovers cutting through fume choked neighbourhoods that are denied access to drinking water and a decent infrastructure. Privatisation and crony capitalism are the order of the day.

Away from the cities, the influence of transnational agricapital and state-corporate grabs for land are leading to violent upheaval, conflict and ecological destruction. The links between the Monsanto-Syngenta-Walmart-backed Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture and the associated US sanctioning and backing of the opening up of India’s nuclear sector to foreign interests show who really benefits from this.

Under the guise of ‘globalisation’, Western powers are on an unrelenting drive to plunder what they regard as ‘untapped markets’ in other areas of the globe. Foreign agricapital has been moving in on Indian food and agriculture for some time. But it first needs to eradicate the peasantry and displace the current model of production before bringing India’s food and agriculture sector under its control.

Other sectors have not been immune to this bogus notion of development. Millions of people have been displaced to facilitate the needs of resource extraction industries, Special Economic Zones, nuclear plants and other large-scale projects. And the full military backing of the state has been on hand to forcibly evict people.

To help open the nation to foreign capital, proponents of economic neoliberalism are fond of stating that ‘regulatory blockages’ must be removed. If particular ‘blockages’ stemming from legitimate protest, rights to land and dissent cannot be dealt with by peaceful means, other methods are used. And when increasing mass surveillance or widespread ideological attempts to discredit and smear does not secure compliance or dilute the power of protest, brute force is on hand.

The country’s spurt of high GDP growth was partly fuelled on the back of cheap food and the subsequent impoverishment of farmers. The gap between their income and the rest of the population has widened enormously to the point where rural India consumes less calories per head of population than it did 40 years ago. Meanwhile, unlike farmers, corporations receive massive handouts and interest-free loans but have failed to spur job creation.

Millions of small-scale and marginal farmers are suffering economic distress as the sector is deliberately made financially non-viable for them. Veteran rural reporter P Sainath says what this has resulted in is not so much an agrarian crisis but a crisis of civilisation proportions, given that the bulk of the population still lives in the countryside and relies on agriculture or related activities for an income.

Independent cultivators are being bankrupted, land is to be amalgamated to facilitate large-scale industrial cultivation and remaining farmers will be absorbed into corporate supply chains and squeezed as they work on contracts, the terms of which will be dictated by large agribusiness and chain retailers.

US agribusiness corporations are spearheading this process, the very companies that fuel and thrive on a five-year US taxpayer-funded farm bill subsidy of around $500 billion. Their industrial model in the US is based on the overproduction of certain commodities often sold at prices below the cost of production and dumped on the rest of the world, thereby undermining farmers’ livelihoods and agriculture in other countries, not least India.

It is a model that can only survive thanks to taxpayer handouts and only function by externalising its massive health, environmental and social costs. And it’s a model that only leads to the destruction of rural communities and jobs, degraded soil, less diverse and nutrient-deficient diets, polluted water, water shortages and spiralling rates of ill health.

We hear certain politicians celebrate the fact India has jumped so many places in the ‘ease of doing business’ table. This term along with ‘foreign direct investment’, making India ‘business friendly’ and ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ embody little more than the tenets of US neoliberal fundamentalism wrapped in benign-sounding words.

Of Course, as Gavin Andrew Marshall notes, US foundations have played a major part in shaping policies and co-opting civil society and major social-political movements across the world, including in India. As Chester Bowles, former US ambassador to India, says:

“Someday someone must give the American people a full report of the Ford Foundation in India. The several million dollars in total Ford expenditures in the country do not tell 1/10 of the story.”

Taking inflation into account, that figure would now be much greater. Maybe people residing in India should be given a full report of Ford’s activities too as well as the overall extent of US ‘intervention’ in the country. 

A couple of years ago, economist Norbert Haring (in his piece A well-kept open secret: Washington is behind India’s brutal experiment of abolishing most cash) outlined the influence of USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in furthering the incorporation of India into the US’s financial (and intelligence) architecture. But this is the type of thing just the tip of a very large iceberg that’s been going on for many decades.

After the recent general election, India seems destined to continue to capitulate to a programme that suits the needs of foreign capital for another five years. However, the focus is often on what India should or should not do. It’s not as if alternatives to current policies do not exist, but as Jason Hickel wrote in The Guardian back in 2017, it really is time that the richer countries led the way by ‘de-developing’ and reorienting their societies to become less consumption based. A laudable aim given the overexploitation of the planets resources, the foreign policy implications (conflict and war) and the path to environmental suicide we are on. However, we must first push back against those forces which resist this.

On 15 August, India commemorates independence from British rule. Many individuals and groups are involved in an ongoing struggle in India to achieve genuine independence from exploitation and human and environmental degradation. It’s a struggle for freedom and a tryst with destiny that’s being fought throughout the world by many, from farmers and indigenous peoples to city dwellers, against the same system and the same forces of brutality and deceit.  

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

India hitherto thought that the US needed it more than the reverse and that’s why took its nascent military-strategic alliance with it for granted by trying to play “hardball” in pressing for a better trade deal, yet it’s now finding out the hard way that it isn’t America’s exclusive ally after Washington decided to follow in Moscow’s footsteps and “balance” South Asian affairs by providing $125 million worth of F-16s to its rivals in the global pivot state of Pakistan.

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The Indian Ministry of External Affairs expressed “grave concern” to the US last week over the decision taken by their country’s new military-strategic ally to provide $125 million worth of F-16s to the global pivot state of Pakistan, something that totally caught New Delhi’s decision makers off guard after they hitherto assumed that Washington needed them more than the reverse and therefore wouldn’t arm their chief rival ever again. India has been under the Bollywood-crafted illusion that it’s the indispensable component of the US’ so-called “Indo-Pacific” strategy for “containing” China, especially after the summer 2017 standoff in the Donglang/Doklam Plateau, so it took its nascent alliance with it for granted by recently trying to play “hardball” in pressing for a better trade deal. That was absolutely unacceptable to the US’ billionaire businessman president who demands full support on his country’s terms when it comes to “containing” China in the military and economic domains, which when coupled with India’s refusal to reconsider its S-400 deal with Russia, provoked the US to play some “hardball” of its own.

The US stood in shock for the past several years as Russia advanced its 21st-century grand strategy of becoming the supreme “balancing” force in Afro-Eurasia by masterfully exploiting America’s missteps in the Mideast and beyond, but Moscow’s “Return to South Asia” earlier this year inspired Washington to recalibrate its regional strategy if it wanted any chance of succeeding with its “Indo-Pacific” plans. The reemergence of Russia as a credible “balancing” alternative to the US and China in this part of the world satisfies a crucial strategic demand that was sorely lacking up until that point and negatively impacts on the prospects of America’s zero-sum plans succeeding there. As such, it was only a matter of time before the US pragmatically decided to engage in its own “balancing” act — largely in response to India’s recalcitrance in accepting the comprehensive partnership deal on offer — by entering into a fast-moving rapprochement with Pakistan, whose irreplaceable peacemaking role in Afghanistan is much more immediately important for Trump than anything that India could provide.

The writing was on the wall for the past few months already ever since India was dealt a bloody nose by Pakistan earlier this year, which prompted the US to debunk New Delhi’s conspiracy theory that Islamabad used American-provided F-16s against it during their famous dogfight in late February. The issue is super sensitive for India because it can’t publicly accept that a JF-17 fighter jet that Pakistan jointly produced with China was responsible for the downing of its Russian-provided MiG-21, nor did it want the US “rebalancing” its regional strategy by reverting back to its historically strong strategic partnership with Pakistan in the aftermath of that embarrassing event, which is why the US’ decision to sell more F-16s to Pakistan is a stinging slap in India’s face. So too, for that matter, is the ambitious commitment that Trump made during his summit with Pakistani Prime Minister Khan last month to increase trade between their two countries by a factor of twenty, which would make the US a de-facto stakeholder in CPEC and explain its interest in mediating the Kashmir Conflict.

Everything is going from bad to worse for India and faster than it could have ever thought possible, all due to the fact that its over-hyped policy of so-called “multi-alignment” has totally failed to bring any tangible dividends for it over the years. India always intended to pivot towards the US at the expense of its “fellow” Russian and Chinese BRICS partners but thought that it could hide behind this “publicly plausible” euphemism the entire time, yet Modi made a serious blunder earlier this year by wanting to play “hardball” with Trump and therefore ruined years of hard diplomatic work in an instant. India’s relations with those three leading Great Powers will therefore never be the same after the self-inflicted damage that he’s done to his country’s reputation through his botched “balancing” act. All of this was entirely avoidable too had India not been blinded by the Bollywood narrative that it’s supposedly a “superpower” despite close to one million children dying there a year from lack of water, sanitation, proper nutrition, and basic health services.

India’s finding out the hard way that it’s not the US’ exclusive ally, nor is it Russia or China’s exclusive one either for that matter. In fact, by trying to be “friends with everyone” through its disastrous policy of “multi-alignment”, it ended up earning each of their distrust by openly “balancing” against whichever one of them was the targeted third party in its various bilateral arrangements, which is no easy feat to pull off when one would ordinarily think that India would naturally be the object of fierce competition between them because of its geostrategic potential. Instead, India defied conventional International Relations theory by behaving as though it’s the most important country in the world and expecting that it could do whatever it wants without consequence because it assumed that everyone else needs it more than the reverse. That fatal flaw in “thinking” is responsible for the seemingly never-ending series of Indian debacles as of late, and should be a lesson to all interested scholars of International Relations about the wrong way to carry out a “balancing” act.

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

Featured image is from UK India Business Council

The FBI has published a document that concludes that “conspiracy theories” can motivate believers to commit crimes. 

Considering the growing acceptance of pre-emptive arrest, that is, arresting someone before they can commit a crime that they are suspected of planning to commit, challenging official explanations, such as those offered for the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King or the official explanation for 9/11, can now result in monitoring by authorities with a view to finding a reason for pre-emptive arrest.  Presidents George W. Bush and Obama created the police state precedents of suspension of habeas corpus and assassination of citizens on suspicion alone without due process.  If Americans can be preemptively detained indefinitely and preemptively assassinated,  Americans can expect to be preemptively imprisoned for crimes that they did not commit.  

As Lawrence Stratton and I explained in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, the historic achievement of forging law into a shield of the people is being reversed in our time as law is being reforged into a weapon in the hands of the government. 

The FBI document says that conspiracy theories “are usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”  Note the use of “official” and “prevailing.”  Official explanations are explanations provided by governments.  Prevailing explanations are the explanations that the media repeats.  Examples of official and prevailing explanations are: Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Iranian nukes, Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the official explanation by the US government for the destruction of Libya.  If a person doubts official explanations such as these, that person is a “conspiracy theorist.”  

Official and prevailing explanations do not have to be consistent with facts.  It is enough that they are official and prevailing.  Whether or not they are true is irrelevant.  Therefore, a person who stands up for the truth can be labeled a conspiracy theorist, monitored, and perhaps pre-emptively arrested. 

Consider 9/11.  No forensic investigation of 9/11 was ever officially conducted.  Instead the destruction of the buildings was blamed on Osama bin Laden, and scenarios and simulations were created to support the allegation, not to find the truth.  Architects, engineers, scientists, pilots, and first responders on site cannot reconcile the official prevailing explanation with the facts.  The scientific and testimonial evidence that they have produced is dismissed as “conspiracy theory.”  It is those experts who stand on the evidence who are defined as conspiracy theorists, not those who created the story of Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 conspiracy.

Consider Russiagate.  Here we have an alleged conspiracy between Trump and Russia that was the official prevailing explanation.  Yet, to believe in the Russiagate conspiracy did not make one a conspiracy theorist as this conspiracy was the official prevailing explanation.  But to doubt the Russiagate conspiracy did make one a conspiracy theorist.

What the FBI report does, intentionally or unintentionally, is to define a conspiracist as a person who doubts official explanations.  In other words, it is a way of preventing any accountability of government.  Whatever the government says, no matter how obvious a lie, will have to be accepted as fact or we will be put on a list to be monitored for preemptive arrest.

In effect, the FBI’s document reduces the First Amendment, that is, free speech, to the right to repeat official and prevailing explanations.  Any other speech is a conspiratorial belief that can lead to the commission of a crime.

Every American should be greatly concerned that the government in Washington does not see this FBI document as an open invitation to tyranny, repudiate it, and demand its recall.

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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.

The war on Syria is a war against children, and men, and women.
It is a war against Christians, and Muslims, and civilization itself.
It is a war for terrorism and sectarianism and extremist ideologies.
It is a war for dictatorship, permanent war, and enduring poverty.
It is a war that seeks to destroy Syria as a functioning state, to balkanize, to loot, to plunder.

It is a war that empties Western treasuries, and impoverishes the aggressors, the countries that commit Supreme International War Crimes as policy.The West and its agencies that are perpetrating this holocaust are degrading themselves, and humanity. Silence and compliance from Western populations makes monsters of us all.

Rare glimpses of what is really happening on the ground in Syria are lightning flashes that tear apart the dark nights of Western war propaganda. Reverend Ashdown has been to Syria numerous times during the war, and he is imminently qualified to offer this assessment of the retrograde barbarity that we, in the West, support, beneath the lies of “humanitarianism”:

“Syria is home to the most diverse Christian presence in the Middle East. All five ‘families’ of the Christian Church, and the Antiochene Patriarchates of the Syriac Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox and Greek Melkite Churches are situated in the country, whose State Constitution guarantees freedom of religious expression and worship. These Christian communities have coexisted for centuries alongside diverse expressions of Islam to create a society noted for its cultural and religious plurality. Ever since the beginning of the current conflict, Christians, along with Muslims who do not follow the radicalised ideology of the jihadists whom western and gulf nations support, have been specifically targeted, with Christian villages being besieged, ethnically cleansed, and constantly attacked by the multiple ‘rebel’ groups. Nationally, it is estimated that the Christian population has been more than halved during the conflict, with all the remaining Christian population living in the safety of government-controlled areas where they live peacefully alongside other members of Syrian society, and where Christian and Muslim leaders stand side by side promoting tolerance, reconciliation and the provision of welfare for all affected by the conflict.”

Vanessa Beeley, too, has studied the war from inside Syria. In the interview below we witness the violent struggle of Syrian Christians who are defending themselves, and Christianity, from the vicious assaults of Western-supported terrorists.

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

Featured image is from Vanessa Beeley

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In what would be Turkey’s third cross-border military operation in Syria since the war began, in as many years, Erdogan announced on Sunday that he would be launching a military operation east of the Euphrates river, to push back Kurdish militias on Turkey’s southern border.

Although Erdogan did not set a timeframe, preparations have been underway for well over a month.  Increased deployment of Turkish military forces along with weaponry, and tanks, etc. have been reported by various sources, on the Turkish side of the southern border with Syria.

Preparations are also underway by Kurdish militias, to counter any possible Turkish aggression. Both sides have said that if the other attacks they will be ready to respond.

The same announcement, regarding a military operation east of the Euphrates, was made by Erdogan over nine months ago, but was then called off due to talks with US President Donald Trump who agreed to set up a safe zone on Turkey’s border to appease Erdogan. However, this never came into fruition, and a buffer zone was not created because of a difference of opinion on the depth. Erdogan now feels the US is stalling, and his latest threats seem to indicate that his patience is running thin.

Some believe that the chances of Erdogan carrying out his mission this time, are higher because he has notified Russia and the US, in advance of his plan.

However, if Turkey carries out this third operation, the outcome will most likely not be a swift defeat and take over by Turkish armed forces and their terrorist ally the Free Syrian Army (FSA) like we have seen in the past. The stakes are also much higher due to the presence of US troops, intelligence officers and US personnel stationed in northeastern Syria.

On Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that

“the U.S. intends to prevent any unilateral invasion by Turkey into northern Syria, saying any such move by the Turks would be unacceptable.”

Esper seemed hopeful that negotiations and talks would lead to some sort of agreement but did not disclose what that could be.

Some speculate that specific airstrikes targeting Kurdish militia installations are more likely to occur, than a unilateral land invasion. The demographics are such that all of the various ethnicities whether they be Syrian Muslims, Assyrians, Armenians, Kurds, Arameans, etc. would most likely bond together against any Turkish aggression.

The first cross-border Turkish operation Euphrates Shield in 2017, focused on targeting a “terror corridor” made up of Daesh and Kurdish fighters further east from Afrin along its southern frontier with Syria. After completing that operation, Turkey set up local systems of governance in the swath of land captured, stretching from the area around Azaz — located to the northeast of Afrin — to the Euphrates River and protected by Turkish forces present there.

The second, Operation Olive Branch, which began January 2018 and was completed in two months with Afrin being captured by the Turkish Armed Forces and their ally the Free Syrian Army. They quickly established control over Afrin and all of the villages that had remained under the control of Kurdish YPG (the People’s Protection Unit) north and northwest of the city. Many YPG fighters and their families fled to government-held parts of Aleppo.

In primarily the second operation, YPG fighters felt abandoned and betrayed by the US who stated that they would not get involved and seemingly allowed Turkey to carry out its operations without much objection. There was a noticeable silence from Russian and Syrian forces as well.

In order to understand Turkey’s contentions with the Kurdish militia’s it’s important to clarify the major players. The YPG is a Kurdish-majority militia that is the military wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Kurdish democratic confederalist political party in northeastern Syria. The YPG is the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is an organization based in Turkey and Iraq that has been engaged in armed conflicts with the Turkish state since 1984.

Turkey considers all these Kurdish organizations to be terrorists and has urged the United States for years to sever ties with them and has demanded a buffer zone. Both the United States and Turkey view the PKK as a terrorist organization.

The United States justified its military and economic support for the YPG by claiming they were the most reliable fighters in Syria against Daesh. Kurdish factions have been used throughout history to create chaos in the Middle East.

To disassociate the YPG from the PKK, General Raymond Thomas, the commander of the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), revealed — at a Security Forum on July 21, 2017 at the Aspen Institute — that he personally discussed the importance of changing its name with the YPG. As he states in this video (watch below), he was impressed that they included the word “democratic” in their rebranding: their new name, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), would help them enter into political negotiations, where they had been excluded previously owing to their association with the PKK.

Recently tensions have been high between the United States and Turkey over the latter’s purchase of the S-400 missile defense system from Russia which the former disapproved of and then subsequently removed the latter from the F-35 fighter jet program. The United States has also threatened to impose sanctions if Turkey activates the S-400 system which Erdogan has stated they have every intention of doing by April 2020.

On Monday, an American military delegation met with Turkish officials in Ankara to continue negotiations and discuss an alternative Turkish military operation which wouldn’t threaten U.S. troops stationed in the area. The U.S. is urging Turkey not to carry out its proclaimed mission.

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This article was originally published on The Rabbit Hole

After a month of intensifying criticism from far-right President Jair Bolsonaro concerning data revealing a spike in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon over recent months, the Brazilian President has fired the head of the government agency in charge of tracking forest loss, raising concerns over the future of an institution recognized nationally and internationally for its cutting-edge satellite-imaging and monitoring program.

On August 2, Bolsonaro fired the head of the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE), Ricardo Magnus Osório Galvão. The announcement was made by Galvão himself after a meeting with the Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication, Marcos Pontes.

Image on the right: Physicist Ricardo Magnus Osório Galvão, former head of the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE). Image courtesy of Giro720 CC BY-SA 4.0.

“I will be fired… The way I reacted to the president[‘s accusations of data inaccuracy and data manipulation] has created an embarrassment that is untenable,” Galvão told journalists in Brasília.

In July, INPE issued an alert identifying deforestation and degradation totaling some 2,072 square kilometers (800 square miles) in June for Legal Amazonia — a federal designation that includes all or parts of nine Brazilian states — as detected by DETER, the institute’s real-time detection system. INPE noted that DETER alerts should not be used as exacting measures of deforestation rates compared year-to-year; rather the figures aim to support surveillance and enforcement.

However, a 2018-2019 month-to-month comparison does show a drastic uptick in deforestation. According to DETER, Brazil’s Amazonian deforestation in June 2019 was 88 percent greater than for the same month in 2018, while deforestation in the first half of July was 68 percent above that for the entire month of July 2018.

INPE is not scheduled to post its detailed 2019 annual deforestation analysis (conducted between August and July by its PRODES satellite monitoring system) until later this year. PRODES determines annual deforestation using NASA Landsat satellite imaging. Data gathered from August 2017 to July 2018 detected an increase in deforestation of 7,536 square kilometers (2,910 square miles) in Legal Amazonia, which represented an increase of 8.5 percent compared to 2017, measured from August 2016 to July 2017, when an area of 6,947 square kilometers (2,682 square miles) was cleared.

Experts recently contacted by Mongabay endorsed INPE’s cutting-edge satellite-imaging used to track forest loss and dismissed the Bolsonaro administration’s accusations of data manipulation. The government has offered no significant evidenceto back up its charges that INPE data is inaccurate.

Beyond challenging INPE data, Bolsonaro has also criticized the way INPE works, claiming that he should have been notified before monthly deforestation statistics were released. The day before Galvão’s firing, Bolsonaro accused him of working in conspiracy with “an NGO.” The administration has repeatedly accused international nonprofits working in the Brazilian Amazon of having undue influence over Brazil’s national environmental policies — including NGO participation in the implementation of the Amazon Fund, long seen as a fairly successful initiative for curbing Amazon deforestation.

“If all this devastation you accuse us of doing, and that has already been done in the past, [were true] the Amazon would have been extinct,” said Bolsonaro in a press conference on August 1 when he dismissed INPE’s figures. “I am convinced that INPE’s data is [a] liar.… In our feeling, this is not consistent with reality. It even looks like he’s [Galvão’s] on duty of an NGO,” he added.

Worrying future

Galvão’s removal triggered an outcry from scientists, NGOs, federal prosecutors and INPE officials.

“Bolsonaro knows that his government is primarily responsible for the current scenario of destruction of the Amazon. The dismissal of INPE’s head is just an act of revenge against those who show the truth,” said Márcio Astrini, public policy coordinator at Greenpeace Brasil, in a statement.

“The new government has been implementing in the country an anti-environmental project, which scrap[s] the State’s ability to combat deforestation and favor[s] those who commit environmental crime. And now, when it comes to facing the consequences of his decisions, he [the president] tries to hide the truth shamefully and blame others,” Astrini added.

Bolsonaro’s cabinet did not comment on Galvão’s removal. Instead, it forwarded a statement from the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication that confirmed the dismissal, thanked Galvão for his work and stated that the choice of a new head will be made based on “the necessary merit [required for] the position.”

Two INPE officials who talked to Mongabay under condition of anonymity expressed “serious concerns” not only about who will next head the institution, but also about the future of INPE’s decades-long monitoring system.

“I’m very concerned about the future. I worry greatly about ensuring that the systems will keep working as they are, with transparency… I hope the government won’t stop our work,” the INPE official told Mongabay.

“Galvão’s dismissal was shocking to us. It’s scary to have a president who discredits a scientific institution that has its work recognized worldwide, simply due to his political interests… It is a complete disrespect to people who are dedicated to science, education, culture. We are being scolded. The scientists are scared,” a second INPE official said.

According to this official, the government’s attacks against INPE seem a strategy to discredit the institution in order to pave the way to set up a private system to monitor the country’s deforestation. In March, the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported that Environment Minister Ricardo Salles was preparing an alternative private system to that employed by INPE, at a cost of at least $8.5 million, using satellite imagery to be provided by Planet, a U.S.-based company. According to the newspaper, INPE currently pays some $150,000 annually for NASA Landsat satellite imagery that it uses to assess PRODES annual deforestation rates, while DETER alerts use images from CBERS, Sino-Brazilian satellites, which are free.

Galvão’s removal and his replacement have yet to be published in the country’s official gazette, Diário Oficial da União. In an interview with Radio Eldorado on August 5, Pontes said that INPE’s new head will be announced by August 6. According to the minister, an Air Force officer and a PhD researcher with deforestation expertise top the list.

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Featured image: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in Rondônia state. This 2016 satellite image shows the smoke from fires which are typically set to clear rainforest in preparation for grazing and farming. Image courtesy of Planet Labs, Inc CC BY-SA 4.0.

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“On a Scale of 1-10, It’s an 11” – Wall Street Reacts to China’s Retaliation

By Zero Hedge, August 07, 2019

One day after China finally snapped, and demonstratively refused to intervene and keep the CNH above 7.00 vs the dollar, escalating the trade war into a currency war, stocks are tumbling and Wall Street analysts – all of whom had been bullish until now – are scrambling to adjust their narrative.

Trade War: China Suspends Purchases of US Agricultural Products

By Telesur, August 07, 2019

China’s Commerce Ministry announced Tuesday that the Asian country will suspend the purchase of U.S. agricultural goods in response to the recent announcement that the President Donald Trump administration will increase tariffs to Chinese exports.

Trump War on China by Other Means. Economic Warfare. Things May Get Ugly

By Stephen Lendman, August 06, 2019

China is rising, heading toward becoming the world’s leading economy — already No. 1 ahead of the US on a purchase price basis, what a basket of goods costs in both countries.

The Global Currency War Has Begun. China’s Yuan Breaks the 7 to $1 Band. Why is The Dollar Rising?

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, August 05, 2019

Over this weekend, China’s Yuan currency broke out of its band and devalued to more than 7 to $1. At the same time China announced it would not purchase more US agricultural goods. The Trump-US Neocon trade strategy has just imploded.

The Dangerous New US Consensus on China and the Future of US-China Relations

By Prof. Mel Gurtov and Prof. Mark Selden, August 05, 2019

The trade war and technological competition with China are symptomatic of a much larger issue: a dangerous gridlock in US-China relations that may become permanent, with dire consequences not just for the two countries’ economies but also for the global economy and quite possibly East Asia’s and international security.

Trump’s Trade War Measures Hit the Financial Markets

By Nick Beams, August 05, 2019

Financial markets around the world fell on Friday as a result of the shock wave from US President Trump’s surprise announcement Thursday that he intended to impose a 10 percent tariff from September 1 on a further $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.

Financial Capitalism Gone Amok: Ultra-low Interest Rates and Price Bubbles

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, July 31, 2019

Don’t look now, but there is a new monetary craze going on in some parts of the world, and it is the new so-called ‘unconventional’ monetary policy adopted by some central banks to push interest rates to ultra-low levels, and even into negative territory.

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August 6th and 9th mark 74 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where only one nuclear bomb dropped on each city caused the deaths of up to 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 people in Nagasaki. Today, with the US decision to walk away from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) negotiated with the Soviet Union, we are once again staring into the abyss of one of the most perilous nuclear challenges since the height of the Cold War.

With its careful verification and inspections, the INF Treaty eliminated a whole class of missiles that threatened peace and stability in Europe. Now the US is leaving the treaty on the grounds that Moscow is developing and deploying a missile with a range prohibited by the treaty. Russia denies the charges and accuses the US of violating the treaty. The US rejected repeated Russian requests to work out the differences in order to preserve the Treaty.

The US withdrawal should be seen in the context of the historical provocations visited upon the Soviet Union and now Russia by the United States and the nations under the US nuclear “umbrella” in NATO and the Pacific. The US has been driving the nuclear arms race with Russia from the dawn of the nuclear age:

• In 1946 Truman rejected Stalin’s offer to turn the bomb over to the newly formed UN under international supervision, after which the Russians made their own bomb.
• Reagan rejected Gorbachev’s offer to give up Star Wars as a condition for both countries to eliminate all their nuclear weapons when the wall came down and Gorbachev released all of Eastern Europe from Soviet occupation, miraculously, without a shot.
• The US pushed NATO right up to Russia’s borders, despite promises when the wall fell that NATO would not expand it one inch eastward of a unified Germany.
• Clinton bombed Kosovo, bypassing Russia’s veto in the UN Security Council and violating the UN treaty we signed never to commit a war of aggression against another nation unless under imminent threat of attack.
• Clinton refused Putin’s offer to each cut our massive nuclear arsenals to 1000 bombs each and call all the others to the table to negotiate for their elimination, provided we stopped developing missile sites in Romania.
• Bush walked out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and put the new missile base in Romania with another to open shortly under Trump in Poland, right in Russia’s backyard.
• Bush and Obama blocked any discussion in 2008 and 2014 on Russian and Chinese proposals for a space weapons ban in the consensus-bound Committee for Disarmament in Geneva.
• Obama’s rejected Putin’s offer to negotiate a treaty to ban cyber war.
• Trump now walked out of the INF Treaty.
• From Clinton through Trump, the US never ratified the 1992 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as Russia has, and has performed more than 20 underground sub-critical tests on the Western Shoshone’s sanctified land at the Nevada test site. Since plutonium is blown up with chemicals that don’t cause a chain reaction, the US claims these tests don’t violate the treaty.
• Obama, and now Trump, pledged over one trillion dollars for the next 30 years for two new nuclear bomb factories in Oak Ridge and Kansas City, as well as new submarines, missiles, airplanes, and warheads!

What has Russia had to say about these US affronts to international security and negotiated treaties? Putin at his State of the Nation address in March 2018 said:

I will speak about the newest systems of Russian strategic weapons that we are creating in response to the unilateral withdrawal of the United States of America from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and the practical deployment of their missile defence systems both in the US and beyond their national borders.

I would like to make a short journey into the recent past. Back in 2000, the US announced its withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. Russia was categorically against this. We saw the Soviet-US ABM Treaty signed in 1972 as the cornerstone of the international security system. Under this treaty, the parties had the right to deploy ballistic missile defence systems only in one of its regions. Russia deployed these systems around Moscow, and the US around its Grand Forks land-based ICBM base. Together with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the ABM treaty not only created an atmosphere of trust but also prevented either party from recklessly using nuclear weapons, which would have endangered humankind, because the limited number of ballistic missile defence systems made the potential aggressor vulnerable to a response strike.

We did our best to dissuade the Americans from withdrawing from the treaty.

All in vain. The US pulled out of the treaty in 2002. Even after that we tried to develop constructive dialogue with the Americans. We proposed working together in this area to ease concerns and maintain the atmosphere of trust. At one point, I thought that a compromise was possible, but this was not to be. All our proposals, absolutely all of them, were rejected. And then we said that we would have to improve our modern strike systems to protect our security.

Despite promises made in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that the five nuclear weapons states – US, UK, Russia, France, China – would eliminate their nuclear weapons while all the other nations of the world promised not to get them (except for India, Pakistan, and Israel, which also acquired nuclear weapons), there are still nearly 14,000 nuclear bombs on the planet. All but 1,000 of them are in the US and Russia, while the seven other countries, including North Korea, have about 1000 bombs between them. If the US and Russia can’t settle their differences and honor their promise in the NPT to eliminate their nuclear weapons, the whole world will continue to live under what President Kennedy described as a nuclear Sword of Damocles, threatened with unimaginable catastrophic humanitarian suffering and destruction.

To prevent a nuclear catastrophe, in 2016, 122 nations adopted a new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). It calls for a ban on nuclear weapons just as the world had banned chemical and biological weapons. The ban treaty provides a pathway for nuclear weapons states to join and dismantle their arsenals under strict and effective verification. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which received the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts, is working for the treaty to enter into force by enrolling 50 nations to ratify the treaty. As of today, 70 nations have signed the treaty and 24 have ratified it, although none of them are nuclear weapons states or the US alliance states under the nuclear umbrella.

With this new opportunity to finally ban the bomb and end the nuclear terror, let us tell the truth about what happened between the US and Russia that brought us to this perilous moment and put the responsibility where it belongs to open up a path for true peace and reconciliation so that never again will anyone on our planet ever be threatened with the terrible consequences of nuclear war.

Here are some actions you can take to ban the bomb:

• Support the ICAN Cities Appeal to take a stand in favor of the ban treaty
• Ask your member of Congress to sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge
• Ask the US Presidential Candidates to pledge support for the Ban Treaty and cut Pentagon spending
• Support the Don’t Bank on the Bomb Campaign for nuclear divestment
• Support the Code Pink Divest From the War Machine Campaign
• Distribute Warheads To Windmills, How to Pay for the Green New Deal, a new study addressing the need to prevent the two greatest dangers facing our planet: nuclear annihilation and climate destruction.

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Alice Slater, author and nuclear disarmament advocate, is a member of the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War and UN NGO Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

When will Americans start to wake up and realize what is happening?  At the end of last week, President Trump announced that the U.S. would be imposing a 10 percent tariff on 300 billion dollars worth of Chinese imports, and that marked a dramatic escalation in our trade war with China.  This move by Trump came as a total shock to Chinese officials, and global financial markets were thrown into a state of turmoil.  Since that announcement, we have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, because we knew that the Chinese would retaliate.  But honestly, very few of the experts expected something like this.  On Monday, China announced that it is going to completely stop buying U.S. agricultural products…

China confirmed reports that it was pulling out of U.S. agriculture as a weapon in the ongoing trade war.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said Chinese companies have stopped purchasing U.S. agricultural products in response to President Trump’s new 10% tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese goods.

This is essentially a trade war equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

If the Chinese would have slapped U.S. agricultural products with tariffs, that would have been a proportional response.  But to quit buying them entirely is an unprecedented escalation in a trade war that is really starting to spiral out of control.

And it is also clearly a political attack on President Trump.  The Chinese know that Trump is highly popular in rural areas, and this ban on U.S. agricultural products is going to severely hurt farmers in rural areas all across the United States.

U.S. voters tend to be more influenced by their bank accounts than by anything else, and so this is a smart strategic move by the Chinese if they would like to see a Democrat get elected in 2020.

In 2017, the Chinese bought 19.5 billion dollars worth of U.S. agricultural products, and that number dropped to just 9.1 billion dollars in 2018.

Now that number is going to zero, and according to Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall this latest move by China is going to be “a body blow to thousands of farmers and ranchers who are already struggling to get by.”

Please say a prayer for our farmers, because they really need it.

In addition to ending purchases of U.S. agricultural products, the Chinese also allowed the value of the yuan to decline dramatically on Monday.  This really rattled global financial markets, and shortly thereafter U.S. Treasury officials formally designated China as a “currency manipulator”.  The following comes directly from the official website of the Treasury Department…

The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 requires the Secretary of the Treasury to analyze the exchange rate policies of other countries. Under Section 3004 of the Act, the Secretary must “consider whether countries manipulate the rate of exchange between their currency and the United States dollar for purposes of preventing effective balance of payments adjustments or gaining unfair competitive advantage in international trade.” Secretary Mnuchin, under the auspices of President Trump, has today determined that China is a Currency Manipulator.

As a result of this determination, Secretary Mnuchin will engage with the International Monetary Fund to eliminate the unfair competitive advantage created by China’s latest actions.

This is the first time since the 1990s that the Treasury Department has used this designation on any of our trading partners, and it is the kind of move that would not be made unless all hopes for a trade deal were completely gone.

Of course the Chinese wouldn’t have made the moves that they made either if they were still holding out hope for a negotiated solution.  According to one market analyst that was quoted by CNBC, the Chinese are “signalling that they have lost confidence that they can reach an agreement with Trump.”

So what this means is that in the short-term things are going to get bad for the global economy.

Really bad.

In the longer term, the structure of the entire global economic system could change dramatically, and this will especially be true if Donald Trump emerges triumphant in 2020.  According to economist Neil Shearing, we could literally be looking at “the end of the world as we know it”…

Among the implications for more deterioration in the global picture that Shearing cites are the “disintegration of the rules-based system” that has governed international commerce since the end of the World War II, and a potential “Balkanization” of the world economy as the U.S. and China develop their own standards, tech platforms and payment systems.

“It’s too soon to say exactly how events will pan out, but this casts the escalation in the US-China trade war over the past year in an altogether more ominous light. We may be witnessing the end of the world as we know it,” he wrote.

It is difficult to imagine a world in which there is no trade between the United States and China, and many would argue that we would be far better off today if we had never gone down that road in the first place.

But now that our two economies are so deeply integrated, trying to decouple is going to be an exceedingly painful process.

If you are familiar with my work, than you already know that I am not a fan of the Chinese government at all.  Something needed to be done about China, because they have been brazenly taking advantage of us and flouting the rules for decades.

Having said that, it is imperative that the American people understand that a messy breakup with China is going to cause an extraordinary amount of pain for us, for them and for the whole world.

It looks like this trade war could be the spark that plunges the global economy into utter chaos, and right now very few Americans seem to understand the true scope of the economic nightmare that appears to be headed our way.

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Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.

Featured image is from Foreign Policy

One day after China finally snapped, and demonstratively refused to intervene and keep the CNH above 7.00 vs the dollar, escalating the trade war into a currency war, stocks are tumbling and Wall Street analysts – all of whom had been bullish until now – are scrambling to adjust their narrative.

With the S&P dropping more than 2%, bringing its slide from the all time highs just two weeks ago to more than 5%, semiconductors which are most directly exposed to Chinese trade, and banks stocks, which are sensitive to interest rates, are among the hardest hit sectors.

As widely expected, President Trump himself joined the fray and on Monday morning tweeted about China and the Fed saying:

“China dropped the price of their currency to an almost a historic low. It’s called ‘currency manipulation.’ Are you listening Federal Reserve? This is a major violation which will greatly weaken China over time!”

In doing so, he once again confirmed that he is using trade war as leverage to get Powell to cut rates further, as BofA showed in the following simple schematic:

But while Trump’s reaction was expected, what was more interesting is how sellside analysts – until recently predicting that the S&P will enjoy smooth sailing well into the 3,000, are adjusting their trading recos now that the worst case scenario in the trade war with China has materialized. So, courtesy of Bloomberg, here are some samples of the latest sellside commentary:

Cowen, Chris Krueger

Krueger called China’s retaliation “massive,” adding that “on a scale of 1-10, it’s an 11.” He cited the Chinese government calling on state buyers to halt U.S. agricultural purchases, while there’s “increased anecdotal evidence that the Chinese government is tightening its overview of foreign firms.”

“While there were measures that could have been chosen with larger direct effects on supply chains, the announcements from Beijing represent a direct shot at the White House and seem designed for maximum political impact,” Krueger said. “ We expect a quick (and possibly intemperate) response from the White House, and consequently expect a more rapid escalation of trade tensions.”

“There now will be increased expectations that the Fed will cut again in September to offset the drag caused by this escalation in the trade war,” he added. “Such moves will only be a partial, lagged offset to the recessionary headwinds a cycle of retaliation would cause.”

BMO, Ian Lyngen

“The wait is over for those wondering how Beijing would respond to Trump’s recent tariff announcement. The result: the yuan was allowed to depreciate well beyond 7.0.”

Instructing state-owned Chinese firms to halt U.S. crop purchases triggered “the obligatory flight-to-quality,” which pushed 10-year yields to 1.74%, with two-year yields keeping pace. That was “an impressive move that suggests August will not experience the traditional summer doldrums. Who needs vacation anyway?”

“The most significant unknown at this moment,” Lyngen added, “is how much further the yuan will be allowed to fall given that it’s already the weakest since 2008.”

Morgan Stanley, Betsy Graseck

Bank investors’ eyes were “glued to the yield curve last week,” with Trump’s tariff tweet on Thursday, Graseck wrote in a note. They’re now asking about Morgan Stanley’s net interest margin (NIM), outlook.

Graseck didn’t change her NIM assumptions yet. “We bake one additional cut of 25 basis points in 2019 in-line with our economist, and bake in the 10-year at 1.75% by mid 2020,” she wrote. She’ll update NIM and earnings per share estimates “if it looks like these trade tariffs are going through as September approaches.”

Morgan Stanley, Michael Zezas

“The dynamics of U.S.-China negotiation and macro conditions mean the next round of tariffs will likely be enacted, and investors are likely to behave as if further escalation will follow in 2019 until markets price in impacts,” Zezas wrote. “This supports our core view of weaker growth and skews the Fed dovish.”

Zezas sees incentives for the U.S. to escalate quickly. If the administration “understands the Fed’s trade policy reaction function, then it may also perceive that a more rapid escalation could deliver one or more of three beneficial points ahead of the 2020 election: 1) A quicker, potentially more aggressive Fed stimulus response that could help the economy heading into the election; 2) More time to re-frame the potential economic downside; and 3) A major concession by China (not our base case, but it is, of course, a possibility).”

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China’s Commerce Ministry announced Tuesday that the Asian country will suspend the purchase of U.S. agricultural goods in response to the recent announcement that the President Donald Trump administration will increase tariffs to Chinese exports.

“It has been agreed that the State Council’s Customs Tariff Commission does not rule out import levies on newly acquired U.S. agricultural products after August 3, and related Chinese companies have suspended the purchase of U.S.agricultural products,” the Commerce Ministry said.

On July 1, Trump said that China had not fulfilled a promise to buy large volumes of U.S. farm products and vowed to impose a 10 percent fee on US$300 billion of Chinese imports starting September 1.

The Commerce Ministry considered that such fare increase is “a serious violation” of what was agreed between Trump and President Xi Jinping at the June G20 summit in Osaka.

The Chinese announcement is a response to a trade war unleashed by President Trump in 2018, which intensified when he announced new tariff measures last week, allegedly because trade negotiations had not progressed.

On Monday, as a result of unilateral actions by U.S., China let its currency weaken past the key 7-yuan-per-dollar level for the first time since April 2008.

A weaker yuan means that Chinese dollar-denominated products are cheaper, which would help China to curb the negative effect of the U.S. tariffs on its competitiveness, although the price to be paid is an increase in the cost of the goods imported by China from the rest of the world.

Farm incomes DOWN 50% before #China said they would buy ZERO #agriculture from the #US. #Tax payers can’t afford your $16 BILLION in #Government handouts to farmers x 2. Boy, you are a closet #SOCIALIST! China does NOT pay your #protectionist #tariffs you moron. pic.twitter.com/Cwzp5p7v3f

— BxKnd (@bixkondor) August 6, 2019

In response to the yuan’s devaluation, the U.S. Treasury Department accused China of being a “currency manipulator” and threatened to engage with the International Monetary Fund(IMF) to end the “unfair competitive advantages” of the Asian country.

The trade war fueled by President Trump has already had adverse effects on the U.S. agriculture. China purchased about 14.3 million tonnes of last season’s soybean crop, the smallest purchase in the least in 11 years. In 2017,  however, China bought 32.9 million tonnes of U.S. soybeans.

Neverthless, Trump’s first wave of measures did not halt the flow of exports to China. Between July 19 and Aug. 2, for instance, China bought 130,000 tonnes of soybeans, 120,000 tonnes of sorghum, 60,000 tonnes of wheat, 40,000 tonnes of pork and products, and 25,000 tonnes of cotton from the U.S.

In order to compensate for the trade-war related short-term losses, the U.S. farmers can start applying for the next round of trade aids this month; however, uncertainty is destroying their business expectations.

“There’s just so much volatility right now because nobody knows the rules of the game and nobody knows how to look at things going forward,” Derek Sawyer, a corn, soybean, wheat and cattle farmer from McPherson, Kansas, said.

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Featured image is from USDA/Flickr CC BY 2.0

People from a variety of advocacy communities who tackle issues ranging from the assassinations of the 1960’s to vaccine safety are rightly upset by a recent NBC News.com op-ed authored by Lynn Parramore, a progressive journalist known for her insightful pieces for Alternet and other outlets. In the article, Parramore argues that those who espouse “conspiracy theories” might be displaying “narcissistic personality traits,” suffer from “low self-esteem,” and share a “negative view of humanity.” Various studies are cited in support of this claim.

As a filmmaker acquainted both with the author of the op-ed as well as a number of people from the communities under fire, I hope it’s possible to dispel some of the misconceptions on all sides and even find some common ground.

At the outset, it should be acknowledged that Parramore’s piece is an uncharacteristically harsh ad hominem smear, taking its place in a long line of similar attacks on people who have dared question—sometimes at great personal cost—a whole range of suspect official narratives over many years.

But Parramore and many journalists like her are neither assets of an intelligence service nor unthinking tools of big media; she is fully conscious of the ways in which power and wealth can be used collusively (one might even say conspiratorially) to deceive and abuse the public.

So what accounts for a piece like this one?  Why does it rankle a progressive like Parramore so intensely when she hears someone mention that the U.S. military-industrial complex had the most to gain from the September 11th attacks, or that Big Pharma may be applying the same racketeering techniques to the ever-expanding vaccination schedule she discovered at play in the opioid crisis?

Those of us who have labored long to publicize state crimes against democracy have our own list of the psychological, political, and economic factors that may be preventing smart people from seeing evidence that we regard as overwhelming. The primary difficulty may lie in just how smart and thoroughly educated many of these writers are: no one who has spent a lifetime looking into the way the world works wants to think they might have missed something big.

And as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the more educated we are, the more we are a target for state-corporate propaganda. Even journalists outside the mainstream may internalize establishment values and prejudices.

Which brings us to Parramore’s embrace of the term “conspiracy theory.”   Once a neutral and little-used phrase, “conspiracy theory” was infamously weaponized in 1967 by a memo from the CIA to its station chiefs worldwide. Troubled by growing mass disbelief in the “lone nut” theory of President Kennedy’s assassination, and concerned that “[c]onspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization,” the agency directed its officers to “discuss the publicity problem with friendly and elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” and to “employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

As Kevin Ryan writes, and various analyses have shown,

“In the 45 years before the CIA memo came out, the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times only 50 times, or about once per year. In the 45 years after the CIA memo, the phrase appeared 2,630 times, or about once per week.”

While it turns out that Parramore knows something about this hugely successful propaganda drive, she chose in her NBC piece to deploy the phrase as the government has come to define it, i.e., as “something that requires no consideration because it is obviously not true.”  This embeds a fallacy in her argument which only spreads as she goes on.

Likewise, the authors of the studies she cites, who attempt to connect belief in “conspiracy theories” to “narcissistic personality traits,” are not immune to efforts to manipulate the wider culture. Studies are only as good as the assumptions from which they proceed; in this case the assumption was provided by an interested Federal agency.

And what of their suggested diagnosis? The DSM-5’s criteria for narcissism include “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity…a need for admiration and lack of empathy.”  My experience in talking to writers and advocates who—to mention a few of the subjects Parramore cites—seek justice in the cases of the political murders of the Sixties, have profound concerns about vaccine safety, or reject the official conspiracy theory of 9/11, does not align with that characterization.

On the contrary, most of the people I know who hold these varied (and not always shared) views are deeply empathic, courageously humble, and resigned to a life on the margins of official discourse, even as they doggedly seek to publicize what they have learned. A number of them have arrived at their views through painful, direct experience, like the loss of a friend or the illness of a child, but far from having a “negative view of humanity,” as Parramore writes, most hold a deep and abiding faith in the power of regular people to see injustice and peacefully oppose it.

In that regard, they share a great deal in common with writers like Parramore: ultimately, we all want what’s best for our children, and none of us want a world ruled by unaccountable political-economic interests.

If we want to achieve that world, then we should work together to promote speech that is free from personal attacks on all sides.  Even more importantly, we should all be troubled by efforts to shut down content and discussions labeled “false and misleading”on major social media platforms. Who will decide what is false and what is true?  In the case of vaccines, there is actually no scientific consensus that they are safe—only a state-media consensus, emanating from groups like the CDC, which act as sales agents for Big Pharma.  A terrible precedent is being set, and both unfettered scientific inquiry and free speech are suffering greatly. Today it is vaccines and “conspiracy theories” that are being banned and labeled “dangerous” by the FBI. What will we be prevented, scared, or shamed away from discussing tomorrow?

President Kennedy said: “a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”  Perhaps we should take a closer look at ideas that so frighten the powers-that-be.  Far from inviting our ridicule, the people who insist that we look in these forbidden places may one day deserve our thanks.

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This article was originally published on OffGuardian.

John Kirby is a documentary filmmaker.  His latest project, Four Died Trying, examines what John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were doing in the last years of their lives which may have led to their deaths.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

Oliver Stone is afraid. Afraid of war. That was the stark message conveyed by his latest film on the Ukraine crisis, ‘Revealing Ukraine’ which picked up the Grand Prix at the Taormina film festival in Italy last month. The documentary, directed by Igor Lopatonok, who also directed ‘Ukraine on Fire’ four years ago, takes us on a journey from the origins of the Ukraine conflict in 2014, to the more recent Kerch Strait incident last year where we witnessed a direct clash between Russian and Ukrainian vessels around Crimea.

Centred around interviews with Ukrainian politician Victor Medvedchuk (former Chief of Staff under President Kuchma) and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the film tries to piece together what happened during the Maidan revolution of 2014 but more importantly the legacy of these events and where the country is headed now after being plunged into an abyss of economic uncertainty.

It opens with a pertinent question from Medvedchuk’s wife – television presenter Oksana Marchenko who lost her job as a presenter of a hit Ukrainian TV show because of her relationship to Medvedchuk – ‘Why are you interested in Ukraine?’ It’s a fair question given all the other global conflict hotspots Stone could have chosen to document.  But his answer gives an indication of the seriousness with which he regards the ongoing Ukraine crisis; he says:‘ I don’t want war.’

And despite accusations of being a propagandist for Putin, Stone makes it clear in the film, and in subsequent media interviews, that his goal remains fixed: to discover the truth about what happened in this highly politicised, ideologically-motivated conflict. His initial decision to support such a film he explained, was rooted in an instinctive feeling that the version of events that happened during Maidan 2014 and since, provided by the western mainstream media was flawed.

And one cannot question his balanced approach when quizzing the main protagonists. By juxtaposing Putin and Medvedchuk’s different perspectives he highlights that despite their consensus on Maidan, they are not in agreement on all issues. While Putin states that Ukrainians and Russians are ‘one people’, Medvedchuk is quite clear that they are two different separate nations and identities. And Stone doesn’t make any attempt to conceal the relationship Medvedchuk has with President Putin – reminding the Russian leader directly that he is the godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter.

The interview with Medvedchuk is comprehensive and covers everything from the history of Ukraine to the role of George Soros in the Maidan movement. History is of course paramount to understanding the current crisis, and as Medvedchuk points out, were it not for the various foreign empires which have controlled Ukrainian territory over the centuries – from the Lithuanians to the Ottoman Turks – there would not be so many different cultural influences over the nation.

The more recent Russian empire and USSR had the most profound effect on the country, which remains to this day divided culturally and ethnically. The fact that the west of Ukraine is culturally closer to Poland and Germany and the East was traditionally under Russian influence, contradicted the very essence of the Maidan movement which denounced everything that was Russian.

This approach, was and is not sustainable in a nation for which Russian is the native language for around a third of its inhabitants. And yet this cultural genocide was born at the time of Maidan, a movement which on the surface was promoted as a project which would provide a positive, European future for Ukraine, but which in reality was built upon fascist, Neo-Nazi policies which have seen the blood spilt of thousands of Ukrainians.

And of course the hand of the West in the conflict is never far away. From the US’ Joe Biden – whose son sits on the board of Ukrainian energy company, Burisma holdings – to the infamous billionaire George Soros whose ‘International Renaissance Foundation’ is depicted in the film as playing a crucial role in financing and stirring up the conflict, the West was as usual meddling in a place it had no business being in, leading Ukraine on a road to perdition as it pursued its own interests.

The current quagmire the country is in as result is steeped in irony; a nation that before the conflict was the third-largest coal producer in Europe, that once produced 87% of coal for the Russian empire and 50% for the Soviet Union, is now having to import coal from the US, Russia and Canada.  US imports alone (from Pennsylvania) in 2018 cost the country just over $806 million.

The deindustrialisation of a nation which was the USSR’s largest producer of automotives, has resulted in it being almost wholly reliant on western car imports. This was a nation, as the film explains, which at the break-up of the Soviet Union was included in the world’s top ten most developed nations, which had a thriving aviation and space industry unrivalled by any other post-Soviet state. Now, since the shrinking of the economy began in 2014, the nation is ranked 60th place in the world by the UN in terms of GDP, even lower than the African nations of Sudan and Angola.

Victor Medvedchuk doesn’t hesitate to agree when asked if he thinks it has been a deliberate strategy by the West to destroy Ukraine. Indeed there is no doubt that since Maidan began, Ukraine has proved incredibly useful for US geopolitical interests. Stone himself states that Ukraine is a button which can be pushed by the US to aggravate Russia. However the film goes into more detail about the role played by Ukraine in manipulating the US elections as consultant Paul Manafort, an advisor to the Trump campaign, was targeted over his work advising former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych.

Medvedchuk asks why it was that none of the other people investigated by Ukrainian authorities over corruption charges have been prosecuted, and Manafort alone was pursued. He suggests it was a targeted, politicised campaign against Manafort, and that instead of looking for Russian interference in the US elections, we should be looking at Ukrainian interference.

The most disturbing message of the film however is not regarding what has been, but what could be, if action is not taken to restore relations between Russia and Ukraine. And despite President Zelensky’s assurances before his election that his priority was to put an end to the conflict in East Ukraine, so far we have seen nothing beyond rhetoric.

In the documentary, Putin candidly tells Stone that the Kerch strait incident last November was a provocation set up by former President Poroshenko to boost his ratings prior to the March 2019. But with reports of the seizure of a Russian vessel by Ukraine just last month, it’s clear that the potential for escalation of the conflict is extremely high. And if one thing is for sure, neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians would be the beneficiaries of such a conflict.

Watch the official teaser below.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Featured image is from 112 International

Sergei Skripal was a former Russian double agent for Britain. After a high-profile spy swap in 2010, he lived in Salisbury, England, near his former MI6 handler, Pablo Miller, who he reportedly kept in touch with.

Late in the afternoon of March 4th, 2018, Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who had flown in from Moscow the previous afternoon to get Sergei’s blessing for a marriage, were found in distress on a Salisbury park bench. The British Army’s top nurse, Col. Alison McCourt and her 16-year old daughter, Abigail, apparently the first to notice them, promptly gave them CPR (1).  The Skripals were sent to nearby Salisbury District Hospital, which had a covert relationship with Porton Down (2), the British government’s chemical warfare research laboratory. They were not expected to survive.

This quickly turned into an international story. Within hours of the news of the Skripals poisoning, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Prime Minister Theresa May — with no evidence — claimed that Russia had attacked them with a nerve agent they called “Novichok”.  Russians disputed that claim, noting that exposure to that nerve agent, better known as A-234, causes virtually immediate death.

The Skripals’ activities before they collapsed were a mystery. Security officials claimed that the GPS of their cell phones had been turned off for the four hours before they were found (3) and many of Salisbury’s CCTVs that should have captured their activities were not working (4).   CCTV’s had caught Sergei’s red BMW at 9:15 am near the cemetery where Yulia’s mother and brother were buried, and at 1:35 pm when they parked near Salisbury’s popular Maltings shopping area.  They were found on the Maltings Park bench less than 45 minutes after they had reportedly left Zizzi’s restaurant.  

There are two widely-published photos of Sergei and Yulia “at Zizzi’s” taken in different years. This photo, which appears to be the more recent, indicates that Sergei knew the photographer, who shared their table along with a fourth person, whose glass is also visible.  The photographer inadvertently took his own picture because of the mirror just behind the Skripals.

Since the photographer (and friend) appear to have been the last people who saw them before their collapse, the UK government should have identified him as a major person of interest to interview. Its lack of interest speaks for itself.

Russia went to the UN Security Council on March 13th to call for an inquiry into the poisoning. The UK not only vetoed an inquiry, but pressured countries to expel members of the Russian diplomatic corps.  Despite the lack of evidence against Russia — and the many reasons why it would not have been in Russia’s interest to have done this – almost 30 countries obeyed and about 150 Russians were expelled.  The Skripal poisoning also discouraged football fans from attending Russia’s hosting of the upcoming World Cup in Moscow. 

In the midst of a barrage of media coverage claiming the danger to the public of this nerve agent, a mid-March letter to The London Times from Steven Davies, described as “Consultant in emergency medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust”, stated:

Sir, Further to your report “Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment”, Mar 14, may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. (5) [emphasis added]

The third person referred to, policeman Nick Bailey, was not a “first responder” as the government had claimed, but became ill only after visiting the Skripal house on March 8th, four days after the poisoning. The actual first responders, Col. McCourt and her daughter, were unaffected despite being vomited on by the Scripals! (6)

On April 12, the UN’s OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) published a summary that “confirmed the UK’s identification” of the agent – without specifying what that was or where it came from. One of the OPCW’s laboratories, in Spiez, Switzerland, broke ranks to imply that Britain’s A-234 sample was not only fraudulent and could not have been used on the Skripals, but contained BZ (7), a non-lethal agent possessed only by the US, UK and NATO countries.  

An ominous silence

Before Yulia was released from the hospital in early April (“to a secure location”) she called her cousin Viktoria in Russia; the call was recorded and quickly broadcast. Within an hour of the Russian broadcast, there was a bizarre British broadcast in which Yulia claimed that she wanted to be left alone: “At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of [Russian embassy] services” (8). The language used was not Yulia’s.

Around the April 20th weekend when Sergei was expected to leave the hospital, Britain announced that it had identified suspects in the poisoning: two Russians who had returned home.  There was no further news about the Skripals for weeks.  The suggestion that the Skripals were to be given new American identities made no sense because they would be recognized anywhere. By staying, they could make money by providing media accounts of what had happened to them — accounts that might have contradicted those of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Director General of MI5 — and possibly brought down the government. 

Russia escalated its attempt to contact Yulia to the United Nations Security Council on Monday, April 23rd, but was rebuffed by the British claim that she did not want to speak to them. In fact, given her silence, many suspected that Yulia was dead.  

But on the evening of Wednesday, May 23rd, 2018, Yulia appeared on British TV and delivered a scripted speech in what appeared to have been English translated into Russian. Walking in a park-like setting that her cousin Viktoria believed was a military base, Yulia said that she had been physically and emotionally devastated by the poisoning but hoped to return to Russia after her father regained his health. At the end, she was seen signing the statement. (9) That was the last that was publicly seen of either of the Skripals.   

But Novichok was soon in the news again. In early July a couple from Salisbury became ill from what was believed to be the same poison that had affected the Skripals.  Dawn Sturgess sprayed her wrists with what she thought was perfume from a sealed bottle she had found in a dumpster; when her partner Charlie Rowley took it, the bottle fell apart in his hands. (10) Sturgess died and was quickly cremated by the British government. 

Ominously, on Sept 1st, 2018, The Guardian reported that the ambulances used for the Skripals had been sealed in a hazardous waste landfill site near Bishop’s Cleeve in Gloucestershire. (11) Later that fall, the British government announced that it would purchase the Skripal house as well as that of Nick Bailey “to decontaminate” them.  In January, 2019, a military team was sent to seal and replace the roof of the Skripal house.

Why was Sergei Skripal targeted?

Russia had nothing to gain from the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.  It had not only lost diplomatic staff from 30 countries, but the poisoning occurred three months before its hosting of the World Cup in Moscow. Any country that murdered its former agents – particularly with their children —  would discourage would-be agents from that employment.  

Although Britain’s involvement in the poisoning and the cover-up were apparent – even senior UK civil servants refused to pretend that Russia was responsible (12) — its motive was not. 

Initially, it appeared to former government whistleblowers that the motive might have been connected to Sergei Skripal’s relationship with his handler Pablo Miller, whose name had been protected by a government gag order soon after the poisoning. Miller was a colleague of Christopher Steele, author of the fabricated Russian dossier on Donald Trump: perhaps Skripal had been involved with that dossier and tried to extort money for what he knew? 

In January, 2019, the hacking group Anonymous released papers that pointed to the actual motives.  In December, 2018, Anonymous had revealed the existence of two powerful British intelligence “charities”, the Institute for Statecraft and its so-called Integrity Initiative program; both are led by top names in British intelligence and funded by the British government, the US government, and recently, even Facebook.  (13)  The “charities” coordinate government and media to implement a cold-war agenda to isolate Russia and encourage a conflict.  In January, Anonymous revealed a document that suggested goals for the Integrity Initiative that included the dismissal of Russian diplomats from as many countries as possible and damaging Russia’s hosting of international events. (14) The budgets of both charities increased dramatically before the Skripal poisonings; after the poisonings, the charities carried out extensive monitoring of international media responses. (15)  

It thus appeared that the inclusion of Yulia Skripal in the poisoning had not been accidental but was an intentional bonus to this media-oriented operation. The apparent murders of Sergei and Yulia Skripal demonstrate the lengths to which British military intelligence was prepared to go to demonize Russia.  

The Anonymous revelations also highlight the critical importance of independent, alternative media as well as of media freedom.  Despite the previous insiders’ assumptions that Sergei Skripal must have contributed to his misfortune, the war-mongering motives of the British military/intelligence community had been hidden before Anonymous’s release of the information.  US President Donald Trump’s additional Russian sanctions of August 2019, based on the spurious account of the poisoning, demonstrate the failure of the mainstream media to publicize the Anonymous revelations and their implications. 

Could demanding proof that the Skripals are alive – and calling for British government accountability if they are unable to demonstrate that – impose limits on future actions of British military/intelligence?  If British leadership is allowed to get away with two such public murders, there will be little to stop more in the future.

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Karin Brothers is a freelance journalist.

Notes 

1. 21wire. SKRIPAL: The Nurse’s Tale Makes a Mockery of UK State-Media “Poisoning” Narrative. January 26, 2019. https://21stcenturywire.com/2019/01/26/skripal-the-nurses-tale-makes-a-mockery-of-uk-state-media-poisoning-narrative/

2. Ibid.

3. Nicholls, Peter. “Missing Hours: Skripals’ Cell phones Reportedly Turned Off on Day of Attack”.    REUTERS. 12 March, 2018.https://sputniknews.com/military/201803261062902960-skripals-cellphones-gps/

4. “Was Salisbury’s CCTV on’ at time of ‘nerve agent’ attack?”  SpireFM. 13 March, 2018. https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2526330/was-salisburys-cctv-on-at-time-of-nerve-agent-attack/ 

5. Moon Of Alabama. “No Patients Have Experienced Symptoms Of Nerve Agent Poisoning In Salisbury” 19 March 2018.www.informationclearinghouse.info/49030.htm 

6.  21wire. SKRIPAL: The Nurse’s Tale Makes a Mockery of UK State-Media “Poisoning” Narrative. January 26, 2019 https://21stcenturywire.com/2019/01/26/skripal-the-nurses-tale-makes-a-mockery-of-uk-state-media-poisoning-narrative/

7. Birchall, Ben. “Russian Embassy in UK Doubts OPCW Skripal Probe as Swiss Lab Cites BZ Agent”. Sputnik International. 15 April 2018.https://sputniknews.com/europe/201804151063576783-skripal-case-bz-agent-opcw/ 

8. Murray, Craig. “Yulia Skripal Is Plainly Under Duress”. 11 Apr, 2018. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ 

9. Mendick, Robert; DAVIES, GARETH; LUHN, ALEC; “Yulia Skripal says she is lucky to be alive in first appearance since assassination attempt” THE TELEGRAPH.  MAY 24, 2018.   HTTPS://WWW.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK/NEWS/2018/05/23/YULIA-SKRIPAL-MAKES-FIRST-PUBLIC-STATEMENT-FOLLOWING-SALISBURY/ 

10. West, Alex. “Hell of losing Dawn: Novichok survivor Charlie Rowley reveals girlfriend Dawn Sturgess died after spraying poison on wrists”. The Sun. 22nd July 2018. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6835503/charlie-rowley-novichok-dawn-sturgess-death-details/ 

11. Press Association. “Salisbury novichok emergency vehicles buried in landfill site” The Guardian. Sat Sept. 1 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/01/salisbury-novichok-emergency-vehicles-buried-landfill-site 

12. Murray, Craig. “Senior Civil Servants Still Deeply Sceptical of Russian Responsibility for Skripal Poisoning”. 18 April 2018. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ 

13. McKeigue, Paul. Miller,David. Mason, Jake. Robinson, Piers. “Briefing note on the Integrity Initiative”. Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media. December 21, 2018.

http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative/ 

14.  Klarenberg, Kit. “Shock Files: What Role Did Integrity Initiative Play in Sergei Skripal Affair?”. Sputnik International. January 4, 2019 (updated January 28, 2019). www.sputniknews.com/europe/201901041071225427-skripal-integrity-initiave-miller/ 

15. Murray, Craig. “British Government Covert Anti-Russian Propaganda and the Skripal Case” Craig Murray Blog. December 21, 2018. www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Images in the body of the article are from the author; featured image is from RTE

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”—H.L. Mencken

We’ve been down this road many times before.

If the government is consistent about any one thing, it is this: it has an unnerving tendency to exploit crises and use them as opportunities for power grabs under the guise of national security.

As David C. Unger, a foreign affairs editorial writer for the New York Times, explains,

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.”

Cue the Emergency State, the government’s Machiavellian version of crisis management that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”: the government has been anticipating and preparing for such crises for years now.

It’s all part of the grand plan for total control.

The government’s proposed response to the latest round of mass shootings—red flag gun laws, precrime surveillance, fusion centers, threat assessments, mental health assessments, involuntary confinement—is just more of the same.

These tactics have been employed before, here in the U.S. and elsewhere, by other totalitarian regimes, with devastating results.

It’s a simple enough formula: first, you create fear, then you capitalize on it by seizing power.

For instance, in his remarks on the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Trump promised to give the FBI “whatever they need” to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism.

Let that sink in a moment.

In a post-9/11 America, Trump’s promise bodes ill for whatever remnants of freedom we have left. With that promise, flippantly delivered without any apparent thought for the Constitution’s prohibitions on such overreach, the president has given the FBI the green light to violate Americans’ civil liberties in every which way.

This is how the Emergency State works, after all.

Although the damage wrought by these power grabs has been most evident in recent presidential administrations—under Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton—the seeds of this present madness were sown, according to Unger, in 1940, when President Roosevelt, the “founding father of modern extraconstitutional presidential war-making, the military-industrial complex, and covert federal surveillance of lawful domestic political activity,” declared a national emergency.

So what does the government’s carefully calibrated response to this current crisis mean for freedom as we know it? Compliance and control.

For starters, consider Trump’s embrace of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats, will only add to the government’s power.

As The Washington Post reports,

these laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”

Be warned: these laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.

Seventeen states, plus the District of Columbia, now have red flag laws on their books. That number is growing.

In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings, these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.

Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.

Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.

With these red flag gun laws, the intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats.

“We need to stop dangerous people before they act”: that’s the rationale behind the NRA’s support of these red flag laws, and at first glance, it appears to be perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others.

However, consider what happened in Maryland after a police officer attempted to “enforce” the state’s new red flag law, which went into effect in Oct. 2018.

At 5 am on a Monday, two police officers showed up at 61-year-old Gary Willis’ house to serve him with a court order requiring that he surrender his guns. Willis answered the door holding a gun. (In some states, merely answering the door holding a gun is enough to get you killed by police who have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.) Willis initially set his gun aside while he spoke with the police. However, when the police attempted to serve him with the gun confiscation order, Willis reportedly became “irate” and picked up his gun again. At that point, a struggle ensued, causing the gun to go off. Although no one was harmed by the struggle, one of the cops shot and killed Willis.

According to the Anne Arundel County police chief, the shooting was a sign that the red flag law is needed. What the police can’t say with any certainty is what they prevented by shooting and killing Willis.

Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally, especially when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.

After all, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

This is the same government that, in 2009, issued a series of Department of Homeland Security reports on Rightwing and Leftwing “Extremism,” which broadly define extremists as individuals, military veterans and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.”

This is the same government that, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal, tracks military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”

This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain and imprison American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.

This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.

For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

According to the FBI’s latest report, you might also be classified as a domestic terrorism threat if you espouse conspiracy theories, especially if you “attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others” and are “usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”

Additionally, according to Michael C. McGarrity, the FBI’s assistant director of the counterterrorism division, the bureau now “classifies domestic terrorism threats into four main categories: racially motivated violent extremism, anti-government/anti-authority extremism, animal rights/environmental extremism, and abortion extremism.”

In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly.

Where many Americans go wrong is in assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or challenging the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.

That is not the case.

All you really need to do is question government authority.

With the help of artificial intelligence, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potentialenemies of the state.

It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

What’s more, the technocrats who run the surveillance state don’t even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate. Computers guided by artificial intelligence now do the tedious work of trolling social media, the internet, text messages and phone calls for potentially anti-government remarks—all of which is carefully recorded, documented, and stored to be used against you someday at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

This is the world that science fiction author Philip K. Dick envisioned for Minority Report in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will crack a few skulls in order to bring the populace under control.

In Dick’s dystopian police state, the police combine widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining and precognitive technology to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage: precrime.

In the film Minority Report, the technology that John Anderton, Chief of the Department of Pre-Crime in Washington, DC, relies on for his predictive policing proves to be fallible, identifying him as the next would-be criminal and targeting him for preemptive measures. Consequently, Anderton finds himself not only attempting to prove his innocence but forced to take drastic measures in order to avoid capture in a surveillance state that uses biometric data and sophisticated computer networks to track its citizens.

With every passing day, the American police state moves that much closer to mirroring the fictional pre-crime prevention world of Minority Report.

For instance, police in major American cities have been using predictive policing technology that allows them to identify individuals—or groups of individuals—most likely to commit a crime in a given community. Those individuals are then put on notice that their movements and activities will be closely monitored and any criminal activity (by them or their associates) will result in harsh penalties.

In other words, the burden of proof is reversed: you are guilty before you are given any chance to prove you are innocent.

Dig beneath the surface of this kind of surveillance/police state, however, and you will find that the real purpose of pre-crime is not safety but control.

Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.

Again, where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.

In fact, U.S. police agencies have been working to identify and manage potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats for some time now.

In much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect, the government’s anti-extremism program renders otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, or appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom.

Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.

You will be tracked wherever you go.

You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

The government has been building its pre-crime, surveillance network in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the corporate sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

Connect the dots.

Start with the powers amassed by the government under the USA Patriot Act, note the government’s ever-broadening definition of what it considers to be an “extremist,” then add in the government’s detention powers under NDAA, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

To that, add tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones and balloons that are beginning to blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the picture, toss in the real-time crime centers being deployed in cities across the country, which will be attempting to “predict” crimes and identify so-called criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

Hopefully you’re starting to understand how easy we’ve made it for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat for a variety of reasons that run the gamut from mental illness to having a military background to challenging its authority to just being on the government’s list of persona non grata.

There’s always a price to pay for standing up to the powers-that-be.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, you don’t even have to be a dissident to get flagged by the government for surveillance, censorship and detention.

All you really need to be is a citizen of the American police state.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

President Donald Trump’s pre-election pledge to end America’s useless wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan just might turn out to be somewhat less than what was promised if some political allies of the president have their way. For the past year there have been rumors circulating in Washington about the possibility of using mercenaries rather than American soldiers to keep the lid on a volatile Afghanistan and to arrange for regime change in countries like Venezuela.

It perhaps should surprise no one that a country dedicated to “free markets” should at least somewhat embrace the idea of using mercenaries to fight its wars. The concept is already embedded in the federal government, increasingly so since 9/11. A majority of the workers in the intelligence community as well as in the civilian ranks of the Pentagon are already paid contractors who work for the “Beltway bandit” firms that specialize in national security. A substantial number of those hires are armed paramilitaries operating in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Mideast and Africa.

The logic for going with contractors rather than employees has been that budgets go up and down, so it is the smart thing to have a lot of people working for you who are on one-year contracts and can be let go if the money to pay them is not authorized. The downside is that the average federal employee costs roughly $125,000 per year in pay and benefits. A contractor costs three times as much, which means that the taxpayer pays the piper for something that is a convenience for the government.

The most prominent advocate for mercenary armies is Erik Prince, an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump and the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater. Blackwater was a major private military contractor in Iraq, where it provided security for State Department operations and facilities. Notoriously, in 2007, Blackwater employees shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians at Nisour Square in Baghdad. One of Prince’s employees was eventually convicted of murder and three others have been convicted of manslaughter. Prince subsequently renamed the Blackwater security company and then sold it in 2010.

Prince, the scion of a wealthy Midwestern family that made its money selling auto parts, is himself a former Navy SEAL. Many of his Blackwater employees were drawn from the special operations community. His sister is Betsy DeVos, the conservative secretary of education, which certainly helps make sure that his views will be conveyed to the White House.

Two years ago, Prince was lobbying heavily in Washington in support of his plan to privatize the war in Afghanistan. He claimed that mercenaries operating in the special ops mode and not requiring a huge logistical tail could be more cost and manpower effective at fighting the similarly armed Taliban. But Prince did not see that as their primary mission, which would be training Afghan national forces while at the same time running the key elements in the country’s government that would support the effort, namely the treasury and national security team. In other words, it would be the foreign mercenaries in charge with the Afghan government going along for the ride until the situation would improve. Having the paid soldiers and their administrators in charge would also eliminate the pervasive Afghan government corruption, which has to this point crippled the war and training efforts.

It was a neat and also creative package that would at a stroke end direct U.S. involvement in the Afghan war, in a manner of speaking. It would also be quite lucrative for the company providing the mercenaries and the other support. Empirically speaking, however, it was always a nonstarter. The ability of a group of mercenaries to multitask in a difficult environment like Afghanistan has never been tested at this level, and it is impossible to imagine that the Afghan government would cede its authorities to a band of Americans and Europeans.

More recently, Prince has been supporting something similar, a private mercenary army of a few thousand men that would bring down the government of Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro. Having learned from the Afghan experience that it is necessary to come up with the money before coming up with a plan, Prince has been discussing Venezuela with conservative Republican donors as well as with Miami-based Venezuelan millionaires, the so-called “bankers and oligarchs” that ran the country before the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 forced many of them to go into exile. He has been seeking $40 million in seed money for the operation.

In private meetings in the United States and Europe, Prince sketched out a plan to field up to 5,000 soldiers-for-hire on behalf of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido. He has argued that a dramatic step is necessary to break through the standoff between Guaido and Maduro. Prince’s pitch detailing how he would accomplish a change in government features intelligence operations preceding deployment of those 5,000 mercenaries recruited in Latin America to conduct “combat and stabilization operations.”

The White House is cool to the plan, particularly in the wake of the poor intelligence that led to the badly bungled and embarrassing Venezuelan coup in May. It is currently more inclined to tighten sanctions to create more unrest, particularly as there are already reports of starvation in some parts of the country.

There also has been concern in Washington policy circles that the introduction of foreign soldiers in Venezuela could lead to civil war, something like a replay of what has been experienced in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Libya. But the most interesting aspect of the discussion is the fact that it is taking place at all. The United States of America, hostile to the ability of kings to initiate wars on their own authority, was founded in part in opposition to any permanent standing army beyond what was necessary for self-defense.

Now, the U.S. may be considering major military operations using mercenary armies to deal with undeclared and illegal wars thousands of miles away that do not even threaten the homeland. It is, unfortunately, just one more indication of how the United States has been changed beyond all recognition in the past 20 years.

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This article was originally published on American Free Press.

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Other articles by Giraldi can be found on the website of the Unz Review. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has hailed as ‘phenomenal’ a new poll which shows majority support for Scottish Independence. The survey, which was carried out by Lord Ashcroft in the wake of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visit to Scotland a week ago, puts those in favour of independence at 46% with 43% against. If one removes undecided and non-voters, it indicates 52% for and 48% against Scotland being an independent country.

This poll has come at a pivotal moment in British politics, when the future of the country in relation to the European Union is hanging in the balance. And credit can only be given to Nicola Sturgeon for facing off her critics (many Nationalists among them) who impatiently derided her for not calling a second independence referendum earlier.

Sturgeon, who insisted she would only call ‘indyref2’ – as it has become known – ‘once the terms of Brexit are known’ has stuck to her guns and like the seasoned politician she is, has patiently awaited  for momentum to be at its highest behind the independence movement. As any experienced politician knows, in this game, timing is everything.

Now, with the promotion of Boris Johnson to Prime Minister, Nationalists would argue that the recipe for independence is complete. The set of circumstances created by the antics of a chaotic Westminster government – years of botched Brexit deals, in-fighting and poor leadership, together with an attitude that Scotland’s interests are of no significance whatsoever to the Brexit ‘war party’, have only exacerbated what was already a problematic situation. For with a majority of Scots voting to Remain within the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum – in contrast to their neighbours south of the border – the ground was already prepared for conflict ahead.

But instead of handling Scotland with respect and giving it the due attention required, Scots were given a clear signal that their differing stance on Brexit was of no consequence. This position was only enhanced by Boris Johnson’s visit north last week where he failed even to interact with ordinary Scots and limited his one-day appearance to well-managed trips to the naval base at Faslane and the First Minister’s residence, Bute House. His announcement of giving £300 million to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, has been received more as an insult than anything else; an attempt to ‘buy off’ Scotland, which is far from welcome.

There is no doubt as well that both Johnson himself, and the elitist culture he represents, being the product of a private school, privileged background, does not go down well with the average working Scot. But put that together with his determination to force Brexit through come hell or high water, and you have Scots digging their heels in even further.

Nicola Sturgeon, in contrast to this reckless, haphazard blonde buffoon, is seen as the embodiment of common sense and rationality. In such circumstances it’s no surprise therefore that one could expect something of a swing from voters who haven’t supported independence in the past – at least they’d have a leader they weren’t embarrassed of.

Sturgeon is now expected to call a second referendum at the earliest opportunity. However, Professor John Curtice, Britain’s most famous pollster, writing in The Times on Tuesday nevertheless reminds us to exercise caution when reading such survey results. He writes:

“Individual polls that report an apparently significant change should always be treated with caution. Polls figures can go up and down purely by chance, even when no-one has changed their mind”.

Furthermore he says there would have to be many more surveys carried out before we could really gauge public opinion on independence.

But time is of the essence. In less than three months the UK could find itself crashing out of the European Union with no deal, and all the economic and political uncertainty that comes with it. Speaking on this earlier, Nicola Sturgeon commented:

‘There is a growing sense of urgency that if we don’t want to get dragged down a political path that we don’t want to go down…then we need to consider becoming independent sooner rather than later’.

All signs indicate that such a referendum is now imminent. But of course it still needs Westminster approval. Sturgeon has already ruled out a Catalonia scenario whereby an illegal referendum was called and independence announced on the basis of its result.

She seems determined to do things by the book; which, if taking into account Spain’s and the EU reaction to Catalonian independence, is the sensible option. Therefore it could be very much down to just how obstinate the Johnson government will be in relation to granting indyref2, and the extent to which they truly value the Union. Based on recent events, this remains to be seen…

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

August 6, 2019, Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) condemns the Trump Administration’s’ economic embargo as a racist assault on the people of Venezuela that will be disproportionately borne by Black working class Venezuelans and campesinos in general. BAP calls on all progressive elements in the U.S. and around the world to oppose this dangerous escalation by the Trump administration along with support from Congress to impose a right-wing counterrevolutionary government on the people of that nation through state terror.

National BAP Coordinating Committee members Netfa Freeman and Vanessa Beck just returned from Venezuela as part of the Embassy Protectors delegation that spend 10 days in the country meeting with community leaders, social organizations and government officials, including a private meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Freeman and Beck are prepared to speak on behalf of BAP and report on the conditions that they observed in Venezuela. With the national conversation centered on Trump’s racist agenda encouraging white nationalist violence in the U.S., Vanessa Beck asserts that

“it is a contradictory position on the part of progressives in the U.S. and even the general public not to link Trump’s racism domestically with his foreign policies that clearly have no regard for the lives of people of color.”

BAP national organizer Ajamu Baraka, therefore, poses the question to progressive forces in the U.S. “How much more war, how much more death and destruction will you endure before you break with the capitalist duopoly of the U.S. and say no more war, no more subversion, no more killings in my name by a state that by every definition has become a rogue state and threat to global humanity?

Background on Embassy Protector Collective

For 37 days, members of the Embassy Protection Collective heroically refused to hand over the control of the Venezuelan Embassy, with the permission of the legitimate government of Venezuela, to a representative of the US-appointed, self-proclaimed “interim President” of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó.

The arrested Embassy Protectors are now facing trials on the trumped-up charge of “interfering with certain protective functions” of the Federal Government, a misdemeanor charge that carries a maximum of one-year imprisonment and $100,000 fine for each one of them.

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Featured image: Activists gather in front of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC in March, 2019.

China is rising, heading toward becoming the world’s leading economy — already No. 1 ahead of the US on a purchase price basis, what a basket of goods costs in both countries.

Has the Trump regime met its match in China? Its tariffs, sanctions, and other bullying tactics haven’t worked, nor are they likely to ahead.

Trump is ignorant of Beijing’s resolve. Its ruling authorities won’t now or ahead yield their aim to become a leading industrial, economic, and technological world power to US interests.

In May, President Xi Jinping said China is “embarking on a new Long March” — referring to the protracted struggle between Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai v. US supported Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces, ending with the Red Army’s triumph, the forerunner of the People’s Liberation Army.

At the time, the official Xinhua News Agency said China “has been standing tall in the East for the last 70 years,” adding:

“It has never lowered its head and it has never feared anyone. History will prove again that bullying and threats by the US will not work.”

China is prepared for a longterm struggle in pursuit of its legitimate aims. Unacceptable US actions and bullying haven’t worked and won’t likely succeed ahead.

After 12 negotiating rounds of talks, things are at impasse between both countries because of unacceptable Trump regime demands no responsible leadership would accept.

On August 5, Mike Pompeo falsely accused China of “engag(ing) in trade practices which stole tens and hundreds of billions of dollars of US economic property (sic), that engaged in forced property transfer where American businesses had to give our technology to China just to open up that market (sic),” adding:

The Trump regime seeks “to restructure that set of trading rules for the United States so that they are fair and reciprocal (sic).”

Cold hard reality refutes his disinformation. China seeks cooperative relations with other nations, featuring carrots over sticks — at peace with its neighbors and all other countries.

The US is a global hegemon, using pressure, bullying, and brute force to get other nations to bend to its will, war and other hostile actions its favored tactics — seeking dominion over planet earth, its resources and populations, wanting ruler-serf societies it controls established everywhere.

Talks with China since spring 2018 have little to do with trade, everything to do with the US wanting its development aims undermined — the trade deficit greatly favoring Beijing a minor issue.

It exists because corporate America offshored much of its industrial base and many other jobs to low-wage countries, notably China — US ruling authorities going along by doing nothing to halt the practice.

Since the neoliberal 90s, the US has been incrementally thirdworldized, poverty the nation’s leading growth industry. Most households need two or more jobs to get by.

Most available are rotten part-time/temp, low-pay, few or no benefits ones. The land of opportunity I grew up in long ago no longer exists.

US ruling authorities serve privileged interests exclusively at the expense of the general welfare.

Law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels is all about serving and protecting monied interests at the expense of ordinary Americans.

On Monday, the Trump regime’s Treasury Department designated China a “Currency Manipulator,” note the caps — a hostile action not about to go down well in Beijing, a Treasury statement saying the following:

“As a result of this determination, Secretary Mnuchin will engage with the (US-controlled) International Monetary Fund to eliminate the unfair competitive advantage created by China’s latest actions (sic).”

“This pattern of actions is also a violation of China’s G20 commitments to refrain from competitive devaluation (sic).”

Here’s what happened. Over the weekend, China let its yuan slip to 7.0982, falling further on Tuesday to 7.0703 to the dollar.

Its January 1994, its all-time high was 8.73 to the dollar — the lower the yuan, the more competitive Chinese exports are in world markets unless offset by currency devaluations elsewhere.

At the same time, Beijing suspended purchases of US soybeans and other agricultural products — its actions in response to Trump’s threat to impose 10% tariffs on another $300 billion worth of Chinese imports and no relief from unacceptable demands during bilateral talks.

Falsely declaring China a currency manipulator is the latest shoe to drop.

The practice involves central banks buying or selling foreign currencies in exchange of their own to influence the exchange rate and commercial policy.

Many nations adjust their currencies to maintain competitiveness, stability, and control inflation.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) Governor Yi Gang said the following:

China will “not engage in competitive devaluation, and not use the exchange rate for competitive purposes and not use the exchange rate as a tool to deal with external disturbances such as trade disputes.”

US legislation directs the Treasury Secretary to “analyze on an annual basis the exchange rate policies of foreign countries…and consider whether countries manipulate the exchange rate between their currency and the United States dollar for purposes of preventing effective balance of payments adjustments or gaining unfair competitive advantage in international trade.”

It’s OK for the US to maintain a competitive advantage over other nations by currency manipulation and other practices, not the other way around.

When the dollar’s valuation rises, currencies of other nations decline, China’s in this case so calling the nation a currency manipulator is false. It’s letting the currency fall naturally by not manipulating it higher.

In response to global geopolitical and economic events, including Trump’s trade war with China and US equities at bubble levels, a flight to safety resulted in large-scale buying of US Treasuries.

It sent the 10-year US Treasury’s yield down to 1.75% on August 5 from a multi-year high of 3.14% months earlier. When yields fall, valuations rise.

The yield curve also inverted (the six-month Treasury at 1.99% on August 5), often signaling recession ahead. Rising gold prices to a six-year high also reflect a flight to safety.

Last week, the Fed began what appears to be a rate-cutting cycle, reversing the short-term hiking one, perhaps heading short rates back to zero or below as in Europe, benefitting investors at the expense of savers and individuals on fixed incomes, the vast majority of Americans.

The Trump regime’s geopolitical, economic and financial agenda is responsible for growing chaotic conditions, including in the financial markets.

The tougher Trump gets with China, the more firm its ruling authorities are likely to be in response to defend the nation’s interests.

Trump’s hostile/counterproductive agenda may push world economies into recession, perhaps a stiff protracted one.

Monetary policy won’t save him. It can prop up the stock market with easy money, not turn around economic weakness.

The massive US national debt exceeding GDP, heading higher, precludes fiscal stimulus to stimulate growth

Things may get ugly ahead — perhaps later this year or in early 2020.

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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.

Embargoes usually occur in times of war or impending hostilities. They partially or entirely prohibit commercial trade with targeted nations.

Illegal US embargoes and sanctions were imposed on Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Cuba, and now Venezuela.

They’re acts of war by other means, harming the economies and populations of targeted countries.

Nations supporting hostile US policies by going along with them are complicit in its criminality.

Michael Hudson accused the US of breaching “rules of international law and order put in place toward the end of World War II,” adding:

“Countries that do not give the United States control of their oil and financial sectors or privatize their key sectors are being isolated by the United States…”

Its tactics include “sanctions and unilateral tariffs giving special advantages to US producers in violation of free trade agreements with European, Asian and other countries.”

Claiming its actions aim to defend US national security is a long ago discredited Big Lie, concealing its real objectives — seeking global dominance by whatever it takes to achieve its imperial goals.

International laws, norms and standards are for other nations to observe. The US operates exclusively by its own rules at the expense of world peace, equity and justice — notions it deplores.

Nations unwilling to sacrifice their sovereign rights to US interests are targeted for regime change.

In Venezuela’s case, it’s notably because of its social democracy, the hemisphere’s best, the threat of a good example bipartisan US hardliners want eliminated.

On Monday, Trump signed an executive order, imposing a total economic embargo on Venezuela. It freezes all Bolivarian Republic assets in the US not already frozen, if any still fall into this category.

It prohibits other nations from engaging in legitimate economic, financial, and trade relations with the country — a flagrant international law breach along with earlier ones, including illegally imposed sanctions on the country, its entities and officials.

Trump’s latest action is based on Big Lies like all his hardline tactics, stating it’s “in light of the continued usurpation of power by Nicolas Maduro and persons affiliated with him (sic), as well as human rights abuses (sic).”

The above accusations apply to how the US and its imperial partners operate, not democratic Venezuela.

Responding to the latest unlawful Trump regime action, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said the Bolivarian Republic is facing “a transnational legal coup planned by the US government,” adding:

“They are liars, scammers and thieves, (aiming) to strip Venezuela of its assets abroad.”

Around three-fourths of world nations recognize Nicolas Maduro as Venezuela’s democratically elected and reelected president, its legitimate head of state.

Guaido is an imposter, a US-designated puppet/usurper in waiting, guilty of treason against the Bolivarian Republic and its people.

On Monday, neocon hardliner John Bolton warned China and Russia not to support Maduro in light of the latest Trump regime action, neither country likely to take orders from the US on this or other hostile issues.

Bolton also called talks between Bolivarian representatives and opposition elements in Barbados “not serious.”

The Trump regime wants Venezuelan capitulation to its demands, Maduro ousted, US-controlled fascist tyranny replacing the country’s social democracy. That’s what its unlawful hardline tactics are all about.

Days earlier, Trump threatened to quarantine Venezuela. Maduro responded saying:

“Venezuela as a whole, in a civil society and military forces union, repudiates and rejects the declarations of Donald Trump of an alleged quarantine, of an alleged naval blockade,” adding:

“To the imperial imperialism I say that they won’t be able to fulfill their plans with Venezuela. (Its) seas…will be free, sovereign and independent…and we will navigate them as we decide.”

Venezuela’s UN envoy Samuel Moncada denounced Trump economic blockade, calling it “theft on a worldwide scale,” adding:

“We reject the horrific perspective of perpetual war and demand the implementation of the UN Charter” — what US policymakers abandoned almost straightaway after its establishment.

Washington is waging economic terrorism and/or hot wars against Venezuela, Iran, China, Russia, Cuba, and other sovereign independent countries it doesn’t control.

Its hostile actions threaten the rights and welfare of ordinary people everywhere — at home and abroad.

A Final Comment

Reports on the Trump regime’s Venezuela embargo by the NYT, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and virtually all other establishment print and electronic media were silent on the illegality of what’s going on.

Hostile actions by the US against other countries flagrantly violate international and constitutional law — what independent media alone explain.

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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 YourNewsWire

A number of commentators have linked the killing of 20 people at a Walmart store in El Paso in the United States of America on Saturday 3^rd August 2019 to the rising tide of White Supremacism.

White Supremacism is a belief that whites are superior to others and therefore have a right to dominate them. There were elements of such thinking in a “manifesto” posted online allegedly written by the suspected killer, a 21 year old white from a Dallas suburb. The suspect had justified his massacre as a response “to the Hispanic invasion of Texas” and had made references to the Christchurch (New Zealand) shootings in March this year where a white gunman killed 51 mosque worshippers.

It has been suggested that the notion of white supremacy has become more virulent in the US in the last two years mainly because of president Trump’s rhetoric against Mexicans and other Hispanics and non-white minorities in general. This is the reason why when his daughter Ivanka condemned the El Paso massacre there was an immediate torrent of criticisms against her. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for instance advised her to

“check your dad in his tweets. 251 mass shootings in the US in 216 days. He incites violence every day with his hate agenda and racism. More people are dying because he fails to fight white supremacist terrorists.”

White supremacist ideology and practice has a long history behind it. It precedes the American civil war in the middle of the 19^th century. The oppression of the African slave population and indeed the institution of slavery itself embodied the contempt and hatred that the whites bore towards the blacks.  The elimination of a huge segment of the indigenous American Indian communities and the systematic marginalisation of those who survived was further proof of white supremacy.  In that sense the Ku Klux Klan as the flag bearer of white racism is not alien to American history.

However, white racism and white supremacy go beyond the US. Western colonialism, whatever its economic and strategic motives, was rooted to a great extent in the ideology of white supremacy. Colonial rulers and administrators were deeply imbued with this ideology. A case in point would be Winston Churchill who stated in 1937,

“I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race to put it in that way has come in and taken their place.”

Of course, in Britain and in much of the contemporary Western world blatant white supremacist thinking has declined considerably. This is partly because of the end of formal colonial rule and the emergence of alternative centres of civilisation especially in the non-Western world.  Nonetheless, because Western hegemony persists in current patterns of global political, economic and cultural power, hints of superiority continue to manifest themselves in various spheres of life. This is why the struggle to evolve more equitable global structures remains formidable.

If anything, two recent developments have exacerbated the situation. Expressions of white supremacy and racist hatred are disseminated more widely today through the social media. Analysts have observed that the vile and vicious propaganda of white supremacists for instance appears to have a greater impact because of the new avenues of communication — avenues which allow their users to adopt extreme positions without assuming responsibility for them. Add to this the flow of migrants to Europe from West Asia, North Africa and Sub- Saharan Africa which has encouraged the Right in the continent to manipulate baseless fears   about the so-called threat to the white, European way of life from these newcomers whose cultures and religions are different. For the Right, the migrant sometimes escaping the chaos at home created by the politics of regime change instigated by Western powers has become a boon to their political fortunes.

In spite of these developments, there are countless groups in Europe and the US standing up to white supremacist politics and racism. They have become vocal champions of inclusivity and diversity in their societies. They eschew the politics of fear and hatred. In fact, Trump’s brazen attempt to harness the support of the white majority by frightening them of some imaginary danger posed by minorities appears to have backfired. A grassroots movement is developing rapidly in various parts of the US seeking to repudiate the politics of white supremacy as anathema to the ideals of the American Constitution and the American Republic.

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

Featured image is from Popular Resistance

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2020 Presidential Elections: Feeding the Israel Lobby

By Philip Giraldi, August 06, 2019

If you have been wondering when the twenty Democratic aspirants for the presidency will begin a serious discussion of American foreign policy in the Middle East, where Washington has been bogged down in both current and impending wars, you are not alone. With the honorable exception of Tulsi Gabbard, no one seems keen to touch that particular live wire.

Trump’s Firearm and Immigration Reform Proposal Is a Risky Political Gamble

By Andrew Korybko, August 06, 2019

Trump’s trying to portray himself as the Uniter-in-Chief following two devastating terrorist attacks over the weekend, but his proposal to marry firearm and immigration reforms into a single bill is a risky political gamble, though one that might ultimately pay off if the American people support him.

Black Sites, Secret Prisons, Rendition: More British Complicity Exposed in Latest ‘CIA Torture Unredacted’ Report

By True Publica, August 06, 2019

The latest report about kidnappings, rendition, ‘black sites’ and torture is a remarkable piece of investigative work. It provides us with nothing less than a litany of shocking evidence and testimony and at 403 pages it makes for truly grim reading. This article is made up of a very brief set of extracts from the just-released  CIA Torture Unredacted report.

World War II: US Military Destroyed 66 Japanese Cities Before Planning to Wipe Out the Same Number of Soviet Cities

By Shane Quinn, August 05, 2019

The extent of devastation inflicted upon Japan by the American military during World War II is not broadly known, even today. In reprisal for the attack over Pearl Harbor, which killed almost 2,500 Americans, US aircraft first began unloading bombs on Japan during the afternoon of 18 April 1942 – attacking the capital Tokyo, and also five other major cities, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe and Yokosuka.

The Global Currency War Has Begun. China’s Yuan Breaks the 7 to $1 Band. Why is The Dollar Rising?

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, August 05, 2019

Over this weekend, China’s Yuan currency broke out of its band and devalued to more than 7 to $1. At the same time China announced it would not purchase more US agricultural goods. The Trump-US Neocon trade strategy has just imploded. As this writer has been predicting, the threshold has now been passed, from a tariff-trade war to a broader economic war between the US and China where other tactics and measures are now being implemented.

Seeking Justice for 9/11 Heroes: An Interview with New York Area Fire Commissioner Christopher Gioia

By Andrew Steele and Christopher Gioia, August 05, 2019

On this week’s episode of 9/11 Free Fall, host Andy Steele is joined by Franklin Square Fire Commissioner Christopher Gioia to discuss his fire district’s recent passage of a historic resolution supporting a new investigation into events of 9/11.

Tulsi Gabbard, the Mainstream Media and Treason

By Renee Parsons, August 05, 2019

In the aftermath of the July debate when Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hi) shined a light on her campaign and took Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Cal) to task for her misleading record on criminal justice as California Attorney General, the MSM and its Democratic flunkies have pummeled Gabbard about an unplanned meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017 just as they have done since Gabbard first announced her candidacy.

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Russia is meticulously advancing Eurasian chessboard moves that should be observed in conjunction, as Moscow proposes to the Global South an approach diametrically opposed to Western sanctions, threats and economic war. Here are three recent examples.

Ten days ago, via a document officially approved by the United Nations, the Russian Foreign Ministry advanced a new concept of collective security for the Persian Gulf.

Moscow stresses that “practical work on launching the process of creating a security system in the Persian Gulf” should start with “bilateral and multilateral consultations between interested parties, including countries both within the region and outside of it,” as well as organizations such as the UN Security Council, League of Arab States, Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Gulf Cooperation Council.

The next step should be an international conference on security and cooperation in the Persian Gulf, followed by the establishment of a dedicated organization – certainly not something resembling the incompetent Arab League.

The Russian initiative should be interpreted as a sort of counterpart of, and mostly a complement to, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is finally blossoming as a security, economic and political body. The inevitable conclusion is that major SCO stakeholders – Russia, China, India, Pakistan and, in the near future, Iran and Turkey – will be major influencers on regional stability.

The Pentagon will not be amused.

Drill, baby, drill

When the commander of the Iranian Navy, Hossein Khanzadi, recently visited St Petersburg for the celebration of Russia’s Navy Day, the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces and the Russian Defense Ministry signed an unprecedented memorandum of understanding.

Khanzadi was keen to stress the memorandum “may be considered a turning point in relations of Tehran and Moscow along the defense trajectory.”

A direct upshot is that Moscow and Tehran, before March 2020, will enact a joint naval exercise in – of all places – the Strait of Hormuz. As Khanzadi told the IRNA news agency:

“The exercise may be held in the northern part of the Indian Ocean, which flows into the Gulf of Oman, the Strait of Hormuz and also the Persian Gulf.”

The US Navy, which plans an “international coalition” to ensure “freedom of navigation” in the Strait of Hormuz – something Iran has always historically guaranteed – won’t be amused. Neither will Britain, which is pushing for a European-led coalition even as Brexit looms.

Khanzadi also noted that Tehran and Moscow are deeply involved in how to strengthen defense cooperation in the Caspian Sea. Joint drills already took place in the Caspian in the past, but never in the Persian Gulf.

Exercise together

Russia’s Eastern Military District will be part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) anti-terrorist exercise in Thailand and China early next month. According to the Eastern Military District, the training is part of “preparations for a practical phase of an ASEAN anti-terrorist exercise in China.” This means, among other things, that Russian troops will be using Chinese military hardware.

Exercises include joint tactical groups attempting to free hostages from inside official buildings; search for and disposal of explosives; and indoor and outdoor radiation, chemical and biological reconnaissance.

This should be interpreted as a direct interaction between SCO practices and ASEAN, complementing the deepening trade interaction between the Eurasia Economic Union and ASEAN.

These three developments illustrate how Russia is involved in a large spectrum from the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf to Southeast Asia.

But the key element remains the Russia-Iran alliance, which must be interpreted as a key node of the massive, 21st century Eurasia integration project.

What Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said at the recent, historic trilateral alongside White House national security adviser John Bolton and Israeli National Security Council Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat in Jerusalem should be unmistakable:

“Iran has always been and remains our ally and partner, with which we are consistently developing relations both on a bilateral basis and within multilateral formats.”

This lays to rest endless, baseless speculation that Moscow is “betraying” Tehran on multiple fronts, from the all-out economic war unleashed by the Donald Trump administration to the resolution of the Syrian tragedy.

To Nur-Sultan

And that leads to the continuation of the Astana process on Syria. Moscow, Tehran and Ankara will hold a new trilateral in Nur-Sultan, the Kazakh capital, possibly on the hugely significant date of September 11, according to diplomatic sources.

What’s really important about this new phase of the Astana process, though, is the establishment of the Syrian Constitutional Committee. This had been agreed way back in January 2018 in Sochi: a committee – including representatives of the government, opposition and civil society – capable of working out Syria’s new constitution, with each group holding one-third of the seats.

The only possible viable solution to the tragedy that is Syria’s nasty, rolling proxy war will be found by Russia, Iran and Turkey. That includes the Russia-Iran alliance. And it includes and expands Russia’s vision of Persian Gulf security, while hinting at an expanded SCO in Southwest Asia, acting as a pan-Asian peacemaking mechanism and serious counterpart to NATO.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Featured image is from en.kremlin.ru

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare Act. Within a year, and without the aid of computers, the United States provided more than 19 million seniors with health coverage. Before the law existed, over half of the elderly in the United States did not have health insurance. Medicare, which now includes people with disabilities, celebrated its 54th birthday this week.

Today, the US is on the verge of another transformation. Thirty million people do not have health insurance and 30,000 people die annually because of that sad fact. The healthcare crisis is also demonstrated by the separate but unequal reality that wealthy people in the US live 15 years longer than poor people.

Momentum for National Improved Medicare for All is growing. That is being reflected in Congress and the presidential elections. As of last week, more than half the Democrats in the US House of Representatives have signed on to HR 1384, the Medicare for All Act of 2019. Medicare for All was also a major topic in the most recent Democratic Presidential Debates.

Image on the right: Rally for Medicare’s birthday in Oakland, CA, July 2015. From Happening-Here.Blogspot.com.

Medicare For All Is Central In The 2020 Elections

National improved Medicare for all (NIMA) has become a litmus test issue in the Democratic Party primary for president. While corporate Democrats funded by Wall Street, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are trying to stop progress, Democratic Party voters are showing the momentum may not be stoppable.

The two leading Medicare for all candidates, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have received the most donations of all the other candidates. One out of three donors to the Democratic primaries donated to Sanders. This broad base of support is consistent with polls that show Democratic Party voters have reached a consensus: NIMA is essential. Democratic voters have the power to nominate candidates who support Medicare for all if they insist on it. This consensus is the result of years of work by single payer advocates. This is a movement that will not compromise in support of false solutions.

The Medicare for All Act not only expands health coverage to everyone from birth to death, but also improves Medicare for seniors by including more benefits such as dental, vision, hearing and long term care. And, it does this without requiring premiums, co-pays or deductibles, saving people more than $300 billion annually in out-of-pocket costs.

All doctors, hospitals and other providers will be in a Medicare for all system so people will have complete choice of health services. Patients will not be limited by the narrow insurance industry networks, which often exclude cancer and other specialty centers – places people go when they are ill – to avoid paying for health care. Medicare for all means complete coverage, complete choice and freedom to change jobs or quit a job without fear of losing health coverage.

Research shows these changes are affordable because one-third of health-related expenditures are for administrative costs caused by the complex web of insurance plans. In addition to insurance company overhead, which ranges from  12.4 percent to  17.8 percent while Medicare has administrative costs of only 1.4 percent, doctors, hospitals and other providers also have high administrative costs due to interacting with thousands of different insurance plans. Having one-payer dramatically reduces the bureaucracy of healthcare. Research shows there could be $504 billion in yearly administrative savings with a single-payer system.

Improved Medicare for all creates hundreds of billions of savings that more than offset the increased costs of covering everyone and eliminating out-of-pocket expenses. In addition to reducing administrative waste, Medicare for all allows the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceuticals and providers to bring down the prices of care.

There are many ways to pay for Medicare for all. Congress routinely goes into debt to fund wars and militarism, so it is strange that for something as essential as healthcare cost is an issue. If increased taxes are needed, there have been a variety of proposals for progressive taxes. These proposals show that all but the wealthiest will pay less for healthcare under improved Medicare for all. Households earning under $130,000 per year would save the most money.

Currently, the US spends 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare and spending is rising faster than inflation and wages. This is an unsustainable expenditure that will be reduced with an improved Medicare for all system. Other wealthy countries with single payer health systems generally spend less than 11.5 percent of their GDP on healthcare.

Medicare for all is good for businesses because they will no longer be subject to unpredictable increases in insurance costs. It is also good for the economy. Warren Buffett says our current healthcare system is a tapeworm on the US economy and describes health care as a real problem for US businesses.

People Will Not Be Fooled By False Proposals

The strategy of the industries that profit from healthcare is to confuse people with false information and false proposals that sound like Medicare for All. They create front groups to create the illusion of support for their proposals and donate to politicians who advocate for their interests. These false proposals, like the one promoted by the so-called Center for American Progress, are designed to protect the industry, not fix the healthcare crisis. The Democratic leadership is addicted to insurance, pharmaceutical, and healthcare dollars. The people must be organized to defeat the industry and put in place the system we need.

This week, Sen. Kamala Harris put forward a terrible policy proposal, which she called Medicare for all. The proposal has two major flaws. First, it requires a ten-year transition to improved Medicare for all. This is unnecessary as the Medicare system already exists and we are already spending enough on health care to cover everyone. There is no need for long delays. Second, she allows insurance industry theft of the Medicare for all system by including “Medicare Advantage” plans (these are private insurance plans). Medicare Advantage is a heavily marketed scam on the elderly that costs the government more money than traditional Medicare and has the same flaws as private insurance. This proposal is bad policy and bad politics and should result in the defeat of Sen. Harris.

The most common false proposal is some form of a ‘public option.’ Mayor Pete Buttigieg, one of Wall Street’s favorite candidates, calls this Medicare for those who want it. We call it Medicare for some, not Medicare for all.  A public option does not fix the system, it makes it worse by adding another insurance plan to an already too complex system. It foregoes 84 percent of the savings that a single payer system would achieve.

Former Vice President Biden, the biggest recipient of donations from the industry, is another who refuses to advocate for what Democratic voters want. Biden continues to put forward false arguments against Medicare for all. He is stuck in the past and focused on saving the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA is fundamentally flawedbecause it is based on the corrupt and expensive private insurance system. Biden is fading in the polls for a variety of reasons, but his refusal to support improved Medicare for all should result in the end of his campaign. Democrats must know that the public understands the issue and insists on improved Medicare for all.

Neither Republicans nor Libertarians are putting forward any healthcare plan, which resulted in Republicans losing in 2018. The Green Party has advocated for single payer health care since the start. Ralph Nader ran on a platform that included Medicare for All as early as 2000.

Congress Must Do More

In addition to stopping the false non-solution promoted by corporate Democrats, the movement must push to improve both the House and Senate Medicare for all bills. The Senate bill, SB 1129, sponsored by Sanders and 14 Senators, is flawed in very serious ways. It needs to expand coverage of long term care, provide global budgeting for hospitals and end the massive insurance loopholes of managed care structures like Accountable Care Organizations (ACO’s), which function like insurance plans.

The House bill is better but still needs improvement. Both the House and Senate bills need to end commodification of health care by eliminating for-profit hospitals and other facilities. The for-profits can be purchased by the healthcare system using a Treasury Bill financed over 15 years at a cost of one percent of total health spending. If the for-profits are kept in and regulated, as the House bill does, it is likely the owners will sell them or convert them to profit-making entities like condominiums as is happening in Philadelphia. The House bill needs to shrink the transition from two years to one year, and the Senate Bill needs to shrink the four-year transition currently proposed.

The movement must insist on the best possible improved Medicare for all bill so people get the healthcare they need, businesses can thrive and the economy is not drained by the cost of healthcare. The US cannot afford to continue the insurance-dominated for-profit system it has; we must put in place improved Medicare for all.

On The Precipice Of Winning Improved Medicare for All

There are many signs that we are on the verge of winning the urgent and essential policy change of national improved Medicare for all. The single payer movement has the power to win improved Medicare for all if it doesn’t back down. The closer we get to victory, the more the profiteering industries will fight us. In the Popular Resistance School for Social Transformation, we describe this push back as part of the process of winning, and we teach how movements can defeat the strategies of those who seek to maintain the status quo.

There are still hurdles before us, but if the movement continues to work to educate voters as well as to organize and mobilize, we will create a political environment where politicians across the political spectrum must support health care as a human right as embodied in  an improved Medicare for all health system.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from M-molly Adams from Flickr.

There are stories that are unrelated to the news, but can explain much better than many combat reports, why people like me are fighting against the Empire and imperialism, with such determination and vehemence. Not all stories are ‘big’ or ‘heroic’; not all include famous people or iconic struggles. Not all take place on battlefields.

But they ‘humanize’ the struggle.

Once in a while, I like to share such stories with my readers. As I will do right now.

Because without them, frankly, nothing really makes sense.

*

It was a hot, humid night in Jakarta; a megapolis with the worst pollution on earth, and with some of the most monstrous contrasts on our planet. A literally sinking city, constructed against the people; fragmented, serving only the few hundred thousand extremely rich (most of them accumulating wealth through corruption and theft), while condemning millions of struggling individuals to a slow death.

For the ruthless Indonesian elites and their Western handlers, the poor of Jakarta (the great majority of city dwellers) simply do not exist. They live in crammed slums, called kampungs – literally translated as villages. Kampungs fill huge spaces between the skyscrapers, malls, and mostly empty five-star hotels. Individuals living there consume very little, and therefore matter close to nothing. Even their number is underplayed in the official statistics.

One night, my small film crew and I were driving though the Klender neighborhood in East Jakarta; a poor, religious and monotonous part of the city.

Re-editing my big film about Indonesia after the US-sponsored military coup of 1965, an event which I often describe as an “Intellectual Hiroshima”, I had to again spend a few days in Jakarta, collecting latest footage, filming contrasts between the people and feudal elites.

We were all tired. Traffic jams have brought the city to an almost permanent gridlock. The pollution is unbearable. Life has come to a standstill. As planned by the regime, no one seemed to be thinking. Nothing seemed to be working.

We were driving past Klender train station a few minutes after midnight.

There were two young women standing by the side of the road. One of them caught my eye. She was clearly a prostitute, or a ‘sex-worker’, as they would call her in the West. But in reality, no, she was not a ‘worker’; not her. Just an abused, tired women.

I liked her face. Hers was an honest, good face. And after all that nonsense I heard during the day, after all that ‘feel good’ crap, I needed to hear something real, honest.

“Stop!” I shouted at my driver. He stepped on the brakes, then backed up a few meters.

“I want to talk to her,” I explained. Then to her: “I want to talk to you.”

She did not find my request strange. She nodded. After years of moving all around the world, while documenting the state of our humanity, I have developed certain instincts. I can tell from the faces of people, whether they have a story to tell; and whether they have the desire to speak. She did, both.

We emptied the front seat for her, next to the driver. She got in. Jakarta is a dangerous city, especially for women. But she did not seem to be frightened. She trusted me, as I trusted her.

“My name is Andre,” I said. “I am a filmmaker, and this is my team”.

“My name is Risna,” she answered and smiled.

“I want to hear your story,” I said.

“OK,” she said.

“Do you mind if I film?”

“Go ahead. I don’t mind.”

I put my GH5 over my knee, turned on the little light on the ceiling of the car, and pressed the “Record” button.

Just like that. No coaching, no preparation. And then it happened. She spoke. Clearly. Bitterly. Honestly.

*

“It was four of us,” she began, softly:

“Four children. Little ones. Two boys and two girls. Our father, a pious religious man, used to use all of us. He had sex with us, with males and females. By then our mother was gone. He wanted to get married for the second time. To a young woman. But he had no money. And so, he began pimping all of us, for cash, so he could save enough, to start his new family. All four of us… you know; we all failed in life. At seven, I often slept on the streets. My siblings are all dysfunctional. I got married, had children, but my husband left me. I’m thirty years old now. I do this to support my children, and my brothers and sister.”

Trains kept passing-by. Loud express trains, rushing to far away cities: Yogyakarta, Solo, Surabaya.

“I couldn’t’ talk to anybody. Here, it is always woman’s fault. No matter what happens, it is woman’s fault.”

I was frozen in my seat.

“This is my story.”

“And now?” I could not think about anything else to ask.

“Now I am speaking to you.”

I stopped the car in the middle of the night. I wanted to hear a story of a woman who was working by the side of the road. And that is precisely what I got: she described to me, briefly, her life.

She did it in a simple, touchingly naïve, pure way. There was nothing unnatural in her voice.

She spoke for herself, and for millions of Indonesian women like her, too.

I cared about her, but did not know how to express it, what to say.

We spoke for a bit, about the terrible fate of women in Indonesia. About the hypocrisy of this society. But it was well after midnight, and she had to earn her living. I had to let her go.

“You will be in my film, together with your former President Gus Dur, and the greatest writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer.”

She nodded, in a matter of fact way.

“What do you dream about?”

And that’s when her eyes filled with tears:

“I want to raise my children as a good mother; from honest work.”

I looked at the monitor of my camera. 8 minutes and few seconds had passed since I began recording. One human life, in a summary. One complex, broken human life. I bowed to her. Shook her hand. Thanked her.

“Do you have hope?”

She looked at me, deep into my eyes. Then she nodded.

“Yes!”

*

At night, I couldn’t sleep.

I knew all about what she was talking about. My friend who works for the UNDP once explained to me, that Indonesia has one of the highest child abandonment rates in the world. And also, one of the highest amounts of sexual child abuse cases, particularly inside families; committed by family members. All these topics are taboo, and no ‘official’ study can be produced, as most women are only willing to speak ‘off the record’.

In Indonesia, after 1965, everything collapsed; was destroyed. But this downfall, and almost nothing related to it, can be discussed openly. Here, the fear of truth is omnipresent, and I will soon address this shocking issue in one of my upcoming essays.

*

In 1979, when the pro-US Somoza’s regime collapsed and the Sandinistas took over the devastated Nicaragua, my friend, an American poet and translator, happened to be in Managua.

He was very young and confused.

He understood, theoretically, the greatness of the revolution. But he was still lacking examples.

Then, one afternoon, he saw a bus. A beat-up public bus, slowly moving towards the center of the city, while sun was setting down, behind the hills.

He told me the story, a long time ago, in New York, as I was ready to depart for Peru, to cover the so-called Dirty War:

“It was the end of the week. The bus was full of girls; young women from slums. Some were barefoot. But they were dressed in their best. They were travelling to the center of the capital, to dance!”

The voice of my friend broke. He was overwhelmed by his memories.

“Do you understand? Before, they only went to the rich parts of the city in order to serve, to be humiliated, used; to labor for the rich. Now, they were going to those clubs that only a week ago were frequented exclusively by ‘gringos’ and local elites. They were going to dance. It was their country, suddenly. It was their city. They were free. The country belonged to them.”

“This is when I understood,” he concluded, “that the revolution was right. Not because I studied Marxism, not because of some theory. But because these girls from the poor neighborhoods of Managua had suddenly gained the right to dance. They gained their right to exist; to be alive!”

*

In Cuba, they say: “Everyone dances, or no one dances!”

Covering the world, documenting wars, conflicts, but also revolutions, I often encounter women like Risna.

Whenever countries collapse, whenever they are destroyed by savage capitalism, by religious extremism, or by subservience to imperialist powers, women suffer the most. It is almost the rule.

Most of them suffer in silence, as even their voices are being muted.

The more oppressive, regressive society gets, the more subjugated are its women.

Their humiliation, repression, suffering gets glorified as virtue. While rape, molestation, and submission are hushed up, never discussed. In countries such as Indonesia, if a woman protests and speaks about her fate, she gets ridiculed, discredited, or even thrown into prison, as has happened recently, on several well-publicized occasions.

Western hypocrisy is obvious: while everyone there is obsessed with ‘political correctness’, London, Washington and Paris are glorifying, supporting and even producing regimes which treat women worse than animals.

*

Risna deserves to be in one of those proverbial buses which are taking women to the once exclusive clubs, so they can dance. In a rough translation of the metaphor: ‘so they could become the owners of their own fate, of their cities, and their country’.

Women like her are the women we are fighting for.

Their stories are our stories. Be they in Managua, Jakarta, Kampala, or Mumbai.

They are as significant as those stories from the war zones near Syrian Idlib, or Afghanistan, or Libya.

Not to tell such stories would convert us, revolutionary writers, into liars.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Four of his latest books are China and Ecological Civilization with John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. His Patreon