Global Research

It’s a battle cry inspired by the dire climate crisis that has been sung by many for years yet still hasn’t been resolutely taken up by the world as a whole. So the question remains: what ultimately is more important: Water or Oil? The Human World is starved for both. But which of the two will ensure the ultimate survival of life on this tiny orb called the Blue Planet? The dilemma of modern human civilization and plight of the planet are one and the same. The lack of water eventually will kill both, while the abundance of oil eventually will also kill them both.

There’s a very real, simple reason why every aspect of the planet’s corporate world order – and especially its corporate mainstream press, government’s and political parties – refuse to fully and truthfully air the real ramifications that underlie why there exists a climate crisis in the first place, and what actually would have to immediately be done – not by the year 2025, 2030, 2040, 2050 or 2100 – but Now – Today – to lower pollution emissions that are inexorably producing ever-greater planetary climate change imbalances to all the air and water. The reason is simple. No truthful dialogue is occurring to come up with immediate, workable solutions for the planet because it would require a complete and utter re-definition, re-calibration and re-tooling of modern human civilization’s entire raison d’etre. It won’t ever happen until what eventually will happen, finally happens. Until then humanity’s modern civilization will continue to whistle in the dark while applying whatever band aids to wherever the hurt is greatest while paying lip service to all the rest.

As a result, a fatal disconnect exists in Canada, as indeed it does everywhere else in the world, between an avowed desire to protect and care for Planet Earth’s natural world, its finite resources and the opposing reality of mankind’s greedy, desperate, burgeoning political-corporate-societal needs for ever more copious amounts of oil and fossil fuels needed to continue: to run all of its vehicles, planes, trains and ships; grow all its food crops for an ever-exploding population, while; operate a slew of every oil and petroleum starved man-made thing in the modern world that keeps humans gainfully employed and the whole business of life running smoothly, however greedy, unbalanced and suicidal that business may be.

This is why countries like the United States and Australia still refuse to fully and openly discuss the climate crisis issue and ongoing degradation of their nation’s pristine habitats and finite natural resources, even though in places like Australia’s New South Wales a recent report revealed that the destruction of its natural habitats, forests and woodlands have increased five fold from what the crisis was a few years ago; while in the United States, ever since its horrifically-monstrous debacle of the Dakota Access Pipeline occurred the need to alarmingly expand the amount of barrels of petroleum in that pipeline needed continues to increase with no end in sight. One can only call what is going on everywhere in the world nothing more nor less than a form of sheer madness coupled with unparalleled greed.

Yet to keep mankind’s world running as it is means that ever greater amounts of the planet’s pure, precious, finite waters must, knowingly and willingly, continue to be consumed, polluted and destroyed to perpetuate human civilization’s hopelessly-addicted fossil-fueled way of life hell bent on its own self-destruction and that of all life on our exquisitely beautiful Blue Planet. It’s a cliché to say the time has long since past the critical tipping point when humanity can’t have it both ways. Every human must, once and for all, choose which side of the debate they’re on and then accept the consequences of whichever side is chosen.

One prime example of the decision to continue to choose the fatal addiction to oil and fossil fuels is Canada’s recent approval to continue the building of its Trans Mountain pipeline from the Tar Sands of Alberta to the coastal waters of British Columbia that will increase the flow of dirty, toxic bitumen – one of the dirtiest of all substances known to exist – to a world hopelessly hooked on yet its next fix of the black stuff. Canada’s in–between a rock and a hard place decision flies in the face of whatever constantly re-adjusted Paris Accord Agreement or proposed grandiose Green Environmental Plan designed to help humanity once and for all kick its fatal attraction to what some call “The Black Death”. It boils down to a falsehood of perpetually trying to have one’s cake and eat it, too.

It’s always a curious fact to note that oil is what remains as a by-product of one of Earth’s most primitive epoch’s in its evolutionary journey yet also is perhaps the main cause of what scientists now refer to as the Anthropocene Epoch in geological history that is in the process of repeating yet the sixth great extinction of all of life on earth.

It’s by-products like bitumen that are fueling this epoch extinction and literally every aspect of the human world’s modern civilization. We must keep reminding ourselves of the fact that such decisions are bringing about, if not speeding up, this geologic epoch that, in order to do so, must knowingly and willingly continue to consume and destroy ever-larger amounts of the earth’s precious, finite natural sources of water; water that, literally and figuratively, is the very essence of life that, in the long run, is the only thing that sustains all of earth’s living things as we travel safely through time and space together on our tiny, resilient blue orb through an incredibly harsh, unforgiving, hostile universe. Therefore, no matter how else one may put it: Water is the Most Sacred Substance of all that Protect’s the Journey we’re on Together.

This should be the single mantra that the people of Canada and everywhere else in the world repeat to themselves as they awaken each morning to greet the new day. It’s a mantra to be repeated, as well, on the full moon of each month when we can especially feel the waters in our bodies, mystically, being pulled this way and that or watch as the currents and tides cause the planet’s own waters to ebb and flow. It’s a mantra to be repeated everytime we turn on a tap to fill up a glass of water to quench our thirst and then pause for a moment to give thanks and ponder the whole story of the earth’s endless journey through time and space and its ability to quench the thirst of every one of its lifeforms with the same waters that literally and figuratively always was since the beginning of time and always will be to its final end.

Such awareness should give one cause to pause for just a moment longer before quenching one’s thirst to consider how wondrous this precious, finite substance is that already has been in the bodies of so many famous or infamous humans or taken such an eons-long circuitous journey through ourselves and still other innumerable living creatures and lifeforms going all the way back to the ancient dinosaurs and beyond and continues to enrich our lives as it did their’s. It’s a mantra especially to be repeated, too, before Canadians and the peoples of the world decide to give any further support whatsoever to the corporate world order that continues to pursue a destructive fossil-fuelled way of life that, daily, through the primitive, brutal mining and extraction of countless dirty, toxic ores and minerals poisons and destroys forever colossal amounts of this precious, finite substance that without it the Earth no longer would be blue but instead become just another brown, shrivelled-up, lifeless hulk hurtling through empty space.

In a National Observer opinion article (“The Juggernaut of corporate oil must be stopped” June 18^th 2019), Guujaaw, an Hereditary Chief Gidansta of the Haida Nation, who also is an advisor to British Columbia’s Coastal First Nations, spoke out in response to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to approve the extension of the controversial TransMountain Pipeline from the Tar Sands of Alberta to the coastal waters of British Columbia and beyond.

Guujaaw’s words, amplified here, is one exceptionally inspirational First Nation version of “The Battle Cry of the Blue Planet”, that is a modern version of a centuries old cry that has been sounded in every corner of the earth, many times over, in as many ways as there are a multitude of fine orators who have ever come and gone upon our earth. It should be taken as a renewed living retort to all those Canadian politicans-indian leaders-energy CEO’s and voters alike who consider themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to be part of the corporate world order as they willingly and knowingly continue to support the sacrifice of the earth’s precious finite resources that instead of being bequeathed as a legacy to future generations, instead continues to be misused to satiate whatever humanity’s immediate selfish needs.

Guujaaw/Chief Gidansta seeks to call to all our minds what those basic responsibilities are that we of this living time in the evolution of the earth now must do, when he reminds us that:

Through the years of legal battles and a very measured examination of Aboriginal issues, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has given well-considered definition to Rights and Aboriginal Title in the context of Canada in the modern world.

Aboriginal Rights are a far-reaching right of the collective, held not only for the present generation but for all succeeding generations. The rights also include an economic component coupled with a very deliberate and appropriate “inherent limit,” which requires that the land “not be used in a way that is irreconcilable with the attachment an Aboriginal group has with the land” nor shall it be encumbered in ways “that would substantially deprive future generations of the benefit of the land.” This is, in fact, a limit that, if applied to all, could go a long way in looking after the earth.

In difficult times, our people stood to look after our land and restore our rights leaving us a solid legal base from which we can uphold our responsibilities. This changed the legal and political dynamic requiring governments and industries not only to consult, but to make accommodations, while the Supreme Court also called out for “reconciliation.”

And so it began: out of the sacrifice and efforts of our champions to look after the lands came the attention of Corporate Oil, with the tried solution of simply buying its way.

Regardless of owner or name, a pipeline and all that comes with it crosses the “inherent limit” and certainly does not carry any Aboriginal Rights. There is none amongst us of any colour or creed that can claim a right to disregard the neighbour downstream, or who can claim a right to neglect life. There is none amongst us with the right to harm the great killer whale or the little barnacle.

An Indian pipeline would be a business venture as any other and is not “reconciliation”; rather, an infringement and a threat.

Be certain that the apparatus killing this planet is a nasty one and it seems intent on finishing the dirty deed. It gains strength through violence with the jack-booted obedient servants at its beck and call. It is commanding enough to recruit our cousins if not you and me. Though it is tough as hell, it’s not that smart.

Left to its devices this Juggernaut will continue killing our planet, and without intervention our fate is sealed and we may as well prepare a dignified exit, but that would be irresponsible.

While it must be stopped, don’t wait for the Indigenous people to lead. The Indians are few in number, battle-weary, and, along with the multitudes, distracted by the ballgames and trying to pay the bills. We are too easy to imprison, too easy to kill, and as you see, as fallible as any.

Be assured, however, that on the front lines the Indigenous people are already standing up for the health of the planet, already standing for basic clean air and water. Most of us love this planet and respect life before money.

Children all over the world are calling out for us to stop this careless behaviour and fix this disorder. The grown-ups still ignore the symptoms and avoid the cure.

Reach out across the chasms to your fellow earthlings and devote some time to figuring this thing out. In each of us is some measure of good and understanding of truth, and somewhere in there is the solution. There is no need to put anyone in harm’s way.

We, the multitudes, allowed it to come to this. We, the creators of the Juggernaut, have got to fix it together.

So with this amplification of Guujaaw’s wise words, there’s nothing more left to be said other than for each human being in Canada and every other country to now do what their individual conscience and morality directs them to do to stop all the dirty deeds of the nasty Juggernaut and its jack-boots in the world that daily are steadily killing all our lives and that of our crystalline Blue Planet.

Each human being must now open up and speak truth to power in the face of the next wave of all the propaganda that will continue to be unleashed to try to convince us all that what is being done to reduce the world’s climate crisis by pumping yet more bitumen throughout the world is right and just for British Columbia, Canada and everyone else.

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Jerome Irwin is a freelance writer who, for decades, in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, has sought to call attention to problems of sustainability caused by excessive mega-developments, the resulting horrors of traffic gridlock, loss of single family neighbourhoods and a host of related environmental-ecological-spiritual issues and concerns that exist between the conflicting philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

Immediately after Dr Mohammed Morsi’s death on the 17^th of June 2019, a number of organisations and individuals had called for a thorough, independent investigation into the cause of his death while on trial in a Cairo court for espionage charges. The United Nations was one of the organisations that demanded an independent investigation. There is no indication that any attempt is being made currently through the UN or any other independent international outfit to ensure that the truth about Morsi’s death is established.

It is imperative that a credible inquiry is conducted at once under the aegis of the UN. Because it is alleged that when he collapsed in court, no medical attention was accorded to Morsi for about 20 minutes, various quarters including his family have accused the authorities in Egypt of conspiring to murder him. In fact the President of Turkey, Recep Erdogan has been emphatic about describing Morsi’s demise as “murder.”  Under international humanitarian law any sudden death in custody must be followed by an independent investigation.

Besides, Morsi who was incarcerated for six years, often in solitary confinement, had various ailments which could have impacted upon his death. He was suffering from diabetes and had liver and kidney problems.  International human rights groups have maintained all along that Morsi was denied adequate medical attention — in spite of numerous requests from Morsi  and his family. 

His prison conditions were harsh and inhumane. He had only three family visits for brief periods during his entire incarceration. Visits from his lawyers were also severely restricted.

Morsi’s mistreatment in prison was all the more unacceptable because the charges against him were politically motivated. A wide range of commentators and human rights advocates had made this observation. Some of them had pleaded with the Egyptian authorities to grant Morsi the standard rights due to a prisoner.

The authorities not only deprived him of his basic rights. It appears that they were determined to erase his role and his contribution to society. They did not want Egyptians especially the younger generation to show any appreciation of the fact that Morsi was the first democratically elected president of Egypt. 

Surely, the manner in which the first democratically elected president of Egypt died in custody deserves to be investigated in an honest and transparent manner 

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

Praise from US President Donald Trump has a tendency of tarnishing gold and ungilding matters, and there was something of the muck in his tweet praising Australia for its sadistic approach to refugee arrivals.  Operation Sovereign Borders, which commenced in 2013, was the high water mark in an experiment of glacial cruelty: to treat refugee arrivals – those specifically taking the sea route to Australia – as a security, if not military threat. That these people were merely availing themselves of human rights acknowledged in international humanitarian law was given the thickest of glossing overs.

A veil of impenetrable secrecy was imposed on the number of boat arrivals, the number of operations, and the entire operational nature of the exercise.  To enforce the effort, Prime Minister Tony Abbott created a force outfitted with the sort of dark kit that would have made the goose-steppers swoon and old military orders sigh.  The Australian Border Protection Force would be given a separate, higher standing than other agencies, with the slightest fascist lite appeal of uniforms, badges and insignia.  (Those cheeky disorderly refugees need only the best the business of repelling can buy.)

By 2016, the Sydney Morning Herald noted that some “20 per cent of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s senior executive ranks are now uniformed, with the majority working within the Australian Border Force.”  And such thuggish authority will come with its host of ironies: those figures of sound authoritarian reassurance had donned uniforms made “almost entirely in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and China.”

While the likes of former prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott might have been brimming with excitement and pride at the creation of one of the world’s most ruthless gulag-enforced systems to counter “illegals” (this concept is, as with much in the refugee world, anathema and arbitrary), the model remains hard to export.  For one, it involes exorbitant, costly measures – the Australian program costs billions, an imposition of cruelty at cost.  In another sense, it also furnishes the public with an illusion that borders are secure.  The problem is merely deferred and deflected to other states (very neighbourly is Australia on that score).  Nor does this halt those seeking aerial routes.

Trump, as he tends to, mines vaults of images for effect.  He wanted a particular quarry after the discovery of the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, found drowned in the Rio Grande on Monday.  “The image,” the New York Times suggested, “represents a poignant distillation of the perilous journey migrants face on their passage north to the United States, and the tragic consequences that often go unseen in the loud and caustic debate over border policy.”

An appreciation for poignancy and good grace are not the standout features of the US President.  Since being in office, he has conflated the immigration issue with the search for asylum.  “The United States will not be a migrant camp,” he promised in June 2018, “and it will not be a refugee holding facility”.  Criminalisation has been a strong theme.  Parents have been separated from their children.  The process for seeking asylum has become one of crawling rather than pacing.

According to Senator Bernie Sanders, “Trump’s policy of making it harder to seek asylum – and separating families who do – is cruel, inhumane and leads to tragedies like this.”  Trump’s retort was uncomplicated: the Democrats were preventing him from plugging holes in Fortress USA.  “If they fixed the laws you wouldn’t have that.  People are coming up, they’re running through the Rio Grande.”

Having scoured a few examples of Australian border force material, he tweeted how, “These flyers depict Australia’s policy on IIlegal Immigration.  Much can be learned!”

The flyers were of the standard, blaring variety, with the border authorities condemning anybody daring to make the journey of danger.  “No way you will make Australia home,” screams a headline, followed by the boastful assertion that,  “The Australian Government has introduced the toughest border protection measures ever.”  Another promises that any attempt to journey to Australia by boat will not result in settlement in the country itself.

Much of the gathered material was drawn from a 2014 campaign rich in agitprop, a vulgar compilation of images and text topped by a graphic novel depicting asylum seekers mouldering in despair in an offshore detention centre.  The then immigration minister Scott Morrison gave it a certain advertising coarseness, a point he replicated during his election campaign last month for the Australian prime ministership.

Trump’s tweet serves as a statement of endorsement to add to a now vast compendium of admiration from Budapest to Washington; the Australians, we are told, got it right. The Refugee Council of Australia offers a different interpretation.  In theassessment of its communications director Kelly Nicholls, “Australia’s harsh policies have come at a terrible cost: 12 people have died; women, men, and children have endured enormous mental and physical harm; Australia’s reputation has been tarnished and all this has cost us more than $5 billion.”

Another assessment, however, is in order.  The displaced person enrages rather than encourages empathy.  They are, to use that expression Hannah Arendt made famous, the heimatlosen, stateless, deracinated souls plunged into legal purgatory.  It was Arendt who urged, in response to the post-Nazi era peppered by death factories and human displacement, the need for “a new guarantee which can be found only in a new political principle, in a new law on earth, whose validity at this time must comprehend the whole of humanity while its power must remain strictly limited, rooted in and controlled by newly defined territorial entities.”

Such entities of control and compassion have yet to be established.  We are left with traditional ones dedicated to brute force cemented by a distinct disregard for the dignity of the human subject.  The rootless remain objects of disdain and, for politicians, a golden currency for re-election.

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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]

Justin was an outstanding author, antiwar activist, an inspiration to all of us. I first met Justin in Kuala Lumpur at the very outset of the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War. He had been invited by Dr.  Mahathir Mohamad, who is currently the prime minister of Malaysia. Justin Raimondo‘s contributions and analysis will live. “Justin was one of a kind. He will be missed, both here at Antiwar.com and by the wider world.” (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 28, 2019)

To consult Justin Raimundo’s articles on Global Research click here

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Justin Raimondo, former editorial director and co-founder of Antiwar.com, is dead at 67. He died at his home in Sebastopol, California, with his husband, Yoshinori Abe, by his side. He had been diagnosed with 4th stage lung cancer in October 2017.

Justin co-founded Antiwar.com with Eric Garris in 1995. Under their leadership, Antiwar.com became a leading force against U.S. wars and foreign intervention, providing daily and often hourly updates and comprehensive news, analysis, and opinion on war and peace. Inspired by Justin’s spirit, vision, and energy, Antiwar.com will go on.

Justin (born Dennis Raimondo, November 18, 1951) grew up in Yorktown Heights, New York and, as a teenager, became a libertarian. He was a fierce advocate of peace who hated war, and an early advocate of gay liberation. He wrote frequently for many different publications and authored several books. He was also politically active in both the Libertarian and Republican parties.

The Young Rebel

When Justin was six, he was, in his own words, “a wild child.” This will surprise no one who knows him. In “Cold War Comfort,” which he wrote for Chronicles Magazine, he tells how he dashed out of his first-grade class with his teacher chasing him. Because this was a daily occurrence, he writes, he was sent to a prominent New York psychiatrist named Dr. Robert Soblen. Just this decade, Justin got his hands on Soblen’s notes on his case and learned that Soblen had concluded that Justin was schizophrenic. Soblen’s reason? Justin was Catholic, claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary, and believed in miracles. Soblen recommended locking up young Justin in a state mental institution. The one Soblen had in mind was Rockland State Hospital, which, according to Justin, was the backdrop for the movie The Snake Pit.

Soblen was not just a psychiatrist. He was also a top Soviet spy and friend of Stalin who was tasked with infiltrating the American Trotskyist movement. He was ultimately convicted of espionage and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1961. Ultimately, in 1962, Soblen committed suicide after jumping bail, fleeing to Israel, and seeking asylum in the UK.

When Justin was 14 years old, he wrote an article on Objectivism, Ayn Rand’s philosophy, for a local New York newspaper. Rand’s lawyer, Henry Holzer, responded by sending him a “cease and desist” letter. Not long after, Justin went to a lecture at the Nathaniel Branden Institute and stood in line to get a book signed. He was identified, pulled out of line, and escorted to a private room. Soon Nathaniel Branden came in and gave Justin a resounding lecture. Shortly after this, Ayn Rand herself entered the room with her entourage. According to Justin, she seemed surprised that he was so young. When Justin told her that the editors of his piece had edited it and changed some of his meaning. Rand warmed up and said, “So you want to be a writer.”

As an Objectivist and budding libertarian, Justin participated in the student strike at his progressive high school, Cherrylawn, in 1968. Although exuberantly popular with students and quite a real-life experiment in anarcho-libertarianism, the school ultimately reverted to its more traditional mode of, among other things, decision making. No more collective morning meetings of students to decide what they would or would not study that day, and whose classes they would attend!

Shortly after graduating from high school, Justin made the leap to San Francisco. Here Justin found a place he made his own and remained for nearly 40 years.

The Activist

Justin was very active politically from an early age. In the mid to late 1970s, he worked to get the Libertarian Party to accept gay rights and was a participant in the gay liberation movement in San Francisco. Justin was one of the activists who spoke out strongly against the Dan White verdict. White was found guilty of manslaughter and given a 7-year prison sentence for killing San Francisco mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, two prominent gay rights advocates. Justin thought that White should have been found guilty of first-degree murder. His powerful booklet about the case, In Praise of Outlaws, was published by the Students for a Libertarian Society.

Justin CO-founded the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus (LPRC) in late 1978. Economist Murray Rothbard joined a few months later. Around the same time, Justin became one of the first employees of the newly formed Students for a Libertarian Society. Shortly after Democratic US Senator Sam Nunn and other members of Congress moved to reinstate the military draft and draft registration, Justin helped organize a number of anti-draft rallies that were held around the country on May 1, 1979. The LPRC disbanded in 1983.

Charles Koch in a heated discussion with Justin, circa 1979

Known for gay rights activism and radicalizing the Libertarian Party, Justin nevertheless did not for the most part identify with the left. He found more intellectual inspiration in the Old Right, people like John T. Flynn, Albert J. Nock, Frank Chodorov, Isabel Paterson, and other mid-20th century figures who defended the vision of a constitutional republic and protested the progressive leviathan’s despotic powers at home and abroad. Justin was especially influenced by novelist Garet Garrett, who saw Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency as a revolutionary development that gutted American freedom while leaving the superficial form of the Constitution intact, and who was perhaps “even harsher” in opposing Truman’s Cold War imperialism. Justin regarded the irreconcilable conflict between interventionists and traditionalists as the defining struggle over the heart and soul of American conservatism.

Justin long hoped that electoral politics could restore anti-imperialism on the right. In 1987, Justin and his friends Eric Garris, Colin Hunter, and Alexia Gilmore started the Libertarian Republican Organizing Committee within the Republican Party. It was a predecessor to the Libertarian Republican faction within the Republican Party that was led by then-Congressman Ron Paul.

Not content just to write and organize, in 1996, Justin ran as a Republican against powerful Bay Area Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. In his campaign, he emphasized his opposition to her vote in favor of the Clinton Administration’s military intervention in Bosnia.

Because of his strong antiwar views, Justin also supported Pat Buchanan three times in his run for President of the United States: 1992, 1996, and 2000. In 2000, Justin gave the nominating speech for Pat Buchanan at the Reform Party convention in Long Beach. It can be seen here from 1:19:00 to 1:32:02.

A Writer to the End

Ayn Rand correctly intuited Justin’s path. Although at times a dedicated activist, he primarily fought the power through writing. Justin wrote regularly for the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, and the American Conservative. He also wrote for Reason, Mises Review, the Journal of Libertarian Studies, Libertarian Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Spectator, Real Clear Politics, and Mother Jones. For several years, he also had a monthly column for Chronicles Magazine.

His two most important books were his 1993 Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, published by the Center for Libertarian Studies and reissued in 2008 by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute with a Foreword by Pat Buchanan and an introduction by George W. Carey, and his 2000 biography, An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard, published by Prometheus Books.

Of course, his most prolific writing was for Antiwar.com. He, along with managing editor Eric Garris, helped set up Antiwar.com in 1995 and he was writing a column 7 days a week by 1999, when Antiwar.com became a major force on the World Wide Web, going viral when it led nationwide opposition to the NATO bombing of Serbia and Kosovo. Justin was the guiding light of Antiwar.com and over those 20 years wrote about 3,000 articles.

Largely due to Justin’s columns, Antiwar.com continued to grow in focus and influence after September 11, 2001, and established itself as a leader of opposition to the new wars of the 21^st Century. Justin led the charge in stressing the need for libertarians, peace activists, and all Americans to resist the war machine, starting with the Afghanistan intervention. His writing on Antiwar.com got him on cable news during the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq: he appeared multiple times on Fox News Channel, CNN, and MSNBC. His outspoken views made him a target of various pro-war intellectuals, notably Bill Kristol, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens. As the nation went to war and throughout the years of conflict, Justin did not tire in his opposition. No writer more relentlessly and meticulously documented the crimes of the war party.

Pursuing the American Dream

Justin fondly quoted poet Robinson Jeffers, who described America as a “perishing republic.” But Justin never gave up on the country he loved, and in his later years he found his own piece of the American dream. In 2007 Justin moved from San Francisco up north to Sonoma County, where he embraced life as a curmudgeonly semi-gentleman-farmer. He took immense pleasure in cutting his lawn, chatting with the neighbors, and surveying the horse pastures beyond the wooden fences across the road, all the while assiduously following political and cultural events, largely via the internet.

Justin and his husband Yoshi

Although early on he was skeptical of gay marriage, Justin defended the right of gays to marry, and married his longtime companion, Yoshinori Abe, in 2017.

When Justin was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in October 2017, he was told he had at most 6 months to live. But he was an early user of Keytruda, which likely increased his lifespan by over one year.

One of the last pleasures Justin had as part of his Antiwar.com activities was seeing, on June 12, three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in 18-15416 Dennis Raimondo v. FBI, roundly rebuke the pathetic Department of Justice lawyer who claimed that the court should have no say in how the FBI held on to evidence when it was clear that no crime was committed.

On Thursday, June 27, Justin finally succumbed to his cancer. He is survived by his two sisters, Dale and Diane, and his husband Yoshi.

Justin was one of a kind. He will be missed, both here at Antiwar.com and by the wider world.

New research on fracking health impacts, combined with unusually high rates of pediatric cancer, sound alarm bells in Pennsylvania

FracTracker isn’t the only one digging deeper into the health impacts of fracking in the past few months. Last week, the Better Path Coalition organized a meeting at the Capitol Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to share new research with government officials, the press, and the public. These groundbreaking reports highlight the increasing body of evidence showing fracking’s adverse health and climate impacts.

Following the presentations on emerging research, Ned Ketyer, M.D., F.A.A.P, discussed the highly concerning proliferation of rare pediatric cancer cases in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Dr. Ketyer drew data from a report released last month by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, which uncovered an unusually high number of childhood cancer diagnoses in southwestern Pennsylvania over the last decade. In just four counties (Washington, Greene, Fayette and Westmoreland), there were 27 people diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a rare bone cancer, between 2008 and 2018. Six of the 27 people diagnosed were from the Canon-McMillan School District in Washington County, where there are currently 10 students district-wide with other types of cancers.

The expected number of Ewing sarcoma diagnoses over this time period and for the population count of southwestern Pennsylvania would be 0.75 cases per year, or roughly eight cases over the course of a decade. Concerned at the high cancer rate in this region, health experts who convened in Harrisburg recommend eliminating likely causes until we have definitive answers.

Cancer in the Marcellus

The Pennsylvania Department of Health investigated three of these cases in Washington County and found that they did not meet the criteria definition of a cancer cluster. Still, the unusually high number of rare cancers over a small geography is cause for alarm and reason to suspect an environmental cause.

This four-county area has a legacy of environmental health hazards associated with coal mining activities and is home to a 40-year old uranium disposal site that sits in close proximity to the Canon-McMillan High School. But with the increase in cancer diagnoses over the past decade, many are looking towards fracking in the Marcellus Shale, the more recent environmental hazard to develop in the region, as a contributing cause.

Southwestern Pennsylvania is a hot spot for fracking activity. In these four counties, there are 3,169 active, producing unconventional gas wells. There are also the infrastructure and activity associated with unconventional development: compressor stations, processing stations (including Pennsylvania’s largest cryogenic plant), disposal sites for radioactive waste, and heavy truck traffic.

The environmental and health risks of these facilities were the focus of the presentations and discussions with Pennsylvania leaders last week.

View map fullscreen | How FracTracker maps work

Call for action

At the culmination of the Harrisburg meeting, participants delivered a letter to Governor Wolf’s office, calling for an investigation into the causes of these childhood cancer cases. Signed by over 900 environmental organizations and individuals, the letter also asks for a suspension of new shale gas permitting until the Department of Health can determine that there is no link between drilling and the cancer outcomes.

Governor Wolf’s response to Karen Feridun, the organizer of this campaign, was a disappointing dismissal of this public health crisis. Stating that the environmental regulations his office has implemented “protect Pennsylvanians from negative environmental and health impacts,” Governor Wolf went on to say that his office “will continue to monitor and study cancer incidents in this area, especially as more data becomes available,” but did not agree to suspend new permitting.

Wolf’s decision to continue with status quo permitting while waiting for more data to become available is unacceptable, and will lead to more Pennsylvanians suffering from the industry’s health impacts.

The Governor’s response is even more disheartening as it follows his recent support for a full ban on fracking activity in the Delaware River Basin (including eastern Pennsylvania). The Governor’s support for the ban is an acknowledgement of the industry’s risks, and leaves us frustrated that the southwestern part of the state is not receiving equal protection.

When is enough evidence enough?

The continued permitting of unconventional wells disregards the scientific evidence of drilling’s harms discussed in Harrisburg.

Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D, of Concerned Health Professionals of New York, discussed the results of the sixth edition of “The Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking.” The Compendium outlines the health risks of fracking infrastructure from almost 1,500 peer-reviewed studies and governmental reports. Notably, the report outlines the inherent dangers of fracking and finds that regulations are incapable of protecting public health from the industry.

Erica Jackson discussed FracTracker Alliance’s recently published Categorical Review of Health Reports. This literature review analyzed 142 publications and reports on the health impacts of fracking, and found that 89% contained evidence of an adverse health outcome or health risk associated with proximity to unconventional oil and gas development.

Brian Schwartz, M.D., M.S., the Director of Geisinger Health Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, presented epidemiological studies linking unconventional development to increased radon concentrations on homes and health impacts including adverse birth outcomes, mental health disorders, and asthma exacerbations.

Lorne Stockman, Senior Research Analyst with Oil Change International, discussed  “Burning the Gas ‘Bridge Fuel’ Myth,” a new report that further solidifies the irrationality of continued oil and gas development based on its climate impacts. The report shows that greenhouse gas emissions from fracking exceed climate goals, and how perpetuating the myth of natural gas as a “bridge” to renewables locks in emissions for decades.

A welcome ray of hope, this report also proves that renewables are an economically viable replacement to coal and gas, costing less than fossil fuels to build and operate in most markets. Furthermore, renewables combined with increasingly competitive battery storage ensures grid reliability.

“Burden of proof always belongs to the industry”

Among the inundation of data, statistics, and studies, Dr. Steingraber offered a sobering reminder of the purpose behind the meeting:

“Public health is about real people. When we collect data on public health problems, behind every data point, behind every black dot floating on a white mathematical space on a graph captured in a study, there are human lives behind those data points. And when those points each represent the life of a child or a teenager, what the dots represent is terror, unimaginable suffering, followed by death, or terror, unimaginable suffering, followed by a life of trauma, pathology reports, bone scans, medical bills, side effects, and uncertainty that all together are known as cancer survival.”

An adolescent cancer survivor herself, Dr. Steingraber clearly articulated the ethical responsibility our elected officials have to hold industry accountable for its impacts:

“Burden of proof always belongs to the industry, and benefit of the doubt always belongs to the child. It’s wrong to treat children like lab rats and experiment on them until the body count becomes so high that it reaches all the levels of statistical significance that tells you that we have a real problem here.”

The evidence is in – we know enough to justify an end to fracking based on its health and climate impacts. It’s time for Pennsylvania’s industry and leaders to stop experimenting with residents’ health and take immediate action to prevent more suffering.

Erica Jackson, Community Outreach and Communications Specialist, FracTracker Alliance

July 4 should be a day of mourning.  The rights our ancestors fought for have been taken away.

Over the course of my lifetime there has been a fundamental shift in the attitude of the judiciary toward Constitutional rights.  I remember when guarding against any diminishing of constitutional rights was considered more important than convicting another criminal. There were cases in which the evidence needed in order to convict a person could not be collected, or used if collected, because it violated constitutional rights.  There are many instances of criminals walking free because police, prosecutors, and trials violated their rights.  Much of the unthinking public would be enraged, because judges let a criminal off.  The public were unable to understand that the judges were protecting their rights as well as the criminal’s.

This is an age old problem.  In Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, is criticized for refusing to bend the law in order to better pursue criminals. Sir Thomas asks his critic, if I cut down the law in order to pursue devils, what happens to the innocent when authority turns on them?  This question formerly had a powerful presence in the courtroom.

Over the course of my lifetime, the emphasis shifted from protecting constitutional rights to seeing them as obstacles to law enforcement. In order to convict a single individual or class of individuals, precedents were established that set aside constitutional rights that protected everyone.  The judiciary began stripping away constitutional protections of the entire population in order that one more guilty person could be more easily convicted.

Larry Stratton and I have written about how law was transformed from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of government in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions.  The “war on crime,” the “war on drugs,” the “war on child abuse,” the “war on terror” have destroyed the US Constitution by the death of a thousand cuts.

Hardly anyone wants a criminal to go free, but sometimes letting criminals go is the only way to protect our constitutional rights.  Formerly, it was clearly understood that protecting liberty was more important than punishing every criminal.  Almost every day John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute provides another example of our disappearing rights.

Courts have used endless exceptions and special circumstances to chop down the protections provided by the Bill of Rights.  I would wager that most Americans see no problem in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling upholding the conviction of drunk driving in the case Whitehead discusses.  Indeed, if they knew about the case, they would be fulminating against the 4 justices who rose to the defense of the 4th Amendment as “liberal judges who want to turn criminals lose on society.”

Sir Thomas More’s warning in A Man of All Seasons has gone unheeded. Today the principle purpose of the US criminal justice (sic) system is to cut down our rights in order to secure convictions.  The practice has been so corrupting that today the US government routinely violates law, both its own and international, in pursuit of material interests. It is inconceivable to the neoconservatives that mere law should stand in the way of American hegemony or in the way of torture that can produce a false confession that serves some government purpose.  It is no longer possible to speak of American diplomacy as Washington relies entirely on threats, coercion, and controlled explanations.

The America that is romanticized in 4th of July celebrations no longer exists.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

June 28, 1918, one hundred years ago…

(An excerpt from Jacques R. Pauwels, The Great Class War 1914-1919, James Lorimer, Toronto, 2016)

On June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the infamous assassination in Sarajevo, the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles officially terminates the Great War. In reality, this treaty merely inaugurates a long truce that will expire in 1939, when worldwide warfare will resume, lasting until 1945. Many historians now indeed consider the First and Second World Wars as parts one and two of one single conflict, as a kind of twentieth-century edition of the disastrous “Thirty Years’ War” of the 1600s, with the years from 1918 to 1939 constituting a long intermission . . .

On a dark night toward the middle of November 1918, a ship bound for the United States encountered an oncoming vessel with all lights blazing, which was unheard of in view of the state of war and the danger represented by submarines. Via light signals, it was asked if perhaps the war was finished. The answer was: “No, it is only an armistice.” And indeed, an armistice such as the one signed by military officials at Rethondes did not put an end to the state of war. The state of war officially continued after November 11, 1918, to be terminated only when statesmen would reach an agreement and sign a peace treaty. In the meantime, allied troops entered Germany as conquerors, the Royal Navy continued its blockade of Germany, and in many regions of Eastern Europe fighting continued between withdrawing German troops, the Bolshevik revolutionaries, Polish and Lithuanian nationalists, etc. In France the state of siege, associated with the war, would be lifted only on October 12, 1919.

The peace negotiations took place in Paris. They started on January 18, 1919 and resulted in a treaty signed on June 28 of that same year in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. The French had decided on that venue in order to obtain some symbolic revenge for the fact that it was from that same room that the German Reich had been proclaimed in January 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The Treaty of Versailles officially ended the war between Germany and the Allies, except for the United States and China, which would sign separate peace treaties with Germany. With the Ottoman Empire and the successor states of the Habsburg Empire, Austria and Hungary, peace treaties would be signed with the former at Sèvres in 1920 and with the latter at Lausanne in 1923. The main points of the Versailles Treaty demonstrated all too clearly that the war had not been about freedom, justice, democracy, the defence of small countries such as Belgium, or to put an end to warfare and similar concocted rationales; this type of discourse was, and remains even today, only vulgar propaganda. It was all about consolidating and increasing the power and privileges of the elite. At Versailles the elite was admittedly unable, at least for the time being, to undo the unpleasant social outcome of the war, the revolution in Russia and major democratic political and social reforms that had been introduced in order to defuse revolutionary situations in Britain, France, Belgium, and elsewhere.

On the other hand, the elite had also unleashed the Great War in order to achieve imperialist objectives for the benefit of banks and corporations, and in this respect the war had produced considerable gains (for the winners, of course), which were enshrined at Versailles. The French, British, Japanese, and even the Belgians were confirmed in the possession of Germany’s former colonies in Africa and elsewhere, and of the oil-rich parts of the now-defunct Ottoman Empire. Nobody considered the possibility of independence for any of these regions, except under some undemocratic regime that could be counted on to do the bidding of the British or some other Western power, as in the case of Saudi Arabia. There was no question of independence for India, China was not allowed to provide any meaningful input during the Paris talks, and not a single foreign power contemplated giving up its mini-colonies (called “concessions”) in that country. The socialist English poet W.N. Ewer provided the following sarcastic comment on this kind of imperialist gluttony and on the hypocrisy of the statesmen who made the decisions at Versailles in a poem entitled “No Annexations”:

“No annexations?” We agree!

We did not draw the sword for gain,

But to keep little nations free;

And surely, surely, it is plain

That land and loot we must disdain,

Who only fight for liberty

. . . . . . . . . .

Of course it happens — as we know —

That ‘German East’ has fertile soil

Where corn and cotton crops will grow,

That Togoland is rich in oil,

That natives can be made to toil

For wages white men count too low,

That many a wealthy diamond mine

Makes South-West Africa a prize,

That river-dam and railway line

  (A profitable enterprise)

May make a paying paradise

Of Baghdad and of Palestine.

However, this is by the way;

We do not fight for things like these

But to destroy a despot’s sway,

To guard our ancient liberties:

We cannot help it if it please

The Gods to make the process pay.

We cannot help it if our

Fate Decree that war in Freedom’s name

Shall handsomely remunerate

Our ruling classes. ‘T was the same

In earlier days — we always came

Not to annex, but liberate.

With the Treaty of Versailles, the “ruling classes” were indeed “handsomely remunerated”; at least, those of the powers that emerged victoriously from the war and dictated the terms of the peace. The armistice of November 11, 1918 had not put an end to the war, and the peace treaty signed at Versailles, as well as the other treaties mentioned here, did not produce a genuine peace. On the side of the losers — and even of the winners — there were those who longed for a revanche while the ink on the documents was not yet dry. In fact, nobody was entirely satisfied with any of these treaties, but the least satisfied of all were to be found in Germany, where the once so powerful and ambitious elite had lost many of its feathers, but unfortunately not enough of them to abandon any hope for a military comeback and a revanchist war. On the side of the winners, too, the desire for revenge and the cupidity of the imperialists, reflected in the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, gave many people the nasty feeling that some of them had already experienced during the war itself, namely that even in case of victory over the German “Huns” there would be no question of real peace, but that a new Great War was likely to erupt again soon between the imperialist powers. In 1915 already, in his poem “War,” the writer Joseph Leftwich (or Lefkowitz) had accurately predicted the following:

And if we win and crush the Huns,

In twenty years

We must fight their sons,

Who will rise against

Our victory,

Their fathers’, their own

Ignominy.

And if their Kaiser

We dethrone,

They will his son restore,

or some other one,

If we win by war,

War is force,

And others to war

Will have recourse.

And through the world

Will rage new war.

Earth, sea and sky

Will wince at his roar.

He will trample down

At every tread,

Millions of men,

Millions of dead.

The armistice of November 1918, which ended the hostilities, did not inaugurate peace, and the peace officially proclaimed at Versailles in 1919 really amounted to a mere armistice, a truce predestined to expire sooner or later with the resumption of open hostilities and the official return of the state of war. That moment would come in 1939, when a new Great War would break out.

The Great War of 1914-1918 had been a conflict in which two blocs of imperialist powers massacred millions of human beings in order to lay their greedy hands on territories in Europe, Africa, and Asia that could provide their industrial and financial elites with desiderata such as raw materials, markets for finished products, opportunities for investment capital, and cheap labour. At the same time, within each belligerent country, the war also amounted to a class conflict, in which the elite, still a “symbiosis” of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie (or “upper middle class”) fought the plebeians of the lower class. The formal result of this imperialist Armageddon was a victory for the French-British duo, a nasty defeat for Germany, and an inglorious demise for the Austrian-Hungarian and Russian empires of the Habsburgs and the Romanovs, respectively. In reality, however, the outcome of the conflict was unclear, confusing and satisfied nobody.

Great Britain and France were the victors, but were exhausted by the enormous demographic, material, financial and other sacrifices that had been required. They were no longer the superpowers they had still been in 1914. Germany, on the other hand, distressed by war and defeat and severely punished at Versailles, lost not only its colonies but also a major part of its own territory, and it was left with only a Lilliputian army. However, it remained an industrial giant and a major power that could be expected to try again to achieve the imperialist ambitions for which it gone to war in 1914. Furthermore, the war had proved to be an opportunity for two non-European powers to reveal imperialist aspirations, namely Japan and the |US. The struggle for supremacy within the restricted circle of imperialist powers, which is what 1914-1918 had been, thus remained undecided. Making the situation even more complex, was the fact that other than Austria-Hungary, yet another major imperialist actor had vanished from the stage, namely Russia. However, its place had been taken by the Soviet-Union. This avowedly anti-capitalist state revealed itself to be a major thorn in the side of all imperialist states, of imperialism tout court. The reason: it was a source of inspiration, guidance, and support for revolutionary and radical-democratic movements within each imperialist power as well as for anti-imperialist movements worldwide. The existence of the Soviet-Union thus also constituted a threat to the imperialist powers’ fat portfolio of  colonial assets. Under those circumstances, Europe and the entire world continued to experience great tensions, conflicts, and aggressions. They would yield a second world war or, as many historians see it, the second act of the murderous “Thirty Years’ War” of the twentieth century.

Feature Image: William Orpen: The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles (Wikimedia Commons)

The President and the Prime Minister are divided over whether local elections should take place as originally scheduled this Sunday, with the former attempting to postpone them until October after the opposition promised to boycott the polls while the latter insists on holding them anyhow and ordered his parliamentary allies to initiate impeachment proceedings against the head of state in response.

Albania’s local elections have sparked an explosive political crisis in the West Balkan country after the opposition’s promise to boycott the polls pitted the President against the Prime Minister in an ever-worsening feud that threatens to turn violent this weekend. The Democratic Party withdrew from parliament in February to protest the ruling Socialist Party’s alleged corruption and ties to organized crime, and their leader Lulzim Basha is convinced that the upcoming local elections will be stolen in order to entrench Prime Minister Edi Rama’s power nationwide.

Without the Democrats’ participation, this Sunday’s elections lose their international legitimacy, which is why the Council of Europe recently announced that it’s withdrawing its monitoring mission. Whether a coincidence or not, Germany refused to advance Albania’s EU membership bid earlier this month too. Keeping in mind the deteriorating domestic political context in which these elections would prospectively be held, President Ilir Meta attempted to cancel them and postpone the vote until October in the hopes that the crisis could be resolved by then with the opposition’s return to parliament and their participation in the polls.

This effort was shot down by the parliament even though the President said that only the Constitutional Court has the authority to decide on his decrees, which prompted Rama to order his legislative allies to begin impeachment proceedings against Meta for trying to stop the elections. In turn, Meta reminded Rama that it’s he who’s the country’s supreme commander, hinting that he might resort to using the military to resolve this crisis. There might not be any choice either since the Democrats declared that they’ll actively prevent this Sunday’s vote from taking place, which raises fears of a violent scenario transpiring.

As Albania lurches towards what might eventually turn into a civil conflict, the rest of the region can’t help but feel alarmed. The concept of so-called “Greater Albania” is a myth to preserve the country’s unity and create a common cause around which to rally its distinct Gheg and Tosk people, and seeing as how Rama has a history of exploiting this ultra-nationalist sentiment from time to time in order to distract from domestic problems, it can’t be ruled out that his supporters might stage provocations in the neighboring countries of Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, and/or Montenegro for the purpose of rallying all Albanians to their side in this dispute.

Even if that speculated scheme succeeds, it might not be enough to win over the international community on which the practical legitimacy of Albania’s government depends. The chief advisor of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union recently spoke out against the country’s “mafia government” after his national media leaked tapes purporting to prove that Rama’s party was engaged in vote-buying and voter intimidation, signaling that the EU’s de-facto leader is tacitly siding with the opposition and believes that the Socialists need to make concessions in order to avoid a full-blown crisis. 

It’ll ultimately depend which side the US decides to back, however, since Washington is the real power broker in Tirana, but there are indications that it might follow in the EU’s footsteps. The US Embassy released a generic statement earlier this week that could be interpreted as playing it safe and not taking any side at this point, which is important in and of itself because it shows that the Socialists don’t have the full support of the Trump Administration, possibly also due to Rama’s connections to the President’s hated foe George Soros. As such, should violence break out on Sunday like the Embassy predicts, then the US might decisively turn against him.

What’s most important to the US is Albania’s political stability, which can only be assured through a free and fair electoral process following the success of the opposition’s enormous grassroots campaign in finally pressing this issue and forcing Washington to pay attention to the people’s demands. Albania’s possible descent into civil conflict couldn’t come at a more strategically inconvenient time for the US since it’s presently trying to implement “geopolitical reform” in the Balkans by pressuring Serbia to recognize Kosovo’s “independence”, but Vucic might walk back his gradual progress in this respect if his country’s neighbor slides into a sudden crisis.

Therefore, it’s not unforeseeable that the US might pull its support for Rama under certain scenarios in order to salvage the “larger prize” of reshaping the “New Balkans”. Albania is the lynchpin of this regional vision, but its pursuit of the shared goal of “Greater Albania” must be done in an systematic fashion, not through the type of risky ad-hoc provocations that Rama might resort to for the short-term interest of emerging victorious in the latest political crisis. Although he was an important asset for assisting the US’ strategic designs in the region over the years, he’s nowadays turning into a liability, thus raising the prospects of his patrons turning on him.

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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.

This incisive article was first published in May 2018

Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which has set the stage for another Iran crisis, has opened a new round of domestic political struggle, as Democrats in Congress, the anti-Trump television networks, and the tattered remains of the old anti-war movement try to push back.

But that effort has a fatal weakness at its core. It concedes to Trump and opponents of the Iran deal an effective argument: that the Iranians have been lying when they say they’ve never had a covert nuclear weapons program. The theme of Iran’s duplicity has been the emotional core of the assault on the JCPOA. It is no accident that the title and consistent theme of Benjamin Netanyahu’s melodramatic YouTube slideshow was “Iran lied.”

As I detail in my investigative history of the Iran nuclear issue, the Obama administration itself fell for a false narrative about a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program allegedly in operation from 2001 to 2003. After Netanyahu’s April 30 show, former secretary of state John Kerry tweeted:

“Every detail PM Netanyahu presented yesterday was every reason the world came together to apply years of sanctions and negotiate the Iran nuclear agreement—because the threat was real and had to be stopped.”

But a far more effective counter would have been the truth—that the long-accepted accusation about Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program is the product of an elaborate disinformation operation based on documents forged by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.

In mid-2004, the CIA acquired a massive set of documents that were said to have come from a secret Iranian nuclear weapons research program. Bush administration officials leaked a sensational story to selected news outlets about the intelligence find, describing to the New York Times what that newspaper described as Iranian drawings “trying to develop a compact warhead to fit atop its Shahab missile.” The same story of Iran mating a nuclear weapon to its longer-range ballistic missile was given to the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

But both the real provenance of the apparently incriminating documents and specific details about the documents themselves indicate that they are fraudulent. A major clue about the papers’ true origins was made public in November 2004, when Karsten Voigt, the coordinator for German-North American cooperation in the German Foreign Office, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal warning that the documents had been provided by “an Iranian dissident group,” and that the United States and Europe “shouldn’t let their Iran policy be influenced by single-source headlines.”

Voigt was clearly suggesting that the mysterious documents had come from the Iranian regime-hating MEK (Mujahideen-e-Khalq)—not from someone in the purported Iranian arms program. But no one in the corporate media universe followed up with Voigt, and it was not until 2013, three years after he’d retired from the Foreign Office, that he agreed to give this writer the story behind his warning.

Voigt recalled how senior officials of the Bundesnachtrichtendienst, or BND, the German foreign intelligence agency, had told him just days before the Wall Street Journal interview that they were upset Secretary of State Colin Powell had referred publicly to “evidence” that Iran had tried to design a new missile to carry a nuclear weapon. Voigt explained that the documents to which Powell was alluding had been turned over to the BND by an Iranian who had been a sometime source—but not a BND spy, contrary to later accounts in the Wall Street Journal and Der Spiegel.

In fact, he said, the BND did not regard the source as trustworthy, because they knew he was a member of the MEK, the exiled armed Iranian opposition group. The MEK is listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization because of its assassination of U.S. officers during the Shah’s regime and its bombings of public events after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The MEK also carried out “special operations” for Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq against domestic opposition during the Iran-Iraq war, and after that had been used by Israel’s Mossad to “launder” information that it wanted to make public but didn’t want attributed to Israel, according to two Israeli journalists. The MEK had pinpointed the location of Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility in August 2002. But it had gotten the satellite intelligence from Mossad, as Seymour Hersh reported in his 2005 book Chain of Command.

Two years before Voigt’s conversation with BND officials, then-BND director August Hanning personally warned CIA director George Tenet to be cautious about using the testimony of the infamous Iraq “Curveball” source regarding Iraqi bioweapons because it could not be independently confirmed. Other BND analysts said that “Curveball” was unreliable. Powell had nevertheless used the information in his infamous United Nations speech justifying the coming invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Two years later, BND officials were afraid history was about to be repeated in Iran. Germany had just joined France and Britain in reaching an accord with Tehran, which was aimed at averting a U.S. move to take the Iran file out of the IAEA and create a new crisis at the UN Security Council over the issue of the nuclear program.

But it wasn’t just the provenance of the MEK documents that was suspect. Their authenticity was never clearly established by the CIA, which could not rule out the possibility of falsification, according to the Washington Post. Mohamed ElBaradei, then director-general of the IAEA, was put under heavy political pressure by a U.S.-led coalition to publish a report endorsing those documents as evidence against Iran. But Elbaradei responded to the pressure by declaring in an October 2009 interview,

“The IAEA is not making any judgment at all whether Iran even had weaponization studies before because there is a major question of authenticity of the documents.”

Benjamin Netanyahu gave the public its first view of the documents on which the Bush administration had heavily relied to sway Elbaradei, showing in his slideshow a surprisingly crude schematic drawing of a Shahab-3 missile reentry vehicle with a circle representing a nuclear weapon. What is important to note about that image is that the shape of the reentry vehicle is the “dunce cap” shape of the original missile that Iran had acquired from North Korea in the mid-1990s. As early as 2000, the CIA’s national intelligence officer on Iranian missiles testified that Iran had already begun redesigning the Shahab-3 missile for better performance. But the outside world was in the dark about what the redesign would look like until the new missile was given its first test flight in August 2004. That test revealed that the redesigned reentry vehicle had a “tri-conic” or “baby bottle” shape.

However, the 36-page document of which the image shown by Netanyahu was a part, called “Implementation of Mass Properties of Shahab-3 Missile Warhead with New Payload,” was dated March-April 2003—long after the redesign of the reentry vehicle had taken place—as the IAEA’s May 2008 report shows on page two of its annex. The inescapable conclusion is that the authors of those drawings were not working for a project of the Iranian Defense Ministry but for a foreign intelligence agency, which guessed wrongly that the shape of Iran’s missile would not change fundamentally.

Lastly,* we have “Project 5,” another alleged project listed in the Iranian weapons program documents, supposedly involving uranium ore mining and conversion of uranium ore for enrichment. One of the sub-projects, designated “Project 5.15”, was for “ore concentration.” But when the IAEA accessed the original documents from Iran in response to its questions, it found that the contract for a “Project 5.15” for ore concentration had been signed not by a secret nuclear weapons project but by the civilian Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, which was in fact responsible for all activities relating to Iranian uranium ore mines.  Furthermore, the IAEA found that the project document had been signed in August 1999—two years before the start date of the alleged secret nuclear weapons research project.  When this writer confronted former IAEA Deputy Director Olli Heinonen about the contradiction, he admitted that he could not explain it.

The Israeli role in the creation of evidence of Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions didn’t end with the papers delivered by the MEK. In 2008-09, Israel turned over more alleged Iranian documents to the IAEA, including a report on experiments with “multi-point initiation” of a nuclear explosion, which Netanyahu emphasized in his recent YouTube presentation. The IAEA and the U.S.-led coalition of states that dominated it of course refused to identify the member state that had provided those documents, but ElBaradei revealed in his memoirs that the state was indeed Israel. 

The historical impact of the Israelis getting U.S. national security, political, and media elites to accept that these fabrications represented genuine evidence of Iran’s nuclear duplicity can hardly be understated. It has unquestionably been one of history’s most successful—and longest running—disinformation campaigns. But it worked without a hitch, because of the readiness of those elites to believe without question anything that was consistent with their perceived interests in continued enmity toward Iran.

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*Note 5/14: The story was republished with additional information by the author.

Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to TAC. He is also the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter.

The Orthodox world is facing a total rearrangement. The balance of powers and the distribution of influence between 14 mutually recognized Local Orthodox Churches is shifting as the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, historically first among equal autocephalous Churches, has completely lost its weight.

This is happening against the background of an unfolding crisis, which Orthodoxy hasn’t witnessed since the Great Schism of 1054. The threat of a new schism emerged because of Patriarch Bartholomew’s ambitions who claims he is the leader of the Orthodox world. The division affects nearly all of the autocephalous Churches, repartitioning the margins of some Churches and breaking up the unity of the other.

Becoming a puppet out of greed, interfering in the other Church’s affairs, the “Green” Patriarch Bartholomew put the future of all Orthodox Christianity at stake. Bartholomew and his followers ignore all warnings of caring Orthodox hierarchs, clergy and laity including respected theologians. Having let himself involved in US geopolitical intrigues and pretending to be “caring” for the Ukrainian faithful, the Ecumenical Patriarchate keeps steering the Orthodox world towards a catastrophe.

Constantinople’s hierarchs have spoken a lot about the unity of Ukrainian believers (which allegedly is facing a “threat” – the presence of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate led by Metropolitan Onufry). It took less than a year for the Phanar to establish a new Church structure and recognize its independence. However, the Patriarchate of Constantinople forgot to secure the very unity promised by its hierarchs: now the two leaders of the new “Church” (Epiphanius and Filaret) are struggling for power, to say nothing of the unity for the Orthodox faithful across whole Ukraine.

Greek and Russian theologians have paid attention to the Phanar’s numerous mistakes: the most important requirement for granting autocephaly wasn’t adhered, millions of Ukrainian believers were “outlawed”, the absence of apostolic succession of the hierarchs admitted by Constantinople without repentance is deliberately silenced.

Why has Bartholomew suddenly decided to satisfy the request of Ukrainian schismatics ignoring the Holy Canons and the tradition of the Holy Fathers (for example, the works of St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite)? No one really tries to conceal the answer: the reason is the political situation in Ukraine and the world. The Phanar’s finances leave much to be desired, “the leader of the Orthodox Church” barely makes both ends meet, and the desire of Ukrainian nationalists was in line with the desire of American masterminds who set in Ukraine the puppet regime of Poroshenko ready for anything to preserve his power. Moreover, the USA uses military, economic and diplomatic leverages to put pressure on many Local Churches and promised to help the Phanar with lobbying its interests in the Orthodox world.

Nevertheless, no Local Church except the Patriarchate of Constantinople has recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). This is not what Constantinople expected and its hierarchs are trying to convince the other Churches. Everyone understands though that the OCU is an example of fragrant violation of Church Canons, and unlike Patriarch Bartholomew hierarchs don’t want to betray the Church of Christ for the sake of American interests.

Meanwhile, things are going bad for Bartholomew. The Orthodox world is deliberating on his anathematization. Its reasonableness isn’t questioned since Bartholomew’s canonical violations are obvious. Just for not denying the schismatic actions and the “two independent self-sufficing families of Local Orthodox Churches” heresy of Filaret, according to Apostolic Canon 45, Patriarch Bartholomew must be defrocked.

The Patriarch recognized the sacraments of anathematized heretic Filaret and Makariy (Maletich) who must be excommunicated, recognized the clergy concelebrating with Filaret, for which according to Apostolic Canons 45 and 46, he must be defrocked and according to the Apostolic Canon 10 anathematized.

Bartholomew also recognized the ordination of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) and Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP) schismatics, so per Apostolic Canon 45 he must be defrocked and per the 10^th Canon excommunicated.

Moreover, as mentioned in the letter of 12 Athonite monks to the Holy Kinot (the supreme body of Holy Mount Athos), the Synod of one Church cannot cancel the excommunication imposed by another Church. Those who violate this rule, as did Patriarch Bartholomew with the Ukrainian schismatics, which were anathematized by the Russian Orthodox Church and can be let in communion only by it, are excommunicated.

Along with this Constantinople cannot satisfyingly justify its authority and actions to defend from the criticism and instead is sinking in more and more its own lies, concealment and manipulations.

Greek hierarchs see this too, though autocephaly supporters are playing the card of “national solidarity” hinting at the Greek origin of Dimitrios Arhondonis (Patriarch Bartholomew), a Turkish-born citizen. They are simply tired of humiliating attitude towards them similar to the one which Archbishop Ieronymos, the Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church, has experienced at the celebrations of Bartholomew’s names day caused by Epiphanius Dumenko’s “surprising” presence.

As Charalambos Vouroudzidis writes in his article “The Great Schism in Orthodoxy and its Consequences”, “no matter how many pages the Phanar filled with their “patriarchal arguments”, the Great Schism has happened and led to terrible repercussions for the spiritually ecumenical status of the organization which united the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church”.

That is why Patriarch John X of Antioch suggested that a Pan-Orthodox Synaxis must be held to discuss the situation. He was supported by the primates of the Churches of Cyprus, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Albania, who decided to act as mediators. They hope to correct the mistakes made by Bartholomew and bring back peace between Orthodox Churches (and they have achieved some results in it by launching the settlement of the conflict between the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem which had been ignored by the Phanar).

First Constantinople tried to kill the clock and claimed that according to Apostolic Canon 34 the Pan-Orthodox Council cannot be convened without Patriarch of Constantinople as the “first hierarch”. And later Bartholomew decided: no Council is needed as everything is alright in Orthodoxy, the Ecumenical Patriarchate experiences no issues in communication with Local Churches; only Churches that are against him express discontent, so the improvement of relations depends only on them.

In his turn, Greek theologian Pavlos Trakados claims that such an interpretation is completely wrong and the Patriarch of Constantinople is afraid of the Council because he understands that the odds are not in his favor. Bartholomew does remember the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431) which denounced and excommunicated Patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople. The Sixth Ecumenical Council (680/681) condemned the monothelite Pope Honorius I, Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and his successors Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter postmortem. However, it seems that His All-Holiness Bartholomew is concerned about his personal ambitions and not the future of the Orthodox Church, so he keeps playing his dark game…

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Sophia Iliadi is a freelance blogger from Athens, currently based in the US. She’s written a couple of articles for Veterans Today, voreini.gr, exapsalmos.gr.

Featured image is from the author

The New Deal and World War II are reminders of past transformative times, reverberating in current severe hardships and extreme dangers. Emergencies can bring clarity and reason about what to do, though at the opposite end, crises can elicit the worst outcomes, such as outlined by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine. There are historical precedents for rational and responsible responses to emergencies, yet a range of measures that could immediately cut emissions, including non-tradable rationing of de-commodified energy and moratoriums on specific high-emitting sectors, are largely ignored in climate policy, including the Green New Deal and other climate justice platforms.

Is it accurate to call climate change an ‘emergency’? Fascism was seen as an emergency requiring urgent systemic changes, and it is arguable that climate change, caused and driven by capitalism (and its elaboration under neoliberalism), threatens far more lives than fascism. The careful research of historians Jason Moore, Andreas Malm, and others, show that modernity could have taken a very different path in terms of social organization and sources of energy.

Is it clarifying to understand global capitalism as a totalitarian organization in which the ‘full spectrum’ of Earth and its atmosphere are privatized, in which reductionistic science characterizes humans as genetically capitalistic and incapable of socially responsible behavior, and in which public knowledge about the unprecedented perils to human beings is systemically blocked?

The following article first focuses on the climate and on the underestimations of the magnitude of climate change mechanisms and its human impacts. Rationing and moratoriums are then discussed as strategies for immediate substantial reductions of greenhouse gases (GHG). The last section focuses on political action and implementation.

Human Fatalities

Typically, addressing the environmental and social crises is posed primarily as a problem of how to provide a liveable economy instead of a problem in addressing the loss of human life. This contributes, intentionally or inadvertently, to not understanding the extremity of the human situation brought about by the intersection of the climate system and the capitalist economy. The exact point of political possibility and knowledge in 1990, with the end of the Cold War and the certainty of anthropogenic climate change, engendered the “great acceleration” of all high-emitting economic sectors and ever-amplifying climate feedbacks, now rapidly driving the climate to a runaway state in which it will be too late for human interventions to alter the physics, biology, and biochemistry of the climate system.

Current reports are awakening an urgent climate movement, but the questions raised in this article are what replaces capitalism, how to urgently eliminate GHG emissions, and whether the new green plans, though a remarkable advance, are dangerously inadequate in scope.

Climate

What does ‘urgency’ mean – what are the effects of delaying greenhouse gas (GHG) elimination? The following selection of reports convey how climate is a complex interactive system that is already irreversibly altered by the incoming energy from the sun.

The October 2018 IPCC report warns that we have only 12 remaining years to cap temperature rise at 1.5C. Many scientists point out the very conservative nature of IPCC projections, partly due to data omissions in some climate models (e.g., omitting the extent of Arctic sea ice melt). Paleoclimate research, based on analysis of ice cores and ocean sediments, shows correlations between global surface temperature, sea level rise, and concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. Similarly, correlations exist of CO2 levels and temperature with past mass extinction events when the climate at times shifted precipitously and suddenly. In the paleoclimate record, levels of GHG equal to current values led to the disappearance of all Earth’s ice.

Is 1.5C a safe level? By the time of the 2009 Copenhagen climate meetings, eminent climate scientist James Hansen warned that 1C and 350 parts per milliom (ppm) represented the uppermost level to avert catastrophic changes. In 2009, the UN Environment Program predicted a 3.5C increase by 2100 at the 2009 rate of emissions, warning that such an increase would “remove habitat for human beings on this planet, as nearly all the plankton in the oceans would disappear.” In October 2009, the Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research suggested a 4C temperature increase by 2060. In November 2013, the International Energy Agency predicted a 3.5C increase by 2035.

The following paragraph may seem confusing, because it is. In December 2018, with reference to the carbon budget consistent with a 2C rise in temperature, the IPCC increased the allowable amount of CO2 emissions to 1170 Gt CO2 from the earlier budget of 1070 Gt CO2. In February 2019, the IPCC reported that “… increased action would need to achieve net zero CO2 emissions in less than 15 years to keep temperature to 1.5C.”

The idea of a carbon “budget” is itself erroneous, as it ignores the climate system dynamics of amplifying feedbacks and deteriorating carbon sinks, natural systems that absorb and store carbon dioxide. It is not possible to identify and anticipate all the amplifying feedbacks, such as when the shorter winter season led to pine beetles devouring huge swaths of Canadian boreal forest,– decimating the forest carbon sink and turning it into a source of CO2 emissions. What we see presently is the magnitude of change due to a global temperature increase less than 1C, and CO2 concentrations much lower than the current high reading of 417ppm due to delays in the climate system. “After the Scripps monitoring station atop Hawaii’s towering Mauna Loa went online in 1959, CO2 rose around just 0.7ppm per year. Then, in the 1990s, the rate increased to 1.5ppm per year. The last decade has averaged 2.2ppm. Yet, in the last year [2018], there was a 3.5ppm gain.”

The extent of recent accelerated change can be minimized by shifting the baseline of temperature measurement from the beginnings of the industrial revolution (1780) to 1950 or 1990. The methane threat can also be minimized by describing its heat-trapping potential as 25 times that of CO2 when averaged over a 100-year period. However, methane is 84 times more potent than CO2 in the short term, which is what counts in this emergency situation. In 2013, an international research group led by Oxford University scientists found evidence from Siberian caves that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius could cause permanently frozen ground to thaw over a large area of Siberia and could release over 1000 giga-tonnes of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, potentially accelerating global warming.

Around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades and at an unprecedented rate in human history. It is now also known that the loss of one species can lead to other species disappearance in a process known as co-extinction, and possibly bring entire systems to an unexpected, sudden shift or total collapse.

Forest fires are more frequent and increasingly intense and long lasting, and the forecast is that the resultant warming soils will emit the immense stores of carbon dioxide that they contain.

There was an unexpected 50% jump in methane emissions from the tropics between 2013 and 2018 compared with the period between 2007 and2012. Methane is also released from wetlands, fracking, livestock (cows), melting permafrost.

The tar sands extraction is another catastrophic factor. Climate scientist James Hansen said that the tar sands meant “game over for the planet,” and it was just reported that tar sands GHG emissions contribute 64% more emissions than previously estimated.

Antarctica is far more sensitive to climate change than originally predicted and is losing ice mass at a rate six times greater than in the 1950s. Current losses are doubling every decade, setting new records for Ocean Heat Content (OHC). The world’s largest ice shelf in Antarctica is melting 10 times faster than the overall average rate of melt.

Oceans Melting Greenland reports that warmer Arctic air and ocean temperatures are increasing the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet. On June 18, record-setting ice melt and sea ice loss occurred several weeks early resulting in “Greenland losing 2 billion tons of ice or about 45% of the surface in just one day.”

The decreasing temperature difference between the North Pole and the equator has already altered the jet stream. The Gulf of Mexico is much warmer than usual and is causing more evaporation, which is carried northward by wind currents where it meets hot dry air from the Rockies and cold dry air from the jet stream. This results in a region of increased tornadoes that is now shifting north and east from the traditional “tornado alley.” Over 500 observed tornados were reported this last May in the American Midwest; previously, only four periods in the official database ever exceeded 500 observed tornadoes in 30 days: 2003, 2004, 2008, and 2011.”

Oceans absorb both heat and CO2, and this is causing a decline in phytoplankton, a major source of Earth’s oxygen.

The oceans are also warming about 40% faster than previous estimates, contributing to more powerful storms, more rapid sea level rise, and changes in ocean currents. The proportion of fresh to salt water causes shifts in stratification and decreased circulation of nutrients and oxygen, as is already evident in the rising sea level that is causing salt water incursion into the major food-producing Nile and Mekong deltas where such a loss is critical.

The reporting of human impacts of climate change is highly influenced by politics and social attitudes. At the time of the Pakistan floods in 2009 when 20 million people were displaced, a prominent climate scientist advised students to count monarch butterflies to convince them of climate change. Meanwhile, barely any news has been reported about the failed monsoon in India, affecting 43% of the country.

“The country has seen widespread drought every year since 2015, with the exception of 2017. About 20,000 villages in the state of Maharashtra are grappling with a severe drinking water crisis, with no water left in 35 major dams. In 1,000 smaller dams, water levels are below 8%. The rivers that feed the dams have been transformed into barren, cracked earth. Groundwater, the source of 40% of India’s water needs, is depleting at an unsustainable rate… Twenty-one Indian cities – including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad – are expected to run out of groundwater by 2020, and 40% of India’s population will have no access to drinking water by 2030, the report said.”

While there is little representation of the devastating effects on people’s lives, NATO and the US military designate climate as a “threat multiplier.” The Quadrennial Defense Review, issued in 2014, defines climate-related threats: “These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions – conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.” The 2003 Pentagon Report projects “‘no-regret (military) strategies’ for worst case, global warming-induced eventualities.”¹

“No regret,” as defined by the Rand Corporation, means that the military must be well prepared for threats so that outcomes will not lead to regrets. Note the recent history of UN forces providing security: in Haiti where UN Peacekeepers caused 9500 deaths from cholera, in the Central African Republic where UN Peacekeepers were involved in sexual exploitation and abuse, in Nepal where UN peacekeepers caused 9000 cholera deaths. There are many non-military solutions to providing security.

Causes of actual human fatalities related to climate change include extreme weather, high temperatures that are not survivable, food and water shortages, the spread of disease pathogens, and the militarization of climate “security” and of borders. Monbiot reported 15,000 child fatalities due to the burning of Indonesian tropical forests for biofuel plantations (ironically, often earning carbon credits). Fatalities in California wildfires were compounded by class-based inequalities in zoning, austerity-based public defunding of fire departments and the exploitation of prisoners as firefighters. Nevertheless, it is only recently that the IPCC formed a working group on the human situation. In 2009, the Global Humanitarian Forum was already reporting the loss of 300,000 people per year due to climate change

Innumerable everyday examples could be cited of how the lived reality of the human situation and the sense of connection to other people are minimized by media and political interests.le. For example, while people are starving due to the confluence of drought and Cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi, and survivors can wait four hours for a bag of maize meal, the New York Times climate report featured, of all things, the food editor: “The climate is changing. And a lot of home cooks have been left paralyzed at the stove or in the marketplace as a result, choosing between the farmed salmon and the pasture-raised chicken, the organic tofu, the fair-trade coffee, the heritage carrots.” These tragedies in Africa should not be a surprise and were anticipated. In 2009, lead G77 negotiator Lumumba Di-aping, with tears rolling down his face, declared that delegates “have been asked to sign a suicide pact that would cause certain death for Africa, …a type of ‘climate fascism’ imposed on Africa by high carbon emitters.” In 2011, Nigerian climate delegate Nnimmo Bassey said that official climate inaction was a death sentence for Africa, and he linked the extraction of slave energy with the extraction of oil: “We thought it was oil/But it was blood.”²

The human side is abstracted even by the language used when we hear about the loss of the “planet” and of “organized civilization,” and of polar bears (In early childhood, attachment to soft furry animals precedes the capacity to have a constant sense of another person). The enclosure of the commons or the privatization of natural resources, has evolved into monetizing humans and ecosystem services and conferring personhood status to corporations: economist Sir Nicholas Stern defended the expansion of aviation because lengthier waits at airports for the business class leads to a greater economic loss than the climate-caused death of an impoverished person; and Larry Summers wrote that “dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage countries” made great economic sense.³ Military budgets price what is priceless – human life.

Rationing

As detailed in examples below, solutions to climate change proffered since the 1960s have not worked. An implicit illogic allows for the constant expansion of destructively high greenhouse gas emitters until they can shift to renewables. Virtually ignored are three high-emitting sectors that are exempt under the Kyoto Accord, all slated for vast expansion in the coming decades and all three not convertible to renewables: the military, international aviation and shipping. Other high-emitters rooted in the economic growth model include the agro-industrial complex; biofuels; extraction of minerals, metals, oil and gas; production of plastic; and the construction industry with its use of energy-intensive steel and cement. Logically, these sectors need to be stringently curtailed or eliminated, first of all, until the basic needs of the world population are prioritized and met without adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, secondly, until GHG concentration is drawn down to a safe level, and finally, until these sectors are actually fueled by renewables while fully accounting for externalities and life cycle analysis.

Among the range of solutions, negligible consideration is given to rationing and moratoriums even though these options could substantially cut emissions immediately without requiring new technologies. Since the 1960s, the focus has been on transitioning to renewables, with far less attention to the actual uses of energy and possible areas of elimination or moratoriums.

The rationality of rationing is readily apparent in times of extreme life threats. There are historical precedents to examine that can be helpful in preventing inequitable implementation and ensuring efficacy.

In his book Late Victorian Holocaust, Mike Davis describes life-saving rations used during the 1743-44 famine in the north China plain that devastated the winter wheat crop. When farmers died in their fields due to heat stroke, mass mortality was averted by the skilled Confucian administration of Fang Guancheng, the agriculture and hydraulic expert who directed relief operations. The renowned ‘ever-normal granaries’ in each county immediately began to issue rations (without any labour test) to peasants in the officially designated disaster counties. Local gentry had already organized soup kitchens to ensure the survival of the poorest residents until state distributions began. When local supplies proved insufficient, Guancheng shifted millet and rice from the great store of tribute grain and moved vast quantities from the south. Two million peasants were maintained for 8 months until the return of the monsoon made farming possible again. In comparison, no contemporary European society guaranteed subsistence as a human right to its peasantry nor could any emulate ‘the perfect timing of [Guancheng’s] operations. Guancheng “tended to give top priority to investments in infrastructure” and to “principles of disaster planning and relief management.”⁴ Contemporary Europeans were dying in the millions from famine and hunger-related diseases following Arctic winters and summer droughts. This compares with a conservative estimate of 50 million deaths in China under British control during the droughts of 1876-79 and 1896-1900, and in 1958-61, under Mao’s “monstrous mishandling” of agriculture during the Great Leap Forward [An unfortunate historical amnesia is the naming of Canada’s progressive climate movement “The Leap”).

In contrast, even before the US entered WWII to fight against the threat of fascism, the public was prepared for possible rationing. First rationed were rubber tires. Soon after, a moratorium was imposed on car manufacturing. A national speed limit of 35 miles per hour (56 km/h) was imposed to save fuel, and gas was distributed on the basis of need, prioritizing essential services. “As of 1 March 1942, dog food could no longer be sold in tin cans, and manufacturers switched to dehydrated versions. As of 1 April 1942, anyone wishing to purchase a new toothpaste tube, then made from metal, had to turn in an empty one. By June 1942 companies also stopped manufacturing metal office furniture, radios, phonographs, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and sewing machines for civilians.”

Stan Cox provides a particularly helpful analysis of rationing in the UK and US from WWII to the present. Rationing by quantity, combined with price controls, was broadly supported by the public, finding these the better way of ensuring that true needs are met when there is a situation of broad inequality. “As the United States shifted from a Depression mind-set into world war gear, a large slice of the population remained poor, and the equal shares aspect of rationing together with controls on prices and the rapid creation of well-paying wartime jobs, tended to boost the real incomes of working class Americans.”⁵ He wrote that people are more receptive to rationing when it is a response to a crisis. In fact, in August 1942, “when only a limited number of items were being rationed, a poll found 70% of respondents feeling they had not been asked to sacrifice enough,” and a later poll indicated that the majority of people felt that the government should have acted faster in rationing scarce goods. Support for continued price controls remained strong after the war. In Britain, demand swelled for “all around rationing.” In both the UK and US, the day-to-day management of rationing systems was handled at the local level. “The block leader, always a woman, would be responsible for discussing nutritional information and sometimes rationing procedures and scrap drives with all residents of her city block.”

Rationing was also adaptable to special needs, such as those of pregnant women and children who received extra shares of milk and of foods high in vitamins, while farmworkers and others who did not have access to workplace canteens at lunchtime received extra cheese rations. The government response changed based on what people demanded. Cox quotes Fred Magdoff, co-author with John Bellamy Foster of What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism, who predicts that rationing will very likely be necessary in any future economy that takes the global ecological crisis seriously. Rationing by quantity rather than ability to pay “makes sense if you want to allocate fairly. It’s something that will have to be faced down the line. I don’t see any way to achieve substantive equality without some form of rationing… [but] there’s a problem with using that terminology. There are certain ‘naughty’ words you don’t use. ‘Rationing’ is not considered as naughty as ‘socialism,’ but it’s still equivalent to a four-letter word” (p. 64).

Rationing can be authoritarian, as in Israel’s strangulation of all supplies going into Gaza, to the point of even regulating caloric intake! In contrast, the work of Stan Cox describes highly participatory and community-based rationing. One precondition of rationing and moratoriums could require free, prior and informed consent, modelled on the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights.

Moratoriums

Ecosocialist Ian Angus provides a brilliant example of the utility of both rationing and moratoriums: Ira Rennert, a criminally neglectful magnate from the high-emitting extraction sector is obscene in his consumer life style, but as a capitalist, his mines cause 85 times more arsenic, 41 times more cadmium and 13 times more lead than is safe; 99% of children tested in proximity to his Peruvian mine had blood-lead levels that vastly exceeded WHO limits.⁶ Real climate action would entail rationing his personal energy use. Non-tradable rationing would allow him to heat or cool one bedroom and one bathroom out of the 25 of each in his primary estate. A moratorium would shut down the mines: mining destroys the soil and forest carbon sinks, and degrades water. Under a just transition, his other properties could be re-distributed to people in need of housing under a humane application of eminent domain.⁷ Lennart’s life style clearly reflects the reasons that the current housing crisis is severe and global and is a product of both climate-caused disasters and the far-reach of the invisible hand of capitalism.

High-emitting sectors continue to expand despite extensive legal challenges, strategic alliances, persistent community activism, political promises, scientific corroboration and international support. Power and wealth overrode opposition at Standing Rock, the Trans Mountain pipeline, and the Narmada Dam in India. The Nation (04/01/19) and Guardian Weekly recently reported an extensive study by the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) about petroleum companies’ $65-billion investment in plastics production, involving ExxonMobil and Saudi Basic Industries Corporation. More than 333 petrochemical projects are underway or newly completed in the US. The CIEL report indicates that the entrenchment of fossil fuels in the plastic production process will be hard to overcome by renewables. The waste will be sent to developing countries. Small US communities were not informed about takeovers and have no say about the new industrial zones that are polluting water and air with a range of toxic compounds. Externalities include 20 to 25 million gallons of water per day required by the “‘cracker’, a facility that uses heat and pressure to crack apart molecules of ethane gas…”

Greenwash abounds. These same corporations announced the Alliance to End Plastic Waste with an initial commitment of $1-billion. In England, the environment secretary announced a phase-out of plastic straws by 2020 to “ensure we leave our environment in a better state for future generations.” Greenwashers literally grasp at straws. Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau just announced a phase-out of single-use plastic by 2021, while at the same time, approving the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. Stopping the production of plastic straws and single-use plastics is not enough. Plastic at the ocean’s surface releases methane and other greenhouse gases, and these emissions increase as the plastic breaks down further. “Microplastic in the oceans may also interfere with the ocean’s capacity to absorb and sequester carbon dioxide.”

The highly touted levies by British Columbia and Australia of a carbon tax deflected attention from the simultaneous expansion of coal mining for shipping to China for manufacturing steel, much of it exported. Again, carbon taxes are not enough. High-emitting coal, shipping and steel manufacturing rationally require moratoriums.

Instead of a moratorium on car manufacturing and investment in free public transit and in reorganizing densely populated areas so that food and other essential goods are nearby, one of the highly acclaimed recent solutions is the electric car. Externalities and life-cycle analysis of electric vehicles includes large amounts of plastic in the car’s body, mined materials (and ruined ecosystems, usually in least developed countries), data centre emissions, water required in the manufacturing process, the source of energy for charging batteries, plus the car infrastructure of streets and roadways that pave over a great deal of fertile agricultural land. Another important fact to keep in mind is the cost when the majority world population cannot even afford indoor toilets.

After the calamities of two world wars in the 20th century, the extant nations agreed to “end the scourge of war,” but now, at the most dangerous time in human history, dismantling the military, or even placing a moratorium on the military-industrial-financialization complex, seems risible and is still not addressed in any climate discourse. The military is exempt from the Kyoto Protocol, and it is the single largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Estimates of military emissions are based mainly on battle machinery and infrastructure – its aircraft and aircraft carriers, its domestic and foreign military bases. It is difficult to know if calculations also include life-cycle analysis of the manufacturing process itself and the procuring and processing of materials. Emissions could also include the enormous energy requirements of the military’s data centres as well as its wholesale defoliation of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and North Korea. The military, like so many high emitting sectors, continues to expand in globalized walled militarized borders. Security in densely populated areas is modelled on Israel’s battle-tested strategies, weaponry, and surveillance technology. The Chinese Belt and Road project, together with emerging Middle East alignments, crisscross Eurasia and parts of Africa with military installations along the enormous coal/oil/gas infrastructure.

US-NATO wars are fought for oil and dominance. The US Department of the Navy released a 36-page document in 2009 called Navy Arctic Roadmap. “The United States has broad and fundamental national security interests in the Arctic region and is prepared to operate either independently or in conjunction with other states to safeguard these interests. These interests include missile defense and early warning, deployment of sea and air navigation, and overflight.” They also comprise secure US sovereign rights over extensive marine areas, including the valuable natural resources they contain. “What the practical implementation of this policy means is the expanded penetration of the Arctic Circle by the US Navy’s submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) third of the American nuclear triad… and the extension of plans for a US-NATO Asian-NATO worldwide interceptor missile system already being put into place near Russia’s western, southern and eastern borders. US and NATO radar submarine and missile deployments in the so-called High North will complete the encirclement.”⁸

Proposed moratoriums on other large GHG emitters have not been implemented: on fracking, hydroelectric dams, biofuels. Several years ago, George Monbiot reported that up to 15,000 children in Indonesia died as a result of the burning down of tropical forests to make room for biofuel plantations. Meanwhile, the biofuel alternative to fossil fuels was a major cause of high food prices in the 2008 economic crisis: “On July 3, 2008, the Guardian came out with an expose on a secret report made by a World Bank economist that claimed that US and EU agrofuels policies were responsible for three-quarters of the 140 percent increase in food prices between 2002 and February 2008.”⁹

Changing the System

The US Green New Deal aims for a 40% to 60% reduction by 2030 below the 2010 baseline when GHG concentration was 386.6ppm. The Kyoto agreement called for (voluntary) cuts of approximately 6% below the 1990 baseline level when GHG concentration was 354.29ppm. At the current rate, 12 years will add 36ppm, bringing concentration to 453ppm – and with feedbacks, a great deal higher. 350ppm CO2 is considered the safe level, and the current reading is 417ppm. The pace of additions continues to increase because of feedbacks and because of the vast expansion of fossil fuel use. Global CO2 emissions rose 60% between 1990 and 2013, increasing from 22.4 billion metric tons in 1990 to 35.8 billion in 2013.

To paraphrase Yeats, all must change, change utterly. It is unlikely that what is required will be implemented unless people truly comprehend that collapse is inevitable under the current system, that collapse means massive loss of human life in a world in which public services have been dismantled under austerity regimes, and a world in which untold numbers of people are prevented from crossing borders. What was significant in WWII was the rapidity of radical transformation of the use of energy and the distribution of basic goods. The WWII economy shifted manufacturing to the war industries. The task is obviously the opposite at this point as the military, the capitalist system, and the life cycle and externalities of industrialization are destroying the habitable environment.

It is hard to see how things can utterly change if people are treated as if they are unable to know, much less to plan together. What is required here is radical system change. What is unique is that it requires the complete and immediate elimination of the core source of energy on which the capitalist system depends. There are two polarities for conceptualizing how to attack this system. First, across the world people are fighting against institutions one-by-one: the corporations, banks, international financial institutions, pension-fund boards, the complicit legal apparatus, trade agreements, corporate-dominated higher education, major media, the military/industrial complex, and closed borders. This includes a significant shift to thinking in terms of the commons, as reflected in the demands for free public transit and free internet access. A second revolutionary path involves workers taking over the means of production and setting up a radically different system based on de-monetizing energy and managing energy as a commons. It is workers who know how the energy system functions – who mine and extract, who turn off valves, who fix equipment, who know how to program and distribute energy. All these actions are supported by laws and norms, including the “necessity defense” and the UN Declaration on civil, political, social and economic rights.

Past and present, people act responsibly and against all odds when they organize: military mutinies,¹⁰ dockworkers who refuse to unload military weapons, the Gaza Great March of Return, prison strikes, protesting against dams, protesting against plastics in Cancer Alley and Chemical Valley. There is a long history of communities deciding how to ration the resources of the commons to meet needs.

All sources of GHG emissions require transformation and the hard work of analysis and collaboration. A comprehensive article in Jacobin Magazine on food and agriculture reviews American farm policy from the first New Deal to the present Green New Deal. It concludes:

“Better living through farming can’t happen without canny political alliance-building, stitching together a bloc that addresses hunger, poverty, malnutrition, and inequities in wealth and wages, both in the countryside and city. The logic of building a counter-hegemonic bloc demands a militant rural presence.”

The Left would do well to follow the path of Meyer Brownstone in directly meeting with people. He was an advisor to Tommy Douglas, former Chair of Oxfam Canada, and specialized in agroecology. He met with rural farmers all over Saskatchewan to hear their views on farming, land distribution, and government. It is crucial at this time of unimaginable threats to the world food supply to not repeat the agriculture practices of the late Victorian holocaust, of Mao, Stalin, Borlaug’s green revolution, and the US agro-industrial complex.

The 21st century is at this point a Tale of Two Extreme Worlds, where eight men hold as much wealth as half the world population. “If we measure poverty by the more accurate $5/day line, the total poverty headcount rises to 4.3 billion people, more than 60 percent of humanity. That’s 370 million more people than in 1990.” Two billion people still do not have basic sanitation facilities such as toilets or latrines. Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces. In least developed countries, 22% of health care facilities have no water service, 21% no sanitation service, and 22% no waste management service. The urgent work is to provide housing, ecosystem restoration, fossil fuel-free agriculture (which will require up to four times more human labour than the current agro-industrial system),¹¹ and the work of uniting and organizing global opposition to the hegemonic power and ideology that is leading to the “end of history.”

The Greens have a mixed history, including Malthusians, displacement of large indigenous populations to make way for pristine retreats, and the Canadian Boreal Initiative negotiated by big forestry and ENGOs without any indigenous participation. Canada’s Green Party platform promises to “use only Canadian fossil fuels,” including upgrades to “turn Canadian solid bitumen into gas, diesel, and other products providing jobs in Alberta.” [!] The Green New Deal, Extinction Rebellion and the Leap are far-reaching in their integrating social-economic justice with recognition of the climate emergency and their not compromising on carbon-based fuels. Yet much remains within the frame of “transitioning” – without clear, immediate, mandatory deadlines for GHG reductions and elimination in all sectors. And while there is a focus on publicly subsidized housing, transportation and healthcare, the crux of this crisis is energy and the opening at this time, indeed the necessity, of demonetizing it.

Quoting Filipino delegate Yeb Sano’s plea at the 2013 COP as Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines: “Stop this madness!”

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Judith Deutsch is a member of Independent Jewish Voices, and president of Science for Peace. She is a psychoanalyst in Toronto. She can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

1. Dave Webb, “Thinking the Worst: The Pentagon Report,” p 68. in David Cromwell and Mark Levene. Surviving Climate Change: The Struggle to Avert Global Catastrophe. Pluto Press 2007.
2. Nnimmo Bassey. To Cook a Continent: Destructive extraction and the climate crisis in Africa. Pambazuka Press 2012.
3. Eric Toussaint. The World Bank: A critical primer. Pluto Press 2006. p 183.
4. Mike Davis. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino famines and the making of the third world. Verso 2002. p. 280-283.
5. Stan Cox. Any Way You Slice It: The past, present, and future of rationing, The New Press 2013. p 71-75. Also see the chapter by Aubrey Meyer, “The Case for Contraction and Convergence” in David Cromwell and Mark Levene, p 29.
6. Ian Angus and Simon Butler. Too Many People? Population, immigration and the environmental crisis. Haymarket 2012. p 166-69.
7. Loka Ashwood. For-Profit Democracy. Yale University Press 2018.
8. Emily Gilbert. “Climate Change and the Military,” p 30-33. Canadian Dimension Magazine, Nov/Dec 2014.
9. Walden Bello and Mara Baviera. “Food Wars” p. 36. In Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar. Agriculture and Food in Crisis: conflict, resistance, and renewal. Monthly Review Press 2010.
10. Mike Gonzalez and Houman Barekat. Arms and the People: Popular movements and the military from the Paris Commune to the Arab Spring, Pluto Press 2013.
11. David Pimentel. “Reducing Energy Inputs in the Agricultural Production System” in Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar. Agriculture and Food in Crisis: conflict, resistance, and renewal. Monthly Review 2010, p 251-52.

All images in this article are from The Bullet

United States Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams has publicly welcomed Venezuela’s ex-intelligence chief to the country after he deserted and joined efforts to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

Manuel Cristopher Figuera, who served as chief of the Bolivarian Intelligence Services (SEBIN) from October 2018 to April 2019, arrived to the US on Monday.

He has recently been sacked and expelled from the Venezuelan armed forces following his participation in the failed putsch led by self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaido on April 30, authorising the release of Guaido’s ally Leopoldo Lopez, who was under house arrest for his role in the violent 2014 street protests.

Speaking at a press conference Tuesday, Abrams, who is known for his leading role in the Iran-Contra scandal and advising George W. Bush in the lead up to the Iraq war, explained that he was “happy” with Cristopher Figuera’s arrival as it “makes it easier to talk to him,” adding that he “has many interesting things to say about Maduro.”

He also alleged that US authorities had no role in bringing him to the country. Cristopher Figuera claims to have been in hiding under the protection of the Colombia government in Bogota since his desertion. The US sanctions against him were also lifted in May following his assistance to Guaido’s efforts.

While the ex-SEBIN chief is yet to make any public comment from the United States, a recent interview done in Bogota was published on Monday by the Washington Post, in which Cristopher Figuera claims to have a “treasure trove” of information for US authorities about the inner workings of the Venezuelan government.

According to the Washington Post, Cristopher Figuera claimed to have knowledge of government corruption schemes, Hezbollah and ELN activities in the country, Cuban influence on Maduro, attempts by ministers to form private armies and that Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez and Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno were party to the April 30 putsch. He goes on to explain how he was convinced by a Guaido envoy to join the events of that day.

While Cristopher Figuera alleges to hold evidence to back up these accusations, both Padrino Lopez and Moreno have publicly rejected his claims, suggesting at the time that Figuera had been “bought” by US authorities.

“I’m proud of what I did (…) I thought I would be able to make Maduro see sense. I couldn’t,” the ex-intelligence chief told the Washington Post. “I quickly realized that Maduro is the head of a criminal enterprise, with his own family involved,” he continued.

Abrams also took the opportunity to downplay rumours that US President Donald Trump is losing interest in efforts to oust the Maduro government, pointing to a recent meeting between Trump and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during which the issue was discussed, as well as the recent launch of the US Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort to South America.

“The notion that there is at the highest levels of the government a diminution of interest [in removing Maduro] is just simply false,” he told press, before adding that the number of countries which recognise Guaido would soon increase, but without offering any further details.

The Washington Post reported last week that Trump was “losing patience and interest in Venezuela” following successive defeats for opposition leader Guaido, quoting an anonymous former government official. The report also claimed that Trump believed that his team “got played” by Guaido regarding the situation on the ground and real prospects of seizing power.

Abrams’ comments also came on the heels of a corruption scandal engulfing the Venezuelan opposition which many analysts claim has affected Guaido’s credibility. The scandal centers on the embezzlement of humanitarian “aid” funds by his team, and has led Venezuelan prosecutors to open an investigation against the opposition leader.

Venezuelan armed forces demand respect

Abrams’ comments coincided with a public statement from the head of the Venezuelan Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB), Vladimir Padrino Lopez, calling for respect from foreign leaders betting on a rupture in the institution.

The kickback came after Colombian President Ivan Duque called on the FANB to “rupture” and to back Juan Guaido.

In an interview with Europa Press over the weekend, Duque reaffirmed that, in his opinion, the overthrow of Maduro should not be democratically done but rather brought about by the armed forces.

“I have been very clear, beyond a foreign military solution, what is needed today is to secure the rupture of the Venezuelan military forces, and that these military forces place themselves on the side of the [National] Assembly and of President Guaido, that they are protagonists in saving their country,” Duque commented, before adding that in his opinion “The military forces in Venezuela are totally fractured.”

In response, the FANB statement called on Duque to show respect and “not waste his time trying to fragment our unity, discipline, morality or loyalty.”

“What would be the reaction of the Colombian government if someone suggested that the military forces of their country broke up and stopped recognising him as president?” the communique asks.

Regarding accusations that the FANB is “fragmented,” the Venezuelan military responded that “This is typical of those who are blind and desperate, who refuse to understand the failure of every effort to break up the nation.”

Opposition leaders and US officials have repeatedly called on the Venezuelan armed forces to break the chain of command and support Guaido’s efforts in ousting the Maduro government, with promises of “amnesty” and lifting personal sanctions.

The armed forces have, however, repeatedly reiterated their commitment to the Venezuelan constitution, including by not allowing right wing forces to violate the country’s border on February 23 as well as following April 30’s failed putsch, when Maduro led exercises in several military bases.

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Iran has summoned  the United Arab Emirates’ chargé d’affaires in Tehran to protest that the UAE allowed the US to use its Al-Dhafra base in UAE to launch the Global Hawk surveillance drone (worth some $130 million) that was downed on the 20^thof June by the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) air defence missile system. The Iranian message was clear: this is not a diplomatic gesture and complaint but a straight warning that any country hosting a US military base which allows a hostile military action against Iran will be considered under attack, along with the US base it is accommodating.

Iran is informing Arab countries that any US attack starting from any neighbouring or Middle Eastern country will be considered an act of war by the country itself, in the words of a high ranking IRGC officer. The IRGC – recently designated a terrorist organisation by the US State Department – is the force in charge of protecting the Strait of Hormuz, and is coordinating on a varying scale with the regular Army intending to stand against the US in case of war.

The Pentagon recently announced that it is sending a squadron  of US F-15E Strike Eagles to the region, in response to the attack on two oil tankers  earlier this month in the Gulf of Oman. In response to the non-downing of the P-8 on June 20, Trump announced the imposition of what he called “significant additional sanctions” against the Leader of the Revolution Sayyed Ali Khamenei and pre-announced that the Iranian Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif will also be included, closing the path to diplomacy between the US and Iran.

Moreover, the US claim it has conducted a cyber-attack on Iranian weapon systems on Thursday, an act of cyber-warfare that apparently disabled the Iranian computer systems that control its missile launchers.

The IRGC source said the tension “is far from being over, on the contrary, it might just be starting. Trump is increasing the sanctions and we shall increase the tensions. Let us see where all this will lead the US. One thing is certain: if we don’t export our oil, no country will.”

The Leader of the revolution Sayyed Ali Khamenei told the political and military leaders, during a private meeting, that “the enemy and our friends, even those among our allies with soft trembling hearts (afraid of the US), should know that we are not seekers of war but that Iran has no fear to go to the battlefield. People should know that we and our allies are strong and we have many surprises to hit our enemies with. In Lebanon 2006, a small group (Hezbollah) was victorious over a much larger entity because Israel ignored the capability of the resistance. The US seems to be ignorant of our military capabilities- but, it seems that, like us, Trump doesn’t want the war. Nevertheless, if war takes place, for every hit Iran receives, we shall launch ten hits in retaliation”.

The Middle East is sitting on some kind of a barrel of gunpowder, with fire encroaching from all sides. It is a matter of time before the fire is extinguished or it provokes a significant conflagration.

The US is trying to bring Iran to its knees but has so far succeeded only in uniting its various political parties and people under one cause, significantly when the US drone was downed. Iran showed it doesn’t fear the US, is not trying to avoid a military confrontation if one is necessary, and treats the US threat like that from any other country, notwithstanding the USA’s superpower status. By challenging the US military and its spy drone, Iran boosted the unity of its population and armed forces. Before the latest severe sanctions imposed by the USA, Iranian society complained about the billions Iran was investing in allies (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen) around the Middle East. Iranians were grumbling about the leadership’s decision to move large sums away from the country at a time when Iran was under sanctions. However, recent tensions have confirmed the benefit to Iran of its network of alliances around the Middle East. Faced with Trump’s threats of war, Iranians are glad not to be isolated. The US President is aware of Iran’s allies and the fact that any future conflict will expand outside Iranian territory and involve Iran’s many partners.

In the case of Syria, the US offered the country to Iran on a golden platter. Iran’s success in supporting the Syrian government against the Jihadists encouraged by the US (ISIS and AQ) has created an unprecedented and robust bond with President Bashar al-Assad and the local population.

Moreover, for 40 years Iran has managed to support, finance, train and consolidate a unique ally in Lebanon that emerged following the US supported Israeli invasion in 1982. Hezbollah has become one of the strongest irregular-organised armies in the Middle East.

Iran can count on these allies and will keep supporting them because the tension is only beginning. If sanctions are not lifted or the signatories don’t find a way out, Iran will make sure that any US attack on Iran will drag the entire Middle East into war. Such a war can only result from miscalculation since both sides are trying to avoid it.

Indeed, Iran decided not to down a US P-8 Poseidon spy plane with 38 personnel onboard on the same morning of the 20^thof June because its leadership didn’t want to corner Trump and leave him no choice but war. It looks like Tehran would like to allow Trump the opportunity to be first in opening fire against Iran so that it can retaliate proportionally. Iran is showing no fear of the US menace, an indication that this crisis will not end any time soon.

Trump seems unaware of the price his predecessors paid for confronting Iran. It is justifiable to be confused. However, history does repeat itself. Trump is walking the path of US President Jimmy Carter, who failed to be re-elected following his confrontation with Iran.

The Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei has reminded Iranian officials of what Imam Khomeini said during the US-Iran crisis in the 80s. He said:

“The behaviour of the US can be compared to the story of a lion in Persian stories. Carter most probably didn’t know about this story. Although it pains me to compare Carter to a lion, the story fits him perfectly. When a Lion faces his enemy, it roars and breaks wind to scare his enemy. The lion ends by shaking his tail, hoping for a mediator. Today the US is mimicking the lion’s behaviour: the shouting and the threats (roaring) don’t scare us, and the US’s continual announcement of new sanctions is to us just like the lion breaking wind”.

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There are monsters among us. Every day I read about an American “plan” to either invade some place new or to otherwise inflict pain to convince a “non-compliant” foreign government how to behave. Last week it was Iran but next week it could just as easily again be Lebanon, Syria or Venezuela. Or even Russia or China, both of whom are seen as “threats” even though American soldiers, sailors and marines sit on their borders and not vice versa. The United States is perhaps unique in the history of the world in that it sees threats everywhere even though it is not, in fact, threatened by anyone.

Just as often, one learns about a new atrocity by Israelis inflicted on the defenseless Arabs just because they have the power to do so. Last Friday in Gaza the Israeli army shot and killed four unarmed demonstrators and injured 300 more while the Jewish state’s police invaded a Palestinian orphanage school in occupied Jerusalem and shut it down because the students were celebrating a “Yes to peace, no to war” poetry festival. Peace is not in the Israeli authorized curriculum.

And then there are the Saudis, publicly chopping the heads off of 37 “dissidents” in a mass display of barbarity, and also murdering and dismembering a hapless journalist. And let’s not forget the bombing and deliberate starving of hundreds of thousands innocent civilians in Yemen.

It is truly a troika of evil, an expression favored by US National Security Advisor John Bolton, though he was applying it to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, all “socialist” nations currently on Washington’s “hit list.” Americans, Saudis and Israelis have become monsters in the eyes of the rest of the world even if in their own minds they are endowed with special privilege due to their being “Exceptional,” “Chosen by God” or “Guardians of Mecca and Medina.” All three countries share a dishonest sense of entitlement that supports the fiction that their oppressive and often illegal behavior is somehow perfectly legitimate.

To be sure not all Americans, Saudis or Israelis are individually monsters. Many are decent people who are appalled by what their respective governments are doing. Saudi citizens live under a despotism and have little to say about their government, but there is a formidable though fragmented peace movement in slightly less totalitarian Israel and in the United States there is growing anti-war sentiment. The discomfort in America is driven by a sense that the post 9/11 conflicts have only embroiled the country more deeply in wars that have no exit and no end. Unfortunately, the peace movement in Israel will never have any real power while the anti-war activists in America are leaderless and disorganized, waiting for someone to step up and take charge.

The current foreign policy debate centers around what Washington’s next moves in the Middle East might be. The decision-making will inevitably involve the US and its “close allies” Israel and Saudi Arabia, which should not surprise anyone. While it is clear that President Donald Trump ordered an attack on Iran before canceling the action at the last minute, exactly how that played out continues to be unclear. One theory, promoted by the president himself, is that the attack would have been disproportionate, killing possibly hundreds of Iranian military personnel in exchange for one admittedly very expensive surveillance drone. Killing the Iranians would have guaranteed an immediate escalation by Iran, which has both the will and the capability to hit high value targets in and around the Persian Gulf region, a factor that may also have figured into the presidential calculus.

Trump’s cancelation of the attack immediately produced cries of rage from the usual neoconservative chickenhawk crowd in Washington as well as a more subdued reiteration of the Israeli and Saudi demands that Iran be punished, though both are also concerned that a massive Iranian retaliation would hit them hard. They are both hoping that Washington’s immensely powerful strategic armaments will succeed in knocking Iran out quickly and decisively, but they have also both learned not to completely trust the White House.

To assuage the beast, the president has initiated a package of “major” new sanctions on Iran which will no doubt hurt the Iranian people while not changing government decision making one iota. There has also been a leak of a story relating to US cyber-attacks on Iranian military and infrastructure targets, yet another attempt to act aggressive to mitigate the sounds being emitted by the neocon chorus.

To understand the stop-and-go behavior by Trump requires application of the Occam’s Razor principle, i.e. that the simplest explanation is most likely correct. For some odd reason, Donald Trump wants to be reelected president in 2020 in spite of the fact that he appears to be uncomfortable in office. A quick, successful war would enhance his chances for a second term, which is probably what Pompeo promised, but any military action that is not immediately decisive would hurt his prospects, quite possibly inflicting fatal damage. Trump apparently had an intercession by Fox news analyst Tucker Carlson, who may have explained that reality to him shortly before he decided to cancel the attack. Tucker is, for what it’s worth, a highly respected critic coming from the political right who is skeptical of wars of choice, democracy building and the global liberal order.

The truth is that all of American foreign policy during the upcoming year will be designed to pander to certain constituencies that will be crucial to the 2020 presidential election. One can bank on even more concessions being granted to Israel and its murderous thug prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring in Jewish votes and, more importantly, money. John Bolton was already in Israel getting his marching orders from Netanyahu on the weekend and Pence was effusive in his praise of Israel when he spoke at the meeting in Orlando earlier in the week launching the Trump 2020 campaign, so the game is already afoot. It is an interesting process to observe how Jewish oligarchs like Sheldon Adelson contribute tens of millions of dollars to the politicians who then in turn give the Jewish state taxpayer generated tens of billions of dollars in return. Bribing corrupt politicians is one of the best investments that one can make in today’s America.

Trump will also go easy on Saudi Arabia because he wants to sell them billions of dollars’ worth of weapons which will make the key constituency of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) happy. And he will continue to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran and Venezuela to show how tough he can be for his Make America Great audience, though avoiding war if he possibly can just in case any of the hapless victims tries to fight back and embarrass him.

So, there it is folks. War with Iran is for the moment on hold, but tune in again next week as the collective White House memory span runs to only three or four days. By next week we Americans might be at war with Mongolia.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCF

One Turkish soldier was killed and 5 others were injured during clashes with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the region of Afrin, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced on June 26. According to the Defense Ministry, the clashes erupted following an attack on Turkish military positions.

The YPG-affiliated Afrin Liberation Forces (ALF) claimed responsibility for the attack saying that they had engaged Turkish forces in the village of Gilbara in the district of Sherawa. The ALF employed at least 2 anti-tank guided missiles against Turkish positions.

Since the occupation of Afrin by Turkey in early 2018, the ALF and the YPG, with assistance from the PKK, have killed and injured dozens of Turkish troops and pro-Turkish militants with ATGM, IED, sniper attacks and ambushes. This situation, as well as regular clashes between members of pro-Turkish groups, demonstrate Ankara’s inability to establish proper security in the occupied region.

One of the key problems is the essence of pro-Turkish “rebel factions”, which are mostly infiltrated by terrorist ideologies and involved in organized crime activities.

Militants killed 18 soldiers and officers of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in an attack on the town of Atshan in northern Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on June 25. According to the SOHR, militants lost 6 fighters.

The “Wa Harid al-Muminin” operations room, a coalition of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, claimed responsibility for the attack. The coalition is led by Horas al-Din. It is known for being a close ally of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda).

The June 25 incident became the biggest clash between the SAA and militants in northern Hama since the start of the Russia-Turkey-brokered ceasefire there last week.

According to local sources, the sides used this time to reinforce their positions and prepare for further battles. It remains unlikely that a political solution of the situation in Idlib can be found while the zone is primarily controlled by al-Qaeda-style terrorist groups.

Armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) launched by militants attacked the Russian Hmeimim airbase in the province of Lattakia in the early hours of June 26. Local sources revealed that Russian air defense systems intercepted the UAVs, which were approaching the base. Later, the Russian military confirmed this saying that 2 UAVs were eliminated. No damage or casualties were inflicted by the attack.

Ferhat Abdi Sahin, Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said that Syria would be a “failed state” without the northeastern region, which is controlled by the US-backed group. The Kurdish commander made the remarks during a meeting of the administration controlling the occupied region.

Sahin claimed that Syria must fully recognize the SDF-controlled administration in northeastern Syria and the SDF as a legitimate armed force fully responsible for the area if it wants to settle the situation via a political agreement. The Kurdish commander stressed that the SDF is stronger than ever, and claimed that ISIS is not posing a serious threat to the northeastern region.

This kind of demand, which would mean a de-facto recognition of the split of Syria and would officially put an end to its territorial integrity, is not likely to be accepted by the Damascus government. SDF leaders and political representatives, who once wanted to negotiate with Damascus, returned to such demands once it appeared that US troops are not going to withdraw from Syria despite Trump’s public declarations.

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If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Read part I, II, III IV and V from the links below.

Part I – On Global Capitalist Crises: Systemic Changes and Challenges

Part II – On Global Capitalist Crises. Debt Defaults, Bankruptcies and Real Economy Decline

Part III – On Global Capitalist Crises: US Neocons and Trump’s Economic and Social Agenda

Part IV – On Global Capitalist Crises: The Destruction and Cooptation of the Trade Union Movement

Part V – On Global Capitalist Crises: Resisting US Financial Imperialism in Venezuela

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Mohsen Abdelmoumen: Why in your opinion does capitalism generate crises?

Jack Rasmus: Part of the reason is the failure of economic theory today to understand how global capitalism has been restructuring itself in recent decades. This restructuring has rendered much of traditional economic theory irrelevant, in so far as understanding and predicting the current trajectory of the global capitalist economy.

My view is not the typical mainstream (e.g. bourgeois) economics analysis of what causes (i.e. ‘cause’ here means distinguishing between what enables, or precipitates, or fundamentally drives) a crisis. There are different ‘forms’ of causation which mainstream economists do not distinguish between, but which I think are necessary. I would not characterize my view as a Keynesian, Schumpeter, Fisher, or even an Austrian (Von Mises-Hayek) economist view.None of these mainstream approaches to economic crisis analysis understand finance capital or how it determines, and is determined by, real (non-financial) capital. They don’t understand how financial and labor markets have both changed fundamentally since the 1980s.Their conceptual framework is deficient for explaining 21st century capitalism and its crises.Nor is my view what might be called a traditional Marxist approach. It too does not understand finance capital.It too tries to employ an even older conceptual framework, from the 19th century classical economics, to explain 21st century capital and crises.

Mainstream economics focuses only on short term business cycles and fiscal-monetary policy measures as solutions. But short term business cycle fluctuations aren’t really ‘crises’. A crisis suggests a fundamental crux or crossroad has been reached requiring basic changes in the system. Mainstream economics doesn’t even raise this as a subject of inquiry. Reality is just a sequence of short term events patched together. Or it attempts to apply business cycle analysis, and associated fiscal-monetary policy solutions, to what is a more fundamental, longer term, chronic instability condition. Consequently it fails both at predicting crises turning points and/or posing effective solutions to them. The two main trends in mainstream economics—what I call Hybrid Keynesians (which is not really Keynes) and Monetarists along with their numerous theoretical offshoots in recent decades—are both incapable of explaining longer term crises endemic in capitalism that have required the periodic restructuring of the capitalist system itself over the last century. That is, in 1908-17, 1944-53, and 1979-88.

Marxist economists have fared little better understanding or predicting 21st century capitalism. This is especially true of anglo-american Marxist economists, although the European and others outside Europe have been more open-minded. Marxist economists do consider the problem of longer term crises trends but attempt to explain it based on the conceptual economics framework of 18th-19th century classical economics, which is insufficient for analysis of 21st century capital. They assume industrial capital is dominant over finance capital, that only workers who produce real goods explains exploitation, and that finance capital and financial asset markets are ‘fictitious’. Hobson-Lenin-Hilferding and others attempted to better understand and integrate the relationship between industrial and finance capital at the turn of the 20th century. This led to an analysis of what’s sometimes called ‘Monopoly Capital’, a school of which still exists today. But subsequent capitalist restructurings of 1944-53 and 1979-1988 in particular have rendered such a view and analysis inaccurate.A century later, today in the early 21st, the relationships between finance capital and industrial capital have significantly changed from how Marx saw them in the 19th century, as well as how Hobson-Hilferding-Lenin envisioned them in the early 20th. In other words, contemporary Marxist economists don’t understand modern finance capital any better than do contemporary mainstream economists. Moreover, they still insist on employing classical economics concepts like the falling rate of profit, productive v. unproductive labor, and try to explain 21st century money and banking based on 19th century financial structures.Nor do they pay much attention to the new forms of labor exploitation today or explain why the unions and social democratic political parties have declined so dramatically in the 21st century.

My critique of all these mainstream (bourgeois) and Marxist economic ‘schools of analysis’, and their numerous spinoffs and offshoots, is contained in Part 3 of my 2016 ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’ book. That book also advances the analysis I originally began to develop in the 2010 book, ‘Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression’. My books published thereafter, 2017-2019, subsequent to ‘Systemic Fragility’, expand upon the key themes introduced in ‘Systemic Fragility’. Looting Greece: A New Financial Imperialism Emerges, August 2016, expands upon analysis in chapters 11, 12 in ‘Systemic Fragility’, addressing financial restructuring of late 20th century capitalism. Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes (August 2017)expands on ‘Systemic Fragility’, chapter 14, on monetary contributions and solutions to crises.So does ‘Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of the Fed’ (March 2019), which is a prequel to ‘Central Bankers’ as a 18th-19th century historical analysis of US banking.And my forthcoming, September 2019, The Scourge of Neoliberalism book,will expand on Chapter 15 in ‘Systemic Fragility’ addressing fiscal policy, deficits and debt.

So all my work is an attempt at a more integrated analysis of 21st century capitalist economy, its contradictions, its increasing financial—and thus general economic—instability, the profound changing relations between finance and industrial capital, its fundamental changes in production processes and both product and labor markets, the increasing failure of traditional fiscal-monetary policies to stabilize the system, and the growing likelihood of a crisis coming within the next five years, or even earlier, that could prove far more intractable and deeper than even that of the 1920s-1930s.

The Three Restructurings of US & Global Capitalism, 1909-2019

Thus far, American capital, the dominant and hegemonic form of global capital over the last century, has restructured itself successful on three occasions: the first in the period just prior to world war I (1909 -1918) and during that war, as US capital ascended in the 1920s as a global player more or less equal to British capital. British capital in this period was eclipsed as hegemonic and had to share hegemony with American capital. In the wake of the second world war British capital was displaced by American as hegemonic, starting 1944 with the Bretton Woods international monetary system created by US capitalists, for US capital, in the interests of US capital.That second restructuring (1944-1953) began to break down in the early 1970s as global capitalist stagnation set in once again. That 1970s decade witnessed a general crisis of global capitalism, especially in the US and throughout the British empire (or what was left of it). But elsewhere among advanced capitalist economies in Europe and Japan as well.

A third restructuring was launched in the late 1970s by Thatcher and Reagan.Thisis sometimes called ‘Neoliberalism’ (a term I don’t like but use since it is generally accepted but is somewhat ideological). The third, Neoliberal restructuring re-stabilize US and global capital and expanded US capital, from roughly 1979 to 2008. It underwent a crisis with the Great Financial-Economic crash of 2008-09 in the US, and subsequent European and Japan multiple recessions and general stagnation that followed 2010 in the ‘advanced capitalist economic periphery’ of Europe-Japan which is now the weak link of global capitalism. Trump’s regime should be understood as an attempt to restore and resurrect neoliberalism—as both a restructuring and a new policy mix—albeit in a more violent, aggressive and nasty form of neoliberalism (2.0? perhaps).

I do not believe Trump will be successful in the longer term with this restoration. He’s had definite success with tax restructuring favoring capital, but is still contending with restoring monetary system to neoliberal principles (i.e. free money/low rates/low dollar value),and is in the midst of a major conflict and resistance to restore US hegemony in international trade and money affairs, in particular from China. Should Trump fail in restoring a harsher, more aggressive Neoliberalism 2.0, it will almost certainly mean a ‘fourth’ major capitalist restructuring will follow in the 2020s. That fourth restructuring will be even more exploitive and oppressive than Neoliberalism, especially for working classes as well as for US capitalist competitors in the advanced capitalist economic periphery and emerging market economies.

My Basic Thesis On Capitalist Crises

Is that capitalism experiences periodic crises every few decades (not ‘business cycles’ that may occur in between the crises but are not crises per se) and it must, and does, restructure itself periodically in order to survive.It creates multiple imbalances within itself whenever its shorter term fiscal-monetary policy solutions no longer are able to re-stabilize a system that grows increasingly unstable over time—i.e. a system which inherently and endogenously tends toward crisis periodically. Each restructuring, however, proves to have limits. Its effect at resurrecting capitalism inevitably dissipates over time, typically 2-3 decades.As a consequence of periodic restructurings, stability and growth is restored for a couple decades, but the fundamental contradictions that lead to renewed crisis arise and intensify once again during the periods of apparent growth and stability. Thus even basic economic restructurings as solution are temporary. Think of fiscal-monetary policy as solutions for only the very short term in the case of business cycles that are due to policy errors or other non-financial forces that cause ‘normal’ recessions. Think of periodic restructurings as producing solutions for the medium term (2-3 decades). But the capitalist system’s longer term crisis is that even periodic restructurings don’t prevent the inevitable crises from reappearing.

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Payments can happen cheaply and easily without banks or credit card companies. This has now been demonstrated – not in the United States but in China. Unlike in the US, where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments, in China most money flows through mobile phones nearly for free. In 2018 these cashless payments totaled a whopping $41.5 trillion; and 90% were through Alipay and WeChat Pay, a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking. According to a May 2018 article in Bloomberg titled “Why China’s Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares”:

The nightmare for the U.S. financial industry is that a technology company—whether from China or a homegrown juggernaut such as Amazon.com Inc. or Facebook Inc.—replicates the success of Alipay and WeChat in America. The stakes are enormous, potentially carving away billions of dollars in annual revenue from major banks and other firms.

That threat may now be materializing. On June 18, Facebook unveiled a white paper outlining ambitious plans to create a new global cryptocurrency called Libra, to be launched in 2020. The New York Times says Facebook has high hopes that Libra will become the foundation for a new financial system free of control by Wall Street power brokers and central banks.

But apparently Libra will not be competing with Visa or Mastercard. In fact the Libra Association lists those two giants among its 28 soon-to-be founding members. Others include Paypal, Stripe, Uber, Lyft and eBay. Facebook has reportedly courted dozens of financial institutions and other tech companies to join the Libra Association, an independent foundation that will contribute capital and help govern the digital currency. Entry barriers are high, with each founding member paying a minimum of $10 million to join. This gives them one vote  (or 1% of the total vote, whichever is larger)  in the Libra Association council. Members are also entitled to a share proportionate to their investment of the dividends earned from  interest on the Libra reserve – the money that users will pay to acquire the Libra currency.

All of which has raised some eyebrows, both among financial analysts and crypto activists. A Zero Hedge commentator calls Libra “Facebook’s Crypto Trojan Rabbit.” An article in FT’s Alphaville calls it “Blockchain, but Without the Blocks or Chain.” Economist Noriel Roubini concurs, tweeting:

It will start as a private, permissioned, not-trustless, centralized oligopolistic members-only club. So much for calling it “blockchain”. … [I]t is blockchain in name only and a monopoly to extract massive seignorage from billions of users. A monopoly scam.

Another Zero Hedge writer calls Libra “The Dollar’s Killer App,” which threatens “not only the power of central banks but also the government’s money monopoly itself.”

From Frying Pan to Fire?

To the crypto-anarchist community, usurping the power of central banks and governments may sound like a good thing. But handing global power to the corporate-controlled Libra Association could be a greater nightmare. So argues Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, who writes in The Financial Times:

This currency would insert a powerful new corporate layer of monetary control between central banks and individuals. Inevitably, these companies will put their private interests — profits and influence — ahead of public ones. . . .

The Libra Association’s goals specifically say that [they] will encourage “decentralised forms of governance”. In other words, Libra will disrupt and weaken nation states by enabling people to move out of unstable local currencies and into a currency denominated in dollars and euros and managed by corporations. . . .

What Libra backers are calling “decentralisation” is in truth a shift of power from developing world central banks toward multinational corporations and the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.

Power will shift to the Fed and ECB because the dollar and the euro will squeeze out weaker currencies in developing countries. As seen recently in Greece, the result will be to cause their governments to lose control of their currencies and their economies.

Pros and Cons

In a June 9 review in Forbes, Caitlin Long, co-founder of the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition, agreed that Libra was a Trojan horse but predicted that it would have some beneficial effects. For one, she thought it would impose discipline on the US banking system by leading to populist calls to repeal their corporate subsidies. The Fed is now paying its member banks 2.35% in risk-free interest on their excess reserves, which this year is projected to total $36 billion of corporate welfare to US banks – about half the sum spent on the US food stamp program. If Facebook parks its entire US dollar balance at the Federal Reserve through one of its bank partners, it could earn the same rate. But Long predicted that Facebook would have to pay interest to Libra users to avoid a chorus of critics, who would loudly publicize how much money Facebook and its partners were pocketing from the interest on the money users traded for their Libra currency.

But that was before the Libra white paper came out. It reveals that the profits will indeed be divvied among Facebook’s Libra partners rather than shared with users. At one time, we earned interest on our deposits in government-insured banks. With Libra, we will get no interest on our money, which will be entrusted to uninsured crypto exchanges, which are coming under increasing regulatory pressure due to lack of transparency and operational irregularities.

UK economics professor Alistair Milne points to another problem with the Libra cryptocurrency: unlike Bitcoin, it will be a “stablecoin,” whose value will be tied to a basket of fiat currencies and short-term government securities. That means it will need the backing of real money to maintain its fixed price. If reserves do not cover withdrawals, who will be responsible for compensating Libra holders? Ideally, Milne writes, reserves would be held with the central bank; but central banks will be reluctant to support a private currency.

Caitlin Long also predicts that Facebook’s cryptocurrency will be a huge honeypot of data for government officials, since every transaction will be traceable. But other reviewers see this as Libra’s most fatal flaw. Facebook has been called Big Brother, the ultimate government surveillance tool. Conspiracy theorists link it to the CIA and the US Department of Defense. Facebook has already demonstrated that it is an untrustworthy manager of personal data. How then can we trust it with our money?

Why Use a Cryptocurrency at All?

A June 20^th CoinDesk article asks why Facebook has chosen to use a cryptocurrency rather than following WeChat and AliPay in doing a global payments network in the traditional way. The article quotes Yan Meng, vice president of the Chinese Software Developer Network, who says Facebook’s fragmented user base across the world leaves it with no better choice than to borrow ideas from blockchain and cryptocurrency.

“Facebook just can’t do a global payments network via traditional methods, which require applying for a license and preparing foreign exchange reserves with local banking, one market after another,” said Meng. “The advantage of WeChat and AliPay is they have already gained a significant number of users from just one giant economy that accounts for 20 percent of the world’s population.” They have no need to establish their own digital currencies, which they still regard as too risky.

Meng suspects that Facebook’s long-term ambition is to become a stateless central bank that uses Libra as a base currency. He wrote in a June 16 article, “With sufficient incentives, nodes of Facebook’s Libra network would represent Facebook to push for utility in various countries for its 2.7 billion users in business, investment, trade and financial services,” which “would help complete a full digital economy empire.”

The question is whether regulators will allow that sort of competition with the central banking system. Immediately after Facebook released its Libra cryptocurrency plan, financial regulators in Europe voiced concerns over the potential danger of Facebook running a “shadow bank.” Maxine Waters, who heads the Financial Services Committee for the US House of Representatives, asked Facebook to halt its development of Libra until hearings could be held. She said:

This is like starting a bank without having to go through any steps to do it. . . . We can’t allow Facebook to go to Switzerland and begin to compete with the dollar without having any regulatory regime that’s dealing with them. 

A Stateless Private Central Bank or a Publicly Accountable One?

Facebook may be competing with more than the dollar. Jennifer Grygiel, Assistant Professor of Communications at Syracuse University, writes:

. . . [It] seems that the company is not seeking to compete with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Rather, Facebook is looking to replace the existing global financial system with an all-new setup, with Libra at its center.

At least at the moment, the Libra is being designed as a form of electronic money linked to many national currencies. That has raised fears that Libra might someday be recognized as a sovereign currency, with Facebook acting as a “shadow bank” that could compete with the central banks of countries around the world.

Caitlin Long thinks Bitcoin rather than Libra will come out the winner in all this; but Bitcoin’s blockchain model is too slow, expensive and energy intensive to replace fiat currency as a medium of exchange on a national scale. As Josh Constine writes on Techcrunch.com:

[E]xisting cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum weren’t properly engineered to scale to be a medium of exchange. Their unanchored price was susceptible to huge and unpredictable swings, making it tough for merchants to accept as payment. And cryptocurrencies miss out on much of their potential beyond speculation unless there are enough places that will take them instead of dollars . . . . But with Facebook’s relationship with 7 million advertisers and 90 million small businesses plus its user experience prowess, it was well-poised to tackle this juggernaut of a problem.

For Libra to scale as a national medium of exchange, its governance had to be centralized rather than “distributed.” But Libra’s governing body is not the sort of global controller we want. Jennifer Grygiel writes:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg . . . is declaring that he wants Facebook to become a virtual nation, populated by users, powered by a self-contained economy, and headed by a CEO – Zuckerberg himself – who is not even accountable to his shareholders. . . .

In many ways the company that Mark Zuckerberg is building is beginning to look more like a Roman Empire, now with its own central bank and currency, than a corporation. The only problem is that this new nation-like platform is a controlled company and is run more like a dictatorship than a sovereign country with democratically elected leaders.

A currency intended for trade on a national—let alone international—scale needs to be not only centralized but democratized, responding to the will of the people and their elected leaders. Rather than bypassing the existing central banking structure as Facebook plans to do, several groups of economists are proposing a more egalitarian solution: nationalizing and democratizing the central bank by opening its deposit window to everyone. As explored in my latest book, “Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age,” these proposals could allow us all to get 2.35% on our deposits, while eliminating bank runs and banking crises, since the central bank cannot run out of funds. Profits from the public medium of exchange need to return to the public, rather than enriching an unaccountable, corporate-controlled Facebook Trojan horse.

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This article was first posted under a different title on Truthdig.org.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books. They include Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age, published by the Democracy Collaborative in June 2019; Web of Debt; and The Public Bank Solution.  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.

It all started with the Vladimir Putin–Xi Jinping summit in Moscow on June 5. Far from a mere bilateral, this meeting upgraded the Eurasian integration process to another level. The Russian and Chinese presidents discussed everything from the progressive interconnection of the New Silk Roads with the Eurasia Economic Union, especially in and around Central Asia, to their concerted strategy for the Korean Peninsula.

A particular theme stood out: They discussed how the connecting role of Persia in the Ancient Silk Road is about to be replicated by Iran in the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And that is non-negotiable. Especially after the Russia-China strategic partnership, less than a month before the Moscow summit, offered explicit support for Tehran signaling that regime change simply won’t be accepted, diplomatic sources say.

Putin and Xi solidified the roadmap at the St Petersburg Economic Forum. And the Greater Eurasia interconnection continued to be woven immediately after at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, with two essential interlocutors: India, a fellow BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and SCO member, and SCO observer Iran.

At the SCO summit we had Putin, Xi, Narendra Modi, Imran Khan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani sitting at the same table. Hanging over the proceedings, like concentric Damocles swords, were the US-China trade war, sanctions on Russia, and the explosive situation in the Persian Gulf.

Rouhani was forceful – and played his cards masterfully – as he described the mechanism and effects of the US economic blockade on Iran, which led Modi and leaders of the Central Asian “stans” to pay closer attention to Russia-China’s Eurasia roadmap. This occurred as Xi made clear that Chinese investments across Central Asia on myriad BRI projects will be significantly increased.

Russia-China diplomatically interpreted what happened in Bishkek as “vital for the reshaping of the world order.” Crucially, RIC – Russia-India-China – not only held a trilateral but also scheduled a replay at the upcoming Group of Twenty summit in Osaka. Diplomats swear the personal chemistry of Putin, Xi and Modi worked wonders.

The RIC format goes back to old strategic Orientalist fox Yevgeny Primakov in the late 1990s. It should be interpreted as the foundation stone of 21st-century multipolarity, and there’s no question how it will be interpreted in Washington.

India, an essential cog in the Indo-Pacific strategy, has been getting cozy with “existential threats” Russia-China, that “peer competitor” – dreaded since geopolitics/geo-strategy founding father Halford Mackinder published his “Geographical Pivot of History” in 1904 –  finally emerging in Eurasia.

RIC was also the basis on which the BRICS grouping was set up. Moscow and Beijing are diplomatically refraining from pronouncing that. But with Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro seen as a mere Trump administration tool, it’s no wonder that Brazil has been excluded from the RIC summit in Osaka. There will be a perfunctory BRICS meeting right before the start of the G20 on Friday, but the real deal is RIC.

Pay attention to the go-between

The internal triangulation of RIC is extremely complex. For instance, at the SCO summit Modi said that India could only support connectivity projects based on “respect of sovereignty” and “regional integrity.” That was code for snubbing the Belt and Roads Initiative – especially because of the flagship China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which New Delhi insists illegally crosses Kashmir. Yet India did not block the final Bishkek declaration.

What matters is that the Xi-Modi bilateral at the SCO was so auspicious that Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale was led to describe it as “the beginning of a process, after the formation of government in India, to now deal with India-China relations from both sides in a larger context of the 21st century and of our role in the Asia-Pacific region.” There will be an informal Xi-Modi summit in India in October. And they meet again at the BRICS summit in Brazil in November.

Putin has excelled as a go-between. He invited Modi to be the guest of honor at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in early September. The thrust of the relationship is to show to Modi the benefits for India to actively join the larger Eurasia integration process instead of playing a supporting role in a Made in USA production.

That may even include a trilateral partnership to develop the Polar Silk Road in the Arctic, which represents, in a nutshell, the meeting of the Belt and Road Initiative with Russia’s Northern Sea Route. China Ocean Shipping (Cosco) is already a partner of the Russian company PAO Sovcomflot, shipping natural gas both east and west from Siberia.

Xi is also beginning to get Modi’s attention on the restarting possibilities for the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCMI) corridor, another major Belt and Road project, as well as improving connectivity from Tibet to Nepal and India.

Impediments, of course, remain plentiful, from disputed Himalayan borders to, for instance, the slow-moving Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the 16-nation theoretical successor of the defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership. Beijing is adamant the RCEP must go into overdrive, and is even prepared to leave New Delhi behind.

One of Modi’s key decisions ahead is on whether to keep importing Iranian oil – considering there are no more US sanctions waivers. Russia is ready to help Iran and weary Asian customers such as India if the EU-3 continue to drag the implementation of their special payment vehicle.

India is a top Iran energy customer. Iran’s port of Chabahar is absolutely essential if India’s mini-Silk Road is to reach Central Asia via Afghanistan. With US President Donald Trump’s administration sanctioning New Delhi over its drive to buy the Russian S-400 air defense system and the loss of preferred trade status with the US, getting closer to Bridge and Road – featuring energy supplier Iran as a key vector – becomes a not-to-be-missed economic opportunity.

With the roadmap ahead for the Russia-China strategic partnership fully solidified after the summits in Moscow, St Petersburg and Bishkek, the emphasis now for RC is to bring India on board a full-fledged RIC. Russia-India is already blossoming as a strategic partnership. And Xi-Modi seemed to be in sync. Osaka may be the geopolitical turning point consolidating RIC for good.

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The recent Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing regarding oversight of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) failed to shed any real light on  details of the proposed 5G network as it received less scrutiny than expected given its highly anticipated, ubiquitous role in American life.

While the Senate Committee would be the logical committee to hold 5G hearings, it was curious that the Committee’s website does not specifically identify The Internet or Digital Communication or any other broadband subject on its list of committee jurisdiction.  The closest mention is “all matters relating to science and technology” even though the Committee has held a series of related 5G hearings beginning in late 2017.

Perusing the Committee’s schedule of hearings, the question remains how and when did the genesis of the 5G project occur?  While there were no introductory or oversight hearings on the  project as a stand-alone entity, it was as if 5G was a done deal. There have been, however, hearings that address individual items specific to the 5G project.  So the question is how exactly did such a complex 5G move so far, so fast without public hearings and little public awareness?   Exactly how did this juggernaut get rolling?  If the 5G project and its massive diabolical offspring came out of Silicon Valley, it would be curious that no representatives appeared before the Committee to take credit for introducing such a sophisticated piece of malevolence.

While the digital revolution ostensibly began in America in 1975, Israel has hosted Intel’s largest and most advanced development and computer chip manufacturing center in the world since 1974 specializing in IOT devices, AIs and cyber security while China’s leading telecoms Huawei and ZTE were founded in 1987 and 1985; respectively.

An Intelpromotional essay entitled “Intel Lays the Groundwork for America’s 5G Future” appears to answer the question of origination when it states:

“In preparation for widespread 5G implementation, Intel released theindustry’s first 5G trial platform in 2016. This made it possible for Intel to test 5G wireless technology across multiple U.S. markets, working closely with telecom equipment manufacturers such as Ericsson and Nokia.”

The same document goes on to suggest that “the nation’s 5G needs to be built by American innovators” that the “groundbreaking technology should be supported by lawmakers” and that “US competitiveness in key 4G technologies is essential to US leadership in 5G.” 

One interpretation of the above is that once Israel/Intel put the product together, it was then up to the US to sneak this technological atrocity past a naturally suspicious public, sell it to stressed-out skeptical citizens, line up the infrastructure, take it to market and deal with the political blowback.

By September, 2018, Intel announced that Nokia and Ericsson would partner to deploy 5G globally describing that, according to an Ericsson spokesman “for 5G we’ve been collaborating since four years back.” In other words, while 5G has been a gleam in Israel/Intel’s eye for sometime, there has been a sort of shakedown cruise to work out the kinks prior to introducing the project to the gullible Americans.

Clearly, the Senate Committee (and 5G proponents) were intent on bamboozling the American public, assuring that discovery of the project would come only after it was too little, too late.

The following hearings, some with obscure sounding titles, were vague enough to deflect public attention and thus escape public scrutiny.  The intent was to avoid public hearings specifically identified as the Big Overall Picture which would have opened 5G to a massive interrogation.  Such hearings would have stirred the American public in furious national outrage and provided them an opportunity to mount an organized, coordinated opposition – and it is not too late.

Clearly, if 5G represented such a social boon, a true benefit to American life as the proponents allege, the Committee would have acted with more accountability, more openness and transparency, a willingness to fully inform the public of its intentions. They did not do so.  Clearly, the Committee and its 5G proponents meant to preclude exactly the kind of national debate as it was their job to have initiated.

2019

• June 25 – Optimizing for Engagement: Understanding the Use of Machine Learning and Internet Platforms
• June 12 – Oversight of the Federal Commerce Commission
• May 1 – Consumer Perspectives: Policy Principles for Federal Data Privacy Framework
• April 30 – Strengthening the Cybersecurity of the Internet of Things
• April 10 – Broadband Mapping:  Challenges and Solutions
• March 26 – Small Business Perspective on Federal Data Privacy Framework
• March 12 – Impact of Broadband investments in Rural America
• March 7 – China: Challenge for US Commerce
• February 27 – Policy Principles for Federal Data Privacy Framework in the US
• February 6 – Winning the Race to 5G and the Next Era of Technology Innovation in the US

2018

• October 12 – The Race to 5G: A View from the Field (South Dakota)
• October 4 – Broadband: Opportunities and Challenges in Rural America
• August 16 – Oversight of the FCC
• July 31- The Internet and Digital Communication:  Examining the Impact of Global Internet Governance
• July 25- The Race to 5G:  Exploring Spectrum Need to Maintain US Global Leadership
• July 11 – Complex Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities:  Lessons Learned from Spectre and Meltdown
• June 19 – Cambridge Analytica and other Facebook Partners: Examining Data Privacy Risks
• March 13 – Rebuilding Infrastructure in America: Investing in Next Generation of Broadband

2017

• December 12 – Digital Decision Making:  The Building Block of Machine Learning and AI
• November 7 – Advancing the Internet of Things in Rural America

Clearly the 5G campaign has been in the Intel pipeline prior to 2016 which explains the sense of urgency for the FCC’s adoption of ‘fast lane’ approval processes.  The US was tasked in January, 2018 by a National Security Council 5G presentation to provide the necessary infrastructure requirements within a three year period in order to not lose the global initiative.

The mega-mammoth project is being sold to the American public as essential to modern life and deliberately focused on increased broadband network speeds, improved reliability and greater capacity including a connectivity to all that can be connected.  The mostly worthless  connectivity of all things is little more than a sham, a talking point that offers no real merit to American consumers.  The slick PR focus on broadband speed is a not-so-clever smokescreen for the sinister Massive Internet of Things (MIOT) and its fiendish compatriot, Artificial Intelligence.  The pretense is that faster speeds are far superior and very desirable, as if the current 4G LTE speed is somehow inferior or as if the public has been clamoring for faster speeds – neither is the case.  The truth is that 5G is much more than an irrelevant connectivity opportunity that begins with a digital transformation but rather provides an opportunity to transform humanity and civilization into a profound grotesque distortion of reality.

This level of razzle-dazzle has not been seen since taming the ‘peaceful’ atom opened the door to a radioactive world of nuclear weapons, nuclear waste and creation of a monolithic military industrial complex.  In return, the American public was promised low cost, reliable, safe electricity, all of which proved to be a blasphemous scam spawned by the snake-oil salesmen and neocons of the day – not unlike the 5G PR campaign we are witnessing today.

The creators of 5G are pinning their hopes on enough wirelessly addicted, self indulgent humans being open to the opportunity for new digital bells and whistles to take over every personal and professional task.  The success of 5G depends on human being willingness to acquiesce those burdensome tasks of setting a timer on the coffee brewer or starting the washing machine so that humanity will have more time to escape into virtual reality toys rather than taking a hike in nature.  Without explicitly saying so, the ultimate objective is to free humanity from the burden of personal interaction with the rest of humanity in favor of interaction with computerized machines or gadgets.  As if the need for human relationship is a genetic weakness, the true existence of human beings becomes extraneous as increased surveillance and monitoring of all daily activity is recorded.  As the State will monitor all thought, our personal bathroom habits, whether to become pregnant (or not) or personal private choices, all will be entered into a personal data registry – not unlike China’s ‘social credit score’ evaluating each citizen’s loyalty.  There will be no on or off switch as opting out will no longer be permitted.

The human heart of kindness, love and compassion will be but a memory of the past when our neighbors were our friends and our friends were like family and our family a scant remnant of a poignant reminiscence that has no authenticity.  These are not exaggerated forecasts of the future but a creepy reality check of what the Silicon Valley and apparently Israel/Intel techno twits have in store as humanity becomes complacent to its own basic life decisions and that of future generations.

To be continued…

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Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31

This writer remembers one afternoon in the late 70s. My business partner and I went over to the local pub for a sandwich and a brew. As we sat at the bar, the pub manager Bob turned on the television and announced “Stooge Time!” The men sitting at the bar all applauded, and we had to sit through this nonsense that was only funny and cute when we were kids.

Fast forward 40 years and one still has to sit through the nonsense when viewing mainstream news shows OR the Congress on -Span. Stooge time is once again the choice of the masses. First and foremost you have the millionaire and mega millionaire (so called) journalists who push across the news only fit for an empire. Most of what they shovel your way is Republican VS. Democrat food fights, never on the most important issues we working stiffs should be concerned with.

No mention of this obscene militarism and military spending (over 50% of our federal taxes) that bankrupts our economy. No mention of the need for real National Health Care for ALL without the predatory private insurers being involved. (Please note: Why should the millionaire and uber rich journalists care when they can easily afford what are labeled ‘ Cadillac health insurance plans’?)

Why should the Congress people care when it’s on our dime that they get great health coverage?

Moving on, issues like having the uber rich pay what their class paid in the 50s , 60s and 70s when the top federal income tax bracket was anywhere from 90% to 78%, and not the current less than 40% one. (Of course, NO ONE actually paid or pays what their bracket dictates- that is why they have accountants to chip away through deductions.) All in all, the stooges we see on the boob tube news shows and the floor of Congress really do not have a clue about what we working stiffs deal with. Yes, sincere politicians like Ms. Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders (to name a few) do care, but they still reside under that ‘Big Tent’ corrupt party. As for the other party, well, they are so far removed from working stiffs….

This empire loves to have their bought and paid for media make heroes of uber rich celebrities, including our sports stars and politicos. Most of these people, even the few who truly care about we working stiffs, do NOT live as we do. They all don’t have to worry about being a few paychecks from the street, or about deciding how to care for their bodies and teeth for lack of viable and full insurance coverage. These folks won’t worry about feeding their kids properly or making the next mortgage or rental payment. All any of we working stiffs can get from the uber rich is the usual LIP SERVICE! Thus, phony populist demagogues like Trump (Make Amerika Great Again for the Few) and Obama (Hope for the Change that never comes) travel in the same circles… insulated from the rabble who continually vote and support them. Why not? After all, it’s Stooge Time!!

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Philip A Farruggio is the 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 TruePublica

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) skeptically welcomes the Trudeau government’s announcement of its new anti-racism strategy, which includes a definition of Islamophobia. Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez unveiled “Building a Foundation for Change” yesterday, a plan that allocates $45 million to fight racism through community initiatives, public education campaigns and combatting online hate. While CJPME is encouraged to see the federal government take steps toward addressing racism in Canada, there are still significant gaps in the strategy, which ultimately fails to enumerate any concrete actions on the urgent problem of Islamophobia in Canada.

The government’s anti-racism strategy comes as a response to the Heritage Committee’s M-103 report and recommendations, which called for a national action strategy against racism and discrimination. While the M-103 study was initially commissioned as a result of growing Islamophobia in Canada, CJPME notes that the new anti-racism strategy deemphasizes the challenges facing Canada’s Muslim community today. Instead, the strategy speaks only generally of the need to fight anti-Black racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Indigenous racism, Islamophobia and other discriminations. CJPME President Thomas Woodley responded, “While any steps toward combatting racism should be applauded, the government’s new anti-racism strategy seems to be a pre-election marketing pitch that seeks to make everyone happy, and avoids any concrete commitment to action.”

CJPME welcomes the definition of Islamophobia in the strategy, yet notes that it fails to mention the racialized aspect of Islamophobia. That is, people who are not Muslim but are perceived to be Muslim also suffer from Islamophobia in Canada. Moreover, whereas the government’s strategy adopted a definition of anti-Semitism that includes hate towards Jewish “community institutions or religious facilities,” there is no similar provision in the Islamophobia definition.

CJPME asserts that there are clear actions the government could implement to take a stand against growing racism in Canada. First, the government could vocally condemn the bigotry that Bill 21 has enshrined into Quebec law. Second, the government could easily implement the M-103 Report’s Recommendation #30, which calls for a “National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia and other forms of religious discrimination.” CJPME notes that the government already has several recommendations against discrimination that they could implement– from the M-103 report to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. CJPME calls the government to stop equivocating, and to take concrete actions to protect Canada’s most vulnerable minorities.

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Yes, I believe the US may never attack Iran. It is based on past experience that the US never attacks a state where it has a fear of retaliation. Iraq war was a good example where Iraq was blamed for possessing “Weapons of Mass Destruction”.  UN inspectors traveled to Iraq and investigated thoroughly and once confirmed that Iraq has no capacity to retaliate then the US invaded Iraq.

Before the invasion, the US identified disgruntle Iraqi’s and through a media campaign, launched a hybrid war, fake news, disappointments, anti-Saddam sentiments, anti-state campaign, etc, were bombarded and psychological warfare was created before the actual attack. Bombed from very high altitude, where Iraq has no capacity to retaliate. The infrastructure, command, and control were destroyed. The military might of Iraq was totally dismantled. Once the country was almost destroyed, ground troops, almost without any resistance conquered Baghdad. 

Libya was also not so different, in the first attempt, force Libya to dismantle its nuclear program, then ensured, Libya should not have any capacity to retaliate, then, through hybrid war, created environments suitable for the US invasion. Once everything was guaranteed a smooth invasion, the US attacked Libya.

While North Korea, really have deterrence, the US may never attack North Korea (NK). North Korean society is very much conservative and the US could not find any local network to work for them. The media is under strict control in NK, and the US failed to launch any significant hybrid war on NK. Moreover, while attacked Iraq and Libya, Russia and China were not in the mood to offer any resistance. But in the case of North Kore (NK), the US failed to get consent from China or Russia. That is why, in spite of the fact, the US wanted to attack NK, but may never be able to attack.

In the case of Iran, which is not a nuclear state, but one of the most resilient nation and can survive under any crisis, may retaliate. Definitely, it cannot compare with the US military might, but must be able to offer some resistance. The US is not in a mood to suffer even a smaller resistance. On the other hand, geopolitics has evolved as a multipolar world, the US may not be allowed to take any action unilaterally. Russia and China are in a situation, where their consent may be required in advance. The Russians and Chinese have heavy stacks in Iran and strategic interests. The Russians and China may not accept the US hegemony in this region. In the case of escalation of the US-Iran war, Russia may involve actively and openly. China may resist in its own manner but definitely may not allow the US to maintain supremacy in the Middle-East.

Iran downed the US drone, is a signal to offer resistance to a huge extent. Crucial consultations among Russia, Israel, and the US, is of high significance. G-20 may be an important platform to formulate a strategy to resolve the issue. UN and International community is also concerned and may play their vital role. Japan and Europe have stakes with Iran and their economy relies on imported oil and gas from the Middle-East, as well as the export of consumer products and daily used items to Middle-East. I fact, any destabilization in Middle-East may adversely impact not only the European Economy, but the global economy may suffer a lot. Furthermore, some of the European nations may not stand with the US in case of full-fledge war with Iran. The US has gained economic benefits already by selling huge amount of weapons to Arab world, by scaring them from Iranian threat. By actual war, the US may destroy Iran, but gained nothing economic benefits.

The real tension started on unilateral withdrawal of the USA from Nuclear deal with Iran. Iran’s nuclear deal was signed in 2015 by seven nations known as “JCPOA”. The landmark nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers – the US, UK, France, China and Russia plus Germany – saw economic sanctions on Iran lifted the following confirmation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that sensitive nuclear activities are restricted in the country. Under the deal, Iran had to halt its nuclear program and the West had to remove economic sanctions on Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed that there has been no evidence of violation from the Iranian side. All other nations’ part of this deal was satisfied with Iran and confirmed the compliance by Iran. Even the US Congress has not confirmed any violations yet.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a PowerPoint presentation that persuaded US President Donald Trump to withdraw from the deal, something he had promised during his election campaign too. It was unilateral withdrawal and an open violation of the international treaty. Any sanctions imposed by the UN must be respected, but imposed by any single country or small group of countries, may not be considered binding on all other nations. Bilateral relations, cannot be imposed on the whole world.

I believe, the UN and the International Community must be given a chance to avert the big disaster. One possible solution may be the restoration of – JCPOA. Be Optimistic! Be Positive! Join us to pray and wish for guidance, wisdom and a sense of responsibility and struggle to avert any big disaster to humanity.

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Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan, Sinologist (ex-Diplomate), Non-Resident Fellow of CCG (Center for China and Globalization), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan. E-mail: [email protected])

The G20 summit in Osaka, Japan is bringing together all the contradictions of an interconnected but highly fragmented world. The Middle East, or West Asia, is still in turmoil, and international terrorism keeps being a disruptive issue in many regions of the world. Moreover, China is under attack from the US, and is getting more support from the international community, as demonstrated on Sunday in Rome by the election of Qu Dongyu as director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The Chinese candidate received 108 votes, the US nominee had to be satisfied with just 12.

The G20 is the most representative political group at the world stage and will turn 10 in September 2019. The group represents 80 percent of global GDP and is a sign of a road toward a multipolar configuration of the world order, overcoming the anachronistic conception of the G7.

Founded as a reaction to the 1990s financial crisis, it represents a step forward to a holistic reform of international governance, giving a wider representation to the most populous developing countries within the framework of the existing institutional architecture.

Unfortunately, the US with some of its major allies is working in the opposite direction, in an attempt to re-establish a unipolar world through policies characterized by protectionism, boycott, military threats and bullying.

The last example is the aggressive posture toward Iran. What will happen in Osaka? What are the prospects for global governance?

The agenda of the summit is extensive. It stretches over global economy, trade, employment, health, innovation, development and environmental issues. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will try to promote the “Osaka Track” to take advantage of the summit in view of the upcoming elections. His focus will be on innovation in order to build a Society 5.0 (post-industrial), namely, to support a fair use of digital data, on the back of Artificial Intelligence, Inernet of Things, robotics and big data. The idea is to develop these innovative fields for human development by promoting a people-centric approach.

Potentially, much more revolutionary is the will to discuss the cryptocurrency issue, where Abe’s Japan wants to start discussion on the international monetary system, moving beyond Bretton Woods.

The topic is no longer avoidable because it is an existing phenomenon, and is also being promoted by some states, by Facebook, and in the near future by other key global corporations. States are jealous of their control over fiat currencies, but technological changes have already paved the way to new systems of payment. There is the possibility that Osaka will be a watershed in this historic development of financial markets.

There is possibility of deals on the sidelines of the Osaka summit, but not much hope that China and the US will make progress in trade negotiations.

The recent US State Department Report on religious freedom strongly criticizes China’s policies in Xinjiang, and the new Chinese tech firms on the US trade entity list is another unfair step against China – but also goes against the interests of the US business community.

Furthermore, the US and Germany’s proposals to table the Hong Kong issue during bilateral talks are equally absurd. Is Hong Kong an international issue? Not at all.

Surely, China, Russia and India will reaffirm a strong commitment to a multipolar world which is against protectionism and unilateralism.

These three powers will be supported by many other countries, not only BRICS, and the US will stand even more isolated.

Major tensions stem not only from trade, technological and monetary issues, but also from interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

In this sense, the US is definitely working against international norms and UN principles of mutual respect.

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This article was originally published on the Global Times.

Fabio Massimo Parenti is associate professor of Geography/International Studies (ASN), teaching at the International Institute Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence. He is also member of CCERRI think tank, Zhengzhou, and EURISPES, Laboratorio BRICS, Rome. His latest book is Geofinance and Geopolitics, Egea. Follow him on twitter @fabiomassimos

Featured image is from VCG

Mohamed Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood leaders in prison in Egypt were given an ultimatum by top officials to disband the organisation or face the consequences, Middle East Eye has learned.

They had until the end of Ramadan to decide. Morsi refused and within days he was dead.

Brotherhood members inside and outside Egypt now fear for the lives of Khairat el Shater, a former presidential candidate, and Mohammed Badie, the supreme guide of the Brotherhood, both of whom refused the offer.

The demand to Morsi and Brotherhood leaders to close the organisation down was first outlined in a strategy document written by senior officials around President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi which was compiled shortly after his re-election last year.

Middle East Eye has been briefed about its contents by multiple Egyptian opposition sources, one of whom had sight of it and who spoke about it on condition of anonymity.

The sources told MEE they were aware of the document and the secret negotiations with Morsi before his sudden death in prison last Monday.

‘Closing the file of the Muslim Brotherhood’

Some details of the protracted contacts between Egyptian officials and Morsi over the last few months have been withheld for fear of endangering the lives of prisoners.

Entitled “Closing the file of the Muslim Brotherhood”, the government document argued that the Brotherhood had been delivered a blow by the military coup in 2013, which was unprecedented in its history and bigger than the crackdowns the Islamist organisation faced under former presidents Nasser and Mubarak.

The document argued that the Brotherhood had been fatally weakened and there was now no clear chain of command.

It stated that the Brotherhood could no longer be considered a threat to the state of Egypt, and that the main problem now was the number of prisoners in jail.

The number of political prisoners from all opposition factions, secular and Islamist, is estimated to be about 60,000.

The government document envisaged closing the organisation down within three years.

It offered freedom to members of the Brotherhood who guaranteed to take no further part in politics or “dawa”, the preaching and social activities of the movement.

Those who refused would be threatened with yet further harsh sentences and prison for life. The document thought that 75 percent of the rank and file would accept.

If they agreed to close the movement down the leadership would be offered better prison conditions.

Pressure on Morsi

Huge pressure was applied on Morsi himself, who was held in solitary confinement in an annex of Tora Farm Prison, and kept away from lawyers, family or any contact with fellow prisoners.

“The Egyptian government wanted to keep this negotiation as secret as possible. They did not want Morsi to confer with colleagues,” one person with knowledge of events inside the prison said.

As negotiations dragged on, Egyptian officials became increasingly frustrated with Morsi, and the senior Brotherhood leadership in prison.

Morsi refused to talk about closing down the Brotherhood because he said he was not its leader, and the Brotherhood leaders refused to talk about national issues such as Morsi renouncing his title as president of Egypt and referred the officials back to him.

The deposed president refused to recognise the coup or surrender his legitimacy as elected president of Egypt. On the issue of ending the Brotherhood, he said he was the president of all Egypt and would not compromise.

“This continued for some time. Efforts were intensified in Ramadan. The regime became frustrated and they made it clear to other leaders that unless they persuaded him to give up and negotiate by the end of Ramadan, the regime would take other actions. They did not specify which,” sources with knowledge of the events told MEE.

For this reason, the sources who spoke to MEE believe Morsi was killed and that the other Brotherhood leaders who refused the demand to disband the organisation are now in mortal danger.

Morsi died aged 67 last Monday shortly after collapsing in court where he was facing a retrial on charges of espionage. Egyptian authorities and state media reported that he had suffered a heart attack.

But concerns that the conditions in which he was being held posed a threat to his health had been raised for years by his family and supporters, who said he had been denied adequate medical care for diabetes and a liver disease.

One Egyptian figure said:

“My analysis is that they decided to kill him at that particular time (the seventh anniversary of the second round of presidential elections). This explains the timing of his death. The main reason they decided to kill him was that they concluded he would never agree to their demands.”

The document was not the first offer that had been made to Brotherhood prisoners by Sisi’s government.

Before the 2018 document, there had been two offers made to them: release on condition of not engaging in politics for a specific time, and release on condition of not engaging in politics, but being allowed to continue with “dawa”, or the religious life of the community. Neither offer had been taken up.

Morsi’s death has sparked strong public criticism of his treatment. Ayman Nour, a former presidential candidate and political opponent, said Morsi had been “killed slowly over six years”.

“Sisi and his regime bear full responsibility for the outcome, and there is no other option but international arbitration into what he was subjected to, medical negligence and deprivation of all rights,” Nour, who now lives in exile, tweeted.

Secrets to share

In the final moments, Morsi urged a judge to let him share secrets which he had kept even from his lawyer, MEE reported.

Morsi said he needed to speak in a closed session to reveal the information – a request the deposed president had repeatedly appealed for in the past but never been granted.

Standing before the court, Morsi said he would keep the secrets to himself until he died or met God. He collapsed soon after.

Earlier in the same court session, fellow detainees Safwat al-Hejazi, an Islamist preacher, and Essam al-Haddad, who served as Morsi’s foreign affairs advisor, asked the judge to consider holding court sessions less frequently.

Haddad’s son Abdullah told MEE he fears his father and brother Gehad, who is also imprisoned, will share Morsi’s fate.

“There are many others who are on the verge of death and unless the international community speaks out and demands others to be released, many more will die, including my own father and brother,” he said.

MEE has contacted the Egyptian embassy in London to ask for comment on the document and the negotiations between the government and Morsi and senior Brotherhood officials in the months and weeks before his death.

The Egyptian foreign ministry last week condemned calls by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for an independent investigation into Morsi’s death.

A spokesperson for the foreign ministry said calls for an inquiry were a “deliberate attempt to politicise a case of natural death”.

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“Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.”– Bob Dylan

In his iconic anthem “The Times They Are A-Changin’” (1962), Minnesota’s Bob Dylan immortalized the totally logical imperative (“don’t criticize”) that admonishes those who want to express their thoughts about an issue to keep their mouths shut until they have done the thorough research into the available unbiased science or history that might make clear what their stance should be before they spout off or blog about it or vote for some politician who has spouted off on issues he doesn’t understand. (By unbiased I mean that the science and history has not been influenced or re-written by some profiteering corporation or by those that are under the influence of those corporations.)

This essay is only partially about the highly-profitable over-vaccination campaigns conducted by Big Pharma and Big Medicine that are highly promoted by the “vaccinology-illiterate”. Sadly most of those illiterates don’t realize that they aren’t even close to understanding the totality of the real science that they are criticizing.

In fact there are very few scientists on the planet that truly understand the entirety of what could be known about vaccinology – and I admit that I am not one of them. But I have spent hundreds of hours reading and studying many books on vaccinology (many of which are in my personal library). I have also studied a lot of the journal articles and testimony of many vaccinology experts, and I also know that the so-called investigative journalists and trolls that are writing about the subject are actually illiterate about real vaccine science. In the process of criticizing what they don’t understand (and accusing those serious researchers who understand a lot more than they do) they are embarrassingly exposing their ignorance.

The subject of how to recognize a vaccinology illiterate individual would take a book-length treatise, but here are a small handful of tip-offs:

1) “Vaccinology illiterates” never mention the fact that vaccine manufacturers, in their clinical trials that they are obligated to do before applying for FDA approval, never do any testing on the safety or efficacy of their new vaccines when they are intramuscularly injected simultaneously with other vaccines(!);

2) When corporate “vaccinology illiterates” want to stir up the demand for more over-vaccination efforts, they repeatedly and endlessly have their equally vaccinology-illiterate journalist colleagues write about the latest viral infection outbreak (the one in New York only amounted to 900+ people out of a population of 302,000,000 over a period of 6 months!), and never mention that many of the victims had already been fully vaccinated;

3) Vaccine illiterate journalists never listen to or interview the parents of the thousands of children that have been vaccine-injured, vaccine-killed or have been afflicted with vaccine-induced autoimmune disorders;

4) Vaccine illiterate journalists, editors and publishers never interview the real unbiased vaccinology experts for their radio or television shows (check the latest hit piece from the BBC’s Claudia Hammond (with anthropologist Heidi Larson who has been hired by Wellcome Trust (which was acquired by vaccine maker GSK years ago) to start the Vaccine Confidence Project in England. Can you guess what the subject matter will be?

The hit piece can be found here.

5) To back up their opinions and bloggings on the safety or efficacy of vaccines, vaccine illiterates naively (or intentionally) use discredited sources of information that are supplied by profiteering corporate entities, paid-off government agencies or medical lobbying groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics that have serious conflicts of interest that they try hard to hide.

6) Vaccine illiterates never point out the following over-vaccination schedule for American children for 2019 that some vaccinology literate scientists project will cause a 50% incidence of autism spectrum disorders in American boys in just a few decades, that is, unless the once sacred Hippocratic Oath, the Precautionary Principle and the principle of Fully Informed Consent is somehow resurrected and then applied by the pediatric and medical communities;

Study this chart and understand that there are toxins in each of them, some of which have synergistic adverse effects.

Below is a short list of untrustworthy corporate influences that have gradually acquired almost total control over the public conversations concerning the endlessly increasing number of neurotoxin-containing and auto-immunity-inducing vaccines. Sadly, the many internet trolls make gleeful use of the skewed disinformation from these sources (the many internet trolls are not listed, they can usually be found at the very top of Google’s lists):

1) profiteering corporations (like the hundreds of Big Pharma and Big Vaccine companies)

2) co-opted, non-elected, governmental oversight agencies that happily take enormous amounts of money from profiteering corporations that the agencies naively deny affects their decision-making

3) profit-minded and professional career-protecting medical lobbying groups that try to deflect any and all evidence of the current iatrogenic disease epidemic (even beyond the over-vaccination epidemic) that is going on all around us

4) the Big Pharma-/Big Vaccine-influenced mainstream media that takes 70% of its revenues from Big Pharma’s profiteers (thus self-silencing themselves when their investigative journalists should be doing deep explorations and revealing important, unwelcome truths about our often corruptible nation’s corporate and governmental leaders [like Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, for example]);

5) the many “charitable” foundations formed by billionaire investors or their families who kind of like the tax exemptions . These non-profit foundations surely own shares in pharmaceutical and vaccine corporations; and

6) assorted hedge fund managers and Wall Street investment firms that don’t really care about the corrupted, unethical, short-term, clinical trials that Big Pharma uses to so fool the (Big Pharma-infiltrated) FDA into approving its potential block-buster products without any concern for the long-term adverse consequences of their investment decisions.

In the case of the exceedingly complex science (and history) of vaccinology, very few laypeople (and very few physicians, nurse practitioners or nurses) have done the work, partly because they have not been able to find the hundreds of hours that it would take to even scratch the surface of the real science. Physicians are hopelessly over-booked and also heavily influenced by the propaganda groups listed above. Besides, unbiased vaccinology is NEVER taught in medical school.

One of the common denominators in the current totally preventable crisis is the large number of “vaccinology-illiterate” entities that are “criticizing what they don’t understand”.

Dylan’s powerful poetic truism mentioned at the top of this essay should be adopted by all good people. To remind readers of its power, here is the fourth verse of that song:

“Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand.
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command;
Your old road is rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changing.

Dylan also had some important words for the profiteering elites discussed above in his 1985 song “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky”:

He wrote:

“I saw thousands who could have overcome the darkness, but for the love of a lousy buck I watched them die”.

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Since his retirement from his holistic mental health practice, Dr Kohls has been writing the weekly Duty to Warn column for the Duluth Reader, Minnesota’s premier alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns, which have been re-published all around the world for the last decade, deal with a variety of justice issues, including the dangers of copper/nickel sulfide mining in water-rich northeast Minnesota and the realities of pro-corporate “Friendly” Fascism in America, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s over-drugging, Big Vaccine’s over-vaccinating, Big Medicine’s over-screening and over-treating agendas, as well as other movements that threaten human health, the environment, democracy, civility and the sustainability of the planet and the populace. Many of his columns have been archived at a number of websites, including the following four:

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national; and

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

Last week Iran’s President Rouhani concluded a trip to Tajikistan to attend CICA. The visit of the Iranian president to Dushanbe came after a period of four years. The last meeting between the Presidents of the two countries was in September 2014. This time there was a visible thaw in relations between Tehran and Dushanbe. Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had visited Dushanbe last month and Tajikistan’s Foreign Minister Sirodjidin Mukhriddin made a trip to Tehran, where some security and political agreements were signed.

In recent years, however, relations between the two neighbours have not always been cordial. In 2015, the main opposition party to Rahmon, Islamic Renaissance of Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) was banned. The process of banning IRPT was started in 2011 by the classified protocol No. 32-20. Bobojon Qayumov, speaker of the IRPT party told the author that an official letter by the prosecutor general’s office was sent to the party and given a ten – day deadline to stop activities by 5^th September 2015. However, the incident involving former deputy defense minister, Abduhalim Nazarzoda, which Rahmon’s government called a coup and opposition considered a state-backed plot to purge IRPT supporters, made it easier for the Tajik state to ban IRPT.

Thus began the souring of relations between Tehran and Dushanbe. Iran was traditionally the main supporter of Tajik United Opposition in the civil war of the 1990s. On the Tajik Peace Accord which was identified and submitted by the UN, Iran was also a peacemaker and guarantor for the treaty on the opposition side. It means that the opposition expected Tehran to protect their interests against possible betrayal by the Tajik state. Of course, the Russian Federation was on the other side. So, apparently Iran would be considered as an obstacle to Rahmon’s plans.

That was why Rahmon took aim at Iran during the first step of the September 2015 incidents and issues of IRPT. When IRPT leader, Muhiddin Kabiri, invited to attend International Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran, had a short meeting with Iranian Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei, it enraged officials in Dushanbe. Relations had gone only downhill from there.

Iranian businessmen were on Dushanbe’s list. Trade dropped from $165 million in 2015 to $92 million in 2018. Many Iranian government organizations and charities were forced to suspend their activities in Dushanbe – including the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee and the Cultural Center of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The flights stopped and lots of Iranian companies forced to leave Tajikistan. Some fake documentaries was broadcasted on Tajik state television blaming Iran for Tajik civil war!

It didn’t stop there. Dushanbe went on to blame Iran for terrorist attacks on its soil. In 2018, Dushanbe blamed terrorists were led by an “active member” of the banned IRPT who “underwent training in Iran’s Qom and Mazandaran” for an attack on foreign tourists. ISIS had claimed the attack soon and then released a video of cyclist killers’ pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. However, Tajikistan dismissed it and pinned the blame on IRPT and Iran, while they knew that Qom is a central Shia city of Iran which could not be related to any ISIS ideology. Tehran summoned the Tajik ambassador and strongly objected Interior ministry’s statement. It was the first time that Iran reacted sternly to Tajikistan.

Tajikistan also worked to halt Iran’s full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. After Iran’s nuclear deal and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, while China and Russia supported Iran’s membership to SCO, Tajikistan was the one which objected.

At this time while Rahmon tried to keep distance from Tehran by getting more friendly with Saudi Arabia, Iran tried to be patient and overlook Tajik mischiefs to focus and deal with more pressing issues of JCPOA and the Middle East. At the same time, Tehran also didn’t escalate disputes with Rahmon. While Iran was a potential destination for banned IRPT members, Kabiri stated that Iran was not prepared for hosting Tajik opposition in 2015 as in the 1990s.

However, with Trump’s withdrawal from JCPOA, Iran has looked more precisely at Central Asian neighbors including Tajikistan. A process of rebuilding the relations has started. The direct flights of Mashhad- Dushanbe has resumed after an eight month halt, Presidents and Foreign Ministers has met, former Deputy Foreign Ministers appointed as new ambassadors and the companies are coming back to resume bilateral trade and business.

The new relations of Dushanbe and Tehran is on a new platform. IRPT have always been part of Iran-Tajikistan relations after the peace treaty. But now it seems that we are facing a more non-ideologic and interest-based approach from Tehran by ignoring traditional partner (IRPT). It would considerably affect the relations in political, security and economic aspects. A significant decline on the depth of relations would be expected, which is desirable for Rahmon. IRPT as an Islamic and pro-Iran group, has helped Tehran to make a good image in mostly rural and traditional society of Tajikistan, in which the government has tried to ruin it in recent years.

But Iran has not disassociated from the IRPT and that’s a dilemma for the new relations. After Mukhriddin’s meetings in Tehran, while Iran was in holidays of Eid al-Fitr, Tajik foreign ministry website published a report of the visit. At the report, the foreign ministry claimed “the Iranian side stressed that it will prevent on its territory the activities of members and supporters of terrorist and extremist groups and parties, including the Islamic Renaissance Party”. But just before Rouhani’s Central Asian tour, the name of the IRPT was removed from the report.

It seems that while the Tajik state has repeatedly requested for absolute severing of Iran- IRPT relations, Tehran has not agreed to do so. But regarding Rahmon’s concerns as a sign of confidence building, Tehran might have reduced relations.

The other point is about the shift in power in Tajikistan. Since 2015, by purging the country of any opposition and 2016, May 22 referendum which paved the way for young Rustam, there are signs of preparing for a shift in power. In this way, Rahmon wants Iran on a favourable position with Rustam. The experience of the 1990s’ shift in power from Soviet to independent Tajikistan, made Tajik president to care about Iran. Tehran has still a considerable influence over Tajikistan and if it decides so can put Rahmon’s succession plans in serious trouble. On the other hand, Iran would wait to deal with new president on traditional relations, considering IRPT. While IRPT is getting more active in the EU by making coalitions such as the National Alliance, the President’s family is getting more and more worried, and hence they are trying their best to purge the opposition completely.

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Omid Rahimi is a Fellow at the Institute for Central Asia and Afghanistan Studies, Mashhad, Iran. His work and comments are published in Eastern Iran, Fars News, Journal of Central Eurasian Studies and Atlantic Council. He tweets at  @0midrahimi

The G20 Summit in Japan is important in and of itself, but far more significant are the many meetings that will take place between several world leaders at this event.

The G20 is always a newsworthy event that has grown in importance ever since this format was used to help coordinate a response to the 2008 financial crisis. The world’s leading economies have a stake in the stability of the international economic system, but this year that very same system is under threat as a result of the escalating “trade war” between its two largest economies. The US wants to create the conditions for changing the global supply chain, hence its tariffs and possibly other measures that it’s taking in pursuit of this end, while China is seeking to entrench itself as the core of the global economy through its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). These contradictory objectives have led to much friction over the past year and threaten to cause immense consequences for the world economy, which is why this year’s G20 is especially significant.

While the casual observer will be waiting for the actual multilateral meeting itself to take place over the weekend, those who have been closely following events will have their eyes peeled on the other meetings that are also scheduled to occur between several world leaders, chief among them the one between Presidents Trump and Xi. The former threatened his counterpart with the immediate imposition of $300 billion worth of tariffs if he didn’t agree to meet, which was an aggressive signal of intent simultaneously designed as a form of psychological warfare against the Chinese leader. Trump is eager to clinch a deal for ending the “trade war”, though not because he’s desperate but because he’d like his envisioned victory to take place before the eyes of the entire world. There’s no better place than the G20 for that to happen, but the prospects are still slim.

Both sides have dug in the heels for what appears to be a protracted struggle for control of the global economy. The US doesn’t want to cede its dwindling leadership in this respect, ergo the efforts that it’s undertaken through the “trade war” to stem its decline and disadvantage its Chinese rival in order to gain a relative advantage. The People’s Republic, meanwhile, knows that Trump is expecting nothing less than its full capitulation, even if it’s done in a “face-saving” way to avoid embarrassing President Xi at home. In addition, China’s continued growth is dependent on securing trade routes for selling its overproduced goods to existing (Western) and developing (“Global South”) markets, with the former being more difficult due to Trump’s pressure while the latter has to contend with the Damocles’ sword of Hybrid War.

Instead of surrendering, China is seeking a creative solution to the stalemate that it’s in with the US, which is why its leader plans to convene a meeting with his Russian and Indian counterparts. RIC, the Eurasian component of BRICS, is statistically impressive given its members’ collective economic potential and enormous populations, therefore making it capable of affecting real change in the global environment. While there are unavoidable challenges to their multilateral cooperation such as the US’ efforts to “poach” India as its new “Indo-Pacific” ally for “containing” China, there are also certain commonalities between these three Great Powers that can’t be ignored either. Each of them has an interest in reforming the global economy in order to increase their role and that of their national currencies, which is something that the US opposes.

Accordingly, it’s entirely feasible that RIC might reach a pragmatic agreement to intensify economic cooperation with one another and expand their existing projects, though predictably stopping short of India’s participation in BRI, which is leverage that its leader could skillfully apply during his bilateral meetings with Presidents Xi, Trump, and Putin. In fact, it’s actually these bilateral interactions between the American, Chinese, Russian, and Indian leaders that will probably end up being the most important aspect of this event. While the RIC get-together shouldn’t be underplayed, it also shouldn’t be overestimated either, since the US will do its utmost to divide and rule these Eurasian Great Powers through Trump’s bilateral meetings with their leaders. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll succeed, but just that that’s most likely his strategic intention.

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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.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the Donald Trump Administration is considering requiring any telecommunications firms that want to sell their 5G equipment in the U.S. to move their production outside of China.

The article says that the basis for this possibly forthcoming decree is the Executive Order that President Trump signed last month, which gives the Commerce Department until October to issue new rules in this respect. If true, then this is nothing short of a scheme to shake up the global supply chain, a U.S. gamble which will fail.

It can be argued that the entire trade war was initiated on this basis, with the U.S. imposing high tariffs on Chinese-produced goods in order to encourage this development. The zero-sum expectation was that companies in a complex relationship of economic interdependence with one of the world’s largest marketplaces would leave China in order to protect the profits that they’re making in the U.S. From an American strategic standpoint, this plot was thought to reduce China’s economic growth if enough companies left the country, but that evidently hasn’t been happening at the scale that they predicted which is why the U.S. is reportedly considering imposing new rules on the import of certain categories of equipment.

The Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation is held in Beijing from April 25 to 27. /CGTN Photo

5G technology is being exploited as the example to roll out what might be a new far-reaching policy of restricting imports on unproven so-called “national security” pretexts, with the precedent that could be established then being applied against an untold number of other products as well.

In preparation for this, the U.S. is trying to clinch trade agreements with possible re-offshoring destinations like India in order to facilitate the export of these formerly Chinese-produced products into the American marketplace on favorable terms akin to the ones that China used to enjoy before the trade war. For as ambitious of a plan as this may be, it could not realize its ends.

Just as many companies are in a relationship of complex economic interdependence with the U.S., so too are many of them in the same one with China, and America’s efforts to force them into making an artificial zero-sum choice between the two are an unnatural manipulation of market forces via tariffs and the aforementioned new import rules that are reportedly being considered.

Ideally, all companies would like to maximize their profits by selling to both of these leading markets, which is why they’re trying to find workarounds to Trump’s plans in order to avoid a disruption of business with China. It’s here where the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) can play an important role in helping both companies and countries balance between the two.

China has reached preferential trade agreements with many of its BRI partners, most of which aren’t restricted from selling to the U.S. through the imposition of high tariffs and restrictive import rules such as the ones reported upon by The Wall Street Journal.

Image on the right: U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai delivers a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2018. /VCG Photo

As such, companies looking to avoid the U.S. economic penalties against Chinese-produced goods yet still wanting to continue conducting business with the country could conceivably re-offshore to these said BRI countries, which would allow them to trade with both the U.S. and China while simultaneously contributing to the development of the mostly developing countries into which they’d be investing.

Pakistan, which hosts BRI’s flagship project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, might be an attractive destination since it enjoys excellent trading ties with both the U.S. and China, as could Kenya, for instance.

The Trump administration’s intent in the trade war is to inflict damage on China’s economic interests, but the invisible hand of the market and the profit-driven motivations of the pressured companies could see this scheme fail by the development of Beijing’s BRI partners and the resultant strengthening of its visionary Silk Road system instead of only benefiting the U.S. and its allies.

Therefore, the U.S. efforts to shake up the global supply chain might not succeed in the end.

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This article was originally published on CGTN.

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

All images in this article are from CGTN

The Western media has been boasting over recent protests in Hong Kong. Western headlines have claimed the protests have “rattled” Beijing’s leadership.

The protests have been organized to obstruct Hong Kong’s elected government from moving forward with an extradition bill. The bill would further integrate Hong Kong’s legal system with that of mainland China’s, allowing suspects to be sent to the mainland, Taiwan, or Macau to face justice for crimes committed anywhere in Chinese territory.

Since taking office, Trump yielded to White House hawks on issues of war and peace, favoring the former, scorning the latter.

He breached his campaign promises to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan and Syria, escalating war instead, including in Iraq by the rape and destruction of Mosul.

He vetoed legislation to end US involvement in Yemen and OK’d terror-bombing of Somalia while waging all-out war by other means on Venezuela and Iran — wanting their legitimate governments replaced by US-controlled puppet regimes, along with gaining control over their vast resources.

Like most of his predecessors, he promotes peace while waging war in multiple theaters, threatening more against Iran, what the late Gore Vidal explained in his book titled: “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We (the US) Got to Be So Hated.”

The Pentagon operates globally, using hundreds of bases in scores of countries on every continent as platforms for endless wars of aggression against nations threatening no one.

The cost of this adventurism is staggering, countless trillions of dollars down a black hole of waste, fraud and abuse at the expense of social justice fast eroding in the US to benefit Wall Street and the nation’s military, industrial, security, media complex.

Iran is in the eye of the storm, Trump, Bolton and Pompeo threatening war on the country.

Trump is a geopolitical know-nothing. He showed profound ignorance of the fallout from wars, telling Fox News on Wednesday:

If his regime wages war on Iran, it “would not last very long” and won’t involve invading the country, adding:

“We’re in a very strong position…(W)e’re (not) going to send a million soldiers. I’m just saying if something would happen, it wouldn’t last very long.”

He also tweeted:

“Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”

The Islamic Republic never preemptively attacked another country — what the US and its imperial partners do repeatedly. Iran may be next.

Its ruling authorities vowed that if attacked by the US, it’ll hit back hard in response, including against nations allied with US aggression.

If things unfold this way, protracted full-scale war would likely follow with devastating consequences, something potentially far more serious than other post-9/11 US wars of aggression.

Trump has no understanding of what wars are all about, the death and destruction toll, how millions of noncombatants are harmed, why aggression is considered the supreme high crime against peace.

DJT is ignorant of international, constitutional, and US statute laws. No nation may legally attack another country except in self-defense, never preemptively, how all US wars are waged.

He’s profoundly ignorant about the Islamic Republic, tweeting:

“The US request for Iran is very simple – No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror!”

In their annual assessments of global risks, the US intelligence community affirms no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program or intention to have one.

The US, NATO, Israel, and their imperial partners are the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism, a scourge Iran abhors and is aiding Syria combat it.

Most Americans know nothing about the horrors their country inflicted on many others throughout the post-WW II era.

They’re ignorant about ongoing US imperial wars, naked aggression against multiple countries, new ones threatened against Iran and perhaps other nations, nor possible catastrophic nuclear war if things are pushed too far.

Authorizing wars without declaring them is longstanding US policy. Big lies launch and perpetuate them, terror-bombing a key way the US wages them.

Millions were slaughtered during Harry Truman’s aggression against North Korea, much of the country turned to rubble. US pilots exhausted targets to bomb.

From 1965 – 1973, eight million tons of bombs were dropped, threefold WW II tonnage, around 300 tons for every Vietnamese man, woman, and child. Millions died, including from banned terror weapons, in Cambodia and Laos as well.

Post-9/11 US wars of aggression took countless millions of lives from terror-bombings, ground attacks, untreated diseases, environmental degradation, starvation, and overall deprivation.

If the Trump regime attacks Iran, something similar to the above would likely follow, the mother of all post-9/11 wars becoming the mother of all high crimes during this period.

America’s ugly past heads toward repeating, a geopolitical know-nothing president perhaps on the cusp of OKing it.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Gage Skidmore

Iran is not provoking but is provoked by a group that wants a war between the U.S. and Iran.  Recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and CIA director Gina Haspel all favored a military attack on Iran, in response to the downing of a drone.  However, the Pentagon officials had cautioned against an attack which could trigger a regional war of monumental proportions.

Pres. Trump does not want to start a war, but there is a group that is pushing him towards a reaction that would spark a war.  In April, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was speaking before the “Asia Society” in New York.  In that address, he warned that a group could be organizing a provocative event in order to escalate tensions between the U. S. and Iran.  However, he said Iran was prepared to react with restraint and patience.

Behind the scenes in the White House, there is a sub-plot running with an international cast of characters. The “B-Team” consists of National Security Advisor John Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed.  They are perceived to be intent on pushing the U. S, and others into a military conflict with Iran. Bolton asked the Pentagon about possible plans, and he proposed hitting Iran with 500 missiles per day.

Saudi Arabia sent its intelligence chief and senior diplomat Adel al-Jubeir to London in order to pressure the UK government to strike Iran militarily, in the wake of Pres. Trump’s decision to abort the U.S. attacks.  They claimed to have fresh evidence against Iran, but the unnamed UK officials were not impressed. The duo’s next stop was Jerusalem, where they will meet with the Israelis and John Bolton.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday, for talks with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, before flying on for talks with the UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed, who are all part of a coalition in favor of military action against Iran.

Iranian Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh asserted the U.S. Global Hawk drone and Navy P-8 aircraft, with a crew of 35 onboard, were violating Iran’s airspace.  According to the Iranians, a decision was made to down the unmanned drone as a warning, but to spare the manned flight.  It is further claimed that several warnings were transmitted to both aircraft prior to action on June 20.   Lt. Col. Earl Brown, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command denied that either aircraft was in violation of Iranian airspace.  However, the Iranian military issued a precise map of the tracking of both aircraft, and it appears there was a slight deviation.

During the Six-Day War, on June 8, 1967, the Israeli military deliberately attacked the USS Liberty, an American ship that had been monitoring the conflict.  According to testimony given by U.S. officials, the radio transmissions were as follows:

Israeli pilot to ground control: “This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?”

Ground control: “Yes, follow orders.”

“But sir, it’s an American ship, I can see the flag!”

Ground control: “Never mind; hit it!”

While the deck was still being strafed by the Israelis, Seaman Terry Halbardier ran out onto the deck with a reel of cable and attached it to the antenna so a “Mayday” could go out to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.  Although badly wounded by Israeli fire, Capt. William McGonagle was able to keep the bombed, torpedoed, napalmed Liberty afloat. The death toll was 34 crewmen, and 174 wounded out of a total crew of 294.  The Israeli false flag attack was meant to have the U.S. believe that Eygpt had done it, and a massive U. S. attack on Egypt would follow.  If not for the American sailor’s bravery under fire, no one would have ever known the truth.  Israel is capable of any false flag event when it stands to benefit.

$ 259 million dollars was donated to the Trump 2016 campaign by Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus.  The group has publicly stated they support military action against Iran; Adelson publicly suggested the use of nuclear weapons and led a campaign to remove H. R. McMaster and have him replaced with John Bolton.  Pres. Trump is now campaigning for re-election and will be mindful of those donors.

Donald J. Trump campaigned on promises of peace, a good economy, bringing troops home, and a new deal with Iran, which would prohibit Iran from ever making a nuclear weapon.  The previous deal was time-limited, but Trump wants a binding agreement for all time.  He makes his own decisions and is willing to go against the hawks surrounding him??

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

Yuval Noah Harari is an Oxford graduate and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has written Sapiens, a book about our history, we are the sapiens as in homo sapiens. He traces time from when it began with the big bang, to our planet’s origin, the start of life, the prehistoric era when we shared space with six other near human species like the Neanderthals and on to today. To him, we are just another species on this planet and species come and species go. Although he sees Sapiens as the rulers of the world at the moment, he expects we will be gone in a century or so.

He writes about how living on this planet affects us and how we affect it.  He looks at how evolution created who we are and how we function. In 2010 researchers found that up to 4% of DNA in a large percentage of us is still Neanderthal. It makes us wonder, what happened to them? Why did we dominate?

Harari notes how we evolved from animals of ‘no significance’ to thinking beings, farming beings, creative beings and now scientific beings. He credits part of our success to our inventions; buildings, laws, language, mathematics and money to name a few.

He describes what he calls the fraud of the agricultural revolution. That occurred when man changed from hunter gathering to farming some thousands of years ago. He contends that it made life worse not better for average people. Folks who had been happy spending a few hours a day foraging and hunting, as their diets changed to what they grew, had to work longer. In the process, ‘we did not domesticate wheat, it domesticated us.’ We worked harder but with more risk. Where once if there were crop failures we would move on, now we would starve. Also, with farming came private land ownership and eventually the capitalist system.

The reasons for this review are two; one is economics the other is fun.

Harari refers to the economy a lot. Two chapters are explicit; The Scent of Money and The Capitalist Creed. Trying to incorporate Western economic assumptions into the theory of how we have evolved is a stretch. His discussion about how man learned to trade and that with trade came travel internationally are wonderful. He refers to the market assumptions of Adam Smith that fit with life in Smith’s era. He neglects to mention that Smith was a professor of moral philosophy and assumed people would act decently. And he misses the growth of corporations, which have no understanding of ethics.

He writes about the invention and use of money which has had a profound impact on our development. He does that well and, in my experience, not everyone can. As I was finalizing the section in my book on money, I sent copies of the draft to two senior Chartered Accountants, people who reported on money for a living, for comment. One replied that he did not want to believe that’s how money is created! – out of thin air – as Harari explains. The other said that he believed he had read almost every book written about money and it was his belief that no one understood it. Harari understands and explains it well.

Trade, markets and money have been real factors in our evolution. They are real factors, they are part of but they are not economics. Harari seems to assume that economics is a science. In real science ideas build upon ideas to create a world view that allows us to make predictions. When the economic collapse of 2008 occurred, the largest collapse since the 1929 depression, it was unpredicted.

In 2008 economics was then over two centuries old yet still so inept that it missed the onset of the largest global economic meltdown of our lifetime. Perhaps that’s why Alfred Nobel never created a Nobel prize for economics. (The bank of Sweden created a prize in memory of Alfred Nobel which they give out annually to bank friendly economists to create the illusion that their work is science.) As John Kenneth Galbraith once said: ‘The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable’.

The other reason for this review is devilment! Harari includes a lot about religion and although he doesn’t say so explicitly, he makes it clear that God is another of man’s inventions! We didn’t find god or discover god, we invented god or at times several of them. I wish he had used ‘Man Created God’ as a chapter title! The idea is throughout chapter 12 The Law of Religion, where he looks how we evolved from animism (when we thought everything had a spirit), polytheism (when we believed in multiple gods) and monotheism (one god, albeit in many configurations).

“History began when humans invented gods and will end when humans become gods” wrote Harari. This provides some insight into his next book: Homo Deus; A brief history of tomorrow, which has since been published.

Harari’s book is delightful to read, sweeping in scope, full of interesting ideas of history, challenging and includes a mixed bag of conclusions.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog: AnInsidersMemoir.com.

When the US plans war on a targeted country, it fabricates pretexts and seeks world community, congressional, and public support — establishment media backing virtually automatic.

Congressional authorization for war hasn’t been gotten since December 8, 1941, following imperial Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack.

All US post-WW II wars have been and continue to be flagrantly illegal. UN Security Council members alone have legal authority to permit one nation to attack another.

It’s permitted solely in self-defense, never preemptively, how all US wars of aggression are waged.

Iran is in the Trump regime’s crosshairs for regime change, things moving ominously toward war on the country based entirely on Big Lies and deception about a nation threatening no one.

Most Republicans support Trump’s drive to war on Iran. GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he’s open to a war authorization vote.

He opposes a National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) amendment to prevent war on Iran without congressional approval, falsely claiming it’ll undermine Trump given crisis conditions that don’t exist.

The vast majority of Dems supported all US post-WW II wars of aggression. It remains to be seen how serious they are about what’s covered below.

Dem Senator Tom Udall and GOP Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee proposed an NDAA amendment to prevent attacking Iran without congressional authorization.

Udall said it’s supported by “every” Senate Dem, and “(it’s) gaining increasing bipartisan support,” adding:

“Our Iran policy is in chaos, careening towards war and to change course the president should immediately fire John Bolton.”

His “long campaign for violent regime change has now pushed us to the brink — and as these internal disagreements spill out into the open, we are only increasing the risk of grave miscalculation, confusing our allies, and reducing any possibility of de-escalation and diplomacy.”

“(T)he Senate cannot continue to duck a vote on a potential war with Iran,” calling for McConnell to permit it. With a 51 – 49 Republican majority and at least two GOP senators against attacking Iran without congressional authorization, the amendment is highly likely to be adopted.

On Tuesday, House members Matt Gaetz, Ro Khanna, and 17 bipartisan co-sponsors introduced an NDAA amendment similar to the Senate one.

House and Senate amendments call for prohibiting funds for attacking Iran unless Congress goes along, saying as well that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) cannot be invoked to justify war on Iran.

House members will take up the amendment during NDAA debate in July. It’s unclear if the Senate will follow through.

If voted on by House and Senate members, it’ll likely be adopted. Will it give Trump pause about attacking Iran?

He ignored joint House/Senate Resolution 7 “to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.”

He also ignored Senate legislation, invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution. It requires a congressional declaration of war, or a national emergency created by an attack on the US, its territories, possessions, or armed forces, for the executive to deploy troops to engage in foreign hostilities.

Congressional members have done nothing to cut off funding for US military involvement in Yemen. Nor have they countered US war in the country by other means.

Bipartisan House and Senate legislation to prevent war on Iran won’t likely deter Trump from launching it because no US president was ever held accountable for attacking another nation — not by Congress or the courts.

Dems are as belligerent as Republicans, large majorities in both houses supporting all US post-WW II wars of aggression.

Will things be different if Trump OKs attacking Iran? Based on the historical record, it’s highly unlikely.

Failure to enlist allies for war on Iran other than Israel, the Saudis, UAE, some other Gulf states, perhaps Britain, and a few small Pacific islands the US controls isn’t enough.

Pompeo and Bolton reportedly seek at least 20 coalition of the willing partners for US war on Iran.

Falling way short could prevent it, not congressional action, calling for its approval that hasn’t worked before.

Attacking Iran preemptively remains ominously possible. If Trump yields to Bolton and Pompeo, the mother of all post-9/11 quagmires could happen with potentially devastating consequences.

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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.

This weekend, a group of us drove around the site of Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, Somerset UK). We had an electromagnetic field radiation detector that was continually bleeping alarmingly and flashing red, indicating that the EMFs it was detecting were way above World Health Organisation recommended safety levels. They were penetrating on to the main road which runs past the site, and there were several hotspots in the quaint little village of Pilton itself, including the village hall and the Working Men’s Club.

A couple of weeks before, I had attended a meeting of Pilton’s parish council. It was standing room only as residents packed in to express their dismay about a telecommunications mast that had been erected, without any consultation with them, in the children’s skate-board park. Engineers had informed one of them that it was going to be made “5G ready” at the end of May, in time for the music festival.

We are now beginning to receive reports from inside the site of dangerously high levels of EMFs. On-site workers have been reporting bad headaches, nose bleeds and digestive issues. And this is all before the bulk of the campers arrive on Wednesday. So one can only assume that matters will get far worse once hundreds of thousands of smart phones turn up.

5G technology was installed at Glastonbury Festival this year by EE as part of a governmental agenda called 5G Rural First. This is a promotional push dreamed up by urbanite marketeers that purports to be about giving better internet access to country dwellers. In reality, though, good folks have paid £250 a ticket to be used as guinea-pigs in a 1.4 square mile test bed for an untested technology that could have serious implications for their health.

Partners of 5G Rural First include US telecommunications giant Cisco, Microsoft, the BBC and British Telecom, the owners of EE who are bringing 5G to Glastonbury Festival.

5G Rural First also has testbeds on the Orkney Islands and Shropshire and it claims its technology will help dairy cows perform better.

But they are ignoring the evidence of 230 scientists and doctors who are appealing to the World Health Organisation to move the 5G wireless signal from a Group 2B carcinogen to a Group 1, the same as asbestos and arsenic.

They believe that the dangers to health from 5G include increased cancer risk, cellular stress, harmful free radicals, genetic damages, structural and functional changes to the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being. And the damage goes well beyond the human race; there is growing evidence of harmful effects to plants, insects and animals.

So where are the protests to halt this threat to our health and wellbeing?

Well, we cannot turn to Extinction Rebellion for help. Last month’s state-organised protests by their “actorvists” against climate change, which brought central London to a standstill, were to provide “hearts-and-minds” support for the zero-carbon-by-2050 promises made by Theresa May in the dying days of her premiership that, unwittingly or not, will bankrupt the country over 30 years.

One of Extinction Rebellion’s founder directors, Gail Bradbrook, went on to head up Citizen’s Online as a “digital inclusion strategy specialist consulting with a wide range of clients such as EE, London Connects and the Cabinet Office.”  There is also a former head of Exxon Mobil on its board as well as Lord Anthony Tudor St. John, a senior consultant to Merrill-Lynch and legal counsel to Shell. Shell is heavily invested in the satellite and aerospace industries which will be involved in the roll-out of 5G.

So what about the Greens? Surely they will be concerned about a new technology that will require the culling of thousands of trees, to successfully transmit its signals? Well, Caroline Lucas and Co were very late to the party. As recently as September last year, she was supporting the “smart agenda”, although the Greens are now talking about conducting a moratorium while the safety risks are assessed.

Glastonbury Town Council, made up largely of Greens, has also been foot-dragging on the issue. It is only now making efforts to catch up with the local grassroots anti-5G movement which had been vigorously trying to draw their attention to the problem for months. However, it is too little, too late. One of the worse EMF hotspots we found on Sunday was when we drove past the entrance to the Chalice Well Gardens at the bottom of Coursing Batch, just before the town.

Glastonbury Town Council is not responsible for the festival site at Pilton, which is in its own parish, and that is why so many of us attended their parish council meeting a few weeks ago. However, it has made no difference.

Michael Eavis, the festival’s farmer founder whose daughter Emily now heads up the four-day event, was leafleted by a local campaigner in Tesco’s the other day.

She said he got annoyed with her and replied:

“Young people are the cause. I bet you have a phone.”

In response, she pulled out of her bag a decidedly unsmart, out-of-date Nokia that, she informed him, was only used for emergencies.

Eavis then told her that he didn’t own a mobile phone. Make of that what you will.

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A special report in the Observer newspaper in the UK on 23 June 2019 asked the question: Why is life expectancy faltering? The piece noted that for the first time in 100 years, Britons are dying earlier. The UK now has the worst health trends in Western Europe.

Aside from the figures for the elderly and the deprived, there has also been a worrying change in infant mortality rates. Since 2014, the rate has increased every year: the figure for 2017 is significantly higher than the one in 2014. To explain this increase in infant mortality, certain experts blame it on ‘austerity’, fewer midwives, an overstrained ambulance service, general deterioration of hospitals, greater poverty among pregnant women and cuts that mean there are fewer health visitors for patients in need.

While all these explanations may be valid, according to environmental campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason, there is something the mainstream narrative is avoiding. She says:

“We are being poisoned by weedkiller and other pesticides in our food and weedkiller sprayed indiscriminately on our communities. The media remain silent.”

The poisoning of the UK public by the agrochemical industry is the focus of her new report – Why is life expectancy faltering: The British Government has worked with Monsanto and Bayer since 1949.

What follows are edited highlights of the text in which she cites many official sources and reports as well as numerous peer-reviewed studies in support of her arguments. Readers can access the report here.

Toxic history of Monsanto in the UK

Mason begins by offering a brief history of Monsanto in the UK. In 1949, that company set up a chemical factory in Newport, Wales, where it manufactured PCBs until 1977 and a number of other dangerous chemicals. Monsanto was eventually found to be dumping toxic waste in the River Severn, public waterways and sewerage. It then paid a contractor which illegally dumped thousands of tons of cancer-causing chemicals, including PCBs, dioxins and Agent Orange derivatives, at two quarries in Wales – Brofiscin (80,000 tonnes) and Maendy (42,000 tonnes) – between 1965 and 1972.

Monsanto stopped making PCBs in Anniston US in 1971 because of various scandals. However, the British government agreed to ramp up production at the Monsanto plant in Newport. In 2003, when toxic effluent from the quarry started leaking into people’s streams in Grosfaen, just outside Cardiff, the Environment Agency – a government agency concerned with flooding and pollution – was hired to clean up the site in 2005.

Mason notes that the agency repeatedly failed to hold Monsanto accountable for its role in the pollution (a role that Monsanto denied from the outset) and consistently downplayed the dangers of the chemicals themselves.

In a report prepared for the agency and the local authority in 2005 but never made public, the sites contain at least 67 toxic chemicals. Seven PCBs have been identified, along with vinyl chlorides and naphthalene. The unlined quarry is still leaking, the report says:

“Pollution of water has been occurring since the 1970s, the waste and groundwater has been shown to contain significant quantities of poisonous, noxious and polluting material, pollution of… waters will continue to occur.”

The duplicity continues

Apart from these events in Wales, Mason outlines the overall toxic nature of Monsanto in the UK. For instance, she discusses the shockingly high levels of weedkiller in packaged cereals. Samples of four oat-based breakfast cereals marketed for children in the UK were recently sent to the Health Research Institute, Fairfield, Iowa, an accredited laboratory for glyphosate testing. Dr Fagan, the director of the centre, says of the results:

“These results are consistently concerning. The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).”

According to Mason, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Commission colluded with the European Glyphosate Task Force and allowed it to write the re-assessment of glyphosate. She lists key peer-reviewed studies, which the Glyphosate Task Force conveniently omitted from its review, from South America where GM crops are grown. In fact, many papers come from Latin American countries where they grow almost exclusively GM Roundup Ready Crops.

Mason cites one study that references many papers from around the world that confirm glyphosate-based herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup are damaging to the development of the foetal brain and that repeated exposure is toxic to the adult human brain and may result in alterations in locomotor activity, feelings of anxiety and memory impairment.

Another study notes neurotransmitter changes in rat brain regions following glyphosate exposure. The highlights from that study indicate that glyphosate oral exposure caused neurotoxicity in rats; that brain regions were susceptible to changes in CNS monoamine levels; that glyphosate reduced 5-HT, DA, NE levels in a brain regional- and dose-related manner; and that glyphosate altered the serotoninergic, dopaminergic and noradrenergic systems.

Little wonder, Mason concludes, that we see various degenerative conditions on the rise. She turns her attention to children, the most vulnerable section of the population, and refers to the UN expert on toxicity Baskut Tuncak. He wrote a scathing piece in the Guardian on 06/11/2017 on the effects of agrotoxins on children’s health:

“Our children are growing up exposed to a toxic cocktail of weedkillers, insecticides, and fungicides. It’s on their food and in their water, and it’s even doused over their parks and playgrounds. Many governments insist that our standards of protection from these pesticides are strong enough. But as a scientist and a lawyer who specialises in chemicals and their potential impact on people’s fundamental rights, I beg to differ. Last month it was revealed that in recommending that glyphosate – the world’s most widely-used pesticide – was safe, the EU’s food safety watchdog copied and pasted pages of a report directly from Monsanto, the pesticide’s manufacturer. Revelations like these are simply shocking.

“… Exposure in pregnancy and childhood is linked to birth defects, diabetes, and cancer. Because a child’s developing body is more sensitive to exposure than adults and takes in more of everything – relative to their size, children eat, breathe, and drink much more than adults – they are particularly vulnerable to these toxic chemicals. Increasing evidence shows that even at “low” doses of childhood exposure, irreversible health impacts can result.

“… In light of revelations such as the copy-and-paste scandal, a careful re-examination of the performance of states is required. The overwhelming reliance of regulators on industry-funded studies, the exclusion of independent science from assessments, and the confidentiality of studies relied upon by authorities must change.”

Warnings ignored

It is a travesty that Theo Colborn’s crucial research in the early 1990s into the chemicals that were changing humans and the environment was ignored. Mason discusses his work into endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), man-made chemicals that became widespread in the environment after WW II.

In a book published in 1996, ‘The Pesticide Conspiracy’, Colborn, Dumanoski and Peters revealed the full horror of what was happening to the world as a result of contamination with EDCs.

At the time, there was emerging scientific research about how a wide range of man-made chemicals disrupt delicate hormone systems in humans. These systems play a critical role in processes ranging from human sexual development to behaviour, intelligence, and the functioning of the immune system.

At that stage, PCBs, DDT, chlordane, lindane, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, toxaphene, heptachlor, dioxin, atrazine+ and dacthal were shown to be EDCs. Many of these residues are found in humans in the UK.

Colborn illustrated the problem by constructing a diagram of the journey of a PCB molecule from a factory in Alabama into a polar bear in the Arctic. He stated:

“The concentration of persistent chemicals can be magnified millions of times as they travel to the ends of the earth… Many chemicals that threaten the next generation have found their way into our bodies. There is no safe, uncontaminated place.”

Mason describes how EDCs interfere with delicate hormone systems in sexual development. Glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor and a nervous system disruptor. She ponders whether Colborn foresaw the outcome whereby humans become confused about their gender or sex.

She then discusses the widespread contamination of people in the UK. One study conducted at the start of this century concluded that every person tested was contaminated by a cocktail of known highly toxic chemicals that were banned from use in the UK during the 1970s and which continue to pose unknown health risks: the highest number of chemicals found in any one person was 49 – nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of the chemicals looked for.

Corruption exposed

Mason discusses corporate duplicity and the institutionalised corruption that allows agrochemicals to get to the commercial market. She notes the catastrophic impacts of these substances on health and the NHS and the environment.

Of course, the chickens are now coming home to roost for Bayer, which bought Monsanto. Mason refers to attorneys revealing Monsanto’s criminal strategy for keeping Roundup on the market and the company being hit with $2 billion verdict in the third ‘Roundup trial’.

Attorney Brent Wisner has argued that Monsanto spent decades suppressing science linking its glyphosate-based weedkiller product to cancer by ghost-writing academic articles and feeding the EPA “bad science”. He asked the jury to ‘punish’ Monsanto with a $1 billion punitive damages award. On Monday 13 May, the jury found Monsanto liable for failure to warn claims, design defect claims, negligence claims and negligent failure to warn claims.

Robert F Kennedy Jr., another attorney fighting Bayer in the courts, says Roundup causes a constellation of other injuries apart from Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma:

“Perhaps more ominously for Bayer, Monsanto also faces cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, and inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts. Strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10.

In finishing, Mason notes the disturbing willingness of the current UK government to usher in GM Roundup Ready crops in the wake of Brexit. Where pesticides are concerned, the EU’s precautionary principle could be ditched in favour of a US-style risk-based approach, allowing faster authorisation.

Rosemary Mason shows that the health of the UK populations already lags behind other countries in Western Europe. She links this to the increasing amounts of agrochemicals being applied to crops. If the UK does a post-Brexit deal with the US, we can only expect a gutting of environmental standards at the behest of the US and its corporations and much worse to follow for the environment and public health.

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

Featured image is from Consumer Safety

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“5G Ready”? UK Government’s “5G Rural First”: “Dangerously High” Levels of Electromagnetic Field Radiation (EMF) in Southern England.

By Annie Dieu-Le-Veut, June 26, 2019

Partners of 5G Rural First include US telecommunications giant Cisco, Microsoft, the BBC and British Telecom, the owners of EE who are bringing 5G to Glastonbury Festival. 5G Rural First also has testbeds on the Orkney Islands and Shropshire and it claims its technology will help dairy cows perform better. But they are ignoring the evidence of 230 scientists and doctors who are appealing to the World Health Organisation to move the 5G wireless signal from a Group 2B carcinogen to a Group 1, the same as asbestos and arsenic.

The Shameful “Deal of the Century”.

By Dr. Elias Akleh, June 26, 2019

The deal has been in development for two years and is eventually being unveiled this week in Manama, Bahrain after long periods of postponement.  It was headed by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with the assistance of Jason Dov Greenblatt andDavid Melech Friedman.

NY Times Admits It Sends Stories to US Government for Approval Before Publication

By Ben Norton, June 26, 2019

The New York Times casually acknowledged that it sends major scoops to the US government before publication, to make sure “national security officials” have “no concerns.”

Reparations and the Liberation of the African American People

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 26, 2019

154 years ago today in the state of Texas, Africans in this area of the United States were formally notified of their release from chattel enslavement, more than two years after the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation by the-then President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863.

How Evil Wins: The Hypocritical Double Standards of Political Outrage

By John W. Whitehead, June 26, 2019

No matter what the team colors might be at any given moment, the playbook remains the same. The leopard has not changed its spots. Scrape off the surface layers and you will find that the American police state that is continuing to wreak havoc on the rights of the people under the Trump Administration is the same police state that wreaked havoc on the rights of the people under every previous administration.

Canada: Lifting the Veil of Identity Politics

By Mark Taliano, June 26, 2019

Globalization does not serve public or human rights interests.  In fact, it erases nation-state sovereignty and democracy – fundamental preconditions for public interests and human rights — replacing both with totalitarian supranational diktats.  Sovereignty, democracy, and human rights are fabricated perceptions.

In Israel the Push to Destroy Jerusalem’s Iconic Al-Aqsa Mosque Goes Mainstream

By Whitney Webb, June 26, 2019

This ancient site that dates back to the year 705 C.E. is being targeted for destruction by extremist groups that seek to erase Jerusalem’s Muslim heritage in pursuit of colonial ambitions and the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.

Western Allies Terror-bombed 70 German Cities by 1945

By Shane Quinn, June 26, 2019

Hitler was in fact shaken by the devastation meted out upon the Reich by British and American aircraft – but what maintained his spirits during the war’s late stages was the great assault he was preparing to unleash mostly through Belgium: The Ardennes Offensive, which would send Allied armies careering back into the English Channel.

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Justin Trudeau is in over a barrel. In 2015, he made a deal with Alberta. He would get an oil pipeline built to a coast if the province joined his pan-Canadian climate plan. After his election this past April, Conservative Alberta Premier Jason Kenney ripped up Alberta’s side of the bargain and declared war on Trudeau’s climate plan.

What should Ottawa do now after being jilted by Alberta?

Should the Liberal government maintain its side of the bargain, and proceed with the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline from Edmonton to the Vancouver area and lose credibility as a climate warrior? Or should it kill the pipeline expansion now and say this was a bargain gone bad?

In the long run, the latter course would save Ottawa lots on further subsidies. But there’s that little short-run thing – the looming federal election on or before Oct. 21.

How could Trudeau explain taking a big loss of taxpayer money on a pipeline that no private sector investor would touch last year? Either choice will look bad. No good options is a predicament.

Kicking the can down the road beyond the federal election is one way out. But Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi promised a decision by June 18.

Remember Justin Trudeau’s grand entry onto the world stage at the Paris Climate Summit in November-December 2015? Canada is back, my friends. That was just six weeks after his stunning electoral upset, leapfrogging his party from third to first place, winning a solid majority.

In Paris, Trudeau and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna promised to catapult Canada from environment laggard under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper to a global climate leader. While most rich countries at the Paris talks aimed to limit global warming to a 2 C rise above pre-industrial levels, Canada joined low-lying island states to champion a stricter 1.5 C global limit.

How then did Trudeau get stuck with a pipeline that makes no environmental or financial sense?

The pipeline is not going to change the fundamental disadvantages of Alberta’s oilsands. At $90 a barrel for new projects, their break-even cost is among the highest in the world. And their emission intensity is through the roof. Environment and Climate Change Canada scientists found that CO2 emissions were more than 60 per cent higher than industry had calculated.

The sands are in a remote part of a remote, landlocked province. Their main market – the U.S. – where 99.9 per cent of Canadian oil exports now head, is now their main competitor. The U.S. produces cheaper, lower-emissions oil.

The idea that the Trans Mountain expansion would open new markets in Asia is illusory. The price of heavy, sour crude oil in the Far East is $1 to $3 a barrel lower than on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Transport costs via the Trans Mountain line and tankers will be at least $2 a barrel higher to Asia. China does not have the capacity to refine bitumen. Besides, the world is swimming in light crude oil.

In recent years, only a few oil tankers have left Vancouver harbour. Most of that oil has gone to the U.S., not China. So the premise behind the Trans Mountain pipeline is faulty. The pipeline expansion will likely be a white elephant, owned or subsidized by taxpayers.

The pipeline expansion could cost up to $10 billion, in addition to the $4.4 billion purchase price that the auditor general said was $1 billion too much.

If by some miracle the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is built, gets filled to capacity and finds markets, it would encourage the production of 590,000 barrels a day more oil from Alberta’s sands. That would add another 13 to 15 megatonnes of carbon pollution.

So it doesn’t make environmental sense either.

The Trudeau government got a special exemption in the new NAFTA (USMCA) to enable it to subsidize the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Why would a government so publicly committed to climate action throw more good money at a dodgy pipeline expansion, especially when Alberta has torn up its side of the climate understanding? Better to cut your losses now.

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Gordon Laxer is a political economy professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and author of the Council of Canadians report “Billion Dollar Buyout. How Canadian taxpayers bought a climate-killing pipeline and Trump’s trade deal supports it.”

Featured image is from Canadian Dimension

A delegation of concerned downstream residents and elected leaders will be travelling from Minnesota to Toronto this week to raise concerns about a Canadian junior mining company’s plan to build a massive copper mine near a sensitive watershed in Duluth.

Amnesty International USA, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Duluth for Clean Water, Honor the Earth, and a Duluth city councillor are among the delegates travelling to Toronto for the PolyMet annual general meeting of shareholders on June 26.

PolyMet, a Canadian junior mining company traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, has recently obtained the final permits to build the controversial NorthMet mine in northern Minnesota. The extractives company has faced community and Indigenous opposition, including several lawsuits aimed at stopping the risky proposal. The mine would be located near a sensitive watershed, upstream from Indigenous wild rice beds and from an ecosystem that connects to Lake Superior.

Among their concerns, the delegates fear a repeat of the Mount Polley mine disaster from 2014, when a tailings dam collapsed and destroyed B.C.’s pristine Quesnel Lake. The ongoing human rights impacts of this crisis – the worst environmental disaster in Canadian history – should serve as a warning for what could happen without adequate human rights due diligence and protections in place. PolyMet is also proposing to build on top of an existing 50-year-old mine tailings dam of the same design that recently collapsed in Brumadinho, Brazil.

WHAT: Rally, photo-op and interview opportunities with delegates travelling from Minnesota to raise awareness of PolyMet’s planned copper mine

LOCATION: Toronto Stock Exchange, 130 King St. West, Toronto, Ontario

DATE: Wednesday, June 26

TIME: 11 a.m.

*Delegates will also be available for interviews by phone or in-person while in Toronto June 25-27*

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Diplomacy has been seen historically as a practitioner’s art, nurtured in schools of learning, tested and tried in the boardrooms of mild mannered summitry.  Klemens von Metternich and Otto von Bismarck practiced it with varying degrees of ruthlessness and skill; the man who thought himself a modern incarnation of the Austrian statesman, Henry Kissinger, dedicated a text to the subject which has become the force-fed reading of many a modern student of international affairs. (Kissinger, for his part, was a pygmy shadow of his hero-worshipped subject.)

The Trump administration is supplying another version: diplomacy, not as subtle art but as childish outrage and pressings, brinkmanship teasingly encouraging of war.  The result of the latest round of bile-filled spats between Iran and the United States is that diplomacy has ceased to exist, becoming a theatrical show demanding the lowest admission fees.

On Monday, Washington announced that another round (how many will they be?) of sanctions would be imposed.  They are of a very specific, personal nature, though their effect is one of insult rather than tangible effect.  Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, deemed by Trump “ultimately responsible for the hostile conduct of the regime”, is the crowning glory of the list, as are his appointments and those in his office.  An important aspect of the sanctioning lies in the allegation that the Ayatollah has access to a vast fund that showers largesse upon the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps.

Some eight commanders of the Revolutionary Guard, including the commander of the unit responsible for shooting down the exorbitantly priced RQ-4A Global Hawk last Thursday, have also made the list. This effort was seen as proof that Iran’s air defences worked, a dastardly thing in the mind of any Pentagon wonk.  Jeremy Binnie of Jane’s Defence Weekly, throwing petrol on the fire, suggested on CNN that, “when the Iranians really make investment, it can really count”.

The response from Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani was one of seething displeasure, marked by a medical diagnosis.  The Ayatollah was a man of modest possessions, owning “a Hoseyniyyeh [prayer venue] and a simple house”.  Then came the snipe.

“You sanction the foreign minister simultaneously with a request for talks.  The White House is afflicted by mental disability and does not know what to do.”

Trump was obligingly apocalyptic.  “Any attack on Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force.  In some areas overwhelming means obliteration.”  Short of obliteration, US policy is designed to throttle, and, in so doing, create the pretext for war.

The tweets from Trump on Iran read like self-portraits of psychological affirmation, disturbed yet consistent.  Broadly speaking, they are also brief notes towards a character of the US imperium, suggesting the psychopath open to both sanctimonious violence and condescending dialogue.  “America is a peace-loving nation,” Trump assures us.  “We do not seek conflict with Iran or any other country.  I look forward to the day when sanctions can be finally lifted and Iran can become a peaceful, prosperous and productive nation.”  He insists that this could happen “tomorrow” or “years from now.”

Iran is the Rorschach inkblot, supplying the pattern upon which meaning can be imposed:  “Iran [sic] leadership doesn’t understand the words ‘nice’ and ‘compassion,’ they never have,” goes one remark.  “Sadly, the thing they do understand is Strength and Power, and the USA is by far the most powerful Military force in the world, with 1.5 Trillion Dollars invested over the last two years alone”.  The only thing Strength and Power comprehend in the shallow expanse of Trumpland are, naturally, Strength and Power.

This play of psychological mirroring also finds form in the utterances of US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who seems to have turned purist on matters of budgeting and transparency.  Khamenei, he argues, “has enriched himself at the expense of the Iranian people.” His office oversees “a vast network of tyranny and corruption.”  No neater and concise description of Trump business practice could be possible, but here it is, being applied to a foreign power in terms more appropriate for an ascetic order of monks.

False empathy, doled out in spades, is also necessary: victims must be found, even as they are being victimised by the virtuous.  In one sense, Trump sticks to another traditional theme of US foreign policy, praising the people a policy punishes even as it seeks to distance them from the leadership.  Sanctions, blunt and broad, rarely find their mark, and usually fall indiscriminately upon the target populace.  “The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all.”

The current round of sanctions, in any case, have been given the heave-ho in terms of effect by such figures as former Treasury sanctions specialist Elizabeth Rosenberg, who sees their application as being “in the realm of the symbolic.”  And what dangerous symbolism it is proving to be.

Wiped of history, the context of such sputtering is isolated, ignoring the bountiful US contribution to the creation of the Iranian theocracy.  The role of the Central Intelligence Agency in sending Iran’s Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh packing in 1953, assisted by their British cousins, leaving the way for a quarter century of byzantine, eccentric and occasionally cruel rule by Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, was deemed an exemplar of destabilisation.  Even then, the scribes of the CIA effort were alert enough to note that unintended consequences could arise from such enthusiastic meddling.  “Blowback” became intelligence argot, and after September 11, 2001, has become the signature term for the actions of aggrieved nations.  The effort to push Iran towards war even as tinfoil claims are made to embrace peace, sink under that realisation.

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

Much have been said and written about the so-called “Deal of the Century”, also called by different names depending on the perspective of different parties. The deal has been in development for two years and is eventually being unveiled this week in Manama, Bahrain after long periods of postponement.  It was headed by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with the assistance of Jason Dov Greenblatt and David Melech Friedman.

Kushner is a young real-estate investor and developer, who was made Trump’s senior advisor. Kushner is still a young kid, a 38 years old kid maneuvering through adult world. He is politically inexperienced, and totally ignorant of the history of the Middle East. One wonders what kind of political experience he has to be nominated as senior advisor to president Trump. Kushner is an ardent Zionist Jew, who backs and finances Israeli settlements (colonies) in occupied West Bank. The Kushner family foundation contributed financial donations to the Israeli settlement Bet El.

Jason Dov Greenblatt was the personal lawyer for Donald Trump and The Trump Organization. After becoming president, Trump appointed Greenblatt as his advisor on Israel and assistant for international negotiations. Greenblatt is an ardent Zionist, who is a backer and financer of Israeli settlements (colonies) in occupied West Bank claiming that these colonies are not obstacles to peace.

David Melech Friedman was a bankruptcy lawyer and the chairman and president of The Trump Organization, who was appointed later by president Trump as the US Ambassador to Israel. Friedman is the son of a rabbi at Temple Hillel in North Woodmere, New York. He is an ardent Zionist Jew who supports and finances Israeli settlements (colonies) in occupied West Bank. In an interview with The New York Times June 8^th. Friedman stated that Israel has the right to annex parts of occupied West Bank.

Yet this Zionist Jewish team claims that it has an economic plan (Deal) to improve the lives of Palestinians by investing money (Gulf Arab money) to invigorate the Palestinian economy. They claim that this economic deal would eventually lead to a political deal that would lead to peace and prosperity. It is worth noting that this team does not include a Palestinian or even an Arab member, who would represent the Palestinian side. It is as if this Zionist team see themselves as “light onto nations” with their solutions believing that Palestinians are incapable of understanding or planning an economic plan for themselves.

Kushner’s team is approaching the issue with the mentality of a business transaction, where money can buy everything and the price depends on skillful negotiations. During a Reuter’s interview, whose reporter seems to boringly read questions from an already prepared transcript, Jared Kushner unveiled portion of his economic deal. He talked about “a global investment fund” of $50 billion used to lift the Palestinian and neighboring Arab States’ economies and a $5 billion fund to build a transportation corridor connecting the West Bank and Gaza.

Kushner explained that $25 billion would be spent in Palestinian territories over a 10-years period, while the rest of the money would be split between Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon to boost their own economies. Some of the projects would be in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where Palestinians from Gaza Strip could benefit from.

The necessary funds for this plan, Kushner explained, would come from wealthy Arab Gulf States, nations from Europe and Asia (but not America), and from private investors. It is implied here that most if not all of the money would come from Saudi Arabia and UAE. Kushner explained that the international economic “workshop” in Bahrain on June 25^th and 26^th will bring together government and business leaders to launch the plan.

In this “Peace to Prosperity Workshop” or as Kushner called it “The Opportunity of the Century” compared to “The deal of the Century” Kushner gave a business presentation on developing the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Stating that Israel is not the problem he blamed the Palestinians for sabotaging previous political plans to solve the conflict due to their poor political decisions. Throughout his speech one detects that he believes that Palestinians are not well educated and are incapable of having a vision of prosperous future.

Kushner’s plan is built on the bases that building economy would lead to peace as he kept stressing in all his media interviews and in his presentation in Bahrain. Yet during his speech he contradicts this premise many times by sentences like “… if we have real peace and we don’t have fear of terrorism … then we can thin the borders and allow for much flow of goods and people”, and “… all these plans could be phased in real time if there is a real seize fire and real peace” and “ … how to make a safe environment so people can invest in the area” among others. Kushner’s economic plan puts the cart in front of the horse, for how a country’s economy would be developed if the government does not know where its political borders are?

The two business men: Mr. Stephen Schwarzman, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone Group, the world’s largest equity investment firm, and Mr. Mohamed Alabbar, the Emirati leading developer and chairman of Emaar Properties famous for building the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, speaking as a panelist stated clearly that safety, security and the rule of law meaning peace are prerequisite for any investments. An independent country with secured border and a government are essential prerequisites for investment and building an economy.

Kushner kept pushing the statement of “help the Palestinian people” when what he really means is “help the Israelis”, who will eventually control all these projects as what had happened during all the previous peace agreements. This so-called economic plan (Deal of the Century) is the same as all previous economic and political peace agreements between Arab countries and Israel that promised peace and prosperity to the region. The 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, the 1994 Wadi Araba Treaty between Israel and Jordan, and the 1994 Paris Protocol and later 1995 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO allowed Israeli goods through and in Arab countries improving Israeli economy but not the other way around. The Oslo Accords gave Israel total control of Palestinian economy; control over customs, taxes, agriculture, industry and all gates to the world economy.

To prevent Palestinian and Arab economies from competing with its own economy, Israel had violated all these treaties and had broken international laws. Israel would take control of all Kushner’s proposed economic projects built mainly by Arab Gulf states.

Kushner stated that his plan has two parts; the economic plan is the initial part followed by political part hoped to be released next November. Everybody knows that the political part had already preceded the economic plan when President Trump declared al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the capital of Israel, closed the PA office in Washington, withdrew support to UNRWA, recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, and indirectly hinted that Israel should also annex large parts of the West Bank. This is Trump’s favorite mafia technique of imposing life threatening pressure in order to enforce his Deal of the Century.

Other leaked political plans for the region include forcing Jordan to give the fertile Baqoura area; where the Yarmouk River flows into the Jordan River, to Israel. In return Saudi Arabia would give Jordan part of its northern desert. Saudi and Emirati money would buy Al-Arish area in Sinai Peninsula south of Gaza Strip as well as Tiran and Sanafir islands at the mouth of Gulf of Aqaba leading to the Red Sea. According to Kushner’s plan a Saudi oil refinery and a water desalination plant would be built in al-Arish to benefit Palestinians living in Gaza. Tiran and Sanafir islands would be turned to and controlled by Israel, which gives Israel free access to the Red Sea. This territorial division will be the cause of even more future conflicts.

This Deal of the Century is similar to Sikes-Picot agreement, Balfour Declaration and all the other Arab/Israeli agreements, which in reality are progressive phases of implementing the Zionist Greater Israel Project. The main goals of this Deal are the elimination of the Palestinian refugee’s issue and the establishment and confirmation of the state of Israel as a legitimate state in the region, who could normalize relationships with some Arab countries and even become their military and intelligence partner against outside enemy; namely Iran. This also means the end of the two-state solution and making the PA an Israeli security apparatus keeping any Palestinian dissent into check.

The Deal of the Century was faced with strong rejection since its first inception by Palestinians as a whole including the PA and all the Palestinians factions. The Palestinian factions called for mass demonstrations in every city in the West Bank and in Gaza Strip starting on June 24^th and continue until the 26^th for the duration of Bahraini conference under banners calling “The Manama Workshop is Treason” and “Palestine is not for sale.”

The Deal was also rejected by all Arab countries and populations except by the leaderships of Saudi Arabia, its occupied Bahrain and the UAE. Mass protests have been taken place throughout the whole Arab world extending from the Persian Gulf all the way west through north African countries to Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean. In Bahrain, itself, every house raised the Palestinian flag in solidarity with Palestinians against Kushner’s economic workshop.

It is not just the Arabs who are giving the Deal of the Century the cold shoulder. The EU, who has always supported the two-state solution, had also rejected the Deal. High-ranking former European politicians; 25 former foreign ministers, six former prime ministers, and two former NATO secretary generals, signed a letter to the EU calling for the rejection of the Deal and the implementation of the two-state solution with Israel and Palestinian state living side by side.

This Deal is destined to fail. Even US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo acknowledged that the Deal will fail in a speech to Jewish leaders in New York calling it “a deal that only the Israelis could love” and admitted that the plan is “un-executable”, and “it may be rejected”

The economic conference will serve only to intensify the Palestinian and in general the Arab’s hatred to Saudi Arabia and UAE, who claim their goal is to help the Palestinians. If they really wanted to help they could have done so directly and without the American pro-Israeli mediation.

The Palestinians have learned the hard lesson not to depend on Arab leaders. The only method of liberating the whole Palestine and rebuilding their state is through armed resistance. They have done so generation after generation throughout the last 71 years. Last generation used stones and knifes, this generation is using rockets that could reach Tel Aviv.

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Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala, Palestine. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the “Nakba” of 1948, then again from Beit Jala after the “Nakseh” of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on different websites. He writes mainly about Middle Eastern and Palestinian related issues.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

Anyone trying to understand what’s happening with the world’s energy systems right now can be forgiven if they are confused. On one hand, most people know about the climate emergency, and the need to move away from fossil fuels. On the other hand, we frequently see headlines about “record setting” levels of wind or solar power, how “coal is dead,” booming sales of electric vehicles, or how renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels. Many stories in the second category suggest that the transition to a low-carbon economy is “inevitable,” or even “well underway.”

Sorting through all of this can be very daunting, especially for people who are not energy experts, but who are concerned about the climate crisis. For South Africans, understanding these issues is especially important given the country’s heavy reliance on coal, the serious problems facing the Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom), and the announced plans for its “unbundling” in order (among other things) to accelerate the shift to renewable energy sources. As my colleague Sean Sweeney has argued elsewhere, talk of “unbundling” Eskom is code for privatization: it is a well-established part of the privatization playbook of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

So what’s really going on? It is true that energy systems around the world are undergoing profound changes. Different countries are facing different challenges, and are tackling those challenges in different ways. But since the climate crisis requires global as well as local action, it is worth looking at the trends in order to understand the lessons.

Energy Demand is Growing Faster than Renewable Capacity

Despite “record setting” growth in renewables, the overall growth in demand for energy is larger still. In March 2019, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that global energy demand grew by 2.3% in 2018 – the sharpest rise, and nearly twice the average rate, this decade. The surge was attributed to strong overall economic growth, as well as to record temperatures in many parts of the world, which raise demand for heating and cooling.

Electricity and Coal

While demand for all forms of energy is growing, what is happening with the power sector (electricity) is especially important. Moving away from fossil fuels will involve widespread electrification, dramatically increasing the need to generate electricity. Global demand for electricity grew even faster in 2018 than demand for energy overall, at 4%. And 42% of energy-related emissions last year came from the power sector.

Despite the closure of many coal plants around the world, coal remains the dominant fuel for generating electricity globally. On current trends, coal consumption is projected to remain at roughly current levels for many years. Although coal consumption declined for a few years, it actually rose in 2017, and again last year.

Coal consumption is growing dramatically in several large countries, mainly in Southeast Asia. China recently announced plans for at least 300 new coal-fired power plants – most of them outside China. Coal demand for power rose 2.6% last year, and CO2 emissions rose 2.5%, with coal accounting for 80% of the increase.

Where coal generation capacity has been replaced in the energy mix, it has mostly been replaced by natural gas rather than renewables. This is especially true for the world’s two largest emitters, the US and China.

From the perspective of climate change, this is bad news. Natural gas has been promoted as a “bridge fuel” between coal and renewables, because burning methane produces less CO2 than burning coal. But methane itself is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 on shorter time scales – roughly 86 times more powerful on a 20-year time scale – and we are learning that methane leakage from fracking and other operations is significantly higher than previously recognized. It even exceeds any gains associated with burning gas rather than coal.

So what we are seeing is not a “transition to renewables,” but rather a reconfiguration of the world’s energy systems. Meanwhile, overall use of energy continues to grow, and no major fuel source is going away any time soon. In other words, not only are we not yet digging our way out of the hole, but we haven’t even stopped digging the hole deeper yet.

Time to Stop Digging and Inspect the Shovel?

How did we get here? In order to understand why the situation is so alarming, we need to look more closely at the policies that were supposed to drive the transition to a sustainable new “green” economy.

In March 2019, the IEA reported that the deployment of new renewable generation capacity “stalled” in 2018.

Why has this happened? As Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported in early 2019, investment in new clean energy capacity fell 8% in 2018 from 2017 levels – from $362-billion to $332-billion. This is very striking, given that we hear so frequently about “record low” prices for renewable generation, which we are told makes renewables more attractive than fossil fuels.

The problem is that the way these “falling prices” are typically reported ignores a crucial distinction: the distinction between the falling construction costs of the infrastructure, and the falling auction prices for the projects that are contracted.

It is true that the construction costs associated with building new renewable projects are falling; this is due to economies of scale, technological improvements, etc. But the competitive pressures of auction-based procurement are driving down the final auction prices even faster. This means profit margins are shrinking, and investors are turning elsewhere.

Crucially, this decline in investment has taken place at a time of very low interest rates. This is especially important because the cost of capital – the interest on money borrowed to build the projects – is by far the largest cost factor for renewable generation, accounting for three quarters or more of total project costs for wind and solar projects. So any rise in interest rates would act as a significant further brake on investment levels.

China to the Rescue?

We often hear that China has taken a different path, and indeed recent data from Bloomberg would seem to show that clean / renewable energy investment in China is continuing to grow (despite the fact that China is also building large numbers of coal plants):

Unfortunately, this apparent difference seems to be largely a matter of timing. In order to understand it, we need to back up a bit.

The initial boom in solar and wind capacity in Europe and elsewhere – the boom that has now stalled there – was largely due to generous, “come one, come all” subsidy schemes. These typically took the form of “feed-in tariffs,” where anyone who could afford to provide generation capacity could sign up and enjoy the guaranteed revenues. This generated a burst of deployment – so much in fact that it became impossible to accommodate all of the new capacity into existing grids.

It also led to exploding subsidy bills for governments. These costs were often passed on to users in the form of higher electricity bills, which led to skepticism about renewable energy and political pressure on government officials. This is why many governments shifted to “competitive bidding” systems, which allowed them to contain both capacity additions and costs – but also led to shrinking profit margins and the loss of investor interest.

That same pattern now seems to be emerging in China. On June 1, 2018, in an effort to contain ballooning subsidy bills and growing overcapacity, the country’s National Development and Reform Commission announced that, effective immediately, approvals for new projects had been “halted until further notice,” and tariffs for existing contracts would be lowered by 6.7 to 9 per cent (depending on the region). The announcement caused serious drops in share price values for Chinese solar companies, and industry observers slashed capacity growth forecasts for the year by as much as one-third.

“No Just Transition without a Transition”

The implications of these trends are profound. In order to have any chance of a just transition, we first need to ensure that there is a transition. The current, market-based approach to the energy transition has failed, and we cannot afford to wait any longer.

Unions and climate activists need to organize and mobilize for public and social ownership of energy, with real democratic accountability. Only such an approach can ensure a rapid but orderly transition to renewable energy – one that takes considerations of profit out of the equation, and puts workers and communities at the centre.

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Note: These following remarks were made by Abayomi Azikiwe at a public meeting held at the Cass Commons in Midtown on June 19 to celebrate the annual Cuba Caravan which arrived in the city at the invitation of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition. Rev. Dr. Luis Barrios of the Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organizations (IFCO) and a faculty member at John Jay College of the City University of New York (CUNY), was the featured speaker. 

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154 years ago today in the state of Texas, Africans in this area of the United States were formally notified of their release from chattel enslavement, more than two years after the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation by the-then President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863.

Africans were enslaved for 250 years in the areas now known as the United States of America.

The 13^th Amendment to the Constitution was introduced in Congress in January 1865 and ratified by the end of that year. The Civil War between the Confederate States of America (CSA) and the U.S. ended during the early days of April 1865.

The economic system of slavery connects Africans in the U.S. with Cuba, where involuntary servitude flourished for a period beyond what existed in the U.S. Slavery did not end in Cuba until October 1886. Slavery in Cuba had begun under the Spanish Crown in the 16^th century even prior to the advent of British colonization of Virginia beginning in the first decade of the 17^th century.

African people in Cuba and their counterparts in the U.S. have very much in common: a centuries-long struggle against slavery, colonialism, racism and imperialism.

Juneteenth and the Debate over Reparations

An historic hearing today on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. before the judiciary committee was illuminating. This debate on re-activating consideration for H.R. 40 comes at a time of much media focus on the upcoming 2020 national presidential elections.

This hearing came one day after comments by Kentucky Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell who said that he was opposed to any notion of reparations for the enslavement of African people in the U.S., since no one is alive today who were involved in the slave system which ended more than 150 years ago. McConnell went on to suggest that reparations had already been paid to African people in the U.S. throughout the passage of Civil Rights legislation during the 1950s and 1960s and the two-term presidency of Barack Obama.

McConnell continued by declaring that no reparations study legislation would pass as long as he was leader of the Senate. Consequently, the following day he was answered sufficiently by Ta- Nehisi Coats and Danny Glover who had addressed the hearings held earlier today.

Quite simply proponents of the passage of H.R. 40 noted that European Americans continued to benefit from the legacy of African enslavement. Other scholars over the previous decades of the 20^th century have chronicled the dialectal relationship between the super-exploitation of Africans and the rise of industrial capitalism.

All of the major sectors of capitalist enterprise including banking, commerce, shipping, steam technology and mass commodities production found their profitable origins within the economic system of involuntary servitude. Slavery laid the basis for colonialism in Africa and its contemporary iteration, neo-colonialism, is a direct by-product of the attempts by imperialism to maintain dominance over African land, resources and labor.

IFCO History and its Relationship to the Movement in Detroit

Image on the right: Cuban President Fidel Castro and Rev. Dr. Lucius Walker

IFCO has a long history in partnership with the activists’ community in Detroit. 50 years ago in late April 1969, the National Black Economic Development Conference (NBEDC) was held at Wayne State University. Organized by the late IFCO founder Rev. Dr. Lucius Walker along with local and national organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), the conference set off alarm bells among the ruling class interests in the U.S. and internationally.

This conference was the backdrop for one of the first comprehensive calls for reparations in the modern era. Dr. James Forman, the former Executive Secretary and later International Affairs Director of SNCC issued the Black Manifesto at the NBEDC on April 26, 1969. The document issued by Forman was adopted by the NBEDC which demanded between $500 million to $3 billion in reparations from white Christian churches and Jewish Synagogues in order to establish a host of institutional projects aimed at the liberation of the African American people.

Image below: James Forman and Lucius Walker, 1969

Following the conclusion of the NBEDC, Forman on May 4, interrupted services at the Riverside Church in New York City to read the Black Manifesto. The events of April and May 1969 gained worldwide press coverage thrusting Forman into the media spotlight once again.

Recent Alliance Work with IFCO in Detroit

The late Rev. Dr. Walker was our guest at the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Rally & March in January of 2008. Following the lead of the IFCO founder in cooperation with former City Councilwoman Jo Ann Watson, we formed the Doctors for Detroit Committee which provided assistance for a number of students from the city to study at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM).

Just two years later in January of 2010, Rev. Thomas E. Smith of IFCO, who recently joined the ancestral realm, served as the keynote speaker for MLK Day in Detroit. This event paid tribute to the late Rev. Dr. Walker and his work on behalf of African and oppressed people worldwide from the U.S. to Central America, Palestine, Southern Africa and Cuba.

Earlier this year, in January 2019, the current IFCO Director Ms. Gail Walker, the daughter of Rev. Dr. Walker, served as our keynote speaker for MLK Day held at the Historic St. Matthews-St. Joseph’s Church in the North End section of Detroit. During this event we commemorated the legacy of MLK and the 50^th anniversary of the NBEDC along with the Black Manifesto.

Tonight we are honored to have Dr. Luis Barrios of New York City. As a board member of IFCO and professor at John Jay College at CUNY, he is well equipped to continue the legacy of Rev. Dr. Walker, Rev. Smith among others.

Abayomi Azikiwe with Moratorium NOW! Coalition members and supporters at the Cuba Caravan public meeting featuring Dr. Luis Barrios, June 19, 2019

The Cuba Caravan has come to Detroit every year as an act of solidarity and defiance. We here are committed to strengthening our work demanding the removal of the illegal and unjust blockade of Cuba by the U.S.

Cuba, only 90 miles off the coast of Florida, is a proud socialist country committed to building a better future for its people and the working and oppressed masses around the globe. Cuban internationalists were instrumental in the liberation of Africa from the nation of Algeria in the early 1960s to sending hundreds of thousands of its own military personnel to Angola in the struggle to defeat the racist South African Defense Forces (SADF) from 1975 to 1989.

In recent years Cuba has educated thousands of African and Latin American medical students creating the ability of these youth to serve their people on a scientific and principled basis in building independent and united continents. The intervention of Cuban medical personnel during 2014-2015 played a critical role in arresting the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) pandemic in three West African states: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Conakry. These accomplishments have been recognized internationally including by the government of the U.S. Similar efforts have also been noted by the Republic of Mozambique when Cuban health specialists assisted in recovery work stemming from the devastating impact of Cyclones Idai and Kenneth earlier this year.

Therefore, we will continue in alliance with IFCO until the blockade is totally lifted and the people of the U.S. and Cuba are able to enjoy full and unprejudiced relations moving into the future.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This text was presented by Abayomi Azikiwe at a public meeting held at the Cass Commons in Midtown on June 19 to celebrate the annual Cuba Caravan which arrived in the city at the invitation of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition. Rev. Dr. Luis Barrios of the Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organizations (IFCO) and a faculty member at John Jay College of the City University of New York (CUNY), was the featured speaker. Dr. Barrios is a board member of IFCO and a Puerto Rican national. He addressed the ongoing hostility of Washington towards Cuba and the necessity of solidarity with the Caribbean island-nation which provides a revolutionary example for oppressed and struggling peoples throughout the world. This meeting coincided with the African American national commemoration of Juneteenth Day.

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

Chronic human rights violator Saudi Arabia is using American-made weapons against civilians in the fifth-poorest nation in the world, Yemen. And make no mistake: U.S. defense contractors and their lobbyists and supporters in government are getting rich in the process.

“Our role is not to make policy, our role is to comply with it,” John Harris, CEO of defense contractor Raytheon International, said to CNBC in February.

But his statement vastly understates the role that defense contractors and lobbyists play in Washington’s halls of power, where their influence on policy directly impacts their bottom lines.

Since 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have waged war against Yemen, killing and injuring thousands of Yemeni civilians. An estimated 90,000 people have been killed, according to one international tracker. By December 2017, the number of cholera cases in Yemen had surged past one million, the largest such outbreak in modern history. An estimated 113,000 children have died since April 2018 from war-related starvation and disease. The United Nations calls the situation in Yemen the largest humanitarian crisis on earth, as over 14 million face starvation.

The majority of the 6,872 Yemeni civilians killed and 10,768 wounded have been victims of Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Nearly 90 coalition airstrikes have hit homes, schools, markets, hospitals, and mosques since 2015, according to Human Rights Watch. In 2018, the coalition bombed a wedding, killing 22 people, including eight children. Another strike hit a bus, killing at least 26 children.

American-origin munitions produced by companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon were identified at the site of over two dozen attacks throughout Yemen. Indeed, the United States is the single largest arms supplier to the Middle East and has been for decades, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

From 2014 to 2018, the United States supplied 68 percent of Saudi Arabia’s arms imports, 64 percent of the UAE’s imports, and 65 percent of Qatar’s imports. Some of this weaponry was subsequently stolen or sold to al-Qaeda linked groups in the Arabian Peninsula, where they could be used against the U.S. military, according to reports.

The Saudi use of U.S.-made jets, bombs, and missiles against Yemeni civilian centers constitutes a war crime. It was an American laser-guided MK-82 bomb that killed the children on the bus; Raytheon’s technology killed the 22 people attending the wedding in 2018 as well as a family traveling in their car; and another American-made MK-82 bomb ended the lives of at least 80 men, women, and children in a Yemeni marketplace in March 2016.

Yet American defense contractors continue to spend millions of dollars to lobby Washington to maintain the flow of arms to these countries. 

“Companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and other defense contractors see countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE as huge potential markets,” Stephen Miles, director of Win Without War, told TAC. “They see them as massive opportunities to make a lot of money; that’s why they’re investing billions and billions of dollars. This is a huge revenue stream to these companies.”

Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics have all highlighted business with Saudi Arabia in their shareholder reports.

“Operations and maintenance have become a very profitable niche market for U.S. corporations,” said Richard Aboulafia, a vice president at Teal Group.

He added that defense contractors can make as much as 150 percent more profit off of operations and maintenance than from the original arms sale. U.S. weapons supply 57 percent of the military aircraft used by the Royal Saudi Air Force, and mechanics and technicians hired by American companies repair and maintain their fighter jets and helicopters.

In 2018 alone, the United States made $4.5 billion worth of arms deals to Saudi Arabia and $1.2 billion to the United Arab Emirates, a report by William Hartung and Christina Arabia found.

From the report:

“Lockheed Martin…was involved in deals worth $25 billion; Boeing, $7.1 billion in deals; Raytheon, $5.5 billion in deals; Northrop Grumman had one deal worth $2.5 billion; and BAE systems…had a $1.3 billion deal.”

“Because of the nature of U.S. arms control law, most of these sales have to get government approval, and we’ve absolutely seen lobbyists weighing in heavily on this,” Miles said. “The last time I saw the numbers, the arms industry had nearly 1,000 registered lobbyists. They’re not on the Hill lobbying Congress about how many schools we should open next year. They’re lobbying for defense contractors. The past 18 years of endless wars have been incredibly lucrative for the arms industry, and they have a vested industry in seeing these wars continue, and not curtailing the cash cow that…has been for them.”

The defense industry spent $125 million on lobbying in 2018. Of that, Boeing spent $15 million on lobbyists, Lockheed Martin spent $13.2 million, General Dynamics $11.9 million, and Raytheon $4.4 million, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act website.

Writes Ben Freeman:

According to a new report…firms registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act have reported receiving more than $40 million from Saudi Arabia in 2017 and 2018. Saudi lobbyists and public relations professionals have contacted Congress, the executive branch, media outlets and think tanks more than 4,000 times. Much of this work has been focused on ensuring that sales of U.S. arms to Saudi Arabia continue unabated and blocking congressional actions that would end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. …

Lobbyists, lawyers and public relations firms working for the Saudis have also reported doling out more than $4.5 million in campaign contributions in the past two years, including at least $6,000 to Trump. In many cases, these contributions have gone to members of Congress they’ve contacted regarding the Yemen war. In fact, some contributions have gone to members of Congress on the exact same day they were contacted by Saudi lobbyists, and some were made to key members just before, and even on the day of, important Yemen votes.

Over a dozen lobbying firms employed by defense contractors have also been working on behalf of the Saudi or Emiratis, efficiently lobbying for both the arms buyers and sellers in one fell swoop. One of these lobbying firms, the McKeon Group, led by former Republican congressman and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Howard McKeon, represents both Saudi Arabia and the American defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK, MBDA, and L3 Technologies. Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman are the biggest suppliers of arms to Saudi Arabia. In 2018, the McKeon Group took $1,697,000 from 10 defense contractors “to, among other objectives, continue the flow of arms to Saudi Arabia,” reports National Memo.

Freeman details multiple examples where lobbyists working on behalf of the Saudis met with a senator’s staff and then made a substantial contribution to that senator’s campaign within days of a key vote to keep the United States in the Yemen war.

American Defense International (ADI) represents the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s coalition partner in the war against Yemen, as well as several American defense contractors, including General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, L3 Technologies, and General Atomics.

Not to be outdone by the McKeon Group, ADI’s lobbyists have also aggressively pursued possible swing votes in the U.S. Senate for the hefty sum of $45,000 a month, paid for by the UAE. ADI lobbyists discussed the “situation in Yemen” and the “Paveway sale to the UAE,” the same bomb used in the deadly wedding strike, with the office of Senator Martin Heinrich, a member of the Armed Services Committee, according to FARA reports. ADI’s lobbyists also met with Congressman Steve Scalise’s legislative director to advise his office to vote against the congressional resolution on Yemen. For their lobbying, Raytheon paid ADI $120,000 in 2018.

In addition to the overt influence exercised by lobbyists for the defense industry, many former arms industry executives are embedded in influential posts throughout the Trump administration: from former Airbus, Huntington Ingalls, and Raytheon lobbyist Charles Faulkner at the State Department, who pushed Mike Pompeo to support arms sales in the Yemen war; to former Boeing executive and erstwhile head of the Department of Defense Patrick Shanahan; to his interim replacement Mark Esper, secretary of the Army and another former lobbyist for Raytheon.

The war in Yemen has been good for American defense contractors’ bottom lines. Since the conflict began, General Dynamics’ stock price has risen from about $135 to $169 per share, Raytheon’s from about $108 to more than $180, and Boeing’s from about $150 to $360, according to In These Times. Their analysis found that those four companies have had at least $30.1 billion in Saudi military contracts approved by the State Department over the last 10 years.

In April, President Donald Trump vetoed a resolution that would have ended American support for the Saudi-UAE coalition war against Yemen. Such efforts have failed to meet the 60-vote veto-proof threshold needed in the Senate.

There are a few senators who didn’t vote for the War Powers resolution “that will probably vote for the Raytheon sales,” Brittany Benowitz, a lawyer and former adviser to a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told TAC. “I think you’ll continue to see horrific bombings and as the famine rages on, people will start to ask, ‘Why are we a part of this war?’ Unfortunately, I don’t think that will start to happen anytime soon.”

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Barbara Boland is TAC’s foreign policy and national security reporter. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC

Featured image: 360b/Shutterstock By Fabian Res /Flickr; F-16 drops MK82 bombs (USAF photo); Child victim of attack in which MK82 bomb built by Lockheed Martin was dropped on his school bus Aug. 9, 2018. (VOA/Screengrab)

US President Donald Trump has been roundly mocked for announcing sanctions on Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini… who died 30 years ago.

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President Trump has just signed an executive order to deny Iran's Supreme Leader and his associates access to key financial resources and support. pic.twitter.com/14qE9iUe61

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 24, 2019

Trump said in a video released by the White House: “Ayatollah Khomeini and his office will not be spared from the sanctions.”

He went on to say that the measures were a “strong and proportionate response.”

Khomeini served as Supreme Leader until his death in 1989.

Although he most likely meant current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, confused Twitter users were quick to point out his mistake:

OMG. You can’t make this up. Trump says US is sanctioning Ayatollah Khomeini who died decades ago. He meant Khamenei, of course, but add this to the pile blunders! pic.twitter.com/uDIUrirYt5

— Bessma Momani (@b_momani) June 24, 2019

Trump said he's placing new sanctions on Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini — he died in 1989 pic.twitter.com/eyvenzcuNs

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) June 24, 2019

Today Trump idiotically hit Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini with sanctions even though he’s been dead for 30 years. To be fair, Trump has been dead inside for 30 years so it’s understandable that he would make that mistake.

— God (@thegoodgodabove) June 25, 2019

Others used the mistake to laugh at him:

Khomeini when he hears he’s been sanctioned (sorry) pic.twitter.com/WehCq6Xb9E

— Murtaza Mohammad Hussain (@MazMHussain) June 24, 2019

Saw Ayatollah Khomeini was trending, knew he's been dead a long time, and said to myself, "This has @realDonaldTrump 's stupidity written all over it." pic.twitter.com/cgO5QW1hyp

— Sheryle B. (@cadesmomsheryle) June 25, 2019

JUST IN: Ayatollah Khomeini responds to Trump's sanctions announcement pic.twitter.com/AMcAMnaN9T

— Mr Brick Housewall (@BrickHousewall) June 24, 2019

Others worried about other dead leaders who could also potentially face sanctions from beyond the grave:

Trump just sanctioned the Ayatollah Khomeini. Saddam Hussein must be shaking in his boots right about now.

— Ham on Wry (@realHamOnWry) June 24, 2019

What's next? Sanctions on Gaddafi, Saddam and Mussolini? Perhaps Santa, the Tooth Fairy and Bigfoot?

— TFA (@nitzafezet) June 25, 2019

This comes as Tehran accused the White House of being ‘afflicted with a mental retardation’, and called his sanctions “outrageous and idiotic.”

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“I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. … We had entire training courses.” That’s what Trump regime Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told students at Texas A&M University on April 15.

On June 14, Pompeo told reporters that “Iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the Gulf of Oman today.” On June 16 he told Fox News,“There’s no doubt. The intelligence community has lots of data, lots of evidence.” He didn’t give any.

The Trump regime is desperately escalating confrontation with Iran in coordination with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Why? The answer can be found in the headlines.

Not the headlines parroting Washington’s claim that Iran attacked tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The answer is in the headlines that bankers and CEOs worry about.

Headlines like these:

• “Oil Prices Are Falling Because Fears of a Glut in Supplies Are Growing,” Barron’s, May 22.
• “Oil Prices Tumble, U.S. Crude Slides Under $60, as Trade Wars Clip Global Demand,” The Street, May 23.
• “Gas Prices Could Fall Below $2 For Many Americans,” CNN Business, June 12.

On June 13, Barron’s financial weekly wrote, “Oil Prices Keep Falling, Something’s Got to Give.”

Something did. Later that day, explosions disabled two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Within hours, Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran. On June 18, the Israeli press reported the U.S. was preparing air strikes on Iran.

This is the second attack reported on shipping in the Gulf region since May 7, when the Pentagon announced a military buildup there. At the request of the U.S. Central Command, British units also deployed to the Gulf. Among them were members of the Special Boat Service, which specializes in covert operations at sea.

Japan disputes U.S. version

One of the tankers attacked was Japanese-owned, one Norwegian. Both carried “Japan-related” cargo, according to Japan’s Foreign Trade Ministry. The attacks happened while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Tehran trying to defuse tension between Iran and the US.

Both the crew and the owner of the damaged Japanese ship, the Kokuka Courageous, contradict the Trump regime’s version of the attack. They say their ship was hit by a flying missile, not underwater mines as the U.S. claims. Japanese and European Union officials have said they are not ready to accept the U.S. version of events.

Japan and the EU have good reason to fear a U.S. attack on Iran. So do the majority of the world’s people, who live in oil and gas-importing countries. So do working-class and oppressed people in the United States. Some in the U.S. ruling class fear it as well.

The Arab-Persian Gulf holds 55 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. Thirty-five percent of the world’s seaborne oil shipments come from there. A regional war could push the price of oil up to $200 a barrel, analysts say. Some say more.

All that money wouldn’t go up in smoke. It would be a massive transfer of wealth into the vaults of U.S. oil companies and banks and hedge funds that speculate on oil. For the trillion-dollar U.S. fracking industry — and the big banks that finance it — this could be a lifesaver. Fracking companies are struggling to keep prices over the cost of production. Hundreds of billions in investments are at risk.

Pompeo, Bolton and the fracking Kochs

The Koch brothers, Charles and David, are big investors in the U.S. fracking industry. Before he was hired by the Trump regime, first as CIA director, then secretary of state, Mike Pompeo was called “the congressman from Koch.” He got $1.1 million in donations from the oil and gas industry during his six years in Congress. Over a third, $375,000, came from Koch Industries, which is based in his Wichita, Kan., home district.

Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, was a fellow at the Koch-funded American Free Enterprise Institute. As an undersecretary of state for the George W. Bush regime, he helped fabricate “evidence” to justify the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Sen. Tom Cotton, who is leading the charge against Iran in the Senate, has gotten over $1 million from oil and gas interests during his six years on the Hill.

Trump’s secretary of the interior, David Bernhardt, was a lobbyist for Noble Energy. Noble is the main U.S. investor in Israeli gas projects in stolen Palestinian waters.

The fracking industry is much bigger than the “new money” robber barons around Trump. “Chevron, ExxonMobil Tighten Their Grip on Fracking,” the Wall Street Journal reported on March 5. Those oil majors control much of Saudi Arabia’s output as well. Four giant banks, JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Bank of America, have poured over half a trillion dollars into the industry.

The hydraulic fracturing — fracking — technology in use today was first tested in June 1998. In August of that year, the collapse of the Russian ruble dropped oil prices to $11 a barrel. That was despite the murderous sanctions and deadly bombing of Iraq by the U.S. It took the energy-price bubble created by the 2003 U.S. invasion and devastation of Iraq to make fracking profitable.

The “fracking revolution’ is slowly destroying North America’s water supply. But it has made the U.S. the world’s top oil and gas producer. It is central to the Trump regime’s proclaimed goal of “U.S. energy dominance.” It is the product of three decades of war, sanctions and covert operations, hundreds of thousands of deaths and nearly six trillion dollars spent on war. It can only be sustained by more war and destruction. Which is what we will get unless we build a people’s movement that can turn things around.

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Featured image: Two U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and a B-2 bomber fly in formation. Photo: USAF

Former President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, had finished his 15-minute discourse in a courtroom, while being locked inside a sound-proofed cage. He read a poem about his love for Egypt, and then collapsed, and died.

His demise sent shock-waves all over Egypt, the region and the Muslim world.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to accept the official story, claiming that the former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi “did not die, he was murdered”.

More came from different corners of the world. According to Reuters:

“A British member of Parliament, Crispin Blunt, who had led a delegation of UK lawmakers and lawyers last year in putting out a report on Mursi’s detention, slammed the conditions of Mursi’s incarceration.

We want to understand whether there was any change in his conditions since we reported in March 2018, and if he continued to be held in the conditions we found, then I’m afraid the Egyptian government are likely to be responsible for his premature death,” he said in remarks to the BBC.”

Human rights organizations, heads of state, as well as the common citizens of Egypt, were outraged by the demise of Mohamed Morsi (also spelt as Mursi), a former Egyptian leader who governed the nation after winning the first democratic elections in the modern history of the country in 2012, just a year after the brutal pro-Western dictator, Hosni Mubarak, was deposed in 2011.

Mr. Morsi was overthrown in 2013, in a violent military coup just one year after he was sworn into the highest office.

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Let’s be clear: Mohamed Morsi was not a ‘good president’. In fact, he was not supposed to be a president at all: the original candidate from his party was disqualified from the elections on a technicality, and Mr. Morsi was asked to take his place. And he won, by a small margin.

He made some serious errors, politically, economically and socially.

He flooded tunnels between Gaza and Sinai.

And under his leadership, more than 40 people died during the violence in Port Said.

When he felt threatened, he used to give orders to fire poisonous gases at the protesters.

But he was not a murderer. And in ‘modern’ Egypt, that was quite an achievement.

He tried to improve the dire situation in his country, but he kept failing.

On the other hand, he separated his government from the gangrenous military embrace. The western-sponsored Egyptian military has been managing to infiltrate everything (under Mubarak’s rule as well as now), fully controlling all aspects of the Egyptian state.

Mr. Morsi tried to please everyone in the terribly divided Egyptian society. But in the end, nobody was satisfied.

Hard-liners in his Muslim Brotherhood hated him for not being radical enough. The anti-religious Left despised him for not pushing harder for social reforms, and for a secular state. He was both obeying the US and the IMF, while at the same time alienating them.

In the end, he appeared like an uncertain, confused and weak man.

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In 2012 and 2013, my friends, my left-wing comrades, were battling police in front of the Presidential Palace in Cairo. I was there, with them, filming, face covered with water-soaked rags in order to at least somehow protect myself from the highly poisonous teargas.

In those days, no one seemed to like Morsi.

The rallying cry during the anti-Morsi protests was:

“We sing to those who deserve to die;

Morsi-Morsi-Morsi!”

Protesters could not have known that 7 years later, their prophecy would come through.

After the military overthrew the democratically elected government (on 3 July 2013), massacres began. Officially hundreds, but most likely thousands of people lost their lives. Tens of thousands were arrested, disappeared, tortured, raped, and exiled.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood were liquidated (soon after the coup it became a banned organization), but also various left-wing organizations and individuals, as well as all those people who were against the corrupt right-wing military and its dictatorship.

Several of my friends had to leave the country. Others are still in prison. Or in hiding.

Former dictator, Western puppet and assassin Hosni Mubarak, is now a free man again. He is 91 years old.

67-year-old Mohamed Morsi is dead.

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During the Morsi era, as well as during and after the 2013 coup, I was working in Egypt, making a documentary film for the Venezuelan television channel Telesur (“Egipto – El Fin de Una Revolucion” – “Egypt, End of the Revolution”).

First, I investigated and wrote about the crimes committed during the reign of President Morsi in the city of Port Said: “Notes from a Besieged City”.

And then, I was right there, in the middle of the battles, when the Egyptian military overthrew Morsi’s government and began liquidating both the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Egyptian left wing. I described the events in my essays “Egypt End of Hope” and “Egypt in the Eye of the Storm”. Many more essays from Egypt were then compiled in my book “Exposing Lies of The Empire”.

Once, while filming after the coup, I found myself facing 5 talks, all pointing their cannons at me. How I survived, I am not sure. Others did not. By the time I finished collecting footage for my film, my body was covered by scars and bruises.

From among those individuals who used to work with me on the film, and from those who used to protest against then President Morsi, there is hardly anyone now who would support the current rule of pro-Western military junta.

Rallies in 2012 and 2013 were all about improving Egypt; about forcing Morsi to deliver what millions of mostly young Egyptians hoped would be a just, secular and socialist society. Morsi was expected to deliver, or to resign, giving way to a better, more ‘progressive’ leader.

What came instead was a coup, a return of the fascist clique of Mubarak, supported by the US, Europe and Israel.

Looking back, I believe that Mohamed Morsi was a decent human being, but at the same time a bad, untalented, naive and confused ruler. That was still much, much better than what was before and after him.

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In her opinion piece for the New York Times, the Egyptian author Mona Eltahawy wrote about the demise of Mohamad Morsi:

“…He always looked like a man caught up in something much bigger than him. That he died in an Egyptian courtroom inside a soundproof cage designed to silence him, almost exactly six years to the day he took office and almost completely forgotten by all but his family and human rights activists, is a reminder of the bathos that surrounded him.”

Then, Ms. Eltahawy put his death into the context of the present-day Egypt:

“Decimated as it is, however, the Muslim Brotherhood is unlikely to be able to pull off mass protests in Egypt, where protests became all but impossible under a draconian law passed soon after Mr. el-Sisi came to power. This, too, is what Mr. el-Sisi has achieved: From July 2013, when Mr. Morsi was overthrown, and January 2016, when the Egyptian parliament reconvened, between 16,000 and 41,000 people, most supporters of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, were reportedly arrested or detained (Some were liberal or secular activists). Since then, a spike in death sentences and executions, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances and a determined effort to wipe out any form of dissent have all but crushed the Brotherhood, as well as most other forms of opposition. Muslim Brotherhood supporters are insisting that Mr. Morsi be eulogized as a martyr at the same time that many state-owned media are reporting on his death without even mentioning that he was once president.”

Frankly speaking, the era of Morsi feels like the only period in modern Egyptian history, when ‘everything was possible’, and when one was at least allowed to dream and to fight for a much better future. Yes, of course, the fight was taking place through teargas, and people got injured, some even killed. But they dared, they were not broken and humiliated like now.

The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ was manipulated, and most likely ‘created’ by the West. But in 2011 to 2013, there was also a parallel, independent, left-wing upsurge of anti-establishment, anti-capitalist and anti-military movements. There was a struggle, and Egypt could have gone in any direction.

I will never forget that year; “the year of Morsi”. We were risking our lives, often suffering direct physical assaults. Different political factions were at each other throats. Steam was out. Passions were boiling. Nothing was certain, everything possible.

That year, while making my film, I was with a group of socialist doctors; true Marxists. They did not doubt that Egypt could go socialist, if they fought harder. I also worked with Wassim Wagdy, one of the leaders of Revolutionary Socialist Organization.

And then, everything collapsed, literally overnight. 3 July 2013.

When did I realized that everything was over? It happened in Heliopolis – in a affluent suburb of Cairo – in a park. Hundreds of rich families went to celebrate the coup, wearing T-shirts depicting el-Sisi and his cronies. It looked like some historic photos from 9-11-1973 – from the days when the coup perpetrated by General Pinochet against President Allende in Chile. It was different, of course it was; but it looked the same. US-sponsored coups always look the same. And so do the faces of the elites that support them!

I read about the demise of Morsi onboard MEA, from Istanbul to Beirut. I felt immense sadness. I did not know why, precisely. Certainly, it was not for the Mr. Morsi’s reign. But most likely it was for that time, for that hope that was now totally choked and abandoned. For the days when ‘everything was possible’; when people were ready and willing to fight for their country.

Egypt is a ‘failed’ state now. Scared, frustrated, poor and totally corrupt. A state that is devouring its own people.

When I go to one of countless slums of Cairo, these days, people look at me with open hate. They see me as a foreigner, as someone who helped to throw them back to hopelessness and misery. Of course, they don’t know that several years ago I fought for them, at least as a filmmaker, side-by-side with their nation’s socialist vanguard.

I also feel sadness for Morsi the man, if not Morsi the president. I somehow sense that the patriotic poem that he read before collapsing and dying, came straight from his heart.

In one single year when he governed, he did his best. His best was not good enough. He failed.

But he did not deserve to die like this, muzzled and humiliated, in a cage!

He deserved better. And his country, Egypt, deserves much, much better, damn it!

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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 Civilizationwith 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

“She was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.”—Kurt Vonnegut

Please spare me the media hysterics and the outrage and the hypocritical double standards of those whose moral conscience appears to be largely dictated by their political loyalties.

Anyone who believes that the injustices, cruelties and vicious callousness of the U.S. government are unique to the Trump Administration has not been paying attention.

No matter what the team colors might be at any given moment, the playbook remains the same. The leopard has not changed its spots. Scrape off the surface layers and you will find that the American police state that is continuing to wreak havoc on the rights of the people under the Trump Administration is the same police state that wreaked havoc on the rights of the people under every previous administration.

Brace yourselves.

While we squabble over which side is winning this losing battle, a tsunami approaches.

Case in point: in Charlottesville, Va.—home of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, champion of the Bill of Rights, and the nation’s third president—city councilors in a quest for so-called “equity” have proposed eliminating Jefferson’s birthday as a city holiday (which has been on the books since 1945) and replacing it with a day that commemorates the liberation of area slaves following the arrival of Union troops under Gen. Philip Sheridan.

In this way, while the populace wages war over past injustices, injustice in the here and now continues to trample innocent lives underfoot. In Charlottesville, as in the rest of the country, little is being done to stem the tide of the institutional racism that has resulted in disproportionate numbers of black Americans being stopped, frisked, shot at, arrested and jailed.

Just recently, in fact, Phoenix police drew their guns, shouted profanities, assaulted and threatened to shoot a black couple whose 4-year-old daughter allegedly stole a doll from a dollar store. The footage of the incident—in which the cops threaten to shoot the pregnant, young mother in the head in the presence of the couple’s 1- and 4-year-old daughters—is horrifying in every way.

Tell me again why it’s more important to spend valuable political capital debating the birthdays of dead presidents rather than proactively working to put a stop to a government mindset that teaches cops it’s okay to treat citizens of any color with brutality and a blatant disregard for their rights?

It doesn’t matter that Phoenix and Charlottesville are 2100 miles apart. The lethal practices of the American police state are the same all over.

No amount of dissembling can shield us from the harsh reality that the danger in our midst is posed by an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution, Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

We’ve got to get our priorities straight if we are to ever have any hope of maintaining any sense of freedom in America. As long as we allow ourselves to be distracted, diverted, occasionally outraged, always polarized and content to view each other—rather than the government—as the enemy, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.

Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedoms of its citizenry.

So stop with all of the excuses and the hedging and the finger-pointing and the pissing contests to see which side can out-shout, out-blame and out-spew the other. Enough already with the short- and long-term amnesia that allows political sycophants to conveniently forget the duplicity, complicity and mendacity of their own party while casting blame on everyone else.

This is how evil wins.

This is how freedom falls and tyranny rises.

This is how good, generally decent people—having allowed themselves to be distracted with manufactured crises, polarizing politics, and fighting that divides the populace into warring us vs. them camps—fail to take note of the looming danger that threatens to wipe freedom from the map and place us all in chains.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware. Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware. And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

The world has been down this road before.

As historian Milton Mayer recounts in his seminal book on Hitler’s rise to power, They Thought They Were Free:

Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people‑—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies’, without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.

We are no longer living the American Dream. We’re living the American Lie.

Indeed, Americans have been lied to so sincerely, so incessantly, and for so long by politicians of all stripes—who lie compulsively and without any seeming remorse—that they’ve almost come to prefer the lies trotted out by those in government over less-palatable truths.

The American people have become compulsive believers: left-leaning Americans are determined to believe that the world has become a far more dangerous place under Trump, while right-leaning Americans are equally convinced that Trump has set us on a path to prosperity and security.

Nothing has changed.

The police state is still winning. We the people are still losing.

In fact, the American police state has continued to advance at the same costly, intrusive, privacy-sapping, Constitution-defying, heartbreaking, soul-scorching, relentless pace under the current Tyrant-in-Chief as it did under those who occupied the White House before him (Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.).

Police haven’t stopped disregarding the rights of citizens. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip, shoot and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials are no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace. Indeed, they continue to keep the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies and slaves rather than citizens.

SWAT teams haven’t stopped crashing through doors and terrorizing families. Nationwide, SWAT teams continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activities or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession. With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own heavily armed law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties continue to rise.

The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security haven’t stopped militarizing and federalizing local police. Police forces continue to be transformed into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. In training police to look and act like the military and use the weapons and tactics of war against American citizens, the government continues to turn the United States into a battlefield and “we the people” into enemy combatants.

Schools haven’t stopped treating young people like hard-core prisoners. School districts continue to team up with law enforcement to create a “schoolhouse to jailhouse track” by imposing a “double dose” of punishment for childish infractions: suspension or expulsion from school, accompanied by an arrest by the police and a trip to juvenile court. In this way, the paradigm of abject compliance to the state continues to be taught by example in the schools, through school lockdowns where police and drug-sniffing dogs enter the classroom, and zero tolerance policies that punish all offenses equally and result in young people being expelled for childish behavior.

For-profit private prisons haven’t stopped locking up Americans and immigrants alike at taxpayer expense. States continue to outsource prison management to private corporations out to make a profit at taxpayer expense. And how do you make a profit in the prison industry? Have the legislatures pass laws that impose harsh penalties for the slightest noncompliance in order keep the prison cells full and corporate investors happy.

Censorship hasn’t stopped. First Amendment activities continue to be pummeled, punched, kicked, choked, chained and generally gagged all across the country. The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remained the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.”

The courts haven’t stopped marching in lockstep with the police state. The courts continue to be dominated by technicians and statists who are deferential to authority, whether government or business. Indeed, the Supreme Court’s decisions in recent years have most often been characterized by an abject deference to government authority, military and corporate interests.

Government bureaucrats haven’t stopped turning American citizens into criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to an overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal, while reinforcing the power of the police state and its corporate allies.

The surveillance state hasn’t stopped spying on Americans’ communications, transactions or movements. On any given day, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether it’s your local police, a fusion center, the National Security Agency or one of the government’s many corporate partners, is still monitoring and tracking your every move.

The TSA hasn’t stopped groping or ogling travelers. Under the pretext of protecting the nation’s infrastructure (roads, mass transit systems, water and power supplies, telecommunications systems and so on) against criminal or terrorist attacks, TSA task forces (comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosive detection canine teams) continue to do random security sweeps of nexuses of transportation, including ports, railway and bus stations, airports, ferries and subways, as well as political conventions, baseball games and music concerts. Sweep tactics include the use of x-ray technology, pat-downs and drug-sniffing dogs, among other things.

Congress hasn’t stopped enacting draconian laws such as the USA Patriot Act and the NDAA. These laws—which completely circumvent the rule of law and the constitutional rights of American citizens, continue to re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the rule of law, our U.S. Constitution, becomes the map by which we navigate life in the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t stopped being a “wasteful, growing, fear-mongering beast.” Indeed, this is the agency that is notorious for militarizing the police and SWAT teams; spying on activists, dissidents and veterans; stockpiling ammunition; distributing license plate readers; contracting to build detention camps; tracking cell-phones with Stingray devices; carrying out military drills and lockdowns in American cities; using the TSA as an advance guard; conducting virtual strip searches with full-body scanners; carrying out soft target checkpoints; directing government workers to spy on Americans; conducting widespread spying networks using fusion centers; carrying out Constitution-free border control searches; funding city-wide surveillance cameras; and utilizing drones and other spybots.

The military industrial complex hasn’t stopped profiting from endless wars abroad. America’s expanding military empire continues to bleed the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour). The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense.

The Deep State’s shadow government hasn’t stopped calling the shots behind the scenes.Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a government continues to be the real reason “we the people” have no real control over our so-called representatives. It’s every facet of a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.

And the American people haven’t stopped acting like gullible sheep. In fact, many Americans have been so carried away by their blind rank-and-file partisan devotion to their respective political gods that they have lost sight of the one thing that has remained constant in recent years: our freedoms are steadily declining. And it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican at the helm, because the bureaucratic mindset on both sides of the aisle now seems to embody the same philosophy of authoritarian government.

So you can try to persuade yourself that you are free, that you still live in a country that values freedom, and that it is not too late to make America great again, but to anyone who has been paying attention to America’s decline over the past 50 years, it will be just another lie.

The German people chose to ignore the truth and believe the lie.

They were not oblivious to the horrors taking place around them. As historian Robert Gellately points out, “[A]nyone in Nazi Germany who wanted to find out about the Gestapo, the concentration camps, and the campaigns of discrimination and persecutions need only read the newspapers.”

The warning signs were definitely there, blinking incessantly like large neon signs.

“Still,” Gellately writes, “the vast majority voted in favor of Nazism, and in spite of what they could read in the press and hear by word of mouth about the secret police, the concentration camps, official anti-Semitism, and so on. . . . [T]here is no getting away from the fact that at that moment, ‘the vast majority of the German people backed him.’”

Half a century later, the wife of a prominent German historian, neither of whom were members of the Nazi party, opined: “[O]n the whole, everyone felt well. . . . And there were certainly eighty percent who lived productively and positively throughout the time. . . . We also had good years. We had wonderful years.”

In other words, as long as their creature comforts remained undiminished, as long as their bank accounts remained flush, as long as they weren’t being discriminated against, persecuted, starved, beaten, shot, stripped, jailed and turned into slave labor, life was good.

Life is good in America, too.

Life is good in America as long as you’re not one of the hundreds of migrant children (including infants, toddlers, preschoolers) being detained in unsanitary conditions by U.S. Border Patrol without proper access to food and water, made to sleep on concrete floors, go without a shower for weeks on end, and only allowed to brush your teeth once every 10 days.

Life is good in America as long as you don’t have to come face to face with a trigger-happy cop hyped up on the power of the badge, trained to shoot first and ask questions later, and disposed to view people of color as a suspect class.

Life is good in America as long as you’re able to keep sleep-walking through life, cocooning yourself in political fantasies that depict a world in which your party is always right and everyone else is wrong, and distracting yourself with bread-and-circus entertainment that bears no resemblance to reality.

Life is good in America as long as you’ve got enough money to spare that you don’t mind being made to pay through the nose for the government’s endless wars, subsidization of foreign nations, military empire, welfare state, roads to nowhere, bloated workforce, secret agencies, fusion centers, private prisons, biometric databases, invasive technologies, arsenal of weapons, and every other budgetary line item that is contributing to the fast-growing wealth of the corporate elite at the expense of those who are barely making ends meet—that is, we the 99%.

Life is good in America for the privileged few, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s getting worse by the day for the rest of us.

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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]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

President Donald Trump and his treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, unveiled Monday what the US administration had touted as new “harsh” and “hard-hitting” economic sanctions against Iran in the wake of last week’s Iranian shoot-down of a sophisticated US drone spy plane over the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

The economic measures come in the wake of Trump’s decision, by his own account, to call off air strikes against Iranian missile and radar sites just 10 minutes before missiles were set to fly and with US warplanes already in the air. While Trump claimed he aborted the raids out of concern for Iranian loss of life, it is evident that the real issue was the likelihood that Iran would retaliate, threatening heavy US casualties and a spiraling escalation that could result in a full-scale regional and even global armed conflict.

Despite the advance promotion, the sanctions order signed by Trump at the White House Monday was largely symbolic. They target Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his appointees as individuals, blocking them from using the US financial system or accessing financial assets in the US.

The administration indicated that it would also add Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, to the list, a highly provocative action that would theoretically expose any world government hosting Iran’s principal foreign policy representative with secondary sanctions.

Trump claimed that his resort to a new round of sanctions, rather than bombarding targets in Iran, demonstrated that “a lot of restraint has been shown by us,” adding, “that doesn’t mean we’re going to show it in the future.” This followed his remark Sunday in an interview with NBC News that if the US were to go to war against Iran “it’ll be obliteration like you’ve never seen before.”

Tehran dismissed the latest sanctions. Iran does not “consider them to have any impact,” Abbas Mousavi told a press conference in Tehran. “Are there really any sanctions left that the United States has not imposed on our country recently or in the past 40 years?”

Indeed, the sanctions regime re-imposed and tightened by the Trump administration since May 2018, when it unilaterally abrogated the 2015 nuclear agreement reached between Iran and the US, China, Russia, the UK, France and Germany, is tantamount to a state of war.

Implementing what it boasts is a campaign of “maximum pressure,” Washington is attempting to drive Iranian energy exports, the country’s principal source of income, to zero. Last month it ended sanctions waivers for several major importers of Iranian oil. Reuters cited energy industry sources as reporting that Iranian crude exports this month have plummeted to just 300,000 barrels a day, a fraction of the 2.5 million barrels per day that it shipped in April 2018, before the US re-imposed sanctions.

Bearing the brunt of these sanctions are tens of millions of Iranian working people, who have seen their real income plummet and their jobs disappear.

The rial, Iran’s national currency, has lost 60 percent of its value, while the inflation rate has soared from 9 percent in 2017 to 31 percent last year, and is expected to reach 37 percent or more this year. The result has been the skyrocketing of prices for basic necessities of life. According to the government’s own statistics, in the year since Washington re-imposed sanctions, meat and poultry prices have risen by 57 percent; milk, cheese and eggs by 37 percent; and vegetables by 47 percent. The real increases are undoubtedly significantly higher.

The official unemployment rate for younger Iranians has risen to 27 percent, and for university graduates to 40 percent. Again, real unemployment is far higher, as the government counts anyone working as little as one hour a week as employed.

While medicine is theoretically exempt from US sanctions, in practice the punishing measures implemented by Washington are depriving millions of Iranians of needed drugs, undoubtedly sending many to early deaths.

European and other international banks and corporations are refusing to participate in financial transactions to allow pharmaceutical companies to ship drugs to Iran out of fear that they will be targeted for US secondary sanctions. And while Iran produces most of the country’s medicines, the raw materials used in making these drugs are often imported.

The Pentagon has continued to build up US military forces in the Persian Gulf, even as top administration officials have traveled to the Middle East in what is billed as a bid to strengthen a US-backed anti-Iranian “coalition.”

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on Monday that the USS Boxer, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship carrying thousands of US Marines, a squadron of attack helicopters and AV-8B Harrier II strike aircraft, had arrived in the region. It is part of an assault group that includes the amphibious transport dock USS John P. Murtha and the amphibious dock landing ship USS Harpers Ferry.

The amphibious assault group joins the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and a B-52 nuclear-cable bomber task force, along with 2,500 additional US troops sent to the region since early May under the pretext of “deterring” alleged Iranian threats to “US interests” in the region.

Even as the Trump administration claimed credit for calling off a catastrophic escalation of its assault on Iran in response to the downing of the spy drone, the New York Times and the Washington Post both cited unnamed Pentagon officials as reporting that the US military’s cyber command had carried out cyberattacks aimed at disabling Iranian rocket systems and disrupting an Iranian intelligence unit.

Iran dismissed the claims, insisting that it deflected the US attacks.

“They try hard, but have not carried out a successful attack,” Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, Iran’s minister for information and communications technology, said on Twitter. “Last year we neutralized 33 million attacks with the (national) firewall.”

An escalation of cyber warfare between the two countries also threatens catastrophic consequences—the bringing down of power grids or possible meltdown of nuclear reactors—spilling over into full scale war.

Meanwhile, the two leading advocates of war and regime-change, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, were in the Middle East promoting aggression against Iran. Pompeo visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, calling his conversations with the rulers of these two absolute Sunni oil monarchies the forging of a “global coalition.” Both the Saudi and the UAE ruling families have long advocated a US war to cripple Iran as a regional rival.

Pompeo’s trip to Riyadh came just a week after the United Nations released a report calling for sanctions against Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for his responsibility in the brutal assassination of dissident journalist and US resident Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s embassy in Istanbul last October.

The report cited tape recordings in which members of the assassination squad sent by the monarchy referred to Khashoggi as the “sacrificial animal” and discussed how to chop up and dispose of his corpse.

A State Department official said that the assassination of Khashoggi, who was a columnist for the Washington Post, never came up in Pompeo’s talks with bin Salman. This followed Trump’s own brushing aside of his silence on the matter in his telephone conversation with the crown prince on Friday. “Saudi Arabia is a big buyer of product,” he said, referring to its multi-billion-dollar arms contracts “That means something to me.”

Meanwhile, Bolton was in Israel meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another advocate of a US war against Iran. Today he is set to meet with both Israel’s and Russia’s national security advisers in Jerusalem to discuss the Middle East. Washington wants to pressure Moscow into turning against Iran, particularly in Syria, where the two countries have been the principal allies of the government of President Bashar al-Assad against the US-orchestrated war for regime-change.

Asked last Thursday whether Washington and Moscow could sign a deal on Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded: “What does ‘deal’ stand for? This is something about commerce, shares. We trade neither our allies, nor our interests, nor our principles. It is possible to agree with our partners about the solution of various urgent problems.”

Tensions between Washington and its “great power” rivals Russia and China are building over the US war threats against Iran in the run-up to the G-20 summit in Japan at the end of this week. On Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov denounced the new US sanctions as illegal and “a reflection of the deliberate and purposeful escalation policy.”

The Chinese newspaper Global Times published an editorial Monday stating that it is “only a matter of time before new war breaks out in the region” and quoting Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who accused Washington of “provoking” Iran and warned that miscalculations could lead to a “world war.”

The editorial stated that Washington’s demands that Iran entirely shut down its civilian nuclear program, give up its ballistic missiles and curtail its influence in the broader Middle East cannot be achieved by means of economic sanctions. “Unless the US destroys the Iranian regime and subverts Iran culturally, the demands are unrealistic.”

The editorial concluded,

“What is worrying is that Washington does not realize that its greedy pursuit of hegemony hides an inherent danger that will cost the world and itself.”

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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

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Feed a cold, starve a fever … mutate the flu?

A couple of labs in Wisconsin and The Netherlands have been given the green light to do controversial work with a deadly strain of avian flu that kills two thirds of the people it infects.

The scientific community and US government declared a moratorium on the experiments in 2014. Why? Because the virus has generally been confined to birds, and these labs are trying to make it transmissible to mammals. On purpose.

The researchers say making new strains of the H5N1 flu virus in a secure lab can help them see what might happen naturally in the real world. Sounds logical, but many scientists oppose it because the facts show most biosafety labs aren’t really secure at all, and experts say the risks of a mutated virus escaping outweigh whatever public health benefit comes from creating them.

But now the US government is funding these same labs again to artificially enhance potentially pandemic pathogens.

Say WHAT? 

In this installment of the Bulletin’s video series that provides a sharp view of fuzzy policy, Johns Hopkins University computational biologist Steven Salzberg explains why arguments by researchers in favor of risky viral research aren’t persuasive.

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Thomas Gaulkin is multimedia editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Joining the Bulletin in 2018, he spent the previous decade working in communications at the University of Chicago, first for the Centers for International Studies and International Social Science Research, and later as Director of News and Online Content for the Division of the Social Sciences. From 1999-2002 and again in 2006 Gaulkin produced Worldview, Chicago Public Radio’s daily global affairs program. He received a BA with honors in political science from the University of Chicago.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s time-honored participation in Pride parades belies something much more sinister.

The Prime Minister’s recent statement that,  “(t)his message, that politicians of all different stripes are out to support them, that the country takes to the streets across Pride Month and at Pride events, to support our friends in the LGBT communities, that we are all allies, continues to be an important message here in Canada, and of course, around the world ever more so,”[1] reinforces the notion that human rights are important to Canada and to the globe itself.

The subterranean messaging is that globalized human rights are important to Canada.

“Perception Management” is all important to Canadian politicians.  Propaganda and political theatre are the message, and the message is a Big Lie.

Globalization does not serve public or human rights interests.  In fact, it erases nation-state sovereignty and democracy – fundamental preconditions for public interests and human rights — replacing both with totalitarian supranational diktats.  Sovereignty, democracy, and human rights are fabricated perceptions.

We’ve seen globalization at work.  So-called free-trade deals coupled with Investor State Dispute Settlement clauses — where fractious issues are “resolved” in secret tribunals outside the jurisdiction of Canadian laws[2] — offer freedom for companies to over-ride nation-state sovereignty.  “Sovereign”[3] corporations are “free” to accept public money, and then to relocate to low-wage, weak labour rights locales. Capital is “free” to impoverish and enslave the masses.

Globalism, imperialism, and predatory political economies are closely aligned. Imperialists destroy nation-states, with the utterly false and ridiculous pretexts of “humanitarian intervention”, with a view to imposing predatory political economies where masses of humanity become impoverished, displaced, and/or denizens of refugee/concentration camps, as is the case in Syria.

Human and all rights are obliterated where terrorist proxies rule, but also in society at large when national institutions and national governance is destroyed. Libya, which previously boasted the highest Standard of Living in all of Africa[4], is now an impoverished, looted, and plundered shadow of its former self, — and host to open market slave trading.

P.M Trudeau may well be progressive in his personal life, but the substance of the diktats ruling and ruining Canada are hardly progressive.  The same neoliberal political economies imposed on prey nations are hard at work in Canada as well.

Nation-state and human-rights destroying globalization, cloaked in veils of “perception management”, enabled and empowered by identity politics, is playing us all for fools.

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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.

Notes

[1] Geoff Zochodne, “ ‘We are all allies’: Trudeau delivers message of support at Pride parade.” National Post, 23 June, 2019. (https://nationalpost.com/business/w e-are-all-allies-trudeau-delivers-message-of-support-at-pride-parade/wcm/747675f5-acec-4049-ad16-ed54d4b57684) Accessed 25 June, 2019.

[2] Mark Taliano,“HUPACASATH FIRST NATION SHINES LIGHT ON SECRETIVE CANADA-CHINA INVESTMENT DEAL.” Niagara At Large, 20 August, 2013; (https://www.marktaliano.net/hupacasath-first-nation-shines-light-on-secretive-canada-china-investment-deal/) Accessed 25 June, 2019, marktaliano.net 

[3] Mark Taliano, “Niagarians Join Thousands In Giant London, Ontario Rally Against Corporate Greed.” Niagara At Large, 22 January, 2012.( https://www.marktaliano.net/niagarians-join-thousands-in-giant-london-ontario-rally-against-corporate-greed/_Accessed 25 June, 2019, marktaliano.net

[4] Mark Taliano, “Terror Inc. and the War on Libya.” Global Research, 26 January, 2015. (https://www.marktaliano.net/terror-inc-and-the-war-on-libya/) Accessed 25 June, 2019.

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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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Early in the morning of June 22, an orchestrated coup attempt was made against the executive leadership of Amhara Regional Government of Ethiopia, north of Addis Ababa.

A “hit squad” led by Amhara’s security chief Brig Gen Asaminew Tsige burst into a meeting in the state offices of Amhara’s capital, Bahir Dar, and shot Governor Dr. Ambachew Mekonnen and his adviser Ezez Wassie. The men were “gravely injured in the attack and later died of their wounds. Attorney General Migbaru Kebede also sustained serious injuries.

Several hours later, in what seemed like a coordinated attack, the Chief of Staff of National Defence Forces General Seare Mekonnen was killed in his home by his bodyguard in Addis Ababa as part of a ploy to seize power in the northern region of Amhara. Also shot dead was a visiting retired General Gezai Abera. Bodyguard shot himself but is being treated for his injuries.

The coup was masterminded by Brig Gen Asaminew Tsige (image on the right), who was serving as head of government’s Peace & Security Bureau, along with some others. He was given amnesty and released from prison last year after remaining in jail for nine years for allegedly plotting a coup.

It was stated that the coup was meant to create chaos and division in the military, and that the situation was under control and that there were no divisions within the military.

PM Abiy Ahmed urged Ethiopians to unite against “evil” forces set on dividing the country. Flags flew at half-mast after the government declared a day of mourning to mark the deaths of loyalists. Gen Seare and Amhara Governor Ambachew Mekonnen were close allies of the Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The slain generals were laid to rest with full honors and during the funeral rites, the PM and the people wept bitterly.

Asaminew Tsige was killed on 24 June as he attempted to escape from his hideout in Amhara’s capital. 180 plotters have been arrested and hunt for the rest is going on.

The point to note is that the slain Gen Seare and Gen Gezai Abera hailed from the minority Tigray ethnic group, while Brig Gen Asaminew who hatched the coup plot was part of the second largest ethnic Amhara group. Ethnic rivalry seem to be the driving force behind the coup.

Since coming to power last year in April, Abiy Ahmed lifted martial law, and has initiated sweeping political and economic reforms, the opening of major state-owned sectors to private investment, and reining in the security services. He has released thousands of political prisoners, including opposition figures once sentenced to death, lifted bans on political parties and some outlawed separatist groups. He prosecuted officials accused of gross human rights abuses, but his government is battling mounting violence. He moved the country towards democratization.

His efforts have been directed to open up the once isolated, security-obsessed Horn of Africa country of 100 million people by loosening the iron-fisted grip of his predecessors like Afwerki.

Although Abiy’s reforms in Africa’s second-most populous country have won him widespread international praise, and are widely popular at home, some members of the previous regime are unhappy with the changes. His shake-up of the military and intelligence services has earned him powerful enemies, while his government is struggling to contain Ethiopia’s myriad ethnic groups fighting the federal government and each other for greater influence and resources.

Abiy has survived a number of threats and a grenade attack. Ethnic bloodshed – long held in check by the state’s iron grip – has flared up in many areas, including Amhara, where the regional government was led by Ambachew Mekonnen.

In Amhara State, the people have a feeling that they were marginalised, and individuals that were suspected to be behind the coup said that Amhara people have never been subordinated. So besides the ethnic factor, this sense of grievance and victimhood is driving the nationalist movement.

On external front, Abiy mended fences with neighboring Eritrea with which it was at war from 1998 to 2000 by accepting a peace agreement. He made a sincere effort to negotiate a truce between protestors and the military in Sudan but his plan was rejected by transitional military council in Khartoum.

Ethiopia is Africa’s oldest independent country and is also the continent’s second most populous after Nigeria, with 102.5 million inhabitants from more than 80 different ethnic groups. It has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, but a vast number of young Ethiopians are without work.Ethiopia is a key regional ally of the U.S. in the restive Horn of Africa region.

Amhara, whose emperors ruled Ethiopia for over a century, struggled to accept the loss of power after the fall of the communist Derg military junta in 1991 which gave way to the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition of four parties that has ruled ever since. One of these is the Amhara Democratic Party (ADP), and with the EPRDF severely weakened after years of turmoil in the country, its members are finding themselves out-muscled by nationalist parties within the region.

Why did the coup take place?

Brig Gen Asaminew hails from Amhara, had a reputation for hardline ethnic nationalism and had previously called for the Amhara people to have greater autonomy. Earlier this month, in a video on social media, he had openly advised the Amhara to arm themselves. He had a bad relationship with the Tigray regional government as well. Since long he had been aspiring to seize power. The bigger motive was not to topple the government, since Asaminew didn’t have sufficient means and followers to do so, but his aim was to kill top Generals close to Abiy. And to cause further divisions in the military, which is the main source of power.

Challenges for Abiy

The coup attempt show the seriousness of the political crisis in Ethiopia, where efforts by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to push through reforms have unleashed a wave of unrest. These tragic incidents demonstrate the depth of Ethiopia’s political crisis.

Former army colonel Abiy is faced with a potentially explosive situation that could snowball if not handled correctly. The pernicious political atmosphere is symbolic of Ethiopia’s tough changeover from a one-party state to democracy and raises questions whether Abiy could bring lasting stability. Ethiopia has gargantuan societal divisions. Abiy’s wide ranging reforms haven’t eased the ethnic tension, economic challenges, and institutional corruption that has bedeviled the nation. As of April this year, an estimated 3.2 million people were displaced by conflict and drought.

107 political parties are divided between Ethio-nationalists and Ethno-nationalists. Both blame each other and are ripping apart the social fabric. Partisan media is adding fuel to fire. Due to stunted economy, problem of unemployment has not been overcome due to which the youth is frustrated. People dislike Abiy’s soft approach towards wrongdoers.

Abiy is focusing mainly on stabilizing macroeconomic imbalances by re-negotiating loan deals and taking stringent austerity measures. No meaningful headway has been made due to status quo loving non-cooperative bureaucracy, which scoffs at reforms. Politics driven by interests of elites at the cost of neglecting the masses, lack of justice, prevalent endemic of corruption and poverty are major causes of unrest.

Competition is especially heating up with the promise of holding national parliamentaryelections in 2020.Several opposition groups have called for the polls to be held on time despite the unrest and displacement.Abey remains the best hope for Ethiopia’s stability and prosperity. He needs to win elections with majority to be able to complete his reforms, unite the country and chart a common future.

Lessons learnt. Snakes will remain snakes; no mercy to snakes which are in the habit of biting the hand feeding them. Like Abey, we had committed this mistake of freeing Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and later milking the snakes. Some similarities can be seen between challenges faced by Abiy and Imran Khan

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Asif Haroon Raja is a retired Brig, war veteran, defence analyst, columnist, author of five books, Vice Chairman Thinkers Forum Pakistan, Director Measac Research Centre, member CWC and think tank Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Society, and member Council Tehreek Jawanan Pakistan. [email protected]

Whether it was the Big Bang, Midas or God himself, we don’t really need to unlock the mystery of the origins of gold when we’ve already identified an asteroid worth $700 quintillion in precious heavy metals.

If anything launches this metals mining space race, it will be this asteroid–Psyche 16, taking up residence between Mars and Jupiter and carrying around enough heavy metals to net every single person on the planet close to a trillion dollars.

The massive quantities of gold, iron and nickel contained in this asteroid are mind-blowing. The discovery has been made. Now, it’s a question of proving it up.

NASA plans to do just that, beginning in 2022.

Of course, says veteran miner Scott Moore, CEO of EuroSun Mining

“The ‘Titans of Gold’ now control hundreds of the best-producing properties around the world, but the 4-5 million ounces of gold they bring to the market every year pales in comparison to the conquests available in space.”

In the decades to come, if you want to be a gold titan, you’ll have to get your feet off the ground. The real titans will be far from Earth.

Moore should know: He heads up a junior mining company that is seeking a seat at the titan table with the biggest in-development gold mine in Europe.

The 21st-Century Gold Rush

Can we actually extract this space gold? That is the quintillion-dollar question, certainly.

Speaking to Outerplaces, Professor John Zarnecki, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, estimates that it would take around 25 years to get ‘proof of concept’, and 50 years to start commercial production.

Of course, it all depends on two key things: Economic feasibility and our advancement of space technology.

And then, we’re not alone, either. There are other world powers who would like to get their hands on that asteroid, as well. China definitively plans to dominate this race.

Mitch Hunter-Scullion, founder of the UK-based Asteroid Mining Company, tells the BBC that this is definitively the next industry “boom”.

“Once you set up the infrastructure then the possibilities are almost infinite,” he said. “There’s an astronomical amount of money to be made by those bold enough to rise to the challenge of the asteroid rush.”

EuroSun’s Moore agrees:

“What we’re doing on the ground now may be impressive, but like everything else, even gold exploration in space is only a matter of infrastructure. We’ll get to it, eventually.”

But it’s not just about the quintillion-dollar prospects of the Asteroid Belt, which is 750 million kilometers from Earth.

“This may be the Holy Grail of space exploration for gold, but it won’t be the first stop on this adventure,” Moore says.

There are also Near-Earth asteroids, which pass close to Earth and could be pushed into an orbit from which water and other elements could be extracted.

Then there’s the moon, which holds resources from gold and platinum group metals to Helium-3, water and rare earth metals. Even though mining operations require gravity and the Moon’s is only one-sixth of Earth’s, scientists say there is enough gravity to make it work.

The Global Asteroid Mining Market

Yes, there is already a global market for asteroid mining, and Allied Market Research estimates that it will top $3.8 billion by 2025.

They’re counting ongoing and future space missions, the rise in inflow of investments in space mining technologies, and the growing use of print materials obtained from asteroids in 3D printing technology.

According to Allied, while the spacecraft design segment of this market accounted for four-fifths of the total revenue in 2017 and is expected to continue to dominate through 2025, the big change here will be in the space mining segment, or the “operation segment”. That segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 29% by 2025 “due to a surge in investment by public and private stakeholders in space mining technologies for resource exploitation”.

“You can’t just think of space mining as something that will suddenly happen in 25 or 50 years,” says EuroSun’s Moore. “It’s already happening from an investment perspective. And the Asteroid Belt is just one aspect of this market. The entire global space market is worth hundreds of billions already.”

Indeed, Morgan Stanley estimates the global space economy to be worth $350 billion today. By 2040, it will be worth a cosmic $2.7 trillion.

Nor is the Psyche-16 Asteroid the only thing of interest in the Belt. Another small asteroid measuring 200 meters in length could be worth $30 billion in platinum.

Who Will Get There First?

China has vowed to dominate this race, and that’s an easier game for a country that controls all the major natural resource companies and maintains a tight leash on tech developers.

That’s not to say that the U.S. doesn’t have ambitions here. The difference, though, is stark. While NASA is focused on space exploration and scientific missions, China is focused on a space-based economy that is zeroing in on long-term wealth generation.

Even Europe, where EuroSun is developing a major goldmine in Romania, has its hand in the game. In January, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced a deal with ArianeGroup, the parent company of Arianespace, to study a prep mission to the moon in 2025. It’s got natural resources on its mind.

Even tiny Luxembourg has 10 space-mining companies registered since 2016, with some targeting space ventures to the Moon, and others eyeing near-Earth asteroids for mining.

Tokyo-based iSpace, for instance, is a private space exploration company that plans to complete a lunar orbit in 2020, and a soft landing in 2021.

For Moore, the prospect is daunting, even if it is the clear future reality, because mining in EuroSun’s Rovina Valley project in west-central Romania has been a cakewalk, both in terms of geology and infrastructure. Everything lines up for a large, low-cost project (the biggest in-development gold mine in Europe.) That won’t be the case in space, but it’s a big bill that governments will want to help foot or risk losing their place in space.

Whoever gets there first will become the new god of gold, and the competition is heating up.

A few companies that could vie for a spot in the space-race are majors like…

Seabridge Gold Inc. (NYSE:SA) (TSX:SEA)

Seabridge is an ambitious young company taking the industry by storm. It has a unique strategy of acquiring promising properties while precious metals prices are low, expanding through exploration, and then putting them up for grabs as prices head upward again.

The company owns four core assets in Canada; the KSM project, which is one of the world’s largest underdeveloped projects measured by reserves, Courageous Lake, a historically renowned property, and Iskut, a product of a recent acquisition by Seabridge.

Recently, Seabridge closed a major extension deal to continue expansion at its KSM project. CEO Rudi Fronk stated:

“We are pleased that our EA Certificate has been renewed until 2024 under the same terms and conditions, reaffirming the Government of British Columbia’s support for KSM and the robustness of the original 2014 EA.”

Teck Resources (NYSE:TECK) (TSX:TECK)

Teck could be one of the best-diversified miners out there, with a broad portfolio of Copper, Zinc, Energy,  Gold, Silver and Molybdenum assets. Its free cash flow and a lower volatility outlook for base metals in combination with a potential trade war breakthrough could send the stock higher in H2 of this year.

Teck’s share price stabilized last year and many investment banks now see the stock as undervalued. Low prices for Canadian crude and disappointing base metals prices weighed on Q4 earnings.

Despite its struggles, however, Teck Resources recently received a favorable investment rating from Fitch and Moody’s, and will likely benefit from its upgraded score.

“Having investment grade ratings is very important to us and confirms the strong financial position of the company,” said Don Lindsay, President and CEO. “We are very pleased to receive this second credit rating upgrade.”

Kinross Gold Corporation (NYSE:KGC) (TSX:K)

Kinross Gold Corporation is relatively new on the scene, founded in the early 90s, but it certainly isn’t lacking drive or experience. In 2015, the company received the highest ranking for of any Canadian miner in Maclean’s magazine’s annual assessment of socially responsible companies.

While Kinross posted a significant loss in the fourth quarter of 2018, the company is making strong moves to turn around its earnings, including the hiring of a new CFO, Andrea S. Freeborough.

“Andrea’s successful track record at Kinross and throughout her career, including accounting, international finance, M&A, and deep management experience, will be an excellent addition to our leadership team,” said Mr. Rollinson. “We have great talent at Kinross and succession planning is a key aspect of retaining that talent for the future success of our Company.”

Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (NYSE:WPM) (TSX:WPM)

Wheaton is a company with its hands in operations all around the world. As one of the largest ‘streaming’ companies on the planet, Wheaton has agreements with 19 operating mines and 9 projects still in development. Its unique business model allows it to leverage price increases in the precious metals sector, as well as provide a quality dividend yield for its investors.

Recently, Wheaton sealed a deal with Hudbay Minerals Inc. relating to its Rosemont project. For an initial payment of $230 million, Wheaton is entitled to 100 percent of payable gold and silver at a price of $450 per ounce and $3.90 per ounce respectively.

Randy Smallwood, Wheaton’s President and Chief Executive Officer explained,

“With their most recent successful construction of the Constancia mine in Peru, the Hudbay team has proven themselves to be strong and responsible mine developers, and we are excited about the same team moving this project into production. Rosemont is an ideal fit for Wheaton’s portfolio of high-quality assets, and when it is in production, should add well over fifty thousand gold equivalent ounces to our already growing production profile.”

Eldorado Gold Corp. (NYSE:EGO) (ELD.TO)

This Canadian mid-cap miner has assets in Europe and Brazil and has managed to cut cost per ounce significantly in recent years. Though its share price isn’t as high as it once was, Eldorado is well positioned to make significant advancements in the near-term.

In 2018, Eldorado produced over 349,000 ounces of gold, well above its previous expectations, and is set to boost production even further in 2019. Additionally, Eldorado is planning increased cash flow and revenue growth this year.

Eldorado’s President and CEO, George Burns, stated:

“As a result of the team’s hard work in 2018, we are well positioned to grow annual gold production to over 500,000 ounces in 2020.  We expect this will allow us to generate significant free cash flow and provide us with the opportunity to consider debt retirement later this year. “

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Joao Peixe is a writer for Oilprice.com

This is what the Republican-elected, property-developer-president in the US White House in Washington has specifically threatened to do to the sovereign state of Iran: which action is presumably endorsed by the UK Conservative government – for it has said nothing to the contrary.

And the crime allegedly committed by Iran – to develop a nuclear deterrent such as that already possessed by Israel. In fact, Israel is estimated by American Scientists to have up to 400 nuclear weapons of mass destruction.  Iran has none.

The population of Iran – one of the world’s oldest civilisations – in 2019 is nearly 83 million – ten times that of Israel.  And Trump has threatened to kill every Iranian man, woman and child in the entire country whilst Britain and the world stay silent in the face of such openly threatened genocide. Never before in history has such a terrible threat of specific mass-murder been made.

What type of world do we now live in where a demented head of state and his family are in command of the most powerful military force on the planet and who has made a direct threat to liquidate over 80 million souls?  A world where the United Nations and the Security Council that represents the international community of nearly two hundred nation states, remain silent in the face of such a heinous threat?

Iran leadership doesn’t understand the words “nice” or “compassion,” they never have. Sadly, the thing they do understand is Strength and Power, and the USA is by far the most powerful Military Force in the world, with 1.5 Trillion Dollars invested over the last two years alone..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2019

….The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else. The U.S. has not forgotten Iran’s use of IED’s & EFP’s (bombs), which killed 2000 Americans, and wounded many more…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2019

….Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2019

Maybe it’s just a nightmare from which we will awake.  For if not, then our children have no future within a world gone mad. More insane even than in the extermination camps of Treblinka and Birkenau in the atrocities perpetrated by Germany in the Europe of World War Two, just over seventy years ago.

The threat by this demented American President must be countered by Europe, Britain and the entire international community.  The fact that he was democratically elected is of no consequence. Hitler was also elected to be Chancellor in the Germany of 1933, from which time he proceeded to obliterate large parts of Europe.  As a consequence, an estimated 50+ million people died, worldwide.

If that sounds familiar, it is.  There must be regime change urgently. If not, then this world will be no place for children, or anyone else, anywhere on the planet. For all that will be left will be a deserted Trump Tower with shattered glass in an otherwise obliterated and radiated New York, standing in mute testament to another elected dictator who was allowed to rule the world for an instant in time.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from FAIR

The much-awaited trilateral meeting of the security chiefs of Russia, Israel and the United States delivered on expectations: no breakthroughs nor revelations of concrete proposals, but lots of mutual political signaling, diplomatic posturing and ground-setting for next engagements.

Iran predictably dominated the agenda of the talks in Jerusalem today, and the parties each took predictable stances on Tehran’s policies.

Speaking in at the morning session, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev noted that Moscow and Tehran are “conducting joint activities in counter-terrorism.”

“We have the opportunity [with Iran] to mutually influence each other’s [policies] and have the opportunity to hear one another. We understand the [security] concerns that Israel has, and we want these threats to be eliminated so that Israeli security is guaranteed. It’s very important to us. There’re some two million Russian-speaking people living in this country and we should never forget that. At the same time, we should never forget about the national interests that other regional powers have. If we fail to acknowledge them, I doubt we can reach a meaningful result,” Patrushev stressed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with US national security adviser John Bolton and Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, as Israeli national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat stands nearby during opening statements of a trilateral meeting between American, Israeli and Russian top security advisers in Jerusalem June 25, 2019. (Source: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)

The remarks reflect the core of the dilemma for Moscow in its pursuit of a compromise in the Israeli-Iranian stand-off. At the same time, the talking points used are meant to convey the rationale behind Russia’s own position. Thus, the reference to two million Russian-speaking Jews is aimed at Iran and Arabs rather than the Israelis themselves, some of which support President Vladimir Putin’s policies in the Middle East but many of whom are quite critical of them.

“I fully share Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s position on how he sees future Syria — peaceful and secure. I’d only add that it should be sovereign, independent, with its territorial integrity preserved — this is our ultimate goal,” Patrushev subtly noted, following the remarks by Netanyahu. “This cannot be done in one leap. Therefore, we need to plan our activities in the way to have on board the countries that have a stake in the process, have an interest to work towards the result.”

Prior to the Jerusalem meeting, the Russian Security Council stated the talks would focus on “steps that need to be taken to settle Syria, destroy the remnants of terrorists, facilitate humanitarian assistance and socio-economic reconstruction of the country.” The Russian delegation was said to be bringing “concrete ideas” on what could be done on all of these matters with the inclusion of key Middle Eastern countries.

Following the talks, Patrushev made another interesting statement, calling Israeli strikes on what it sees as Iranian assets in Syria “undesirable.” It’s nothing new, as Moscow has always complained about these actions, yet it’s important that the words came from the top level security official on his visit to Israel.

“Many instances of [Israeli] strikes [in Syria] could be prevented by non-military means in order to localize the situation that concerns Israel,” Patrushev noted, calling for better interaction between the Russian and Israeli militaries.

Patrushev made it clear Moscow deems the meeting in Jerusalem important both in itself and as a potential start of similar discussions on regional security. Russia’s insistence on acknowledging Iranian interests has to do with Moscow’s vision for real progress in such discussions and a starting point for depolarizing the political atmosphere in the Middle East. Russia also sees its attempt to find middle ground on Iran as a catalyst for its own engagement with Tehran: If not pressured, Moscow believes, Iran will be more prone to compromises in Syria and beyond.

Patrushev was mum on the issue of the departure of foreign forces from Syria, a point that Netanyahu brought up in his own remarks. Although it’s often believed that Moscow is not happy with the Iranian influence over Damascus, Russia sticks to the position that since the Iranians operate in Syria upon invitation by the official government, it’s for Damascus to discuss the terms of their departure. Even if the issue is to be addressed at other venues, Moscow argues, it should be negotiated with Iran rather than pushed upon it.

“We’ve agreed on most issues regarding what kind of Syria we’d want to see at the end of the day. But as far as specific ways are concerned on how to make this happen, well, we need to continue the dialogue. I hope given the spirit of the good will we’ve seen in these talks we can make it happen, eventually,” Patrushev said.

The meeting is also critical groundwork for the Putin-Trump encounter in Japan’s Osaka later this week. Details of the meeting between the two leaders and its agenda are not available, but the issues discussed in Jerusalem will definitely be raised. The challenge for Washington and Moscow in this interaction is to decouple the Syria-Iran agenda as part of a potential venue of joint activity from the bitter state of US-Russia’s own bilateral relationship.

“I don’t know, let them decide themselves whether they need to foster relations with Russia or not. Therefore, if they need dialogue — please, we are ready. If they don’t need it, we will wait until they mature,” Putin said over the weekend.

Putin expressed skepticism over prospects of normalization with the United States but spared Trump blame for it, saying, “We see that the system is so that many things, which [Trump] wants to do, cannot be done. Although, certainly, a lot depends on the political will.”

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Maxim A. Suchkov, is editor of Al-Monitor’s Russia / Mideast coverage. He is a non-resident expert at the Russian International Affairs Council and at the Valdai International Discussion Club. He was a Fulbright visiting fellow at Georgetown University (2010-11) and New York University (2015). On Twitter: @MSuchkov_ALM Email: [email protected]

Marianna Belenkaya writes on the Middle East for the Russian daily Kommersant. An Arab studies scholar with almost 20 years of experience covering the Middle East, she served in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s press pool from 2000 to 2007 as a political commentator for RIA Novosti and later became the first editor of the RT Arabic (formerly Rusiya al-Yaum) website, until 2013. She has written for the Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the Russian Profile Magazine and Al-Hayat and is now a regular contributor to the Carnegie Moscow Center. On Twitter: @lavmir

The Wall Street Journal is reporting in increasing detail on President Trump’s Thursday decision to not attack Iran, providing reports from aides that described Trump as very reluctant to be dragged into another war.

Trump reportedly told one of his confidants of his inner circle that “these people want to push us into war… it’s so disgusting.” He added that in his view “we don’t need any more wars.”

Signs are that much of the cabinet was pushing for a US attack, but Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered a more wary assessment of the outcome of such an attack. This is a surprising revelation since the Pentagon’s brass had been suggested to be hawkish as well.

Trump praised Dunford for calling for caution, calling him a “terrific man and a terrific general.” Trump added that he was happy to see division within his team on the matter, though some within his administration, notably those who didn’t get the war they wanted, are made about the internal schism.

On Thursday morning, when the attack was planned, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo summoned national security officials for a breakfast, and to talk about the US drone being shot down. Officials claimed that the group was “unanimous” in favor of attacking Iran, though others denied that Dunford, who was present, had supported the attack.

Trump is increasingly favoring Gen. Dunford on matters of foreign policy, and that likely put him in a better position to express opposition to the strike. Trump appears to have already been inclined against such a strike, especially if it killed anyone, which would’ve given Dunford the benefit of telling Trump what he wanted to hear.

Dunford’s opposition is also fueling allegations of military lawyers being the backchannel through which President Trump got the formal estimate of 150 killed in the attack, which he says is what made him decide against it.

Some reports claim the military’s lawyers sent the estimate to White House lawyers, who passed it along to Trump. Others are denying this, and accusing White House lawyers of inventing the whole estimate themselves. Trump confirmed being unhappy with the vague estimates he was initially offered on the attack plan, saying we “wanted an accurate count.”

This has fueled a lot of disputes within the administration that the estimate was too high, though Trump dismissed this as largely irrelevant to his decision, saying “anything is a lot when you shoot down an unmanned drone.”

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Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Featured image is from Geopolitics Alert