Global Research

On Thursday, the United States came perilously close to a military confrontation with Iran after it downed a U.S. drone that may or may not have entered the country’s air space. President Donald Trump reportedly ordered a retaliatory military strike on Iran but called it off, according to Trump’s own tweets on Friday morning, because a general told him that “150 people” might die in the strike.

Much analysis of Trump’s slide toward war with Iran has focused on his hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton, who, reportedly requested options from the Pentagon to deploy as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East and hit Iran with 500 missiles per day. Bolton is the loudest voice inside the White House pushing for a military escalation to the administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for his part, is staking out the position that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force allows the administration to take military action against Iran without congressional approval, an unusual and broadly criticized interpretation of congressional oversight.

Yet, there’s another omnipresent influence on Trump: $259 million given by some of the GOP’s top supporters to boost his campaign in 2016 and support Republican congressional and senate campaigns in 2016 and 2018.

Those funds  came from Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus, donors who have made no secret, both through public statements and funding think tanks that support military action against Iran, of their desire for the United States to destroy the Islamic Republic.

Adelson, who alongside his wife Miriam are the biggest donors to Trump and the GOP, contributed $205 million to Republicans in the past two political cycles and reportedly sent $35 million to the Future 45 Super PAC that supported Trump’s presidential bid. His role as the biggest funder of Republican House and Senate campaigns makes him a vital ally for Trump—who relied on Adelson’s campaign donations to maintain a Republican majority in the Senate and curb Republican losses in the House in the 2018 midterm election—and any Republican seeking national office.

Adelson publicly suggested using nuclear weapons against Iran and pushed for Trump to replace then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster with Bolton, partly due to the former’s perceived unwillingness to take a harder line on Iran. In 2017, the Zionist Organization of America, which receives much of its funding from the Adelsons, led a public campaign against McMaster, accusing him of being “opposed to President Trump’s basic policy positions on Israel, Iran, and Islamist terror.”

In 2015, Trump mocked his primary opponent, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), for seeking Adelson’s financial support, warning that Adelson expects a degree of control over candidates in exchange for campaign contributions. Trump tweeted:

Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!

And Adelson isn’t alone.

Billionaire Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus is the second largest contributor to Trump’s campaign, providing $7 million. He also champions John Bolton, contributing $530,000 to John Bolton’s super PAC over its lifetime. And he’s a major contributor to GOP campaigns, contributing over $13 million to Trump’s presidential campaign and GOP congressional campaigns in 2016 and nearly $8 million to GOP midterm efforts in 2018.

Marcus, like Adelson, makes no qualms about his views on Iran, which he characterized as “the devil” in a 2015 Fox Business interview.

Unlike Adelson and Marcus, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer was a “never Trump” conservative until Trump won the election. Then he donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. Singer is far more careful with his words than Marcus and Singer, but his money supports some of the most hawkish think tank experts and politicians in Washington.

Singer, alongside Marcus and Adelson, has contributed generously to the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, whose experts have spent the past decade regularly promoting policies to pressure Iran economically and militarily, including most recently Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach.

According to donor rolls of FDD’s biggest supporters by the end of 2011, a year that saw a sharp rise in tensions and rumors of war by Israel against Iran, Adelson contributed $1.5 million, Paul Singer contributed $3.6 million, and Bernard Marcus, who sits on FDD’s board, contributed $10.7 million.

(FDD says that Adelson is no longer a contributor, but Marcus continues to give generously, contributing $3.63 million in 2017, over a quarter of FDD’s contributions that year.)

Employees of Singer’s firm, Elliott Management, were the second largest source of funds for the 2014 candidacy of the Senate’s most outspoken Iran hawk, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who urged Trump to conduct a “retaliatory strike” against Iran for purportedly attacking two commercial tankers last week.

Singer donated $26 million to Republicans in the 2016 election and $6.4 million to the GOP’s midterm campaigns.

The billionaire Iran hawks—the Adelsons, Singer, and Marcus—made combined donations of over $259 million to GOP politicians in the past two cycles, making them some of the Republican Party’s most important donors. That quarter-billion-dollars doesn’t include contributions to dark money 501c4 groups and donations to 501c3 nonprofits, such as think tanks like FDD.

News coverage of Trump’s slide toward war frames the discussion as a competition between his better instincts and a national security advisor and secretary of state who, to varying degrees, favor military action.

But the $259 million that helped elect Trump and Trump-friendly Republicans must loom large over the president.

As Trump evaluates his options with Iran and turns his attention to the 2020 election, he knows he’ll need to rely on the Adelsons, Singer, and Marcus to boost his campaign, maintain a narrow majority in the Senate, and attempt a takeback of the House.

These donors have made their policy preferences on Iran plainly known. They surely expect a return on their investment in Trump’s GOP.

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Eli Clifton reports on money in politics and US foreign policy. Eli previously reported for the American Independent News Network, ThinkProgress, and Inter Press Service.

Tensions in the Persian Gulf are reaching a point of no return. In recent weeks, six oil tankers have been subjected to Israeli sabotage disguised to look like Iranian attacks to induce the United States to take military action against the Islamic Republic. Some days ago Iran rightfully shot out of the sky a US Drone. In Yemen, the Houthis have finally started responding with cruise and ballistic missiles to the Saudis’ indiscriminate attacks, causing damage to the Saudi international airport of Abha, as well as blocking, through explosive drones, Saudi oil transportation from east to west through one of the largest pipelines in the world.

As if the political and military situation at this time were not tense and complex enough, the two most important power groups in the United States, the Fed and the military-industrial complex, both face problems that threaten to diminish Washington’s status as a world superpower.

The Fed could find itself defending the role of the US dollar as the world reserve currency during any conflict in the Persian Gulf that would see the cost of oil rise to $300 a barrel, threatening trillions of dollars in derivatives and toppling the global economy.

The military-industrial complex would in turn be involved in a war that it would struggle to contain and even win, destroying the United States’ image of invincibility and inflicting a mortal blow on its ability to project power to the four corners of the world.

Just look at how surprised US officials were about Iran’s capabilities to shot down an advanced US Drone:

“Iran’s ability to target and destroy the high-altitude American drone, which was developed to evade the very surface-to-air missiles used to bring it down, surprised some Defense Department officials, who interpreted it as a show of how difficult Tehran can make things for the United States as it deploys more troops and steps up surveillance in the region.”

The Fed and the defense of the dollar

The US dollar-based economy has a huge debt problem caused by post-2008 economic policies. All central banks have lowered interest rates to zero or even negative, thus continuing to feed otherwise dying economies.

The central bank of central banks, the Bank for International Settlements, an entity hardly known to most people, has stated in writing that “the outstanding notional amount of derivative contracts is 542 trillion dollars.” The total combined GDP of all the countries of the world is around 75 trillion dollars.

With the dimensions of the problem thus understood, it is important to look at how Deutsche Bank (DB), one of the largest financial institutions in the world, is dealing with this. The German bank alone has assets worth about 40 trillion dollars in derivatives, or more than half of annual global GDP.

Their solution, not at all innovative or effective, has been to create yet another bad bank into which to pour at least 50 billion dollars of long-term assets, which are clearly toxic.

Reuters explains:

“The bad bank would house or sell assets valued at up to 50 billion euros ($56 billion) – after adjusting for risk – and comprising mainly long-dated derivatives.

The measures are part of a significant restructuring of the investment bank, a major source of revenue for Germany’s largest lender, which has struggled to generate sustainable profits since the 2008 financial crisis.”

Thus, not only has Deutsche Bank accumulated tens of billions of dollars in unsuccessful options and securities, it seeks to obtain a profit that has been elusive since 2008, the year of the financial crisis. Deutsche Bank is full of toxic bonds and inflated debts kept alive through the flow of quantitative easing (QE) money from the European Central Bank, the Fed and the Japanese Central Bank. Without QE, the entire Western world economy would have fallen into recession with a chain of bubbles bursting, such as in public and private debt.

If the economy was recovering, as we are told by soi-disant financial experts, the central-bank rates would rise. Instead, rates have plummeted for about a decade, to the extent of becoming negative loans.

If the Western financial trend is undoubtedly heading towards an economic abyss as a result of the monetary policies employed after 2008 to keep a dying economy alive, what is the rescue plan for the US dollar, its status as a global-reserve currency, and by extension of US hegemony? Simply put, there is no rescue plan.

There could not be one because the next financial crisis will undoubtedly wipe out the US dollar as a global reserve currency, ending US hegemony financed by unlimited spending power. All countries possessing a modicum of foresight are in the process of de-dollarizing their economies and are converting strategic reserves from US or US-dollar government bonds to primary commodities like gold.

The military-industrial complex and the harsh reality in Iran

In this economic situation that offers no escape, the immediate geopolitical effect is a surge of war threats in strategic locations like the Persian Gulf. The risk of a war of aggression against Iran by the Saudi-Israeli-US axis would have little chance of success, but it would probably succeed in permanently devastating the global economy as a result of a surge in oil prices.

The risk of war on Iran by this triad seems to be the typical ploy of the bad loser who, rather than admit defeat, would rather pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet in order to bring everybody down with him. Tankers being hit and then blamed on Iran with no evidence are a prime example of how to create the plausible justification for bombing Tehran.

Upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that the actions of Bolton and Pompeo seem to be aligned in prolonging the United States’ unipolar moment, continuing to issue diktats to other countries and failing to recognize the multipolar reality we live in. Their policies and actions are accelerating the dispersal of power away from the US and towards other great powers like Russia and China, both of which also have enormous influence in the Persian Gulf.

The threat of causing a conflict in the Persian Gulf, and thereby making the price of oil soar to $300 a barrel, will not save US hegemony but will rather end up accelerating the inevitable end of the US dollar as a global reserve currency.

Trump is in danger of being crushed between a Fed that sees the US dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency collapse, and the need for the Fed to blame someone not linked to the real causes of the collapse, that is to say, the monetary policies adopted through QE to prolong the post-crisis economic agony of 2008.

At the same time, with Trump as president, the neocon-Israeli-Saudi supporters see a unique opportunity to strike Iran, a desire that has remained unchanged for 40 years.

As foolish as it may seem, a war on Iran could be the perfect option that satisfies all power groups in the United States. The hawks would finally have their war against Tehran, the world economy would sink, and the blame would fall entirely on Trump. The Donald, as a result, would lose any chance of being re-elected so it makes sense for him to call off possible strikes as he did after the US drone was shot out of the sky.

While unable to live up to his electoral promises, Trump seems to be aware that the path laid out for him in the event of an attack on Iran would lead to his political destruction and probably to a conflict that is militarily unsustainable for the US and especially its Saudi and Israeli allies. It would also be the catalyst for the collapse of the world economy.

In trying to pressure Iran into new negotiations, Trump runs the risk of putting too much pressure on Tehran and giving too much of a free hand to the provocations of Pompeo and Bolton that could end up triggering a war in the Strait of Hormuz.

Putin and Xi Jinping prepare for the worst

Our current geopolitical environment requires the careful and considered attention of relevant heads of state. The repeated meetings between Putin and Xi Jinping indicate that Russia and China are actively preparing for any eventuality. The closer we get to economic collapse, the more tensions and chaos increase around the world thanks to the actions of Washington and her close allies.

Xi Jinping and Putin, who have inherited this chaotic situation, have met at least a dozen times over the last six months, more recently meeting at least three times over two months. The pressing need is to coordinate and prepare for what will inevitably happen, once again trying to limit and contain the damage by a United States that is completely out of control and becoming a danger to all, allies and enemies alike.

As Putin just recently said:

“The degeneration of the universalistic model of globalization and its transformation into a parody, caricature of itself, where the common international rules are replaced by administrative and judicial laws of a country or group of countries.

The fragmentation of global economic space with a policy of unbridled economic selfishness and an imposed collapse. But this is the road to infinite conflict, trade wars and perhaps not just commercial ones. Figuratively, this is the road to the final struggle of all against all.

It is necessary to draft a more stable and fair development model. These agreements should not only be written clearly, but should be observed by all participants.

However, I am convinced that talking about a world economic order such as this will remain a pious desire unless we return to the center of the discussion, that is to say, notions like sovereignty, the unconditional right of each country to its own path to development and, let me add, responsibility in the universal sustainable development, not just its own.”

The spokesman of the Chancellery of the People’s Republic of China, Hua Chun Ying, echoed this sentiment:

“The American leaders say that ‘the era of the commercial surrender of their country has come to an end’, but what is over is their economic intimidation of the world and their hegemony.

The United States must again respect international law, not arrogate to itself extraterritorial rights and mandates, must learn to respect its peers in safeguarding transparent and non-discriminatory diplomatic and commercial relations. China and the United States have negotiated other disputes in the past with good results and the doors of dialogue are open as long as they are based on mutual respect and benefits.

But as long as these new trade disputes persist, China informs the government of the United States of America and the whole world that it will immediately impose duties on each other, unilaterally on 128 products from the United States of America.

Also, we think we will stop buying US public debt. It’s all, good night!”

I wonder if Europeans will understand all this before the impending disaster. I doubt it.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

Washington-led NATO has always sought to destroy Syria as a functioning state. In order to achieve this goal, its air campaign and its terrorists have continuously targeted infrastructure. Schools, hospitals, and their employees have been targeted either for destruction or for repurposing to suit terrorist requirements. The terrorists have always sought to impose their will on domestic populations.  Garnering Syrian public support was never a consideration.

A 2017 Tasmin news article notes, for example, that terrorists killed over 700 doctors and destroyed over 450 ambulances. The aforementioned source adds:

During the six years of the war against Syria, the terrorist groups destroyed 38 hospitals completely, 20 hospitals were partially damaged and the equipment and medical equipment were damaged. About 450 health centers were out of service and some 200 others closed due to their presence in unsafe areas. [1]

These statistics seem reasonable. In 2014, Prof. Tim Anderson noted that, “(s)ince 2011 NATO-backed armed groups have systematically attacked more than two thirds of Syria’s public hospitals, and have murdered, kidnapped or injured more than 300 health workers.”[2]

NATO terrorists take pride in their work. In the video below, we see them blowing up what was previously Aleppo’s renowned al-Kindi hospital, one of the Middle-East’s foremost anti-cancer centre.

NATO terrorists also use civilian infrastructure as shields.  Hence hospitals are frequently “re-purposed” to suit their needs. The buildings serve as sniper perches, Sharia jails, torture centers, warehouses to hoard medicine and food, command centers and a myriad other uses. Once this happens, “hospitals” lose their “protected” status under international law.[3]

Making matters even worse, the West’s criminal economic warfare against Syria also targets Syrian healthcare.  Dr. Jafaari notes:

Another scandal, as human feelings are overflowing today, do you know that after 8 years of imposing sanctions, or what they call unilateral coercive measures, because they are not imposed by you and are not legal, after 8 years, and with such overflowing human feelings we heard today, the United States and the European Union prohibit the export of medical devices such as the MRI and CT Scan to Syria until today, and the surgical procedures required by Syrian doctors for surgical operations? What is this overflowing human feeling that prevents the export of medical devices such as MRI and CT Scan and surgical thread for surgical operations?[4]

NATO-supported terrorists have consistently attacked Syrian schools as well, thus denying Syrian children access to secular education in terrorist-occupied areas. By 2017, the terrorists had reportedly murdered 480 school teachers and 700 school children[5]. The grim statistics would be higher by now. As with hospitals, the terrorists also repurpose some schools, at times turning them into “Wahhabi learning centres”, but also for military purposes.

Western media, of course, obliterates all of these facts from its “reporting”, as it now focuses on protecting its al Qaeda assets in Idlib.  To set the record straight, Rachid Khallouf provides this information on a June 19 Facebook post:

The population of Idlib is 126,000. According to the 2010 census.

• Idlib city diameter 2.7 km.
• It has one traffic sign.
• Two government hospitals and six small private hospitals.
• abandoned by the local population, and currently inhabited by global terrorism.

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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] “Detailed figures for six years of the Syrian war .. Losses sectors of health, education, electricity and tourism + photos.” Tasnim. 2017/04/12. (https://tn.ai/1376971) Accessed 22 June, 2019.

[2] Prof. Tim Anderson, “Syria’s Hospitals targeted by NATO-backed Armed Groups.” Global Research, 03 January, 2014 (https://www.globalresearch.ca/syrias-hospitals-targeted-by-nato-backed-armed-groups/5363563?fbclid=IwAR3ee8vg0xLg5pkkEXShWTKxtbSXVzBprec3ssfilYkg_BWckP1_2jrmcPM) Accessed 22 June, 2019.

[3] Gail Malone, “Aleppo: Where hospitals were turned into Sharia gaols.” Off Guardian, 17 May, 2017. (https://off-guardian.org/2017/05/17/aleppo-where-hospitals-were-turned-into-sharia-gaols/) Accessed 22 June, 2019.

[4] Arabi Souri, “Amb. Jaafari’s Statement at UNSC on Idlib and NATO’s War Of Terror against the Syrian People.” Syria News, 19 June, 2019. (https://www.syrianews.cc/amb-jaafaris-statement-at-unsc-on-idlib-and-natos-war-of-terror-against-the-syrian-people/) Accessed 22 June, 2019.

[5] “Syrian Minister of Education Sputnik: a huge number of schools destroyed.” Sputnik Arabic. 14/04/2019 (https://sptnkne.ws/mkkU) Accessed 22 June, 2019.

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The US considers China a strategic adversary. Waging war on the China by other means makes reconciling major bilateral differences all the harder.

According to a US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) document, 143 tech-related Chinese enterprises have been blacklisted from the US market.

They include companies involved in producing aviation related products, semiconductors, engineering, as well as other high-tech products and components.

Falsely claiming these enterprises act “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States” is cover for wanting corporate America to have a leg up on Chinese competition.

On Friday, the BIS added five more Chinese tech enterprises to its blacklist, further heightening bilateral tensions ahead of China’s President Xi Jinping’s scheduled meeting with Trump for talks later this week at the Osaka, Japan G20 summit.

All blacklisted companies are barred from purchasing US technology without Washington’s permission, tech giant Huawei and its 70 affiliate companies most prominent on its so-called “entity list.”

A 90-day reprieve was granted the company before the order takes effect, enabling Huawei to fulfill existing orders and provide software updates for its mobile phone users.

In early June, China’s Commerce Ministry said it’ll blacklist what it called the country’s “non-reliable entity list,” comprised of foreign “entities, individuals and companies that block and shut the supply chain, or take discriminatory measures over non-commercial reasons, and when their actions endanger the business of Chinese companies…”

The announcement responded to the Trump regime’s blacklisting of Huawei, its affiliate companies, and other Chinese enterprises showing it won’t tolerate unacceptable US actions.

Beijing is prepared for a longterm struggle with the US, intending to pursue whatever it believes appropriate to defend its sovereignty and national interests.

Weeks earlier, China’s central economic planning authorities, its national development and reform commission, along with its ministries of commerce, industry and technology reportedly warned major US tech companies they’ll face “dire consequences” if they comply with the Trump regime’s ban to cut Huawei out of the global supply chain.

They were also warned them against relocating their production facilities to other countries, saying this action could have permanent consequences — perhaps restricting or banning them from the Chinese market, the most important one for many foreign enterprises.

As long as major Sino/US differences remain world’s apart, the number of blacklisted Chinese entities could expand exponentially. Over 300 Russian enterprises are banned from the US market.

Former US trade official William Reinsch said blacklisting five more Chinese entities is “ill-timed” ahead of this week’s Xi/Trump meeting, adding:

The action “clearly will be received negatively by the Chinese,” making resolution of bilateral differences all the harder.

Hostile US actions encourage its authorities to go all-out to develop homegrown technology, clearly a longterm project, China currently dependent on foreign suppliers for key high-tech products and components.

On Saturday, China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet said Beijing is “prepare(d) for a long fight if the US continues to escalate tensions (even if it)  negatively affect China’s economy,” adding:

“To those who claim that China will lose, we have one thing to say: fear is not in our vocabulary.”

Last week, China’s Global Times stressed that the nation “must stay firm for negotiations,” adding:

“Negotiation outcomes are not often obtained through talks, but through fights. If desiring a good negotiation result, China must persist and not fear.”

“If the US imposes unfair conditions on China, it must be prepared for a protracted trade war and bear the consequential losses together with China.”

What’s likely from Xi/Trump talks later this week? Global Times editor Hu Xijin tweeted:

“Chinese side is concerned about the fairness of a trade deal. The most important part is the US side must remove all newly imposed tariffs since the trade war. Until now, what I’ve learned is China won’t accept a deal that the US keeps part of the tariffs.”

Trump regime negotiators rejected this demand earlier. They’re unlikely to soften their position ahead while things remain unresolved.

Perhaps Xi/Trump talks this week will end like when they last met on the sidelines of the Buenos Aires G20 summit late last year — agreeing to a 90-day truce for further talks.

Because of the Trump regime’s hardline position toward China, wanting the country weakened, contained, and isolated, no major breakthroughs are likely in Osaka.

Perhaps they’re out of reach entirely no matter how many more rounds of talks are held.

The US trade deficit with China is a minor issue compared to major ones.

China is an emerging political, economic, financial, technological, and military powerhouse. The US wants its growing power and influence curtailed.

That’s the stuff conflicts are made of. The risk of Sino/US confrontation ahead is real. The same goes for US relations with Russia.

Both nations stand in the way of US rage for global dominance — why eventual nuclear war is an ominous possibility.

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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.

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Madame Angela Merkel – the head of Europe’s strongest economy, of the leader of the European Union, said that there was strong evidence that Iran attacked the two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Ten days ago, German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, travelled to Tehran, officially to “save” the Nuclear Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPoA), but in reality, to ‘negotiate’ with Tehran ways so Germany and by association other EU members, might still do business with Iran, against some “concessions” by Iran, in order to appease Washington.

Iran’s President Rouhani reacted quickly. FM Maas got the cold shoulder and was dismissed. And rightly so. Maas was not really representing Germany – but the United States. Iran gave the EU an “ultimatum” of 60 days to stick to their commitments on trading with Iran according to the Nuclear Deal – despite the US reneging on it – or else, Iran may bypass some of the conditions under the JCPOA accord. The EU – not being independent and her member countries having lost all sovereignty by submitting to the dictate first from Brussels, second from the tyranny of Washington, didn’t like the ultimatum, and said so in a joint statement. They added a weak and meek phrase, “We call on countries not party to the JCPOA to refrain from taking any actions that impede the remaining parties’ ability to fully perform their commitments;” not even daring calling the country by name, for whom the statement was destined, i.e. the US of A.

Germany’s position is as absurd as it has ever been since Merkel and the entire Bundestag accepted the sanctions imposed by Washington on Russia in 2014 – and replicated them along with the rest of the EU – even to their own detriment and to the detriment of the entire EU. Chancellor Merkel and apparently the entire Bundestag, again, go along with Washington’s equally absurd and false accusation that Iran has attacked the two tankers, one Japanese owned, the other Norwegian. The latter belonging to a close friend of Iran’s, and the Japanese one, hardest hit – exactly at the time when Japan’s PM Shinzō Abe, was visiting the Ayatollah in Tehran to discuss how to maintain the Nuclear Deal – trading – despite the sanctions and threats of Washington, hence, a friendly visit.

A blind person can see that these were two false flags – so thinly masked, with badly fabricated US ‘video evidence’ that even according to CIA and US military brass did not deliver conclusive evidence. In fact, none at all. Madame Merkel – why do you not first ask the obvious question “Cui bono?”— Who benefits? Certainly not Iran – but the aggressor, the US which has been planning and preparing for war with Iran for decades, ever since the first Iraq war under Father Bush, in 1991. At the 2003 invasion of Iraq – Bolton openly expressed his dreams to demolish Iran. He and Pompeo are liars and war criminals, who run the White House and pretend to run the Pentagon – and who act in impunity. Their power seems limitless. Trump – seems to be a mere puppet.

Getting Merkel on board of the flagrant US lie that Iran was attacking two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, is a strategic hit, enhancing the lies’ credibility and, thus, making a US attack on Iran more palatable to the rest of the world. Yet, apparently this was not enough. The Pentagon sent an unmanned high-altitude Global Hawk drone into Iranian airspace, a provocation Iran could not resist and shot the drone down, but not before sending warning signals, about which today nobody talks. The world shouldn’t know that Iran had the noblesse to warn the US about the drone being in their airspace. As can be expected the White House gnomes deny that the drone was invading Iranian airspace, but pretend it was in international air space, when it was shot down.

This raised the ante for Washington to launch an attack on Iran. All was planned to be carried from Thursday to Friday (20 to 21 June), and at last minute Trump stopped it. Is it true? – It could be, because somebody a bit ‘higher up’ than Trump and his warrior minions, must have realized the danger that such an attack may pose to the rest of the world – or actually that it could trigger a nuclear conflict. However, that the attack plan was stopped doesn’t mean it was canceled. Maybe it was just postponed.

In the meantime, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered all US airlines to avoid the Gulf of Oman and the Gulf of Hormuz. And, as could be expected, the airlines of Washington’s “true” puppet allies have followed suit, i.e. Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd, Singapore Airlines Ltd, Germany’s Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France and its Dutch KLM affiliate, as well as Malaysia Airlines, said they were re-routing flights to avoid the area. Others may follow under direct or tacit pressure of the US. The Japanese airline ANA said they were considering alternative routings. Effectively, the US was able to declare a no-fly zone over a significant area of Iran.

Let’s make no mistake, all the visible key figures at the helm of the White House – are run in the back by Israel, by Netanyahu and the Chosen People he represents, those who also run Wall Street and the western world’s banking and financial system. Israel would like to see Iran in rubbles, or better, in eternal chaos, the goal that was set for Iraq, Afghanistan and that the US was and still is dreaming for Syria. This bunch of evil elite pulls the strings and hopes to soon pull just ONE string for global hegemony, under a ONE World Order.

Back to Germany. Instead of jumping off the sinking ship of Washington and its faithful entourage of the willing, as rats would do, and as the vast majority of the German people would prefer, let alone German and European business, Madame Merkel and apparently all her circles, including Berlin’s Parliament, follow the US flagrant lie propaganda. Why? – Well, this is the deal: There are many ways to “buy” top politicians, with threats or with money or by outright inflicting fear through ‘proxy-assassinations’.

Once Germany is on board – the rest of Europe will follow suit. In that case, Washington – Trump and consortia – think they have Iran totally strangled, by blocking all trade and all financial transactions, plus confiscating Iranian assets abroad – on top of imposing stiff tariffs, so that Iran can no longer afford importing vital goods for manufacturing – or for sheer survival from the west. Once a country is weak, it can be taken over easily. So, the western, AngloZionist thinking goes.

Iran – her Fifth-Columnists aside – is strong and has already proven that it is detaching from the west. Even trying to adhere and fight for the Nuclear Deal which the west, i.e. Europe is incapable of respecting for lack of backbone, is a waste of time. To demonstrate that Iran has alternatives, Mr. Rouhani was attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on 13 and 14 June 2019, by invitation of China, the leader of the 8-member “club”.

SCO stands for promoting peace, trade and a non-aggressive defense strategy (the antidote to the NATO-type military aggression). As of now, Mr. Rouhani is an observer for his country, Iran which is in an advanced stage in the process of entering the SCO as a full member. This could happen later this year or in 2020. Iran would recover her sovereignty, her economic potential and would – and will – be able to detach from the west, pretty much as did Russia and China, the two super-powers under constant assaults of sanctions, denigration and false accusations.

Turkey – is in a similar situation. If Turkey is admitted by the SCO – also very likely – their NATO exit will be imminent. What that will mean for the rest of NATO, at this point we can only guess and dream of, especially since there is an ever-stronger people’s movement throughout Europe to exit NATO. It is particularly strong in Italy and paradoxically also in Germany. The vast majority of Germans want to exit NATO, but the government doesn’t listen. “So far” doesn’t listen. The German anti-NATO movement has been gaining strength ever since the anti-nuclear energy protests in the early seventies which were followed and intensified in the late 1970’s early 1980s against nuclear arms stockpiled in Germany by the US, particularly those stored at the US Air Force base of Ramstein, near Kaiserslautern.

The “so-far” is a precursor to a break with NATO, as the pressure against the USAF base Ramstein, against NATO, is mounting, and that, when Madame Merkel decides firmly to go with the sinking ship – risking to pull Germany and her people down the drain for sheer senseless and outdated obedience to the succumbing tyrant. How absurd!

While Iran is making smart moves, gradually away from western economics, from trading with the west – and moving eastwards – where the future is – Germany backtracks, literally into the orbit of a dying beast, into what is ever-more detectible – a decaying empire.

When will Germany wake up? When the first bombs fall on her cities – a WWI and WWII redux? Except this time, it may not be just the falling of conventional bombs. It may be nuclear meeting nuclear at Ramstein. Madame Merkel, your obligation to the people who apparently elected you is larger than you think and larger than yourself – and much larger than whatever goes on in your mind to follow a defeated warrior and rogue nation into hell.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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

Having signed off on an attack against Iran early Thursday, President Trump didn’t just tell the military and diplomats that he was on board. Trump also sent a message to the Iranian government, by way of Oman, telling them that the attack was imminent.

Trump’s forwarded message not only informed Iran of the planned US attack, but also offered talks with Iran “about various issues.” They gave a very brief period awaiting an Iranian response.

Iranian officials say that they responded Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had already rejected talks, and added that any US attack would “have regional and international consequences.” Trump decided against the attack with 10 minutes to spare, though he suggests this was not related to the exchange with Iranian officials.

US officials are now emphasizing that the US offered diplomacy, and that Iran “has no right” to respond with force, by way of condemning the downing of a US surveillance drone by Iran.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry, by contrast, reacted that they would respond to diplomacy with diplomacy, and intend to respond to war “with firm defense.” That’s a key distinction, of course.

And while the US clearly wants to portray Iran as the one in the wrong in this situation, they weren’t just offered diplomacy in Trump’s Thursday message. They were told they were being attacked by the United States, and an offer of talks was the postscript that was likely drowned out by the lead message of an imminent attack which but for the call would’ve been a total sneak attack.

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Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Featured image is from  Silent Crow News

President Trump’s controversial visit to the UK finished with his departure to Normandy to mark the 75^th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Trump gathered with other Western leaders for the usual photo op which did not include the leaders of Russia and China who were not even invited even though their countries lost 27 million and 20 million dead respectively during World War Two.

In his speech Trump celebrated the sacrifice and heroism of Allied soldiers who helped liberate France from Nazi control. He thanked America’s western allies stating ‘our bond is unbreakable’. There was no mention of America’s Soviet ally in the east. The Soviet Union made gigantic sacrifices and the decisive contribution towards defeating the German Wehrmacht during the summer of 1944.

Trump’s failure to even acknowledge the role of the Soviet Union fits in with the Western narrative that the D-Day landings played the critical role in bringing about the defeat of Nazi Germany whilst completely ignoring the role of the Soviet Red Army.

Competing narratives regarding the importance of D-Day

This narrative is exemplified in the article by Ian Carter from the Imperial War Museum in London, Why D-Day Was So Important To Allied Victory. Carter makes the grandiose and historically inaccurate claim that the Allied invasion of Normandy played a vitally important role in the defeat of Nazi Germany:

“The German Army suffered a catastrophe greater than that of Stalingrad, the defeat in North Africa or even the massive Soviet summer offensive of 1944.’’

American historian Peter Kuznick, professor of history at American University and co-author, with Oliver Stone, of The Untold History Of The United States, has recently commented on the narrative that it was the D-Day landings that broke the back of German fascism. In an interview with The Real News Network on 9 June Kuznick commented:

“For the Americans, the war begins at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. And then there’s some battling in North Africa and the underbelly, and Italy. But the real war for the Americans begins June 6, 1944, with the invasion of Normandy with D-Day. Then the Americans single-handedly defeat the Germans and marched straight into Berlin. And the Americans win the war in Europe. That’s a very, very unfortunate and dangerous myth that has been perpetrated. And if you listen to Trump’s words, again, in England, again he’s reinforcing that myth about the Americans leading the way to the liberation of Europe. That’s not the reality. The reality was the success at Normandy is largely due to the fact that the Germans were already weakened badly by that point, because they had been taking a pummelling, and they were in retreat across Europe ahead of the Russian Army, ahead of the vast Red Army, which was then liberating the concentration camps.’’

In complete contrast to this pro-American narrative Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, made the following statement on the 75 anniversary of the D-Day landings:

“As historians note, the Normandy landing did not have a decisive impact on the outcome of World War II and the Great Patriotic War. It had already been pre-determined as a result of the Red Army’s victories, mainly at Stalingrad (in late 1942) and Kursk (in mid-1943),’’

Before I proceed here’s my disclaimer. My grandfather fought in North Africa and Italy with the British 8^th Army so this article is not knocking the contribution of allied soldiers but merely seeks to give historical balance to the highly politicized narrative over who dealt the decisive blow to Nazi Germany during 1944.

Importance of German defeats during 1943

The United States entered World War Two on 7 December 1941 following the Japanese attack upon the American naval base at Pearl Harbour. As early as June 1942 the Soviet Union had urged its American and British allies to open a second front in Western Europe. It would take the US and UK another two years to finally launch the invasion of France. Meanwhile, the Red Army took the brunt of German military might and millions died in the genocidal race war waged by the Nazis on the Eastern Front.

By June 1944 the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany had already been established by the Red Army victories at Stalingrad (August 1942-February 1943) and Kursk (July-August 1943) during 1943. At Stalingrad it had lost the Sixth Army and four allied armies of over 400,000 men. Meanwhile, at Kursk it had lost 30 divisions (over 500,000 men) including 7 Panzer divisions equipped with the new Panther and Tiger tanks, 1,500 tanks, 3,000 guns and 3,500 warplanes.

Both German and Soviet generals writing after the war agree upon the catastrophic consequences of the Wehrmacht’s defeats during 1943. Colonel General Heinz Guderian, who became Chief of the General Staff in 1944, admitted that by the end of 1943 the Wehrmacht, “had suffered a decisive defeat. … From now on the enemy was in undisputed possession of the initiative.’’

Troops of the 49th Army during the capture of Mogilev on 28 June 1944 (CC BY 4.0)

Field Marshall Manstein echoed Guderian’s assessment of the catastrophic consequences of German defeats during 1943. In his memoirs he noted that by the end of 1943 the Wehrmacht:

“ … found itself waging a defensive struggle which could not be anything more than a system of improvisations and stopgaps….To maintain ourselves in the field, and in doing so wear down the enemy’s offensive capabilities to the utmost, became the whole essence of the struggle.’’

Marshal Zhukov, deputy commander of the Red Army later observed the decisive nature of the defeats inflicted upon the German Wehrmacht during 1943:

“Not only were the picked and most powerful groupings of the Germans destroyed here, but the faith of the German Army and the German people in the Nazi leadership and Germany’s ability to withstand the growing might of the Soviet Union was irrevocably shattered.’’

The American historians David Glantz and Jonathan House, in their account of the Eastern Front When Titans Clashed How The Red Army Stopped Hitler, declare that 1943 was a ruinous and fatally destructive period for the German army:

“Organizationally, the Wehrmacht was clearly in decline by late 1943. In addition to the death of Sixth Army and several allied armies, the German Panzer force and air transport force had been shattered repeatedly. Hundreds of ordinary infantry divisions were reduced to two thirds of their strength, with declining mobility and inadequate anti-tank defences.’’

“Indeed, after Kursk a vicious cycle set in. Each new setback forced the Germans to commit their newly recruited replacement troops and their refurbished panzer units to battle more rapidly and with less training. Poorly trained troops suffered abnormally high casualties before they learned the harsh realities of combat. These casualties in turn, meant that commanders had to call on the next wave of replacments at an even earlier stage in their training.’’

By the summer of 1944 the German Wehrmacht was incapable of conducting a general offensive on a wide front. It was reeling from the massive losses inflicted by the Red Army’s winter campaign of 1943-44 that had led to the destruction of large portions of First Panzer, Sixth, Eighth and Seventeenth Armies. 16 German divisions comprising over 50,000 men had been completely destroyed while 60 other divisions had been reduced to fragments of their former strength.

Objectives for the Soviet summer offensives of 1944

Wider geo-political considerations entered the deliberations of the Red Army command when working out the objectives for its summer campaign of 1944. The long delayed second front invasion of France was a factor in Stalin’ s thinking. He was aware that the American led force landing in Normandy would be in a race with the Red Army to get to Berlin first. In 1943 Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference to begin planning the post war future of Europe which envisaged the division of Germany into zones of influence. Stalin was determined that the Red Army would get to Berlin first and so have the initiative when dividing up Germany and ensuring that Eastern Europe would become a satellite buffer zone for the Soviet Union.

In March 1944 the State Defence Committee led by Stalin and the Red Army General Staff began their analysis of their options for the summer offensive. It was eventually resolved that the Red Army would attack and destroy its toughest foe: Army Group Centre which was concentrated in Belorussia. The liberation of Belorussia would place the Red Army in Poland and leave it poised along the most direct route to Berlin and have the added bonus of leaving Army Group North cut off from its supply lines and unable to retreat.

The summer campaign would involved five different offensives running north to south that would be staggered along the 2,000 mile front. Operation Bagration was named after the Russian general who was mortally wounded in 1812 at the battle of Borodino. It was scheduled to start on 22 June nearly a fortnight after the offensive against Finland which was designed to drive this German ally out of the war.

The Red Army pulled off a massive redeployment of troops in strict secrecy that was part of its highly successful deception that led the German High Command to expect the main offensives to be directed against Army Group South and Army Group North.

By mid June the Red Army had pulled off the herculean task of manoeuvring 14 combined-arms armies in to place together with 1 tank army, 118 rifle divisions, 4 air armies and 2 cavalry corps. This huge force comprised 1,254,300 men, 2,715 tanks, 24,363 artillery pieces supported by 2,306 Katyusha rocket launchers and 5,327 combat aircraft supported by 700 bombers of the Long Range Bomber Force.

The logistics involved in preparing the four army fronts involved in Operation Bagration gives an idea of the massive scale of the impending attack. The four army fronts were supported by 70,000 lorries and 90-100 trains a day bringing fuel and ammunitions up to the starting lines of the impending offensive.

Summer Offensives begin

Three days after the D-Day landings on 9 June almost 1,000 combat aircraft opened the offensive that was to knock Finland out of the war. It also had the added benefit of keeping Army Group Centre distracted away from the main Soviet thrust that was carefully forming in front of the German defences.

Operation Bagration 23 June – 19 August 1944

On 19 June Soviet partisans set off over 10,000 demolition charges ripping up German rail track, rolling stock, sidings and junctions on the central front. Over the next 4 nights 40,000 demolitions spread destruction deep into the rear of the German transport network.

Source: WW11 Database

Finally, on 23 June, on almost the third anniversary of the Wehrmacht’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the Red Army launched its massive surprise attack against Army Group Centre.

Operation Bagration achieved complete tactical surprise and soon had Army Group Centre reeling. The German High Command seemed completely unaware of the impending catastrophe that was rapidly enveloping their forces. Hitler, refused permission for any kind of flexible defence that involved tactical retreats by German units and was unwilling to sanction any major reinforcements being despatched to Army Group Centre.

As early as 24 June Army Group Centre was facing a very serious threat to its entire position. John Erickson in his magisterial account of the Eastern Front, The Road To Berlin: Stalin’s War With Germany Vol.2, has commented:

“From this point forward, Army Group Centre was caught in an impossible situation and progressively drenched with Russian fire denied any degree of flexibility yet bereft of any effective reinforcement. … The situation of Third Panzer [army] and Fourth Army was serious: for the Ninth Army to the south it rapidly became catastrophic.’’

A week after the launch of Operation Bagration the German defensive system had collapsed. The four Red Army fronts had liberated Vitebesk, Orsha, Moghilev and Bobruisk and pressed on towards Minsk. They had killed over 130,000 German soldiers, taken 66,000 prisoner and destroyed 900 German tanks and thousands of vehicles. Red Army casualties were so high that the 2^nd Belorussian Front was forced to withdraw and recoup. Despite its heavy casualties the Red Army showed no signs of slackening the pace of its offensive.

The three German armies that comprised Army Group Centre were in disarray and in headlong retreat. They were ordered to follow a scorched earth policy that left no resources for the advancing Red Army which came across numerous German war crimes. John Erickson has noted that:

“Minsk, its factories dynamited and its installations wrecked, stood mostly in ruins; throughout most of Belorussia Soviet troops advanced through burned villages and broken towns, the livestock gone and the population fearfully thinned. More than once Red Army units came upon wagons loaded with children consigned to deportation to the Reich.’’

Minsk, capital of Belorussia fell on 3 July, and the Red Army moved to encircle and destroy the German Fourth whose strength by then had fallen to around 105,000 men.

40,000 German soldiers died trying to break out of the Soviet encirclement. On 11 July the remnants of Fourth Army, out of ammunition and fuel, surrendered.

The Red Army had achieved total tactical and strategic success and torn a 250 mile gap in the German front leaving Army Group Centre with a meagre 8 divisions at its disposal.

Estimates of the staggering German losses suggest that Army Group Centre lost 25-28 divisions, over 450,000 men, while another 100,000 fell on the southern and northern fronts.

Soviet casualties were equally horrendous with the Red Army suffering over 230,000 killed and 800,000 wounded.

During the Red Army’s whirlwind offensives of late June and July 1944 the Western Allies struggled to break out of their Normandy bridgehead. Operation Bagration and the accompanying offensives that took the Red Army to the eastern suburbs of Warsaw, had surpassed their initial objectives and broken the back of Germany’s strongest army group leaving Hitler’s regime staring defeat in the face.

Assessments of Operation Bagration

Assessments of the impact of Operation Bagration all agree that it dealt a devastating and catastrophic blow to the military capabilities of German fascism.

American historians David M. Gantz and Jonathan House have noted the dreadful consequences of Operation Bagration for the German Wehrmacht:

“The destruction of more than 30 divisions and the carnage wrought in a host of surviving divisions, accompanied by a Soviet mechanized advance in excess of 300 kilometres. It had decimated Army Group Centre, the strongest German army group, severely shaken Army Group South Ukraine, and brought the Red Army to the borders of the Reich.’’

John Erickson in his evaluation of the historical importance of Operation Bagration has commented:

“ When Soviet armies shattered Army Group Centre, they achieved their greatest military success on the Eastern Front. For the German army in the east it was a catastrophe of unbelievable proportions, greater than that of Stalingrad, ….’’

This assessment is supported by German and Soviet generals.

According to German military historian, General von Buttlar, Operation Bagration left the German Wehrmacht in disarray and shattered its ability to mount effective resistance to the Red Army. He observed that, ‘the rout of the Centre Group of Armies put an end to the organized resistance of Germans in the East.’

Marshal Zhukov in his memoirs gave a detailed assessment of the military and geo-political ramifications of Operation Bagration:

“In two months, Soviet troops had routed two big strategic German groupings, liberated Belorussia, completed the liberation of the Ukraine, and freed a considerable part of Lithuania and eastern Poland. In these battles, the 1^st, 2^ndand 3^rd Belorussian Fronts and the 1^st Baltic Front routed 70 divisions. Thirty divisions were routed by the 1^stUkrainian Front in the Lvov-Sandomir regions … the defeat of the Centre and North Ukraine groups, the capture of three major bridgeheads on the Vistula and arrival at Warsaw brought our striking fronts close to Berlin, now only 600 km [370 miles] away … Roumania and Hungary were close to withdrawal from the German alliance.’’

During June-July 1944 Operation Bagration broke the back of the strongest military formation in the German Wehrmacht and dealt a mortal blow to German fascism from which it was unable to recover. The American narrative that D-Day dealt the mortal blow to German fascism does not stand up to close scrutiny.

The American military historians Glantz and House have observed that, ‘ … despite the Germans’ need to direct new divisions and equipment eastward, throughout June and July the Wehrmacht was still able to contain the Allied bridgehead in Normandy.’

On 17 July 1944 57,000 German prisoners of war, captured during Operation Bagration, were paraded through the streets of Moscow. The motive for this was to scotch all talk that the Red Army had not played the decisive role in destroying the military capabilities of the German Wehrmacht.

Military historian John Erickson has noted how:

“Russians resented suggestions that German troops had been transferred from Belorussia westwards to fight off the invading Allied armies: the parade of the prisoners was in part designed to stifle ‘nonsensical’ talk of this kind. The main battle-front, and here Soviet commentators quoted directly from German cries of anguish, lay in the east where battles of ‘apocalyptic’ dimensions raged.’’

Endnote

It is 75 years since the momentous events on the eastern front during the summer of 1944 that broke the back of German fascism and left it staring defeat in the face. We should celebrate this victory and remember the huge sacrifices made by the Red Army.

That said, we should not be complacent about the defeat of German fascism. The conditions that helped give birth to fascism are beginning to re-emerge and will be given a huge stimulus by the next global economic crisis.

Bertolt Brecht gave a warning about this when writing after World War Two. Brecht warned:

“Don’t rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world stood up and stopped the bastard. The bitch that bore him is in heat again.’’

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The New York Times is reporting that on June 20, President Trump ordered military strikes against Iran to retaliate for its shootdown of a U.S. drone, but then pulled back and didn’t launch them. Officials told the Times that Trump had approved attacks on Iranian radar and missile batteries.

Trump tweeted,

“We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

Nevertheless, shortly after midnight on June 21, Newsweek reported that regional U.S. military assets have been put on 72-hour standby.

On June 19, an Iranian surface-to-air missile shot down an unmanned U.S. surveillance drone. The White House claimed that its drone was at least 20 miles from Iran, in international airspace, while Iran maintains the drone was in Iranian airspace. Iran presented GPS coordinates showing the drone eight miles from Iran’s coast, which is inside the area of 12 nautical miles that is considered Iran’s territorial waters under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Iran has the legal right to control its own airspace. The United States has no lawful claim of self-defense that would justify a military attack on Iran.

Both the U.S. and Iran are parties to the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, which provides “that every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory.”

Iran’s sovereignty over its airspace includes the right to shoot down an unmanned drone present without consent.

“Although there is no black letter law on the question, state practice suggests that a state can use force against unmanned drones that have entered its airspace without consent,” Ashley Deeks and Scott R. Anderson wrote at Lawfare.

“Assuming that for once Washington is telling the truth” about how far the U.S. drone was from Iran when it was downed, “it is still undeniable that Iran has the right to demand identification from any aircraft flying this near its territory,” H. Bruce Franklin, former Air Force navigator and intelligence officer, wrote on Facebook. U.S. Air Defense Identification Zones extend 200 miles from the U.S. border. “Any unidentified drone” which flew that close to the U.S. “would most likely be shot down,” Franklin added.

Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, wrote to the Security Council that the drone did not respond to several radio warnings before it was shot down.

A U.S. Attack on Iran Would Not Be Lawful Self-Defense

If the United States attacks Iran, it would act in violation of the United Nations Charter. The Charter only allows the use of military force in self-defense after an armed attack or with Security Council approval.

The International Court of Justice held in the 1986 Nicaragua case that an “armed attack” only includes “the most grave forms of the use of force.” No one was injured or killed when Iran shot down the U.S. drone since it was unmanned. Indeed, Trump told reporters it made “a big, big difference” that a U.S. pilot was not threatened.

Iran did not carry out an armed attack against the United States. Under the Caroline case, there must exist “a necessity of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” There is no imminent necessity for a U.S. military attack on Iran.

Congress Has Not Authorized a Military Attack on Iran

A U.S. strike on Iran would also violate the War Powers Resolution, which lists three situations in which the president can introduce U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities:

First, after a declaration of war by Congress, which has not occurred since World War II. Second, in “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” The loss of a U.S. drone does not constitute a “national emergency.” Third, when there is “specific statutory authorization,” such as an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

In 2001, Congress adopted an AUMF that authorized the president to use military force against individuals, groups and countries that had contributed to the 9/11 attacks. In the past 18 years, three presidents have misused the 2001 AUMF to justify multiple military interventions.

This is happening again. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has mounted a campaign to link Iran to al-Qaeda in order to make a case that the 2001 AUMF would allow the U.S. to attack Iran. But, as Johns Hopkins professor Bruce Riedel told Al-Monitor,

“Rather than being secretly in bed with each other as some have argued, al-Qaeda had a fairly hostile relationship with the Iranian regime.”

On June 19, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a $1 trillion appropriations bill that includes a provision repealing the 2001 AUMF within eight months. Introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California), it says the AUMF “has been used to justify a broad and open-ended authorization for the use of military force and such an interpretation is inconsistent with the authority of Congress to declare war and make all laws for executing powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.” But the GOP-controlled Senate will not pass the bill with the AUMF repeal provision in it.

The U.N. Security Council Should Act

Tensions between the United States and Iran have been steadily escalating. One year ago, the U.S. pulled out of the multilateral 2015 nuclear deal, which was working to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Trump then reimposed devastating sanctions against Iran, whose oil exports have fallen by one-half.

After Trump designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group in April, Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-third of the world’s oil passes. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council designated the U.S. Central Command a terrorist organization. Trump ordered 2,500 additional troops and an aircraft carrier to the region.

On June 13, two oil tankers — one Japanese, the other Norwegian with a 50 percent Russian crew — were attacked in the Gulf of Oman. The United States blamed Iran, which denied responsibility for the attack. Neither Japan nor Norway have said Iran was responsible. “That Iran would target a Japanese and a friendly Russian crewed ship is a ludicrous allegation,” Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote on his blog.

Besides being illegal, a U.S. attack on Iran would prove disastrous to the entire region, and indeed, the world. Congress should repeal the 2001 AUMF and assert its authority under the War Powers Resolution. The Security Council must convene immediately and act to fulfill its duty under the Charter to restore international peace and security to the Gulf region.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

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

This article was originally published in March 2017.

In April [2017] as part of our fact finding mission, we travelled to Aleppo.  We visited a hospital there which MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctor’s Without Borders) has accused Assad and Russia of deliberately bombing.  The White Helmets reported all hospitals in Eastern Aleppo had been destroyed, clearly this is not the case.  MSF also mentioned that they had not given either Syria or Russia the co-ordinates of ‘their’ hospitals.  As you will see from the photographs the hospital has not been bombed, although mortar and small weapons fire is obvious.  Factors to note; no one from MSF are actually on the ground to verify what they are being told.  There was no aerial bombardment at the time of the report and the liberation.  Aleppo was predominately a ground offensive … suburb to suburb, block to block, street to street and house to house and room to room.

Image on the right: Box of supplies with MSF logo; image below: White Helmets logo

This MSF ‘hospital’ had a women’s section, a men’s section, a Sharia school for the kiddies and a literal dungeon consisting of hundreds of solitary confinement cells and a Sharia Court.  A one stop, Wahhabi terror shop.  We saw plenty of evidence of everyone’s favourite Oscar winners.  The White Helmets had left behind evidence in their rush to stay with their murdering mates on their way to Idlib, following the money as it were.  Hollywood, particularly George Clooney, must be so proud.  Stick a ‘white hat’ on anyone and in the eyes of a gullible audience they must be the heroes … brainwashing 101.

There where all manner of medical supplies, supplies that never made their way to the majority of the civilians, held to ransom by groups operating out of a MSF claimed hospital.  I hope people are fully grasping what this means.  There where empty glass vials scattered on the ground, and evidence of a Norwegian NGO’s supplies being stored at this base, also a Turkish NGO’s blanket and Syrian American Medical Society stickers, among others on the walls .  If, as reported in the west, Assad and Russia were besieging Aleppo and not allowing aid in, how did the takfiris get their hands on these vital supplies?

We saw graffiti on the walls of cells hapless victims were held in this place of horrors.  One read; ‘God help my children’.  The once fully functioning hospital was used by the takfiris against the Syrian government and MSF went along for the ride.  With a number of hard line terrorist supporter journalists, like Australia’s Sophie McNeill and CNN’s Clarissa Ward preferring not to delve too deeply into their sources, giving the terrorists a life of their own as good Samaritans.  Still, I guess that’s journalism these days.  We all know the famous Malcolm X quote about believing the guilty.

Emblem of a shadow council on White Helmet uniform

There is now enough evidence to link the White Helmets with terrorism.  Hypothetically, if not enough to arrest them, there’s plenty of evidence to warrant an investigation and one would think enough to raise an eyebrow in Hollywood, but no.  Tinsel Town seems to be in for the long haul, toughing it out. How they will recover from this is anyone’s guess.  Like Iraq, the truth of Syria will eventually see the light of day.  Will any of these journalists, actors and NGOs complicit in the great lie of the Syrian Crisis face justice?  Time will tell but justice, like international law, seems a quaint idea from the past.

Updated 6th June, 2017

Note: link below contains many of the logos of ‘NGOs’ we saw in the hospital.  On page 19 there is a photo of the above hospital before Aleppo was liberated.  This brings all these groups under suspicion of supporting jihadist in Syria. https://savinglivesunderground.thesyriacampaign.org

According to news reports, the validity of which cannot be ascertained by the general public, a crazed US government came within ten minutes of igniting a general conflagation in the Middle East, the consequences of which could have been catastrophic for all. 

The moronic warmongers in high office—Bolton, Pompeo, and Pence—and their Israel Lobby masters are determined, and they have not abandoned their campaign for war with Iran.  Of course, the liars say that Iran will just accept its punishment for defending its territory and there will be no war.  But this is not what Iran says.  I believe Iran.

Some of the tiny percentage of people in the Western World who are still capable of thought regret that Trump called off the insane plan.  They think the consequences would have been the destruction of the Saudi and Israeli governments—two of the most evil in history—and the cut-off of oil to the US and Europe, with the resulting depression causing the overthrow of the Western warmonger governments.  They believe that catastrophic American defeat is the only way peace can be restored to the world.  

In other words, it is not clear whether Trump calling off the attack saved us or doomed us.  The Israel Lobby and their neoconservative agents have not been taught a lesson.  Trump has not fired Bolton and Pompeo for almost igniting a conflagation, and he has not dressed down his moronic vice president.  So, it can all happen again.  

And likely will.  The lesson that Bolton and Israel have learned is that the fake news about an Iranian attack on a Japanese freighter, denied by the Japanese, was not sufficient to lock Trump into “saving face” by attacking Iran.  So be prepared for a larger orchestrated provocation. Bolton and Israel know that the Western presstitutes will lie for them.  Watch for a provocation that allows Trump no alternative to an attack.

Washington’s use of fake news and false flag attacks to launch military attacks goes back a long way.  In the 21st century we have had a concentrated dose—Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Iranian nukes, Russian invasions, Maduro starving his own people, the endless lies about Gaddafi.  Yes, I know there are more.  I am writing an article, not an encyclopedia.

Washington has grown accustomed to attacking countries on false pretenses and getting away with it.  Therefore, there is nothing to discourage the Israel Lobby and its Washington puppets from continuing to set-up Iran for an attack.  Success breeds incaution.  The attack on Iraq was stage-managed by a credible US Secretary of State before the UN.  The attack on Libya was stage-managed by a UN resolution that a deceived Russia and China failed to block.  In situations such as these, Washington arranged a green light for its war crimes.  However, Washington has failed to stage-manage a green light for an attack on Iran. Moreover, Iran is a more powerful military force than Iraq and Libya, and the extent of the depth of Russian and Chinese support for Iran is unknown to Washington.

If Israel succeeds in having its Washington puppet attack Iran, Israel and its neoconservative agents will not welcome failure of their objective.  They will fight against failure with more dangerous moves.  I can easily imagine the fanatics having Trump “save face” by destroying the world and issuing some kind of ultimatums to Russia and China or resorting to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran.  

The insouciant American—indeed, Western—people are kept unaware by design.  It is the function of the presstitutes to control the explanations given to the people.  The US Congress is bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby, as are most important politicians in the UK and Europe.  What I am telling you is that it is very easy for fanatics to produce Armageddon.

Stephen Cohen and I, and a few surviving others, lived through the 20th century Cold War. In recent years we both have reported on numerous occasions that the threat of nuclear war today is far higher than during the Cold War.  One reason is that during the Cold War US and Soviet leaders worked to defuse tensions and to build trust.  In contrast, since the Clinton regime the US has worked consistently to build tensions.  Both Cohen and I have listed on many occasions the tension-building activities pursued by all post-Reagan/George H.W. Bush administrations.

The Russians no longer trust Washington, and neither do the Chinese.  Washington has lied to, and about, Russia so often in the 21st century that Russian trust of Washington is exhausted.  No matter how earnestly the Russian government wants to trust Washington, it dare not do so.

Therefore, it takes very little miscalculation for the morons in Washington to cause a threat-ending response from Russia as Washington has convinced the Russian government that the US intends to destroy them.  

The orchestration of Russiagate by the Democratic Party, military/security complex, and their media whores has, as Stephen Cohen has emphasized, forced President Trump in an act of self-preservation to adopt the neoconservative attitude toward Russia and other “non-compliant” governments.  This attitude is dangerous enough in the best of times.  It is extremely dangerous after trust has been destroyed by years of lies and false accusations.  

Perhaps there is someone in the Trump administration who has the intelligence to understand the dangerous situation and who has Trump’s confidence.  But I do not know who that person is.

We have to face the fact that as we face Armageddon the Western World is leaderless.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

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

“Imagine that a group of bandits entered your house without permission and booted you and your family members out. Afterwards the bandits continue to occupy the house, but they graciously allow you and your family to stay in the cellar. Would you accept such a state of affairs? Would you not want your house back in its entirety? And would you not want the usurpers evicted?”  – Kim Peterson (May 20, 2018) [1]

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According to the internationally recognized definition, genocide is a broad term that encompasses not only mass killing of members of a specific national, ethnic, racial or religious group, but also:

• the Causing of serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
• the Deliberate inflicting on the group of conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
• the Imposing of measures intended to prevent births within the group
• and the Forcible transferring of children of the group to another group

By this definition, the entities known as Canada and the United States of America owe their very existence as nation states to a genocide perpetrated against the original peoples of the continent. Going all the way back to the arrival of Christopher Columbus, Indigenous communities were subjected to torture, terror, sexual abuse, systematic military occupations, massacres, and relocations. In American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present, authors Erin McKenna, Scott L. Pratt report a 90-95% decline in the Indigenous population of the Americas between 1491 and 1691. [2][3]

In Canada, this genocide was facilitated by the creation of the Canadian National Railway, and the consequent destruction of the buffalo, a critical component of Indigenous life and culture. There was also critically, the 1876 Indian Act, and the system of Indian Residential schools it enabled. This system ripped children away from their parents and put them into institutions designed to assimilate them instead into Canadian society, the stated intention being ‘to kill the Indian in the child.’ [4][5]

It is no small coincidence that the genocide has been beneficial for elite corporate interests, both domestic and foreign, seeking to profit from the land base over which various Indigenous peoples have title and sovereignty.

On the occasion of National Indigenous Peoples Day, recognized in Canada on June 21st, this week’s Global Research News Hour radio program is a special broadcast recognizing the past and ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples against the forces seeking to exploit them and extinguish their resistance.

The episode opens with an excerpt from the National Community Radio Association’s Resonating Reconciliation Project, produced by CITR 101.9FM in Vancouver on the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam Nation.

We complete the first half hour with an interview with Bruce Clark, an author, scholar and former lawyer who has spent forty six years defending the rights of Indigenous peoples across North America. In this discussion, Clark elaborates on his fundamental position that the legal system has been twisted and contorted to deliberately suppress Indigenous sovereignty to the advantage of wealthy elites, and is therefore aiding and abetting a genocide.

Our second guest, Reuben George, is a member of the Tsleil Waututh Nation on the West Coast of Canada that is vowing to contest the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, recently approved by the Canadian federal government. He outlines the heart of his peoples’ concerns, the problems with the government’s consultation process, and his conviction that the pipeline project will not be completed.

Finally, Intercontinental Cry founder and editor John Ahniwanika Schertow returns with reports on genocidal actions being carried out against the forest-dwelling Adivasi in India, and the Yezidi in Syria and Iraq.

Bruce Clark holds an MA in constitutional history and a PhD in comparative law jurisprudence. A scholar specializing in the legal history of the evolving relationship between Natives and Newcomers, he is the author of a number of essays for Dissident Voice, and of the 2018 book, Ongoing Genocide caused by Judicial Suppression of the “Existing” Aboriginal Rights. Dr. Clark’s site is ongoinggenocide.com

Reuben George is manager of the Tsleil Waututh Nation Sacred Trust Initative, which is mandated to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion from happening.

John Ahniwanika Schertow is an award-winning journalist and multimedia artist of Mohawk and European descent. He is the founder and lead editor of Intercontinental Cry, an on-line media source of news of world-wide Indigenous struggle and resistance. As a poet and freelance journalist, John’s work has been featured in the Guardian, Toward Freedom, the Dominion, Madre, Swerve Magazine and many other publications. 

(Global Research News Hour Episode 265)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

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Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

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Notes:

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dispossession-of-canadas-first-nations-and-the-kinder-morgan-pipeline/5641139
2. http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/162804
3. American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present; Erin McKenna, Scott L. Pratt; Bloomsbury; 2015; Page 375
4. Timothy J. Stanley (January 7, 2015), ‘John A. Macdonald’s Aryan Canada: Aboriginal Genocide and Chinese Exclusion’, Active History; activehistory.ca/2015/01/john-a-macdonalds-aryan-canada-aboriginal-genocide-and-chinese-exclusion/
5. (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, p. 130; http://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Final%20Reports/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf

Introduction

Armed forces organization depends on several factors, from current and future threats and challenges (the nature of the projected theater of operations, or TO), to the country’s economic and technological capabilities. The doctrines of the two world superpowers of the second half of the 20th century (USSR and USA) assumed that large combined arms forces would conduct operations with massive support by artillery and aviation under conditions of nuclear war, in a multi-theater setting, including the wide-ranging European TO. But the experience of actual wars, including the Vietnam one for the US and Afghan one for the USSR showed that the current limited local and regional conflicts are decided by well-equipped mobile formations. Both countries researched the optimum organizational structure and methods of waging war for such operations.

Another event determining the development of military thought was the break-up of USSR. Massed nuclear strikes were no longer on the agenda. Military planning shifted from operations by field armies and larger formations toward highly mobile and well-equipped tactical task forces and combat teams up to brigade level.

By the end of the 2000’s, leading powers again changed their assessment of threats and challenges. This was due to the changes in global economy as well as social and ideological processes. Neither the US nor Russia were satisfied with the world situation. One felt the sense of losing an opportunity to establish oneself as the global hegemon, while the other sought to re-establish the status of a, at minimum, regional power. Economic motives played a key role in both cases. The powers increasingly acted through military confrontations. The risk of a global or a number of regional conflicts increased. Armed forces required adaptation to the new reality.

This is the context in which we briefly evaluate the organizational and staff structure of US and Russian armies, their missions and tasks, and development prospects.

United States

From the perspective of US military and political leadership, the post-USSR international environment and the associated changes in the methods of warfare demanded high-readiness Army units. Army divisions of the late 1990s represented a collection of battalions and brigade HQs. The divisional commander formed brigade out of several battalions and an already deployed brigade HQ. This made it difficult to coalesce these ad-hoc brigades, undermined their ability to conduct autonomous operations, and complicated joint action among brigade’s subunits. The decreased mobility and lavish equipment levels made it difficult to deploy divisions to overseas theaters of operations. Such units did not correspond to contemporary rapid reaction requirements, or the need for units capable of operating effectively in combat and non-combat (“operations other than war”) roles. The new requirements toward the US Army, particularly relevant during the opening phases of operations, demanded reforms in order to create a qualitatively new formation type capable of rapid deployment to theaters of operations.

Soldiers in Bull Troop, 1st Squadron, 2d Cavalry Regiment conduct a blank fire lane during troop exercise evaluations in the Grafenwoehr Training Area Feb. 18, 2018. The U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center is modernizing the Army Safety program to ensure that all Soldiers are safe during training and in carrying out their duties. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jennifer Bunn)

The US Army launched a large-scale re-organization in 2003 in order to transition to a brigade structure. Results included new corps and divisional command structures with a novel organizational structure.

As far as divisions are concerned, they are currently modular. The division maintains the function of HQ over a number of wholly autonomous brigades. Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) may be sent at any moment and in desired quantity to any corner of the world under the command of a divisional HQ  or theater-level command structures. US Army divisions may be divided into two types—combined arms (infantry, cavalry, armored) and special (mountain, airborne, airmobile). Overall there are 11 divisions, not counting the US Army National Guard.

Brigades, consisting of a number of assets, became the key building blocks of land forces. They were subordinated to divisional, corps, or theater HQs, acting as a component of joint forces formed to satisfy the needs of the local commander. Such brigades are capable of rapid deployment and timely reaction to changes in situation.

Organizational and staff structure of Brigade Combat Teams

The US Army includes 3 brigade types: the Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT), Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT), and Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT).

The mission of the IBCT is to disrupt or destroy enemy military forces, control land areas including populations and resources and be prepared to conduct combat operations to protect US national interests. It is intended for operations in urban or densely populated areas where heavier equipment is inappropriate, as part of aerial or amphibious assault operations, and as a enveloping/raiding force. IBCT consists of 7 battalions: 3 infantry, reconnaissance, combat service support, combat engineer, and artillery, and totals 4413 soldiers. Each IBCT can perform assault operations and is officially designed as assault-landing. Most of its soldiers are mounted on Humvees. The weight and size of IBCT equipment allow transport using all types of transport aircraft, ensuring very high strategic mobility. IBCT’s main firepower consists of 6 towed M777 155mm howitzers, 12 towed M119 105mm howitzers, 48 mortars of various calibers, 36 self-propelled TOW-2 ATGMs, and 100 portable Javelin ATGMs.

U.S. Army soldiers of 141st Infantry Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Bulldogs, out of Fort Bliss, fire at the enemy as part of a training mission at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, Calif., on June 19, 2011.

Organizational and staff structure of SBCT

The SBCT is a medium mechanized brigade intended for both offensive and defensive operations in various terrain types. This BCT is usually used in fluid maneuver environments in certain terrain types (urban, mountain), and to defend important sectors.

SBCT consists of 7 battalions: 3 infantry, reconnaissance, combat service support, combat engineer, artillery, and totals 4500 soldiers. Since 2015 the anti-tank battery was transferred from combat engineer to reconnaissance battalion in order to form a fire support company there.

SBCT firepower includes 77 M1138 wheeled assault guns/tank destroyers with 105mm cannon, 36 M1129 SP 120mm mortars, 9 M1134 SP TOW-2 ATGMs, 121 portable Javelin ATGMs, and 18 M777 towed 155mm howitzers.

Soldiers from the 18th Engineer Co. 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, Stryker Brigade Combat Team, ready their 19 ton Engineer Squad Vehicles prior to moving into the “box” at the National Training Center.

Organizational and staff structure of ABCT

The ABCT represents the mainstay of US Army heavy forces. It is the main tactical shock-action unit intended for operations in tank-friendly terrain, launching counterattacks, breaking enemy defenses, and inflicting maximum damage on the enemy. Possessing great striking power and survivability, ABCTs form the core of the land force component in strategic theaters and, as a rule, are deployed in their entirety on combat missions.

ABCT consists of 7 battalions: 3 mechanized (combined arms), reconnaissance, artillery, combat engineer, and combat service support, totaling 4743 soldiers. Since 2013, the three combined arms battalions became two tank (two tank and one mechanized company) and one mechanized (one tank, two mechanized companies). It meant the elimination of two mechanized companies, while a tank company was reassigned to the reconnaissance battalion.

ABCT firepower consists of 87 Abrams MBTs, 18 M109 155 SP howitzers, 18 120mm SP mortars, and 84 portable Javelin ATGMs.

Support Brigades

Modularity is also practiced in support brigades. The Modular Support Brigades come in 5 varieties: army aviation, artillery, reconnaissance, mixed (combat engineers, signals, military police, NBC defense), and supply. In earlier times artillery and combat service support existed only at division level, while brigades were assigned subunits by the divisional commander depending on the mission and situation. BCTs may be supported by the following units, depending on the mission and higher commander’s decisions.

Combat Aviation Brigades include UAVs, heavy and medium transport helicopters (Chinook and Blackhawk), attack helicopters (Apache), medevac helicopters. Such brigades are directly subordinated to divisional HQ.

Field Artillery Brigades (Fires Brigades until 2014) are equipped with M270 MLRS and HIMARS multiple rocket launchers. They also conduct information operations and have non-lethal capabilities.

Patriot

Air Defense Brigades possess Patriot and THAAD anti-air and anti-missile batteries. They were taken away from divisions as part of air defense reorganization. Nine out of ten US Army air defense battalions and two out of eight National Guard air defense battalions have been deactivated. The US Army has realized the need to re-establish a viable short-range air defense (SHORAD) capability, largely from lessons learned in Ukraine and Syria. National Guard units still utilize the Avenger AN/TWQ-1 short-range air defense system, and the US Army is currently updating and deploying the Avenger. The 678^th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, a National Guard unit, was deployed to Europe last year, the first such deployment since the end of the Cold War.

THAAD

Maneuver Enhancement Brigades are used on those operational theaters where combat and support units are used in limited quantities, where an entire support brigade would be superfluous.

Sustainment Brigades provide logistical support of units above brigade-level. They consist of two battalions: special troops (battalion HQ and signals company), and combat service support (battalion HQ, technical servicing company, transport company, dispatcher group, quartermaster company).

Battlefield Surveillance Brigades are equipped with UAVs and deploy surveillance detachments.

In addition, there also exist Security Force Assistance Brigades, which train allied armed forces. While such brigades do not directly participate in combat, 500 SFAB troops save 4500 BCT troops from having to serve on training missions. By October 2017, the first of six planned SFABs was established at Ft. Benning.

As of September 2018, US Army had 31 brigades, including 13 IBCT (5 airborne, 3 air assault), 11 ABCT, and 7 SBCT.

Army National Guard has 27 BCT, including 5 ABCT, 12 IBCT, and 2 SBCT. Altogether the US Army has 58 BCT.

In order to visualize the capabilities of a division, we will consider a few cases.

Organizational and staff structure of 1^st Armored Division, 1^st and 3^rd Infantry Divisions

The 1st Armored Division, as of 2016, consisted of a Headquarters and Headquarters company, Operations Company, Intelligence and Sustainment Company, Signal Company. Its combat power consists of one SBCT, two ABCT, Division Artillery, Combat aviation Brigade, supported by a Sustainment Brigade.

The 1st Infantry Division, as of 2016, had similar organization, except that its combat units include only two ABCT.

The 3rd Infantry Division is similar, except for two ABCT and one IBCT, supported by a Maneuver Enhancement Brigade.

When examining corps and army levels, one can discern the following:

I Corps is unique among active Army corps in that it includes both regular and reserve forces stationed in 47 out of 50 US states. Formally its forces include only the 7th ID.

III Corps includes the 1st Cavalry, 1st Armored, 1st Infantry and 4th Infantry divisions, in addition to support units.

XVIII Airborne Corps consists of 3rd Infantry, 10th Infantry (Mountain), 82nd Airborne and 101st Air Assault Divisions

Regional commands deserve a separate mention.

US EUCOM’s Army units are subordinates to US Army Europe (USAREUR). Its forces include 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment (SBCT organization) in germany, and the 173rd IBCT (Airborne) in Italy. It is headquartered at the Lucius D. Clay Kaserne in Wiesbaden, Germany.

USINDPACOM (Pacific and Indian Ocean area). Its army units are subordinated to USARPAC. Organizationally it consists of the 8th Army, which in turn controls the 2nd Infantry and 25th Infantry divisions, with most of the latter based in Hawaii and Alaska. Its HQ is at Ft. Shafter, Hawaii.

USAFRICOM. Its Army units are subordinated to USARAF, and include the 2nd ABCT. It is headquarted at Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy.

USCENTCOM does not have permanently assigned Army forces.

USARCENT (the former 3rd Army) controls foreign bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and various support units. Its HQ is at the Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina.

USNORTHCOM has no permanently assigned Army units.

USARNORTH (former 5th Army) controls the 263rd Air and Missile Defense Command

USSOUTHCOM has no permanently assigned Army units.

USARSOUTH (former 6th Army) includes the 193rd Infantry Brigade, 476th Military Intelligence Brigade, and various support units. Its HQ is at Ft. Sam Houston, TX.

US Army also has Functional Combatant Commands, including the USCYBERCOM, USSTRATCOM, USTRANSCOM, USSPACECOM, and USSOCOM. They do not have permanently assigned Army units, only attached ones as required and assigned by higher HQs.

Special Characteristics and Development Prospects

Unique organizational characteristics are readily evident. Each division has a unique structure. Nominally the US Army has only one armored division, and the existing infantry divisions are de-facto combined arms (not fully infantry, but also not fully mechanized). Artillery does not exist as a separate structure within the division. The divisional artillery headquarters trains and commands artillery units of assigned BCTs.

Changed threat assessments by leading world powers led to a new round of confrontation and a heightened risk of a global or several regional conflicts. Therefore US Army BCTs will form core of task forces with personnel strength of up to 5000 troops. US military specialists suggest three options.

The first is an armored brigade, reinforced by two infantry battalions and a reconnaissance battalion.

The second is a Stryker brigade reinforced by two heavy mechanized/tank battalions and a reconnaissance battalion.

The third is a light brigade, reinforced by two infantry battalions and a reconnaissance battalion.

Moreover, US Army BCTs will undertake a broader range of missions, including ones currently undertaken by special operations forces: raids, ambushes, mining important facilities and avenues of approach, precision strikes, guiding precision-guided munitions to target.

Simultaneously the US Army is reorganizing and expanding combat service support battalions, as part of effort of reforming US Army logistics in order to improve timely resupply prior to and during combat operations by shifting from mass delivery approach to a detailed distribution one. In particular, there is a trend of increasing the number of forward support companies. It is they which facilitate the ability of BCTs to quickly enter combat after deployment to a distant theater of operations without extensive logistical infrastructure. Attaching a forward logistical support company to each battalion makes it possible to create a flexible and scalable logistical network to ensure targeted logistical support.

Russian Federation

Now we will briefly evaluate Russian Federation Ground Forces, which experienced a more complicated and tortuous path toward its optimum organization due to the Russian military leadership’s approach to assessing military threats. If for the Soviet Army that threat was represented by NATO with its large combined arms forces, in the 1990s-2000s it was the struggle against international terrorism, and in 2010s the problem of confronting NATO and its mobile and well-equipped forces re-emerged.

Starting with the late 1980s and until the early 2000s, most heavy forces were deactivated or turned into equipment storage bases for economic and political reasons. The changing geopolitical situation and the experience of armed conflicts in various countries showed that in the absence of a well armed and property trained army it is impossible to defend national interests, particularly economic ones, neither on the global nor on regional scale. Reorganizing the army was a particularly high priority after the fighting in Chechnya in 1994 and 1999, and again during the war in South Ossetia in 2008. It proved unexpected for Russian military leaders that a division could at best deploy a reinforced battalion. Hasty assembly of several such divisions into more or less combat-capable formations revealed shortcomings in command and control, battle cohesion, organization of communications and logistics.

On the basis of such negative practical experience, Russian leadership decided to utilize the experience of foreign countries (particularly USA) in order to form modern mobile Ground Forces. Brigade was chosen as the building block. The main argument in favor of shifting to a brigade structure was that it had smaller size, thus it was more flexible and mobile than a division. Brigade structure was to endow the entire Russian army with high mobility and flexibility, corresponding to new security challenges.

In practice, the transition to the new structure suffered from the general situation plaguing the Russian Army of the early 2000’s, and was made more complicated by the civilian reformers running the MOD. A motorized rifle division would be reduced to a single motor-rifle regiment (2-3 battalions) plus reinforcements (tank, artillery, combat engineer, air defense, transport, and other subunits), the remainder being deactivated. There were fewer tank and motor rifle battalions, missions they were capable of fulfilling were more than modest. At that time it was probably the only way to preserve divisions, even in a reduced state. If one considers that the brigade was seen as something intermediate between regiment and brigade (divisional power and regimental mobility), one has to admit the actual outcome was a failure. Many exercises showed that brigades did not absorb division’s power and did not have regiments’ cohesion and mobility. If one is to compare the amount of assets entering into the direct contact with the enemy, the balance was not in favor of the brigade. Regiments and brigades had approximately the same number of tanks, APCs, and IFVs (more about that will be said below). Thus the brigade became a weak regiment reinforced with artillery and other support units. Motor rifle divisions would have three such regiments (two MRR, one tank), with the same number of support units.

The worsening of the international situation and NATO’s military activities near Russia’s borders revealed problems in Russia’s combined arms formations and forced military leaders to act. This included acknowledging the fact that as of mid-2014, there was not a single combined arms formation located in the Russian provinces adjacent to the Donetsk and Lugansk provinces of Ukraine, capable of defending them from unexpected Ukrainian military operations. One the western threat was reassessed, due to the pro-Western Ukrainian regime and NATO concentration near Russian borders, Russian military decided in 2014-17 to reorganize the 20^th Army of the Western MD and creating the 1^st Tank Army (Western MD) and the 8^th Army (Southern MD), whose core would consist of tank and motor-rifle divisions. The Western strategic direction is critically important to the Russian Federation, as it includes 78% of the country’s population, biggest cities, the main economic, industrial, and scientific potential.

Russian Ground Forces currently deploy forces on the territory of adjacent countries and also further abroad. When deploying military bases (MBs), the Russian military uses US experience. The bases in South Ossetia (4^th MB, 4000 troops), Abkhazia (7^th MB, 4000 troops), Armenia (102^nd MB, 5000 troops) have de-facto brigade structure. Their missions is to protect Russian interests in the region and prevent conflict. Due to the specifics and importance of that region, the 201^st MB in Tajikistan has had divisional structure since 2013. This is due to the unending conflict in Afghanistan and the vacuum of power after NATO’s retreat. The base has the mission of protecting the independence and constitutional order of the Republic of Tajikistan, as well as ensuring the stability of political and military situation.

To get more detailed understanding of Russian Ground Forces combined arms formations, one should examine the entire structure from the army to division/brigade/regiment level. The following are the data for 2015-17.

As an example, we will examine the 20^th Guards Army of the Western MD which was created in a new form in 2015.

By comparison, here is the 2^nd Guards Army of the Central MD

One level of organization below:

• 3^rd MRD 
• 21^st MR Brigade of the 2^nd Army (Southern MD)
• 37^th MR Brigade of the 36^th Army of Eastern MD
• One level lower: 752^nd MRR of the 3^rd MRD (as of 2016)

By comparison, a tank division, brigade, and regiment, whose organizational structures are known

• 4^th Guards TD from the 1^st Tank Army (Western MD)
• 5^th Separate Guards Tank Brigade from 36^th Army, Eastern MD
• 12^th TR from the 4^th TD of the 1^st Tank Army

Specifics and Development Prospects

Russian Ground Forces are currently in the midst of determining the most optimal and universal structure. Hence the reason why Russian military does not have standardized organizational structure and maintains not only brigades but also regiments and divisions. MR brigades also differ from one another. Russia’s Ground Forces include armies which may have only a single MR brigade (29^th Army in Eastern MD) without support units. This is due to the specific missions of the armies. At the same time, in the eastern direction, division level formations are also formed for key spots. So, at the end of 2018, the 127th motorized rifle division (5^th Army in Eastern MD) was re-established on the basis of the 59th and, partially, 60th motorized rifle brigades. One must concentrated shock- and fire-power inherent to divisions on the western direction to counter NATO forces. In the southern and eastern directions, the main enemy are terrorist organizations and the main threat is the destruction of political regimes of countries neighboring Russia and the spread of civil war. Here brigades or battalion tactical groups are more convenient, since they can conduct autonomous operations against mobile terrorist or insurgent formations. Widespread formation of battalion tactical groups was the situational way out for the Russian armed forces. Put that way, up to 136 battalion tactical groups, staffed with contract soldiers, were formed at the beginning of 2019.

It’s also worth noting Russian military now fully realize the importance of reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and sniping on the modern battlefield. MR and tank brigades, regiments, and divisions now have sniper companies, EW and drone units.

Concerning differences between US and Russian armies, the Russian military does not have a concept of a modular support brigade. Artillery and reconnaissance brigades’ functions are peUnified Combatant Commands (UCC) under the rformed by units which are part of individual brigades (rocket artillery battalions or batteries, UAV companies). Frontal aviation units operate independently or are attached as needed by higher HQs.

Conclusions

Having considered the main aspects of land forces organization for the United States and Russia, one may discern a difference in approach due to varying assessments of threats, and to whether operations will be conducted on distant theaters or one’s own soil. There are also different approaches in assessing whether to rank potential threats as critical, vital, or important to state interests. Economic, technological, and organizational potential also plays a role.

The US Army is continuing to reorganize its BCTs. The aim is to improve their combat power through revising organizational structure and rearmament in order to meet battlefield demands. There is a trend to depart from a rigid classification of types of combat operations in favor of giving commanders the ability to act on the basis of own initiative in response to concrete tasks and conditions.

Brigade is the foundation for the brigade task force capable of accomplishing a wide range of missions after sufficient reinforcement, in both offensive and defensive operations as well as stabilization and assistance missions. According to senior US Army officers, further BCT development will depend on the spectrum of tasks they have to perform, battlefield conditions, and methods of waging warfare.

At higher levels, the United States military operates Unified Combatant Commands (UCC) under the DoD, consisting of at least two military departments with broad and continuing missions. These commands ensure effective direction of military formations irrespective of the branch of service during both peace and war. They are organized on “area of responsibility” (AOR) geographic principle or a functional one, for example special operations or logistics. The  term AOR is used by the commands to establish regions with specific geographic boundaries where they may plan and conduct operations.

In Russia’s case, military leaders decided to abandon brigades as the basic block of combined arms formations on the most important strategic directions. This was due to the concern about the increase in NATO forces and their deployment on Russia’s western borders. Thus the Western MD is going back to armies consisting of divisions and regiments rather than brigades, which is more useful in both defense and offense. In addition, Ground Forces are creating large tank-heavy formations. Western MD already has one. In the foreseeable future, one may expect the Central MD to also get a tank army, since the 90^th Tank Division is not part of any army. It is also likely Eastern MD formations will retain current structure. Brigades there are the best solution for a country in difficult economic and demographic conditions.

A few words should be said about the military administration of Russia’s territory. There is active discussion of a return to the Soviet military district model, due to the difficulties in command and control when the district HQ is 1000km away from the district boundary. The reinvented military district would also be responsible for all types of forces needed to fulfill its missions. Thus the Western MD may be divided into Leningrad and Moscow MDs, Central MD into Vola-Urals and Siberian MDs. It’s difficult to say how Eastern MD might be divided, and the Southern MD will likely be preserved in its current form, which means splitting higher command echelons (district level) and increasing formation size (from brigades to divisions and regiments).

We may thus draw the conclusion that the main difference in the approach between US and Russian land forces is that, first of all, the Russian Ground Forces are intended to defend the territorial integrity and inviolability of the nation’s own territory, and secondly, to react to the use of force by competitor powers in third countries when it poses a significant threat to Russia’s vital interests.

In the meantime, further US Army development will focus on rapid deployability to any part of the planet, concurrently with the overwhelming expansion of its own potential to defend US or allied interests. It is therefore relatively clear that the United States will continue to develop the doctrine of offensive operations as part of its pursuit of global dominion. The Russian Federation, in turn, will concentrated on defense and reaction to the actions of potential rivals.

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“War in the name of morality provides as many reasons for historical shudders as war in the name of self-interest, for at least the latter may be easier to call off when self-interest calls for compromise.” — Lawrence Freedman, Review of International Studies, July, 2000

The Balkans has often been prone to seizures of mysticism, glum prediction and predation.  But one character felt at home as he addressed his audience in Kosovo, himself having been afflicted by a certain evangelical urge.  This month, former US President William Jefferson Clinton, keeping company with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, were rubbing shoulders with officials and stage hands in Pristina to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Kosovo intervention by NATO in March 1999.

It was a chance Kosovo’s president Hashim Thaçi was not going to let pass.  In being awarded the Order of Freedom, Clinton was all praise.

“I think the whole world today with all this turmoil, can look to Kosovo as an example of a democracy and a commitment to prove, grow, and live in peace with one’s neighbours.”

Being Clinton, his words have a profound lightweight quality, albeit dressed up as grave and morally hefty.

Image: Albright and former KLA leader Hashim Thaci in 1998

Nonetheless, they struck the appropriate, ceremonial note.  Thaçi glowed with appreciation.

“We thank you for the just decision to stop the Serbian genocide during 1999.  We are very grateful for the support of the US to Kosovo. The story of Kosovo is a story of joint success.  You are our hero.”

Clinton duly responded, expressing pride at having been the “president of the United States when you needed someone to stand up and say no more ethnic cleansing, no more people running out of their homes, no more killing innocent civilians, there’s got to be another way.”

Misnamed humanitarian interventions are nasty, untidy things.  They ride on the wave of emotional simplification, embellished by the force of ghastly imagery and eye-moistened grief.  As UK Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd would note as the crisis in Yugoslavia deepened in blood in 1992, taking a swipe at the seductions of the idiot box in a much quoted speech at the Travellers’ Club in London,

“the selection of these tragedies is now visible within hours to people around the world.  People reject and resent what is going on because they know it more visibly than before.”

As news reporter Martin Bell would reflect, a variant of this point had been made by the essayist and novelist G.K. Chesterton:

“It’s not the world that has got so much worse, but the news coverage that has got so much better”.

Yet such coverage can be suspect not because it inaccurately portrays horror, but that it does so from one, captured vantage point.  Participants assume the roles of innocent victims and stained perpetrators.  The NATO intervention, given its Clinton white wash, removes references to attacks on Serbian civilian targets and infrastructure and the acceleration of the cleansing efforts by Serb forces in Kosovo-proper after the bombings began, suggesting a less than rosy account of Operation Allied Force.

The neatness of such commemorative occasions as took place in Pristina unduly purifies. It ignores such assessments as those from Robert Gelbard, Clinton’s special envoy to the Balkans, who deemed the Kosovo Liberation Army “a terrorist group” in comments made on February 23, 1999. In March that same year, Gelbard appeared before the House International Relations Committee to modify his response, claiming that the KLA had “not been classified legally by the US government as a terrorist organisation.” That said, he did explain to law makers that “terrorist” acts perpetrated by the KLA had “provided an excuse for [Serbian President Slobodan] Milošević.”

Even with the embers still bright, Jeremy Harding remarked in an August issue of the London Review of Books how “in the former Yugoslavia, a loss of any kind often insinuates itself into the annals of gain, while short-term winners – Kosovo Albanians, for instance – can barely distinguish what they are meant to have won from all the have lost.”

Serbia’s Foreign Minister, Ivica Dačić, if predictably, had a rather different reading of the anniversary.  When the 78-day aerial bombing initiated by a US-led NATO force commenced on the rump of what was left of Yugoslavia, it did so without UN Security Council authorisation, a rebuff to the UN Charter. Those powers, Dačić said accusingly, became colonisers. The pathway to Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence had been less paved than bombed, and this small stretch of territory became a European headache of monumental proportions, punctuated by annual clashes between the Albanian majority and Serbian minority ever fearful at their own expulsion.

Last year’s decision to transform the Kosovo Security Forces into a more traditional military fighting force could hardly be said to be in line with neighbourliness, but realities on trodden Balkan ground were always rather different from Clinton’s distracted interpretations.

While Clinton was being cheered in Pristina, the humanitarian credo in international relations had a vital co-conspirator in British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  It was Blair who girded the Kosovo intervention with a doctrine and flogged it before assemblies and fora with gravity and conviction.  Before the Chicago Economic Club in April 1999, he drew back the curtains on the “Doctrine of the International Community”, showing the usual spin and ease with terms that proved to be the hallmark of New Labour.

Central to the meretricious doctrine is a contention that cruelty has one face – or a set of faces – clearly discernible, and, to that end, identifiable for punishment. “No one in the west who has seen what is happening in Kosovo can doubt that NATO’s military action is justified.”  Bismarck, he contended, was wrong to suggest that the Balkans were not worth the bones of one Pomeranian Grenadier. “Anyone who has seen the tear-stained faces of the hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming across the border, heard their heart-rending tales of cruelty or contemplated the unknown fates of those left behind, knows that Bismarck was wrong.”  Hurd, hard boiled realist, would have recoiled; but Blair was the prime minister of image, the confection, the sound bite.

The Kosovo intervention remains an object lesson on how misguided the messianic instinct can be. Coupled with the astonishing shallowness that governed much of the President Erect’s time in office, one marked by squalid scandal and the desperation for foreign distractions, NATO gave birth to a monster that has been reprised in several forms since.

The worst of these is the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, a cheeky number that discards the “right” to intervene in favour of an obligation to protect.  But the record of this less than illustrious doctrine is patchy, even disastrous.  The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001 tried to underpin the interventionist doctrine with procedural caveats – the need for verification of atrocity, for instance, and the logistical requirement that infrastructure would be spared – but such neat precautions disappear in the red mist fog of war. As unfolded in Libya in 2011, cruise missiles do little in the way of promoting humanitarian, let alone humane outcomes.

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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]

Featured image is from Reuters

From Harry Truman’s aggression on North Korea to post-9/11 preemptive US wars, US ruling authorities acted with coalition of the willing partners — in lieu of going it alone.

World community opposition gives Washington pause about attacking another nation unilaterally, what so far appears to be a restraint against Trump’s war on Iran especially urged by Bolton and Pompeo.

Following incidents in the Gulf of Oman last week and regional waters in May, along with Iran downing a hostile US drone intrusion in its airspace, Trump threatened to attack the Islamic Republic.

He then stepped back, calling off what could have opened the gates of hell to all-out war, potentially devastating the country, its people and region.

The possibility of things going this far prompted a global alarm from the world community, including from close US allies, calling for restraint, opposing war on Iran.

Is this what got Trump to call off Pentagon strikes on Iranian targets? It had nothing to do with his Big Lie concern for the loss of Iranian lives he doesn’t give a hoot about — or lives and welfare of ordinary people anywhere, including domestically.

His hostile agenda speaks for itself, escalating wars of aggression he inherited from Bush/Cheney and Obama, serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary Americans harmed by his actions.

Weeks earlier, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini called for “maximum restraint and avoiding any escalation on a military side” against Iran.

On Friday, European Council President Donald Tusk expressed concern about the US attacking Iran.

On the same day, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said “information that we have shows absolutely clearly that the situation is extremely dangerous,” adding:

“I would call this balancing on the brink of war…Most ‘fires’ in the Middle East were sparked by Washington’s ‘arsonist’ policies.”

“There still is a risk of conflict, and we call on responsible players again — if there are any responsible players left in Washington — to assess the possible consequences. We warn them against hasty steps.”

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said

“(t)he situation in the Persian Gulf is very tense. We are extremely concerned about it. We’re following the situation carefully, and we call on all sides involved to show restraint.”

A UK statement said

“(w)e have said continuously that we are calling for de-escalation on all sides…We don’t believe escalation would be in any party’s interest and continue to talk to the US and our partners.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said

“(w)e need an agenda with Iran and our partners in the region that allows us to find a solution to this crisis,” adding:

“We need to continue to frame the Iranian nuclear activities, to go further in time, but we must avoid the escalation of tensions. So I invite all the parties to reason, to calm down and to discuss.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for “diplomatic negotiations for a political solution to a very tense situation.”

Israel, the Saudis, UAE and Iranophobic hardliners in Washington support war on the country.

Iranian academic Mohammad Marandi warned that the response by its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to US aggression would be “relentless and disproportionate,” adding:

“(T)he Iranians will not only strike back at aggressive forces, but they will strike at those countries that have facilitated the United States in carrying out that attack.”

“No one in Iran trusts the United States, and, in particular, no one trusts Trump.”

Marandi noted the July 3, 1988 downing of Iran Air Flight 655 in its own airspace by an SM-2MR surface-to-air cruise missile launched from the USS Vincennes, killing 290 civilians, including 65 children and infants — based on a Big Lie.

Then-Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati asked the Security Council to condemn the downing as a willful “criminal act, (a) massacre, (and an) atrocity.”

Then-US Vice President GHW Bush said the captain and crew of the Vincennes acted appropriately, separately telling GOP officials:

“I will never apologize for the United States. I don’t care what the facts are…I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy” — the same true for the vast majority of GOP and undemocratic Dem officials earlier and now.

Vincennes crew members were awarded Combat Action Ribbons for the incident. The warship’s warfare coordinator received the Navy Commendation Medal.

Ship Captain William C. Rogers was awarded the Legion of Merit “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer…from April 1987 to May 1989.”

The citation omitted mention of downing Iran Air 655. Marandi explained that US authorities “lied about the flight, and the Western media mimicked the US government position,” adding:

“They lied completely in order to make the Iranian airliner seem guilty and justify US acts. And later on it became very clear the airline…was acting as any other plane was supposed to act” — threatening no one.

Marandi noted that Captain Rogers was “awarded a medal for murdering innocents.”

Countless US actions against the Islamic Republic show clear US hostility toward the country.

It can never be trusted, why Iran rejects talks with Trump regime officials, knowing the futility of engaging with hardliners bent on toppling its government.

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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.

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Transcript of the video below.

1) PATRICK CLAWSON ON “CRISIS INITIATION”

CLAWSON: I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough and it’s very hard for me to see how the United States president can get us to war with Iran. Which leads me to conclude that if in fact compromise is not coming, that the traditional way of America gets to war is what would be best for US interests.

Some people might think that Mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us into World War II. As David mentioned, you may recall we had to wait for Pearl Harbor. Some people might think Mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World War I. You may recall he had to wait for the Lusitania episode. Some people might think that Mr. Johnson wanted to send troops to Vietnam. You may recall they had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin episode. We didn’t go to war with Spain until the USS Maine exploded. And may I point out that Mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call out the federal army until Fort Sumter was attacked, which is why he ordered the commander at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing would the South Carolinians had said would cause an attack.

So if in fact the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war.

[…]

I would just like to suggest that one can combine other means of pressure with
sanctions. I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean, look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down. Someday one of them might not come up. Who would know why? We can do a variety of things if we wish to increase the pressure. I’m not advocating that, but I’m just suggesting that this is not an either-or proposition of, you know, it’s just sanctions has to succeed or other things. We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier at that.

SOURCE: Patrick Clawson Responds to Questions, Full Video – 9/21/2012

2) ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI WARNS OF “A TERRORIST ACT BLAMED ON IRAN”

BRZEZINSKI: A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the bench marks followed by accusations of the Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the United States blamed on Iran culminating in a “defensive” US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

SOURCE: Zbigniew Brzezinski The Senate Foreign Relations Committee

3) GARY HART WARNS IRAN ABOUT “ANOTHER GULF OF TONKIN”

WE ARE CHANGE: Yes, you recently wrote a letter to the President of Iran in which you urge them to study the gulf of tonkin incident which we now know is a staged event used to justify war in Vietnam andyou also raise the question “Does America provoke provocations?” Sir, was this not an . . I have the letter right here sir if you want to read it I have it on me right here Oh sir I mean that’s mainstream media has been published in many publications do you deny writing that letter sir you say I can read it to you right now okay you said on presuming that you are not actually ignorant enough to desire war with the United States you might you might be well advised to read the history of the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1998 and the history of the gulf of gulf of tonkin

HART: I’m sorry that was a blog or nothing to most I did not literally write a letter it was a mock letter read failed in doublespeak that the United States could stage an event to go to war with Iran no no then well what I was come in cheek saying was that we have an administration in Washington that is dying for a reason to bomb Iran and so in a mock blog letter to the Iranian government not the president of the Iranian government I just simply said if unless you people want to be bombed you better be careful about cross border incursions and I think I explicitly said keep the Republican Guard and revolutionary whatever it’s called away from the Iraqi border I was trying to communicate to the American people what our own government was trying to plan and that was to find a reason for bombing Iran and I was simply saying in effect to the American people through this mock letter be very careful about this administration creating a USS Maine incident or a Gulf of Tonkin incident that would justify popping around that’s all

SOURCE: Gary Hart WARNING – WeAreChange

4) SEYMOUR HERSH: CHENEY’S PLAN TO STAGE AN INCIDENT

FAIZ SHAKIR: There’s a bit at the end of this latest article that you wrote that I found actually most interesting. And the article hasn’t got that much attention but I want to get your take on this. And this relates to a stray or an incident that happened a couple months ago. Many of you remember. It was in the Strait of Hormuz. There was an incident where an American carrier almost blew a couple of Iranian speedboats out of the water and perhaps would have started the next war against Iran or potentially a World War III. And it was averted, thankfully, at the last second. We later learned that there was really nothing to be terribly concerned about—the incident was overblown—and that there was a vice admiral in charge of the fleet in the Strait of Hormuz who said basically there was no concern there. That it was overblown.

HERSH: But yeah, the second part basically. He was concerned but they were never a threat.

SHAKIR: They were never a threat. And you talked about—this his name is Kevin cosgrove and in article you write:

Nonetheless, Cosgriff’s demeanor angered Cheney, according to the former senior intelligence official. But a lesson was learned in the incident: The public had supported the idea of retaliation, and was even asking why the US didn’t do more. The former official said that, a few weeks later, a meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. “The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,” he said.

What you’re writing there is that Cheney—there was a meeting in the White House where Cheney presided over looking to cook up the next war. A false war based on false intelligence.

HERSH: My oldest son is a lawyer and when I sent him this story before it was published—basically in a final form, just a day—and he he wrote back and he said “You really buried the lead in this one,” about casus belli. Um, how many press are here?

Anyway, there was a meeting. Among the items among the items considered and rejected—which is why The New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn’t accepted—one of the items was why not . . . There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger war. The one that interested me the most was: Why don’t we build in our shipyard—build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats, put navy seals on them with a lot of arms and the next time what about those goes through the Straits of Hormuz start a shoot up. Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. But that’s the kind of that’s the level of stuff we were talking about: provocation.

But that was rejected so I could understand the argument of not writing something that was rejected. Maybe. I, basically—my attitude always towards editors is they’re mice training to be rats. But the point is jejune, if you know what that means. Silly, maybe, but potentially very lethal. Because one of the things they learned in the incident was the American public—if you get the right incident, the American public will support, you know, bang bang kiss kiss. You know, we’re into it.

SOURCE Dick Cheney’s false flag attack idea to start the war with Iran

MIKE POMPEO: But in terms of how you think about problem sets, I – when I was a cadet, what’s the first – what’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. (Laughter.) It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses. (Applause.)

SOURCE: Secretary Pompeo Participates in Q&A Discussion at Texas A&M University

POMPEO: Good afternoon. It is the assessment of the United States Government that the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the Gulf of Oman today. This assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication.

SOURCE: Secretary Pompeo Delivers Remarks to the Media

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Featured image is from Jared Rodriguez/Truthout

The infamous Herman Goering had this quote at the time of the Nuremberg Trials in the wake of World War II [1]:

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, It is the Leaders of the country  who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. it works the same in any country.”  (emphasis added)

One can fast forward to some of our own nation’s so called ‘Wars’ after World War II: Korea, Vietnam and of course Iraq. In all of these instances the public was sold, hook, line and sinker, the fear card that our entire way of life would come to an end if we did not fight. And fight we did, or should I say in the case of Iraq ‘And attack we did!’ This ‘guns and butter’ approach only succeeded, each and every time, of helping to further the slow timed bankruptcy process, both fiscally and morally.

Eugene Jarecki made one of the greatest documentaries in 2005 entitled so appropriately ‘Why We Fight’. This is a must see for all Americans, especially our high school kids. The film is that powerful! Three years after his film, Jarecki wrote a great book The American Way of War, covering the how and why our corrupt leaders do what they do. Folks, it has always been and will always be about serving The Empire, what this writer always refers to as The Military Industrial Empire.

In Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick‘s The Untold History of the United States the creation of what was named The Cold War was by this same empire… the military industrial one. Goering’s quote from above scores it all.

The ‘sheep’ need to be led so that the uber rich who run things can maintain their place at the head of the world’s table. It was never really about Russia or China or Iraq or now Iran. No, it was and is always about DUH MONEY! Marine Major General Smedley Butler was correct in his 1935 essay War is a Racket – The money talks and few wounded walk.

The sad reality is to look at this ‘Teeedle Dum and Tweedle Dee’ two party system which has handcuffed our citizenry for so long… and will always! Through the embedded media they will rant and rave at each other for the cameras.. a ‘Food Fight’ by mostly millionaires or wanabee ones.

The Democrats will stand firm and tell the suckers how they ‘Will fight for you’, and then sell us out time and time again. The other party, more dastardly and yes, much more dangerous, will promise to protect the suckers from all interlopers, and how ‘Family Values’ are secured inside of the flag… the flag they hold hostage.

Meanwhile, both phony and hypocritical parties laugh all the way to the bank and future lobbyist or corporate positions after they serve. It is always been we working stiffs who have to pay the bills… for obscene military spending or other corporate gifts for the empire.

That is why we fight… and die!!

Note 

[1] This quote from Hermann Goering during the course of the Nuremburg Trials, was not part of the trial records. The quote was recorded in a conversation between Goering awith prison psychologist and U.S. Army Captain Gustave M. Gilbert which took place in the prison. 

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

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

Featured image is from Pete Linforth/Pixabay

Cuba denounced a decision by the United States to blacklist the island nation for allegedly contributing to human trafficking as based on “lies and slander.”

The U.S. State Department’s annual report on human trafficking released Thursday added Cuba and Saudi Arabia to the list of countries allegedly “not doing enugh” to prevent human trafficking and warned sanctions could follow. To add insult to injury, the U.S. also accused Cuba of using its overseas medical program for trafficking.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel rejected the claims on Twitter, writing,

“More lies and slander by #US in ranking #Cuba in the lowest tier of trafficking in persons report, attacking Cuban medical cooperation, (an) example of solidarity, humanity and noble and legitimate collaboration between countries of the South #SomosCuba #SomosContinuidad,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel wrote on Twitter.

This is what conservative ideas prevailing in #US mistake for trafficking in persons. We denounce this immoral, lying and perverse accusation.#SomosCuba
Cuban internationalist doctors: slaves only to the love for othershttps://t.co/r8MFKCwqrK

— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) June 20, 2019

“This is the conservative ideas that prevail in the #US, confusing people. We denounce this immoral, lying and perverse accusation. #WeAreCuba. Cuban internationalist doctors: slaves only of love for each other.”

Cuba’s international medical program Operation Miracle travels the world offering free medical treatment to impoverished and needy communities. They have been praised by numerous international organizations for their selfless dedication to their patients and their rapid response to areas struck by disaster.

To discredit the program by accusing it of aiding human traffickers would also, by association, discredit the hundreds of surgeons who have worked to care for Mozambique’s cyclone victims, Bolivia’s most remote villagers, Puerto Rican hurricane victims, Ecuadorean earthquake survivors, and Chernobyl’s cancer patients.

Diaz-Canel denounced it as a ploy to increase sanctions against the Caribbean country​​​​​​​. The United Nations has denounced the compounding number of sanctions imposed by the United States as a violation of human rights and international law.

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In spite of the “writ” not having been “dropped” Canada is already in full election mode.  Of course politicians are always electioneering as their main purpose once in power is to stay in power in order to reap its rewards and benefits.  Otherwise, instead of politicians running the country we could simply let the bureaucrats do their uncelebrated mundane work of the daily running of the country.  Unfortunately it is not that simple as the rules and policies the bureaucracy follows are put out by various political parties – massaged and manipulated over time – and not  put out on the basis of “universal values” or “constitutional values” whatever they may be.  In the meantime electioneering has started with the many policies, plans, promises, platitudes, and homilies being announced for consumption by the incumbents and wannabes.

Within domestic affairs and identity politics are many topics used to shape and steer discussions in attempts to sway the popular will.  What is seldom discussed – and very little understood, are the actions and belief systems that really underlie our society.  In a broad perspective Canada’s position as a neoliberal, austerity imposing, capitalist member of the western elite, the western U.S. sponsored empire, is seldom if ever questioned.

It is seldom discussed because the true powers that be – the elite powers of those within the Washington consensus group of institutions – the bankers, financial officers, and corporate managers of the large private and public businesses and institutions – do not want it discussed.  They do not want ‘democracy’ to be more than a superficial status.  Their control of monetary policy, their centralized control of the media steers the world the way they want it to operate and be perceived, making our democratic institutions essentially a rubber stamp for their economic dominance.

Our institutions operate within the parameters acceptable to the corporate greed towards ever increasing profits at the expense of the global environment, and at the expense of the global citizenry.  While science has long warned about climate change and environmental pollution of all kinds – a very real occurrence – even those who pay attention to it are so entwined within societies’ structures that very little is done about  these scientific concerns.  Along with that, part of the same underlying paradigm are increasingly vast disparities in income and wealth levels both domestically and in other countries.  A small group of super elites control vast amounts of wealth and thus power, generally working together to secure their realm.

If this broad if somewhat short generalized view is used as the lens through which to view Canada’s political parties, there are rather few underlying differences between the parties as seldom if ever are the underlying factors questioned..

Essentially it all comes down to maintaining the status quo of western financial dominance of the world, its resources and people.  The Liberals and Conservatives both actively support the military industrial complex that is the not so hidden fist keeping – or trying to – control of the world’s governments.  Perhaps they present it differently, the Conservatives wanting to put the military out to “punch above its weight” while the Liberals soften the blow with “rule of law” and “peacekeeping forces,” both serving the empire well.  Few question it – from Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria to Ukraine, Canada willingly supports the empire.  Venezuela reveals the ultimate ugliness of it all as Canada has for decades – with notables such as Ben Rowswell and Allan Culham (former ambassadors), and Chrystia Freeland (current Foreign Minister) – openly advocating the overthrow of a duly elected government.  How democratic!

Israel serves as another example of an empire under non-democratic control.  A government that denies twenty per cent of its population the same civic status as the ethnic religious majority, that guards 1.8 million people in an open air prison on survival rations only, and that has created a series of militarily ruled or controlled bantustans is not democratic.  Yet there is no Canadian political party that decries this situation, all fearful of the domestic religious vote (Christian and Jewish) and the repercussions of not supporting the empire’s outpost in the Middle East.  For the latter it is truly not so much fear of what might happen but an overwhelming blind willingness to support the dominant power of the west.

All major parties – Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats, and Greens – support the fully outdated position of wanting a two state position, while Israel continues to ignore all those dead positions and continues building illegal settlements on occupied territory while the rest of the world turns away.  Israel is not the only place where Canadians uphold the status of the west’s military control of wealth and resources.

Throughout Africa, through much of the Middle East, Canada’s military-business connections help maintain the extraction of wealth through current supra-national corporate models of governance.  So called “free trade” agreements, onerous World Bank predatory lending, and IMF “structural adjustment programs” (debt and more debt) maintains control of many governments and many supposedly sovereign economies.  In essence, globalization is about controlling the world’s wealth while guarding the people – the workers, labourers – behind sovereign borders.  Canada is in full partnership with all this.

Blowback – refugees, poverty, and the environment

Obviously all is not well with globalization as millions of people attempt to escape the worst of its violent dangers and impositions.  The large displacement of people in the Middle East and Africa  is placing pressure on Europe as refugees continue to arrive en masse when escaping domestic mayhem.  The same holds true in the Americas as thousands of Hispanic/indigenous people attempt to travel to the U.S. in order to escape the violence and corruption and despotism at home.  Most of that violence is caused by the economic impositions of globalization combined with the history of U.S. interventions to control governments that objected to U.S.corporate dominance.

Blowback from globalization also has an impact on the Canadian domestic scene.  Hyped up fears of terrorism has increased the powers of the security state (with much learned from Israel’s control of its Palestinian population) and increased the unjustified glorification of the Canadian military both through the media and with a larger budget.  Canada is a member of the “five eyes”, the family members inheriting the British empire and who now share information and security methodologies.  Another form of blowback are the  heightened fear of terrorism ad “other” – mainly focussed on refugees with a Muslim background but extending out to the created fears generated by identity politics.  These fears and prejudices are used in different ways to control the domestic electorate, a diversion from the reality of the overall non-democratic governance of the military-financial- corporate powers.

Two other perspectives can view this same phenomenon – income disparity/poverty and global environmental change.

Most everyone pays lip service to poverty.  Many offer solutions on a small scale through NGOs acting on small targeted goals in specific areas – actions that certainly aid a small number of people but in no way address the source of poverty.  Musicians sing about it, politicians talk about it, the media keeps us focused on these feel good/do-good attempts without addressing the underlying causes (and note, poverty does not equate to terrorism).  Until the base structures of western globalization are deconstructed or contained (or collapse) poverty will continue its destructive pathways – malnutrition, starvation, poor health, serfdom, wage slave labour, exploitation et al.  Poverty, other than small domestic pockets, many of indigenous people, does not register on Canada’s domestic political scene.  However climate change and global warming do have an impact.

At this point it is mainly different parties and different jurisdictions arguing about how to control carbon output using some form of establishment acceptable monetary initiatives (cap and trade, carbon tax).  Extrapolating from current trends all that money manoeuvering will have little impact due to the nature of our profit oriented consumer culture.  As one small but important factor consider Canada’s export of garbage, plastic waste, and e-waste to poorer less developed countries in Southeast Asia.  Those outlets now are closed and very little of our waste/garbage is actually recycled or reused.  Most is incinerated at 1400 degrees celsius with the subsequent volatile gases dispersing through the atmosphere.

Canadian consumer culture continues its money habits of purchasing stuff, and “planned obsolescence stuff” continuing the degradation of the environment both from chemical pollution and carbon induced warming.  Global warming, while obviously important and becoming more and more a political and media talking point hides the dangers of thousand of chemical products behind a smokescreen (quite literally).

Canadians who think they are “green” and want to eliminate poverty, need to consider the following. Are you really willing to accept the huge changes necessary in order to achieve a clean sustainable world –  i.e., far less consumption, less travel, less stuff, no more debt purchases?  The latter is very difficult because while the wealth of the top elites has risen dramatically, wages have stagnated over the past several decades.  Simply using the “3 Rs” will not do it unless the reduce aspect is taken to its necessary full extension.

Consider also Canada’s military.  Can you recognize our actions in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and maybe soon Venezuela and Iran as being part of U.S. corporate elites striving for full control?  Do you support Canada’s role within the globalization paradigm of controlling other countries economies through predatory financial practices, up to and including the use of mercenaries to protect corporations against indigenous protests?

Do you support the U.S. military actions – overt and covert – used to maintain the economic dominance of the super elites and their global corporations?  Do you support the many western interventions in the Middle East considering the terrorists we are supposedly fighting have been used, supplied, and trained in part by western military and political establishments?  More broadly, ask what role the 800+ military bases, the dozen or so carrier groups, play in attempting to subordinate the rest of the world to our non-sustainable demands.  The U.S. military is the largest institutional user of oil in the world.  In 2007 it ranked as the 35th largest sovereign user, and ranks 3rd globally on a per capita basis.  Canada is a large part of the U.S. empire and plays a large role in creating the poverty, terror, and environmental disasters around the world through our support of their military adventurism.

In other words if you support the military as it is currently used, you achieve nothing against poverty and your green colour is a veneer over the actual economic life style choices you make.

The veneer is readily maintained by mainstream media, the vast majority of which is owned and financially controlled by the military-financial-corporate elites. It combines a wilful ignorance of our predations with massive amounts of diversions.  One of the main diversions includes all the propaganda associated with the various wars of control and the manipulation of the terrorist “threat”.  The diversions extend well beyond through  all aspects of consumerism – the entertainment of movies, film, television, the internet in all its aspects through to major sports activities, and on to leisure and holiday consumption.  As corporate profits rise and wages stagnate, consumers rely heavily on debt to achieve the advertised/propagandized ideals of the good life.  All the debt, trillions of dollars, simply feeds more money and power to the controllers of a corporate financialized economy.

Back to Canadian political parties

In Canada, these issues present a serious problem as to which party or candidate to support.  The Liberals and Conservatives are essentially opposite sides of the same coin, both supporters of the global status quo as envisioned by the corporate powers.  The supposedly “left” New Democrats similarly follow this status quo, are not very green, and tend to move to the right once the political dollars become a more central interest.  That leaves the actual Greens, although they are not as green as they would like to be perceived – support for U.S. actions, support for Israeli actions, with no real action plan regarding environmental changes addressing our military supported consumer society lowers their credentials as a truly ‘green‘ party.

The Liberals quashed their election reform agenda after realizing it could negatively affect their majority control in parliament.  In opposing moves they announce a climate “emergency” then a day later approve a 12-14 billion dollar pipeline project to move tar sands – diluted bitumen or dilbit, but not oil – to an ecologically sensitive coastline.  Given Canada’s current economic-political fight with China, it is a bit ridiculous to think China will buy more of our dirty oil.  Economic health as determined by a high energy consumer economy does not go together with a good environment.

The Conservatives acquiesced on the lack of election reform for the same reason.  They are pro big oil, frequent climate change deniers although a recent policy statement recognized that, yes, after all these years of working against the idea, global warming is happening.  They offer no real solutions other than a variant on the inefficient cap and trade idea, but with no stated costs or implementation factors.

The two smaller parties offer little.  The NDP have failed to truly distinguish themselves from the two larger parties, creating policy positions frequently accepted and adopted (if not implemented) by the Liberals and for which the Conservatives cry “socialism” over.  The Greens have some initiatives in the right direction but with their support of the military and of government attempts to change foreign governments, they have yet to create a policy that will change the momentum/inertia of a debt ridden, consumer based, media biased, military/corporate society.

Other than perhaps voting for the lessor evil of the group, a spoiled ballot or no vote at all are the better options.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Concentration camp (noun): a place in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. -Oxford English Dictionary

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has ignited a firestorm of criticism, from both the left and the right as well as the mainstream media, for calling US immigrant detention centers “concentration camps.” To her credit, Ocasio-Cortez has refused to back down, citing academic experts and blasting the Trump administration for forcibly holding undocumented migrants “where they are brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.” She also cited history.

“The US ran concentration camps before, when we rounded up Japanese people during World War II,” she tweeted. “It is such a shameful history that we largely ignore it. These camps occur throughout history.”

Indeed they do. What follows is an overview of US civilian concentration camps through the centuries. Prisoner-of-war camps, as horrific as they have been, have been excluded due to their legal status under the Geneva Conventions, and for brevity’s sake.

Trail of Tears

Half a century before President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law in 1830, a young Virginia governor named Thomas Jefferson embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing as solutions to what would later be called the “Indian problem.” In 1780 Jefferson wrote that “if we are to wage a campaign against these Indians, the end proposed should be their extermination, or their removal beyond the lakes of the Illinois River.” However, it wasn’t until Jackson that “emigration depots” were introduced as an integral part of official US Indian removal policy. Tens of thousands of Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Ponca, Winnebago and other indigenous peoples were forced from their homes at gunpoint and marched to prison camps in Alabama and Tennessee. Overcrowding and a lack of sanitation led to outbreaks of measles, cholera, whooping cough, dysentery and typhus, while insufficient food and water, along with exposure to the elements, caused tremendous death and suffering.

Thousands of men, women and children died of cold, hunger and illness in camps and during death marches, including the infamous Trail of Tears, of hundreds and sometimes even a thousand miles (1,600 km). This genocidal relocation was pursued, Jackson explained, as the “benevolent policy” of the US government, and because Native Americans “have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits nor the desire of improvement” required to live in peace and freedom. “Established in the midst of a… superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority… they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and long disappear,” the man who Donald Trump has called his favorite president said in his 1833 State of the Union address.

The Long Walk

Decades later, when the Sioux and other indigenous people resisted white invasion and theft of their lands, Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsey responded with yet another call for genocide and ethnic cleansing. “The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state,” he declared in 1862, offering a bounty of $200 — over $5,000 in today’s money — for the scalp of each fleeing or resisting Indian. Around 1,700 Dakota women, children and elderly were force-marched into a concentration camp built on a sacred spiritual site. Many didn’t make it there. According to Mendota Dakota Tribal Chair Jim Anderson, “during that march a lot of our relatives died. They were killed by settlers; when they went through the small towns, babies were taken out of mothers arms and killed and women… were shot or bayoneted.” Those who survived faced winter storms, diseases and hunger. Many did not make it through the winter.

Two years later, Civil War general and notorious Indian killer James Henry Carleton forced 10,000 Navajo people to march 300 miles (480 km) in the dead of winter from their homeland in the Four Corners region to a concentration camp at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. This followed a scorched earth campaign in which famed frontiersman Kit Carson tried to starve the life out of the Navajo, hundreds of whom died or were enslaved by white settlers and rival tribes during what became known as The Long Walk. Those who survived the death march to Fort Sumner faced starvation, lack of wood for heating and cooking during the bitterly cold winters and ravaging diseases. Daily depredations included a ban on prayers, spiritual ceremonies and songs. It is estimated that some 1,500 people died while interned at Fort Sumner, many of them infants and children.

Contraband

At about the same time, the Union Army was re-capturing freed slaves throughout the South and pressing them into hard labor in disease-ridden “contraband camps,” as escaped and freed slaves were considered captured enemy property.

“There is much sickness, suffering and destitution,” wrote James E. Yeatman of the Western Sanitary Commission after visiting one such camp near Natchez, Mississippi in 1863. “There was not one house that I visited where death had not entered… Seventy-five had died in a single day… some had returned to their masters on account of their suffering.”

At one camp in Young’s Point, Louisiana, Yeatman reported “frightful sickness and death,” with 30-50 people dying each day from disease and starvation. One camp near Natchez, Mississippi held as many as 4,000 black refugees in the summer of 1863; by fall 2,000 had already perished, most of them children infected with smallpox and measles.

‘Benevolent Assimilation’ in the ‘Suburbs of Hell’

With indigenous peoples no longer standing in the way of its “manifest destiny,” the US set its sights on becoming a first-rate imperial power through overseas conquest and expansion. After overthrowing Hawaii’s monarchy and annexing its islands, war was waged against Spain, resulting in the capture of the first US colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. When Filipinos resisted, US commanders responded with tremendous cruelty. Echoing Andrew Jackson, President William McKinley called this the “benevolent assimilation” of the Philippines into the burgeoning US empire.

As General “Hell-Roaring” Jake Smith ordered his troops to “kill everyone over 10” in Samar, future president William Howard Taft, the US colonial administrator of the archipelago, instituted a “pacification” campaign that combined the counterinsurgency tactics of torture and summary execution with deportation and imprisonment in concentration camps, or reconcentrados, that one commandant referred to as the  “suburbs of hell.” General J. Franklin Bell, looking forward to his new post as warden of the notorious Batangas reconcentrado, declared that “all consideration and regard for the inhabitants of this place cease from the day I become commander.”

He meant it. In December 1901 Bell gave the people of Batangas two weeks to leave their homes and report to the camp; everything they left behind — their homes, farms, livestock, food stores and tools — was stolen or destroyed by US troops. People who refused to report to the camp were shot, as were random prisoners whenever insurgents killed an American. Conditions were beyond horrific in many reconcentrados. Hunger, disease and torture, which included waterboarding, were rampant. In some camps, as many as 20 percent of internees died. In order to save food, 1,300 Batangas prisoners were forced to dig mass graves before being gunned down 20 at a time and buried in them. “To keep them prisoners would necessitate the placing of [US] soldiers on short rations,” one soldier explained. “There was nothing to do but kill them.”

Concentration Camps for US Citizens

During both world wars, thousands of German nationals, German-Americans and Germans from Latin American nations were imprisoned in concentration camps across the United States. However, their race and relatively high level of assimilation saved most German-Americans from internment, and conditions were much better than they had been in previous US camps. Japanese-Americans weren’t so lucky. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, under which all people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were rounded up and imprisoned in dozens of civilian assembly centers (where they were often forced to sleep in crowded, manure-covered horse stables), relocation centers, military bases, and “citizen isolation centers” — harsh desert prison camps where “problem inmates,” including those who refused to pledge allegiance to the United States, were jailed. Conditions varied by camp, but overcrowding, lack of indoor plumbing, fuel shortages and food rationing were common. Many of the camps were located in remote, scorpion- and snake-infested deserts.

Incredibly, thousands of Japanese-Americans volunteered to fight for the country that was imprisoning them for nothing more than their ethnicity. These were some of the most highly-decorated US troops in the war. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court sided with the government in three cases brought by Japanese-Americans challenging the constitutionality of their detention, and an American public caught in the grip of racist “yellow peril” hysteria acquiesced to the blatantly unconstitutional mass imprisonment. Internment would last the duration of the war, sometimes longer, with many detainees discovering their homes, businesses and property were stolen or destroyed when they were finally released. President Ronald Reagan would formally apologize and sign off on $20,000 reparation payments to former internees in 1988.

In addition to Japanese and some Germans, a smaller number of Italians and Italian-Americans were also imprisoned during World War II. So were the indigenous Aleuts of Alaska, who were forcibly evacuated before their villages were burned to the ground to prevent any invading Japanese forces from using them. Nearly 900 Aleuts were imprisoned in abandoned factories and other derelict facilities without plumbing, electricity or toilets; decent food, potable water and warm winter clothing were in short supply. Nearly 10 percent of the detainees died in the camps. Others were enslaved and forced to hunt fur seals.

During the early years of the Cold War, Congress passed the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 over President Harry Truman’s veto, which led to the construction of six concentration camps that were meant to hold communists, peace activists, civil rights leaders and others deemed a threat in the event the government declared a state of emergency. The act was upheld by the Supreme Court during the McCarthy/Red Scare years but in the 1960s the high court ruled  that provisions requiring communists to register with the government and banning them from obtaining passports or government employment were unconstitutional. The camps, which were never used, were closed by the end of the decade.

From Japan to Vietnam

In a little-known atrocity, at least 3,000 Okinawans died from malaria and other diseases in camps set up by US troops after they conquered the Japanese islands during fierce fighting in 1945. During and after the war, Okinawans’ land and homes were seized at gunpoint and their houses and farms were bulldozed or burned to the ground to make way for dozens of US military bases. Some 300,000 civilians were forced into these camps; survivor Kenichiro Miyazato later recalled how “too many people died, so the bodies had to be buried in a single mass grave.”

For sheer scale, no US concentration camp regime could match the Strategic Hamlet Program. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy approved the forcible relocation, often at gunpoint, of 8.5 million South Vietnamese peasants into over 7,000 fortified camps surrounded by barbed wire, minefields and armed guards. This was done to starve the growing Viet Cong insurgency of food, shelter and new recruits. However, few hearts and minds were won and many were indeed lost as US and South Vietnamese troops burned people’s homes before their very eyes before marching them away from their land, and with it their deepest spiritual bonds with their revered ancestors.

War on Terrorists and Migrants

Although prisoner of war camps are not included in this survey of US concentration camps, the open-ended global war against terrorism started by the George W. Bush administration after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States has seen a blurring of lines between combatant and civilian detention. According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff for Bush-era secretary of state Colin Powell, most of the men and boys held at the Guantánamo Bay military prison were innocent but held for political reasons or in an attempt to glean a “mosaic” of intelligence. Innocent civilians were also held in military prisons, some of them secret, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Many detainees were tortured and died in US custody. Some of these men have been held without charge or trial for as many as 17 years, while some deemed too innocent to charge remain imprisoned at GITMO despite being cleared for release for many years.

Now it’s the migrants’ turn. And despite the howling protestations of those who commit or justify the crime of tearing infants and children from their parents’ arms and imprisoning them in freezing cages that Trump officials have euphemistically compared to “summer camp,” there is no doubt that concentration camps are in operation on US soil once again. The Trump administration’s attempt to portray child imprisonment as something much happier instantly recalls World War II propaganda films showing content Japanese-Americans benefiting from life behind barbed wire. Actor George Takei, who was interned with his family for the duration of the war, was anything but content. “I know what concentration camps are,” he tweeted amid the current controversy. “I was inside two of them. In America. And yes, we are operating such camps again.”

Takei noted one big difference between then and now: “At least during the internment of Japanese-Americans, I and other children were not stripped from our parents,” he wrote, adding that “‘at least during the internment’ are words I thought I’d never utter.”

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Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based freelance author and editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal. His work, which focuses on issues of war and peace and human rights, is archived at www.brettwilkins.com.

India has recently voted in support of Israel at the United Nations (UN) for the first time in its post-independence history. At the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on June 6 she voted with Israel to deny a Palestinian non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Shahed, an observer status.

To many this may appear innocuous. Israel has persuaded India that Shahed is a terrorist organisation and not, as it claims to be, an NGO fighting for the human rights of Palestinians.

But under threat of genocide is not survival contingent upon resistance? Why not give Shahed an observer status? How dangerous can that be?

Instead, New Delhi chose to break a long standing post-independence position, which is to be on the side of the two-state settlement, viewing both Israel and Palestine as equals. Even before independence, the Mahatma himself had voiced concern about the return of the Jews to Palestine. In a letter to the Jewish-German philosopher, Martin Buber, he asked why the Arabs in Palestine should be evacuated because of a civil war in Europe or a Biblical promise of a National Homeland in Palestine? This was the stand that Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, perpetuated in his foreign policy. He refused to recognise Israel as long as there was no Palestinian state as envisaged in the 1948 demarcation of historic Palestine.

Netanyahu and Modi (image right)

As such, until recently no diplomatic ties existed between the two countries. Today, however, there is an embassy of Israel in New Delhi.

It was then just a matter of time before a definitive position would surface, a pragmatic one that would consider Indian interests before any moral high ground. But whether Gandhi’s position will be completely abandoned is yet to be seen. Mahatma Gandhi, himself, was not against the notion of a Jewish homeland. He questioned why Palestine, a centuries-old state still very much populated, was the location of choice.

Indeed, currently, supporting Palestinian statehood under the two-state solution is the only ethical way forward for any country . But geopolitical and economic imperatives will, ultimately, be too compelling. India is making strides in economic growth although current trends are indicating a plateauing because the real economy is not growing fast enough to make consumers of the poor, numbering hundreds of millions, who can help propel the Indian economy into the big league. Foregoing opportunities offered by the US and Israel for a socialist-humanitarian stance is looking to be a growing economic burden. India’s flirtation with neo-liberal capitalism under Narendra Modi, while not making a pro-Israel policy preference necessary, an economic partnership with the US, however, necessitates it. That geoeconomically India is an American ally is borne out by New Delhi’s demonetisation exercise. It is a US inspired move often blamed for the economic slowdown now afflicting the country.

Meanwhile, the US under xenophobic and belligerent Donald Trump — who is attempting a feat unsurpassed with regard an apartheid Jewish state on Palestinian soil, promising a “deal of the century” peace plan — is urgently trying to patch together a pro-Israel coalition of disparate nations that will allow the deal to pass with as little fuss as possible, of course, at the expense of the Palestinians who are not being consulted. Moving to the right with a little arm-twisting by Washington, has some political commentators in India applauding. From their viewpoint the past is hypocrisy when all the while India has not stopped talking to Israel, the pace of which gained tempo under Narashimha Rao, India’s 9^th prime minister.

While voting in support of Israel is new, India took the first step in a pro-Israel direction in the UN in 2015. Then, New Delhi abstained from voting in the UN Human Rights Council for a resolution critical of Israel. Tel Aviv was being censured for having perpetrated inexcusable violence against the Palestinians during her so-called Operation Protective Edge war on Gaza in 2014. India refused to condemn Israel for slaughtering more than a thousand Palestinians almost half of whom were children!

To friends of Palestine a pro-Israel position appears to be the start of an unholy alliance where ethics and morality are no longer front and centre for India. Security has become the imperative with Israel now the third supplier of military equipment to India after Russia and the US.

More importantly, it is noteworthy that India under Modi is part of the emerging “Quad” of nations — US, Australia, Japan and India — in the Indo-Pacific set up to counter China even while it is part of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa organisation (BRICS) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), with China. This foreign policy stance is referred to by Indian commentators as a pro-India policy with priority for Indian interests. The moral high ground vis-a-vis Palestine is being weighed against the demands of self-interest.

The point is for Palestine there is no way other nations can support her effectively outside of the United Nations given that the state has effectively been legally disappeared. Until a solution is afforded to her in the way of a state restored, Palestine can only be supported within the UN construct. As such a pro-Israel move in the UN, such as India’s, is a dramatic shift in foreign policy, a move which cannot act as precedent for other Palestine-friendly countries.

It cannot be denied that India must look after her citizens first. But consequences of such and similar actions in the UN cannot be ignored.

For all its seeming impotence, the UN is a world body. Through it the voice of every member nation be they rich or poor, large or small, powerful or weak can be heard. For this reason, for Palestine, it is an enormous disadvantage when friends desert them. Palestine needs the support of friendly nations in the UN in the struggle for a state. Palestine was stolen from under the feet of its people. The time has come for  Palestine to be returned to Palestinians for which supporting the Palestinian war of resistance is obligatory.

And, human decency dictates that any move supporting the position of a terrorist state, which Israel indisputably is, and an occupying power too, is not merely morally reprehensible but unethical and just plain wrong.

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Askiah Adam is Executive Director of the International Movement for a JUST World (JUST).

Featured image is from India TV

Sixty years ago, Britain won a long-forgotten war in Oman, setting the special relationship between the two countries that is still being boosted today. 

The anniversary falls as the head of the British army recently visited Oman, and as the two countries signed a “Comprehensive Joint Declaration on Enduring Friendship” and a new Joint Defence Agreement. Last year, the two cooperated on the UK’s largest military exercise in the Middle East in 20 years.

The UK’s growing support for Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos, is as extensive as it is ignored in the British media. But a key question looms: who will succeed the sultan after his death, and will London then continue this special relationship?

‘Not a great deal of hope’

The 1957-9 war in central Oman defeated an uprising threatening the rule of Sultan Said bin Taimur, one of the most repressive regimes ever seen in the Middle East. Declassified files show Britain’s chief diplomat in the region, George Middleton, recognising that: “The condition of the people is miserable, the Sultan is unpopular, there is no central administration … and, under the present regime, not a great deal of hope for the future.”

But that didn’t stop Britain from coming to the aid of the sultan, who kept hundreds of slaves at his palace in Salalah, deploying the Royal Air Force (RAF) to bomb the rebels from the air “to show the population the power of weapons at our disposal” and to convince them that “resistance will be fruitless and lead only to hardship”, the files show.

Former prime minister Harold Macmillan approved the bombing of water supplies and agricultural gardens – civilian targets that constitute war crimes – to “deter dissident villages from gathering their crops” and to promote “denial of water supply to selected villages by air action”. The Special Air Service was also deployed in late 1958 and captured the rebels’ final stronghold the following year.

The rebellion that broke out a few years later in Dhofar province in southern Oman also prompted British intervention. The Dhofar uprising was “an indigenous rebellion against the repression and neglect” of the sultan, the Foreign Office later privately noted.

With barely any schools or health facilities in the country, even by 1970 it was forbidden to smoke in public, to play football, to wear glasses, or to talk to anyone for more than 15 minutes. The sultan’s response to the uprising was to use even greater force – largely from British officers, who controlled Oman’s military.

A giant British base

When the British realised the sultan might not win the Dhofar war, their military advisers in Muscat overthrew him in a palace coup in 1970 and installed in power his son, Qaboos, who has remained there ever since. Oman became, in effect, a giant British military and intelligence base.

Files leaked by Edward Snowden show that Britain’s GCHQ has a network of three spy bases in Oman – codenamed Timpani, Guitar and Clarinet – which tap in to various undersea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Gulf.

These bases intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic. The information is then shared with the US National Security Agency.

Britain has just established a large, new military base at the Duqm port complex in central Oman, which will house the two 65,000-tonneaircraft carriers being built for the Royal Navy. This will provide “a strategically important and permanent maritime base east of Suez, but outside of the Gulf” and “serve as a staging post for UK Carrier Strike Group deployments across the Indian Ocean”.

A new Omani-British Joint Training Area is also being established in Oman this year to facilitate a permanent British army presence in the region. The relationship is solidified, as ever, by arms exports: Oman imported $2.4bn worth of arms during 2014-18, of which the UK was the largest supplier.

Economic interests

British commercial interests in Oman are also growing, especially in oil and gas, which accounts for 30 percent of Oman’s GDP. Shell has a 34 percent interest in the Petroleum Development Corporation, which manages the country’s oil, while BP has a 60 percent interest in the massive Khazzan gas project, in which it has invested $16bn.

These interests are tying the UK still further to the sultan’s regime, which is authoritarian and repressive even by Gulf standards. Political parties are banned and political meetings are likely to result in arrests. Although Oman has elections to its lower house, the body is largely toothless.

Sultan Qaboos formally holds the positions of prime minister, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, chairman of the central bank, and minister of defence, foreign affairs and finance.

While Oman has made major economic progress in recent decades, portraying it as a benign dictatorship is misleading. In 2014, a UN special rapporteur described a “pervasive culture of silence and fear affecting anyone who wants to speak and work for reforms in Oman”.

Last year, Oman introduced a new penal code that contains harsh penalties against free speech and other rights, and gives sweeping powers to authorities. It provides for jailing anyone who publishes material that poses “a challenge to the rights of the Sultan and his prerogatives, or disgraces his person” or which “undermine the stature of the State”.

Human rights abuses

Britain’s active support for the sultan’s regime was confirmed in 2017, when Middle East Eye revealed that the Police Service of Northern Ireland had run programmes training Oman’s police, military and special forces in how to manage strikes and protests.

London remains silent on Oman’s human rights abuses, while stressing their “exceptionally close relationship”. Indeed, when the recently-sacked UK defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, was in Oman in February 2019, he praised the “statesmanship, the knowledge, the wisdom” of the sultan, even describing him as a “visionary”.

Alan Duncan, a British foreign minister, is a regular guest of the sultan and has visited Oman 24 times since 2000, according to the British parliament’s register of financial interests. These trips have been mainly paid by the sultanate. Three visits have taken place since Duncan became minister of state in July 2016.

But will Britain maintain its special relationship when the current sultan dies? Qaboos, who is 78 and has suffered from colon cancer since 2014, has no heirs and has not formally designated a successor. Oman’s Basic Law stipulates that the next leader must be a male descendant of Sayyid Turki bin Said bin Sultan, the sultan of Muscat and Oman from 1871-88.

The two most commonly mentioned frontrunners are Qaboos’s cousin, Sayyid Asaad bin Tariq al Said, and the latter’s son, Taimur.

Business as usual

Asaad, the deputy prime minister, regularly meets foreign diplomats on behalf of Qaboos and is believed to be the most likely successor. Asaad was, like Qaboos himself, trained at the UK’s military training centre at Sandhurst in the 1970s before becoming an army commander.

Taimur, who is just 39, was described in a US State Department cable, revealed by Wikileaks, as “personable, affable and informal”. He studied for four years in the UK, in Brighton, Galashiels in Scotland and London.

The UK will be using its connections with the coterie surrounding its current placeman in Muscat to help ensure more of the same upon Qaboos’s passing.

Britain’s exit from the European Union is prompting the British government to seek ever closer relations with its longstanding allies in the Gulf. This will continue to be at the expense of promoting positive political and economic change in the region.

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Mark Curtis is a historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and international development and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam.

Last April marked a special anniversary for Cuba but one that we should all reflect upon given the current events in Latin America, particularly in Venezuela. In mid-April 1961 three cities in Cuba were bombed at the same time from the air. Immediately the US government claimed that Cuban defectors carried out the action with Cuban planes and pilots. The media quickly “confirmed the actions”.

These were false flag attacks organized by the US.

In a large mass rally in Havana the next day Fidel Castro pronounced a very important speech where he called John Kennedy and the media liars. That was the speech where Fidel declared the “socialist character” of the Cuban revolution.

US interventions, military and parliamentary coups have been relentless before and since in Latin America. Often they are preceded by outright disinformation in order to misrepresent events and demonize the target government as a prelude to legitimize a more aggressive intervention.

Fast-forward to the 21^st Century, pan quickly over the Middle East, and zoom into our Western hemisphere today and you will see Venezuela. Not the country that most Venezuelans want you to see, but the country that the US government and its allies – Canada at the forefront – want you to see. Reportedly, one that needs a regime change.

The level of disinformation about Venezuela has been widely exposed by political analysts like Dan Kovalik and media groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), which indicated that corporate media in the United States has undertaken “a full-scale marketing campaign for regime change in Venezuela”.

In an article last April Time magazine said, “Venezuelans are starving for information”. Venezuelanalysis.com writers responded that, “Creative reporting about Venezuela is ‘the world’s most lucrative fictional genre’“, and it goes on to show how there are three private TV channels, a satellite provider that covers FOX News, CNN and BBC. Anti-government print media is also widely accessible as well as online outlets.

The truth is that people outside Venezuela are starving for reliable information.

The New York Times printed, “Venezuela’s Collapse Is the Worst Outside of War in Decades” with barely a reference to the impact of US sanctions and the billions of dollars stolen from Venezuela as if irrelevant.

Perhaps there is no conventional war in Venezuela, but there is a devastating economic war imposed by unilateral coercive measures, media warfare or infowar. Venezuelans call it guerra mediática. In 2009 Chavez even spoke of “media dictatorship.”

It kills people just the same by virtue of curtailing vital trade, investment and imports in a capitalist world that reacts and panics very quickly at a minor sign of insecurity. Capital flees, leaving the country at the mercy of political imperial attacks.

The US government and its embedded corporate media become the jugglers of disinformation, or equivalently they display what I call a choreography of disinformation.

When it comes to Venezuela papers like the Washington Post, the NYT, the Globe and Mail and others are no different from tabloids. How else would you interpret the NYT information that Hezbollah is in Venezuela? It is a dangerous insinuation just because the Minister of Industry of Venezuela is of Lebanese descent and his great-uncle allegedly was associated with the Ba’athist Party of Iraq. The NYT would never make such an outlandish insinuation that the neo-Fascists are in Canada because Chrystia Freeland had a distant relative associated with Nazism in the Ukraine.

If we skip over the most obvious media lies, the bulk of disinformation can be reduced to two main categories of accusations laid against Nicolas Maduro: 1) Maduro is not a legitimate president; and 2) Maduro has broken the constitutional order of Venezuela.

Is Maduro an illegitimate president? Let’s remember that Maduro obtained irrefutably almost 68% of the valid votes on May 20^th, and that Juan Guaidó appointed himself as “interim president” in a street rally.

Further, an analysis of the electoral process based on the established international standards shows that all the recommended elements for a legitimate election were followed in Venezuela and confirmed by many international observers.

More importantly, five candidates participated in the elections representing different ideologies. One of them, Henri Falcon, was even threatened with sanctions by the US if he decided to participate. The most radical rightwing opposition did not participate in the elections and did so by their own free will boycotting the process.

Did Maduro break the constitutional order? Former Canadian ambassador to Venezuela Ben Rowswell (2014-2017) recently lied in an interview with CTV stating that Maduro “suspended” the constitution. That never happened as it has been widely documented.

We cannot deny the economic crisis in Venezuela caused by the “guerra económica” (economic war) waged by the US. The last conservative figure for the cost of US sanctions to Venezuela is US$130 billion. But the US government and the corporate media want you to believe that the economic crisis in Venezuela is due to the Maduro government mismanagement, totally disregarding the impact of the unilateral coercive measures.

The reality is that the government of Venezuela is responding with full commitment to the constitution, and the international commitment to its “responsibility to protect” the well being of the population by maintaining its social programs under harsh circumstances. The people are at the centre of all programs.

Perhaps the most important government program is the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP-Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción) that guarantees delivery of boxes of food and other items in order to cover the basic needs. The program covers about 6 million families.

The US is currently threatening the Venezuelan CLAP program with sanctions, alleging that it finances or is a cover up for drug trade. This is the most vile deceit at the cost of starving Venezuelans. Not even in time of war is such a callous crime allowed.

Concluding remarks

It is obvious that the US government is after the control of Venezuela’s oil resources based on its unfounded claim over its “backyard”. Canada has joined with its own claim to protect its mining sector corporations with interests in Venezuela. Neither country has any interest in the people of Venezuela, despite their rhetoric.

It is also quite obvious that the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela centers on the protection of its people and on preventing any pillage of its resources based on its legitimate claim on sovereignty, independence and self-determination, supported by the majority of people.

There lies the true nature of the US/Canada attacks against Venezuela.

However, that is the pragmatic reason. The more political and ideological reason is that the US corporate interests that govern the country will never allow any other ideology that hints or resembles any form of socialism, even in its embryonic form. Canada’s foreign policy today is quite attuned with US foreign policy.

It is interesting to note that the constitution promoted by Chavez does not have a single mention of the word “socialism”. It speaks frequently of “social democracy” but never of socialism.

Chavez coined the phrase “Socialism for the 21^st Century” in 2005, six years after the new constitution was approved. And yet he was already slated for a US-sponsored coup in 2002. The coup failed but that must have made Chavez’s anti-imperialism discourse much more urgent. His speeches rejecting capitalism, imperialism and neo-liberalism, as causing oppression of the population, became much more open, explicit and forceful.

The policies of his government also became much more progressive as indicated by the law passed in 2006 establishing communal councils as units of direct democratic self-government, and the law of 2010 establishing the creation of communes as institutions that would bring together the communal councils with local productive units. These laws were in compliance with Article 184 of the constitution.

However, the new constitution being drafted by the National Constituent Assembly needs to formalize the close to 3,000 Communes in Venezuela by giving them constitutional ranking.

It would not be totally surprising to see a more prominent place for the “21^stCentury Socialism” in the new constitution. Perhaps, we may witness a formal Venezuelan declaration of the “socialist character” of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Today we can infer that the corporate media war is not just against Maduro but it is against Chavismo as the living ideology of the Bolivarian Revolution.

We are currently witnessing a race between two forces in our hemisphere: 1) the US and Canada imperial forces that support the Venezuelan rightwing opposition in order to produce a regime change, and 2) Venezuela’s popular majority forces determined to build an independent socialist path.

This is not a race where we can stand at the margin and say, may the best win. This is a race in which we are all involved. We must be involved. Today’s geopolitical reality makes us all vulnerable. Sorting out reality from fiction is the essential task.

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This article was originally published on Venezuelanalysis.com.

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

Featured image is from teleSUR

The warmongers on Trump’s national security team apparently convinced him to set in motion an aerial strike against Iran Thursday in retaliation for the downing of a US drone over waters claimed by Iran.

Then at the last minute, Michael D. Shear, Eric Schmitt, Michael Crowley and Maggie Haberman at the NYT report, Trump seems to have listened to generals who warned him that things could spiral out of control, even into war. He issued a stand down order. At least for now.

It isn’t even clear that there was a casus belli. On domestic issues, the US press is locked into an one the one hand, on the other hand disastrous story-telling mode that has enormously benefited those pushing falsehoods such as that cigarettes don’t cause cancer or putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere does not cause global heating.

Source: New York Times

Yet, when it comes to reporting on international security affairs, most US reporting does not fall more than an inch from the Pentagon line of the day (often this dishonesty is the work of editors and publisher-owners rather than the fault of news-gathering reporters, as we saw at McClatchy during the Iraq War).

We heard all about the way Trump attempted to walk back his tough talk, saying that he was sure that Iran shot down the US drone by accident. The statement, like his later stand down order, is a clear sign of the division between him and his warmongering appointees, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton.

Trump created this crisis by breaching the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Having pocketed Iran’s mothballing of 80 percent of its uranium enrichment program, Trump slapped the harshest sanctions ever seen against any country on Iran, unilaterally and in the teeth of opposition from NATO allies and the permanent members of the UN Security Council. In other words, he screwed Iran over. Europe cannot stop the US sanctions, since they are third-party sanctions and European firms who do business both in the US and in Iran will be fined billions of dollars for their dealings with Tehran.

So Trump’s attempts to back peddle from his hard liners are useless as long as the US has a financial blockade on Iran preventing it from selling its petroleum. A naval blockade preventing a country from exporting a key commodity is considered an act of war in international law. It is hard to see the difference between that and an effective financial blockade. Same outcome.

The US press almost never interviews non-US world leaders, especially those to whom Washington is hostile. It is almost as though when it comes to national security reporting, American news outlets go into war propaganda mode. Warmongers in high office know all about this phenomenon and use it to get the wars they crave.

So with regard to the shooting down of the US drone by Iran, I think it is important to hear the Iranian side of the story. It may be false, it may be Iranian war propaganda. We can decide that once we’ve heard it.

BBC Monitoring translated from a Persian website the statement from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps:

“The Global Hawk surveillance drone took off from one the US bases in the south of the Persian Gulf at 0014 [1944 gmt] and disabled its identification system in a move contravening aviation regulations. It secretly flew from the Strait of Hormuz to Chabahar and on its way back travelling westward, the unmanned aerial vehicle violated the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the region of Strait of Hormuz and started collecting information and spying,” IRGC’s statement read . . At 0405 [2335 gmt] and while the intrusive plane was inside our territories, the Guard’s aerospace defence unit shot it down.”

Source: Fars News Agency website, Tehran, in Persian 0919 gmt 20 Jun 19

In another report, Iran’s news service said that a 3 Khordad anti-aircraft missile was deployed against the drone.

If Iran is right that the drone flew into Iranian territory, the incident is still an unfortunate raising of tensions. But if it was over international waters, as the US maintains, Iran was in the wrong.

One problem for these definitions is that the US, in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, recognizes only 12 nautical miles off the coast as belonging to the country, whereas many nations claim a much larger portion of the sea along their coasts than that. The US Air Force says that the drone was never closer to the Iranian coast than 21 nautical miles. One of the unfortunate consequences of the hostility of Trump and his capos like John Bolton to the UN and international law is that it makes it harder for the US to insist with a straight face that other countries take these things seriously. Bolton once denied that the UN even exists.

In the absence of an agreement on the UN definition of territorial waters, some sort of US Iran bilateral negotiations would be preferable to cowboying it.

Again, this crisis is of Trump’s making. His conviction that he could stiff Iran without consequences, all for the sake of looking tough with his MAGA base, was a serious miscalculation. It is the problem with having an ignorant and yet opinionated man at the helm of the US government. He is guaranteed to make basic mistakes that put the US on a war footing even though that appears to be the last thing Trump wants.

Unfortunately, Iran will provoke again, and next time the US warmongers may win the argument.

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Featured image is from Informed Comment

This article was first published in August 2018.

Author’s Introduction and Update

With regard to ongoing US threats directed against Iran:

Whereas a “bloody nose” missile attack directed against specific targets in Iran cannot be ruled out, a conventional war theatre including ground war operations directed against Iran is almost an impossibility without the support of Turkey and Pakistan, both of which are “sleeping with the enemy”.

Turkey is a NATO heavyweight which is allied with Iran and Russia. Pakistan is allied with China and Iran. Both Turkey and Pakistan have borders with Iran.

The Pentagon’s policy of “encirclement” of Iran formulated in the wake of the 2003 Iraq War is defunct. Iran has good relations with neighbouring countries including Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan. All three countries have refused to collaborate with Washington.

Needless to say the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is also in crisis. America can no no longer rely on its staunchest allies.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

America’s largest military facility in the Middle East the Al-Udeid military base in Qatar is now situated in a country which is (unofficially) a partner and de facto ally of Iran. Qatar has switched sides. It has broken its relations with Saudi Arabia. While retaining good  bilateral relations with the US, Qatar is nonetheless aligned with Iran (and Turkey).

Moreover, since 2016, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is in jeopardy. The Sultanate of Oman which together with Iran guards the Strait of Hormuz entry into the Persian Gulf is also unofficially aligned with Iran.

US Central Command (USCENTCOM) in Enemy Territory

Moreover, while the US air force has relocated part of its capabilities to Saudi Arabia, the Al-Udeid military base in Qatar still “officially” hosts the Middle East “forward headquarters” of US Central Command (USCENTCOM) in a country which is de facto aligned with an enemy of the United States of America.

In January 2019,  the US and Qatar signed  a Joint Declaration on Security Co-operation “to promote peace and stability and counter the scourge of terrorism”.

The United States welcomed Qatar’s generous offer to expand critical facilities at bases used by US forces in the country and to align operating procedures at these bases with Nato standards, thereby increasing the operational capability of US and coalition forces based in Qatar.

Ironically, the US and Qatar signed an Memorandum of Understanding “enabling deeper co-ordination on potential expansion at Al Udeid Air Base.”

Not withstanding the rhetoric underlying official US-Qatar ties, The Atlantic Council, a think tank, which has close ties to both the Pentagon and NATO confirms that Qatar is now a firm ally of both Turkey and Iran:

Put simply, for Qatar to maintain its independence, Doha will have essentially no choice but to maintain its strong partnership with Turkey, which has been an important ally from the perspective of military support and food security, as well as Iran. The odds are good that Iranian-Qatari ties will continue to strengthen even if Tehran and Doha agree to disagree on certain issues … On June 15, President Hassan Rouhani emphasized that improving relations with Qatar is a high priority for Iranian policymakers. … Rouhani told the Qatari emir that “stability and security of regional countries are intertwined” and Qatar’s head of state, in turn, stressed that Doha seeks a stronger partnership with the Islamic Republic. (Atlantic Council, June 2019)

The structure of alliances is in jeopardy. The US cannot reasonably wage a full-fledged conventional theatre war on Iran without the support of its longstanding allies which are now sleeping with the enemy.

This of course does not exclude other forms of warfare, including

• targeted missile attacks which could lead to escalation,
• economic warfare and sanctions,
• cyber warfare,
• political destabilization and regime change,
• the selective use of advanced weapons systems (e.g. electromagnetic warfare, environmental modification techniques (ENMOD), climatic warfare, the use of biological and chemical weapons)

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 22, 2019

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A major and far-reaching shift in military alliances is unfolding.

While Turkey is still “officially” a member of NATO, president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been developing “friendly relations” with two of America’s staunchest enemies, namely Iran and Russia. (see image right). 

US-Turkey military cooperation (including US air force bases in Turkey) dates back to the Cold War. Today Turkey is sleeping with the enemy. And Trump has (“rhetorically”) declared war on Turkey. 

We are ready for war,  says President Erdogan.

“The secret to successful states is their readiness for war. We are ready with everything we have,” (Erdogan’s statement on August 12, 2018 meeting with ambassadors in Ankara) 

Erdogan also accuses the US of waging a “financial warfare” against Turkey.

Turkish banks are under attack. In turn, a banking crisis is unfolding in the European Union largely hitting EU banks which hold substantial portions of Turkey’s debt.

According to Turkey’s president:

 “It is everyone’s observation that the developments in foreign currency exchange have no financial basis and they are an attack on our country… On the one hand you are a strategic ally and the other you shoot (the country) in the foot. Is something like this acceptable?” (Ahvalnews)

While the media has its eyes riveted on the collapse of the Turkish Lira (which so far in 2018 has lost approximately 40 percent of its value in relation to the US dollar), NATO is in a state of disarray, with one of its member states “at war” with another member state, namely the United States of America.

Turkey by a long shot has the largest conventional forces (after the US) within NATO outpacing France, Britain and Germany, (not to mention its tactical B61 nuclear weapons capabilities).

#NATOExit

Broadly speaking, the US-Turkey rift and its implications for the Atlantic Alliance are either ignored or trivialized by the media. The entire structure of military alliances is defunct. NATO is in a shambles.

Turkey is to acquire Russia’s state of the art S-400 air defense system. Why? Does this mean that Turkey which is a NATO member state will withdraw from the integrated US-NATO-Israel air defense system? Such a decision is tantamount to NATOExit.

 “On  July 26, the US Congress decided to ban the shipment of F-35 aircraft to Turkey unless  Ankara refused to purchase S-400 anti-aircraft systems from Russia.” (Pravda)

The US-Turkey-Israel “Triple Alliance” is Also Defunct

In 1993, Israel and Turkey signed a Memorandum of Understanding leading to the creation of (Israeli-Turkish) “joint committees” to handle so-called regional threats. Under the terms of the Memorandum, Turkey and Israel agreed “to cooperate in gathering intelligence on Syria, Iran, and Iraq and to meet regularly to share assessments pertaining to terrorism and these countries’ military capabilities.”

Image on the right: Sharon and Erdogan in 2004

The triple alliance was also coupled with a 2005 NATO-Israeli military cooperation agreement which included “many areas of common interest, such as the fight against terrorism and joint military exercises.”  These military cooperation ties with NATO were viewed by the Israeli military as a means to “enhance Israel’s deterrence capability regarding potential enemies threatening it, mainly Iran and Syria.”

The “triple alliance” linking the US, Israel and Turkey was coordinated by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was an integrated and coordinated military command structure pertaining to the broader Middle East. It was based on close bilateral US military ties respectively with Israel and Turkey, coupled with a strong bilateral military relationship between Tel Aviv and Ankara. In this regard, Israel and Turkey have been close partners with the US in planned aerial attacks on Iran since 2005. (See Michel Chossudovsky, May 2005)

Needless to say, that triple alliance is defunct. With Turkey siding with Iran and Russia, it would be “suicide” for US-Israel to even consider waging aerial attacks on Iran.

Moreover, the NATO-Israel 2005 military cooperation agreement which relied heavily on the role of Turkey is dysfunctional.

What this means is that US-Israeli threats directed against Iran are no longer supported by Turkey which has entered into an alliance of convenience with Iran.

The broader Realignment of Military alliances

The shift in military alliances is not limited to Turkey. Following the rift between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is in disarray with Qatar siding with Iran and Turkey against Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Qatar is of utmost strategic significance because it shares with Iran the world’s largest maritime gas fields in the Persian Gulf. (see map below)

The Al-Udeid military base near Doha is America’s largest military base in the Middle East. In turn, Turkey has now established its own military facility in Qatar.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)

A profound shift in geopolitical alliances is also occurring in South Asia with the instatement in 2017 of both India and Pakistan as full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).  Inevitably, this historic shift constitutes a blow against Washington, which has defense and trade agreements with both Pakistan and India. “While India remains firmly aligned with Washington, America’s political stranglehold on Pakistan (through military and intelligence agreements) has been weakened as a result of Pakistan’s trade and investment deals with China.”  (Michel Chossudovsky, August 1, 2017)

In other words, this enlargement of the SCO weakens America’s hegemonic ambitions in both South Asia and the broader Eurasian region. It has a bearing on energy pipeline routes, transport corridors, borders and mutual security and maritime rights.

Pakistan is the gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia, where US influence has been weakened to the benefit of China, Iran and Turkey. China is involved in major investments in mining, not to mention the development of transport routes which seek the integration of Afghanistan into Western China.

Where does Turkey fit in? Turkey is increasingly part of the Eurasian project dominated by China and Russia. In 2017-18, Erdogan had several meetings with both president Xi-Jingping and Vladimir Putin. Erdogan has been contemplating becoming a member of the SCO since 2016 but sofar nothing concrete has emerged.

The Antiwar Movement: #NATOExit People’s Movement

Of crucial significance, the crisis within NATO constitutes a historic opportunity to develop a #NATOExit people’s movement across Europe and North America, a people’s movement pressuring governments to withdraw from the Atlantic Alliance, a movement to eventually dismantle and abolish the military and political apparatus of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff briefly published and then removed from public access a new edition of their official doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons. But a public copy was preserved. See Joint Publication 3-72, Nuclear Operations, June 11, 2019.

The document presents an unclassified, mostly familiar overview of nuclear strategy, force structure, planning, targeting, command and control, and operations.

“Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability,” according to one Strangelovian passage in the publication. “Specifically, the use of a nuclear weapon will fundamentally change the scope of a battle and create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.”

Screenshot

The document might have gone unremarked, but after publishing it last week the Joint Chiefs deleted it from their public website. A notice there states that it (JP 3-72) is now only “available through JEL+” (the Joint Electronic Library), which is a restricted access site.

A local copy remains publicly available on the FAS website.

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Days after calling last week’s Gulf of Oman incident “very minor,” stepping back from possible war on Iran, Trump called its downing of a US spy drone (in its own airspace he failed to explain) “a very big mistake.” 

Responding to whether he’ll order a strike on the country in retaliation against what was a hostile US act, he ominously said: “You’ll soon find out” — a worrisome sign.

Attacking Iran would be “a very big mistake,” a nation able to hit back hard against an aggressor and disrupt oil shipments through the Gulf of Hormuz if its own are blocked.

By letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Iranian UN envoy Majid Takht-e Ravanchi condemned the provocative intrusion of a US spy plane in its airspace, saying the following:

“Iran condemns, in the strongest possible terms, this irresponsible and provocative wrongful act by the United States, which entails its international responsibility,” adding:

“While the Islamic Republic of Iran does not seek war, it reserves its inherent right, under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, to take all appropriate necessary measures against any hostile act violating its territory, and is determined to vigorously defend its land, sea and air.”

“This is not the first provocative act by the United States against Iran’s territorial integrity” and clearly won’t be the last.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Seyyed Abbas Araqchi said the following:

There’s “irrefutable evidence about the presence of this drone in Iran’s airspace, and even some parts of its wreckage have been retrieved from Iranian territorial waters.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted:

“The US wages #Economic Terrorism on Iran, has conducted covert action against us & now encroaches on our territory.”

“We don’t seek war, but will zealously defend our skies, land & waters.”

“We’ll take this new aggression to #UN & show that the US is lying about international waters.”

The US wages #EconomicTerrorism on Iran, has conducted covert action against us & now encroaches on our territory.

We don't seek war, but will zealously defend our skies, land & waters.

We'll take this new aggression to #UN & show that the US is lying about international waters

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) June 20, 2019

Zarif explained the following via Twitter:

“At 00:14 (on the day of the incident a) US drone took off from UAE in stealth mode & violated Iranian airspace. It was targeted at 04:05 at the coordinates (25°59’43″N 57°02’25″E) near Kouh-e Mobarak.”

“We’ve retrieved sections of the US military drone in OUR territorial waters where it was shot down.”

At 00:14 US drone took off from UAE in stealth mode & violated Iranian airspace. It was targeted at 04:05 at the coordinates (25°59'43"N 57°02'25"E) near Kouh-e Mobarak.

We've retrieved sections of the US military drone in OUR territorial waters where it was shot down. pic.twitter.com/pJ34Tysmsg

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) June 20, 2019

A statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) explained that the US spy drone’s identification transponder was switched off “in violation of aviation rules and was moving in full secrecy” when it was downed over Iranian territorial waters.

Iran will present evidence to the UN proving it. During his annual marathon Q & A session, fielding questions on numerous issues, Vladimir Putin said the following on possible US aggression against Iran:

Attacking Iran militarily by the US “would be a catastrophe at least for the region, because it would trigger violence and, possibly, an increase in the number of refugees from the region,” adding:

“For those who might make such attempts the consequences would be very sad, too, because it is very hard to foresee what the use of military force might entail.”

He stopped short of indicating how Russia might respond to possible US aggression against the Islamic Republic, a nonbelligerent nation threatening no one.

Separately, European External Action Service (EEAS) secretary Helga Schmid stressed that the IAEA “confirmed in 15 reports that Iran abides by its nuclear related commitments” — even after increasing its uranium enrichment and storage, including retention of its heavy water.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “it’s a dangerous situation,” adding she doubts Trump wants war. “There is no appetite for going to war” on Iran, including by many congressional members.

After sounding bellicose, Trump softened his rhetoric, saying

“I find it hard to believe it was intentional. I would imagine it was a general or somebody who made a mistake in shooting the drone down,” adding:

“I have a feeling…that it was a mistake made by somebody…I think they made a mistake and I’m not just talking about the country made a mistake somebody under the command of the country made a mistake.”

The NYT reported that he

“approved strikes on Iran, but then abruptly pull(ed) back from launching them on Thursday night after a day of escalating tensions,” adding:

“Officials said the president had initially approved attacks on a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries.”

“The operation was underway in its early stages when it was called off, a senior administration official said. Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down, the official said.”

First, it’s unclear if the above information is accurate or whether it’s the official story the White House wants reported.

It’s also unclear if Trump ordered strikes on Iran, then called them off, or if shifted them to a later time frame — perhaps with greater force against more targeted sites.

According to the Times, Pompeo, Bolton, and CIA director Gina Haspel pushed for a strike. Pentagon commanders reportedly cautioned against it because of likely IRGC retaliation against US regional forces.

Striking Iran over the Gulf of Oman and earlier May regional incidents it had nothing to do with would be going to war based on Big Lies and deception — what unjustifiably justifies all wars of aggression, including all US ones from Harry Truman’s aggression against North Korea in the early 1950s to all post-9/11 conflicts.

On Thursday, Iran’s IRGC commander-in-chief General Hossein Salami said

“(t)he downing of the American drone was a clear message to America (that Tehran will) react strongly” to any aggression.

He stressed that the Islamic Republic wants regional peace and stability, but is “fully prepared to defend” itself if attacked by an aggressor.

Self-defense is a universal right, affirmed by the UN Charter, stating in Article 51:

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

The Trump regime is waging war on Iran by other means. Escalating tensions risks turning things hot.

Iran is the prime US/Israeli regional target for regime change. Attacking the country would risk boiling over the Middle East more than already.

The Islamic Republic can’t match US military strength, but its ballistic and cruise missiles can accurately strike its regional bases and warships, along with Israeli, Saudi and UAE targets if these nations get involved in hostilities against its territory.

Iran never attacked another country preemptively, threatening none now — polar opposite how the US, NATO, Israel, and their imperial partners operate.

Not a shred of credible evidence suggests Tehran had anything to do with preemptive belligerent incidents anywhere throughout its history.

Days earlier, a fabricated US intelligence report suggested a large-scale Iranian assault on a Saudi oil facility was coming in days. No credible evidence suggests it.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council chairman Ali Shamkhani said

“(w)e currently face demonstrative threats.”

“Nevertheless, when it comes to air defense of our country, we consider using foreign potential in addition to our domestic capacities.”

Iran has Russian S-300 air defense missiles. It may be seeking S-400s from Moscow for greater defensive capabilities.

Separately on Thursday, the US Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) banned commercial air traffic in Iranian airspace over its territorial waters.

US flights to Iran are legal. Will banning them altogether follow the above explained FAA ban?

Of far greater concern is whether Trump will yield ahead to Pompeo and Bolton on striking Iranian sites.

Perhaps it’s coming in response to a greater US-orchestrated false flag than the Gulf of Oman and May incidents.

Something against a US warship similar to the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin false flag could get Trump to order strikes on Iranian targets.

What earlier led to over a decade of US Southeast Asia aggression and quagmire could happen in the Middle East by attacking Iran — based on Big Lies and deception.

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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 Veterans Today

Supplementary to my earlier letter [1] it strikes me that public criticism of vaccine products may come a poor third in the spread of measles in comparison with failure of outreach and failure of the vaccine technology itself. In addition to the 1996 paper by Markowitz which I cited [2] I note a number of papers pointing to failure of immunity as a result of the programme [3-11].

Even with 100% coverage and three doses it seems unlikely that synthetic herd immunity is set to do anything but decline: meanwhile censuring and criminalising critics and dissenters is only distracting in a politically unpleasant way from the problem. I am personally grateful to the editor for her recent call for “civil discourse, and debate” [12].

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Notes

[1] John Stone, ‘Advocates of compulsory vaccination also need to acknowledge risks’, 6 June 2019, https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l2359/rr-0

[2] Markowitz LE, Albrecht P, Rhodes P, Demonteverde R, Swint E, Maes EF, Powell C, Patriarca PA., ‘Changing levels of measles antibody titers in women and children in the United States: impact on response to vaccination. Kaiser Permanente Measles Vaccine Trial Team.’, Pediatrics. 1996 Jan;97(1):53-8., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8545224

[3] Kontio M, Jokinen S, Paunio M, Peltola H, Davidkin I, ‘Waning antibody levels and avidity: implications for MMR vaccine-induced protection’, Infect Dis. 2012 Nov 15;206(10):1542-8. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jis568. Epub 2012 Sep 10.

[4] Sandra Waaijenborg, Susan J. M. Hahné, Liesbeth Mollema, Gaby P. Smits, Guy A. M. Berbers, Fiona R. M. van der Klis, Hester E. de Melker, and Jacco Wallinga, ‘Waning of Maternal Antibodies Against Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Varicella in Communities With Contrasting Vaccination Coverage’, J Infect Dis. 2013 Jul 1; 208(1): 10–16.

[5] Zhao et al, ‘Low titers of measles antibody in mothers whose infants suffered from measles before eligible age for measles vaccination’ Virol J. 2010; 7: 87., Published online 2010 May 6. doi: 10.1186/1743-422X-7-87

[6] Kang et al, ‘An increasing, potentially measles-susceptible population over time after vaccination in Korea’, Vaccine
Volume 35, Issue 33, 24 July 2017, Pages 4126-4132, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X17308551

[7] Fiebelkorn et al, ‘Measles virus neutralizing antibody response, cell-mediated immunity, and IgG antibody avidity before and after a third dose of measles-mumps-rubella vaccine in young adults’, J Infect Dis. 2016 Apr 1; 213(7): 1115–1123.
Published online 2015 Nov 23. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiv555

[8] Paunio et al, ‘Secondary measles vaccine failures identified by measurement of IgG avidity: high occurrence among teenagers vaccinated at a young age’, Epidemiol Infect. 2000 Apr;124(2):263-71.,https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l2359/rr-0

[9] Rosen JB, Rota JS, Hickman CJ, Sowers SB, Mercader S, Rota PA, Bellini WJ, Huang AJ, Doll MK, Zucker JR, Zimmerman CM., ‘Outbreak of measles among persons with prior evidence of immunity, New York City, 2011’, Clin Infect Dis. 2014 May;58(9):1205-10. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciu105. Epub 2014 Feb 27

[10] Felicia Roy, Lillian Mendoza, Joanne Hiebert, Rebecca J. McNall, Bettina Bankamp, Sarah Connolly, Amy Lüdde, Nicole Friedrich, Annette Mankertz, Paul A. Rota, Alberto Severini , ‘Rapid Identification of Measles Virus Vaccine Genotype by Real-Time PCR’
https://jcm.asm.org/content/55/3/735 “Of the 194 measles virus sequences obtained in the United States in 2015, 73 were identified as vaccine sequences (RJ McNall, unpublished data)”.

[11] Rosen JB, Rota JS, Hickman CJ, Sowers SB, Mercader S, Rota PA, Bellini WJ, Huang AJ, Doll MK, Zucker JR, Zimmerman CM., ‘Outbreak of measles among persons with prior evidence of immunity, New York City, 2011’, Clin Infect Dis. 2014 May;58(9):1205-10. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciu105. Epub 2014 Feb 27

[12] Fiona Godlee, ‘What should we do about vaccine hesitancy?’,
BMJ 2019; 365 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l4044 (Published 06 June 2019)

Thanks to an explosive internal memo, there is no reason to believe the claims put forward by the Syrian opposition that President Bashar al-Assad’s government used chemical weapons against innocent civilians in Douma back in April. This is a scenario I have questioned from the beginning.

It also calls into question all the other conclusions and reports by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was assigned in 2014 “to establish facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic.”

As you recall, the Trump administration initiated a coordinated bombing of Syrian government facilities with the UK and France within days of the Douma incident and before a full investigation of the scene could be completed, charging Assad with the “barbaric act” of using “banned chemical weapons” to kill dozens of people on the scene. Bomb first, ask questions later.

The OPCW began their investigation days after the strikes. The group drew on witness testimonies, environmental and biomedical sample analysis results, and additional digital information from witnesses (i.e. video and still photography), as well as toxicological and ballistic analyses. In July 2018, the OPCW released an interim report on Douma that said “no organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties,” but that chlorine, which is not a banned chemical weapon, was detected there.

The report cited ballistic tests that indicated that the canisters found at two locations on the scene were dropped from the air (witnesses blamed Assad’s forces), but investigations were ongoing. The final report in March reiterated the ballistics data, and the conclusions were just as underwhelming, saying that all of the evidence gathered there provides “reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place,” due in part to traces of chlorine and explosives at the impact sites.

Now, the leaked internal report apparently suppressed by the OPCW says there is a “high probability” that a pair of chlorine gas cylinders that had been claimed as the source of the toxic chemical had been planted there by hand and not dropped by aircraft. This was based on extensive engineering assessments and computer modeling as well as all of the evidence previously afforded to the OPCW.

What does this mean? To my mind, the canisters were planted by the opposition in an effort to frame the Syrian government.

The OPCW has confirmed with the validity of this shocking document and has offered statements to reporters, including Peter Hitchens, who published the organization’s response to him on May 16.

The ramifications of this turn of events extend far beyond simply disproving the allegations concerning the events in April 2018. The credibility of the OPCW itself and every report and conclusion it has released concerning allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government are now suspect. The extent to which the OPCW has, almost exclusively, relied upon the same Syrian opposition sources who are now suspected of fabricating the Douma events raises serious questions about both the methodology and motivation of an organization that had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 for “its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons.”

In a response to Agence France-Presse (AFP), OPCW director general Fernando Arias acknowledged there is an internal probe into the memo leak but that he continues to “stand by the impartial and professional conclusions” of the group’s original report. He played down the role of the memo’s author, Ian Henderson, and said his alternative hypotheses were not included in the final OPCW report because they “pointed at possible attribution” and were therefore outside the scope of the OPCW’s fact finding mission in Syria.

Self-produced videos and witness statements provided by the pro-opposition Violations Documentation Center, Syrian Civil Defense (also known as the White Helmets), and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), a non-profit organization that operates hospitals in opposition-controlled Syria, represented the heart and soul of the case against the Syrian government regarding the events in Douma. To my mind, the internal memo now suggests that these actors were engaging in a systemic effort to disseminate disinformation that would facilitate Western military intervention with the goal of removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power.

This theory has been advanced by pro-Assad forces and their Russian partners for some time. But independent reporting on the ground since the Douma incident has sussed out many of the same concerns. From James Harkin, director of the Center for Investigative Journalism and a fellow at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center, who traveled to the site of the attacks and reported for The Intercept in February of this year:

The imperative to grab the fleeting attention of an international audience certainly seems to have influenced the presentation of the evidence. In the videos and photos that appeared that evening, most analysts and observers agree that there were some signs that the bodies and gas canisters had been moved or tampered with after the event for maximum impact. The Syrian media activists who’d arrived at the apartment block with the dead people weren’t the first to arrive on the scene; they’d heard about the deaths from White Helmet workers and doctors at the hospital.

The relationship between the OPCW and the Syrian opposition can be traced back to 2013. That was when the OPCW was given the responsibility of eliminating Syria’s declared arsenal of chemical weapons; this task was largely completed by 2014. However, the Syrian opposition began making persistent allegations of chemical weapon attacks by the Syrian government in which chlorine, a substance not covered by Syria’s obligation to be disarmed of chemical weapons, was used. In response, the OPCW established the Fact Finding Mission (FFM) in 2014 “to establish facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic.”

The priority of effort for the FFM early on was to investigate allegations of the use of chlorine as a weapon. Since, according to its May 2014 summary, “all reported incidents took place at locations that the Syrian Government considers to be outside its effective control,” the FFM determined that the success of its mission was contingent upon “identification of key actors, such as local authorities and/or representatives of armed opposition groups in charge of the territories in which these locations are situated; the establishment of contacts with these groups in an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidence that allows the mandate and objectives of the FFM to be communicated.”

So from its very inception, the FFM had to rely on the anti-Assad opposition and its supporters for nearly everything. The document that governed the conduct of the FFM’s work in Syria was premised on the fact that the mission would be dependent in part upon “opposition representatives” to coordinate, along with the United Nations, the “security, logistical and operational aspects of the OPCW FFM,” including liaising “for the purposes of making available persons for interviews.”

One could sense the bias resulting from such an arrangement when, acting on information provided to it by the opposition regarding an “alleged attack with chlorine” on the towns of Kafr Zeyta and Al-Lataminah, the FFM changed its original plans to investigate an alleged chlorine attack on the town of Harasta. This decision, the FFM reported, “was welcomed by the opposition.” When the FFM attempted to inspect Kafr Zeyta, however, it was attacked by opposition forces, with one of its vehicles destroyed by a roadside bomb, one inspector wounded, and several inspectors detained by opposition fighters.

The inability to go to Kafr Zeyta precluded the group from “presenting definitive conclusions,” according to the report. But that did not stop the FFM from saying that the information given to them from these opposition sources, “including treating physicians with whom the FFM was able to establish contact,” and public domain material, “lends credence to the view that toxic chemicals, most likely pulmonary irritating agents such as chlorine, have been used in a systematic manner in a number of attacks” against Kafr Zeyta.

So the conclusion/non-conclusion was based not on any onsite investigation, but rather videos produced by the opposition and subsequently released via social media and interviews also likely set up by opposition groups (White Helmets, SAMS, etc.), which we know, according to their own documents, served as the key liaisons for the FFM on the ground.

All of this is worrisome. It is unclear at this point how many Syrian chemical attacks have been truly confirmed since the start of the war. In February of this year, the Global Policy Institute released a report saying there were 336 such reports, but they were broken down into “confirmed,” “credibly substantiated,” and “comprehensively confirmed.” Out of the total, 111 were given the rigorous “comprehensively confirmed” tag, which, according to the group, meant the incidents were “were investigated and confirmed by competent international bodies or backed up by at least three highly reliable independent sources of evidence.”

They do not go into further detail about those bodies and sources, but are sure to thank the White Helmets and their “implementing partner” Mayday Rescue and Violations Documentation Center, among other groups, as “friends and partners” in the study. So it becomes clear, looking at the Kafr Zeytan inspection and beyond, that the same opposition sources that are informing the now-dubious OPCW reports are also delivering data and “assistance” to outside groups reaching international audiences, too.

The role of the OPCW in sustaining the claims made by the obviously biased Syrian opposition sources cannot be understated—by confirming the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma, the OPCW lent credibility to claims that otherwise should not—and indeed would not—have been granted, and in doing so violated the very operating procedures that had been put in place by the OPCW to protect the credibility of the organization and its findings.

There is an old prosecutorial rule—one lie, all lies—that comes into play in this case. With the leaked internal report out there, suggesting that the sources in the Douma investigation were agenda-driven and dishonest, all information ever provided to the OPCW by the White Helmets, SAMS, and other Syrian opposition groups must now, in my mind, be viewed as tainted and therefore unusable.

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Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Featured image is from Mikhail Semenov /Shutterstock

The tenth international meeting on security has just concluded in the Russian the city of Ufa. The forum has been under-reported, but it represents one of the few global examples of multilateral meetings between high-level representatives of countries that are in conflict. Hundreds of representatives from as many as 120 countries attended the meeting over three days to discuss humanitarian crises, hybrid warfare, terrorist threats and ways to recover from armed conflict.

President Putin’s opening speech was read aloud by Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev, which explained the forum’s agenda and objectives, namely, to create a positive atmosphere that should succeed in reducing various areas of tension between countries around the globe.

“I expect your communication to be substantial and fruitful, and will help achieve our common goal of creating a reliable, flexible, indivisible and equal for all security system at the regional and global level. US exit from arms reduction treaties undermines global security. This forum has fully proved to be in demand and effective, ensuring a dialogue on countering global challenges. The meeting’s agenda addresses problems requiring joint solutions and collective action, overcoming the consequences of armed conflict and humanitarian problems, as well as ensuring information security.”

The most important news of the day coming from Ufa was revealed by Tass:

“A high-ranking official from the US National Security Council will take part in an international meeting of high security representatives at Ufa on June 18-20, Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council Alexander Venediktov said in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily on Sunday.”

This disclosure is particularly relevant as the US has not sent any representatives to attend the international security meeting in the last four years. This is an event where leading figures can meet and discuss ways of overcoming disagreements in spite of any current difficulties that may exist between countries, such as between Iran and the US.

The Ufa forum has drawn little attention from the international press and has even been little reported on in the host country, with only Tass putting out a couple of reports on the gathering. The lack of media exposure is probably intentional, with the lack of a media spotlight allowing for diplomacy to calmly do its work without any unnecessary distractions.

The world is at a critical historical juncture, with potential or already volatile situations present on the Korean peninsula, in Venezuela, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Ukraine, the Arctic, the Persian Gulf, and the Baltic, Black and South China Seas. Other volatile situations can be found in the cyber and information-warfare domains, as well as in the competition in space.

With so many potential flashpoints, a conference to address these dangers is most welcome. The fact that 120 countries have the opportunity to talk and think about possible ways for de-escalation is a rare opportunity that should not be left to go to waste.

Given current global events, the most significant attendees in Ufa are a senior US National Security Council member and the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani. As of now, the only official news comes from Ali Shamkhani’s words concerning the possibility of mediation with the US and the possibility of Iran acquiring weapons systems to fend off US threats. Shamkhani stated:

“We currently face demonstrative threats. Nevertheless, when it comes to air defense of our country, we consider using the foreign potential in addition to our domestic capacities… Mediation is out of question in the current situation. The United States has unilaterally withdrawn from the JCPOA, it has flouted its obligations and it has introduced illegal sanctions against Iran. The United States should return to the starting point and correct its own mistakes. This process needs no mediation,”

“This [gradually boosting of uranium enrichment and heavy water production beyond the levels outlined in the JCPOA] is a serious decision of the Islamic Republic [of Iran] and we will continue doing it step by step until JCPOA violators move toward agreement and return to fulfilling their obligations. [If JCPOA participants do not comply with the deal, Iran will be reducing its commitments] step by step within legal mechanisms that the JCPOA envisions.”

He also accused the US of “exercising pressure on the Islamic Republic through claims that Iran was behind the attack on oil tankers attack in the Gulf of Oman”. Speaking about the possibility of a closure of the Strait of Hormuz, he reiterated that “Iran will protect its borders and repel any encroachment”. The official also stated that “Iran and the United States will not come to war as there is no reason for this war to happen”.

Ali Shamkhani also held an important meeting with his Armenian counterpart to reaffirm how strategic trust and cooperation between Tehran and Yerevan is fundamental to the region, resisting external pressure from third parties. Currently Iran needs all the possible international support it can get in light of tensions with the US. The Ufa forum seems to be the perfect place for Iran to make this happen. The meeting between Ali Shamkhani and his Afghan counterpart, Hamdullah Mohib, seems to reflect this, being another example of how Iran is seeking more political allies.

Afghanistan is a central player in Eurasian integration, and Russia, India, China and Iran are all too keenly aware of the devastation wrought by the American occupation of the country.

The situation in Afghanistan seems to have improved recently, with regional powers increasingly acting independently of Washington’s desire to plunge the country into a perpetual state of chaos and underdevelopment. In fact, the next regional meeting on Afghanistan is set to be held in Tehran, with the participation of all five countries bordering Afghanistan, namely, Iran, Russia, China, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Notably, Shamkhani asked neighboring countries to interact with the opposition in Afghanistan in order to draw them to the negotiating table, thereby limiting the influence of external actors in the country.

The meeting between Mohib and Shamkhani also served to reiterate how strategic cooperation between all relevant parties is fundamental to sustaining progress, peace and development in an area that is fundamental to Eurasian integration.

Ali Shamkhani also released some statements directed at Trump and the current state of Iran-US relations, stating that

“[Donald Trump’s America] is the most warmongering country in its history… If a wide range of countries decide to stand up to the illegal US blackmail and bullying, we can make the US retreat and adopt a rational and responsible behavior in the international system.”

Speaking of the US’s weaponization of the banking system and international finance, Shamkhani stated:

“No title other than economic terrorism suits this US behavior.”

He urged countries to create multilateral mechanisms to break US dominance on the global monetary system. He also pointed out that the US withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was a blow against the role of diplomacy and dialogue in solving security challenges. However, most countries, he added, were appreciative of Iran’s “wise” behavior in giving diplomacy a chance and were dragging their feet with regard to US pressure to suspend the nuclear deal.

Shamkhani’s words testify to the level of dissatisfaction and annoyance that Iran feels, being treated as it is so aggressively by Washington following years of negotiation to finally agree on the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to the satisfaction of all parties involved.

Guo Shengkun, a Senior Chinese security official who attended the conference, underlined the importance of countries increasing dialogue and cooperation to avoid unnecessary conflicts and trade wars, a pointed reference to Washington’s actions in its trade war against the People’s Republic of China.

His Russian counterpart was even more direct, highlighting Washington’s fear of full-scale Eurasian integration led by China and Russia. Sergey Naryshkin, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, stated:

“The US uses methods of hybrid war trying to hamper Russian cooperation, particularly with China. We are witnessing that. Moreover, there is no need to make any effort to see it, it is all happening before our very eyes.”

He also commented on how Washington exploits the US dollar as the global reserve currency for economic warfare.

“It seems bewildering that the US continues to be the holder of the main reserve currency while behaving so aggressively and unpredictably. The monopoly position of the dollar in international economic relations has become anachronistic. Gradually, the dollar is becoming toxic.”

The political climate in Ufa seems very serene and inclined to favour dialogue and collaboration, showing how the Eurasian giants China, Russia and Iran are working together with enormous efforts to pacify the region and beyond. The statement of the Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergey Naryshkin, about new US sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) reveal the profound cooperation between Moscow and Tehran in various fields including terrorism.

“It’s no secret that over the past several years sanctions have become a favored method of the US policy. What is especially alarming is that the restrictions are introduced absolutely arbitrarily, spontaneously and impulsively. Their initiators do not take into account not only the long-term consequences but also the opinion of the closest economic partners… [Regarding US sanctions against the IRGC] The IRGC has made a huge contribution to the fight against ISIL in Syria and Iraq.”

The Ufa meeting is not attracting any particular attention from the mainstream press (no mention of it has been made in the major Western news outlets). While it has been given some coverage by the Russian and Chinese media, most coverage has been given by Iranian media. This is an aspect worth considering given the current geopolitical environment. Moscow and Beijing have no intention of increasing the tension between Washington and other countries. Keeping a low media profile is a way of helping the Ufa forum act in a way that eases global tensions.

A war against Iran is a red line for virtually all forum participants. The fact that the US is represented at the forum at a time of elevated tensions with Iran, especially after having not attended for the previous four years, is a good signal from the Trump administration that it is willing to open dialogue with Iran despite the risk of continued provocations or intentional accidents between the two countries.

The explicit and direct words used by the Russian, Chinese and Iranian representatives suggest a complete coordination on essential issues like terrorism, especially when it is used by the US as a tool against geopolitical opponents around the world, whether it be on Russia’s southern border, in Syria, or in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. Terrorism used as tool of imperialism is something that Ufa places at the center of current global problems, trying to limit its impact and effectiveness.

Iran and Russia’s energy ministers met in the Iranian city of Isfahan on Tuesday to continue discussions about an oil-for-goods program in which the proceeds from the sale of Iranian oil would be used to pay for Russian agricultural equipment and products.

The Ufa forum shows the combined power of Russia and China in a multipolar global order. Beijing and Moscow seem to be the only two global superpowers able to mediate and gather countries around a table in spite of increasing tensions.

Putin and Xi Jinping’s ability to de-escalate global tensions in such low-key forum as the one in Ufa (now in its tenth edition) is the only hope we have for avoiding or defusing conflicts and trade wars that may be erupt around the world.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Standing back a little and surveying the events of the last couple of weeks, gives a bleak view of the current state of western democracy.

We have seen what appears to be the most unconvincing of false flags in the Gulf. I pointed out why it was improbable Iran would attack these particular ships. Since then we have had American military sources pointing to video evidence of a packed small Iranian boat allegedly removing a limpet mine from the ship the Iranians helped to rescue, which was somehow supposed to prove it was the Iranians who planted the alleged device. We also have had the Japanese owner specifically contradict the American account and say that the ship was hit by flying objects.

The Iranians certainly have a strange method of bomb disposal if they carry it out using unarmoured personnel, with as many as possible crammed into a small boat in immediate contact with the “mine”. It is also hard to understand why the alleged “limpet mines” would be four feet above the waterline.

Limpet mines are placed below the waterline. There are numerous reasons for this. Firstly, holes above the waterline will not sink a ship. Secondly, the weight of the water helps contain the blast against the ship. Thirdly, it is obviously harder to detect both the diver placing the mine and the mine once placed if it is below the water. In fact it would be very difficult for a diver to place a limpet mine four feet above the waterline, even if they wanted to.

There seems to be a remarkable disconnect between the widespread popular disdain at yet another fake western power casus belli in the Middle East, and the near universal complicity of the UK political and media class in promoting this transparent lie. It is as though even pretending to have any respect for truth and fact has simply been discarded within the UK’s governmental system. Which ought to worry us a lot.

The second development ought to have been the biggest media story of the decade in the UK, if we had anything like a free and honest media. Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, made plain the Trump administration’s intent to prevent the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister. Pompeo told a meeting of Jewish leaders:

It could be that Mr. Corbyn manages to run the gantlet and get elected. It’s possible. You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to push back.

This blatant interference by a foreign power in the UK’s democracy is an absolute scandal. Compare the lack of media outrage at Pompeo’s intervention with the ludicrous claims made about much less high profile Russian attempts at influence. This incident provides incontrovertible proof that the world does indeed operate in the way that I have been explaining here for a decade. It is not a “conspiracy theory” that democracy is manipulated by hidden powers, it is fact. Pompeo’s description of Corbyn’s route to election as “running the gauntlet” is particularly revealing. Even more so is the cursory coverage this story was given, and I have seen no evidence to date of any MSM “journalist” attempting any follow-up investigation on the methods the US are planning to employ – or more likely already employing – against Corbyn.

Everybody should be incandescent at this, no matter who they vote for.

Something else which revealed the truth of the way the political world now operates, and which again did not get nearly the media attention it deserves, was Matt Kennard’s stunning revelation of the way the Guardian has been taken over by the security services. I have been explaining for years that the Guardian has become the security services’ news outlet of choice, and it is very helpful to have documentation to prove it.

It is worth noting that the Guardian obeyed completely the DSMA committee ban on mentioning Pablo Miller in reporting the security service fantasy version of the Skripal story. As Kennard points out, it is also very interesting indeed that the Guardian published Luke Harding’s front page fabrication of Manafort/Assange meetings two weeks after MOD Director Dominic Wilson congratulated Guardian deputy editor Paul Johnson on “re-establishing links” with the security services. The Guardian is, like other British newspapers, as controlled by the military and security services just like in any other decent autocracy.

Incidentally, I cannot find Matt Kennard’s excellent work set out anywhere, except in that twitter stream. Surely there is an article on a website somewhere? I cannot find anything on Google, but as it is exactly the kind of information Google routinely suppresses, that does not mean it is not out there. Anyone seen it?

Finally, we have of course seen Sajid Javid sign the extradition warrant for Julian Assange to be sent to the United States for the “crime” of publishing truthful information about US government illegalities. Julian’s extradition hearing was, contrary to normal practice, held despite the fact he was too sick to attend in person. And it was presided over by Judge Arbuthnot, despite the fact that her husband is a former Tory defence minister who started a “security consultancy” in partnership with a former head of MI6, the war criminal John Scarlett who oversaw the fabrication of the dossier of lies about Iraqi WMD, in order to launch an illegal war of aggression that killed and maimed millions. The Assange team had asked her to recuse herself on that pretty obvious basis, but she had refused. At an earlier hearing she taunted Assange with the observation that he could get adequate exercise in the Embassy on a 1.5 meter Juliet balcony.

Just as the Guardian has never apologised for, nor withdrawn, the utter lie of the Assange/Manafort story, so the identity politics promoting, false “left” has never apologised for its pursuit of Assange over sexual allegations in Sweden, which were obvious on the slightest scrutiny to be only a fit-up designed to get him into custody. Those figures like David Allen Green, Joan Smith and David Aaronovitch, among scores of other pustulous hacks, who mocked and scorned those of us who always said that Assange faced not extradition to Sweden but to the United States for publishing, have been shown up as, at the very best, stupid naive and unwitting tools of the state, and more likely, insincere and vicious propagandists.

This brief review of current issues reveal that not only do western governments lie and fake, they have really given up on trying to pretend that they do not. The abuse of power is naked and the propaganda is revealed by the lightest effort to brush away the veneer of democracy.

I find it hard to believe that I live in times where Assange suffers as he does for telling the truth, where a dedicated anti-racist like Corbyn is subjected to daily false accusations of racism and to US and security service backed efforts to thwart his democratic prospects, where the most laughable false flag is paraded to move us towards war with Iran, and where there is no semblance of a genuinely independent media. But, starkly, that is where we are. This is not unrelated to the massive and fast growing inequality of wealth; the erosion of freedom is the necessary precondition that allows the ultra-wealthy to loot the rest of us. It remains my hope there will eventually come a public reaction against the political classes as strong as the situation demands.

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Even though there is a tremendous amount of evidence to the contrary, the Federal Reserve continues to insist that the U.S. economy is in good shape.  On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told the nation that “the economy has performed relatively well” in 2019 and he insisted that “the baseline outlook is a good one.”  Of course he didn’t say anything about our collapsing manufacturing numbers, the worst global trade numbers since the last recession or the “bloodbath” in the U.S. trucking industry.  Powell did concede that “the risk of less favorable outcomes has risen”, but other than vague statements like that he really didn’t acknowledge our growing economic problems at all.  Considering the fact that Powell has more power over the U.S. economy than anyone else in the entire country, this should deeply concern all of us.  To me, Powell’s performance on Wednesday was quite reminiscent of the moment in 2008 when Fed Chair Ben Bernanke told us that the Federal Reserve was not “currently forecasting a recession” after a recession had already begun.

As I have been documenting for weeks, evidence that another major economic downturn has already started can be clearly seen all around us.

For example, we got some very alarming news from the steel industry on Wednesday.  When the Trump administration slapped a 25 percent tariff on steel imports last year, that was supposed to greatly help the U.S. steel industry.  But instead, a dramatic drop in demand due to this new economic downturn is forcing steel companies to take dramatic measures.  According to CNN, U.S. Steel just announced that it will be shutting down a blast furnace in Gary, Indiana and another one that is located just outside of Detroit…

Pain has returned to the US steel industry despite the tariffs put on imported steel last year that were designed to help.

Late Tuesday US Steel announced it will idle two of the blast furnaces where it makes steel, one in its flagship mill in Gary, Indiana, near Chicago, the other in Ecorse, Michigan, near Detroit. The idled furnaces will cut production by about 200,000 tons of steel or more a month, the company said.

“We will resume blast furnace production at one or both idled blast furnaces when market conditions improve,” said the company.

But when will market conditions improve?

In 2020?

After this new economic downturn is over?

Never?

Of course U.S. Steel is not the only steel producer that is hurting right now.  In fact, Nucor and Steel Dynamics have both cut profit forecasts…

US Steel’s action follows similar warnings Monday from Nucor, the nation’s largest steelmaker, and Steel Dynamics. Both are now forecasting lower profits. Nucor pointed to weaker demand from the US auto industry.

Sadly, the truth is that major industry after major industry is deeply suffering at this moment…

• Our ongoing “retail apocalypse” is absolutely brutalizing the retail industry, and we are on pace to have the worst year for store closings in our entire history.
• Auto industry sales have been absolutely abysmal, and auto loan delinquencies have shot up to alarmingly high levels.
• The agriculture industry is going to have the worst year it has seen in at least several decades.
• Our 800 billion dollar trucking industry is already in the midst of a “bloodbath”.
• The real estate industry is poised for the worst downturn that we have seen since the subprime mortgage meltdown during the last financial crisis.
• The manufacturing industry has not seen numbers this bad since the last recession, and things are rapidly getting worse.

But yeah, let’s tell the American people that the economy is “booming” and see if they will buy it.

Really?

Let’s get real.  The U.S. economy is mired in the worst slump in a decade, and economic conditions continue to deteriorate rapidly.  The Federal Reserve could have given us a short-term boost by cutting interest rates on Wednesday, but they decided not to do that…

A divided Federal Reserve held the line on interest rates Wednesday and indicated formally that no cuts are coming in 2019. The decision came amid divisions over what is ahead and still leaves open the possibility that policy loosening could happen before the end of the year depending on how conditions unfold.

The central bank predicts one or two rate cuts in its set of economic predictions, but not until 2020. Despite cautious wording in the post-meeting statement Wednesday, markets are still betting the Fed cuts, as soon as July.

Perhaps they want to save their very limited ammunition for when the recession officially starts, and I can understand that.

But this latest move by the Fed is definitely not going to please President Trump, and it will likely prompt more speculation that Trump would like to demote Powell…

The action sets up a possible confrontation between Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and President Donald Trump, who has been pressuring the Fed to cut rates. Just Tuesday, Trump said “let’s see what he does” at the Fed meeting when asked if he still wants to demote Powell.

At the post-statement news conference, Powell was asked about his future as chairman. “I think the law is clear that I have a four year term, and I fully intend to serve it,” he said.

Trump needs the U.S. economy to be as strong as possible as he heads into an election year.

The stronger the U.S. economy is, the more likely it is that he will be re-elected.

And actually the Federal Reserve may be doing Trump a favor by trying to perpetuate the myth that everything is just fine.  Because if the Fed had cut rates on Wednesday, it would have essentially been an admission that a new recession is on our doorstep.  As John P. Hussman has aptly pointed out, almost every initial rate cut in history “has been associated with an oncoming or ongoing recession”…

With the exception of 1967 and 1996, every initial Fed rate cut has been associated with an oncoming or ongoing recession. Be careful what you wish for.

So for now, the Fed seems to have adopted a “fake it until you make it” approach, and sometimes that can work.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it is going to work this time.  And meanwhile millions upon millions of Americans have been lulled into a false sense of security, and they are not getting prepared for the exceedingly hard times that are coming.

One of my readers recently left a comment in which he stated that what we are facing “is not a drill”, and I believe that he is quite correct.

We haven’t seen economic conditions anything like this since the last recession, and the outlook is getting worse with each passing day.

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Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Featured image is from Moneycontrol

The ruling “Georgian Dream” party of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia is at risk of falling in the face of an ever-escalating Color Revolution that was preplanned to coincide with the symbolic visit of a Russian parliamentarian during the ongoing Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy meeting in the South Caucasian country’s capital, possibly giving way to an American nightmare afterwards if this regime change plot succeeds and ends up forcing Russia on the defensive on yet another former Soviet front.

The Republic of Georgia is in the throes of an ever-escalating Color Revolution that abruptly broke out in response to the symbolic visit of a Russian parliamentarian during the ongoing Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (IAO) meeting in the South Caucasian country’s capital. The ruling “Georgian Dream” party is under fire for allowing IAO chairman and Duma deputy Sergei Gavrilov from the Russian Communist Party to address the gathering in his native language from the Georgian parliamentarian chairman’s seat, with the opposition regarding this as a provocative affront to their state’s sovereignty given the absence of formal relations between the two countries since Russia’s 2008 peace-enforcement mission. Furthermore, rumors abounded that Gavrilov had supported the Abkhaz separatists in the 1990s, though the foreign official denied the accusations and instead insisted that “Russia and Georgia are united by fraternal Orthodox ties”.

His trip to Georgia was supposed to have been an apolitical event aimed at achieving Orthodox-facilitated reconciliation between these two neighboring countries, with it having been entirely predictable that he’d address the assembly in this year’s host state seeing as how protocol naturally calls for the chairman to do so. Nevertheless, because the scheduled event and Gavrilov’s role in it obviously weren’t a secret, this allowed the opposition to prepare for carrying out a preplanned provocation designed to topple the ruling “Georgian Dream” party for its pragmatic stance towards Russia after the previous attempt during last summer’s so-called “Rave Revolution” failed (even if it did serve in hindsight as a probing attempt to discern the security services’ vulnerabilities). Accordingly, some opposition members stormed out of the meeting when Gavrilov stepped up to the podium and then proceeded to call on their compatriots to stage a massive protest outside of parliament in response.

The resultant Color Revolution attempt turned downtown Tbilisi into a war zone after the riot police were forced to respond with tear gas and rubber bullets following the opposition’s attack against parliament. The country is now bracing for a second wave of unrest this weekend as the anti-government rioters demand the resignation of several top officials, which if successful would basically amount to regime change against the ruling “Georgian Dream” party. Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze attempted to mitigate the public’s anger by describing events as a “fair protest” that was triggered by the “huge mistake” of letting Gavrilov address the assembly from the Georgian parliamentarian chairman’s seat but blamed “destructive forces” for hijacking the demonstrations. French-born President Salome Zurabishvili, who ran as an Independent but in an alliance with the “Georgian Dream” party, sensed her coalition partner’s weakness and pounced by accusing a Russian “fifth column” of being behind the unrest, implying that some in the state might have been involved in a conspiracy.

Chaos theory teaches that the outcome of complex processes is disproportionately dependent on the initial conditions, so bearing in mind that Color Revolutions are essentially the weaponization of this concept, it’s possible to make some predictions about the direction that the latest events are headed. It’s obvious that this was a preplanned provocation that exploited preexisting tensions and was timed to coincide with the “trigger event” of Gavrilov making his IAO speech from the Georgian parliamentarian chairman’s seat. The opposition’s walk-out stunt and subsequent rabble-rousing fanned the flames of ultra-nationalist sentiment that were quickly corralled in the direction of parliament and against the ruling party, succeeding in causing a split between the Independent President and her ruling “Georgian Dream” coalition partners. If the targeted authorities don’t resign, then the demonstrations will probably increase in fervor, probably culminating in more violence and/or a constitutional crisis if the President seeks to dismiss some officials against their will.

In terms of the larger picture, the latest unrest serves American grand strategic interests by forcing Russia to react to yet another crisis on its periphery, thereby tightening the “containment” noose that it’s set up in recent years throughout a slew of former Soviet Republics and forcing it on the defensive on yet another front. Furthermore, the possible loss of pragmatic partners in Georgia could further deteriorate Russia’s relations with the country, especially if a new ultra-nationalist government tries to expedite the state’s entry into NATO in spite of the unresolved status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (which should technically make Georgia ineligible for membership). Even in the “best-case” scenario that the “Georgian Dream” doesn’t immediately give way to an American nightmare, it’s probable that the US and its EU partners might sanction the country under the pretext of supposed “unprovoked violence against peaceful protesters”, which could worsen the situation and eventually pave the way for yet another Color Revolution attempt in the coming future.

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

Featured image is from Reuters/Irakli Gedenidze

Syria and Russia have been evacuating civilians from yet another region starved by its Western-backed terrorists. But Western corporate media ignore this and instead continue spinning nightmarish war propaganda on Syria.

The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) and the Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF) share Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s skepticism about  Russia’s alleged culpability in the shooting down of MH17 on the 17^th of July 2014. The Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT) has not produced any solid evidence to show that the four suspects it has named are guilty of the crime. Dr.Mahathir is right when he argues that from the very beginning there was a political script in place to put the blame upon Russia.

A number of independent investigators, apart from organisations such as JUST, PGPF and Global Research, had raised fundamental questions about the investigation since 2014. They had asked how the investigation could be credible when Ukraine was in the team because it was alleged that Ukraine was complicit in the attack on MH17. To make it worse, the four initial members of the JIT, namely, Australia, Belgium, Netherlands and Ukraine  — Malaysia was deliberately excluded in the early stage of the investigation — came to an agreement on 8 August 2014 that the results of the investigation can only be announced if they have the consent of all four parties. Making unanimity among the four a condition in effect gave Ukraine an effective veto over the decision-making process.

We are also aware that throughout the investigation attempts to obtain independent verifiable data have not been successful. These include certified copies of communications between Ukrainian air traffic controllers and the flight crew on board the ill-fated airline and the Comma Separated Variable (CSV) file from the plane’s flight data recorder. This lack of transparency had created serious doubts about the integrity of the investigation. It is alleged that as a result of the biased investigation high quality items of evidence available were not subjected to thorough analysis and evaluation.

There is perhaps an even bigger problem with the investigation. The JIT has not tried to link the tragedy with larger geopolitical concerns. The critical question of who benefitted from the massacre in the skies has not been accorded any attention. And yet it is obvious that the massacre was manipulated to not only demonize Russian President Vladimir Putin and thwart Russia’s military and political re-assertion but also to intensify sanctions against Russia with the support of the United States’ European allies. These allies such as Germany, France, Netherlands and Italy were somewhat reluctant to endorse the US drive to widen and deepen sanctions against Russia in the initial phase but after the July 17^th massacre of innocent travellers the European mood changed dramatically.

The failure of the JIT to address these and other important issues pertaining to the actual investigation and its geopolitical dimensions undermines its credibility. Arresting and charging individuals on the back such a lopsided investigation does not do justice to the families of the victims of the terrible tragedy. It does not guarantee closure.

In the name of the families of the victims and in the name of truth and justice, JUST and PGPF demand that a more honest and comprehensive investigation be carried out perhaps by a truly independent international panel.

Let us not sacrifice truth and justice at the altar of power and geopolitical machinations.

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Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, President, International  Movement for a Just World (JUST)

Tan Sri Norian Mai, Chairman, Perdana  Global Peace Foundation (PGPF)        

Read part I, II, III and IV 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

In this part is a brief comment on how US financial imperialism works in Venezuela, just as German-Northern Europe financial imperialism works in the southern Europe periphery of the Eurozone (e.g. Greece, Italy, etc.).

Mohsen Abdelmoumen: Your article Financial Imperialism: The case of Venezuela dated last March caught my attention, as all your work that I advise our readership to read. You wrote: “Venezuela today is a classic case how US imperialism in the 21st century employs financial measures to crush a state and country that dares to break away from the US global economic empire and pursue an independent course outside the US empire’s web of entangling economic and financial relations.” In your opinion, how can Venezuela resist the US-led imperialist war against it?

Jack Rasmus: It’s important to understand how in 21st century capitalism, where the US is clearly the hegemonic power, how the US expands, maintains, and intervenes to maintain its economic empire. If 21st century global capitalism is increasingly a financial capitalism, and depends increasingly more on financial means to expand, then its imperialism is more financial than ever before.

Unfortunately, the ‘left’ and progressives, even Marxists, are looking in the rear view mirror at imperialism.They still see it in the prism of 19th century, or early 20th century, in its forms. One of my projects is to analyze and explain how financial measures are used by US to maintain its economic empire. It is quite different from classical British imperialism, which collapsed fully after world war II and was replaced by the American empire.

In my article, ‘Financial Imperialism: The Case of Venezuela’ I explained how some of these financial measures work, and continue to work, to destabilize Venezuela’s economy and set it up for violent political change, either from within or without via invasion of some kind that is organized and managed by the US.

My 2016 book, ‘Looting Greece: A New Financial Imperialism Emerges’, looked at how it works in the Eurozone as well, with Greece a microcosm case example that has implications elsewhere. Financial Imperialism works as well within the advanced capitalist economies, where the periphery (like southern Europe) is financially exploited by the northern Europe bankers and their political elites in the European Central Bank, European Commission, etc. Trade zones and currency unions (like the Eurozone) function in this way.

What can Venezuela do to resist the US-led imperialist war against it is your question. First, it is essential for Venezuela to organize, mobilize and arm its base of popular support. This I think it has been doing. But I’m not sure it has a strategy how to use that mobilized base against its opponents, internal and external. It’s been mostly a defensive action, not going on the offensive. But I may be wrong there, since I have no way of knowing what it may be doing internally in that regard.

Second, the Maduro regime must retain support of the Venezuelan military.So far it appears it is succeeding in that regard. The recent attempted uprising by the US-puppet, Gaido, failed miserably in its attempt to co-opt and ‘turn’ the military against the government.

Third, its important that popular forces find a way to throw out Bolsonaro in Brazil and Macri in Argentina.Those two US-assisted governments would probably send the military forces should a military invasion occur in Venezuela. The US will use the OAS (note: Organization of American States)and their militaries as proxies. But if they’re out of the picture or preoccupied with serious problems at home, its unlikely they could be used.The people of Brazil and Argentina can thus play a role here as well. State allies of Venezuela could help significantly as well by trade and loans to help Venezuela. And by purchasing its oil and restoring its refinery production to offset US sabotage and sanctions. Notably here are China, Russia, Cuba and other South American countries not already the clients of Washington like Brazil, Argentina, and perhaps now Ecuador.

Finally, within the US progressive forces can work more aggressively and coordinate better their efforts to reveal to American people what’s really going on in Venezuela, how the US neocons are intensifying the attack in preparation for invasion, what’s really behind the problems in the country’s economy, etc. There needs to be something similar to the Latin American defense movement that arose in the 1970s after the Chilean coup engineered by the US and the defense of central American progressive forces in the 1980s.

Another ‘target’ of intensifying US financial imperialism is, of course, Iran. Here you can see the strategy and program how it is implemented from the beginning.

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Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has described the decision to charge three Russians and one Ukranian with murder over flight MH17 as a political plot against Russia.

“We are very unhappy. From the very beginning, it became a political issue on how to accuse Russia of the wrongdoing.

“Even before they examined the case, they have already claimed it (the shooting down of MH17) was done by Russia,” said Dr Mahathir to reporters at the Prime Minister’s Department Hari Raya celebration event here.

Dr Mahathir said Malaysia is not convinced with the findings and demands that the investigators provide proof that the Russians were behind the shooting.

Click here to watch the video

 

“This is a ridiculous thing. Someone shoots a gun and you are not able to see who, but you know who shot,” said Dr Mahathir.

When asked if Malaysia’s stance was because it had a stake with Russia, who are the buyers of its palm oil, Dr Mahathir said no.

“No, no. That is different,” he said.

International investigators charged four people with murder over the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 above rebel-held eastern Ukraine in which 298 people were killed.

The four were Russian nationals Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Oleg Pulatov, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko.

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Late on June 19, Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis) carried out a new one “cruise missile” strike on Saudi Arabia. The missile strike targeted a major power plant in the area of al-Shuqaiq in the Kingdom’s southern province of Jizan.

Brig. Gen. Yahya Sari, a spokesman for the part of the Yemeni Armed Forces loyal to the Ansar Allah government said that the strike was a response to the continued crimes of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. He also promised “great surprises” for “the Saudi regime” if it continues its invasion of Yemen.

This was the second cruise missile strike on southern Saudi Arabia in a week. On June 12, a cruise missile hit Abha International Airport. Then, Ansar Allah stressed that the missile hit the control tower and put it out of service. According to this version of events, the strike was aimed at a military-related part of the infrastructure. The Saudi side reported dozens of civilian casualties saying that the missile hit the arrival hall.

Since 2016, Ansar Allah has carried out at least 10 attacks on Abha Airport with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and loitering munitions. The most recent took place on June 18 when the Yemeni resistance employed Qasef-K2 suicide drones paralyzing the work of the airport once again.

Ansar Allah and allied army units also carried out successful raids in the southern Saudi province of Asir on June 17th and 18th. In the course of the advance, they destroyed at least 11 vehicles of Saudi forces and captured loads of weapons.

Saudi warplanes and attack helicopters carried out several airstrikes on Houthi positions in southern ‘Asir in an attempt to repel the attacks. However, the airstrikes were not effective.

Over the past months, the province of Asir has turned into a battleground between Saudi and Yemeni forces with the Saudi military seemingly unable to stop Ansar Allah attacks and secure the border area.

On June 20, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said that it had shot down an intruding US spy drone near the Kouh-e Mobarak region, over the province of Hormozgan. According to US officials as quoted by mainstream media, it was downed over the Strait of Hormuz.

Just recently, the US accused Iran of attempting to shoot down an MQ-9 Reaper over the Gulf of Oman and of assisting Ansar Allah in downing another MQ-9 Reaper over Yemen.

Yemeni sources see the continued US military buildup in the region and its increased intelligence activity as signs of a coming escalation in the Persian Gulf region.

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Sooner or later the US “maximum pressure” on Iran would inevitably be met by “maximum counter-pressure”. Sparks are ominously bound to fly.

For the past few days, intelligence circles across Eurasia had been prodding Tehran to consider a quite straightforward scenario. There would be no need to shut down the Strait of Hormuz if Quds Force commander, General Qasem Soleimani, the ultimate Pentagon bête noire, explained in detail, on global media, that Washington simply does not have the military capacity to keep the Strait open.

As I previously reported, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz would destroy the American economy by detonating the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market; and that would collapse the world banking system, crushing the world’s $80 trillion GDP and causing an unprecedented depression.

Soleimani should also state bluntly that Iran may in fact shut down the Strait of Hormuz if the nation is prevented from exporting essential two million barrels of oil a day, mostly to Asia. Exports, which before illegal US sanctions and de facto blockade would normally reach 2.5 million barrels a day, now may be down to only 400,000.

Soleimani’s intervention would align with consistent signs already coming from the IRGC. The Persian Gulf is being described as an imminent “shooting gallery.” Brigadier General Hossein Salami stressed that Iran’s ballistic missiles are capable of hitting “carriers in the sea” with pinpoint precision. The whole northern border of the Persian Gulf, on Iranian territory, is lined up with anti-ship missiles – as I confirmed with IRGC-related sources.

We’ll let you know when it’s closed

Then, it happened.

Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Mohammad Baqeri, went straight to the point;

“If the Islamic Republic of Iran were determined to prevent export of oil from the Persian Gulf, that determination would be realized in full and announced in public, in view of the power of the country and its Armed Forces.”

The facts are stark. Tehran simply won’t accept all-out economic war lying down – prevented to export the oil that protects its economic survival. The Strait of Hormuz question has been officially addressed. Now it’s time for the derivatives.

Presenting detailed derivatives analysis plus military analysis to global media would force the media pack, mostly Western, to go to Warren Buffett to see if it is true. And it is true. Soleimani, according to this scenario, should say as much and recommend that the media go talk to Warren Buffett.

The extent of a possible derivatives crisis is an uber-taboo theme for the Washington consensus institutions. According to one of my American banking sources, the most accurate figure – $1.2 quadrillion – comes from a Swiss banker, off the record. He should know; the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) – the central bank of central banks – is in Basle.

The key point is it doesn’t matter how the Strait of Hormuz is blocked.

It could be a false flag. Or it could be because the Iranian government feels it’s going to be attacked and then sinks a cargo ship or two. What matters is the final result; any blocking of the energy flow will lead the price of oil to reach $200 a barrel, $500 or even, according to some Goldman Sachs projections, $1,000.

Another US banking source explains:

“The key in the analysis is what is called notional. They are so far out of the money that they are said to mean nothing. But in a crisis the notional can become real.  For example, if I buy a call for a million barrels of oil at $300 a barrel, my cost will not be very great as it is thought to be inconceivable that the price will go that high.  That is notional.  But if the Strait is closed, that can become a stupendous figure.”

BIS will only commit, officially, to indicate the total notional amount outstanding for contracts in derivatives markets is an estimated $542.4 trillion. But this is just an estimate.

The banking source adds,

“Even here it is the notional that has meaning.  Huge amounts are interest rate derivatives. Most are notional but if oil goes to a thousand dollars a barrel, then this will affect interest rates if 45% of the world’s GDP is oil. This is what is called in business a contingent liability.”

Goldman Sachs has projected a feasible, possible $1,000 a barrel a few weeks after the Strait of Hormuz being shut down. This figure, times 100 million barrels of oil produced per day, leads us to 45% of the $80 trillion global GDP. It’s self-evident the world economy would collapse based on just that alone.

War dogs barking mad

As much as 30% of the world’s oil supply transits the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Wily Persian Gulf traders – who know better – are virtually unanimous; if Tehran was really responsible for the Gulf of Oman tanker incident, oil prices would be going through the roof by now. They aren’t.

Iran’s territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz amount to 12 nautical miles (22 km). Since 1959, Iran recognizes only non-military naval transit.

Since 1972, Oman’s territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz also amount to 12 nautical miles. At its narrowest, the width of the Strait is 21 nautical miles (39 km). That means, crucially, that half of the Strait of Hormuz is in Iranian territorial waters, and the other half in Oman’s. There are no “international waters”.

And that adds to Tehran now openly saying that Iran may decide to close the Strait of Hormuz publicly – and not by stealth.

Iran’s indirect, asymmetric warfare response to any US adventure will be very painful. Prof. Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran once again reconfirmed, “even a limited strike will be met by a major and disproportionate response.” And that means gloves off, big time; anything from really blowing up tankers to, in Marandi’s words, “Saudi and UAE oil facilities in flames”.

Hezbollah will launch tens of thousands of missiles against Israel. As Hezbollah’s secretary-general Hasan Nasrallah has been stressing in his speeches,

“war on Iran will not remain within that country’s borders, rather it will mean that the entire [Middle East] region will be set ablaze. All of the American forces and interests in the region will be wiped out, and with them the conspirators, first among them Israel and the Saudi ruling family.”

It’s quite enlightening to pay close attention to what this Israel intel op is saying. The dogs of war though are barking mad.

Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo jetted to CENTCOM in Tampa to discuss “regional security concerns and ongoing operations” with – skeptical – generals, a euphemism for “maxim pressure” eventually leading to war on Iran.

Iranian diplomacy, discreetly, has already informed the EU – and the Swiss – about their ability to crash the entire world economy. But still that was not enough to remove US sanctions.

War zone in effect

As it stands in Trumpland, former CIA Mike “We lied, We cheated, We stole” Pompeo – America’s “top diplomat” – is virtually running the Pentagon. “Acting” secretary Shanahan performed self-immolation. Pompeo continues to actively sell the notion the “intelligence community is convinced” Iran is responsible for the Gulf of Oman tanker incident. Washington is ablaze with rumors of an ominous double bill in the near future; Pompeo as head of the Pentagon and Psycho John Bolton as Secretary of State. That would spell out War.

Yet even before sparks start to fly, Iran could declare that the Persian Gulf is in a state of war; declare that the Strait of Hormuz is a war zone; and then ban all “hostile” military and civilian traffic in its half of the Strait. Without firing a single shot, no shipping company on the planet would have oil tankers transiting the Persian Gulf.

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist. 

Featured image is from American Herald Tribune

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

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India’s dispatch of naval and air assets to the Gulf in response to the latest US-provoked crisis there is anti-Iranian to the core and intended to serve as an exercise for improving the South Asian state’s interoperability with its new American military-strategic ally.

The Gulf has been thrown into crisis as a result of two possible false flag tanker attacks and Iran’s downing of an American spy drone shortly after the latest one, but an unlikely country has decided to urgently dispatch its naval and air assets to the region in response…India. The South Asian state claims that it’s doing so in order to “reassure” Indian-flagged vessels transiting to and from the region, but the real reason is most likely that it intends for this deployment to serve as an exercise for improving the country’s interoperability with its new American military-strategic ally. The two Great Powers are closely cooperating in “containing” China, and the US successfully pressured India to discontinue purchasing Iranian oil under the pain of sanctions despite New Delhi previously promising last year to only abide by UNSC sanctions in this respect. India has now replaced its previous Iranian imports with Saudi, Emirati, and American resources instead, thus meaning that the other purpose of this so-called “reassurance” mission is to send the signal that it supports the US-led multilateral militarization of this waterway because it tacitly agrees with Washington’s official narrative that Iran was responsible for the earlier tanker attacks.

It’s not known whether India’s naval assets will be equipped with the ship-based surface-to-air missiles that it jointly produced with “Israel” and recently tested last month, but the two parties are now officially UN allies after New Delhi unprecedentedly voted together with Tel Aviv to prevent a Palestinian NGO from being granted consultative status by the global body so it wouldn’t be surprising if it does so in order to further ingratiate itself with the self-proclaimed “Jewish State” and their shared American ally. In any case, India’s military deployment to the Gulf has a more practical component to it than just virtue signaling fealty to its new American, “Israeli”, and Saudi friends because of the ways in which it can finally put the LEMOA and COMCASA pacts to use in a real-life operational environment. These agreements enable the US and India to use some of each other’s bases  (such as the new ones that they established in the nearby Omani port of Duqm) on a case-by-case “logistical” basis and exchange sensitive military information, respectively, ergo the original assertion that this is intended to be an exercise to improve their interoperability.

Suffice to say, India’s moves are anti-Iranian to the core and might finally convince the Islamic Republic’s leadership to stop begging the South Asian state to reconsider its compliance with America’s unilateral sanctions regime after New Delhi so proudly showed off its implicit military support for Tehran’s American, “Israeli”, and Saudi enemies during the ongoing crisis. As is becoming the trend, the Indian rogue state‘s regionally destabilizing actions are increasing the geostrategic importance of the global pivot state of Pakistan, which has wisely remained neutral and is therefore best-suited for credibly mediating a peaceful resolution to the latest tensions. As such, Islamabad has proven its independence in foreign affairs and debunked the false claim that’s regularly propagated about it supposedly being nothing more than a Saudi puppet, with the true marionette of not just Riyadh but also Washington and Tel Aviv being revealed to be none other than India, which still unconvincingly clings to the discredited slogan of “multi-alignment” to justify its unipolar pivot.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Introduction by Dr. Gary Null

About a decade ago, my late colleague Dr. Martin Feldman and I were invited to be keynote speakers at a conference on anti-aging and alternative medicine in Chicago.

The hall was packed with several thousand clinicians, physicians, medical professors, scientific researchers and doctors of non-conventional medical disciplines who were interested in the latest anti-aging research. Marty and I presented a paper based upon a year-long clinical study we had conducted.

Following the presentation, a professor at a California medical school asked me to meet privately with some physicians in a separate conference room. I was only anticipating a handful of doctors; therefore I was taken aback to see several hundred MDs and PhDs crammed into the space.  The physicians and professors were likely board certified; what they held in common was their inclusion of non-toxic, non-drug therapies in their protocols to treat patients.  The professor who invited me had published dozens of papers in peer-reviewed journals, but she was unable to get her own clinical research using alternative medical therapies published.  This was despite the fact that there are already tens of thousands of studies in print supporting the scientific basis for what she and thousands of other physicians are doing.   

What I learned from listening to these doctors’ complaints is that they feared speaking out publicly about their personal successes. They worried that they would be attacked and could face interrogation from state medical boards for breaking rank with the status quo. One professor from the University of Chicago’s medical school stated that he and his colleagues felt as if they were being held silent in the closet.  However, what surprised me was their  knowledge about the causes of disease and non-toxic therapies that could reverse them. For the following hours Marty and I listened to in depth conversations for preventing, treating and reversing diseases their colleagues using orthodox protocols were unable to achieve. California professor made a remark I would never forget. He stated it was almost Orwellian that those of us who are able to use alternative medicine must apologize for the success of our treatments. We are attacked and punished for succeeding while they are rewarded for failing. The room burst into applause. A woman physician from Baylor University said she has never been able to discuss her accomplishments in treating childhood autism because she did not use an conventional therapy. One those occasions when she tried, she was confronted with disdain and rebukes. All the doctors in the room had similar stories to share. 

My advice was for these doctors was to start collaborating together and bring their results and protocols to public attention.  They argued it was too risky. Therefore nothing happened and alternative medicine’s acceptance in the mainstream continues to worsen.  The consequence has been that tens of thousands of trained medical practitioners have been forced to suffer, remain silent and practice quietly.  

The bitter irony is that with tens of millions of patients turning towards non-conventional medicine, and with this trend increasing rapidly as conventional drug interventions repeatedly fail, these are the real heroes who are being isolated and shunned from the mainstream. Yet they have the support of the scientific literature to back their health claims as well as countless patient testimonials. 

It cannot be emphasized enough that a significant proportion of modern medicine is a failure but nevertheless mythologized as a success. In the US, a 2012 National Health Interview Survey recorded that 2.1 percent representing over 6.5 million Americans use homeopathy. The website Homeobook estimates there are about 3,000 board certified American physicians incorporating homeopathy into their clinical practice. Twenty-seven million people turn to Chiropractic. Globally, 80 percent of the world’s population use traditional botanical medical therapies. There are no accurate estimates for traditional Chinese medicine and Indian Ayurveda users in the US; however there are over 6,000 practicing naturopathic physicians and more than 27,000 licensed acupuncturists. After we add other holistic therapies such as meditative behavior modification, hypnosis, energy medicine, various mind-body therapies, therapeutic massage, etc. we find a growing percentage of Americans resorting to alternative medicine whether or not they follow allopathic protocols as well. Unfortunately the real pioneers in these healing arts have no voice and more often than not they are ridiculed and damned. The message is clear: stay in your corner, remain silent and don’t bring attention to yourself. 

During the course of my career I have spoken with thousands of physicians who incorporate some form of alternative medicine into their clinical practice. It is fair to say many are terrified of the industrial medical complex and its henchmen in the government agencies and media. With very rare exceptions such as the groundbreaking work of Dr. Dean Ornish, will we ever read in medical journals the profiles of the men and women who are pioneering safer and more effective ways to prevent and reverse disease outside of the dominant matrix. The simple reason why a board certified physician would jump ship and turn to these alternative therapies is because they work and they have experienced first hand the trail of severe complications, injuries and deaths caused by conventional medicine. Even the AMA’s journal noted that iatrogenic death is the third leading cause of death in the US after cardiovascular disease and cancer. A conservative figure places the number at approximately 300,000 deaths annually.  Our own analysis suggests drug complications and medical error may be first. But if we multiply this figure over the course of the previous ten years, we are looking at 3 million people who have died at the hands of modern medicine. 

Those who are responsible for this medical genocide are never held accountable. In fact they are rewarded. This presents a double standard because these are the same leaders of the modern medical regime who most viciously attack safer natural protocols. They make every effort to contain alternative medicine, which they perceive as a threat to their control over the nation’s healthcare. We have discovered a term that describes this phenomenon well: Medical Apartheid. 

Many of the most innovative health practitioners and those speaking out about the risks of conventional medicine and the proven benefits of the alternatives, find themselves stuck in a medical gulag. Notable examples include Drs. Rupert Sheldrake, Deepak Chopra, Larry Dossey, Andrew Weil, David Perlmutter and hundreds more. The guards over this apartheid encampment are the CDC, the leading medical associations, mainstream media, radicalized Skeptic organizations espousing scientific materialism such as the Center for Inquiry and the Society for Science Based Medicine, social media platforms such as Wikipedia, and of course the pharmaceutical companies that bank their efforts. One is no less responsible than another. They work in unison for the sole purpose of advancing the pipelines of the drug makers while roping off the opposition. Consequently, the apartheid regime acts as a court that both charges and convicts without a jury. It plays the role of judge and executioner. And this apartheid is now being demonstrated everywhere. 

An excellent example is the career of Dr. Linus Pauling, one of the most prolific medical researchers in American history. Pauling had a distinguished career at Cal Tech University for over three decades, published over 1,200 scientific papers and books, and was the rare recipient of the Nobel Prize on two separate occasions. Yet despite his spectacular career, it was his discovery that large doses of Vitamin C could prevent and reduce the severity of colds and flu infections that turned him into a pariah within the medical establishment. His later discovery that mega-doses of Vitamin C could be used to treat terminal cancer further labeled him as a dangerous heretic. 

During a private conversation with Dr. Pauling, he shared with me his personal disappointment with the conventional medical community and predicted that in the future his entire career would be reduced to having been an advocate of pseudoscience. Indeed, his prophesy was fulfilled. Wikipedia describes Orthomolecular Medicine, a modality of alternative medicine co-founded by Drs. Pauling and Abram Hoffer, which is based upon maintaining optimal health with nutritional supplementation, as “food faddism” and “quackery.”  And despite the tens of thousands of peer-reviewed studies showing a wide range of health benefits for hundreds of different nutrients, Wikipedia only presents several dismal and poor quality studies that claim the opposite. Dr. Pauling’s case is a lesson to better understand why thousands of medical doctors and followers of non-conventional protocols are fearful that their work to heal patients may actually destroy their careers and reputations. And this identifies a tactic of the Medical Apartheid: frame alternative medical practitioners and its advocates as enemies of public health and detain them in a prison of anxiety so they are fearful to reach out beyond the barbed walls of their gulag. 

Dr. Gary Null

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Definitions for apartheid vary slightly. However what they all share in common is that apartheid is a form of discrimination sanctioned by the law of the state. Apartheid’s ultimate goal is to segregate a race, ethnicity, belief system or group in order to exclude them from the state privileges awarded to those to whom a regime holds in favor. The victims of apartheid find themselves entrapped in an open-air detention center. Although apartheid conjures images of Afrikaners’ discrimination against minorities in South Africa, the Australian government’s treatment of the Aboriginal peoples, the state of Israel’s vicious repression of Palestinians, and the southern states of the US during the days of segregation, and Native Americans being forced on ghettoized reservations, apartheid is an appropriate term to describe ideological repression, discrimination and segregation waged against  the followers of alternative points of view. The dominant medical paradigm’s unceasing offensive against all forms of natural and alternative medicine has been with us for over century.  This assault is being undertaken by a wide network of players in the pharmaceutical industrial complex, the federal health agencies, bought off politicians, universities, professional medical associations and journals, the mainstream media, and Silicon Valley firms including Wikipedia. 

What the medical establishment shares with repressive, racist governments is a mission to go beyond the boundaries of social and civil rights in order to establish its authority and control over its targeted victims.  In effect,  America’s Medical Apartheid against non-conventional medical practice is nothing less than institutionalized prejudice.  In effect, the non-conventional and natural medical disciplines are being corridored off into indentured serfdom. 

One feature of apartheid is that it permits the “other” to exist in isolation. In South Africa, apartheid was a rule of law that enabled Afrikaners and South African Blacks to development independently under segregated conditions. The ruling Afrikaner government was fully aware it could not extinguish minority groups altogether. Therefore a repressive system was created to sequester Black communities. Likewise, the conventional medical establishment is making every effort to quarantine alternative medical systems. More important are the efforts to smother the successes of its practitioners and the enormous body of peer-reviewed scientific literature indicating that these non-drug based therapies are far more effective and safe than the pharmaceutical model. 

One of the most nefarious federal laws on the books that perpetuates our nation’s Medical Apartheid is to forbid any health claims to be associated with foods, vitamins, supplements, and medicinal herbs that have not gone through the FDA’s regulatory hurdles for drug approval and licensing.  During the 2009 “fake” H1N1 epidemic, the FDA harassed and threatened Dr. Andrew Weil for his claims that the popular Asian herb astragulus could prevent and treat swine flu infection. The warning came despite an enormous body of research in the National Institute of Health’s database of peer-reviewed medical literature showing that the plant possesses powerful antibacterial and antiviral properties. The FDA has also led SWAT raids against the walnut and cherry industries for advertising these food’s health claims. The sole reason for this unwarranted harassment was because astragulus, walnuts and cherries are not licensed medications. Few are aware that the FDA employs armed goons eager to invade dairy farmers providing raw milk to their communities. As ridiculous as these examples might appear, it is regrettably the law of the land. And the pharmaceutical industry and its abettors at the highest levels of the CDC, FDA and HHS are determined to maintain this apparatus of surveillance, repression and persecution. 

Another characteristic of America’s Medical Apartheid is our healthcare system’s differential attitude towards basic human rights and its regressive policies that sustain medical discrimination. America’s healthcare now ranks at the bottom of the pack among developed nations. Not only is it incompetent and economically unsustainable, it is also thoroughly corrupt and biased by solely benefiting the pharmaceutical and insurance industries and their shareholders. You cant place your bets on the stock market for a potential boom in Chiropracic or Traditional Chinese Medicine or the discovery of a new effective natural treatment. The delivery of medical services solely within a private insurance-based dynasty intentionally refuses to cover most preventative and alternative medical practices, which are substantially cheaper and more effective than the drug and surgical interventions being covered. Again, we find money and power favoring and providing gratuitous privileges only to those who are fully obedient to the dominant medical paradigm. By excluding holistic medicine from insurance coverage, patients are forced to pay out of pocket if they wish to follow a natural and less risky course of treatment. Imagine if the US were more like Switzerland, which universally covers most alternative forms of treatment, including homeopathy?  We would surely have a much healthier citizenry. 

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration states,

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and the family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.” 

However, in a Medical Apartheid the ruling establishment controls the legislature and federal health agencies that determine what is accepted medical practice. If health and wellness are basic human rights, then this apartheid perverts the very definition of “health” within its warped parameters that exclude other definitions and the more scientific means to restore wellness.

Consequently, another characteristic of an apartheid is “structural discrimination.” Discrimination against alternative medicine filters down into additional laws limiting the public freedom of choice and access to vital health information. Examples are the recent flurry of laws being passed in a growing number of states that mandate vaccination and efforts to restrict all nutritional counseling, including advice concerning vitamins and supplements, to certified dietitians who follow only the system’s accepted guidelines. Any naturopath, alternative nutritionist, food counselor who follows a different medical model is presumed to be inferior. Therefore the apartheid makes every effort to hamper the influence of their practices. This is one reason why a Medical Apartheid is analogous to other forms of institutionalized racism. 

South African apartheid acknowledged completely the potential political strength in the non-Afrikaner communities. It fully realized its capacity to upset the status quo of White rule. Therefore, an apartheid will recognize the existence of the “other” while simultaneously denying and undermining its value to the nation or larger community. Simiiarly, a Medical Apartheid promulgates a culture of cognitive dissonance within the medical community. While acknowledging that there is a vast body of scientific literature to prove alternative therapies’ efficacy, at the same it is determined to never advocate on behalf of these therapies. Preference is given to drugs over safety and cost-savings. 

Finally, we should note the important role the powers of private lobbying play to enforce laws that in turn marginalize and limit the practice of non-conventional medicine. Lobbying favors our medical regime which has become increasingly defined by financial incentives rather than restoring the health of ill patients. By encircling alternative health systems with bad press, with vitriol and abuse on social media such as Wikipedia and Facebook, with regressive laws limiting public access to invaluable treatments, and by erecting prejudiced obstacles to bar non-conventional medical achievements from entering professional journals, conferences and medical schools, natural medicine has become imprisoned for the sole purpose to reduce its exposure to the public. Medical Apartheid is not an accidental development of a healthcare system in decline. Rather, similar to Israel’s strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people, the dominant establishment oppresses its presumed competition by means of distinct laws, rigid policies, coordinated harassment and inequitable practices.

Once ensnared in the apartheid’s detention zone, there is no recourse unless a physician renounces his or her life’s work, repents to the medical authorities and publicly voices hostility against the very treatments used successfully to treat patients. This is the case of several prominent alternative health practitioners who converted to Skepticism, such as former Chiropractic Samuel Homola and more notably Edzard Ernst, a former professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter in the UK. Today Homola and Ernst are now regarded as heroes by Skeptics, given awards by Skeptic organizations and are often referenced as a proof-of-concept that non-conventional medicine simply doesn’t work, is dangerous, and therefore should be regarded as quackery. 

Wikipedia is the principal holder of the virtual keys to the internet’s Medical Apartheid. Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales and his minion of militant Skeptics serve as the final arbitrators as to whether a physician will be awarded a laurel wreath or be condemned with a professional death sentence.  Our investigations during the past year have convinced us that there is no reason whatsoever to question that Wikipedia’s Skeptic editors have direct and/or indirect lines of collusion with the apartheid’s drug industry and enablers in government, universities and professional associations. Their critical role in denigrating alternative health professions can not be over-stated. Wikipedia is in fact the virtual face of the apartheid at its worse.  

By now, we should have learned the lessons of how our federal officials handle scientifically proven dangers to the public:  adverse effects of drugs that should have never been approved in the first place, the health risks of agricultural chemicals such as glyphosate, the probable escalation of autism and other neurological disorders by imposing mandatory vaccination upon the population, 5G technology’s peril to human health and the environment, the dietary and environmental factors associated with our epidemics in obesity, diabetes, autism, heart diseases, etc,. And of course there is the evisceration of consumer protection laws, such as the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, and the erosion of laws protecting our civil rights and freedom of medical choice. Rarely do we ever read an honest, truthful expose about any major media source about the institutions and organizations that hold power over our lives, such as the dilettantes in the drug and insurance industries, American Medical Association and other professional organizations, the CDC, FDA and the Department of Human Health Services. All of these entities are the architects and helmsmen of a medical regime that earned the reputation of being a major threat to the health of the nation. 

The culmination of Medical Apartheid brings us to the final step to denounce, ridicule and shame all alternative medical therapies and their practitioners.They are called quacks or in Jimmy Wales’s words “lunatic charlatans” on Wikipedia and they risk being banned from Google and Facebook. Consequently their careers are frozen forever in a virtual reality with no rights to sue or given recourse for removal. And finally, the major thought leaders of non-conventional medicine, as well as their patients who become activist voices for wellness, such as the countless mothers and fathers of vaccine-injured children, are labeled as a serious danger to pubic health. Hence they face endless harassment and even arrest or imprisonment. And sadly this strategy of the Medical Apartheid is succeeding.     

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

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

This Saturday, Winnipeggers will hold the city’s 38th annual Walk for Peace. The theme of this year’s march is to call for Canada to adopt a foreign policy that focuses on international peace, development and co-operation. The event is sponsored by Peace Alliance Winnipeg and the Winnipeg chapter of the Council of Canadians.

Background: Winnipeggers have held an annual Walk for Peace since 1982. The purpose then was to draw attention to the threat of nuclear war and to urge our political leaders to pursue peaceful options and to support nuclear disarmament.

In many ways the world situation is more dangerous than it was in 1982 and our need to remind our politicians of their responsibilities remains.

Canadians overwhelmingly support peace and disarmament. For example, polling conducted by Environics in 2008 indicated that almost 90 percent of Canadians support the abolition of nuclear weapons. Research reported by Environics in 2018 shows that Canadian opposition to nuclear weapons remains high. Despite this, the federal government has refused to support the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, approved by 122 countries at the United Nations on July 7, 2017.

Equally disturbing has been Canada’s increasingly belligerent relationship with Russia, participation in Middle Eastern wars, sales of arms to notorious human rights violators, such as Saudi Arabia and seeking the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Venezuela.

When: Saturday, June 22, 2019
Where: The west side of the Manitoba Legislative Building
What time: We assemble at 12:00 Noon. The march begins at 12:30 PM.
Where to: We will walk from the Legislative Building, south on Osborne to Stradbrook, east on Stradbrook to Scott, north on Scott to River, west on River to Osborne and back to the Legislative Building. Route map.

What else: refreshments and brief speeches after the march

Sponsors:

– Peace Alliance Winnipeg
– Council of Canadians – Winnipeg Chapter

As readers may recall, the USS Liberty was attacked by Israel during the six-day war in 1967, as it sailed at 5 knots in international waters off the Sinai coast. Of 294 crew members, 34 were killed and 171 wounded in the attack.[1] The Israeli government claimed and continues to claim that its military confused the Liberty with an Egyptian supply ship, the El Quseir, formerly used to transport horses.

The Israeli government apologized for this “tragic mistake” and agreed to pay compensation. Israel’s explanation for the “mistake” was at the time accepted at face value by the U.S. government.[2] The surviving crew members, however, consistently claim that the attackers knew they targeted an American ship they intended to sink, leaving no witnesses alive. One of the surviving crew members, James M. Ennes, Jr., published in 1979 the first book on this event, “Assault on the Liberty”, which demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the Israelis deliberately attempted to sink the Liberty in the knowledge that it was an American ship and that the U.S. authorities, led by President Lyndon B. Johnson, intended to cover-up this fact. These two opposing views cannot be reconciled. Most writings on the Liberty case focus on this dispute.

Yet, in 2003, a book by British investigative journalist Peter Hounam (“Operation Cyanide: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III”) and its accompanying BBC documentary film from 2002 (“USS Liberty: Dead in the Water”), changed the framework of debate.

In his book, the author

(a) puts to rest the legend that the attackers mistook the Liberty for an Egyptian ship;

(b) demonstrates that both the Israeli and the U.S. governments have colluded in covering up the facts;

(c) that both governments have used lies and obfuscation as part of the cover-up; and

(d) that the Liberty’s true mission was never revealed. Documents declassified since then not only support Hounam’s revisionist narrative but suggest that the White House intended for the Liberty to be attacked and its crew killed.

In 2018, Joan Mellen published another book on the USS Liberty (“Blood in the Water: How the U.S. and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty”). The author corroborates largely Hounam’s findings and complements these with new testimonies. She, too, concludes that the attack on the Liberty was a joint U.S.-Israel false-flag operation aimed at toppling the Nasser regime in Egypt.

While it is now generally accepted – including by former U.S. military leaders[3] – that the attack was no mistake but a deliberate attempt by Israel to sink an American ship, questions remain: Why was the USS Liberty sent to the zone of war and even denied military escort? What was the purpose of the attack on the USS Liberty? Why is this issue surrounded by such secrecy lasting until now? An attempt to shed some light on these questions will be made in this essay.

Initially, two motives were presented for Israel’s attempt to sink the Liberty: The first was that Israel wanted to eliminate witnesses to war crimes committed by Israeli forces in the Sinai.

The Liberty was supposed to have intercepted Israeli communications regarding these war crimes and had, therefore, to be eliminated. This explanation was based on three tenuous assumptions: One, that Israeli forces would discuss their war crimes over the radio; two, that the Liberty would not transmit such intercepted messages to Washington until later; three, that the United States, an ally, would be overly concerned by Israel committing war crimes against Egyptians.

In any case, as we will see, the Liberty was not tasked to intercept Israeli communications.

Another motive initially offered for Israel’s action was that it did not wish the United States to know about Israel’s plans to attack Syria. Admiral Thomas Moorer, for example, wrote in the July-August 1997 issue of The Link magazine:

Israel was preparing to seize the Golan Heights from Syria despite President Johnson’s known opposition to such a move…. And I believe [Israeli Defense Minister] Moshe Dayan concluded that he could prevent Washington from becoming aware of what Israel was up to by destroying the primary source of acquiring that information – the USS Liberty.[4]

Israel actually made no attempts to hide its plans to attack Syria. U.S. officials, such as U.S. Ambassador to Israel Walworth Barbour, reported on June 8, that he “would not, repeat not, be surprised if the reported Israeli attack [on the Golan] does take place or has already done so.”[5] Israeli Intelligence Chief Aharon Yariv told Harry McPherson, a senior White House aide who was visiting Israel at the time, that “there still remained the Syria problem and perhaps it would be necessary to give Syria a blow.”[6] Such suspicions were not based on interceptions by the USS Liberty but on direct contacts between the U.S. and Israel. In any case, the USS Liberty was not the only platform able to intercept Israeli communications. Such interception could be effectively be carried out from Cyprus.[7] And the Liberty was not tasked to intercept Israeli communications.

According to Michael B. Oren, former Israel Ambassador to the United States, whose article on the USS Liberty is posted on the Jewish Virtual Library, “there is no indication in the archives that the Israelis were troubled by the Liberty, much less considered it worthy of attack.”[8]

Even if we assume that Israel wanted to keep the U.S. in the dark about its war operations, it is difficult to believe that it would have attacked an intelligence ship of its main ally and benefactor, the United States of America, and murdered part of its crew of over 290 persons, without coordination with U.S. leadership. It is doubtful that any Israeli government would have taken such a huge risk for relatively minor gains.

Powerful actors in the United States pretended to criticize the President, Lyndon Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara for having bowed to the Jewish lobby by accepting Israel’s contrived claim of having mistakenly attacked the Liberty. According to their theory, the U.S. simply authorized the attack on the Liberty in order to please Israel. As we will see, far more weighty reasons compelled the U.S. to accept Israel’s explanation. But first, some basic facts.

1. The lightly armed Liberty was sent without protection to a war zone

The Liberty’s intelligence operations were run by the NSA. But its security in the Mediterranean was under the responsibility of the Vice Admiral William Inman Martin.

The Liberty was ordered to sail from Abidjan (The Ivory Coast), where it had docked, first to Rota, Spain[9], and then toward the Sinai coast. The decision to send the Liberty to the Middle East was taken before the war broke out there on June 5, 1967.[10]

On the morning of June 5, the Liberty was already “steaming near its maximum speed of 13 knots and was midway between Rota and the Sinai Coast.”[11] Fearing for the safety of the ship and its crew, Dave Lewis of the Liberty formally requested from Vice-Admiral Martin a destroyer as an armed escort to accompany the ship.

The Liberty was essentially defenseless. It was not a warship. Martin denied Liberty’s request despite the fact that the war between Israel and Egypt had meanwhile broken out. The Liberty was to sail to a zone of war without protection. The official explanation given by Martin was that the Liberty was “a clearly marked United States ship in international waters” and “not a reasonable subject for attack by any nation.” In the unlikely event of an inadvertent attack, he said, “jet fighters from the Sixth Fleet carrier force could be overhead in less than ten minutes.”[12] When the Liberty was attacked, no jet fighters ever came to the ship’s rescue.

The reason for denying protection to the Liberty only later became transparent.

2. The Liberty was sent to the Middle East on a contrived mission

Immediately after the attack, the Navy’s Public Information Office issued a news release, indicating that the Liberty, dubbed a “technical research ship,” was sent “to assure communications for U.S. Government posts in the Middle East and to assist in relaying information concerning the evacuation of American dependents and other citizens from the Arab-Israeli war area.”[13] This news release was only meant to deceive the public for it could not deceive the Israeli, Russian and Egyptian navies, who knew that the Liberty was one of the most sophisticated spy ships of the United States, and would not be sent to a war zone for such trivial chores.

A different story was leaked to the Associated Press. In a AP wire story from 9 June 1967, written by Bob Horton from aboard the aircraft carrier America, he quoted an unnamed officer who told him:

“To put it bluntly, [the Liberty] was there to spy for the U.S. Russia does the same thing. We moved in close to monitor the communications of both Egypt and Israel. We have to. We must be informed of what’s going on in matter of minutes.”[14]

That story, published in the garb of a “credible source”, was also contrived. For, as transpired during various inquiries and testimonies, the Liberty did not carry Hebrew-speaking officers or linguists able to monitor Israeli communications.[15] According to US Marine Bryce Lockwood, cited by Joan Mellen, he was specifically told by David Lewis of the Liberty, that in the case they intercept Israeli communications, they were to drop those. They were not to intercept communications of their ally.[16] As for the Arab-speaking linguists on the Liberty, they found themselves virtually out of work, as by June 8, the Egyptian army was already defeated by Israel and there were no Egyptian combat communications to be monitored.

Robert L. Wilson, one of the Arab linguists on board said years later, that

“there weren’t a lot of communications emanating from Egypt at that time.[17] […] Once we got on station, the Egyptians were dead, practically. There was no voice communications at all that we could pick up, except for the Israelis.”[18]

As the Liberty neared its target, Lloyd Painter of the Liberty commented:

“So we come six thousand miles to watch the war, and we finally arrive just as it’s grinding to a close.”

His shipmate Philip Armstrong added:

“You can be glad we’re late. Out there all alone, we’re an easy target. I hate to think where we would be now if we had been sitting off the Gaza Strip when the war broke out.”[19]

They had no clue what awaited them.

3. Attempts to rescue the Liberty were stopped by the White House?

According to Liberty crew members, the first Mayday messages went out at 1:58 pm and 2:09 pm. Israel-time. While estimates on the duration of the attacks differ, it appears that they lasted until 3:15 pm, including series of attacks by aircraft and later by torpedo boats.

Joe Tully was the Captain of USS Saratoga (one of the aircraft carriers of the Sixth Fleet). According to Peter Hounam, Tully had kept personal copies of the Saratoga’s log and other records and confirmed that, at that time, 12 fighter-bombers and four tanker aircraft had taken off from his flight deck bound for the position radioed by the Liberty.[20] A minute after the aircraft were launched, Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis, Sixth Fleet carrier division commander, radioed Tully and ordered him to recall the planes.[21]

Tully was told by Geis he could launch again rescue aircraft in 90 minutes, only to have the aircraft recalled once more.[22] Until his death, Tully was furious that Washington prevented him from rescuing the Liberty but never discovered the reason for the recalls.[23]

What surprised Tully was that he and Captain Donald Engen, in charge of the carrier USS America, were never questioned about these issues.[24] Dave McFeggan, a Liberty survivor, who remains wary of speaking out about his role in the ship, was asked whether Vice Admiral Martin, the Commander of the Flagship of the Sixth Fleet, had foreknowledge of the attack. He said: “Of course he knew.”[25] This is a widely shared opinion of Liberty survivors.

Lt Commander David E. Lewis, surviving Liberty officer in charge of communications, said that when he was in hospital he was told to report to Admiral Geis.[26] Lewis learned that Geis had twice ordered the launching of aircraft to defend the Liberty. Each time he had received orders from the White House to recall them when they were already in the air. Lewis added:

“When the first were recalled by Robert McNamara, Geis thought McNamara was afraid that some of the aircraft might carry nuclear weapons. Geis immediately configured a flight with aircraft which could not carry nukes, relaunched and again notified Washington. Again McNamara ordered them recalled. Geis then requested confirmation of the order and the Commander-in-Chief, Lyndon Johnson, came on [the phone] and ordered them recalled, with the comment, ‘I will not embarrass our ally.’ Geis said that he was sure that ‘it would all be hushed and our conversation would be highly classified. With that, he asked me to keep it confidential, but [said] that he had to tell someone that he had tried to help us.’”

Hounam added that Lewis kept this story secret until Geis died 20 years later.[27]

Lewis’s account was corroborated by Julian ‘Tony’ Hart, who manned a U.S. Navy communications centre at Sidi Yahia, Morocco. He said that when the Liberty sent its Mayday message of being attacked, he relayed that message to Washington. Ten minutes later, after the identity of the Liberty was authenticated, another message to this effect was dispatched. At the same time Hart picked up a “flash message” from a carrier in the Sixth Fleet saying that they had launched ready aircraft [i.e. aircraft carrying nuclear weapons].[28] Hart added:

“Within three or four minutes – it was very, very quickly – we had a flash message come through from Washington to the Sixth Fleet commander saying to recall the aircraft. Sixth Fleet sent a message back to DC requesting authority to relaunch. There was then a period of maybe ten or 15 minutes, and then a voice communication link with Washington was brought up. The person identified himself on the phone as Secretary McNamara and wanted us to patch [him] through to Commander Sixth Fleet, [Rear Admiral Geis]. He was talking to McNamara and asking for permission to relaunch [any] aircraft and McNamara said no, that no aircraft were to be launched.[29] […] After 40, 45 minutes later there was a second voice communication with Washington DC to Com. Sixth Fleet. The person again identified himself as McNamara and the Admiral identified himself as being there. He was told to dispatch investigating aircraft in 30 minutes or 25 minutes.[30] He did not explain why such delay was necessary.

4. Israel’s task was to sink the USS Liberty and kill its entire crew?

The explanation for the delay in coming to the Liberty’s assistance may have been given by a person who only agreed to speak to Peter Hounam under the name of Steve. He said that in 1967 he was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, working in a highly secret vault at the Strategic Air Command headquarters. He was cleared to read and handle the most sensitive signals traffic intercepted by the NSA and other agencies. He decided to reveal his knowledge in April 2002, and contacted therefore Liberty veteran Jim Ennes.[31] According to Steve the Israelis were frustrated that they could not sink the Liberty immediately:

The [Israeli] ground station […] reiterated that it was imperative that the ship be sunk immediately. All the time we heard the command centre expressing annoyance that the attack […] was taking far too long. That was their only concern – that the ship was staying afloat.[32]

Another person, James Ronald Gotcher III, declared in 2003 under penalty of perjury that while serving as a Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, assigned to the 6924th Security Squadron at Da Nang, Vietnam, his unit received on June 8, 1967, a CRITIC message saying that the USS Liberty was under attack by Israeli aircraft. He said he had a clear recollection of reading transcripts of conversations between pilots and controllers. He said it was clear to him from these statements that (a) “the aircraft were flying a planned mission to find and sink USS Liberty”, and (b) that “the Israeli pilots were making every effort possible to sink USS Liberty and were very frustrated by their inability to do so.” He added the following statements

Approximately ten days to two weeks thereafter, we received an internal NSA report stating, in no uncertain terms, that the attack was planned in advance and deliberately executed. The mission was to sink the USS Liberty. A few days later, another message came through directing the document control officer to gather and destroy all copies of both the rough and final intercept translations as well as the subsequently issued report. After the destruction of those documents, I saw nothing further on this subject.[33]

A statement by Petty Officer Lloyd Painter confirmed that Israel’s mission was to not only to sink the USS Liberty but to exterminate all its crew. After the ship’s rubber life-rafts had been inflated and lowered overboard, these were also attacked:

I looked at the stern of the ship and saw one of the torpedo boats methodically machine-gunning one of our life-rafts that had floated back… I knew that had there been anyone in there they certainly wouldn’t be alive. It happened so fast it didn’t seem real. […] I was bewildered. I couldn’t understand why they would do it to us. I just didn’t understand a thing at that point.[34]

Several crew members of the Liberty, including Bob Farley,[35] testified that their communications were jammed and their communications were knocked out early on[36] by the Israelis in order to prevent them from calling for assistance. Yet, when the ship’s radiomen reported the apparent jamming of Liberty’s radios, their testimony was classified “Top Secret” and was not followed up by the U.S. authorities.[37] This is strong evidence that the identify of the ship was known to the attackers and that the U.S authorities tried to cover-up this fact.

When Hounam interviewed former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara – long retired – for a BBC documentary and asked him to comment on the Liberty incident, McNamara said “I have nothing to say on the Liberty. I don’t recall it, but everything…well, I’m not going to go further. I’m not going to say anything on the Liberty.”[38] When Hounam pointed out that the surviving crew would like Congress to investigate the Liberty attack, McNamara looked annoyed and said:

I am not saying anything about the Liberty period. The reason I don’t…You’ve got to deal with me fairly on this, now. Don’t have any of this – anything about the Liberty – on the tape….because I don’t know what the hell happened and I haven’t taken time to find out. There are all of those claims that we sent planes, that planes were going out and we turned them around and that we intentionally allowed the Israelis to sink the Liberty. I know nothing about it. I don’t want to say I didn’t at the time, but today I have no knowledge of it.[39]

George Golden, the Liberty’s chief engineer, was informed of the following when the damaged ship reached Malta:

“We were hearing we were the guinea pigs, to get shot up, to make it look like Egypt was doing this so the United States could step in. […] We were told that the attack was supposed to have looked like it was the Egyptians, and that was going to give our country an excuse to get in there to help Israel.”[40]

Asked how he felt when he was told all this about being guinea pigs, Golden answered:

“I thought I was going to cry, because I couldn’t believe something like that would happen. I didn’t think our government was that way.”[41]

Asked if he was told that McNamara and [President] Johnson knew about that and that the orders not to help the Liberty came from as high as the President, he said “Yes.” He added:

Some of our people from the States came over when we came into Malta. I happened to know two of them. One of them was with me when we put the Liberty back in commission…and he said, “George, they really did it to you, old boy” and I said “What are you talking about?” And he said “You were a damned guinea pig.” And that’s all he would say.[42]

Golden said that two or three years before the Liberty’s Captain McGonagle’s death, he confided in Golden that it was the President and McNamara who sent the Liberty from over in Africa [to the Middle East], ”to have this happen.”[43] McGonagle refused all along to reveal what he knew about the real mission of the Liberty. He apparently left no record of what he knew of his own country’s role in the incident.[44]

5. What was Operation Cyanide?

According to several witnesses, the Liberty was entangled in a covert project involving United States submarines whose presence within the war zone has never been officially admitted.

Israeli Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs) in formation, c. 1967. These were the MTBs that attacked USS Liberty. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Although the identity of the submarines has not been definitely established, two particular submarines came in question: The USS Amberjack SS522 and a Polaris submarine, the USS Andrew Jackson, carrying nuclear weapons.[45] To the day of his death, the captain of the USS Amberjack, Augustine Hubal, refused to discuss what his submarine was doing out there so close to the Liberty.[46] Not only did the U.S. government never admit the presence of any submarines at this time and location, but the witnesses who admitted to have served in these submarines did not reveal the precise mission of their vessels. One of the Liberty survivors, Charles ‘Chuck’ Rowley, confided to his shipmate Jim Ennes that he was cleared for “a secret submarine project under codename Cyanide.”[47]

The likely presence of a submarine that shadowed the Liberty was repeatedly mentioned in James M. Ennes’ book. Someone on the Liberty charted a mysterious Contact X on the ship’s Coordination Chart. The “unidentified object had been tracked for days until it merged with Liberty’s track, when suddenly the plot was discontinued,” wrote Ennes. He wrote that he asked his shipmate Jim O’Connor, who was security-cleared, what X represented. O’Connor claimed ignorance. It was never revealed who charted the coordinates of Contact X on the Liberty’s and knew what Contact X represented. Ennes guessed that it was a submarine with which the Liberty had a rendezvous.[48] Ennes wrote that an unnamed crew member of the submarine blurted out a few weeks after the attacks in the cafeteria at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, that the commanding officer of the said submarine “activated a periscope camera that recorded Liberty’s trauma on movie film.” Ennes added that “three persons in positions to know have confirmed the story that a submarine operated near Liberty.”[49]

A highly secret document dated 10 April 1967 [that is, before the Liberty attack] and discovered by Jim Ennes in the Lyndon B Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, among papers filed about the USS Liberty, shows only one item from the minutes of a meeting held on 7 April 1967 by a group called the 303 Committee.[50] Richard Helms, at the time director of the CIA, explained after his retirement 35 years later the role of this committee. It was, he told Peter Hounam, “simply a device for examining covert operations of any kind and making a judgment on behalf of the President so he wouldn’t be nailed with the thing if it failed.”

The meeting of the 303 Committee was chaired by Walt Rostow, Johnson’s national security advisor. General Ralph D. Steakley attended the meeting and briefed the Committee about a sensitive military project called Frontlet 615. In the document, that particular item is encircled by a pen with a handwritten note saying: ‘Submarine within UAR waters.”[51] [UAR = United Arab Republic, the name given at the time by Egypt to itself] The document thus reveals the existence of a top secret project authorized by the White House and involving the future deployment of a submarine into Egyptian waters. Was the number 615 a short code for June 15th, the initially planned date for the war against Egypt?

Image below: Commander W.L. McGonagle in his damaged cabin after the attack (Source: Public Domain)

Presuming that the United States would inform its ally Israel about its military project Frontlet 615 or Operation Cyanide and about the movements of the USS Liberty to the area, there is no basis for the belief that Israel was kept out of the loop and attacked the USS Liberty by mistake.

Several Liberty survivors actually assumed in their testimonies that Israel, a U.S. ally, had been informed about their presence in the area. For that reason they were not concerned when they saw Israeli planes circling again and again over the ship for hours before the attack in an attempt to identify the ship.

The Liberty’s American flag was clearly visible in the breeze and the ship was marked. There was no way to mistake the ship for anything else. No other ships were at that time in the area. For unexplained reasons, the Liberty’s captain, McGonagle, was reluctant to report these repeated visits by the Israeli aircraft to the Sixth Fleet.[52] He later attempted to minimize the nature of the Israeli attack and was criticized by Liberty survivors for participating in the cover-up of the incident. Only before his death, he admitted having betrayed his crew.

When Peter Hounam asked Rafi Eitan, who was the head of Israeli Secret Service in 1967, if he had ever heard of an Operation Cyanide in 1967, Eitan asked, “Operation Cyanide? If I heard about it? I have. So?” Hounam then asked what it was. Eitan waited a while before saying: “I suggest we stop the interview here.” He then almost shouted: “What do you say? Why do you want it?“ Hounam: ”I just want to know what it was. Why won’t you be able to speak about Operation Cyanide? It’s 34 years since.” After a long pause Eitan said with emphasis: “Signature,” making a gesture with his hand as though he was signing the Official Secrets Act, “and loyalty to my country.”[53]

6. U.S. bombers on the way to attack Cairo were recalled in midair

Operation Cyanide and Frontlet 615 referred to a U.S. plan to bomb Cairo and topple the Nasser regime. Hard evidence comes from David Nes, at the time chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. In the afternoon of 8 June, he received a message notifying him that the USS Saratoga had launched bombers which were heading his way.[54] After his retirement he told Peter Hounam:

“We got one of those ‘flash’ messages saying Navy ship Liberty had been attacked, presumably by Egyptian planes, and that a retaliatory launch was under way. […] But within a very short period of time another ‘flash’ telegram came through saying that the attack [on the Liberty] had been identified as Israeli and that was the end of that.”[55]

The exact wording of the telegram bears noting. Nes said that the bombers were heading his way on the presumption that the Liberty had been attacked by Egyptian planes. It is, however, unthinkable that the U.S. military would make such a presumption without conclusive evidence and launch within minutes bombers to attack a sovereign state, without prior planning and without authorization from the White House.

Several witnesses who were on the USS Saratoga testified that planes which took off from that aircraft carrier appear to have carried nuclear bombs. Among them were Brad Knickerbocker, at the time a young aviator on the Saratoga;[56] Mike Ratigan, a center-deck catapult operator;[57] Jay Goralski, a U.S. reporter;[58] and b, correspondent for UPI.[59] 

Charles ‘Chuck’ Rowley, who survived the Liberty attack, said that a pilot from the USS America had told him that he had flown on that day a jet with nuclear weapons and was ordered to head for Cairo.[60] Joe Meadors, also a Liberty survivor, said that when he arrived in Crete on the way to be hospitalized for his injuries, some of the U.S. ground crew told him that they had refueled a U.S. fighter, which, to their amazement, had an atomic bomb underneath.[61] There is no apparent reason for these witnesses to invent their stories.

Moe Shafer, a Liberty veteran living in Marietta, Georgia, told Hounam that unlike most of the injured from the Liberty, he was flown by helicopter to the USS Davis. Shafer said that the next morning Vice Admiral Martin came to see him when he sat on his bunk with two or three other injured men. According to Shafer, Martin told him that “four [jets] were on their way to Cairo loaded with nuclear weapons”, that “we were three minutes from bombing them [the Egyptians]” and “that the jets could not land back on the carrier with nuclear arms and they had to land in Athens.”[62] There was no reason for Shafer to invent such a story.

It is evident that sending planes within minutes of the Liberty attack to bomb Cairo could not have been a considered reaction to the attack, but a planned operation using the Liberty attack as pretext. It was, of course, necessary to recall the attack planes when it transpired that Israel did not succeed in destroying the Liberty and its crew.

7. The Liberty’s crew members were warned not to talk about the incident with anyone

While Israeli officials claimed that Liberty had been attacked “by mistake” and the U.S. Government accepted this explanation, the Department of Defense and the Navy sternly warned the crew of the Liberty and others not to speak to anyone about the attack, ever. They were threatened with imprisonment or worse. The cover-up began even before the damaged Liberty arrived in port. Admiral Isaac Kidd was ferried aboard the limping Liberty to begin conducting the official inquiry.[63] Petty Officer Philip Tourney recalled:

“Admiral Kidd ordered me not to see (sic) what I had seen or I would be in the penitentiary of worse – meaning, I thought, death.”

CT Ronald Grantski recalled:

“I don’t know what kind of pressure the officers were under, but we were told over and over never to say anything about the attack to anyone, ever, and told never to think that time had run out, because it wouldn’t. And we were scared.”

Robert ‘Buddha’ Schnell was also debriefed by Admiral Kidd, then told not to talk to anybody and to be especially careful to avoid the press. He said that when he was debriefed on leaving the Navy in 1968,

“they said they would be checking on me and they also told me I could not leave the continental U.S. for ten years because of the attack.”

Richard ‘Larry’ Weaver, another Liberty survivor who was severely injured in the attack, sitting in a wheelchair in the hospital, was confronted by a three- or four-star Admiral.

“He took the stars off his collar and said, ‘Richard, do you know anything? Tell me everything you know.”

After he told him what he knew, the Admiral said

“Fine, Richard”, put his stars back on and said: “If you ever repeat this to anyone else ever again you will be put in the prison and forgotten about.”[64]

William LeMay was also badly wounded during the attack. He woke up in a hospital with a tag on his arm that said his name was Smith. LeMay asked for it to be corrected. He was told,

“That is your name for the time being and you never served on the USS Liberty.”[65]

To prevent unauthorized contact with the outside world, guards were stationed at each door of the Liberty men’s [hospital] ward, wrote James M. Ennes.[66]

Ken Ecker, a Liberty survivor, posted the following statement on the website of the USS Liberty veterans:

Immediately following the attack I was threatened with court-martial if I discussed the incident with the press or anyone else. One of the warnings was also not to discuss the attack even with my immediate family or friends. In my case these warnings were repeated upon my transfer from each duty station I left along with the standard security clearance de-briefing. I was also periodically taken aside and reminded of the original threat even when not being transferred.[67]

George Golden described to Peter Hounam how, periodically, he would be threatened and people would visit him, who he believed were from the CIA, demanding he hand over documents he had kept. Did he think the authorities would still try to silence him? “Yes, I do”, he said firmly, “because of some phone calls that I got.”[68]

Another person who feared for his security and was, therefore, unwilling to disclose what he knew about the case, was another Liberty veteran, CT David McFeggan, whom Peter Hounam discovered working as an accountant in Chicago. McFeggan declined a face-to-face meeting with Peter Hounam but spoke with him “very guardedly” on the phone. He told Hounam that it was hard for other people to understand why there was so much secrecy, but there was still danger for him in talking.[69] One of McFeggan’s concerns was that there was no one he could rely upon to support his story if he were to speak freely:

“The people who would back me up, Jim O’Connor and Dick Blue [sic], are both dead.”

When asked about Operation Cyanide, he said “I can answer nothing about that.” McFeggan said he was so deeply affected by his memories of what happened that he breaks down and cries like a baby.[70]

Patricia Blue, wife of NSA employee Allen Blue, who died in the attack on the Liberty, said she was picked up by NSA officials in Maryland immediately after the attack and taken to her home. She said:

”They [the NSA people] never left for six weeks. They answered the phones because they did not want me to talk to any reporters […] They did not want me speak…and I never did.”[71]

A Liberty seaman, Ronald Grantski, said:

“I don’t know what kind of pressure the officers were under, but we were told over and over never to say anything about the attack to anyone, ever, and told never to think that time had run out, because it wouldn’t. And we were scared.”[72]

In parallel with systematic efforts to muzzle Liberty survivors, officials attempted to generate deceptive counter-narratives. Chief Petty Officer Joseph A. Benkert of the Liberty, related to James M. Ennes how he was manipulated for such a deceptive act.

At first, Benkert was informed by his seniors that he could grant press interviews if he chose to. Benkert did not want, however, to be interviewed unless he was free to speak candidly and without restriction. So when reporter Clifford Hubbard of Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot contacted him, he politely declined. He soon, however, received a call from Commander David M. Cooney, who ordered Benkert to “report promptly for a press briefing” at CINCLANFLT headquarters. Before this “press briefing”, with Rear Admiral Renken present, Benkert was asked every conceivable question about the ship and the attack and reminded that he could neither discuss the ship’s mission nor Vice Admiral Martin’s promise to provide jet fighter protection or the failure of such protection to arrive. He was not allowed to mention the machine-gunning of the life rafts nor that napalm was used in the attack. He was not permitted to mention that the American flag was flying and that the wind was blowing. His press interview was conducted in the presence of several “minders”, such as Commander Cooney, Admiral Renken and other Navy officials that Benkert didn’t recognize. After his interview was published, he said: “I don’t know where they got the quotes for that story. They didn’t come from me. They didn’t use what I said and they made up stuff I didn’t say. At least ninety percent of that story is bullshit.”[73]

8. Was an American involved in the attack on the Liberty?

George Golden revealed to Peter Hounam that after arriving with the limping Liberty to Malta, he met an American “four-striper”, who, to his astonishment, told him that he had been in the Israeli war room in Tel Aviv during the attack on the Liberty.

“I don’t remember his name”, he said. “I remember he was a big, fat person. They [the Israelis] all left the war room for a period of time; he stayed, and when they came back the planes and the boats were hitting [the Liberty]. What makes that stand out to me more than anything else was the fact that he said they should have sunk the whole ship, they had the power to do it, and the Liberty should not have gotten away. It was, to me, like he was on somebody else’s side, not America’s side when they were shooting up our ship.”

It was never established who this “four-striper” was and what role he played in the Israeli war room during the attack on the Liberty.

9. Why was the Liberty attacked?

Evidence that the U.S. was involved in both planning and executing the Six-Day war came from several witnesses interviewed by author Peter Hounam. One of them was Joe Sorrels, whom he found living in Naples, Florida, as a successful manager of golfing and leisure resorts. Sorrels told Hounam a story that may offer additional light on the Liberty issue. His testimony supports the view that the initiative for attacking the Liberty had not come from Israel, but from the United States.

Sorrels said his mission was named Operation Cyanide. Sorrels told Hounam that this was a “joint plan by elements of military intelligence in Israel and the United States to engineer a war with Egypt and depose its leader Gamal Abdul Nasser who, the U.S. believed, was a dangerous puppet of Moscow.”[74] Hounam admits that he initially had doubts about the credibility of this witness:

Was [Sorrels] telling the truth? It is difficult to fathom any motive for him making up the extraordinary story he told me in four telephonic interviews conducted over a period of 15 months. He sought no payment and did not want to meet face to face. He was reluctant to volunteer much in the way of detail, but he differentiated between what was speculation and what he knew from his direct experiences. Furthermore, what he disclosed match-es other evidence.[75]

Sorrels said he was secretly sent in August 1966 to Israel as an adviser to the Israeli Army. He discovered on arrival that he was part of a multi-national force of so-called ‘advisers’ from Australia and Britain. Senior officers from the U.S. were in charge:

“I had a briefing on a weekly basis. I made a weekly report directly to an individual but I cannot give you his name because he’s still wired [working for the U.S. intelligence]. They were equally tight-tipped […] I asked if that meant Britain was going to be involved in the forthcoming war. That was my read on it”, he said.[76]

Hounam:

“From [Sorrels’] viewpoint, it seemed the Israelis were responding to pressure from the United States to eradicate Nasser; Israel was not the prime mover.”[77]

When Hounam asked Sorrels how Operation Cyanide had come about, Sorrels’ language became more elliptical. Sorrels:

”My understanding was that there had been some commitments unfulfilled that were discussed. I was far beneath that echelon…It’s just that at the time we’d committed … we were selling a bill of goods as [regards] alliance, capability and commitment to the Israelis.”

Did the United States want to get rid of Nasser and engineer a confrontation, asked Hounam.

“Hell, yes. There were a lot of things going on to stimulate and provoke. We’ll never know exactly the root of where that came from.”[78]

Sorrels repeated that Operation Cyanide was a secret plan to start a war against Egypt. He said Israel’s only motive was to grab territory, nothing more, and it was elements in the U.S. who were pushing them to invade Egypt.[79]

Sorrels pointed out that not only the United States, but the United Kingdom too, was covertly involved in the 1967 war to topple the Egyptian regime. Evidence presented by Hounam, independently of Sorrels’ views, suggests that this was indeed the case[.80]

Like many others, Peter Hounam wondered what prompted Israel to suddenly halt its attack on the Liberty. He recalled what Liberty survivor David McFeggan had told him: “I won’t tell you who. The only name I’ll give you is Moshe Dayan. […] Dayan was the biggest patriot and the biggest saviour in Israel being a country.” This statement by a Liberty survivor puzzled Hounam. McFeggan wouldn’t elaborate. Was Dayan informed at the last moment that the United States was sending bombers to nuke Cairo on the contrived presumption that the Liberty had been attacked by Egypt? Was Dayan concerned that the Soviet Union could retaliate by bombing Israel? Did heorder to halt the assault on the Liberty? That might have been what went through McFeggan’s mind.[81] We do not know and will perhaps never know the reason for Israel to halt its attack, as the main protagonists are either dead or determined never, ever, to disclose what they know.

Concluding observations

The true story of the USS Liberty demonstrates the callousness of which political and military leaders are capable. It belies the widely held belief that “our leaders wouldn’t do such things to us.” Realizing the callousness of U.S. leaders not only toward citizens of other nations, but towards their own citizens, military as well as civilians, should help Americans shed illusions about the morality of their political and military leaders.

Realizing the degree of callousness of which they are capable may help to expose the mass-murder of 9/11. Such a conclusion is not meant to exculpate Israeli civilian and military leaders, who agreed to murder defenseless Americans as a hired guns of the United States. A few days after the 1967 war, the United States began negotiations with Israel for delivery of fifty Phantom F-4 fighters.[82]

In August 1989, Israel received her first consignment of these fighters.[83] State Department officials with whom James M. Ennes discussed, denied any connection between this military assistance and the Liberty attack.[84] Yet, it was in 1967 that France stopped its military deliveries to Israel and was replaced by the United States.

Another useful aspect of the Liberty story is to expose a widely held myth about the relation between United States and Israel.

It has become fashionable to argue that the Zionist lobby dominates U.S. foreign policy. Thus, Liberty veterans and well-meaning sympathizers contend that the cover-up of the Liberty attack by the U.S. administration derives from its fear of embarrassing Israel and losing American Jewish votes. The Liberty story, as presented in these pages, does not support this theory. The evidence confirms what some of the Liberty survivors suspected: That they were deliberately sent by the U.S. Government to die in a joint U.S.-Israeli false-flag operation. Presenting Israel or its lobby as those who determine or dictate U.S. foreign policy, is, however, a useful method used by the U.S. oligarchy to deflect public opinion from its own criminal activities. As for Israel, it apparently gains respect and fear by maintaining the fiction that it can dictate policy to the United States.[85]

 

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Elias Davidsson is an Icelandic citizen living in Germany. He is a composer, human rights and peace activist and author of several books on 9/11 and false-flag terrorism.

Notes

Where an end note is followed by a number preceded by the sign #, that source can be consulted on the internet address www.aldeilis.net/liberty/####.pdf (replace the #### by the number).

1. There is a wealth of literature on the case of the USS Liberty. A good starting point is the Wikipedia entry 13 on the Attack on the USS Liberty.
2. “U.S. military officials said Saturday that they were satisfied Israel’s attack Thursday on the U.S. communications ship Liberty was one of the tragic mistakes of warfare.” (UPI dispatch, June 10, 1967, cited in James M. Ennes, Assault on the Liberty, p. 155)
3. See Testimony by Rep. John Conyers, House of Representatives, Congressional Record, p. E1886-7, 11 October 2004, #2793; also Memorandum by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, “Attack on the USS Liberty”, 8 June 1997, http://www.ussliberty.org/moorer3.htm
4. Cited by Michael B. Oren, The USS Liberty Incident: “The USS Liberty: Case Closed”, Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-uss-liberty-case-closed-quot
5. LBJ, National Security File, Box 104/107, Middle East Crisis: Jerusalem to the Secretary of State, June 8, 1967; Barbour to Department, June 8, 1967; Joint Embassy Memorandum, June 8, 1967 (cited by Michael Oren, The USS Liberty Incident: “The USS Liberty: Case Closed”, Jewish Virtual Library, https:// www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-uss-liberty-case-closed-quot)
6. Ibid
7. Peter Hounam, Operation Cyanide – Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War II, Satin Publications, London, 2003, p. 110
8. Michael B. Oren, op. cit.
9. Operation Cyanide, p. 189
10. From a Press Statement issued by the White House on the day of the attack, cited in Operation Cyanide, p. 104
11. Operation Cyanide, p. 171
12. Ibid
13. Memorandum for the Record by Louis W. Tordella, Deputy Director of the NSA, 8 June 1967, #2786
14. Associated Press wire on the USS Liberty, 9 June 1967, #2780
15. Questions by General Carroll, Director, DIA, and Answers by G Group, 27 June 1967, #2787
16. Joan Mellen, Blood in the Water: How the U.S. and Israel conspired to ambush the USS Liberty, Prometheus Books, 2018, p. 118
17. Oral History Interview with Robert L. Wilson of the G Group, Doc. NSA-OH-15-80, 6 May 1980, p. 7, #2789
18. Ibid, p. 10
19. James M. Ennes, Jr., Assault on the Liberty, Ivy Books, 1979, p. 47-48
20. Operation Cyanide, p. 91
21. Ibid
22. Ibid
23. Operation Cyanide, p. 91
24. Operation Cyanide, p. 174
25. Joan Mellen, Blood in the Water, p. 223
26. Operation Cyanide, p. 175
27. Ibid
28. Operation Cyanide, p. 176; Assault on the Liberty, p. 89-90
29. Ibid
30. Operation Cyanide, p. 177
31. Operation Cyanide, p. 159
32. Operation Cyanide, p. 161
33. Declaration by James Ronald Gotcher III, 2 September 2003, www.aldeilis.net/liberty/gotcher.pdf
34. Operation Cyanide, p. 37; BBC Documentary “Dead in the Water”, minute 29’40”
35. Oral History Interview, Document NSA-OH-25-80 of June 13, 1980
36. Oral History. Interview of Henry L. Wilson, Document NSA-OH-15-80 of May 6, 1980
37. Assault on the Liberty, p. 184
38. Operation Cyanide, p. 237; BBC Documentary “Dead in the Water”, minute 28’40”
39. Operation Cyanide, p. 237-238
40. Operation Cyanide, p. 240
41. Operation Cyanide, p. 241
42. Ibid
43. Operation Cyanide, p. 242
44. Operation Cyanide, p. 246
45. Operation Cyanide, p. 124, 128
46. Joan Mellen, Blood in the Water, p. 115
47. Operation Cyanide, p. 113-114
48. James M. Ennes, Jr., Assault on the Liberty, p. 46-47
49. Ibid, p. 73-74
50. Operation Cyanide, p. 115; BBC Documentary “Dead in the Water”, minute 46’30”
51. Ibid
52. James M. Ennes, Assault on the Liberty, p. 63
53. Operation Cyanide, p. 224-225; and BBC Documentary “Dead in the Water”, minute 48:30”
54. Operation Cyanide, p. 184
55. Operation Cyanide, p. 185
56. Operation Cyanide, p 180-181, 184
57. Operation Cyanide, p 181-182
58. Operation Cyanide, p 182
59. Operation Cyanide, p 182-183
60. Operation Cyanide, p 183
61. Operation Cyanide, p 183
62. Operation Cyanide, p. 221
63. BBC Documentary “Dead in the Water”, minute 39’20”
64. Operation Cyanide, p. 46
65. Operation Cyanide, p. 47
66. James M. Ennes, Assault on the Liberty, p. 167
67. http://www.ussliberty.org/ecker.htm
68. Operation Cyanide, p. 243
69. Operation Cyanide, p. 192
70. Operation Cyanide, p. 193
71. Operation Cyanide, p. 43
72. Operation Cyanide, p. 46
73. James M. Ennes, Assault on the Liberty, p. 205-206
74. Operation Cyanide, p. 196
75. Operation Cyanide, p. 196-7
76. Operation Cyanide, p. 197
77. Operation Cyanide, p. 199
78. Operation Cyanide, p. 200
79. Operation Cyanide, p. 201
80. Operation Cyanide, p. 201-210
81. Operation Cyanide, p. 268-269
82. The New York Times, December 19, 1967
83. The New York Times, September 7, 1969
84. James M. Ennes, Assault on the Liberty, p. 241
85. Israel’s military power is highly exaggerated. As described by experts, even a non-state entity such as the Hezbollah (Lebanon) was able to challenge Israel’s military power. See, inter alia, Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke, “How Hezbollah Defeated Israel: II. Winning the Ground War”, Conflicts Forum, 27 October 2006

ISIS remnants, with the help of their US sponsors, are trying to create new posts for their terrorist operations close to the towns and villages secured earlier by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies, especially in the eastern deserts of Syria.

Vigilant SAA and security officers, with the help of the locals, discovered one of their command and control centers in Al-Quriyah town and found a large number of weapons and munition, they displayed part of it in this video report (English subtitles)

(English transcript below the video):

Click video still to watch.

Video report English translation transcript:

During the combing operations of the areas cleaned from terror in Deir Ezzor’s desert, security forces and the Syrian Arab Army units with the help of the locals discovered an ISIS quarter south of Al-Quriyah town, southern (Deir Ezzor) province’s countryside.

While chasing the remnants of the terrorists who fled this area after our armed forces liberated the areas of Deir Ezzor and its eastern countryside, we discovered a terrorist den being recently prepared by the terrorist groups in Al-Quriyah area, eastern Deir Ezzor countryside towards the desert, this area, in particular, has been secured by our armed forces and the residents returned to it where terrorists are trying hard to create an environment of chaos and to return their terrorist operations to this area.

Based on tips we received of some persons coming to a given quarter, our security forces secured the location and its perimeter completely, the time for the raid was carefully chosen after moving the civilians away from this area where we found it’s an integrated den recently created by the terrorists they were using it as a base for their terrorist operations, upon searching the quarter we discovered a large number of weapons, food supplies, communication devices, and flammable materials prepared to be used by the terrorists instead of using gas and other materials.

Among the items found searching this quarter were a number of projectiles, assorted weapons, some of which were of Israeli make also we found explosive devices like suicide vests and Israeli made bombs.

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Donald Trump forces illegally positioned in Syria, especially those operating from Al-Tanf military base, have been working on regrouping the remnant of ISIS terrorists, augmenting them with new members coming across the desert from Iraq in the east and Jordan in the south, in addition to new forced recruits from the Rukban Concentration Camp through the ISIS affiliate known as Maghaweer Al-Thawra.

Instead of draining the swamp he promised, Trump has become swamp-drunk himself and turned himself into a cheap tool in the hands of the cult in control of the so-called Deep State or as they like to call themselves in their media ‘The establishment’, who knew how to play the incumbent puppet at the White House and made him executing their commands while thinking he’s resisting them.

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We hear a lot about suicide when celebrities like Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade die by their own hand. Otherwise, it seldom makes the headlines. That’s odd given the magnitude of the problem.

In 2017, 47,173 Americans killed themselves. In that single year, in other words, the suicide count was nearly seven times greater than the number of American soldiers killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars between 2001 and 2018.

A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every 12 minutes. What’s more, after decades of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually — the suicide rate — has been increasing sharply since the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do homicides, even though the murder rate gets so much more attention.

In other words, we’re talking about a national epidemic of self-inflicted deaths.

Worrisome Numbers

Anyone who has lost a close relative or friend to suicide or has worked on a suicide hotline (as I have) knows that statistics transform the individual, the personal, and indeed the mysterious aspects of that violent act — Why this person?  Why now? Why in this manner? — into depersonalized abstractions. Still, to grasp how serious the suicide epidemic has become, numbers are a necessity.

According to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control study, between 1999 and 2016, the suicide rate increased in every state in the union except Nevada, which already had a remarkably high rate.  In 30 states, it jumped by 25% or more; in 17, by at least a third.  Nationally, it increased 33%.  In some states the upsurge was far higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%).

Alas, the news only gets grimmer.

Since 2008, suicide has ranked 10th among the causes of death in this country. For Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second; for those between 35 and 45, fourth.  The United States also has the ninth-highest rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Globally, it ranks 27th.

More importantly, the trend in the United States doesn’t align with what’s happening elsewhere in the developed world. The World Health Organization, for instance, reports that Great Britain, Canada, and China all have notably lower suicide rates than the U.S., as do all but six countries in the European Union. (Japan’s is only slightly lower.)

World Bank statistics show that, worldwide, the suicide rate fell from 12.8 per 100,000 in 2000 to 10.6 in 2016.  It’s been falling in China, Japan (where it has declined steadily for nearly a decade and is at its lowest point in 37 years), most of Europe, and even countries like South Korea and Russia that have a significantly higher suicide rate than the United States. In Russia, for instance, it has dropped by nearly 26% from a high point of 42 per 100,000 in 1994 to 31 in 2019.

We know a fair amount about the patterns of suicide in the United States.  In 2017, the rate was highest for men between the ages of 45 and 64 (30 per 100,000) and those 75 and older (39.7 per 100,000).

The rates in rural counties are almost double those in the most urbanized ones, which is why states like Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list. Furthermore, a far higher percentage of people in rural states own guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a higher rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half of all such acts in this country.

There are gender-based differences as well. From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was substantially higher than for women — almost four-and-a-half times higher in the first of those years, slightly more than three-and-a-half times in the last.

Education is also a factor.  The suicide rate is lowest among individuals with college degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by comparison, twice as likely to kill themselves.  Suicide rates also tend to be lower among people in higher-income brackets.

The Economics of Stress

This surge in the suicide rate has taken place in years during which the working class has experienced greater economic hardship and psychological stress.  Increased competition from abroad and outsourcing, the results of globalization, have contributed to job loss, particularly in economic sectors like manufacturing, steel, and mining that had long been mainstays of employment for such workers. The jobs still available often paid less and provided fewer benefits.

Technological change, including computerization, robotics, and the coming of artificial intelligence, has similarly begun to displace labor in significant ways, leaving Americans without college degrees, especially those 50 and older, in far more difficult straits when it comes to finding new jobs that pay well. The lack of anything resembling an industrial policy of a sort that exists in Europe has made these dislocations even more painful for American workers, while a sharp decline in private-sector union membership — downfrom nearly 17% in 1983 to 6.4% today — has reduced their ability to press for higher wages through collective bargaining.

Furthermore, the inflation-adjusted median wage has barely budged over the last four decades (even as CEO salaries have soared).  And a decline in worker productivity doesn’t explain it: between 1973 and 2017 productivity increased by 77%, while a worker’s average hourly wage only rose by 12.4%. Wage stagnation has made it harder for working-class Americans to get by, let alone have a lifestyle comparable to that of their parents or grandparents.

The gap in earnings between those at the top and bottom of American society has also increased — a lot. Since 1979, the wages of Americans in the 10th percentile increased by a pitiful 1.2%. Those in the 50th percentile did a bit better, making a gain of 6%.  By contrast, those in the 90th percentile increased by 34.3% and those near the peak of the wage pyramid — the top 1% and especially the rarefied 0.1% — made far more substantial gains.

And mind you, we’re just talking about wages, not other forms of income like large stock dividends, expensive homes, or eyepopping inheritances.  The share of net national wealth held by the richest 0.1% increased from 10% in the 1980s to 20% in 2016.  By contrast, the share of the bottom 90% shrank in those same decades from about 35% to 20%.  As for the top 1%, by 2016 its share had increased to almost 39%.

The precise relationship between economic inequality and suicide rates remains unclear, and suicide certainly can’t simply be reduced to wealth disparities or financial stress. Still, strikingly, in contrast to the United States, suicide rates are noticeably lower and have been declining in Western European countries where income inequalities are far less pronounced, publicly funded healthcare is regarded as a right (not demonized as a pathway to serfdom), social safety nets far more extensive, and apprenticeships and worker retraining programs more widespread.

Evidence from the United States, Brazil, Japan, and Sweden does indicate that, as income inequality increases, so does the suicide rate. If so, the good news is that progressive economic policies — should Democrats ever retake the White House and the Senate — could make a positive difference.  A study based on state-by-state variations in the U.S. found that simply boosting the minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit by 10% appreciably reduces the suicide rate among people without college degrees.

The Race Enigma

One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling.  Though whites have fared far better economically (and in many other ways) than African Americans, their suicide rate is significantly higher.  It increased from 11.3 per 100,000 in 2000 to 15.85 per 100,000 in 2017; for African Americans in those years the rates were 5.52 per 100,000 and 6.61 per 100,000. Black men are 10 times more likely to be homicide victims than white men, but the latter are two-and-half times more likely to kill themselves.

The higher suicide rate among whites as well as among people with only a high school diploma highlights suicide’s disproportionate effect on working-class whites. This segment of the population also accounts for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have labeled “deaths of despair” — those caused by suicides plus opioid overdoses and liver diseases linked to alcohol abuse. Though it’s hard to offer a complete explanation for this, economic hardship and its ripple effects do appear to matter.

According to a study by the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the white working class accounted for 45% of all income earned in the United States in 1990, but only 27% in 2016.  In those same years, its share of national wealth plummeted, from 45% to 22%.  And as inflation-adjusted wages have decreased for men without college degrees, many white workers seem to have lost hope of success of any sort.  Paradoxically, the sense of failure and the accompanying stress may be greater for white workers precisely because they traditionally were much better off economically than their African American and Hispanic counterparts.

In addition, the fraying of communities knit together by employment in once-robust factories and mines has increased social isolation among them, and the evidence that it — along with opioid addiction and alcohol abuse — increases the risk of suicide is strong. On top of that, a significantly higher proportion of whites than blacks and Hispanics own firearms, and suicide rates are markedly higher in states where gun ownership is more widespread.

Trump’s Faux Populism

The large increase in suicide within the white working class began a couple of decades before Donald Trump’s election. Still, it’s reasonable to ask what he’s tried to do about it, particularly since votes from these Americans helped propel him to the White House. In 2016, he received 64% of the votes of whites without college degrees; Hillary Clinton, only 28%.  Nationwide, he beat Clinton in counties where deaths of despair rose significantly between 2000 and 2015.

White workers will remain crucial to Trump’s chances of winning in 2020.  Yet while he has spoken about, and initiated steps aimed at reducing, the high suicide rate among veterans, his speeches and tweets have never highlighted the national suicide epidemic or its inordinate impact on white workers. More importantly, to the extent that economic despair contributes to their high suicide rate, his policies will only make matters worse.

The real benefits from the December 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act championed by the president and congressional Republicans flowed to those on the top steps of the economic ladder.  By 2027, when the Act’s provisions will run out, the wealthiest Americans are expected to have captured 81.8%of the gains.  And that’s not counting the windfall they received from recent changes in taxes on inheritances. Trump and the GOP doubled the annual amount exempt from estate taxes — wealth bequeathed to heirs — through 2025 from $5.6 million per individual to $11.2 million (or $22.4 million per couple). And who benefits most from this act of generosity?  Not workers, that’s for sure, but every household with an estate worth $22 million or more will.

As for job retraining provided by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the president proposed cutting that program by 40% in his 2019 budget, later settling for keeping it at 2017 levels. Future cuts seem in the cards as long as Trump is in the White House. The Congressional Budget Office projects that his tax cuts alone will produce even bigger budget deficits in the years to come. (The shortfall last year was $779 billion and it is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2020.) Inevitably, the president and congressional Republicans will then demand additional reductions in spending for social programs.

This is all the more likely because Trump and those Republicans also slashedcorporate taxes from 35% to 21% — an estimated $1.4 trillion in savings for corporations over the next decade. And unlike the income tax cut, the corporate tax has no end date. The president assured his base that the big bucks those companies had stashed abroad would start flowing home and produce a wave of job creation — all without adding to the deficit. As it happens, however, most of that repatriated cash has been used for corporate stock buy-backs, which totaled more than $800 billion last year.  That, in turn, boosted share prices, but didn’t exactly rain money down on workers. No surprise, of course, since the wealthiest 10% of Americans own at least 84% of all stocks and the bottom 60% have less than 2% of them.

And the president’s corporate tax cut hasn’t produced the tsunami of job-generating investments he predicted either. Indeed, in its aftermath, more than 80% of American companies stated that their plans for investment and hiring hadn’t changed. As a result, the monthly increase in jobs has proven unremarkable compared to President Obama’s second term, when the economic recovery that Trump largely inherited began. Yes, the economy did grow 2.3% in 2017 and 2.9% in 2018 (though not 3.1% as the president claimed). There wasn’t, however, any “unprecedented economic boom — a boom that has rarely been seen before” as he insisted in this year’s State of the Union Address.

Anyway, what matters for workers struggling to get by is growth in real wages, and there’s nothing to celebrate on that front: between 2017 and mid-2018 they actually declined by 1.63% for white workers and 2.5% for African Americans, while they rose for Hispanics by a measly 0.37%.  And though Trump insists that his beloved tariff hikes are going to help workers, they will actually raise the prices of goods, hurting the working class and other low-income Americans the most.

Then there are the obstacles those susceptible to suicide face in receiving insurance-provided mental-health care. If you’re a white worker without medical coverage or have a policy with a deductible and co-payments that are high and your income, while low, is too high to qualify for Medicaid, Trump and the GOP haven’t done anything for you. Never mind the president’s tweetproclaiming that “the Republican Party Will Become ‘The Party of Healthcare!’”

Let me amend that: actually, they have done something. It’s just not what you’d call helpful. The percentage of uninsured adults, which fell from 18% in 2013 to 10.9% at the end of 2016, thanks in no small measure to Obamacare, had risen to 13.7% by the end of last year.

The bottom line? On a problem that literally has life-and-death significance for a pivotal portion of his base, Trump has been AWOL. In fact, to the extent that economic strain contributes to the alarming suicide rate among white workers, his policies are only likely to exacerbate what is already a national crisis of epidemic proportions.

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Rajan Menon, a TomDispatch regular, is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. His latest book is The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.

After withdrawing from the nuclear deal with Iran last year and resuming sanctions last November, the White House in April announced that its goal was to “drive Iranian exports to zero.” To make this drive happen, the White House stopped allowing (my emphasis) countries like India, China, Japan, Turkey, and South Korea to import Iranian oil: dictating to sovereign countries whom they can trade with.

The dictating doesn’t stop there. Last December the United States had Canadian authorities detain and imprison a Chinese executive, the chief financial officer of telecom company Huawei. Meng Wanzhou is currently on trial in Canada, on the allegation that her company violated U.S. sanctions against Iran. Not content with having told China that it cannot trade with Iran, the United States has gotten a third country, Canada, to take a Chinese corporate executive captive in what Trump suggested was leverage for a trade deal:

“If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made, which is a very important thing—what’s good for national security—I would certainly intervene, if I thought it was necessary,” he told Reuters in December.

The trade deal with China didn’t come through, and a “trade war” has begun. Meng Wanzhou is still stuck in Canada. And the blockade against Iran is still tightening. Economist Mark Weisbrot assessed some of the damage to the Iranian economy in a recent segment on the Real News Network, noting that when sanctions were imposed in 2012, oil production dropped by 832,000 barrels per day and GDP by 7.7 percent; when they were lifted in 2016 in the nuclear deal, production increased by 972,000 barrels per day and GDP increased by 12 percent that year. In 2018 when sanctions were imposed, oil production fell dramatically again and inflation rose by 51 percent; shortages of dozens of essential medicines, according to a study at the University of California, have followed.

Some basic economics are in order here. A country that does not need to import or export is called an autarky, and in today’s global economy there are no autarkies. All national economies depend on trade: they export, earn foreign currency, and use that to import what they cannot produce. Driving a country’s exports to zero means destroying the country’s economy, and depriving the country’s people of necessities.

Sometimes billed as an alternative to war, sanctions are in fact a weapon of war. Far from precision-guided munitions, sanctions are weapons of starvation, which target the most vulnerable civilians for slow and painful death by deprivation of food and medicine. They are an alternative to war in the sense that unlike the invasion of ground troops or even the dropping of bombs, they pose little risk to the aggressor. This is their appeal to someone like Trump, who revealed the genocidal intent behind the Iran sanctions when he threatened (on Twitter) “the official end of Iran.”

In the 1990s, one focus of the antiwar movement was the impact of the genocidal sanctions against Iraq, which killed 500,000 children (a “price” that Madeleine Albright famously said was “worth it”). Antiwar activists feared that the sanctions were part of a military strategy that would end in even more devastating shooting war. Those fears proved true. Today’s sanctions seem to draw from the same playbook.

International law recognizes that sanctions are a form of warfare, and places the use of the sanctions weapon in the hands of the United Nations Security Council. And so it happened that between the 1990 and 2003 U.S. wars on Iraq, the UN played the shameful role of administering the Iraq sanctions. But today’s unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. circumvent any UN legalities. In the same Real News segment, UN Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures Idriss Jazairy noted that about one-quarter of the world’s population is under some form of unilateral sanctions. Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Sudan and others are under various U.S. sanctions regimes. Yemen is fully blockaded by the U.S., UK, and Saudi Arabia; Gaza and the West Bank are completely sealed in by Israel; Qatar is blockaded by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the list goes on.

U.S. sanctions against Venezuela have already killed 40,000 people between 2017 and 2018, according to a report by Mark Weisbrot and Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs. The more intense sanctions imposed in 2019 will kill still more. Venezuela’s electrical grid is damaged, most likely because of sabotage. Maintenance of potable water pumps has become impossible without imported spare parts, leaving millions without water. A Venezuelan professor of economics, Pasqualina Curcio, told a delegation of the End Venezuela Sanctions coalition that sanctions have cost the country $114 billion, “which is nearly equal to one year’s worth of Venezuelan GDP at a typical oil price, or 26 years’ worth of medical imports.”

One of the tactical arguments anti-sanctions campaigners sometimes make is that sanctions “don’t work.” And for their declared purpose of “regime change,” indeed they do not. But when a policy is so widespread, such a first resort, perhaps the declared purpose is not the real purpose. If the purpose is to destroy economies, isolate countries, coerce allies, keep tensions near boiling and maintain a constant threat of war, sanctions are successful. It has been shown time and again that torture “doesn’t work” for obtaining information. But torture is not a technique for obtaining information. It is a technique for breaking a person and, when practiced on a mass scale by an apartheid state or dictatorship, for breaking a society. Sanctions are similar: the point is to break the society, not “regime change.”

Sanctions are Trump’s favorite weapon, but good Democrats are no different. Obama oversaw the destruction of Syria, Clinton laughed about the murder of Gaddafi and the destruction of Libya, and Albright said that 500,000 Iraqi children’s deaths were “worth it.” For the empire, genocide, like aggression, is a normal part of politics. Nuclear planners plan how to commit it. Sanctions officials administer it. And for the most part, human rights organizations take no position on it.

It is possible that at some point sanctions could become self-limiting. If enough countries are sanctioned, they might of course decide to trade with one another. In attempting to isolate so many big countries, the United States could isolate itself, creating a kind of “coalition of the sanctioned.” But from the U.S. perspective, with Brazil, India, and Egypt (the biggest countries in Latin America, South Asia, and the Arab world) all utterly subservient, perhaps this looks like a good moment to try to pressure China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. Trump’s planners can rest assured that it is not them, but millions of innocents in those countries who will pay for their power plays.

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This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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Justin Podur is Associate Professor at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies. He is the author of Haiti’s New Dictatorship (Pluto, Between the Lines, and Palgrave-Macmillan 2012). His writings can be found at podur.org.

Featured image is from podur.org

Drone Wars UK began compiling details of military drone crashes in 2010. Our database cover crashes of large (Class II and III) military drones since 01 Jan 2007. It has been compiled from USAF Accident Investigation Board (AIB) Reports, the Wikileaks War Logs, The Washington Post US drone crash database and reports from the general and military press.

Although we always have more than one source for details of a crash we generally only link here to one source, except if other crucial information (such as the particular location of a crash) becomes available.

This list is almost certainly not complete. If you know of any other large drone crashes not mentioned please let us know.

Read full article here.

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In April 2017 in Damascus, BSNews co-ed Alison Banville filmed the wall (above), commemorating the Syrian journalists killed while reporting on the conflict.

Mike Raddie (co-editor) was being interviewed on Syrian national television that day and we both took the time to pay our respects to these brave people who exemplify what real journalism should be and who paid the ultimate price for their integrity and dedication.

All the more disgraceful then that our western corporate media ‘journalists’ – who are not fit to hold that title – disappear the true journalists whose work and tragic deaths are inconvenient to the government approved narrative they slavishly amplify.

You can view the video of the wall of commemoration at Facebook here. Please read Eva Bartlett’s shocking and heartrending document below and tell everyone you know the truth.  

Eva Bartlett, October 2014:

Who outside of Syria knows the names Yara Abbas, Maya Naser, Mohamed al-Saeed…? The corporate media has inundated us with news of the two American journalists allegedly beheaded, the first of whose execution video has been deemed faked. But what of the non-Western journalists and civilians beheaded and murdered by ISIS, al-Nusra, and associated terrorists in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine?

Why didn’t the August 2012 execution (which some reported as a beheading) of TV presenter Mohamed al–Saeed, claimed by the Nusra gang, create the same outrage? Or the December 2013 kidnapping and point blank execution in Idlib by ISIS of Iraqi journalist Yasser al-Jumaili?

Why wasn’t the murder of Yara Abbas—a journalist with al-Ikhbariaya, whose crew’s car was attacked by an insurgent sniper—broadcast on Western television stations? Or that of Lebanese cameraman for al-Mayadeen, Omar Abdel Qader, shot dead by an insurgent sniper on March 8, 2014 in eastern Syria.

Maya Naser, Ali Abbas, Hamza Hajj Hassan (Lebanese), Mohamad Muntish (Lebanese), Halim Alou (Lebanese)…all were media workers killed by the Western-backed insurgents in Syria. Their deaths were reported by local media, some even got a passing notice in corporate media, but none resulted in a media frenzy of horror and condemnations as came with the alleged killings of Westerners. Another at least 20 Arab journalists have been killed by NATO’s death squads in Syria in the past few years.

The killing of 16 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, at least 7 targeted while working, during the July/August 2014 Zionist Genocide of Gaza, also fell on deaf ears. Nor were the previous years of murdering Palestinian journalists noted, let alone whipped into a media frenzy. [see also: Silencing the Press, Sixteenth Report, Documentation ofIsraeli Attacks against Media Personnel in the opt ]

In Syria, there are thousands of civilians and Syrian soldiers who have been beheaded—and in far more brutal and realistic manner than the SITE videos insinuate—by the so-called “moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA), al-Nusra, Da’esh (ISIS), and hoards of other Western-backed mercenaries. At the hands of the various NATO-gangs, tens of thousands more civilians have been assassinated and subjected to various sadistic practices—torture, mutilation, crucifixion, burning in ovens, throwing into wells, and a sick lot more. Thousands more, including children and women, remain missing after being kidnapped during mercenary raids and massacres.

Nidal Jannoud, a farmer from Banias (southwestern Syria), was one of the earlier victims of “moderate rebel” assassination. Jannoud was tortured and slaughtered by “peaceful demonstrators” in April, 2011. Omar Ayrout and Yahya Al Rayes confessed later that they aided a mob in killing Janoud. “I heard gunfire and saw a group of people detaining Jannoud….I took a knife from Taha al-Daye and stabbed Jannoud in his right shoulder…Then the group attacked him with knives and mutilated his body afterwards,” Yahya al–Rayyis confessed.

In the case of the organ–eating al–Farouq Brigade militant “Abu Sakkar,” who bit into the lung out of a Syrian soldier, there was corporate media notice and general horror. Yet, very quickly the corporate media rushed to justify his cannibalism (see: Face–to–face with Abu Sakkar, Syria‘s ‘heart–eating cannibal‘ and BBC whitewashes Syria ‘heart–eating cannibal‘ to justify armingal–Qaeda).

How the tides would have turned if the lung in question belonged to a Western soldier, or worse, an “Israeli”soldier… would the BBC have then humanized the perpetrator of this barbaric act? Would the world have so quickly moved on, forgotten? Of course not.

Apart from the thousands more individual slaughters, there are also numerous massacres, mostly overlooked or simply lied about in the media.

In Raqqa, overtaken by al-Nusra and the so-called FSA in March 2013, then two months later by ISIS, civilians have faced floggings (including whipping of women),executions and crucifixions…with bodies left on public display for days, usually for the “crime” of supporting President Assad and the Syrian army, and often for the “crimes” of not living up to the warped version of Islam by their executioners. [see also: Raqqais Being Slaughtered Silently]

With the May 2012 slaughter of 108 Houla civilians (including 49 children and 34 women)—among them patients in a hospital and entire families in their homes—most corporate media and political fingers pointed at the Syrian Arab Army as the culprits, without a shred of evidence. The BBC brandished Italian journalist Italian journalist Marco Di Lauro‘s image of dead Iraqi civilians in shrouds, claiming it to portray Houla victims. Upon demand of the aghast journalist, the claim was later retracted and corrected, an “accident”…but who was listening by that point? Once the trickery of the corporate media was revealed, the massacre was no longer newsworthy. [see: “Syria: Media Lies, Hidden Agendas and Strange Alliances” and “Syria : One Year After the Houla Massacre. New Report on Official vs. Real Truth” and “Syria’s ‘false flag’ terrorism, Houla and the United Nations”]

While later investigations into Houla revealed the culpability of the so-called insurgents, the MSM had already moved on, leaving the average person confused, or stuck with the initial lies. Investigative articles aside, there was the confession of aninsurgent member who was present that Friday in Houla:

“…we’d been asked by our supporters from outside to do something to inflame the situation…The planning came from outside…On Friday after prayers, a large number of armed men came…they didn’t enter the mosque or pray. …The goal was to attack an army checkpoint and to liquidate these families supportive of the government. There were men, like Haytham al-Hassan, who had weapons including a cleaver. They butchered families….They sent people to announce that ‘Shabbiha’ had entered the village and slaughtered everyone. I was there. There were no Shabbiha.”

The December 2012 slaughter in Aqrab of at least 150 Alawites was likewise misreported, in spite of survivor testimonies. The UK Channel 4’s Alex Thomson met Aqrab survivors whose separately-given accounts corroborated one another:

“…our eyewitnesses say Sunni rebels took hundreds of Alawite civilians as prisoner,” noted Thomson, also writing, “They all insist…rebels from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) corralled around 500 Alawite civilians in a large red-coloured two-storey house…” kept there for 11 days.

“They had long beards, and sometimes you couldn’t quite understand what they said. They were not dressed in the normal way,” said one survivor, Madlyan Hosin. A second interviewee, Hayat Youseh, said, “…they forced us out of our homes and set fire to them.”

A Syrian from a village three kilometers from Aqrab told me, “When Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya started saying that the Syrian Arab Army had attacked Aqrab, I went there to find out. I interviewed a lady from Aqrab who said that no army had come near there at the time of the massacre.”

Kassab, a predominantly Armenian Christian village near the Turkish border, came under heavy assault earlier this year by insurgents and Turkish soldiers. Kim Kardashian tweeted about Kassab…then, otherwise, the world largely forgot. In Latakia, some of Kassab’s internally-displaced spoke of the March 21, 2014 assault originating from Turkey. One young woman reported that the insurgents “raped our older women because they couldn’t find any girls.”

According to a Latakia resident, with friends and a home in Kassab, 88 Christians were murdered, 13 of whom were beheaded, others who were shot dead on the spot. Another 22 elderly were kidnapped and taken to Turkey where they were held for about three months before being released into Lebanon.

The fact that Christians were murdered by foreign mercenaries, let alone beheaded, should have created shock waves in the media. But, not surprisingly, it has had the exact opposite effect, because spotlighting those crimes doesn’t serve the West’s stated agenda to overthrow President Assad, to dismember Syria as the NATO-backed takfiris are dismembering Syrians.

It the case of the Kassab massacre, it became transparent that the lack of any governmental/political condemnation of the massacre and kidnappings was not due to lack of knowledge: Turkey helped commit the attack and housed the kidnapped [see: NATO and Turkey’s Genocidal War on Syria and Searching for casus belli:Turkey’s assault on Kassab?]; the West’s darling, Ahmed Jarba, visited soon after, sitting with “what appeared to be local rebel commanders in a house that was said to be in Latakia province,” the Daily Star reported, noting “Jarba also said ‘the Coalition has provided assistance to (fighters on) the front’, according to his office.”

Four months after it was liberated of the terrorists, most of the displaced from Kassab still have not returned to their desecrated and looted homes. According to a Latakia resident who keeps informed on Kassab, “The roads are fairly safe, but they have been targeted by short range missiles and mortars from Turkey. The ‘threat’ of attack and lack of money or resources to rebuild their homes and shops has kept most away. A handful will have enough money to repair, and those who are dirt poor may freeze this winter.”

The August 2013 insurgent massacre and kidnappings in the villages of Balouta, Hambushiya, and a number of other agricultural hamlets in the Latakia countryside did briefly receive some corporate media coverage…and also absolutely zero international outrage. That outrage was reserved for the falsified sarin gas attacks not long after, using the kidnapped children to stage their videos. [For a very detailed account of the Latakia massacre and its relation to FSA-falsified Sarin gas videos, see: “Combating the Propaganda Machine in Syria”]

In the nearly two weeks of attacks on these rural hamlets, 220 civilians were massacred (according to doctors in a Latakia hospital), including infants, children, women, and elderly—even a nonagenarian. At least one hundred were kidnapped (mostly children, some women), only 44 of which were nine months later released. These kidnap survivors spoke of torture at the hands of their “moderate rebel” captors. Al Akhbar reported that “according to another freed child, the fighters gouged out the eyes of one of the abducted children.”

The assault took place by roughly 20 coordinated factions, including ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the so-called FSA (with the knowledge and approval of the SNC’s George Sabra).

But, there was no outcry by the humanitarian, would-be interventionalists and their public.

Two months after the fact, the Guardian’s Jonathan Steele reported on the attacks, including the insurgents’ move early on August 4 from their base in nearby Salma village to attack the Latakia countryside. Surprisingly, the article actually quoted Syrian Arab Army and National Defence Forces (NDF) officers’ testimonies:

Special forces officer Hassan told Steele, “I heard a rebel telling another rebel: ‘Kill this one, but not that one’. One rebel asked: ‘What do I do about the girls?’ The answer came: ‘I’m sending a truck to pick them up’. Several were taken and raped, and have not been seen again.”

NDF officer Shadi told Steele, “When we got into the village of Balouta I saw a baby’s head hanging from a tree. There was a woman’s body which had been sliced in half from head to toe and each half was hanging from separate apple trees.’”

SAA soldier Ali told Steele, “We found two mass graves with 140 bodies. They were not shot. They had their throats slit. About 105 people of different ages were kidnapped…Salafists from abroad were behind the attack.”

In a separate video interview, a resident of one of the villages (unnamed for his safety) testifies:

“There were Chechen, Libyan, Saudi, and Afghan terrorists among them….One group was killing people by swords. And the other group was running after those who had been able to escape and killing them by shooting them….They broke into house while people were sleeping and beheaded them. They removed the foetus of a pregnant woman. I lost 42 from my family. Some of them were killed and others arrested (kidnapped).”

In the face of mounds of evidence, eyewitness testimony, mass graves, doctor and coroner reports of death by throat slitting, the massacre in Latakia resulted again in none of the fervor that we’ve seen in recent months…in spite of 220 civilians being brutally massacred, another 100—mostly children—abducted by the West’s freedom-loving terrorists.

Twenty km north of Damascus, Adra industrial town suffered horrific atrocities that went largely unreported in the corporate media. The town came under Jabhat al-Nusra and Liwa Al-Islam insurgents attack on December 11, 2013, Russia Todayreported, massacring at least 80 residents.

In another report, Russia Today interviewed eyewitnesses, one of whom said:

“There was slaughter everywhere…The eldest was only 20 years old; he was slaughtered. They were all children. I saw them with my own eyes. They killed fourteen people with a machete. I don’t know if these people were Alawites. I don’t know why they were slaughtered. They grabbed them by their heads and slaughtered them like sheep.”

In addition to the massacre of entire families”, bakery workers were executed and “toasted…in ovens used to bake bread ,” an Adra resident told RT.

Professor Tim Anderson‘s report noted “Beheaded bodies from Adra were proudly displayed by the terrorists… Severed heads were also said to have been hung from trees.”

In Latakia city in April, 2014, I met refugees from Harem, a northwestern city 2 km from the Turkish border, who had fled after Harem came under attack by McCain‘smoderates, with the help of Turkey.

One man told me:

“The terrorists attacked us, terrorists from Turkey, from Chechnya, and from Arab and other foreign countries. They had tanks and guns, like an army, just like an army. For 73 days we were surrounded in the citadel of Harem. They hit us with all kinds of weapons. We had women and children with us. They showed no mercy. When they caught any of us, they slaughtered him, and then send his head back to us. They killed over 100 people, and kidnapped around 150… children, civilians, soldiers. Until now, we don’t know what’s happened to them.”

Image on the right: Harem refugee in Latakia centre speaks of atrocities committed by foreign insurgents. Photo by Eva Bartlett.

The first Turkish-backed attacks on Harem were in September, 2012, and by October 31, al Akhbar reported that 4,000 civilians were under siege in the town fortress, warning of a potential massacre by insurgents who are “known to have been supplied with Turkish-made short-range missiles and launchers mounted on four-wheel drive vehicles, as well as an abundance of mortars.” The report also noted Turkey’s role in treating the FSA terrorists: “the FSA wounded are transported across the border to Turkey in ambulances,” and in killing Harem residents: “Dozens of people were killed in Harem’s al-Tarmeh neighborhood after it was subject to a missile bombardment from a Turkish police station.”

Once again, the FSA and ISIS attack was misreported in the corporate media, and the kidnappings of Harem residents not reported period. The situation of occupied Harem has been non existent in the media since. Breaking that silence, on October 12, Twitter user “Nutsflipped @Nutsflipped_z_1 ” tweeted a series of updates on Harem:

“I just talked to someone from #Harem near the Turkish borders. 60 SAA held off 5000 Islamist all coming from #Turkey for 1 year.#Syria

They literally killed 1000s of attackers, until the Turks gave Islamist Grad MLRS and flooded the town with fighters from #Turkey. #Syria

#Kobani, #Kessab and #Harem, cities in #Syria near the Turkish border attacked in the same manner by Islamist coming from#Turkey.”

In a personal message, he explained further. His information, he said, is from a contact from Harem now displaced who has “lost many male relatives. Executed. He was almost executed himself fleeing.”

“ISIS is genociding the natives of Harem, throwing their bodies in caves, selling their women and children. This has been going on since 2012, it was first FSA but they were losing. Then Turkey unleashed ISIS. Now ISIS has stepped up the massacre. Turkey is behind this. The West turns a blind eye. Turkey did the same thing all across the border.”

Some of the most recent massacres and atrocities at the hand of the Western/NATO/Gulf-backed/financed/trained terrorists that have gotten scant notice or tears include:

• The August 28 and September 6 beheadings of Ali al-Sayyed and Abbas Medlej respectively, and the September 20 execution of MohammadHamiyeh, all Lebanese soldiers (captured with another 16 other soldiers) by ISIS and al-Nusra.
• The October 1 terrorist double-bombings just outside the Ekrima al-Jadida school, killing 33 (mostly children), and injuring 102 (many seriously). Syria‘sForeign and Expatriates Ministry denounced the “international community” on the failure “to issue a clear condemnation of the atrocities committed by terrorist organizations in Syria…” [photos]
• The relentless stream of mortar and missile attacks on civilian areas which SANA reports have killed 296 civilians and injured 1487 in August and September alone. [see my: The Terrorism We Support in Syria: A First–handAccount of the Use of Mortars against Civilians]
• The October 10 ISIS beheading of Iraqi cameraman Raad Mohamed al–Azaoui
• The October 13 ISIS execution of Iraqi journalist Mohanad al-Aqidi [disputed by family]
• Most recently, the highly suspect car crash death of American-Lebanese journalist, Serena Shim, whose timely “accident” occurred just days after she revealed on air with Press TV that she’d been accused by Turkish intelligence of spying, that she was afraid. Shim had extensively reported on Turkey‘s rolein supporting and funneling terrorists into Syria. [see: The Death of aReporter]

Shim’s suspect death went unnoticed by corporate media for at least a day; were she a Western journalist who died—accident or assassination—all the major media would have been broadcasting her death endlessly. [see: Journalists under attack, hypocritical Western media remains silent]

And this is the point. The murders of non-Westerners—whether in Syria, Palestine or elsewhere—doesn’t matter to the media and public, unless it serves an Imperialist or Zionist agenda.

In fact, supremacism and racism aside, the only reason the alleged-beheadings of the two Western journalists, among others, is really being trumpeted and shoved down our fear-mongered throats is that these questionable stories serve perfectly the Axis-of-Destruction’s agenda: a justification to bomb Iraq and Syria, to re-invade, to attempt to implement the Yinon Plan.

The murders of Syrians and other Arab journalists and civilians by NATO thugs are not forgotten, even if the corporate media would have it otherwise. And whereas the corporate media shirks their obligation to report these murders, let alone to report honestly on the real agenda to oust President Assad and destroy Syria as per Iraq, Libya, independent journalists, activists, and concerned pro-resistance people must fill the gap.

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Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine. She is a recipient of the International Journalism Award for International Reporting. Eva recently returned from a visit to Venezuela. She will be speaking in Hamilton on Monday April 29th.

Visit her personal blog, In Gaza, and support her work on Patreon.

Featured image: The wall of commemoration outside Syria’s national tv station in Damascus showing Syrian journalists killed in the conflict (Source: Friends of Syria)

Talks broke down in early May over unacceptable US demands. Eleven rounds of talks since  China’s Xi Jinping met with Trump at his Mar a Lago, Florida estate in April 2017 failed to resolve major structural issues.

Blacklisting Chinese tech giant Huawei and its 70 affiliates by the Trump regime on the phony pretext of preventing the company from “potentially undermin(ing) US national security” widened the breach between both countries.

So did Trump’s refusal to drop tariffs while talks continue on unresolved issues. Major differences between both sides are more world’s apart now than when negotiations began a year ago.

Beijing stressed it won’t be pressured, bullied, intimidated or threatened to bend to Washington’s will. Agreements are reached when beneficial to all parties.

According to Trump’s trade representative Robert Lighthizer, both countries agreed to resume trade talks. He, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and China’s Vice Premier and chief negotiator Liu He will meet meet in Osaka, Japan next week, site of the G20 summit, he said.

On Tuesday, Trump said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet on the sidelines of the June 28-29 G20 summit for “an extended meeting,” adding “(o)ur respective teams will begin talks prior to our meeting.”

Talks are expected to cover a range of bilateral differences, an agenda for their meeting not announced by either country so far.

On Tuesday, Trump and Xi spoke by phone. According to China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang, both leaders will discuss bilateral relations with no further elaboration.

Former Chinese Commerce Ministry Vice Minister Wei Jianguo said Xi will stress Beijing’s core interests, including its sovereign, developmental, and territorial rights even though it’s unlikely a concrete agreement will be reached.

That’s for negotiators on both sides to work out, what’s been unattainable for the past year, nothing likely to change ahead as long as the Trump regime remains hardline.

During their last face-to-face meeting at the November 30-December 1 G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Trump and Xi agreed on a 90-day truce to continue discussing major world’s apart differences — no progress made in resolving them from then to now.

Both leaders will likely put a brave face on results of their Osaka talks despite no likely resolution of major bilateral differences on major issues.

On Tuesday, Xi reportedly told Trump he expects talks in Osaka to focus on “fundamental issues” affecting bilateral relations.

The US considers China a “strategic competitor” and major adversary, relations between both countries far from what mutual cooperation is all about.

Resolving major bilateral differences has been unattainable because of Washington’s rage to dominate all other nations, demanding they subordinate their sovereign rights to US interests, what’s clearly unacceptable to Beijing.

Bilateral differences are all about the US wanting to undermine China’s aim to become an economic, industrial, and technological powerhouse, matching or exceeding the US, the trade deficit a minor issue by comparison.

Will Xi/Trump talks in Osaka and resumption of talks between their chief negotiators resolve what’s been unresolvable so far?

China’s Global Times struck a hardline note, saying Beijing “must persist and not fear,” adding:

“China’s fearless attitude of over a month will not be in vain. It has sent a clear signal to Washington: China can never be daunted. If the US imposes unfair conditions on China, it must be prepared for a protracted trade war and bear the consequential losses together with China.”

“China is fighting for the country’s sovereignty (and) development…We should do our own things well and unite like a fortress. Persist in our stance and victory will be our only destination.”

China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet said

“(t)he root cause for the China-US trade war is not China’s high-profile publicity, but the US ambition to elevate the so-called ‘America First’ strategy above international justice,” adding:

“China does not want a trade war, but it is not afraid of one, and it will fight one if necessary.”

Impasse between both nations is highly unlikely to change from Xi/Trump talks in Osaka.

Resolving major bilateral differences between negotiators of both sides depends on the US softening its hardline position.

The jury is very much out on whether it’s coming in the weeks and months ahead.

What seemed likely months earlier is highly uncertain now.

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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: President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with their wives, first lady Melania Trump and Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan are seated during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. Ivanka Trump, the daughter and assistant to President Donald Trump, and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner are seated at left. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Campaigners have welcomed a Court of Appeal decision to overturn a 2017 High Court judgment which allowed the UK government to continue licensing the export of arms to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen. The appeal hearing took place in April 2019. The judgment comes amidst global concern over the use of these weapons against civilians.

The legal action was brought by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), represented by solicitors Leigh Day, against the Secretary of State for International Trade. It was based on reports from numerous reputable sources that Saudi forces had violated International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in their ongoing bombardment of Yemen. Criterion 2c of the Consolidated EU and National Arm Export Licensing criteria says that export licences should not be granted if there is a clear risk the equipment to be exported might be used in a serious violation of IHL.

In their judgment, the Master of the Rolls, Rt Hon Sir Terence Etherton; Lord Justice Irwin; and Lord Justice Singh concluded that it was ‘irrational and therefore unlawful’ for the Secretary of State for International Trade to have made the export licensing decisions without making at least some assessment as to whether or not past incidents amounted to breaches of IHL and, if they did, whether measures subsequently taken meant there was no longer a “clear risk” that future exports might do so. The judges said:

“The question whether there was an historic pattern of breaches of IHL … was a question which required to be faced.”

The Secretary of State for International Trade must now reconsider the export licences in accordance with the correct legal approach.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:

We welcome this verdict, but it should never have taken a court case brought by campaigners to force the Government to follow its own rules. The Saudi Arabian regime is one of the most brutal and repressive in the world, yet, for decades, it has been the largest buyer of UK-made arms. No matter what atrocities it has inflicted, the Saudi regime has been able to count on the uncritical political and military support of the UK.

The bombing has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. UK arms companies have profited every step of the way. The arms sales must stop immediately.

Rosa Curling, solicitor of law firm Leigh Day, said:

Our client is delighted with the judgment handed down today. The court has ruled the government’s procedure for granting licences to export arms to Saudi Arabia is unlawful. The Government has been forced to accept it must now stop granting new licences for arms exports to Saudia Arabia, for possible use in the conflict in Yemen pending any application to the Court of Appeal for a stay.

The horrors that the world has witnessed in Yemen can no longer be ignored by the UK government. When considering whether to grantlicences, the court has confirmed the Secretary of State must assess whether the KSA has breached international humanitarian law previously.

The pattern of serious violations do not simply need to be “taken into account” as the Divisional Court found; the Court of Appeal has ruled that the pattern has to be properly assessed and considered. An answer to the question of whether KSA has breached IHL has to be answered.

The government will now have to reconsider whether to suspend existing export licences and reconsider its decision to continue to grant licences. Our client hopes the government will reconsider quickly and will decide that no further licences should be granted.”

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Brazil’s long-running Hybrid War crisis never really went away, it just took a few months for it to change form and turn against its original initiators after they failed to close the Pandora’s Box of regime change protest potential that they opened at the US’ behest.

The Bolsonaro government is coming under intense grassroots pressure as two crises continue to converge within the country and threaten to spiral out of the authorities’ control. An estimated 45 million people just participated in a massive strike over the weekend against the proposed neoliberal pension reforms that would increase both the age of retirement and contributions for ordinary workers, which tens of millions of people feel is unfair but which the state says is needed in order to fix the failing system that it inherited as a result of its predecessors’ corrupt mismanagement. Brazil has a history of seemingly irreconcilable political polarization between the Left and Right like all Latin American countries do, but this fault line was exacerbated to the fullest extent throughout the course of the long-running Hybrid War on Brazil, which was waged via the NSA-facilitated “Operation Car Wash” that served as a pretext for carrying out a preplanned pro-American regime change that represented the crowning achievement of Obama’s “Operation Condor 2.0” and made Trump’s “Fortress America” hemispheric vision possible.

In layman’s terms, American intelligence agencies meddled in Brazil’s democracy by selectively leaking purported evidence of serious corruption by the then-ruling party, which predictably set into motion a self-sustaining inquisitional cycle that led to Rousseff’s impeachment, Lula’s imprisonment, and ultimately Bolsonaro’s “dark horse” victory after he was presented to the people as the only non-corrupt candidate capable of restoring order out of the chaos that the socialists were blamed for causing. This externally triggered regime change was intended to create the domestic political conditions that were thought to make a Leftist revival impossible in the future and thereby indefinitely perpetuate the restoration of US influence in Brazil, with the Right’s victory legitimized at the ballot after the majority of the population was successfully led by these foreign-manufactured events to conclude that Bolsonaro was the only person capable of changing the system. Upon entering office, he did exactly as he promised and began to push forward his controversial neoliberal reforms that provoked the latest strike.

Bolsonaro and his US buddies obviously underestimated the Left’s resilience and therefore weren’t prepared for the massive pushback that this move provoked, but the public’s anger last weekend was also fueled by The Intercept’s leaked revelations that “Operation Car Wash’s” top judge and the country’s current Justice Minister colluded with prosecutors to convict Lula and therefore prevent him from running for President (which in turn greatly facilitated Bolsonaro’s rise to power). Many Brazilians had long suspected as much, but this was the first time that messages from a private Telegram group consisting of the regime change collaborators were made public to corroborate this theory. It’s important to point out that the conversation was leaked and not hacked, strongly suggesting dissident within the deepest ranks of the regime change movement for reasons that can only be speculated upon at this time but which nevertheless motivated the whistleblower to share the evidence in their possession with society in order to catalyze grassroots pressure against the government.

It’s therefore not an exaggeration to say that Brazil’s long-running Hybrid War crisis never really went away, it just took a few months for it to change form and turn against its original initiators after they failed to close the Pandora’s Box of regime change protest potential that they opened at the US’ behest. Bolsonaro’s rise to power was shady from the get-go and only made possibly by Lula’s conviction and the consequent banning of the country’s most popular political candidate from the presidential race, which has now been proven without any reasonable doubt to have been part of an actual conspiracy by some members of the permanent bureaucracy (“deep state”) against him. This throws into question the electoral legitimacy of Brazil’s latest leader and therefore sets up the scenario of having every one of his political moves invalidated if he’s ever removed from office on this pretext, including the controversial pension reform that he’s trying to push through. Naturally, the labor crisis is merging with the political one and creating a critical mass of regime change unrest.

Although some of the protesters are employing classic Color Revolution tactics during their anti-government demonstrations, this political technology isn’t black and white because it could conceivably be used by anyone in pursuit of any end. In this case, the nascent movement has the same regime change objective as its pro-American antecedent and is similarly relying on overwhelming popular support to legitimize its goals, albeit the defining difference in this Hybrid War is that it isn’t tied to any foreign power (both in terms of its inception and development unlike “Operation Car Wash”) except if one cynically traces its origin to the US’ NSA meddling many years ago. In fact, what’s happening in Brazil right now is nothing less than blowback against Bolsonaro after his conspiratorial US-backed rise to power and the consequent pension controversy that he’s since caused. The protest organizers want to return the country to the pre-crisis status quo of being led by Lula and the Left, though they might also embrace some mild reforms to appeal to the moderate Right that arose in recent years if they ever end up succeeding in reversing the effects of the US’ Hybrid War on Brazil.

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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.

Five years before Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel to investigate the allegation that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and had conspired with the Trump campaign, the Pentagon had been waging secret cyberattacks against Russia’s electrical grid. The cyberwar against Russia began in 2012. The timing of the cyberwar against Russia is significant. It was thus not triggered by Russia’s intervention in Syria (2015) or the Crimea referendum in June 2014 that resulted in Crimea leaving Ukraine and rejoining Russia.

During the past year the attacks have accelerated “with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before,” according to a new report published by the New York Times based on three months of private interviews with Pentagon officials.

Officials in the Pentagon decided to conceal the details of the operation from Donald Trump out of fear that he might not allow the more advanced offensive attacks to take place. Barack Obama, according to the report, had initially not allowed a full out offensive cyberwar. Obama signed off on the less aggressive cyberwar tactics against Russia but feared that an escalation would make the U.S. infrastructure too vulnerable to counter-attack.

Was Bolton in the Pentagon’s loop?

Trump was kept in the dark but one could reasonably conclude that war lunatic Bolton and Mike Pompeo, the religious zealot who occupies the post of top diplomat, are fully plugged in by the military cabal that now functions as the real power in Washington.

“Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place “implants” — software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid,” two unnamed Trump officials told the NY Times [because] “he might countermand it…” Who are those two officials?

An important backdrop for this alarming revelation is the Pentagon new military strategy/doctrine announced in December 2017 that profoundly reorients U.S. military and foreign policy so as to prepare the country for “major power” conflict with Russia and China in the coming years.

This is offensive not defensive war

The New York Times article makes explicit that the cyberattacks against Russia are an offensive, not defensive, operation. They are an act of war. Using Orwellian language the commander of United States Cyber Command, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, characterized the operation as a “defend forward” measure against Russia penetrating “deep in an adversary’s networks,” according to the Times.

During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis President Kennedy barely held off the Pentagon brass who wanted to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The world was at the brink. Those events should be studied. Kennedy told his closest advisors following the harrowing debates inside the government about how to deal with the crisis that the military leadership “was mad.”

Is it a democracy when the military makes the decisions?

The decision to not tell Trump that the Pentagon is waging offensive military operations against Russia’s infrastructure is one of the clearest signs, among many others, that the reins of power when it comes to matters of war and peace barely remain in the hands of the civilian government. The President is the commander in chief. This is the cornerstone of civilian rule demarcating democratic rule from a military regime. The conceit and arrogance of the uniformed brass’ decision to wage offensive operations against the infrastructure of a rival thermonuclear power – without informing the civilian commander in chief – indicates that they no longer fear accountability, much less retribution, for their seizure of powers that the Constitution insists belong to the elected representatives of the people and not unelected military strongmen.

Trump is such a vainglorious, insecure and ridiculous “leader” that he virtually invited this secret coup against his own authority. He surrounded himself with Pentagon generals in the Cabinet and green-lighted the “independence” of field commanders and their bosses in decision making about the issues of existential importance. “Mr. Trump issued new authorities to Cyber Command last summer, in a still-classified document known as National Security Presidential Memoranda 13,” according to the Times. Perhaps this buffoonish politician occupying the position of commander-in-chief didn’t expect or care those Pentagon commanders would make critical decisions, such as launching offensive cyberwar against Russia, without notifying him.

The Pentagon and Trump are not the only problem. The Democratic Party leadership too has done its part contributing to the looming debacle by spending the past three years whipping up the most vile hatred and demonization of Russia – even while the Pentagon was attacking Russia’s infrastructure — as a diversionary explanation for why such a scoundrel as Trump could win the electoral college. Meanwhile the craven politicians of both parties continue the looting of the national treasury for the enrichment and widening power of the U.S. war machine.

Before the Cold War there were real global wars

A crystal ball is not required to see that, unless the Pentagon war drive is stopped or curtailed, the future of the 21st century will look very much like the first half of the 20th century.

Venezuela is under attack. It’s electric grid crashed repeatedly and they accused the United States of sabotaging the system using its cyberwarfare capabilities. Cuba and Nicaragua are being targeted. Iran abided by an international nuclear deal only to see Trump shred the agreement and launch economic war against Iranians. The danger of another military conflict in the Middle East is threatened. And the Pentagon and all of its derivative D.C. think tanks are preparing the country for major power conflict – and it has already started. Congress is not a check nor is the so-called commander-in-chief.

“Major power conflict” is one of the mind numbing euphemisms used by the Pentagon to describe global conflict. This threat is real now and it has happened before. Capitalist powers prepared for such conflict and initiated it 1914-1918 and again between 1937-1945. The scourge of a third “major power conflict” has been avoided since 1945 largely because the Soviet Union developed a form of nuclear military parity that by the mid-1950s checked the Pentagon’s hyper-aggressive plans for unipolar domination.

When the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed in 1991, however, U.S. imperialism expected that the goal of uncontested global domination could be achieved without engaging in extensive ground operations and drawn-out occupations. As Russia got back on its feet in the last decade and as China emerged as a global power the Pentagon has returned to a game plan that is premised on defeating Russia and China through intensifying demonstrations of military threats in and around these countries and a campaign of systematic weakening of both countries on all fronts – both militarily and through a regime of sanctions and economic warfare. The stakes are high.

Militarism and U.S. capitalism are one and the same. The danger of catastrophic war emanates not from this or that politician but is rather rooted in the foundational structures of late-stage capitalism.

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Brian Becker is the National Director of the ANSWER Coalition.

Featured image is from Liberation News

When Israeli prime ministers are in trouble, facing difficult elections or a corruption scandal, the temptation has typically been for them to unleash a military operation to bolster their standing. In recent years, Gaza has served as a favourite punching bag.

Benjamin Netanyahu is confronting both difficulties at once: a second round of elections in September that he may struggle to win; and an attorney general who is widely expected to indict him on corruption charges shortly afterwards.

Netanyahu is in an unusually tight spot, even by the standards of an often chaotic and fractious Israeli political system. After a decade in power, his electoral magic may be deserting him. There are already rumblings of discontent among his allies on the far right.

Given his desperate straits, some observers fear that he may need to pull a new kind of rabbit out of the hat.

In the past two elections, Netanyahu rode to success after issuing dramatic last-minute statements. In 2015, he agitated against the fifth of Israel’s citizens who are Palestinian asserting their democratic rights, warning that they were “coming out in droves to vote”.

Back in April, he declared his intention to annex large chunks of the occupied West Bank, in violation of international law, during the next parliament.

Amos Harel, a veteran military analyst with Haaretz newspaper, observed last week that Netanyahu may decide words are no longer enough to win. Action is needed, possibly in the form of an announcement on the eve of September’s ballot that as much as two-thirds of the West Bank is to be annexed.

Washington does not look like it will stand in his way.

Shortly before April’s election, the Trump administration offered Netanyahu a campaign fillip by recognising Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, territory Israel seized from Syria in 1967.

This month David Friedman, US ambassador to Israel and one of the chief architects of Donald Trump’s long-delayed “deal of the century” peace plan, appeared to offer a similar, early election boost.

In interviews, he claimed Israel was “on the side of God” – unlike, or so it was implied, the Palestinians. He further argued that Israel had the “right to retain” much of the West Bank.

Both statements suggest that the Trump administration will not object to any Israeli moves towards annexation, especially if it ensures their favoured candidate returns to power.

Whatever Friedman suggests, it is not God who has intervened on Israel’s behalf. The hands that have carefully cleared a path over many decades to the West Bank’s annexation are all too human.

Israeli officials have been preparing for this moment for more than half a century, since the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza were seized back in 1967.

That point is underscored by an innovative interactive map of the occupied territories. This valuable new resource is a joint project of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and Forensic Architecture, a London-based team that uses new technology to visualise and map political violence and environmental destruction.

Titled Conquer and Divide, it reveals in detail how Israel has “torn apart Palestinian space, divided the Palestinian population into dozens of disconnected enclaves and unravelled its social, cultural and economic fabric”.

The map proves beyond doubt that Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank was never accidental, defensive or reluctant. It was coldly calculated and intricately planned, with one goal in mind – and the moment to realise that goal is fast approaching.

Annexation is not a right-wing project that has hijacked the benign intentions of Israel’s founding generation. Annexation was on the cards from the occupation’s very beginnings in 1967, when the so-called centre-left – now presented as a peace-loving alternative to Netanyahu – ran the government.

The map shows how Israeli military planners created a complex web of pretexts to seize Palestinian land: closed military zones today cover a third of the West Bank; firing ranges impact 38 Palestinian communities; nature reserves are located on 6 per cent of the territory; nearly a quarter has been declared Israeli “state” land; some 250 settlements have been established; dozens of permanent checkpoints severely limit movement; and hundreds of kilometres of walls and fences have been completed.

These interlocking land seizures seamlessly carved up the territory, establishing the walls of dozens of tightly contained prisons for Palestinians in their own homeland.

Two Nasa satellite images of the region separated by 30 years – from 1987 and 2017 – reveal how Israel’s settlements and transport infrastructure have gradually scarred the West Bank’s landscape, clearing away natural vegetation and replacing it with concrete.

The land grabs were not simply about acquisition of territory. They were a weapon, along with increasingly draconian movement restrictions, to force the native Palestinian population to submit, to recognise its defeat, to give up hope.

In the immediate wake of the West Bank’s occupation, defence minister Moshe Dayan, Israel’s hero of the hour and one of the architects of the settlement project, observed that Palestinians should be made “to live like dogs, and whoever wants to can leave – and we shall see where this process leads”.

Although Israel has concentrated Palestinians in 165 disconnected areas across the West Bank, its actions effectively won the international community’s seal of approval in 1995. The Oslo accords cemented Israel’s absolute control over 62 per cent of the West Bank, containing the Palestinians’ key agricultural land and water sources, which was classified as Area C.

Occupations are intended to be temporary – and the Oslo accords promised the same. Gradually, the Palestinians would be allowed to take back more of their territory to build a state. But Israel made sure both the occupation and the land thefts sanctioned by Oslo continued.

The new map reveals more than just the methods Israel used to commandeer the West Bank. Decades of land seizures highlight a trajectory, plotting a course that indicates the project is still not complete.

If Netanyahu partially annexes the West Bank – Area C – it will be simply another stage in Israel’s tireless efforts to immiserate the Palestinian population and bully them into leaving. This is a war of attrition – what Israelis have long understood as “creeping annexation”, carried out by stealth to avoid a backlash from the international community.

Ultimately, Israel wants the Palestinians gone entirely, squeezed out into neighbouring Arab states, such as Egypt and Jordan. That next chapter is likely to begin in earnest if Trump ever gets the chance to unveil his “deal of the century”.

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A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

After years of deprivation and financial turmoil farmers across the most fertile parts of Syria and Iraq were looking forward to a much-needed return on their investment. Unfortunately, before that could happen, their hard work went up in flames, literally. The devastation and pain that these fires have caused a countless number of families is heartbreaking and immeasurable.

Recently, tens of thousands of acres of agricultural land have been set on fire in the northern and eastern regions of Syria. 0ver 84,000 acres of wheat and barley crops have been destroyed, estimated losses are well over $3,000,000, as of June 17th. Over 20,000 acres of crops in a dozen Iraqi provinces have been destroyed as well.

I spoke with a Qamishli resident under the condition of anonymity, on June 17th about the recent wheat and barley crop fires in his region and he had the following to say, “If you were to come to Qamishli right now, you would not be able to smell anything but the fire. I get up in the morning and there’s ash covering my entire car, from the crop fires. The entire region has been affected, people’s livelihoods have been destroyed, people are confused and upset, and the fires are spreading beyond the fields and into towns, many families are suffering right now. Have you seen the size of the flames? They can’t be contained. There are birds that were killed, they couldn’t escape from the fire. Imagine that, they have been photographed sitting, some protecting their nests, completely burned alive.”

I asked about fatalities, he said “Over 25 people have been killed so far.”

When I asked who owns the land and who would have a motive to do this he answered,

“The majority of the lands that have been affected were owned by Arab families, not Kurds.” He also said, “75% of the people here think the Kurdish militias are responsible because”.

A new policy implemented by the self-proclaimed Kurdish administration prevents wheat from being sold to areas under the Syrian governments control. Farmers who were offered a better rate by the Syrian government for their crops were not allowed to sell and coincidentally, now their crops have been destroyed.

Laith Marouf, Senior Consultant of Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC) stated on June 14th,

“For the past month, Kurdish Contras in Syria implemented a scorched earth campaign against Arab and Assyrian farm lands, with 100s of acres of crops burnt to the ground in an effort to force the majority population to accept Kurdish minority rule and occupation by the Empire. Yesterday, as a follow up to this campaign, Saudi sent an envoy who has toured the areas along with the US ambassador offering money to Arab and Assyrian tribal leaders, now hungry and financially ruined after their annual harvest was destroyed, in return for their allegiance against their homeland.”

When I spoke to Laith on June 17th about allegations being made against Turkish militias for the fires on Turkey’s borders Laith stated

“Fires started first in regions close to the Euphrates and Khabour rivers. Only in past few days fires started in border regions with Turkey”.

In 2017, when Daesh lost a significant amount of territory in Iraq and Syria including Mosul, Palmyra and Raqqa, the terrorist group took on a campaign of mass destruction and sabotage. Their goal was to destroy anything of value including priceless artifacts, factories, buildings, oil wells, water wells, electricity, sugar and cement factories and burning crops. Their aim was to inflict as much economic turmoil as possible on not only the governments but the civilians that lived in these areas. This led to what has been referred to as Daesh’s “scorched earth policy”.  The idea is simple, if they can’t have something, then no one else can either.

With these recent crop fires however, there could be multiple culprits that are using this opportunity to further their own destructive plans while Daesh or sleeper cells takes the entire blame. Even though Daesh has claimed responsibility and has called for their followers to continue to burn crops and cause the “apostates” to suffer, other parties have motives as well.

The Kurdish self-administration has blamed the Syrian government along with Daesh, for the fires. Salman Barudo the head of Kurdish administrations agriculture committee stated,

“We cannot say the regime and ISIS are working together, but they share the same interest in not seeing the success of this area”.

Ironically, we have proof that SDF has not only worked with Daesh and other terrorist groups during the war, but has used Daesh war tactics such as kidnapping and forced conscription.

Some have alleged that Iran was responsible for the fires in Iraq, implying that they were trying to force the Iraqi government to buy Iranian wheat. Syrian Opposition groups have blamed the Kurdish led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF. And the blame game continues.

Amidst all the allegations, (some more ridiculous than others) the simple fact that certain parties aside from Daesh, have much to gain from these terrible acts remains. They can only hide behind Daesh for so long before the responsible parties are fully exposed.

Earlier this month, Syria’s Ikhbariya state TV journalist and correspondent Muhammad as-Saghir was detained by the SDF after filming wheat fields on fire and obtaining evidence that the SDF was not in a hurry to put them out. He also stated that the SDF was seeking to destroy Syrian wheat stocks as a means of furthering the US economic war against Damascus.

Given this information, it appears that crop fires are part of Washington’s next phase of economic warfare/terrorism (in addition to the existing harsh sanctions), being imposed on war-ravaged Syrians who have courageously fought against western-supported global terrorism, within their borders for over eight years.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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

Not a shred of credible evidence suggests Russia or its nationals had anything to do with downing Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) on July 17, 2014 in eastern Ukraine airspace, all passengers and crew members perishing at the time.

So-called Joint Investigation Team (JIT) member countries Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Ukraine (US sponsored Kiev regime) in cahoots with the US and NATO falsely claimed otherwise. Russia and Malaysia were excluded from the probe.

Based on its own investigation, Russia’s Defense Ministry earlier revealed that the serial number obtained from fragments of the Soviet-era Buk missile used to down the aircraft “indicate(d) that the engine was manufactured in the Soviet Union back in 1986.”

By 2011, missiles manufactured in that year “were withdrawn from service, written off or scrapped,” adding:

“The sole reason why the JIT stays quiet about the origin of the missile engine manufactured in 1986 is the missile more than likely belonged to the Ukrainian armed forces.”

Clearly Russia had nothing to do with downing MH17, nor did Donbass freedom fighters. The incident had US and Kiev fingerprints all over it.

A classic false flag, a longstanding US specialty, MH17’s downing occurred in Ukrainian airspace at a time regime forces waging war on Donbass were being soundly beaten.

Five years later, the Big Lie about what happened persists, ignoring what’s obvious. What possible reason would Russia have to down a commercial aircraft anywhere?

The Obama regime and Kiev putchists it installed clearly benefit from blaming Russia for what no credible evidence suggests it had anything to do with.

Yet on Wednesday, the JIT falsely blamed three Russian nationals — Igor Girkin (connected to its Federal Security Service), military intelligence officials Sergei Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov, along with pro-Moscow Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko for downing MH17.

Placed on an international want list, a show trial with them in absentia is scheduled for March 9, 2020, the above individuals falsely charged with murder.

A JIT spokesperson said

“(w)e are still gathering new data for investigation, because we will start prosecuting now, but the investigation will continue.”

Dutch chief prosecutor Fred Westerbeke said the following:

“Today, we will send out international arrest warrants for the four suspects that we will prosecute,” adding:

“They will also be placed on national and international wanted lists. Because of that, we (are) reveal(ing) their full names…show(ing) you their pictures” — despite no credible evidence of their involvement in what happened.

Russia categorically rejects the fabricated JIT accusations, calling them “absolutely baseless.” No credible evidence supports them.

Excluding Russia from the JIT probe let its member countries “fabricate evidence,” credible information Russian investigators uncovered separately excluded from JIT findings.

No Russian missile crossed the Ukrainian border, its Defense Ministry stressed, the missile used given to Ukraine in 1986, identified by its serial number, as explained above.

The above-named JIT suspects are convenient patsies, wanting them and Russia blamed for what the US and Kiev were responsible for.

Source: NYT

Russophobic NYT editors jumped on the falsified JIT accusations. Turning truth on its head, they said the following:

“In Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, lying — willfully, methodically, shamelessly — is the default response to any accusations of wrongdoing” — a longstanding US, NATO, Israeli specialty, not how Putin’s Russia operates.

It’s also standard procedure for the Times and other establishment media, featuring managed news misinformation and disinformation, suppressing hard truths on major issues, especially geopolitical ones.

The Times: “Russia’s involvement  (in downing MH17) has long been clear” — a bald-faced Big Lie.

The Times: “(A) Russian missile launcher belonging to an active Russian military unit was driven into eastern Ukraine and used to fire a Buk missile at the Malaysian jumbo jet” — another bald-faced Big Lie.

Because of its global reach, the Times is the closest thing to an official US ministry of propaganda, carpet-bombing its readers with falsified official narrative rubbish in lieu of high journalistic standards the way they’re supposed to be.

The Times and other establishment media abandoned them long ago, giving yellow journalism they feature a bad name.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

On Thursday, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) said “the IRGC air force shot down an American spy drone, identified as RQ-4 Global Hawk, that had violated Iranian airspace in the Kuh Mubarak region located at Hormozgan province, south of the country, the IRGC’s public relations department said in a statement.”

The IRGC said further details of the intrusion will be announced later.

A Pentagon spy plane provocatively entering Iranian airspace when tensions between both countries are at a fever pitch was a hostile act, further heightening them.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Bill Urban claimed “(n)o US aircraft w(as) operating in Iranian airspace today.”

An unnamed Trump regime official claimed the RQ-4 Global Hawk was shot down in “international airspace” by an Iranian surface-to-air missile.

Ahead of the incident on Tuesday, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani said the Islamic Republic will defend its airspace, territorial waters, and borders from hostile intrusions.

Days earlier, unnamed Western diplomatic sources told the Israeli Hebrew-language Maariv broadsheet that the Trump regime is planning a “tactical assault” on an Iranian nuclear facility in response to last week’s Gulf of Oman attacks on two tankers — no evidence suggests the Islamic Republic had anything to do with.

Source: IRNA

An unnamed Western diplomat was quoted saying “(t)he bombing will be massive but will be limited to a specific target” — an Iranian response in self-defense highly likely if this occurs, its legal right under international law.

The Pentagon hasn’t confirmed the downing of its spy drone so far, nor has the State Department commented on the incident.

On Wednesday, Pompeo continued his anti-Iran disinformation campaign, falsely claiming the Trump regime has “high confidence” that Gulf of Oman and weeks earlier regional incidents “were Iranian attacks…”

He, Bolton, and their hardline underlings are selling war on nonbelligerent Iran threatening no one.

Downing of the Pentagon’s spy drone came when Yemini Houthis reportedly struck a major Saudi power plant in the kingdom’s southern Jizan province with a cruise missile, according to Yemini al-Masirah television.

It followed a similar attack on the Abha International Airport in southern Saudi Arabia, injuring dozens and shutting down the facility.

According to AMN News on Thursday, Houthi forces made a “large-scale advance inside Saudi Arabia’s Najran Province near the Yemeni border, captur(ing) more than 20 military sites” in the kingdom, “inflicting heavy losses on the enemy troops.”

The US accuses Iran of supporting the Houthis, their latest actions likely to further heighten tensions with the Trump regime, pushing things closer to possible war Trump said he doesn’t want, but as his record shows, time and again he said one thing and went another way.

During Wednesday House Foreign Affairs Committee testimony, Dem Rep. Ted Deutch noted John Bolton’s history of “false or misleading” statements while holding State Department envoy for regime change in Iran Brian Hook’s feet to the fire about White House claims about the country.

“There are legitimate concerns about taking the administration at its word,” Deutch stressed, quoting former State Department official Greg Thielmann on Bolton’s earlier intelligence disinformation in the run-up to Bush/Cheney’s aggression on Iraq, saying last month:

“The pattern that I’ve seen with Bolton then and subsequently is that he has established quite a track record of cherry-picking intelligence information that serves whatever case he’s going to make.”

Deutch called Bolton “a long-time proponent of regime change in Tehran. He continually questions the utility of negotiating with Iran and frequently indicates that (its ruling authorities) will not be in power in the coming years.”

The congressman questioned Pompeo’s dubious claim about (nonexistent) Iranian support for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan “against American and allied interests” — no evidence whatever suggesting it.

Deutch also questioned Hook about whether the White House intends using the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to wage war on Iran.

Clearly it provides no legal justification to attack any nation. Security Council members alone may authorize one country to attack another, permitted only in self-defense, never preemptively.

Using the AUMF to strike Iran would be naked aggression against a nation threatening no one. Hook declined to say if the Trump regime intends using it as authorization to wage war on the Islamic Republic.

Claiming “we will comply with the law” is belied by ongoing US aggression in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, along with all-out war by other means on Iran and Venezuela, similar less extreme actions against Cuba and Nicaragua.

All of the above are illegal under international, constitutional, and US statute laws — never standing in the way of US actions against nations targeted for their sovereign independence and opposition to its imperial agenda.

On Wednesday, the State Department said Hook will visit Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf states to discuss (nonexistent) “Iran(ian) regional aggression.”

It’s a longstanding US, NATO, Israeli specialty, not how the Islamic Republic operates — not earlier, not now.

Claims otherwise are part of the Trump region’s disinformation campaign against the country, risking war that likely would be far more devastating than other post-9/11 conflicts — why it’s crucial to avoid.

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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.

Any sentient being should be offended.  Eventually, the casualisation of the academic workforce was bound to find lazy enthusiasts who neither teach, nor understand the value of a tenured position dedicated to that musty, soon-to-be-forgotten vocation of the pedagogue.  It shows in the designs of certain universities who confuse frothy trendiness with tangible depth: the pedagogue banished from the podium, with rooms lacking a centre, or a focal point for the instructor.  Not chic, not cool, we are told, often by learning and teaching committees that perform neither task.  Keep it modern; do not sound too bright and hide the learning: we are all equal in the classroom, inspiringly even and scrubbed of knowledge.  The result is what was always to be expected: profound laziness on the part of instructors and students, dedicated mediocrity, and a rejection of all things intellectually taxing.

Casualisation, a word that says much in of itself, is seen as analogue of broader outsourcing initiatives.  Militaries do it, governments do it, and the university does it.  Services long held to be the domain of the state, itself an animation of the social contract, the spirit of the people, have now become the incentive of the corporate mind, and, it follows, its associated vices.  The entire scope of what has come to be known as outsourcing is itself a creature of propaganda, cheered on as an opportunity drawing benefits rather than an ill encouraging a brutish, tenuous life. 

One such text is Douglas Brown and Scott Wilson’s The Black Book of Outsourcing. Plaudits for it resemble worshippers at a shrine planning kisses upon icons and holy relics.  “Brown & Wilson deliver on the best, most innovative, new practices all aimed at helping one and all survive, manage and lead in this new economy,” praises Joann Martin, Vice President of Pitney Bowes Management Services.  Brown and Wilson take aim at a fundamental “myth”: that “Outsourcing is bad for America.”  They cite work sponsored by the Information Technology Association of America (of course) that “the practice of outsourcing is good for the US economy and its workers.”

Practitioners and policy makers within the education industry have become devotees of the amoral dictates of supply and demand, underpinned by an insatiable management class.  Central to their program of university mismanagement is the casual academic, a creature both embraced and maligned in the tertiary sectors of the globe.    

The casual academic is meant to be an underpaid miracle worker, whose divining acts rescue often lax academics from discharging their duties. (These duties are outlined in that deceptive and unreliable document known as a “workplan”, as tedious as it is fictional.)  The casual academic grades papers, lectures, tutors and coordinates subjects.  The casual provides cover, a shield, and an excuse for a certain class of academic manager who prefers the calling of pretence to the realities of work.

Often, these casual academics are students undertaking a postgraduate degree and subject to inordinate degrees of stress in an environment of perennial uncertainty.  The stresses associated with such students are documented in the Guardian’s Academics Anonymous series and have also been the subject of research in the journal Research Policy.  A representative sample of PhD students studying in Flanders, Belgium found that one in two experienced psychological distress, with one in three at risk of a common psychiatric disorder.  Mental health problems tended to be higher in PhD students “than in the highly educated general population, highly education employees and higher education students.”

This is hardly helped by the prospects faced by those PhDs for future permanent employment, given what the authors of the Research Policy article describe as the “unfavourable shift in the labour-supply demand balance, a growing popularity of short-term contracts, budget cuts and increased competition for research sources”.

There have been a few pompom holders encouraging the casualisation mania, suggesting that it is good for the academic sector.  The explanations are never more than structural: a casual workforce, for instance, copes with fluctuating enrolments and reduces labour costs.  “Using casual academics brings benefits and challenges,” we find Dorothy Wardale, Julia Richardson and Yuliani Suseno telling us in The Conversation.  This, in truth, is much like suggesting that syphilis and irritable bowel syndrome is necessary to keep you on your toes, sharp and streamlined.  The mindset of the academic-administrator is to assume that such things are such (casualisation, the authors insist, is not going way, so embrace) and adopt a prostrate position in the face of funding cuts from the public purse.

Casualisation can be seen alongside a host of other ills.  If the instructor is disposable and vulnerable, then so are the manifestations of learning.  Libraries and research collections, for instance, are being regarded as deadening, inanimate burdens on the modern, vibrant university environment.  Some institutions make a regular habit of culling their supply of texts and references: we are all e-people now, bound to prefer screens to paper, the bleary-eyed session of online engagement to the tactile session with a book.

The casual, sessional academic also has, for company, the “hot-desk”, a spot for temporary, and all too fleeting occupation.  The hot-desk has replaced the work desk; the partitions of the office are giving way to the intrusions of the open plan. The hot-desker, like coitus, is temporary and brief. The casual academic epitomises that unstable reality; there is little need to give such workers more than temporary, precarious space.  As a result, confidentiality is impaired, and privacy all but negated.  Despite extensive research showing the negative costs of “hot-desking” and open plan settings, university management remains crusade bound to implement such daft ideas in the name of efficiency. 

Casualisation also compounds fraudulence in the academy.  It supplies the bejewelled short cut route, the bypass, the evasion of the rigorous things in learning.  Academics may reek like piddling middle class spongers avoiding the issues while pretending to deal with them, but the good ones at least make some effort to teach their brood decently and marshal their thoughts in a way that resembles, at the very least, a sound whiff of knowledge.  This ancient code, tested and tried, is worth keeping, but it is something that modern management types, along with their parasitic cognates, ignore.  In Australia, this is particularly problematic, given suggestions that up to 80 percent of undergraduate courses in certain higher learning institutions are taught by casual academics.

The union between the spread sheet manager and the uninterested academic who sees promotion through the management channel rather than scholarship, throws up a terrible hybrid, one vicious enough to degrade all in its pathway. This sort of hybrid hack resorts to skiving and getting casuals to do the work he or she ought to be doing.  Such people co-ordinate courses but make sure they get the wallahs and helpers desperate for cash to do it. Manipulation is guaranteed, exploitation is assured.    

The economy of desperation is cashed in like a reliable blue-chip stock: the skiver with an ongoing position knows that a casual academic desperate to earn some cash cannot dissent, will do little to rock the misdirected boat, and will have to go along with utterly dotty notions.  There are no additional benefits from work, no ongoing income, no insurance, and, importantly, inflated hours that rarely take into account the amount of preparation required for the task. 

The ultimate nature of the casualisation catastrophe is its diminution of the entire academic sector.  Casuals suffer, but so do students.  The result is not mere sloth but misrepresentation of the worst kind: the university keen to advertise a particular service it cannot provide sufficiently. This, in time, is normalised: what would students, who in many instances may not even know the grader of their paper, expect?  The remunerated, secure academic-manager, being in the castle, can raise the drawbridge and throw the casuals to the vengeful crowd, an employment environment made safe for hypocrisy.

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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]

Trump’s geopolitical record shows he yielded to regime hawks Pompeo, Bolton, and in the war department on escalating aggression in multiple theaters.

Bolton pushed for war on Iran long before he became Trump’s national security advisor. Pompeo largely favors war on the country by other means to make its economy scream and immiserate its people.

Patrick Shanahan replaced “Mad Dog” James Mattis as war secretary. Army secretary Mark Esper replaced him, the FBI investigating an earlier domestic abuse incident between him and his then-wife. Shanahan’s stepping down was likely to avoid a potentially nasty Senate confirmation hearing process.

Following the June Gulf of Oman incident and other regional ones in May, falsely blamed on Iran, with US and likely Israeli fingerprints all over them, Pompeo’s rhetoric sounded like he’s with Bolton for hot war on the country.

On Tuesday at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida, he continued his hostile anti-Iran rhetoric, pushing the Big Lie about (nonexistent) Iranian “aggression in the region” — the US, NATO, Israel, and their imperial partners alone responsible for endless Middle East wars with more in mind.

Bipartisan hawks in Washington want Iran returned to US client state status, eliminating Israel’s main regional rival at the same time, along with gaining control over its vast oil and gas reserves.

On Monday, Time magazine interviewed Trump. “I would certainly go (to war on Iran) over nuclear weapons” (it doesn’t have or want), he said, adding:

“…I would keep the other a question mark.” While falsely blaming Iran for the Gulf of Oman and May regional incidents, he called them “very minor,” suggesting for him they’re not (false flag) enough to go to war over.

Ahead of stepping down as war secretary, Shanahan lied saying the following:

“The recent Iranian attacks (sic) validate the reliable, credible intelligence we have received on hostile behavior by Iranian forces and their proxy groups that threaten United States personnel and interests across the region (sic).”

No “credible intelligence” exist, nothing suggesting an aggressive Iran, just the opposite. Clear evidence shows the Islamic Republic is the region’s leading proponent of peace, stability, and cooperation with other nations — polar opposite how the US, NATO, the Saudis, UAE, and Israel operate.

Trump told Time that the Gulf of Oman “is less strategically important for the United States now than it used to be,” the publication said, quoting DJT saying:

“Other (countries) get such vast amounts of oil there. We get very little. We have made tremendous progress in the last two and a half years in energy,” adding:

“And when the pipelines get built, we’re now an exporter of energy. So we’re not in the position that we used to be in in the Middle East where…some people would say we were there for the oil.”

Fact: Henry Kissinger long ago explained that controlling oil is how to control nations. Its own energy needs aside, the US seeks control over energy reserves worldwide — especially in the Middle East, Venezuela, and the reserves of other oil-rich independent nations.

Asked if he’s considering war on Iran, Trump said “I wouldn’t say that. I can’t say that at all.”

His remark suggests he differs with Bolton and Pompeo on how tough to be on Iran. The neocon/ CIA house organ Washington Post earlier said the following:

“…Trump is frustrated with some of his top advisers, who he thinks could rush the United States into a military confrontation with Iran and shatter his long-standing pledge to withdraw from costly foreign wars, according to several U.S. officials,” adding:

“Trump prefers a diplomatic approach to resolving tensions and wants to speak directly with Iran’s leaders.”

He’s “angry…about what he sees as warlike planning that is getting ahead of his own thinking, said a senior administration official with knowledge of conversations Trump had regarding national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.”

Bolton especially is “in a different place” from Trump. (DJT) wants to talk to the Iranians. He wants a deal,” according to an unnamed White House official. “He is not comfortable with all this ‘regime change’ talk.”

If the above information is accurate, it’s a positive sign, stepping back from the brink of possible war that could be far more devastating than other US post-9/11 wars of aggression.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

On this Juneteenth, we must confront the impacts of racism dating back to the founding of the United States with the slave trade of Black people brought from Africa, Jim Crow segregation, and policies that continue to this day that cause wealth inequality, disinvestment in Black communities, police violence, mass incarceration, and white nationalist violence.

A pre-eminent African historian, Basil Davidson, credits the initiation of the African slave trade to Columbus. The first license granted to send enslaved Africans to the Caribbean was issued in 1501, during Columbus’s rule in the Indies. Davidson labels Columbus the “father of the slave trade.” African slavery is as old as the European colonization of North America.

History of Juneteenth in the Context of the Legacy of US Racism

The nation typically celebrates Emancipation Day, January 1, as the end of slavery, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Then what is Juneteenth? Juneteenth, Freedom Day, commemorates the true end of legalized slavery in the United States. It dates back to June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers came to Galveston, Texas and announced that all slaves were free and the Civil War had come to an end. This was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. There were 250,000 slaves in Texas and 4 million throughout the United States when the war came to an end and slaves were freed.

Emancipation was followed by the period of Reconstruction, during the term of President Andrew Johnson. The Johnson administration prioritized the return of the southern states to the Union and looked away while new southern state legislatures passed restrictive “Black Codes” modeled after slave laws designed to force Black people into labor for minor violations of law and restrict the freedom of former slaves. There was a backlash against these racist laws and in 1868, the Civil Rights Act became the first major bill to become law overriding a presidential veto. In February 1869, Congress approved the 15th Amendment which guaranteed that a citizen’s right to vote would not be denied “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Black people began to run and win elected office putting in place a series of progressive policies including the first state-funded public school systems in the South, more equitable taxation, and laws against racial discrimination in public transport and accommodations, until Jim Crow segregation was consolidated toward the end of the 19th century. While 20 Black people served in the US House and two in the US Senate between 1870 and 1901, none were elected until one in 1929. A few more served in the House until after passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

The racist backlash to this progress led by the Ku Klux Klan used violence to stop Black voters and forcibly overthrow Reconstruction state governments. The slogan of these Democratic Party “Redeemers” was White Supremacy. The era of Jim Crow segregation began, lynching Black people became a tactic of terror, and vagrancy laws were enacted across the south to force Black people into unpaid labor. This continued until the Civil Rights era which culminated in desegregation court decisions and Civil Rights laws in the 1950s and 60s.

But, racist policies still continue. Black people in the United States are 6.4 times more likely than whites to be incarcerated, suffer an unemployment rate that is consistently twice as high as white unemployment and can expect to die 3.5 years sooner than a white person.

In 1968, the Kerner Commission Report concluded: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one Black, one white—separate and unequal.” It called for a sweeping set of reforms totaling some $80 billion. The federal government continued funding the Vietnam War instead and, beginning with the Nixon administration’s “war on drugs,” used arrests and mass incarceration to control Black communities.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, fifty years after the Kerner Commission, Black workers still make only 82.5 cents on every dollar earned by white workers, and African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites. A recent study found that the median White family now has 41 times more wealth than the median Black family and 22 times more wealth than the median Latinx family. Incarceration of African Americans tripled after 1980 and is currently more than six times the white incarceration rate.

From the first slave ship to the current racist economic, criminal justice and other policies, racism has created unequal opportunity and devastation in Black communities. The US needs a new approach to the economy that priorities racial equality as part of economic security for people of all races.

Race-conscious Programs to Remedy Race-conscious Injuries

Five hundred years of racial oppression requires the United States to face up to its history and correct historic and current injustices. The United States must enact HR 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, to develop remedies for the impact of slavery and subsequent racial discrimination on Black people.

Even before a reparations program is developed, we can begin immediately repairing the damage by strengthening the enforcement of civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. We must take affirmative action to reverse the growing race and resegregation of housing and schools and to dismantle how systems of oppression manifest in the school-to-jailhouse pipeline track and in the proliferation of test-driven charter schools.

We must take power from racists who discriminate and exclude Black and other people of color by empowering racially- oppressed communities to practice self-determination through collective community ownership and control of public housing, schools, police, and businesses. Empowerment means democratic community control so that the masses of racially-oppressed people benefit, not merely a more “representative” professional-managerial class that simply replaces the white professional-managerial class in soaking up most of the funding in salaries, grants, and contracts.

Dr. King said in his “I Have a Dream” speech:

“It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

King’s speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a call to implement the demands of the march, which amounted to an Economic Bill of Rights to jobs, income, housing, health care, and education. King and the other leaders of the march envisioned these the fulfillment of these economic rights as a down-payment on the promissory note that King referenced.

Special attention must be given to the criminal justice system. Communities must be empowered with ‘community control of police’ so the epidemic of racist police violence can be ended. The federal government must take action against police misconduct. Every step in the criminal justice process including arrest, prosecution, sentencing, and incarceration shows prejudice against people of color. We must end the war on drugs which disproportionately targets Black people by enacting legal adult use of marijuana, decriminalization of other drugs and harm reduction policies based on public health and treatment on request. Drug use is a health problem and should not be treated as a criminal problem. The drug war has been the engine of criminal justice racism and mass incarceration of Black people.

My campaign is calling for an Economic Bill of Rights as part of the Ecosocialist Green New Deal. This will provide universal programs for economic security for all but with a race-conscious emphasis on ending discrimination. This Bill of Rights would guarantee all people the rights of a living-wage job, an income above poverty, decent housing, comprehensive health care, a good education, and freedom from discrimination.

The Black freedom movement—including some of its leaders, Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin —urged us to move “from civil rights to human rights.” With the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the 1966 Freedom Budget, and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, they demanded the implementation of FDR’s 1944 Economic Bill of Rights in a way that ended racial discrimination in education, employment, and housing. By linking racial justice to economic justice for all, we can build a majoritarian interracial movement of working people that can win these reforms. The Democrats have failed to do it for 75 years. The Greens will do it.

Finally, we must take federal action against white nationalist terrorism which President Trump has encouraged with his racist dog-whistling and incitements to violence. Actions must be taken to ensure that members of racist groups are prevented from making racist violent actions.

On this Juneteenth, we need more than anything else to demand an entirely new way of thinking about social, racial and economic issues. The US economy must prioritize economic security and racial equality. We must confront racism in the neglect of communities of color. Police enforcement and the criminal justice system, and many sectors of the US economy including healthcare, banking, housing, education, and employment must be re-made to put in place democratic control of these institutions, the fruit of which will be racial justice because self-determinant people will finally be in the driver’s seat. The United States needs to commit to undoing the damage of 500 years of racist policies and systems.

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Morsi was Egypt’s only democratically elected president, serving from June 30, 2012 until the Obama regime orchestrated his ouster on July 3, 2013 — because he wasn’t subservient enough to US interests, wanting a ruler it controls.

His toppling was reminiscent of September 11, 1973 in Chile, replacing democratically elected Salvador Allende with despotic Augusto Pinochet rule.

Years of US-supported state terror and neoliberal harshness followed, the same thing going on in Egypt.

The Obama regime installed General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to replace Morsi, Egypt’s Pinochet, governing by junta rule. A US War College graduate, he maintains close ties to the Pentagon.

His regime bears full responsibility for Morsi’s premature death at age 67. He collapsed and died in a regime-controlled Cairo rubber-stamp court following years of medical neglect and mistreatment under what human rights advocate Gamal Eid called “brutal prison conditions” — despite his history of diabetes, high blood pressure, liver and kidney disease.

His end of life was similar to how Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic perished in March 2006. Framed for war crimes he didn’t commit by the Hague-based rubber-stamp ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) in deference to the Clinton regime, he was wrongfully prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned.

Despite heart and other health problems, he was denied proper medical treatment. Days before his death, he wrote Russia’s Foreign Ministry, saying the ICTY wanted him dead. So did Washington and its key NATO partners.

Proper medical care could have saved him. Posthumously, the ICTY exonerated him, proving charges against him were fabricated.

Morsi was falsely charged with murder, treason, espionage, and supporting terrorism, accused of collaborating with Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Palestinian resistance groups.

In deference to Israel and Washington’s own interests, the State Department falsely designated them terrorist organizations. Both countries have been hostile to Iran since its 1979 revolution.

Guilt by accusation for Morsi was automatic. Coup d’etat rule replaced him. El-Sisi serves US imperial interests and his own, ruling by state terror, tolerating no opposition.

Last April by manipulated referendum, he empowered himself to rule unchallenged until 2030 — as long as he doesn’t run afoul of US interests and ends up like Morsi.

Turkey’s Erdogan called him a martyr.

“May Allah rest our brother Morsi, our martyr’s soul in peace,” he said.

London-based Muslim Brotherhood figure Mohammed Sudan called his death “premeditated murder,” explaining he was denied medical care, and information about his health was largely suppressed.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party called Egyptian authorities responsible for his “deliberate slow death,” adding:

They “put him in solitary confinement…They withheld medication and gave him disgusting food…They did not give him the most basic human rights.” They wanted him dead and assured it by gross neglect.

Hamas issued a statement, praising Morsi for his solidarity with “the Palestinian cause.”

Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said

“(d)uring  his tenure as president, Mr Morsi showed courage and moral fortitude in his attempt to lead Egypt away from decades of authoritarian rule…”

Last year after visiting him in prison, UK lawmakers said he was subjected to torture-like mistreatment, including denial of medical care.

US officials largely ignored his death. Asked about it during a Monday State Department press briefing, spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus dismissively said “we saw that the death was reported” — with no further comment.

El-Sisi rules by iron fisted brute force, tolerating no opposition. Human rights workers, truth-telling academics, union heads, independent journalists, and Muslim Brotherhood members are on his target list for elimination.

During the 2013 coup and aftermath, security forces killed hundreds. Tens of thousands were arrested. Many others disappeared.

Egypt is a dictatorship, el-Sisi’s brutal rule supported and encouraged by Washington.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

On June 18, the joint forces of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Turkish-backed militant groups launched an assault on several positions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in northern Hama.

The so-called “moderate opposition” reportedly used at least two suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive devices. One exploded near SAA positions in Jalamah. Another one was eliminated in the nearby area. At the same time, clashes were reported near Sheikh Hadid, Qiratah and Jub Suleiman.

By June 19, the militant attack had been fully repelled by the SAA. Despite this, pro-militant media outlets claimed that all devices had worked as intended and “Assad regime forces” had suffered dozens of casualties. According to pro-government sources, the militants lost up to 30 killed or injured fighters, and 6 pieces of military equipment, including a battle tank.

The militant advance also triggered a new round of Syrian airstrikes on their infrastructure in southern Idlib and northern Hama.

The SAA halted offensive actions in the area last week in the framework of the temporary ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Russia. However, this move does not seem to be appreciated by the so-called opposition.

Clashes between the SAA and ISIS erupted north of the town of al-Sukhna in the Homs province. ISIS cells reportedly ambushed at least one SAA checkpoint there. There are no confirmed reports regarding the casualties.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) detained nearly 100 people in the town of Tayaneh on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, according to Syrian state media. The SDF also stormed the village of Shwehan arresting 11 more people. Reports claim that the raids came in response to the locals’ refusal to hand over their crops of wheat and barley to the US-backed militias. Earlier reports appeared that SDF units were burning crops in farms that do not support the SDF’s administration policy. Pro-SDF sources deny this.

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