Global Research

Iraq has spent the better share of the last 16 years under US military occupation. Despite this, time and again US-Iraqi relations have come to be defined by US hostility toward neighboring Iran, and Iraq’s desire to not get mixed up in that.

So while Iraq’s parliament was already bristling under Pentagon talk of staying in Iraq, and Trump saying that the US was staying in Iraq to “keep an eye on Iran,” the recent escalation of US rhetoric about a war against Iran has sparked action within parliament.

On Saturday, Iraq will be voting on a bill that would aim to expel all foreign troops from Iraqi soil, and singles out US troops in particular as needing to leave. The bill is endorsed by Iraq’s top two Shi’ite blocs, and is expected to pass fairly easily.

What happens then is the real question. Iraq’s parliament is already being spun as “pro-Iran factions,” and it’s been a long time since US officials, Pentagon or otherwise, gave any indication that they thought staying in Iraq was up to the Iraqi government.

So while the Iraqi Prime Minister is warning the US that they can’t use Iraq to launch a war on Iran, the US is browbeating Iraq over its government-aligned Shi’ite militias, and doing everything they can to try to portray that Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government as effectively in league with the Iranians, and subsequently a threat to US interests. No matter what happens, it seems certain US-Iraqi ties will suffer for it.

*

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

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Both countries want major outstanding issues resolved, a bilateral deal finalized, ending the longstanding differences on trade and related issues. 

Yet after 11 rounds of talks since China’s Xi Jinping met with Trump at his Mar a Lago, Florida estate in April 2017, followed by US initiated trade war in March 2018, major structural issues remain unresolved.

The Trump regime upped the stakes by blacklisting Chinese tech giant Huawei and its 70 affiliates on the phony pretext of preventing the company from “potentially undermin(ing) US national security.”

The move made bilateral accommodation all the harder, risking full-blown trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

If things go this far, it will negatively affect both countries and the global economy. It also risks direct Sino/US confrontation.

Beijing won’t be pressured, bullied, intimidated or threatened to bend to Washington’s will. In response to blacklisting Huawei and its affiliates, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Gao Feng said his government “emphasized many times that the concept of national security should not be abused, and that it should not be used as a tool for trade protectionism,” adding:

China “will take all the necessary measures to resolutely safeguard (the) legitimate rights” of its enterprises. He slammed the US for “unilaterally and continuously escalat(ing) the trade conflict.”

Are future talks between officials of both countries doomed by this action and other unacceptable US toughness? Will China walk away believing resolution of major bilateral differences are unattainable?

Blacklisting Huawei prohibits it from buying parts and components from US companies without Washington’s approval.

The action shuts the company out of the US market, making it harder for it to sell some of its products that rely on what’s bought from US suppliers.

A second action by Trump bans US companies from purchasing telecom equipment from foreign suppliers “deemed to pose a national security risk” — his order aimed at Huawei and other Chinese firms without naming them.

The action is all about wanting US companies to have a leg up on foreign competition. China is sure to retaliate against shutting out Huawei and its affiliates from the US market.

The company is leading the race to roll out 5G technology in Western and world markets. At stake are trillions of dollars of economic value, why the company is targeted.

According to its chairman Liang Hua, it intends signing “no-spy” agreements with European and other countries.

Its UK-based representative Nigel Jeffries said targeting its supply chain, hampering its 5G rollout will “limit the US to inferior yet more expensive alternatives, leaving the US lagging behind in 5G deployment and eventually harming the interests of US companies and consumers.”

China’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, responded sharply to the Trump regime’s action against Huawei, calling it “unreasonable bully tactics…cast(ing) a (long) shadow” over bilateral relations, “underestimat(ing) the will and determination of the Chinese people to defend the country’s core interests.”

The broadsheet accused the US of “backtrack(ing) in trade talks,” falsely accusing Beijing of “reneging on promises,” adding:

“It is totally nonsense that disregards facts, and such false accusation on China is nothing but a lie.”

“China will never make concessions on major issues of principle, and its core concerns must be addressed.”

“Washington holds a hegemonic logic that anything goes against its own wills is considered backtracking.”

“The US exploits…treaties, clauses, and organizations that conform to its own interests, and slams those not able to help it maximize its profits.”

“The US went back on its words four times since it started trade talks with China a year ago…The arbitrary acts of the US increased uncertainty for the future development of global economy and disappointed the international community.”

Instead of seeking mutual cooperation with China and other countries, the US demands they subordinate their sovereign rights to its interests — a formula for highteined friction, perhaps making resolution of major differences with China unattainable.

What seemed unlikely earlier is how things may turn out ahead because of unacceptable Trump regime actions.

Economist Richard Wolff slammed its actions, saying it’s costing jobs and money. DJT “initiated a massive tax on Americans. Tariff is just a word for a particular kind of tax” paid by US consumers and businesses.

Wolff believes both countries will reach agreement, each claiming “they prevailed, and we will go on to some other crisis that can keep our president in the news.”

His remarks came before the US blacklisted Huawei. The action isn’t a game-changer so far. The playing field could markedly shift if the Trump regime persuades its European and other allies to adopt a similar policy.

It won’t be easy, given the company’s advanced technology, superior to competition, making it hard to shut the firm out of world markets.

The US and China are competing for which country will be the leader in 5G technology, trillions of dollars of market value at stake.

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 both countries be able to resolve major differences in the weeks and months ahead? The jury is very much out on this major issue.

According to Chinese state media, its authorities may suspend trade talks with the US if its unacceptable toughness continues, saying:

“If there is no real concrete action by the US, it will be meaningless for you to come and talk” — the remark directed at Treasury Secretary Mnunchin, adding:

“It is better to suspend the consultation completely and return to the normal working track.”

“The US does not show any sincerity in continuing talks. Instead, it is extending its pressure tactics.”

“The US on one hand says it engages in talks, but on the other hand keeps using petty tricks to destroy the atmosphere for talks.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said

“(i)f anyone thinks that China is bluffing, it will only be another major miscalculation…”

Is Beijing bluffing or is it willing to suspend further talks, hoping the Trump regime softens its hardline position.

At a Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations, Xi Jinping said the following:

“If someone thinks their own race and civilization is superior and insists on remoulding or replacing other civilizations, it would be a stupid idea and disastrous act,” adding:

“We should hold up equality and respect, abandon pride and prejudice, deepen our knowledge about the differences between our own and other civilizations, and promote harmonious dialogue and coexistence between civilizations.”

His remarks were directed at the US without naming it. Authorities of both countries are aware of the dangers of deteriorating relations.

That’s where things are heading on issues besides trade. The US wants control over other nations, their resources and populations.

It’s playing with fire by trying to push China and Russia too far, heightening the risk of possible global war.

*

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

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.

Terrorist groups in West Africa are dangerously trying to transplant the “Syraq” model of transnational destabilization to the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger border triangle in order to turn it into a similarly lawless region like the frontier between those two aforementioned Mideast states used to be during the height of Daesh’s so-called “caliphate”, with this terrifying development proving that France’s 2013 military intervention in Mali has been a total failure as well as threatening to cause another Migrant Crisis to crash into Europe.

The “West African ‘Syraq’”

Terrorists thought to be affiliated with either Al Qaeda or Daesh ambushed Nigerien troops near the Malian border not far from the capital of Niamey and ended up killing at least 28 of them in a horrifying attack which bodes very negatively for the West African region as a whole. Terrorist groups in this part of the continent are dangerously trying to transplant the “Syraq” model of transnational destabilization to the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger border triangle after a spree of attacks in this area over the past several months showed that it’s becoming just as lawless as the frontier between those two aforementioned Mideast states used to be during the height of Daesh’s so-called “caliphate”. This terrifying development poses very serious security risks for Europe because of the chance that it could quickly spiral out of control and catalyze another large-scale Migrant Crisis, thus potentially drawing it deeper into mission creep as it seeks to preemptively thwart this scenario.

Different Crisis, Same Origins

The origins of the growing West African terrorist crisis are identical to the Mideast one in that they can both be traced back to a US-led war on a regional leader whose destruction destabilized nearby fragile states and created a fertile ground for unconventional threats to take root. The US’ 2003 War on Iraq preceded the Hybrid War of Terror on Syria that led to Daesh’s rise, just as the 2011 NATO War on Libya triggered the large-scale exodus of highly trained and battle-hardened Tuaregs back to Mali where they quickly got to work carving out the separatist state of “Azawad” that was later hijacked by Islamic militants. The key difference, however, is that the Mideast states were always comparatively more stable than the West African ones, which is why the geographic scope of destabilization in the former was more limited than in the latter. Furthermore, while the Kurds have historically been a transnational issue in the Mideast, their Tuareg structural counterparts in West Africa were more historically successful in their campaigns precisely because of the said state weaknesses.

France’s Failure

France’s 2013 military intervention in Mali was meant to reverse the massive gains made by the region’s proto-Daesh after the destruction of Libya and subsequent hijacking of “Azawad” by Islamic militants, while the follow-up “Operation Barkhane” and attendant assembling of the Paris-led so-called “G5 Sahel” military bloc of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad were meant to sustain these gains and keep terrorist threats in check. That obviously didn’t happen, and not only did the chaos spread to the one-time Burkinabe bastion of regional stability, but it’s also contributing to perennially failed state Niger’s collapse that’s exacerbated by the challenge that Boko Haram simultaneously poses in its east. The “perfect storm” is evidently forming, but extra-regional hegemon France seems powerless to stop it since it already has its hands full dealing with its many domestic problems and protecting its Chadian ally from Libyan-originating rebel invasions.

EuroRealists To The Rescue?

Faced with the credible possibility of rising terrorist threats in the “West African ‘Syraq’” causing an out-of-control Migrant Crisis to crash into the bloc later this summer, the EU might feel compelled to step up is military activities there in order to thwart that worst-case scenario, which might receive a populist boost if EuroRealist parties pull off an impressive performance after the EU Parliamentary elections later this month. Italy has already positioned itself as a “frontline state” interested in actively doing whatever is needed to stop new migrant waves to Europe, so it’s not inconceivable that Salvini might try to use the EuroRealists’ possibly forthcoming mandate after the elections to lobby for the urgent dispatch of a multilateral EU intervention force (possibly through PESCO) to ensure that this scenario never transpires. Such an effort could be paired with a so-called “Marshall Plan for Africa” to satisfy the EuroLiberals’ socio-economic priorities there in exchange for their support of this military mission.

Concluding Thoughts

Whatever ends up happening, it’s quickly becoming increasingly clear that the rest of the world is being forced to take notice of the “West African ‘Syraq’” that’s forming in the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger border triangle after a recent spree of terrorist attacks there drew international attention to the region. The latest one that killed at least 28 Nigerian soldiers comes on the heels of several in Burkina Faso that specifically targeted Christians and finally got the West to wonder what’s going on in this part of the world, especially since the memory of the Easter terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka is still fresh on people’s mind. If the EuroRealists do well in the upcoming EU Parliamentary elections, then there’s a real possibility that the bloc might begin seriously considering more robust multilateral military action in West Africa in order to thwart the worst-case scenario of another Migrant Crisis crashing into its borders, though there’s no telling if it’ll succeed where France has already failed.

*

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

This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from Nato Defense College Foundation

As of May 10, Mr. Trump has arbitrarily increased tariffs on Chinese goods imported into the US, worth about 200 billion dollars, from 10 % to 25%. It is an action without any foundation. An action that makes no sense at all, as China can and will retaliate – and retaliate much stronger than what the impact of the US’s new “sanctions” may bear – because these arbitrary tariffs are nothing else but sanctions. Illegality of such foreign interference aside, there is hardly any serious economist in this world, who would favor tariffs in international trade among “adults” anywhere and for any reason, and, of course, least as a punishment for a nation. All that such sanctions do is pushing a partner away. In this case it’s not just any partner; China is a key trading partner of the United States.

The new tariffs will hardly harm the American consumer. There are huge profit margins by US middlemen and importers of Chinese goods. They are competing with each other within the US – and the consumer may not even notice a thing. However, the US economy will likely suffer, especially from Chinese retaliatory actions.

A spoiled child, what Trump is, doesn’t get his way – and goes into a tantrum, not quite knowing what he is doing, and knowing even less what he may expect in return.

Back to trading with China. China has a million ways (almost) to retaliate. China can devalue her currency vis-à-vis the dollar, or China can dump some of their almost 3 trillion dollars-worth of reserves on the money market – just take a wild guess about what that would do to the hegemony of the dollar which is already in dire straits – with ever more countries departing from the use of dollars for international trade.

And just hypothetically, China could stop altogether exporting all that Walmart junk that American consumers love so much – just for a while. Or China could stop making iPhones for the US market. Guess what kind of an uproar that would trigger in the US? – Or China could of course, levy herself high tariffs on US imports, or stop US imports altogether. China being part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – actually the co-founder of it – has many alternatives to cover her demand. No need to depend on the west.

Let’s not forget, the SCO which also counts as its members, Russia, India, Pakistan, most of Central Asia, and Iran poised to become a full-fledged member – covers about half of the world population and a third of the world’s economic output, or GDP. No need to look to the west for ‘survival’ – those times are long gone.

But more importantly, what all this looks like to me – is the desperate thrashing around of a dying beast, or in this case a dying empire.

We have the US and Venezuela – threats after threats after threats – Maduro must go, or more sanctions. Indeed, according to a study by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), these horrifying, totally illegal sanctions or blockages of imports, most of them already paid for by Venezuela, have killed some 40,000 people in Venezuela. Of course, Washington doesn’t care about legality and killing, also typical for a fading mighty power – no respect for law and order, no respect for human rights and human lives. One only has to see what type of psychopaths are occupying the tasks of “Foreign Minister” and of “National Security Advisor” or of Vice President, for that matter – they are all sick, but very sick and dangerous people.

Well, in Venezuela “regime change” didn’t work out – so far. Pompeo has been clearly told off by Mr. Lavrov during their recent get-together in Helsinki – and China is in the same line of supporting the government of Nicolas Maduro.

Next – Iran. Attacking Iran has been a dream of Bolton’s ever since the US 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq. Bolton and Pompeo are of the same revolting kind: They want wars, conflicts, or if they don’t get wars, they want to sow fear, they enjoy seeing people scared. They want suffering. Now they didn’t succeed – at least so far – with Venezuela, let’s try Iran. Pompeo – “Iran has done irregular things” – not saying what in particular he means – so Iran has to be punished, with yet more sanctions. And any argument is good.

The entire world knows, including the Vienna-base UN Economic Energy Commission, and has acknowledged umpteen times that Iran has fully adhered to the conditions of the Nuclear Deal from which the US exited a year ago. Of course, no secret here either, this at the demand of Trump’s Big Friend Bibi Netanyahu. The European Union vassals may actually turn for their own business interests, not for political ethics, but pure and simple self-interest – towards respecting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Nuclear Deal. China and Russia are already holding on to the Deal, and they are not impressed by Washington’s threats. So, there is very little Trump and his minions can do, other than saber rattling.

Therefore, the nefarious Pence-Pompeo-Bolton trio must invent another warning: Iran or any proxy of Iran shall attack an ally of the US, and Iran will be devastated. In fact, they consider the Houthis in Yemen who fight for their sheer survival against the US-UK-France – and NATO supported Saudis, as a proxy for Iran. So, the US could start bombing Iran already today. Why don’t they?

Maybe they are afraid – afraid Iran could lock down the Strait of Hormuz, where 60% of US oil imports have to sail through. What a disaster that would be, not just for the US but also for the rest of the world. Oil prices could skyrocket. Would Washington want to risk a war over their irrationality? – Maybe, Mr. Halfwit Trump might, but I doubt that his deep-dark state handlers would. They know what’s at stake for them and the world. But they let Trump play his games a bit longer.

Moving the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, loaded with war planes, close to Iranian waters costs hundreds of millions or billions. Just to enhance a threat. A show-off. Bolton and Pompeo will entertain their sadism, enjoying seeing scared people. But the cost of war doesn’t matter – it’s just more debt, and as we know, the US never, but never pays back its debt.

Next – or simultaneously is China. The trade war with China that started last year, then had a respite to the point of the recent joint negotiations – and suddenly the Trumpians are veering off again. They must smash China, wanting to appear superior. But why? The world knows that the US are no longer superior – by a long shot, and haven’t been for the last couple of years, when China surpassed the US in economic strength, measured by PPP = Purchasing Power Parity – which is the only parity or exchange rate that has any real meaning.

Guess what! – All these three cases have one common denominator: The dollar as a chief instrument for world hegemony. Venezuela and Iran have stopped using the dollar for their hydrocarbon and other international trading, already some years ago. And so did China and Russia. China’s strong currency, the Yuan, is rapidly taking over the US-dollar’s reserve position in the world. Sanctioning China with insane tariffs is supposed to weaken the Yuan; but it won’t.

All of these three countries, China, Iran and Venezuela are threatening the US dollar’s world hegemony – and without that the US economy is dead, literally. The dollar is based on thin air, and on fraud – the dollar system used around the globe is nothing but a huge, a very big and monstrous Ponzi-scheme, that one day must be coming crashing down.

That’s what’s at stake. New FED Board member, Herman Cain, for example, is pledging for a new gold standard. But none of these last resort US measure will work, not a new gold standard, not a trade and tariff war, and not threats of wars and destruction and “regime change”. The nations around the world know what’s going on, they know the US is in her last breath; though they don’t quite dare saying so – but they know it, and are waiting for the downfall to continue. The world is waiting for the grand fiesta, dancing in the streets, when the empire disappears – or becomes utterly irrelevant.

*

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

This 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.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 was adopted on 23.12.2016. The resolution passed in a 14–0 vote by members of the U.N.S.C. including four parties having power of veto: China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

It reaffirmed that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.

The Council reiterated its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.  It underlined that it would not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the two sides through negotiations.

It further called for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction. 

The resolution states that all measures aimed at changing the demographic composition and status of Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, including construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians are in violation of international humanitarian law, Israel’s obligation as the occupying Power according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, and previous resolutions.

This is also the (nuclear-armed) government that is currently inciting the Trump administration of the United States to attack the (non-nuclear) sovereign nation of Iran in a bid to impose Israeli regional dominance.  It must not succeed because that would almost certainly escalate into a global, nuclear conflict that could end in worldwide devastation.

*

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

Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from American Free Press

The New York Times continues to descend further into spewing fiction masquerading as news. Its most recent analysis challenges Judith Miller‘s delusional screed about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as sheer nonsense. Evidently the Times has a propensity for disgracing itself. Now the newspaper’s latest low is William Broad’s essay, “Your 5G Phone Won’t Hurt You But Russia Wants You to Think Otherwise,” touting a wild conspiracy theory that 5G technology’s severe risks to human health and the environment is a covert Russian plot intended to sow confusion into the minds of the American public.

As a patriotic loyalist of Russo-paranoia, Broad has dreamed up a hallucination that Russia is preparing to outpace the US’s strategy to dominate the global “internet of everything” in the race to launch 5G technology globally. Aside from Broad’s otherwise corporate friendly stances supporting hydrofracking, genetically modified foods, and the myth that vaccines do not contribute to neurological disorders, he has produced some excellent work about Yoga culture and North Korea. Yet these are hardly topics that would enable a person to speak intelligently about electromagnetic frequency’s (EMFs) biomolecular effects on living organisms. 

Seen in its context, the Time’s article was timely. It was published just days before the National Day of Action to Halt 5G on May 15th.  The event was launched by Americans for Responsible Technology and has earned the support of nearly one hundred organizations including the Environmental Health Trust, the EMF Safety Network, Parents for Safe Technology, Wireless Radiation Education and Defense, among others.  Since the telecom industry and FCC have no viable science to support their claims, through the mouthpiece of the Times it has found a voice to further fuel the nation’s Russia mania. 

Source: The New York Times

Broad argues there is no scientific support for 5G signals contributing to brain tumors, infertility, autism, heart tumors and Alzheimer’s disease. Although the research may arguably offer less than 100 percent certainty, the scientific evidence unquestionably confirms that 5G is assuredly unsafe. Persons already suffering from electromagnetic sensivities will have no means of escape. And tens of thousands of scientists and medical experts agree. Contrast this with the Europa EM-EMF guideline that found “strong evidence that long-term exposure to certain EMFs is a risk factor for diseases such as certain cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, and male infertility… Common EHS (electromagnetic hypersensitivity) symptoms include headaches, concentration difficulties, sleep problems, depression, lack of energy, fatigue, and flu-like symptoms.”  Seemingly, the Times has never heard of the “precautionary principle,” a recognized standard for avoiding unnecessary risks.  

In January 2019, over 26,000 scientists submitted a petition to the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Union, the Council of Europe and world governments opposing the 5G roll out. The letter states,

“Despite widespread denial, the evidence that radio frequency (RF) radiation is harmful to life is already overwhelming.  The accumulated clinical evidence of sick and injured human beings, experimental evidence of damage to DNA, cells and organ systems in a wide variety of plants and animals, and epidemiological evidence that the major diseases of modern civilization—cancer, heart disease and diabetes—are in large part caused by electromagnetic pollution, forms a literature base of well over 10,000 peer-reviewed studies.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Over 10,000 peer-reviewed studies now collectively confirm 5G’s measurable adverse effects. Oddly, the Times didn’t bother to do its homework. In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified EMFs as possibly carcinogenic to humans. This was based on research showing a direct correlation between glioma tumors — a malignant brain cancer — and wireless mobile phone use.  The Agency falls under the umbrella of the WHO, a cesspool compromised by corporate conflicts of interests and biased influence. The WHO’s website, which Broad references, denies EMF’s adverse effects nevertheless acknowledges the IARC’s classification.  A former chair of the IARC group responsible for evaluating the epidemiology and carcinogenicity of mobile phone radiation was Anders Ahlbom, co-founder of Gunnar Ahlbom AB, a Belgian lobbying firm providing public relations services to the telecom industry. Hence, the IARC is completely biased.

The letter continues,

“If the telecommunication industry’s plans for 5G come to fruition, no person, no animal, no bird, no insect and no plant on Earth will be able to avoid exposure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to levels of RF radiation that are tens to hundreds of times greater than what exists today, without any possibility of escape anywhere on the planet. These 5G plans threaten to provoke serious, irreversible effects on humans and permanent damage to all of the Earth’s ecosystems.”

Between August 2016 and September 2018, over 400 new studies on electromagnetic radiation risks were compiled by public health Professor Joel Moskowitz at the University of California at Berkeley. These studies cover earlier generation technologies, whereas 5G will be everywhere and far less safe. Compared to 4G technology in common use today, every 5G base station will contain hundreds of thousands of antennas each aiming laser like microwave beams to all devices. In an urban area, base stations could be installed as little as 100 meters (328 feet) apart.

Today, nations with the highest EMF technological use are witnessing a dramatic increase in male sterility. Researchers at the National Academy of Medical Sciences in Ukraine, placed study participants’ sperm samples in incubation conditions either with our without Wifi mobile phone exposure. Sperm exposed to EMF showed substantial DNA fragmentation and loss of motility. More comprehensive in vitro and in vivo studies out of Hanyang University in Seoul concluded that EMF exposure dramatically altered reproductive endocrine hormones, gonadal function, embryonic development, pregnancy and fetal development. In addition, pineal gland measurements observed a decrease in melatonin, which would contribute to either sleeplessness or poor quality of sleep that is commonly noted by persons with EMF sensitivities. 

Nor should we neglect other nations now aligning with the scientific consensus outside of private industry. France now bans mobile phone use from its primary and secondary schools. It is also against the law to advertise cell phones to children. Israel’s Minister of Health has called for banning all Wifi installations in schools; the city of Haifa has already done so. Ontario schools label Wifi transmitters as “hazardous.”  Mumbai, India’s largest city with over 18 million residents, has banned all cell towers from being erected in the vicinity of schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages and juvenile detention homes. Before any cell tower can be installed on building roofs, it must have 100 percent approval from residents.  And Russia, which Broad is intent to isolate with a phantasmagorical conspiracy, started removing Wifi from schools back in 2012. 

Nowhere in the Times’ piece does Broad provide credible references to the thousands of published papers warning about the likely injurious consequences once we are all exposed endlessly to 5G frequencies.  Rather, the author finds an “expert” voice in Marvin Ziskin, an emeritus professor of radiology at Temple University’s School of Medicine. Broad quotes Ziskin arguing that “5G emissions, if anything, should be safer than previous generations.” 

Ziskin happens to be a co-chair at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE. The organization is not scientifically impartial. It provides 5G training through the telecommunications industry. Its former president during the Obama Spectrum Frontier initiative spent three decades with telecom giants AT&T and Lucent Technologies. And its current Executive Director and COO held senior leadership positions at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA is the brain initiative for the military’s future use of 5G.  Its website IEEE Spectrum outlines its full support for colonizing the new frontier with 5G technology.

For an excellent example of Broad’s nonsensical fear-mongering, he writes, “hundreds of blogs and websites appear to be picking up the network’s [Russia TV] 5G alarms, seldom if ever noting the Russian origins.”  Frankly, nobody needs to turn to Russia for information about 5G’s threats to animal and human health and the environment. We can simply listen to our own American scientists. In fact, Broad could have looked into the CIA’s own records. Russia knows a little something about EMF’s and microwave’s health risks. In 1985, the CIA declassified its “Soviet Directed Energy Weapons” report detailing 878 long-term studies the former Soviet Union conducted on microwave particle and electromagnetic frequency effects on the human body. To avoid confusion, 5G transmission is within the microwave band frequency. 

An overview of the Soviet’s research thoroughly frightening. Its researchers determined the degree and amount of time required from exposure for developing sensory somatic disorders, autonomic nervous disorders, cardiovascular disease, circadian rhythm interruption, hypoglycemia, sensory motor disorders and chronic fatigue, depression and memory loss. 

Consequently there have been no secrets about the health threats from microwave frequency exposure. They have been known for several decades yet federal officials, the tech companies and the media such as the New York Times has made a concerted effort to bulldoze aside the evidence. If 4G technology had been categorized and regulated as a pharmaceutical drug, it would have been black boxed and removed from the market long ago. And 5G will be far more toxic and there will be no escape from it.

As a journalist, in our opinion, Broad has displayed gross negligence. Anyone could have spent less than an hour searching the peer-reviewed literature and technological safety organization’s websites and walk away convinced that something is disturbingly awry with the institutionalized version of 5G safety.  The fact that the New York Times would promulgate such conspiratorial foolishness is even more unsettling. 

Nevertheless, to say that there are serious conflicts of interest in the Times’ public projection of 5G would be an understatement. Instead, the newspaper has been directly colluding with the telecommunications industrial complex. Last January, the Times CEO Mark Thompson, alongside Verizon’s CEO Hans Vestberg, appeared at the Consumer Technology Conference in Las Vegas to announce the news outlet’s partnership with the telecom giant Verizon to launch a 5G Journalism Lab. The Times will now have an advantage over other mainstream media by gaining “early access to the 5G network” as the news goes increasingly digital.

Furthermore, Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of communications at New York University, has pointed out that the Time’s top shareholder is the Mexican billionaire and mobile phone business magnate Carlos Slim. Slim is positioned to reap billions beyond his own fortune with the 5G roll out south of the border. “He therefore stands to profit hugely off 5G,” writes Miller, “although he’s rich enough already to live far from any of the cell phone towers  that will have millions of us battling tumors, or dropping dead from  heart attacks—about which “Mr. Slim” is also (obviously) rich enough  already not to care.”

Have we learned nothing from history? Phony corporate-funded tobacco science instilled in us the belief that tobacco was beneficial to our health. Synthetic hormone replacement therapy was marketed as the perfect antidote for menopausal symptoms despite the most comprehensive study to date by the Nurses Health study that led to the FDA’s black box warning on women’s hormone replacement therapy.

Monsanto is now tanking under the weight of lawsuits because its flagstaff glyphosate herbicide or Roundup has been proven to be carcinogenic in the courtroom. Nevertheless Monsanto has generated many tens of billions of dollars in revenue while deceiving  populations and nations for over three decades about its safety record. Our military personnel are indoctrinated into the illusion that depleted uranium exposure in the Middle East poses no health risks. Hence, soldiers should not worry from the radiated particulate matter being inhaled on the battle field. Lead in paint and gasloline and asbestos were likewise presented as harmless. 

How much further down this rabbit hole must we go? 5G is as bad as all of these earlier marketing fabrications and much worse. We can choose not to smoke or drink. We can decide on the foods we wish to eat. We have a choice to take a medication or not.  But no one will be able to have a choice to aovid 5G exposure. Borrowing a term from Times columnist Thomas Friedman, 5G is the “golden straightjacket” for the elite and military that simply won’t come off.

With every public health threat, such as the one Americans will face with 5G, it required years to decades before a toxic product was removed from the market. And that was before our federal agencies and the media became fully captured by private industry and special interest groups. We must not expect to find a single negative report regarding 5G technology released by any federal health agency, and certainly not by the telecom industry. If we do not act now, it will be too late after the planned 20,000-plus satellites are launched to drape the planet in EMF radiation. 

There is urgent reason to be concerned about 5G, especially for our children and their future children who will live in a sea 5G radiation.  Dr. Lennart Hardel, an oncology professor at University Hospital in Orebro, Sweden, has even considered the horrible thought that the telecommunication industry’s plans to launch 5G globally may violate the Nuremberg Code.  Mr. Broad, your employer is already a quagmire of falsehoods. Are you ready to accept your responsibility for this sorely delinquent experiment that awaits us?  We certainly hope you are. 

*

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

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 Poverty Inc and Deadly Deception.

Featured image is from End of the American Dream

On May 1, the US Department of Defense sent a letter to the European Union warning that plans for an independent EU army could lead to a collapse in the NATO alliance between the United States and the EU powers. The letter, sent by the US undersecretaries for defense Ellen Lord and Andrea Thompson to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, was leaked to the Spanish daily El Pais.

El Pais reported on it on May 13, as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived uninvited at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels to demand EU support for US war moves against Iran.

“The United States is deeply concerned by the approval of rules for the European Defense Fund and the general conditions of PESCO,” the letter states, referring to the EU army’s technical name, the Permanent Structured Cooperation.

The EU army, the letter added, is leading to “a dramatic step back in three decades of growing integration of the trans-Atlantic defense industry.” It warned of the danger of “unnecessary competition between NATO and the EU.”

The “very harsh” letter, El Pais reported, “is full of more or less veiled threats of possible political or commercial retaliation if Brussels maintains its intentions to develop European weapons projects without consulting with outside countries, like the United States.”

The Pentagon letter objects to provisions in the European Defense Fund mandating that European firms control the technology employed in European weapons systems, and threatens to take similar measures to exclude European firms from Pentagon weapons contracts. It states,

“It is clear that similar reciprocally imposed US restrictions would not be welcomed by our European partners and allies, and we would not relish having to consider them in the future.”

Referring to the conflicts that erupted when European powers led by Berlin and Paris opposed the illegal 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the letter states that the current EU plans “could not only hurt the constructive relationship between NATO and the EU, but could also potentially revive the tense discussions that dominated our contacts 15 years ago on European defense initiatives.”

The seriousness with which threats of a breakdown of the US-European alliance are taken in ruling circles in Europe was reflected in the publication this week of a study by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank in London. The report, titled “Defending Europe: scenario-based capability requirements for NATO’s European members,” estimated the costs to Europe to rebuild NATO’s military capacity if the United States abandoned the alliance. The document called for a massive $110 billion naval build-up and $357 billion to prepare for war with Russia.

The publication of these documents point to the advanced state of collapse of alliances and arrangements that have governed the international relations of world capitalism for decades. It puts paid to the European imperialist powers’ attempts to present their plans for a major escalation of their military spending and operations as a supplement intended to aid NATO. The Pentagon views these plans as a threat to develop the EU as a rival to the US-led NATO alliance, founded in 1949 after two world wars between the United States and Germany.

The strategic aims underlying the deployment of US warships and troops for war with Iran, which Washington is justifying with unsubstantiated and non-credible allegations of an Iranian military threat to the United States, go well beyond that oil-rich region. Washington in engaged in a ferocious military campaign not only to defend its fading military hegemony in the Middle East and Eurasia. One of its main aims is to stamp out the danger of a potential challenge from its great power rivals, including its nominal European allies.

The massive military build-up underway in Europe, as the EU powers pour billions of euros into their militaries and wage bloody wars of plunder such as the Franco-German occupation of Mali, underscore the class nature of these conflicts. They are bitter struggles between rival imperialist powers over the spoils to be obtained from the world economy, amid growing working class opposition to war and the austerity measures used to finance the military build-ups.

Washington viewed the temporary alliance between Berlin, Paris and Moscow at the UN in opposition to the illegal 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, justified by lies about non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), as a serious threat. Now that Brexit has deprived London of its ability to veto plans for an EU army on Washington’s behalf, these conflicts have vastly escalated. Under cover of an agreement of all the NATO powers to boost military spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product, strategic and commercial rivalries continue to rise between Washington and the EU powers.

On May 13, US Senators Ted Cruz and Jeanne Shaheen introduced bipartisan legislation to sanction European and Russian firms working on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany. Using against Europe methods Washington previously used to target Iran and Russia, the bill would ban travel and financial transactions involving employees and physical assets of firms building the pipeline, which Trump denounced last year. Firms targeted could include Germany’s BASF, British-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, and France’s ENGIE.

Tensions are growing as well over EU relations with China, after Italy formally signed in March a memorandum of understanding endorsing Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a vast Eurasian infrastructure plan, over US objections. Since then, Washington has threatened Germany and Britain with a suspension of intelligence cooperation for allowing the Chinese firm Huawei to participate in building their telecommunications network.

Bitter conflict has above all been provoked by the US campaign against Iran since the Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear treaty and reimposed US sanctions, which cut across multi-billion-dollar deals signed in Iran by European oil and industrial firms.

Last week, after visiting Britain to demand London’s support for Washington against Iran, Pompeo abruptly cancelled a visit to Berlin, citing “pressing issues,” and flying to Baghdad instead. There, he promoted US oil deals and demanded that the Iraqi puppet state set up after the 2003 war protect US interests from alleged Iranian threats. Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote on Pompeo’s snub to Berlin that “much of that which for a long time was lauded as the German-American friendship now lies in pieces.”

Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron complained of the US torpedoing of the Iranian nuclear deal. At an EU summit last week in Romania, Macron said,

“Firstly, Iran did not withdraw from this deal. Secondly, if Iran withdraws from this deal, it will be the responsibility of the United States.”

And yesterday, Spain withdrew its frigate Méndez Núñez from the US-led naval battle group anchored by the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, which is sailing to the Persian Gulf to threaten Iran. Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles blandly stated:

“If the North American government intends for the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to go to a certain zone for a certain mission that it never agreed with Spain, we are provisionally leaving the battle group.”

Despite taking a move indicating real fears that the naval battle group will launch military action against Iran, Madrid sought to downplay the decision and mask its significance to the public. Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said there had been

“no formal complaint” from Madrid to Washington over this event, adding, “It is not something to get too worked up about.”

*

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

American media still refer to Juan Guaidó, America’s hand-picked “legitimate leader” or “legitimate president” of Venezuela, as having an “administration.”

The truth is that his “administration” — consisting of advisors and other opposition leaders — are all either arrested and being held by the government, hiding, seeking asylum in various foreign embassies (Spanish, Italian, Brazilian and Argentinian) in the capital of Caracas, or have fled to other countries like Brazil and Colombia.

Guaidó, apparently a government of one, has so far avoided arrest probably because the elected Venezuelan President Maduro doesn’t want to give the US an excuse to try and rescue him, or to launch military actions of some kind against Venezuela as the White House keeps threatening to do.

Clearly, in calling for US military intervention, Guaidó has both demonstrated almost his total lack of backing among the masses of Venezuelan people, as well as his desperation, given Latin American’s visceral resentment of US interventions in their country, all of which have been designed to put autocrats or even military juntas in power, and many of which have openly overthrown popularly elected governments, as in Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and elsewhere.

None of this gets reported in the US. Only recently has the New York Times, always a reliable backer of US imperial policy in Latin America, at least hinted at the possibility that the reason Maduro remains president and that Guaidó’s efforts to oust him are failing  so abysmally could be that the Venezuelan people want him to stay president, and do not want a US-backed coup or a US military intervention to replace him.

At this point the huffing and puffing coming from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and especially from the White House National Security Advisor and chief militarist blowhard John Bolton, are looking pretty pathetic, with Bolton trying to sow dissension and distrust by hinting that Maduro “better not trust” his own generals’ loyalty, and by offering rewards to those generals willing to abandon Maduro.

It is an indication of the United States’s declining power and influence in Latin America that few outside the US with its insular mass media believe that the US would or even could successfully invade Venezuela and impose a government on that country of 32 million (a number that keeps declining as the upper middle class and rich flee).

If anything, US sabotage and threats and US backing for a government of the wealthy are probably galvanizing support for Maduro. While people in the US, if they are paying any attention at all to events in Venezuela, may believe that Maduro is a corrupt thug, people in Venezuela itself, and in most of Latin America know full well that the main problems in that oil-rich country have to do with the collapse in oil prices since the heady days of Hugo Chavez when it was going for $100 a barrel, to American efforts to block Venezuela from exporting its oil now, and to freeze or even seize Venezuelan assets and oil receipts from the oil it does manage to export, and to other forms of economic warfare engaged in by the United States. As in Cuba, this kind of strategy by the US only works to build support for the country’s existing government.

At some point Guaidó is going to go. He will either be written off by the US media — his main backer — or will be arrested. Probably the latter will follow the former since once he’s recognized as an impotent charlatan, his arrest will not make him a martyr for the opposition. Already he has lost what public support he had as Venezuela’s wealthy abandon the country for Florida. As well, the “50 countries” that we in the US keep hearing about which supposedly back Guaidó as Venezuela’s “legitimate leader” are realizing that they were hoodwinked by the US. The are now mostly calling for a calmer response to the crisis in Venezuela, and are refusing to buy into US military threats against the Maduro government. Meanwhile nobody in the US media mentions that over 140 countries in the world support Maduro as the leader of Venezuela. 

In truth it’s impossible to find that list of “more than 50 countries” backing a self-proclaimed and unelected Guaidó as Venezuela’s president. The closest I could come by running google searches was a map produced by Bloomberg News listing 13 countries besides the US as supporting Guaidó. These included Canada, the UK, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. That is 13 plus the United States. Listed as supporting Maduro as elected President are Russia, China, Turkey, Bolivia, and Cuba, though I believe Bloomberg neglected to mention Nicaragua, a strong Maduro backer, which would make it six. All of Africa and much of Asia was left as “no opinion,” though in fact that means they are continuing to recognize the current Maduro government. 

For a time, most of the countries of Europe were lining up behind Guaidó, particularly after Germany announced that it was recognizing him as the new interim leader of Venezuela in late January, and after it ousted the country’s ambassador, but then by late March Germany was having second thoughts, and rejected the person sent there by Guaidó to assume the position of Venezuelan ambassador. At this point, except for the UK, the countries of Europe, along with Mexico and Uruguay, are simply calling for a dialogue and a negotiated solution to the Venezuela political crisis, and in addition to opposing any talk of military action or a coup, are seeking nothing more than a new election (which Maduro would probably win, given the alternative of the return of a government of the rich). The Europeans are no longer really backing Guaidó.

The reporters who continue to refer to “more than 50 countries” calling for Maduro’s ouster all must be using the same wrong or outdated news clip or some exaggerated and dated State Department press release.  (I asked the State Department for an updated list today but so far none has been forthcoming, though it would appear such a list shouldn’t take long to compile given how short it must be.)

*

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

Featured image is from This Can’t Be Happening!

This article was written by Anne Ramberg, who happens to be the Secretary General of the Swedish Bar Association, the professional body of lawyers in that country.  The article has been translated by Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Swedish professor emeritus of epidemiology and doctor of psychiatry. Anne Ramberg reveals her concern over the breech of legal principles, the treatment of Assange in general and the moral obligation to reveal wrongdoing, just as Julian Assange has done.

My knowledge about this matter, now an almost unique one, is not entirely in-depth.  It is a matter featured by everything from prodigal conspiracy theories deprived of any reality support, to a deplorable legal handling from both Swedish and British side.

The right to a fair trial within a reasonable time is established both in the Swedish legal system [Regeringsformen, 2 kap. 11 § andra stycket 1) and in the European Convention (Article 6). This legal right also applies during the preliminary investigation stage.

To this has to be added the so-labelled presumption of innocence.

It may well be questioned whether the result of the Swedish managing [of the case] was done in accordance with the principle of proportionality. I have previously stated that I find it remarkable that the Prosecutor did not implement the preliminary investigation forward at the pace and with the care one could have demanded.

In this context, the courts have a very great responsibility. They could have put tougher demands on the prosecutor, to move the preliminary investigation forward. The conclusions that the prosecutor had as ground to dismiss the case [the pre-investigation], should also have been communicated considerably earlier than what happened. This leads to the conclusion that Sweden has a great responsibility for the situation that has arisen.

Now the question is whether Sweden should resume the preliminary investigation that prompted Assange’s asylum request to Ecuador –and his subsequent involuntary lock-in and demand his extradition to Sweden.

I fear that the treatment of Assange has damaged the reputation of the Swedish judicial system, even though Assange did not actively contribute to participate to any significant extent.

That being said, I have sympathy for Assange’s concern that Sweden would acquiesce with the United States in the event of a request for his extradition. One can only speculate on this. I am of the personal opinion that the Supreme Court would not extradite Assange to the United States. If my assumption is correct, a Supreme Court review [of the extradition case] would result in that Assange could not be extradited, even if the government so wished.

Let us not forget that whatever we may think of Assange or the deeds he is suspected of, this is about much more. It is about freedom of speech and the rule of law principles.

It is ultimately about the right and the moral obligation to expose war crimes. Assange and Wikileaks did it. The revelations about US abuse were necessary and particularly important.

Should we extradite to Germany’s Hitler someone who has revealed the existence of concentration camps and genocide, regardless to how that information was obtained?  I don’t think so.”

*

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

1. Iraq is 168,754 mi² and Iran is 636,400 mi²; that is, Iran is geographically 3.77 times bigger than Iraq, almost 4 times as big.

2. Iraq’s population when invaded was 26 million. Iran’s population today is 81 million.

3. General Eric Shinseki testified before Congress prior to Bush’s invasion that based on the US military’s experience in the Balkans, 800,000 troops would be needed to provide security to Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted on 100,000 troops, wrongly believing he could pull them out in 6 months. Bush’s viceroy in Iraq, Paul Bremer, later admitted that “we never had enough troops” in Iraq.

4. Since Iran is 3 times as populous as Iraq, by Shinseki’s correct calculation, the US would need 2.4 million troops to occupy Iran.

5. The US total military personnel count is about 2,141,900, of whom 1, 281,900 are active duty and the rest reservists.

6. Iraq’s army was a conventional military force with four powerful tank divisions, which the US Air Force turned to black carbon dust. The US only ran into trouble when Iraqis opposed to the invasion turned to guerrilla tactics, which the US never was able to deal with effectively.

7. Iran can already mobilize at least 1.5 million paramilitary “Basij” forces for guerrilla warfare. This is in addition to over 500,000 active duty military personnel.

8. Iraq was largely ruled by a small Sunni minority of perhaps 17% of the population. Iran is ruled by the Shiite majority that makes up 90% of the population. That Iraq had a minority government allowed the Bush administration to make friends in the majority Shiite community by putting them in power. This step alienated and angered the Sunnis, but they were a minority and so could not do much about it. In Iran, the Shiite majority would mount a massive struggle against the US invaders.

9. Bush found international allies for his war on Iraq, including Britain and Spain. No one in Western Europe would join Trump in a war with Iran, making the US isolated and causing it to look like a unilateralist bully.

10. Whereas Iraq’s neighbors– Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia in particular– had been mauled by Saddam and so did not strongly oppose Bush’s invasion, Shiite Iraqis, many Syrians, the Hazaras of Afghanistan, and the some 40 million Shiites of Pakistan would support Iran.

*

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

All images in this article are from Informed Comment

An Israel-based campaign to meddle in the elections of several African, Asian and Latin American countries has been uncovered by social media giant Facebook.

Facebook announced today that it had deactivated dozens of accounts found to be spreading disinformation by posing as local journalists and influencers. The social media giant traced these accounts to Archimedes Group, a private company based near Tel Aviv which had engineered the campaign.

Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, told reporters that the platform had deleted 65 accounts, 161 pages and dozens of groups linked to the misinformation campaign, noting that this activity had garnered 2.8 million followers and hundreds of thousands of views. Gleicher also told reporters that Archimedes has now been banned from Facebook, Haaretz reported.

For its part, the Times of Israel quoted Gleicher as saying that

“these are actors that were essentially facilitating deception, and they appear to be commercially engaged to do this”.

He added:

“That type of business does not have a place on our platforms so we are removing them from the platform and our teams will continue to investigate to look for other instances of this type of behaviour, [whether] for commercial or other strategic purposes.”

Archimedes’ operations are thought to have focused on Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia, as well as a handful of Asian and Latin American countries. It is thought that the campaign has spent over $800,000 on Facebook adverts since 2012.

Relatively little is known about Archimedes Group. The Washington Post noted that the group presents itself as “a consulting firm involved in campaigns for presidential elections,” using the slogan “winning campaigns worldwide”. The website also features a vague description of the group’s “mass social media management” software, which it claims can enable the operation of an “unlimited” number of online accounts.

The Washington Post added that Archimedes is headed by Elinadav Heymann, citing Swiss negotiations consultancy Negotiations.CH. Heymann is also reported to have been Executive Director of the European Friends of Israel since 2012 and an “advisor to various parties [in] the Israeli Knesset for 3 terms”.

Facebook’s Gleicher said he could not speculate as to whether Archimedes’ motives were political, and as yet it is not known who solicited and paid for the group’s services. However, given the campaign’s focus on predominantly central and west African countries – a region in which the Israeli state has recently tried to increase its influence – questions to this effect are likely to be raised going forward.

In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Chad to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries, which were severed in 1972. Speaking at a press conference before his departure, Netanyahu said that the visit was “part of the revolution we are doing in the Arab and Muslim world,” claiming that such an initiative “greatly worries, even greatly angers” Palestinians and the wider Arab world.

Though Israel’s normalisation drive in Africa has material benefits – often including lucrative arms deals, memorandums for economic cooperation and the use of airspace which will significantly shorten flight paths for commercial Israeli airlines – the initiative is also pursued for its propaganda value. Netanyahu has long been keen to emphasise these diplomatic successes, particularly in the run up to Israel’s general election which took place last month.

*

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

Featured image is from Black Agenda Report

The New York Times reported earlier in the week that top Trump administration national security officials asked for and received a briefing on military plans that would send some 120,000 US troops to the Middle East should Iran take aggressive actions against American forces there or resume work on nuclear weapons. That article set off furious tweetstorms from national security policy experts suggesting that National Security Adviser John Bolton was once again (see: Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003) steering the United States into war in the Middle East on false pretenses.

.

https://t.co/vFrVDH2My7

There is no legal authority to use military force against Iran. US officials have been clear they want depose the Iranian regime. Anything they say should be suspect and not taken at face value.

— 🇺🇸 Jon B. “Globalist” Wolfsthal (@JBWolfsthal) May 14, 2019

I oversaw Iran policy and planning at the Pentagon from 2009-2011, at the height of concerns over Iran’s nuclear progress, and no plausible contingency except invasion and regime change would require sending 120,000 US forces to the Middle East. https://t.co/tBbpEVzddM

— Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) May 14, 2019

President Trump denied the Times report the next day, in a way that, as has often been the case, made a foreign affairs situation more rather than less confused:

“I think it’s fake news, OK? Now, would I do that? Absolutely. But we have not planned for that. Hopefully we’re not going to have to plan for that. And if we did that, we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that,” Reuters quoted Trump as saying.

The confusion continued as the Trump administration repeated claims that it had sent a carrier task force and other military assets to the region to counter unspecified threats to American troops and facilities in the region. These claims were subsequently downplayed by British Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, the deputy commander of the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, who, according to the Times, said:

“No, there has been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq or Syria.”

The US Central Command responded almost immediately by saying Ghika’s comments run “counter to the identified credible threats available to intelligence from U.S. and allies regarding Iranian-backed forces in the region.”

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that

“three distinct Iranian actions have triggered alarms: information suggesting an Iranian threat against US diplomatic facilities in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Irbil; US concerns that Iran may be preparing to mount rocket or missile launchers on small ships in the Persian Gulf; and a directive from Khamenei to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regular Iranian military units that some US officials have interpreted as a potential threat to US military and diplomatic personnel.”

But in a stunning addition to a week of speculation about war with Iran, the Post article was headlined “Trump, frustrated by advisers, is not convinced the time is right to attack Iran” and quoted a senior unnamed administration official to the effect that Trump is frustrated with Bolton’s martial approach. The president, the official said, “wants to talk to the Iranians; he wants a deal,” not war.

Of course, some social media observers noted an obvious implication of the Post headline—there is a right time to attack Iran, it’s just not now. And others demanded what they see as another obvious implication of the situation: Bolton needs firing.

Fire John Bolton then: Trump, frustrated by advisers, is not convinced the time is right to attack Iran https://t.co/BG8E8E9MRm

— Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) May 16, 2019

In general, while reporting the chaotic and shifting signals about the possibility of war with Iran—a possibility that seemed to spring from nowhere this week, supported only by vague assertions of Iranian threats—the major news media have not done a particularly good job of explaining why major US military action in Iran would be, in practical terms, so likely to end in disaster. David Frum takes a stab at such explication in a piece for The Atlantic, but his blade largely misses the target, with Frum, a former speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, spending most of the article explaining and apologizing for his support of the Iraq War of 2003.

For those interested in understanding why the probability of a successful US military effort against Iran is so horribly low, I recommend a reading (or re-reading) of this 2004 article by Atlantic correspondent James Fallows. Though not the most scintillating prose Fallows has ever written (sorry, Jim), the article lays out clearly and completely what a fool’s errand a US attack on Iran—a country that has been girding itself to thwart a US invasion for decades—would quickly become. The article details a carefully conducted war game of options in regard to Iran, played out by top experts. A concluding quote from the article says much about the options available to a US president, then—and now.

“After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers,” retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner said of the exercise. “You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work.”

*

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

John Mecklin is the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Miller-McCune (since renamed Pacific Standard), an award-winning national magazine that focused on research-based solutions to major policy problems.

This article was first crossposted in February 2017.

Introduction

Amnesty International (AI) has done some good investigations and reports over the years. This has won them widespread support.  However, less well recognized, Amnesty International has also carried out faulty investigations contributing to bloody and disastrous actions. One prominent example is in Iraq, where AI “corroborated” the false story that Iraqi soldiers were stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. The deception was planned and carried out in Washington DC to influence the public and Congress. 

A more recent example is from 2011 where false accusations were being made about Libya and its leader as Western and Gulf powers sought to overthrow the Gaddafi government. AI leaders joined the campaign claiming that Gaddafi was using “mercenaries” to threaten and kill peacefully protesting civilians. The propaganda was successful in muting criticism. Going far beyond a UN Security Council resolution to “protect civilians”, NATO launched sustained air attacks and toppled the Libyan government leading to chaos, violence and a flood of refugees. AI later refuted the “mercenary” accusations but the damage was done.

The Sensational New Amnesty International Report

On 7 February Amnesty International released a new report titled “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison”. It has received huge uncritical review in mainstream and liberal media.

Like the Iraq/Kuwait incubator story and the Libyan ‘mercenary’ story, the “Human Slaughterhouse” report is coming at a critical time. The consequences of the AI report are to accuse and convict the Syrian government of horrible atrocities against civilians.  AI explicitly calls for the international community to take “action”.

As will be shown below, the AI report is biased and partial. To the extent that it is resulting in a widespread kangaroo conviction of the Syrian government, the AI release can be called a “Kangaroo Report”.

Problems with the Report

1) The Amnesty International report on Syria violates their own research standards.  As documented by Prof Tim Hayward here, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, claims that Amnesty does its research ‘in a very systematic, primary, way where we collect evidence with our own staff on the ground. And every aspect of our data collection is based on corroboration and cross-checking from all parties, even if there are, you know, many parties in any situation because of all of the issues we deal with are quite contested. So it’s very important to get different points of view and constantly cross check and verify the facts.’ As documented below, the Amnesty report fails on all counts: they rely on third parties, they did not gather different points of view and they did not cross-check.

2) The report conclusions are not based on primary sources, material evidence or their own staff; they are solely based on the claims of anonymous individuals, mostly in southern Turkey from where the war on Syria is coordinated.

3) Amnesty gathered witnesses and testimonies from only one side of the conflict: the Western and Gulf supported opposition. For example, AI consulted with the Syrian Network for Human Rights which is known to seek NATO intervention in Syria. AI “liased” with the Commission for International Justice and Accountability. This organization is funded by the West to press criminal charges against the Syrian leadership. These are obviously not neutral, independent or nonpartisan organizations. If AI was doing what the Secretary General claims they do, they would have consulted with organizations within or outside Syria to hear different accounts of life at Saydnaya Prison.  Since the AI report has been released, the AngryArab has published the account of a Syrian dissident, Nizar Nayyouf, who was imprisoned at Saydnaya. He contradicts many statements in the Amnesty International report. This is the type of cross-checking which Amnesty International failed to do for this important study.

4) Amnesty’s accusation that executions were “extrajudicial” is exaggerated or false. By Amnesty’s own description, each prisoner appeared briefly before a judge and each execution was authorized by a high government leader. We do not know if the judge looked at documentation or other information regarding each prisoner. One could argue that the process was superficial but it’s clear there was some kind of judicial process.

5) Amnesty’s suggestion that all Saydnaya prisoners are convicted is false.  Amnesty quotes one of their witnesses who says about the court: “The judge will ask the name of the detainee and whether he committed the crime. Whether the answer is yes or no, he will be convicted.” This assertion is contradicted by a former Saydnaya prisoner who is now a refugee in Sweden. In this news report the former prisoner says the judge “asked him how many soldiers he had killed. When he said none, the judge spared him.” This is evidence that there is a judicial process of some sort and there are acquittals.

6) The Amnesty report includes satellite photographs with captions which are meaningless or erroneous. For example, as pointed out by Syrian dissident Nizar Nayyouf, the photo on page 30 showing a Martyrs Cemetery is “silly beyond silly”. The photo and caption show the cemetery doubled in size. However, this does not prove hangings of prisoners who would never be buried in a “martyrs cemetery” reserved for Syrian army soldiers. On the contrary, it confirms the fact which Amnesty International otherwise ignores:  Syrian soldiers have died in large numbers.

7) The Amnesty report falsely claims, based on data provided by one of the groups seeking NATO intervention, “The victims are overwhelmingly ordinary civilians who are thought to oppose the government.”  While it’s surely true that innocent civilians are sometimes wrongly arrested, as happens in all countries, the suggestion that Saydnaya prison is filled with 95% “ordinary civilians” is preposterous. Amnesty International can make this claim with a straight face because they have effectively “disappeared” the reality of Syria. Essential facts which are completely missing from the Amnesty report include:

a) western powers and Gulf monarchies have put up billions of dollars annually since 2011 to fund, train, weaponize, provide salaries and propaganda in support of a violent campaign to overthrow the Syrian government;  b) tens of thousands of foreign fanatics have invaded Syria;

c) tens of thousands of Syrians have been radicalized and paid by Wahabi monarchies in the Gulf to overthrow the government;

d) over 100 THOUSAND Syrian Army and National Defense soldiers have been killed defending their country. Most of this is public information yet ignored by Amnesty International and other media in the West. They have done a massive distortion and cover-up of reality.

8) Without providing evidence, Amnesty International accuses the highest Sunni religious leader in Syria, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, of authorizing the execution of “ordinary civilians”. The Grand Mufti is a personal victim: his son was murdered by terrorists near Aleppo. Yet he has consistently called for reconciliation. Following the assassination of his son, Grand Mufti Hassoun gave an eloquent speech expressing forgiveness for the murderers and calling for an end to the violence. What does it say about Amnesty International that they make these kind of specific personal accusations, against people who have personally suffered, yet provide zero evidence?

9) Amnesty uses sensational and emotional accusations in place of factual evidence. The title of the report is  “Human Slaughterhouse”. What goes with a “slaughterhouse”?  Why of course ….. a “meat fridge”!  The report uses the expression “meat fridge” seven separate times, presumably in an attempt to buttress the association.  Even the opening quotation is hyperbolic: “Saydnaya is the end of life – the end of humanity”.  This report is in sharp contrast with fact-based objective research and investigation; it is closer to perception management and manipulation.

10) Amnesty International accusations that the Syrian government is carrying out a policy of “extermination” are contradicted by the fact that the vast majority of Syrians prefer to live in government controlled areas. When the “rebels” were finally driven out of East Aleppo in December 2016, 90% of civilians rushed into government controlled areas. In recent days, civilians from Latakia province who had been imprisoned by terrorists for the past 3 years have been liberated in a prisoner exchange. The following video shows the Syrian President and first lady meeting with some of the civilians and gives a sense of the joy.

11) The Amnesty report is accompanied by a 3 minute cartoon which gives the false narrative that Syrian civilians who protest peacefully are imprisoned and executed. The cartoon is titled “Saydnaya Prison: Human Slaughterhouse”. Apparently Amnesty International is in denial of the fact that there are many tens of thousands of violent extremists in Syria. They set off car bombs, launch mortars and otherwise attack civilian areas every day. While there are mistakes from time to time, and also cases of corruption and bribery, it makes no sense that Syrian security or prison authorities would be wasting time and resources with non-violent civilians when there are tens of thousands of foreign sponsored actual terrorists in the country. The AI accusation is also contradicted by the fact that there are many opposition parties in Syria. They compete for seats in the National Assembly and campaign openly for public support from both the right and left of the Baath Party.

12) The Amnesty claim that Syrian authorities brutally repress peaceful protest is also contradicted by the Syrian reconciliation process. For the past several years armed opposition militants have been encouraged to lay down their weapons and peacefully rejoin society. This is largely unreported in western media because it contradicts the false stereotype presented by Amnesty International and western media in general. A recent example is reported here.

13) The Amnesty report cites the “Caesar” photographs as supporting evidence but ignores the fact that nearly half the photographs show the opposite of what was claimed. The widely publicized “Caesar photographs” was a Qatari funded hoax designed to sabotage the 2014 Geneva negotiations as documented here .

14) The Amnesty report makes many accusations against the Syrian government but ignores the violation of Syrian sovereignty being committed by western and Gulf countries. It is a curious fact that big NGOs such as Amnesty International focus on violations of “human rights law” and “humanitarian law” but ignore the crime of aggression, also called the crime against peace.  According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, this is “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister and former President of the U.N. General Assembly, Father Miguel D’Escoto, is someone who should know. He says, “What the U.S. government is doing in Syria is tantamount to a war of aggression, which, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, is the worst possible crime a State can commit against another State.” Amnesty International ignores this.

Background and Context

The co-author of this Amnesty International report is Nicolette Waldman (Boehland). She was uncritically interviewed on DemocracyNow on 9 February. The background and previous work of Waldman shows the inter-connections between influential Washington “think tanks” and the billionaire foundation funded Non Governmental Organizations that claim to be independent but are clearly not. Waldman previously worked for the “Center for Civilians in Conflict”. This organization is directed by leaders from George Soros’ Open Society, Human Rights Watch, Blackrock Solutions and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). CNAS may be the most significant indication of political orientation since it is led by Michele Flournoy, who was predicted to become Secretary of Defense if Hillary Clinton had won the election. CNAS has been a leading force behind neo-conservatives plan to escalate war in Syria. While past work or associations do not always define new or future work, in this case the sensational and evidence-free accusations seem to align with neoconservative political goals.

Conclusion

Amnesty International has previously published false information or “corroboration” which justified western aggression against Iraq and Libya. This seems to be the same role they are playing now in Syria.

The Amnesty International report is a combination of accusations based on hearsay and sensationalism. Partially because of Amnesty’s undeserved reputation for independence and accuracy, the report has been picked up and broadcast widely.  Liberal and supposedly progressive media outlets have dutifully echoed the dubious accusations. In reality this report amounts to a Kangaroo court with the victim being the Syrian government and people who have borne the brunt of the foreign sponsored aggression. If this report sparks an escalation of the conflict, which Amnesty International seems to call for, it will be a big step backwards not forward ….just like in Iraq and Libya.

*

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

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the SF Bay Area. He can be reached at [email protected]

There was little pretense that when former UN Ambassador John Bolton became President Trump’s National Security Adviser and former Rep. Mike Pompeo moved into the Secretary of State position, that either would bring a professionally credible and respectable presence to  world diplomacy or foreign affairs.

It is fair to say that both have surpassed any of the bleak expectations and proven to be more extreme in their ideology, more personally amoral and malevolent than previously feared.  What we are seeing now is as if all constraints have been removed with free rein to fulfill their zio-neocon agendas specifically against Venezuela and Iran.

• While speaking to a student audience recently at Texas A&M University, Pompeo revealed his utter contempt for a democratic government based on the rule of law when he bragged about “lying, cheating and stealing” as CIA Director. To an audience of undergraduates which clapped and laughed throughout, Pompeo offered

“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. (laughing as if he had said something humorous) We had entire training courses. (Audience applause and cheers) It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.” (emphasis added)

First in his class at West Point and a graduate of Harvard Law School, Pompeo prides himself on having “come to an understanding of Jesus that fundamentally changed“ his life as a cadet and today claims to  be a “man of faith.”  It is not clear who Pompeo thinks he is kidding with the religious fervor schtick but for sure it is not any divine deity which will one day sit in Judgment on his character and integrity.  The Texas A&M exchange reveals an unscrupulous bully who knows no limit to his omnipotence and a willingness to condone war crimes on behalf of the disreputable Empire he serves.

• Keynote speaker at AIPAC’s 2019 conference, Pompeo proved where his fidelity lies when he declared “Let me go on record: Anti-zionism is anti-semitism” which has become the new rallying cry for the poor, beleaguered state of Israel.
• As the State Department is now defining the term ‘anti Zionism,’ Pompeo appointed Elan Carr as Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism with the ultimate goal to intimidate and criminalize critics of Israel’s foreign policy objectives.

In describing his responsibilities, Carr’s stated priorities will be to “reduce the feelings of insecurity”, review “indoctrination of anti semitic textbooks” and “focus relentlessly on eradicating this false distinction between anti Zionism and anti-semitism.”  It takes living in a simulated reality to not grasp the distinction between criticism of Israel’s apartheid policy toward the Palestinians and its belligerent foreign policy in the Middle East and a genuine prejudice or discrimination based on one’s religious preference or ethnic differences.

At his press briefing, Carr was immediately in the weeds and lost total control of the narrative before being shut down by the State Department official spokesman.

As a one dimensional thinker,  Mr. Carr never described who or how anti-semitism will be identified. Will the State Department issue a weekly list of anti-Semitic offenders and what will  be the penalty?  Will State provide a list of forbidden anti-semitic words? How will deliberate intent be determined?   If a non-jew utters words like apartheid, yenta, yarmulke or illegal settlements, will they be considered proof of anti-Semitic?   Will the Nazis still be permitted to march in Skokie?  Will the tech giants rewrite their algorithms to search for ‘banned’ words?

• On April 10^th, Omar Barghouti (image on the right), a prominent Palestinian human rights defender and a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement was denied entry by the US Consulate before departing Ben Gurion Airport despite having valid travel documents and having visited the US previously. Barghouti responded that

“Supporters of Israeli apartheid in the US are desperately trying to deny US lawmakers, media, diverse audiences at universities, a bookstore and a synagogue, their right to listen, first-hand, to a Palestinian human rights advocate calling for ending US complicity in Israel’s crimes against our people.”

• In a 2016 report, the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda initiated an investigation into possible war crimes in Afghanistan involving the torture of 61 prisoners committed by the US Army and the torture and rape of 27 prisoners committed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at CIAprison sites in Poland, Romania and Lithuania.

In response to the ICC inquiry in 2018, Bolton warned

“We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the US financial system, and we will prosecute them in the US criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans,”

In March 2019, Pompeo repeated the ICC threats with no apology in a straight forward defense of torture and war criminals.

“Since 1998, the US has declined to join the ICC because of its broad unaccountable prosecutorial powers and the threat it poses to American national sovereignty.  We are determined to protect the American and allied military and civilian personnel from living in fear of unjust prosecution for actions taken to defend our great nation.   I’m announcing a policy of US visa restrictions on those individuals directly responsible for any ICC investigation of US personnel. These visa restrictions may also be used to deter ICC efforts to pursue allied personnel, including Israelis without allies consent. These visa restrictions will not be the end of our efforts.We are prepared to take additional steps, including economic sanctions, if the ICC does not change course,”

After the Court responded that itwould continue its investigation with “war crimes and crimes against humanitywere, and continue to be, committed by foreign government forces in Afghanistan,”  Reference to ‘allied” personnel and Israeli involvement in US war crimes remains impenetrable.  True to his word, in early April Pompeo revoked the visa for Bensouda (image on the left).

In a devastating setback for the ICC, its pre-trial chamber recently refused to approve the investigation from moving forward citing a lack of US cooperation.  Certainly the Pompeo – Bolton threat to criminally prosecute and personally sanction the Court’s judges or that the US would ‘use any means necessary ” had nothing to do with that decision.  Bensouda says she will appeal the chamber’s decision.

• After the January meeting with North Korea ended in failure, NK’s Deputy Defense Minister, who took part in the meeting, revealed that while Trump had shown a willingness to lift some sanctions based on NK’s moratorium on missile tests, he was later overridden by Pompeo and Bolton who brought “an atmosphere of hostility and mistrust” to the table with their “gangster like behavior.”

As the zio-neocons continue to move on Venezuela and/or Iran as uncontrollable malevolent fiends, loose cannons with no concept of international law or the need for global harmony, men of no conscience and no morality, it is only a matter of time before cosmic law balances the scale.

*

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

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

Here’s how the Canadians will deal with citizen journalism and narrative debunking—they’ll force the taxpayers to subsidize corporate news rackets. 

“Federal agencies will publish an A-list of newspapers and websites deemed reliable under a multi-million dollar subsidy program, the Department of Finance yesterday told the Senate national finance committee,” reports an Ottawa website, Blacklock’s Reporter. 

Bill C-97 the Budget Implementation Act proposes a 15 percent tax credit to a maximum $75 for subscribers of websites operated by a “qualified Canadian journalism organization”. Criteria are not known. The tax credit is projected to cost $11 million in 2020. It expires in 2024.

The bill also amends the Income Tax Act to offer lucrative payroll subsidies for news organizations “primarily engaged in the production of original written news content”. A total $360 million would be paid over four years through a 25 percent payroll tax credit for publishers, the equivalent of a maximum $13,750 per newsroom employee, retroactive to January 1, 2019.

Not only will Canadians be forced at gunpoint to pay the salaries of official government script readers described as journalists, but the government is now in the process of making sure the average citizen will be prevented from viewing “misinformation” on social media. 

From Global News:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said social platforms were “failing their users” on Thursday, while speaking at the Viva Technology conference in Paris.

He said his government would hold companies to account for fake news, and that they had to make major improvements to their means of dealing with the issue or there would be “meaningful financial consequences…”

Speaking about Canada’s upcoming federal election, he said the government was taking steps to eliminate fake news and that a new task force had been created in order to identify threats to the election and prevent foreign interference.

Singapore’s parliament approved the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) on May 8, 2019.

Activist Post reports:

Under the law, any government minister can compel website administrators, internet service providers, and even private chat groups to immediately correct or remove ‘fake news’ from their domains. But the law’s definition of what counts as fake or false is remarkably vague.

The “Christchurch Call” is helping to push forward a campaign to sanitize the internet of all content government characterizes as dangerous. 

The Christchurch Call is a commitment by Governments and tech companies to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. It rests on the conviction that a free, open and secure internet offers extraordinary benefits to society. Respect for freedom of expression is fundamental. However, no one has the right to create and share terrorist and violent extremist content online.

Of course, the definition of terrorist and violent extremist content online is remarkably vague, thus allowing the state to attach it to any individual or group it wants to discredit and target for elimination. 

“The term extremist refers to someone adhering to an ideology that is considered far outside the acceptable mainstream attitudes of society. Not all extremists are terrorists—some people hold extremist beliefs but do not resort to violence in an attempt to enact those beliefs. Some extremists hold extreme versions of views that could be considered normal,” explains the Anti-Defamation League. 

In other words, if you deviate from state-generated narratives, you are “considered far outside the acceptable mainstream attitudes of society” and will be denied access or—in the case of France, Germany, and now New Zealand and Canada—fined and possibly jailed for the crime of unapproved and therefore extremist and dangerous speech. 

The corporate media has done a fairly effective job of conflating populism and nationalism with white supremacy. It has also managed to portray antiwar activists both right and left as supporters of terrorism and either willing or unwilling propaganda tools for the likes of Bashir al-Assad in Syria, the mullahs in Iran, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin who is working to undermine democracy. 

The cancer of authoritarian censorship increases with every suspicious terrorist attack. Islamic terror now competes with white nationalism for headline space. 

Any criticism of the financial elite and their Ponzi scheme economy is considered antisemitism, and therefore hate to be censored and ultimately punished.  

*

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

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from davidduke.com

It’s not enough to want untold thousands to die and the country destroyed, now neocons in Congress want to steal more than a billion and a half dollars from Iran as compensation for something somebody else did or didn’t do. 

From the Daily Caller:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday to make $1.68 billion worth of Iranian funds available to the families of 241 American servicemen killed in the 1983 suicide bombing on a Marine base in Beirut, Lebanon.

In Trump Bizarro World, as in the Obama and Bush versions of the same, reality and facts are only applicable when they serve the agenda. 

For instance:

The Iranian regime founded and supported the terror group responsible for the attack, Hezbollah. Multiple court decisions have authorized that Iranian funds be seized and given to the victim’s families.

It looks like The Daily Caller is going for The Washington Post Fake News Award, or one similar handed out by The Atlantic Council with the help of the Rockefeller Bros. 

First and foremost, Hezbollah was not founded by Iran. It is certainly funded by Iran in much the same way the US funds Israel. 

If Israel hadn’t invaded Lebanon in 1982, there would today be no Hezbollah. Hezbollah began as a Shia resistance to Israel’s invasion and mistreatment of Shias in Southern Lebanon. 

Second point. It is not conclusively known what group or country is responsible for the bombing of the US Marine Barracks in Beirut back in 1983. 

At the time, Reagan’s Vice President Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane decided to blame Iran and Syria for the attack and a second on the US embassy in Lebanon. The US later said elements that would become Hezbollah were responsible. 

“Hezbollah’s track record on terror is largely speculative,” I wrote in April. “There is no evidence the group kidnapped the president of the American University in Beirut, Davis S. Dodge, or is there conclusive evidence it attacked the US embassy in Beirut or truck bombed a US military barracks in Lebanon.”

The US said the Islamic Jihad, a little-known group that claimed responsibility for the attacks, was actually Hezbollah, an organization that did not yet exist. Hezbollah formed in 1985. 

The attacks allowed the US and France to collaborate on attacking Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. The USS New Jersey fired hundreds of shells at Druze and Syrian positions. 

“In a nine-hour period, the USS New Jersey fired 288 16-inch rounds, each one weighing as much as a Volkswagen Beetle. In those nine-hours, the ship consumed 40 percent of the 16-inch ammunition available in the entire European theater,” write Martin and Walcott in Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America’s War Against Terrorism. 

The target was Syria. If the US-Israeli plan for the Middle East was to be realized, Hafez al-Assad’s influence in Lebanon would need to be terminated. 

The first step was to kill Syrian commanding officers by lobbing 30 or more shells at a command center in the Shouf mountains. 

Many Shia and Druze civilians were killed in the effort by the US, France, and the Lebanese Army to eliminate the influence of Syria in the artificially created state of Lebanon carved out of Syria decades before by the French. 

All of the above historical information is easily available on the internet. Is it too much to ask corporate media journalists to do their homework? Or is putting things in their proper historical and political context a conspiracy theory? 

At the absolute minimum, they should mention the fact the Marine barracks and US embassy bombings have not been conclusively linked to Hezbollah, a group that did not exist at the time. 

Of course, I don’t expect this to happen under the current propaganda system imposed by the state and its corporate media. 

If a professional journalist wants to keep his or her job, they read the script. 

It’s not the truth, at best half-truth. It is deception. 

It’s the manipulation of millions of people to gain their acquiescence for the unimaginable—bombing sorties, cruise missiles, the drones of Hell unleashed, and the mangled and dismembered bodies of men, women, and children Mike Pence and John Bolton will never see. 

*

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

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Today, law enforcement agents broke into the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C., and arrested the four remaining members of the Embassy Protection Collective.

“We denounce these arrests, as the people inside were there with our permission, and we consider it a violation of the Vienna Conventions,” Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ron said.

For 36 days, the protectors had lived in the embassy to shield it from a raid by U.S. authorities working in concert with opponents of Venezuela’s lawfully elected president, Nicolás Maduro. Since U.S. officers had refused to allow food into the embassy, only four of the some 50 members of the collective had stayed in order to conserve supplies.

The Trump administration has been trying to engineer an unlawful coup and regime change in Venezuela. After U.S. puppet Juan Guaidó declared himself “interim president” of Venezuela on January 23, high Trump officials quickly ratified his declaration. The U.S. government seeks to illegally install Guaidó and a new ambassador in the D.C. embassy as part of its coup attempt.

After cutting off electricity and refusing to allow food and water to the protectors, agents from the Secret Service, State Department and Washington, D.C., police tried to raid the embassy on May 13. They read from an unsigned piece of paper titled “Trespassing Notice,” which stated that the U.S. government recognized Guaidó as president of Venezuela and Carlos Vecchio as Venezuelan ambassador to the United States.

The paper, which had no official letterhead or insignia, threatened that “anyone who refuses to obey the demands and orders to vacate the property will be in violation of federal and District of Columbia law, and could be arrested and criminally prosecuted.” After speaking with the protectors’ attorney, who told them they needed a warrant, law enforcement authorities left the premises.

While demonstrating outside the embassy this week, retired U.S. Army Reserve Col. Ann Wright told Truthout in an email:

“The attempt of the Guaidó faction and the U.S. government to seize the embassy of the government of Venezuela should be of concern to everyone. As a former diplomat,” she said, “I am particularly disturbed by the U.S. government’s recognition of Guaidó, who has undertaken three failed coup attempts and is calling for military intervention in Venezuela. Guaidó and the United States share a dangerous agenda which has little support in Venezuela.”

On April 30, Guaidó tried unsuccessfully to convince the Venezuelan military to seize power from Maduro. Six days prior to Guaidó’s foiled effort, the State Department posted a fact sheet bragging about the United States’s central role in the attempted coup, but quickly removed the posting.

Since 2017, the U.S. government has imposed illegal sanctions on Venezuela, which have caused 40,000 deaths and a 36 percent reduction in oil production.

Moreover, the Trump administration is moving dangerously close to an illegal military intervention in Venezuela.

U.S. Eviction of Protectors From Embassy Violates U.S. and International Law

On May 13, the National Lawyers Guild posted a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secret Service, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and Idriss Jazairy, U.N. special rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights. The signatories, including this writer, condemned the law-breaking by U.S. agents at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C. The letter cited violations of the U.N. Charter and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and demanded that immediate action be taken.

“[T]he United States government, through various law enforcement agencies, have condoned and protected violent opponents in support of an attempted siege of the Embassy,” we wrote. Those actions are “creating a dangerous precedent for diplomatic relations with all nations,” the letter continued, which “are not only illegal, but they put embassies around the world at risk.”

Citing the Secret Service’s actions in “permitting violent opposition demonstrators to physically attack the Embassy, assault the peaceful invitees and prevent them from entering the Embassy with supplies of food and water,” the letter also decried “the hurling of racist, sexist and homophobic slurs at those expressing to support the peace activists inside the Embassy.” The letter noted that Gerry Condon, president of Veterans for Peace, was tackled, bloodied and arrested by Secret Service agents to prevent him from delivering food to the invitees.

Today’s raid of the embassy and eviction of the protectors violates two treaties the United States has ratified. When the U.S. ratifies a treaty, its provisions become part of domestic law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

Article 22 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR) states,

“The premises of the mission shall be inviolable.”

U.S. agents are forbidden from entering the embassy without the consent of the Maduro government. The U.S. is also “under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.” The premises, furniture and other property “shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.”

The 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) states in Article 33,

“The consular archives and documents shall be inviolable at all times and wherever they may be.”

Article 27 provides,

“In the event of the severance of consular relations between [the U.S. and Venezuela], the [U.S.] shall … respect and protect the consular premises, together with the property of the consular post and the consular archives.”

Article 31 of the VCCR says,

“The authorities of the [U.S.] shall not enter that part of the consular premises which is used exclusively for the purpose of the work of the consular post except with the consent of the head of the consular post or of his designee or of the head of the diplomatic mission of [Venezuela].” Furthermore, “the [U.S.] is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the consular premises against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the consular post or impairment of its dignity.”

Embassy Protection Collective Proposed a Protecting Power Agreement

On May 13, the Embassy Protection Collective wrote a letter to the U.S. State Department and the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry proposing a lawful resolution to the standoff: A mutual Protecting Power Agreement “would avoid a military conflict that could lead to war.” The letter stated that the United States wants a Protecting Power for the U.S. embassy in Caracas and Venezuela wants a Protecting Power for its embassy in Washington, D.C. “Such agreements,” the collective noted, “are not uncommon when diplomatic relations are severed.”

Indeed, Article 45 of the VCDR provides that if diplomatic relations are broken off between the U.S. and Venezuela, the U.S. must respect and protect the premises of the mission, including its property and archives. It also provides that Venezuela may entrust the custody of the embassy, including its property, archives and interests, to a third country acceptable to the U.S.

There is precedent for a third party taking charge of an embassy.

“This has happened in the case of Iran, Cuba and North Korea,” CODEPINK co-founder and embassy protector Medea Benjamin said on Democracy Now!. “The U.S. has often used the countries such as Sweden and Switzerland to protect its embassies. And this could be easily done in the case of the U.S. and Venezuela right now.”

Time reports that representatives of the Maduro government and the opposition are meeting in Oslo, Norway, to attempt a resolution of the conflict.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving toward the use of military action in Venezuela. Guaidó has organized a meeting with the U.S. Southern Command to get “strategic and operational” cooperation in removing Maduro.

Team Trump and Guaidó are playing with fire and plotting to violate the law in the process. The United Nations Charter forbids one country from using military force against another except in self-defense or with the blessing of the Security Council, neither of which has happened in this case.

*

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

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.

Featured image is from CodePink

US media reports suggest that President Donald Trump is considering replacing his hawkish National Security Adviser John Bolton over his plans to push the United States towards a military conflict with Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

Bolton “is headed for the exits, having flown too close to the sun on his regime change efforts for Iran, Venezuela and North Korea,” The National Interest magazine reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

“Hearing that Trump wants him out,” a former senior Trump administration official told the magazine.

There is speculation in Washington “that there’s now daylight between Trump and Bolton,” the report added.

The fighting has also expanded to include US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, officials say. A State Department official and a former White House official both report that Bolton and Pompeo are “fighting all the time.”

A former senior official in the State Department said Pompeo is enthusiastic about isolating Iran, but fearful of an actual war that might engulf much of the Middle East.

“John Bolton is the problem … Trump’s national security adviser is getting dangerous…particularly to the president’s ideals,” Douglas Macgregor, a Bolton rival and would-be successor, writes in Spectator USA.

Trump ran his election campaign on the promise to pull the US military out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria — unwinnable post-9/11 wars that have consumed American lives and military budgets.

That partial retreat remains one of Trump’s strongest points in his pitch to be the so-called outsider president.

But Bolton is working in exactly the opposite direction.

The United States has been ratcheting up economic and military pressure on Iran, with Trump recently urging Tehran to talk to him.

“What I’d like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday.

But then he said he would not rule out the possibility of military action in Iran amid escalating tensions before slamming former secretary of state John Kerry for his involvement in the issue.

His remarks came after Bolton said on Sunday that the United States was sending an aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in a “clear and unmistakable” message to Iran.

The Pentagon announced on Friday that the US was deploying an amphibious assault ship and a Patriot missile battery to bolster an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers already sent to the Persian Gulf.

*

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

On May 14, Saudi Arabia halted pumping on its 1,200km-long East-West pipeline after it had been targeted by suicide unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The kingdom’s Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources Khalid al-Falih confirmed the attack on the pipeline, which carries crude oil from the country’s main eastern oil fields to the Red Sea port city of Yanbu in the western part of the country. He described the attack as “an act of terrorism” and said that it “proves the importance of confronting all terrorist organizations.”

The targeted facilities were located in the towns of al-Duwadimi and Afif. No casualties were reported.

The energy minister stressed that Saudi oil production and exports will still continue uninterrupted. Despite this, global oil prices rose after the incident.

On the same day, Yemen’s Masirah TV, loyal to the Ansar Allah movement [also known as the Houthis], reported that seven drones had been employed against vital Saudi installations. According to the report, the drone strikes were carried out in response to Saudi Arabia’s military aggression against Yemen. The TV station quoted an official from the Ansar Allah government, who said that Yemeni forces are ready “to execute more of these significant and tough strikes as long as the siege continues.”

The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia blame any operations carried out by Ansar Allah against Saudi Arabia on Iran.

Another situation, which fueled concerns over oil supply disruptions and nearing conflict between the US-led bloc and Iran, is developing over the reported “sabotage attack” on four commercial vessels off the UAE’s Fujairah on May 12. Initially, the UAE denounced reports about this situation, but then was forced to admit that some kind of “sabotage” incident took place. The targeted vessels were identified as very large crude carrier (VLCC) tanker Amjad and crude tanker Al Marzoqah, both owned by Saudi shipping firm Bahri. The other two were UAE-flagged fuel bunker barge A Michel and Norwegian-registered oil products tanker MT AndreA Victory.

Thome Ship Management said its Norwegian-registered oil products tanker MT Andrew Victory was “struck by an unknown object”. Jaber Al Lamki, an executive director at the UAE’s National Media Council, claimed that the attack was “aimed at undermining global oil supplies and maritime security.”

Despite the lack of clear evidence, Western mainstream media outlets as well as many pro-UAE and pro-Saudi sources immediately blamed Iran. In turn, Teheran distanced itself from the attacks and claimed it was a false flag. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said that the country expected such “suspicious sabotage acts” designed to “create tensions in the region”.

In the meantime, the US deployed the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and the USS Arlington amphibious transport dock, which carries marines, amphibious vehicles, and rotary aircraft, as well as the Patriot missiles, near the Persian Gulf. An additional strategic bomber task force arrived at the US airbase Al Udeid in Qatar. In all cases, the US cited the growing Iranian threat and possible Iranian attacks on US forces and infrastructure as the reason for the deployment.

At the same time, reports are surfacing that the US is actively drawing up plans for a military action against Iran. While Trump denounced NYT reports on the plan to deploy 120,000 troops to the Middle East, his administration repeatedly confirmed that it is ready for active measures in the event of the escalation or even in the event of Iran’s withdrawal from its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal accord. The irony is that the US itself has done more that any side to destroy this deal thus de-facto pushing the region toward the new crisis.

*

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

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

It was way back when, right before our nation performed the most horrific act of preemptively attacking and invading Iraq… which was not only illegal, but highly immoral.

I was at the video store rapping with my friend Kenny the mgr. Now Kenny the mgr. was such a nice guy, despite his very conservative views. He enjoyed reading my columns, yet still would always comment “Your views are really waaaay out there- but on some of them I actually do agree.”

Like what I asked? “Well, I agree that we could have and actually need some sort of national healthcare for all of us, if the gov’t would cut down on excess spending… like giving money to all those regimes throughout the world that care diddlysquat about us!”

We got to the subject of conducting a war vs. Iraq. I stated the underlining fact that is rarely discussed on the mainstream media-. That being that such a war would cost us taxpayers over 100 billion smackeroos.

Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, this young mother, on line with two young sons swinging from her arms,  shouted with such vigor “He’s got it now! We cannot wait any longer! He has the uranium and he’s a danger!” Kenny assured her that ‘I myself do not like or support someone like a Saddam Hussein, but’… She cut him off with “He can make the big one pretty soon-. He’s got to go before he uses it!”

I asked the two of them why would this guy, if and when he had “The Bomb”, why would he risk losing his power, his country and, more importantly, his LIFE? Why would he use this bomb as a preemptive strike (sound familiar Georgie Jr.?) when it would be the LAST thing he would do alive? I concluded that men like him want to live as much as the next guy (or despot) especially since they live so well. They want to die of old age in a nice warm bed with their power under their pillow, and not go up in flames just to say “gotcha first”. Finally, I intimated that the only way this clown would use any “weapon of mass destruction” (seemed to be the phrase of the day )would be if he were cornered and trapped like the proverbial rat that he is. Isn’t that usually when rats attack?

Mother in War was already swinging her kids, movies in hand, out the door, shouting back that I was crazy to ever trust this madman. I tried to answer her about which country had the greater madman, but she was already climbing into her Land Cruiser with (I kid you not) license plates that read Support Education. I wanted to tell her that the $100 billion we would save could go pretty far in supporting education, as well as better healthcare for me, her and her swinging kids. Too late, she was off into the Friday traffic, getting her 12 miles per gallon. I guess this “War” with Iraq could go a long way for her. Perhaps the 112 billion gallons of oil under Saddam’s bed would help lower gas prices.

Finally, I scratched my head in wonder. Isn’t it so easy for any of us to send troops into war, like they did in the 60’s when many of my schoolmates returned in “zipped bags”? So easy to send some other mother’s son to fight and die. I wondered if a) Mother in War’s boys were 18 and 19, not 3 and 4 and b) we had a military draft in place. I wondered how “gung ho” Mom would then be. Perhaps she’d load her boys into the Land Cruiser and gasguzzleit to Canada instead of some troop transport.

Once again the John Boltons, Elliot Abrams, the ghost of good old hero John McCain (he of ‘Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran’ to the tune of the Beach Boy’s song Barbara Ann) and all the other war mongering cowards are once again banging the drum. Before we ‘sign off” on giving this (or any) President the power to wage war without a Congressional declaration, as  what transpired regarding the Iraq invasion, we and our politicos should have investigated all the facts, and all the options. Hear that Mother in War? Your boys could now be ready to land in Tehran.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons 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].

A British general threw a wrench into the Trump administration’s narrative that Iran is plotting attacks on American troops in the Middle East by telling reporters gathered at the Pentagon Tuesday that “there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces” in the region.

“We monitor them along with a whole range of others because that’s the environment we’re in,” said Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, speaking via video from Baghdad. “If the threat level seems to go up then we’ll raise our force protection measures accordingly.”

Apparently eager to squash the general’s remarks, the U.S. Central Command issued a statement just hours later disputing Ghika’s comments and repeating national security adviser John Bolton’s unsubstantiated claim that American intelligence has “identified credible threats” from “Iranian-backed forces” in Iraq and Syria.

UK vs US: Top British general says NO increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Mideast; directly contradicts US claims used to justify regional military buildup.

US military spokesman slams the statement by top UK ally within hours. #Iran
https://t.co/H16P6dRgJN

— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) May 15, 2019

The public dispute came as anti-war voices and foreign policy analysts warned that the United States, led by Bolton, may be attempting to manufacture a false pretext to justify launching a war with Iran.

As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, U.S. officials are—without any concrete evidence—attempting to blame Iran for attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend.

The effort to pin the tanker attacks on Iran came just over a week after Bolton used the planned deployment of an American aircraft carrier and bomber task force to the Persian Gulf to threaten Iran with military action and warn—again, without evidence—of “escalatory indications” from Iran.

According to the New York Times—which reported Monday that President Donald Trump has reviewed a Bolton-crafted plan to send 120,000 troops to the Middle East to threaten Iran—Trump administration officials are having a difficult time convincing America’s European allies to join them on their march to war.

As the Times reported Tuesday:

Intelligence and military officials in Europe as well as in the United States said that over the past year, most aggressive moves have originated not in Tehran, but in Washington—where John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, has prodded President Trump into backing Iran into a corner.

One American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential internal planning, said the new intelligence of an increased Iranian threat was “small stuff” and did not merit the military planning being driven by Mr. Bolton. The official also said the ultimate goal of the yearlong economic sanctions campaign by the Trump administration was to draw Iran into an armed conflict with the United States.

The anonymous American official’s assessment aligns with that of foreign policy observers, who have urgently warned in recent days that the Trump administration is escalating tensions with Iran in an effort to provoke an attack and spark an all-out war.

“John Bolton is methodically setting the stage for war with Iran—forcing Iran into a corner and then readying war plans for when Iran takes the bait,” Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement on Monday.

Iran has thus far acted with restraint in the face of U.S. belligerence, urging diplomacy and attempting to restart negotiations with Europe over the terms of the Iran nuclear accord.

With tensions between the two nations reaching dangerous levels, U.S. Democratic presidential candidates have joined progressive anti-war groups in vowing to oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to start a military conflict with Iran.

In a speech streamed online Tuesday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said “a war with Iran would be an absolute disaster.”

“The United States Congress must do everything it can,” said Sanders, “to prevent the Trump administration’s attempts to put us on the brink of a catastrophic and unconstitutional war with Iran that could lead to even more deaths than the Iraq War.”

The United States Congress must do everything it can to prevent the Trump Administration’s attempts to put us on the brink of a catastrophic and unconstitutional war with Iran. https://t.co/n2Wbzcj2Pq

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 14, 2019

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) echoed Sanders in a tweet Tuesday night, announcing her decision to co-sponsor a bill aimed at stopping a war with Iran.

“We cannot let the Trump admin drag us into yet another war in the Middle East,” Warren wrote. “This is exactly why the president doesn’t have the constitutional authority to declare war. That’s Congress’s job—and that’s why I’m supporting this legislation to prevent a war with Iran.”

*

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

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

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

Remaining promoters of the concept of Donald Trump as President of the United States cite the fact that he has started no new shooting wars while Russiagate has turned out to be a flop and the economy seems to be doing well. He also seems serious about leaving Syria and Afghanistan, though those initiatives are currently on hold pending the approval of his consigliere “Defender of Israel” award winner John Bolton.

The Trump supporters however choose to ignore that the president has been unable to secure the southern border, which was a significant campaign pledge, and has initiated a series of trade and economic wars supplemented by a heavy dose of sanctions that have possibly killed more people and destroyed more American jobs collaterally than if he deliberately gone out and sought to do so. And also on his watch relations with Russia, the most important country in the world with respect to national security, have gotten worse, not better. Far worse.

I voted for Trump because he was not Hillary Clinton and he presented himself as the peace and reconciliation candidate. Almost everyone I know from my national security and moderate conservative background did the same, but now few of those supporters are enthusiastic about Trump based on his record of war-crime cruise missile attacks on Syria and his shameful and never ending pandering to Israel, which has included withdrawal from a highly beneficial nuclear agreement coupled with almost weekly piling on Iran. Venezuela, which is a sideshow, has merely confirmed that the Trump Administration has a lot of loose cannons on deck and the least tethered of all just might be the president.

At this point, people I know are completely disillusioned by what is going on – or not going on – in the White House and would only vote for Trump if he again runs against Hillary in 2020. But that is a Clinton thing that actually has little to do with what Trump is or represents and it begs the question why America tends to produce such terrible presidential candidates.

Unfortunately, when one thinks about Donald Trump the words “boorish” and “uncouth” come immediately to mind, followed by “possibly insane.” Some observers suggest that the crudeness is a ploy on Trump’s part, the kind of language that his supporters expect, something that excites them, but I tend to think that he has lost more than he has gained by his demeanor. And then there is the tweeting. It is so far beneath the dignity of the office that Trump holds to tweet insults far and wide that it is difficult to imagine what he thinks he gains by doing it. It is perhaps an indication that his self esteem is so fragile that he has to be on the attack constantly and his chosen method for dealing with critics is ridicule.

A recent Trump target was putative Democratic presidential candidate Pete Butteig, whom he nicknamed Alred E. Neuman, Mad Magazine’s perennial cover nerd. In an interview, Trump declared to Politico that “Alfred E. Neuman cannot become president of the United States,” an insult presumably based on Trump’s assessment of Buttigieg’s appearance. Buttigieg, for his part, did not know who Neuman was as the “What, me worry?” boy was a humor magazine staple well-known half a century ago in the 1960s and 1970s. He responded that he was “surprised” Trump wasn’t “spending more time trying to salvage this China deal.”

Donald Trump is much given to lashing out with insults to his opponents, but denigrating Buttigieg on his appearance, who, as mayor of South Bend Indiana, is only recently on the national political map, might be considered a new low. Other Democrats in Congress have been subjected to phrases like “pencil-neck” and have been derided for their height or physical appearance. Or for being stupid, which recalls Trump’s own assertions that he is a “very stable genius” and possibly the most brilliant of all presidents. And then there was the Pocahontas label attached to Senator Elizabeth Warren, though she probably in fact was somewhat deserving of a put down as she had clearly faked her native American roots for personal gain in academia.

Buttigieg, however, may be a fairly conventional liberal but he is not a lightweight. He is a genuinely religious former Rhodes scholar and Navy Reserve intelligence officer who actually served a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Donald Trump famously avoided the draft for Vietnam in the nineteen-seventies because of an allegedly phony claim that he had “bone spurs.” The thrice married Trump once described how he had experienced his own “personal Vietnam” during the war by avoiding sexually transmitted diseases while sleeping with random women. “I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

The point is that Donald Trump was elected because many American people realized that the Establishment politicians had failed them while other voters took his commitments to secure borders and a less aggressive foreign policy seriously. But his tweeting and insults plus his frequently unhinged assertions quite plausibly make him unworthy of the office he holds, regardless of whether it all amounts to an impeachable offense or not. Citizens entering the voting booth in 2020 should consider Trump’s character and demeanor as well as his record, such as it is, before casting their ballots.

*

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

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

Once again, Marco Rubio is trying to tell us Trump’s neocons are not interested in a war with Iran, despite the fact they have loudly and persistently called for one for two decades. 

.

.

.

URGENT: 1/5
These actions are not the prelude to a U.S. attack against #Iran

There is clear & persistent evidence,supported by observable movements on the ground,that Iran’s proxy forces in #Iraq & #Yemen plan to attack Americans with the intent of inflicting mass casualties https://t.co/NqQB3R8tXD

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 15, 2019

Rubio’s intelligence on a devious Iranian plan to kill Americans (in Iraq illegally and against the will of the Iraqi people) is nothing but horse feathers. 

It doesn’t get a passing grade in the effective use of propaganda. It is relatively easy to debunk everything they tell us. The first reaction to any corporate media news story should be skepticism. It should be assumed they are lying, especially about foreign policy directed by inveterate liars and accomplices in mass murder and other war crimes. 

Now we’re told Iran moved missiles into Iraq this week in response to threats by Bolton and Pompeo. In fact, it was almost a year ago Iran “transferred short-range ballistic missiles to allies in Iraq,” Reuters reported on August 31, 2018. 

“If Iran duplicates its formula from Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen by sending long-range missiles to Iraq, then future conflicts with Israel would likely include military action on Iraqi soil,” writes The Washington Institute, which is an AIPAC cutout. 

In July 2018, Seth J. Frantzman posted the “Arabic website Al-Jarida reported on July 21 that Israel will bomb Iraq and that it has obtained a list of Iranian targets.”

Al-Jarida learned from informed sources that Israel has set a list of targets inside Iraqi territory, in preparation for hitting them, claiming that they were Iranian military sites used to transport weapons, equipment and elements to Syria.

Israel has conducted numerous attacks on Syria, primarily conducted in Lebanese airspace in violation of international law.

Frantzman cites the source as saying the newspaper “obtained exclusive aerial photographs of the targets that Israel intends to hit, including border crossings with Iran…”

The sources pointed out that in recent years, Israel has frequently monitored Iranian attempts to create a land corridor from Tehran through Baghdad to Syrian territory, adding that some of these Iraqi positions now controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were under the control of the US military in Iraq.”

The part of this “land corridor” in Iraq has existed for centuries. Shia Muslims from Iran have taken a religious pilgrimage to holy sites in Najaf and Karbala (the main center of Shia scholarship) in Iraq. 

There are also major Shia religious sites in Baghdad. Lebanon is more than half Shia Muslim and home to Hezbollah, while Syria has a ruling Alawite minority led by the al-Assad family. Syria has a debt of gratitude to Iran and Russia for mostly eliminating the Saudi-US Salafist Islamic State threat. 

Saudi Arabia has demonstrated its capacity for psychotic viciousness by attacking the marginally-Shia (Zaidi sect) Houthi in Yemen. Intense centuries-long hatred of the Shia inspires murderous rage in the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and his family, the keeper of Islam’s most sacred holy sites. This is a particular sore spot for the Wahhabi Saudis because Yemen is located on the Arabian Peninsula. 

Marco Rubio has yet to tell us how going to war against Iran benefits the United States and the American people. All he can do—all any neocon can do—is talk in clichéd generalities about democracy and freedom for the Iranian people. It’s all cover for the real benefactor—Israel. 

Rubio is a creation of Sheldon Adelson, Normal Braman, Paul Singer, and Larry Ellison—all mega-donors to the cause of Israel in the United States. 

Back in 2015, Republican candidate 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!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2015

Fast-forward four years. Sheldon owns Trump. The Donald’s Orthodox Jewish (and good friend of Likudnik Bibi Netanyahu) son-in-law dictates policy for the administration. 

Jared Kushner’s influence shaped his father-in-law’s decisions to move the US embassy to Jerusalem while also signing off on the illegally annexed Golan Heights and the possible annexation of large areas of the West Bank set aside for Zionist settlers, all in direct violation of international law.  

*

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

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Gage Skidmore/Flickr

Representatives from the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) and the Forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change have been holding talks with the Transitional Military Council (TMC) for several weeks since the coup against ousted President Omer Hassan al-Bashir on April 11.

An announcement on May 14 indicates that the two sides have reached a settlement on the establishment of a joint civilian-military administration which will govern the country until national elections are held within a yet to be designated time period.

Sudan has been wracked with mass demonstrations since December when the economic crisis inside the nation escalated pushing up prices of bread and other consumer goods. The demands of the protesters quickly escalated beyond the call for lower prices to insisting upon the resignation of al-Bashir and his cabinet.

Demonstrators began marching in the streets challenging the security forces consisting of police, the vast intelligence apparatus and the military. Violence has erupted on numerous occasions since December leaving dozens dead and hundreds more injured.

Thousands of opposition supporters began a sit-in on April 6 outside the military headquarters in Khartoum challenging the authority which has been the underpinning of the al-Bashir government since it took power in a coup in 1989. Al-Bashir is a former military official and after seizing power the military was highly politicized through the creation of the National Congress Party (NCP) in 1998, which has been the dominant entity in the administration for over two decades.

Sudan demonstrations led to the ouster of President al-Bashir

Even though the president was forced to resign by his top military generals on April 11 as the social conditions worsened, there was no agreement over the composition of a transitional regime until May 14. The internal pressure has prompted the African Union (AU) to set a timetable for the resumption of what they consider civilian rule.

After the announcement of the agreement between the TMC and the opposition groupings, security forces were said to have opened fire on demonstrators outside military headquarters leaving at least five people dead, including one police officer. There are conflicting reports over who initiated the clashes. Some say it was a lone gunman who targeted protesters while others claim it was the authorities.

An article published by the Independent said of the incident that:

“One policeman and three protesters were killed in Khartoum and many other demonstrators were wounded, state TV said. Heavy gunfire was heard in the capital late into the evening, but Reuters could not immediately confirm the scale of casualties or who triggered the violence.” (May 14)

This same report went on to emphasize:

“The Transitional Military Council (TMC) blamed saboteurs. ‘Behind this are groups that… are working hard to abort any progress in negotiations.’ Early on Tuesday the TMC said it would not allow citizens’ safety to be jeopardized. ‘Neither the (paramilitary) Rapid Support Forces or the army will fire one shot at our protesting brothers, but we repeat: we do not allow chaos,’ it said.”

The Role of the United States in Sudan

The country has been suffering immensely since the partition of the former British colony in 2011, creating the neighboring Republic of South Sudan, the world’s newest state. A large proportion of the oil resources were taken out of the control of the government in the capital of Khartoum. Washington, London and Tel Aviv were major supporters of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), the ruling party now governing in Juba.

After the breaking up of the Republic of Sudan, once Africa’s largest geographic nation-state and the founding of the Republic of South Sudan, the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) was forced to adjust to the new international situation. South Sudan was immediately recognized by both the United Nations and the African Union (AU) as a sovereign state.

There were disagreements over the border demarcations in the aftermath of the partition particularly as it related to petroleum resources. A brief skirmish erupted creating a crisis in 2012 between Juba, the capital of South Sudan, and Khartoum.

Since late 2013, the SPLA/M government in Juba has been split resulting in a civil war. A recent peace agreement is yet to be fully implemented between President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Reik Machar, now of the SPLM/A in Opposition.

After the ascendancy of former leader al-Bashir, the country moved closer to the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Relations worsened in August of 1998 when the U.S. under President Bill Clinton bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum claiming it was a chemical weapons factory. There was never any prove that the facility was producing chemical weapons and was in fact manufacturing medicines.

China began to play a leading role in oil exploration and marketing in Sudan controlling 80 percent of petroleum concessions by the end of the first decade of this century. Iran developed economic and military links with Khartoum as well, leading to accusations that Sudan was serving as a conduit for the funneling of weapons to Hamas in Gaza.

Nonetheless, since 2015, Sudan has shifted its foreign policy due to pressure from the economic crisis. Al-Bashir sent troops to fight alongside Saudi Arabia and its allies against the Ansurallah resistance forces in Yemen. Diplomatic relations with Tehran and Damascus (Syria) were severed while overtures aimed at normalizing relations with Washington have been ongoing. Sudan has since reestablished relations with Damascus.

After a ceasefire agreement was signed with the SPLM/A and the transition to independence began in the south, another insurgency broke out in the western Darfur region. The NCP government responded to the armed rebel groupings with force in an effort to re-establish order in the region.

Allegations of human rights violations and genocide were made against al-Bashir by the U.S. and other imperialist powers. The International Criminal Court (ICC) based in the Netherlands indicted the former president and other leading officials of the NCP administration and sought their extradition to The Hague to stand trial on the charges.

Although Washington is not a signatory to the Rome Statue which created the ICC and therefore not bound by its ostensible jurisdiction, the charges against the Sudanese government were used to foster instability internally and the isolation of al-Bashir internationally. Since the removal of al-Bashir, some within the opposition have demanded the former head-of-state be placed on trial for repressive tactics used against demonstrators since December. It is not clear whether al-Bashir will be tried inside the country or sent to The Hague under the outstanding warrants issued by the ICC.

U.S. embassy officials have been quick to blame the TMC for the outbreak of violence on May 14. U.S. and other western embassy delegations of diplomats have visited protesters to express their support. These actions angered the Sudanese Foreign Ministry which took offense at what they perceived as another unwarranted interference in the domestic affairs of the country.

In a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry on May 12, it said:

“All the visits by Western ambassadors, including the head of the EU mission to the sit-inners were carried out without coordination with the Foreign Ministry, which should be notified of movements in dangerous sites so as to be able to provide protection in accordance with its international obligations.”

When U.S. Charge d’affaires Steven Koutsis visited the protesters’ site outside the Defense Ministry he was protected by the Red Vest security team appointed by the opposition leaders. Sudan’s military and other security forces have no official presence at the sit-in.

Future of Sudan Uncertain

Even with the possibility of the creation of a joint civilian-military governing council, there are still many more unresolved issues which will impact the Sudanese people. It is obvious that Washington is attempting to influence the future direction of the government.

It remains unclear what political line the joint civilian-military council will take on relations with China, Iran and other neighboring states within Africa. Also the role of other opposition parties which have had substantial support in Sudan historically and are not a part of the Forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change may differ significantly with the those interests now considered the leading opposition groupings. These parties will have to be allowed to contest any upcoming election.

*

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

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

All images in this article are from the author; featured image: Sudan protests chants led by women opposition forces

First Nations in Ontario have run out of patience. For 43 years, the forest industry has been conducting aerial spraying of glyphosate herbicide on Indigenous lands – a “rain of death” used in forest management practice that has slowly been killing off a wide range of animals, plants, fish and insects. First Nations have tried to stop this practice since the 1990s through a variety of measures including meetings with logging companies and government officials, protests and reports, but all to no avail. The “rain of death” keeps coming.

Now, members of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Elders of the North Shore of Lake Huron say they will be going to court to force the Canadian federal government to live up to Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850. That treaty guarantees First Nations in the area the right to hunt, fish, gather berries and use plant medicines in traditional territories. The TEK Elders say that by allowing the aerial spraying to continue, the Trudeau government is violating this treaty and the Constitution Act of 1982, which reaffirms those rights.

“We’re done waiting,” Raymond Owl, one of the founding members of TEK, told the press in April. [1] Formed in 2014, the TEK Elders group is comprised of Elders from 21 bands in the area.

Sue Chiblow, a Garden River First Nation Councillor assisting the TEK Elders, has stated:

“We went to the Ministry of Natural Resources and they said ‘well no we just issued the license so that’s not our problem; it’s Health Canada’s problem’ … So we went to Health Canada and they said ‘we don’t actually do the spraying; we’re just saying that’s it’s ok and it’s up to the companies to use or not use it’.” [2]

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry recently provided a statement to APTN News which said in part:

“Herbicide use is very limited in Ontario and they are only used when absolutely necessary – usually amounts to less than 0.2 per cent of Ontario’s forested area in any given year … Health Canada recently re-evaluated the use of glyphosate, finding no unacceptable risks to human health or the environment when used as directed.” [3]

Health Canada is taking this stance even as Bayer-Monsanto has been losing court case after court case in the U.S. to juries awarding billions in damages to individuals harmed by the pesticide. Some 13,000 more cancer victims’ cases against Bayer-Monsanto await trial.

The TEK Elders’ website (tekelders.weebly.com) states that “In Ontario, the forest management planning process begins with Crown approval for aerial spraying already in place.” There has never been any consultation with First Nations on this issue. As TEK Elder Raymond Owl has stated on the website,

“The announcements for spraying are printed in local newspapers to say when and where – and that’s it. We are told by Health Canada that the chemicals are safe, not harmful to humans, yet we are witness to absolute destruction of natural habitat and ecosystems.”

Creating a Monoculture

The forest industry across Canada (and in parts of Oregon and Washington) has relied on aerial herbicide spraying for more than 40 years, in line with its practice of clear-cutting, followed by replanting for monocultures.

The purpose of the glyphosate and other herbicides is to wipe out the so-called “weed” species that start re-growing after clearcutting. Those species include aspen, alder, birch, oak, maple, willow and other broad-leaf plants and shrubs – all considered of less commercial value than needle-leaf softwoods like Lodgepole Pine and Douglas Fir.

Forester and Forest Ecologist Herb Hammond told me by email,

“the presence of dense ‘brush’ following logging is a sign of ecological degradation from logging, which is dominated by clearcutting. There is nothing natural about clearcutting,” he noted, but it is “the cheapest, fastest way to turn forests into money.”

So after the clearcutting, “natural processes activate restoration procedures for soil and microclimate, resulting in high densities of herbaceous and woody vegetation other than coniferous trees.” These so-called “weed” species “are vital for biological diversity, building soil nutrient capital, slowing the spread of wildfire, and [they are] superior to conifers in sequestering and storing carbon – an important forest assist in this climate change world,” Hammond told me.

The irony is that “conifers will emerge from under the other vegetation and will grow better over time than those trees where ‘competing vegetation’ was removed” by aerial spraying. But, noted Hammond, “people prescribing pesticides give little value to other life that depend upon the plants being sprayed, or the water, soil and air affected by pesticide treatments.”

Also a BC Problem

According to The Prince George Daily News,

“timber companies are required by government legislation to eliminate the so-called weed trees in area they have logged or face penalties. A preferred way to accomplish this is to dump herbicide in massive doses on the land base. Manual, non-spray brushing could potentially create many more seasonal jobs in the forest. Yet that method is little utilized today.” [4]

According to the NGO Stop The Spray BC, between 10,000 and 20,000 hectares of BC forests are sprayed with glyphosate and other herbicides every year, mostly in the Central Interior.

“This vast conversion of our forests from bio-diverse stands with many broadleaf species to conifer monocultures is required by law, signed off on by Registered Professional Foresters, and is supported by the Association of British Columbia Professional Foresters.”

Stop the Spray BC spokesman James Steidle states that wildlife are “incredibly dependent” on the broadleaf trees considered “weeds” by industry and government. And those same trees in a mixed forest are better at sequestering carbon and controlling wildfires. Steidle notes,

“As our planet continues to warm, biodiversity fades and forest fires grow worse, does it make sense to keep eliminating the trees with the highest biodiversity values, lower probability of flammability, and best ability to sequester CO2 and reflect solar radiation from our forests? Obviously not.” [5]

But timber companies and our provincial governments are actually spending millions every year to do precisely that.

Quebec, however, is the exception. Chemical herbicides were banned on Crown forest lands in Quebec in 2001 – about 90% of the provincial forest land base. In 2008, the Quebec government reaffirmed its commitment to ecosystem-based management of public forests. [6]

In March, the Prince George Citizen reported that B.C. MLA Mike Morris is working on a private members bill to ban the use of glyphosate on provincial forests. [7]

Stopping the Rain of Death

Clearly, the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Elders of Ontario have raised a huge issue with their pending lawsuit. SumOfUs is raising funding for their legal fees and helping to alert the wider community. The TEK Elders are also planning to contact the World Health Organization (WTO) for assistance. The WTO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has already classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. [8]

Information about the TEK Elders’ pending lawsuit also comes just days after the UN’s shocking biodiversity report, warning that one million species are at risk of extinction. That report was issued by the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). UBC professor Kai Chan, one of the lead authors of the report, told the Toronto Star that “…the scale of change now requires us to pressure political systems and other institutions to overhaul national and global economies. ‘Nature isn’t broken. But you could say that our institutions are not fit for purpose,’ Chan says. ‘Really, what we need to do is fix them’.” [9]

That comment may be applicable to Health Canada, which seems to have been captured by Bayer-Monsanto and the pesticide industry.

The UN biodiversity report also specifically urged policy-makers “to recognize and respect Indigenous institutions, values, innovations, practices and knowledge, and to engage with and consider Indigenous communities, something they note is currently sorely lacking.” [10] The Traditional Ecological Knowledge Elders of Ontario know the brutal truth of this, and now they’re going to court. That seems to be the only way to stop the “rain of death”.

*

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

Joyce Nelson is the author of seven books. She can be reached via www.joycenelson.ca

Notes

[1] Helen Morley, “TEK Elders will take government to court,” Mid North Monitor, April 4, 2019.

[2] Quoted in Christopher Read, “Trappers in Robinson Huron treaty want aerial herbicide spraying to end,” APTN News, March 22, 2019.

[3] Quoted in Ibid.

[4] Peter Ewart, “Death from the sky in northern B.C.,” The Prince George Daily News, March 31, 2018.

[5]http://stopthespraybc.com/

[6] Dave Mance III, “The Great Glyphosate Debate,” Northern Woodlands, Spring 2012.

[7] Mark Nielsen, “Morris calling for ban on glyphosate in B.C. forests,” Prince George Citizen, March 7, 2019.

[8] Read, op. cit.

[9] Quoted in Kate Allen, “One million species face possibility of extinction, report warns,” Toronto Star, May 6, 2019.

[10] Ibid.

Featured image is from Maui Independent

“Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.” – Kabir, “To Be a Slave of Intensity”

Strange how a man

Can enter your life

Just like that: a knock

Out of nowhere

And you’ve slipped away

To a rendezvous with destiny

That always awaited you.

 – EJC, “The Birth and Death of Trauma”

Myths and popular tales, like life, are replete with accounts of those not answering the call, of locking the door to their hearts and shutting themselves up in sterile and safe lives where the rest of the world is not even an afterthought, where others suffer and die because of one’s indifference.  Answering can be very dangerous, for it can take you on a journey from which you may never return, surely, at least, as the same person.  Only the courageous heed the call.

When Carolyn Forché, a twenty-seven year old naïve academic poet living in the San Diego area, miraculously answered the call of a Salvadorian stranger named Leonel Gómez Vides, who showed up at her door out of the blue, to go to El Salvador, a country she knew very little about but to which he said war was coming and her poet’s eye was needed, she acted intuitively and bravely from her deep soul’s murmurings and said yes, not knowing why or where she was heading except into the unknown.

This memoir, a souvenir of hope and terror and a call to resistance, a poet’s lucid dreaming between childhood and an adult awakening, invites the reader to examine one’s life and conscience through language that emulates our living experience as it strains toward meaning through a wandering dialectical consciousness that weaves the past present with the present past and lucid dreaming with the waking state. One experiences this book as one does life, not, as the French existentialist Gabriel Marcel, has said, “as a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.” It is impossible to adequately “review” a book that breathes.  One can only conspire with it to uncover the conspiracy of silence that is American government propaganda.

For at the heart of this mystery are facts, which Forché describes in graphic detail, the truth of how the United States government has long been doing the devil’s murderous work in El Salvador, throughout Latin America and the world, as current events confirm. Forché asks us to enter into her memories not to wax nostalgic, but to wake to the truth of today.  The truth that little has changed and the past was prologue.  The U.S. is still “Murder Incorporated,” and Americans must see this clearly, and resist.

Image on the right: Leonel Gómez Vides via Carolyn Forche

Carolyn’s “Yes” to the enigmatic stranger Leonel, so I sense from her reveries, was the fruit of a seed of faith planted when she was a child of ten or so in Michigan.

“The girl I once was, who had been a Catholic, woke for the bells of the Angelus at six in the morning, Angelus Domini.  I sang to myself as I walked to morning Mass under a canopy of maples, through a wetland of swamp cabbage and red-winged blackbirds, the quiet, low Mass where it was possible to pray in peace, with the Latin liturgy a murmur in the air….I felt at peace in the church, on the padded kneeler near the stained-glass windows depicting the seven sorrows along the west wall, the seven joys along the east….When I knelt beside them, the floor, the pews, and my own body were quilted in colored light.”

But she tells Leonel that she has “fallen” because she no longer attends Mass.

Leonel, a “non-believer” who says “I believe with my life, how I live,” tells her about Padre Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit priest who was murdered with an old man and a boy by the U.S. trained and supported Salvadorian death-squads.

“God that Padre Grande taught was not up in the sky lying in some damn cloud hammock.  This was a God who expected us to be brothers and sisters and to make of earth a just place.”

This was her introduction to a new theology, a way of connecting her spiritual core from a conservative Catholic childhood piety to the liberation theology that created Christian base communities of the poor and persecuted in El Salvador and other Latin American countries.  Dissident Christianity. True Christianity. When she went to El Salvador soon thereafter, not only did the poet leave the quiet of her study where her work might have revolved around herself, but the little girl left the church building to discover, as a changed woman, Christ among the poor and persecuted in the living world.

One night she meets a man in the shadows of such a Christian base community where a few of its members had been killed and dismembered by the government death squads.  His pseudonym is Inocencio.  “You can say Chencho,” he tells her.  At first he thinks she is a nun, (“although,“ as a girl, “I considered that vocation.”) because she smokes, and some of the foreign nuns smoke and don’t dress in traditional habits.  He asks her why she is there and she says, “You know, I’m not sure.”  She then explains how an unnamed person invited her to come to see the truth for herself because war was coming, and when she returned to the United States to “explain the reasons for the war to the North Americans, because my friend tells me that this will be important, that the real reasons be known, so that the people of the United States understand.”

Chencho is a catechist who secretly moves under darkness of night from one small Christian base community to another, encouraging the campesinos to keep the faith because God is with them, la gente, los pobres, the people, the poor. He says to Carolyn,

Listen to me, hermana.  We are brothers and sisters in Christ, and Christ is moving through the world now, through us.  He is acting through us in the struggle against injustice, poverty, and oppression. To be with God now is to choose the fate of the poor, to be with them, to see through their eyes and feel through their hearts, and if this means torture and death, we accept.  We are already in the grave.

Later, Leonel takes her to visit a friend who is in a prison from hell where men are tortured in padlocked wooden boxes the size of washing machines.  Afterwards she vomits. Then they go to visit a dirt poor young mother give birth in a casita in which there was nothing, “really nothing: a candle, a plastic basin, a ladle hanging against the wall, and, in the candlelight, the shadow of a wooden chair dancing on the wall.”

I followed him [Leonel] through the darkness into a passage, then through a door lit by a candle and, by the light of it, saw people gathered and one of them, someone, took me by the hand and drew me into the circle surrounding a young woman who was lying on her side on a blanket on the floor, her head propped in her hand.  There was a cardboard box beside her, and in the box, a newborn girl with her hair still wet, lying in a towel.  Leonel was looking at me from across the room.  ‘She was born about a half hour ago,’ a young man beside me whispered.  ‘She’s early. We’re going to name her Alma. Bellisima!’

Then it is on through night to meet with four young impoverished men who read their “political” poems for her, written under pseudonyms for fear for their lives, poems they hope might stir the hearts of people in the United States.

That night I knew something had changed for me, and that I wasn’t going to get tired or need a shower or want to call something off so I could rest, and I hoped that if I forgot this I would somehow remember Alma in the cardboard box in the barrio, and the mimeographed poems….The woman who went into the prison in Ahuachapán left herself behind in a barrio called La Fosa, the grave.

The naïve young poet is buried and the political poet of witness is born.  It is impossible not to be deeply moved and nourished by such a birth. Who, I wonder, are the “fallen” ones? What is writing for?  What good are poets?  Why say yes to a stranger’s request when it is so much easier to not answer the knock on the door?  So much easier to barricade ourselves behind walls of denial and say “me first.”  So much easier to ignore the truth that this book reveals: that the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world and our society rests on keeping the poor poor and under the vicious thumbs of the rich.

The world is filled with writers who witness only to their imprisonment in their own egos.  When Carolyn Forché said yes to Leonel and then returned from El Salvador to write “political” poems such as “The Colonel,” she was attacked by writers wishing a poet would stay in her box and not disturb their universe.  That she was not like them angered them, J. Alfred Prufrocks who were not going to come back from the dead to tell us all as she has, poets who had time on their hands to neurotically contemplate their navels with their fellow Americans:

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Having heard Leonel’s descriptions of “the silence of misery endured” and the American supported death-squads massacring impoverished Salvadorians, she tells us,

I knew that if I didn’t accept his invitation, I could never live as if I would have been willing to do something, should an opportunity have presented itself.  I could never say to myself: If only I’d had the chance.  This was, I knew, my chance.

Wasn’t such a daring decision by this “fallen” poet the quintessence of the creative act, exactly what inspired artists do when they see the act of writing as an adventure into the unknown where startling truths wait to reveal themselves to the unsuspecting author?  A journey fraught with danger and delight, perhaps delightful danger or dangerous delight, but always ready to surprise with hidden truths that might unlock the prison gates that enclose the world in suffering and pain? Does not the artist proceed into this alien territory armed only with a fierce faith in the power of truth to reveal its face and so strengthen us through disarmament? Doesn’t a poet trust in a power greater than herself and know what she wishes to say only in the act of saying it? Isn’t real writing a transmission between the creative spirit and the world of flesh and blood, the living and the dead, a visionary opening into the future where freedom beckons?

Carolyn somehow knew this then and now, and her memoir is the result, a haunting trip into the past to liberate the present.  “The strange, mysterious, perhaps dangerous, perhaps redeeming comfort that there is in writing,” wrote Kafka in his diary.  Perhaps there are certain writings that cannot be adequately reviewed but must be experienced. As I said, I think What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance is such a book.  How do you review a prayer and a mystery?  You must enter them if you are willing.

Carolyn, drawing on the uncanny spirit of her mystical, Gypsy-spirited Czechoslavian grandmother Anna (“I will get Anna out of you if it’s the last thing I do” her mother told her, to no avail), chose to develop her “legitimate strangeness,” as the French poet René Char urged, heeding his words that “what comes into the world to disturb nothing merits neither attention or patience.”  Disturbed and perplexed by the stranger’s tales and her former husband’s experiences in Vietnam and the United Sates’ savage war there, as well as by her mystical Catholic childhood’s faith and its tug of conscience, she joins the mysterious Leonel in El Salvador.

To those ensconced in instrumental rationality, her decision seems insane. However, instrumental rationality is insane, and it has taken us to the brink of nuclear extinction.  It is to the poet’s truth we should turn.  The data driven instrumental rationalists have given us WW I, II, Auschwitz, Vietnam, the CIA, death squads, Iraq, Syria, etc. – should I give you numbers, list it all, do the logic?  When has such logic convinced the disbelievers? Logicians don’t trust the soul’s promptings and, like Carolyn, take a chance, take a leap of faith.  They do calculations, follow computer models, and dare not enter the world outside if they are told there is a 60% chance of rain. And if they are told the sun will shine and all will be well with the world, but a hard rain does fall and the poet shouts there is blood on our hands, they act shocked.  Always shocked at the truth that was there from the start. If only we had known.

Is it any wonder so many Americans are depressed?

For Carolyn, the child of Czechoslovakian ancestry, the German holocaust atrocities haunted her, and she grew up suffering from periodic depressions that would lift once she felt the urge to do something about the injustices she saw. The urge to act for others freed her from wallowing in depression.  Rather than becoming a nun, she became a poet, and when Leonel told her that an American poet was needed to witness the truth of the American supported atrocities in El Salvador, she trusted the spirit to lead her on, not knowing why this might be so.  What use are poets, she wondered, in the U.S. poetry “doesn’t matter.”  She would soon help change that.

There is an old Catholic prayer that goes like this: “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.”

Might such words have bubbled up from her unconscious?  I have long felt it was a prayer for poets as well as the religiously faithful – are not all inspired together?  Is there a difference?  “I believe in the magic and authority of words,” said Char, the French resistance fighter.  Witness and resistance.  Words. Poetry.  Prayers.

It is best that I not tell you too much about Leonel.  You will wonder about him, and you will wonder with Carolyn what her relationship with him is all about.  You will discover his essence in the reading. You will learn that he once said to Carolyn that “it isn’t the risk of death and fear of danger that prevent people from rising up, it is numbness, acquiescence, and the defeat of the mind.  Resistance to oppression begins when people realize deeply within themselves that something better is possible.”  You might, like me, question whether this is true only for the most oppressed, or whether it applies to Americans whose lives depend on the subjugation of others in foreign lands.

You will be terrified to learn of the death squads, the brutality and cold-bloodedness of their murders, and Forché’s close escapes as they hunted her.  You will feel her fear.

You will learn of the courageous women who befriend her, her meeting with Monseñor Oscar Romero the week before he is assassinated while saying Mass and Carolyn has left the country at his urging, and you too will be lost in reveries as you travel between worlds of night and day, wealth and poverty, life and death, now and then.

If you are like me, you will be inspired by what the poet Char called “wisdom with tear-filled eyes.”  This book is just that.  It is a call to Americans to face the truth and resist.

*

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

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

Putin actually sounded pretty concerned about the future of Nord Stream II for the first time ever during Tuesday’s press conference with his Austrian counterpart, strongly suggesting that Pompeo might have delivered a serious message to him during Monday’s meeting that got the Russian leader to finally have a more realistic assessment of the grand strategic challenge that the US poses to its interests, therefore pushing him to consider what compromises his country might have to make in order to reach a sought-after “New Detente” for relieving this unprecedented pressure. 

Sanctioning Nord Stream II?

Putin seems to have a much more realistic assessment of the challenge that the US poses to his country’s energy interests after Monday’s meeting with Pompeo, with the Russian leader actually sounding pretty concerned about the future of Nord Stream II for the first time ever during Tuesday’s press conference with his Austrian counterpart. Sputnik quoted him as saying that

“As for the attempts of our American partners to derail certain agreements, some projects — I mean Nord Stream 2 and some other projects, we have repeatedly said this and want to reiterate: these are attempts of unfair competition under various political pretexts…I already said it yesterday, the United States has become the largest oil producer and we need to think about how we influence the global energy market.”

For a man who’s carefully cultivated a “tough guy” image, it’s out of character for him to complain about how “unfair” the US is being, which is an allusion to the possibility of sanctions being imposed on the pipeline and its partners in order to create unbearable costs on the European side and subsequently derail the project.

The Reagan Redux

Putin’s right, though, because Trump is using all the tricks in the book to make matters more difficult for Russia, though what he’s doing really isn’t anything too novel in and of itself. While it can be said that the weaponization of sanctions as one of his administration’s preferred foreign policy instruments is unprecedented in its scale and scope, the underlying principle of increasing costs on his adversaries and their partners in order to reverse some of their policies isn’t anything novel. In fact, it’s actually very similar to what Reagan did against the USSR in restarting the arms race through “Star Wars” simultaneously with manipulating global oil prices in order to bankrupt the so-called “Evil Empire”. Trump, as a successful billionaire businessman, has a keen ability to sniff out economic weaknesses in his adversaries, and he understands that there’s no better time than now to put maximum pressure on Russia ahead of negotiating a “New Detente” in order to get as many concessions as possible out of it prior to clinching this long-sought deal.

The Systemic Transitions

The fact of the matter is that Russia is in the beginning of two interconnected domestic systemic transitions, the “Great Society” socio-economic one and its political counterpart PP-24 (Post-Putin 2024). Chaos theory preaches that the outcome of complex processes such as these is disproportionately influenced by their initial conditions, so in other words, disrupting these transitions as much as possible at this highly vulnerable time could possibly lead to their ultimate failure. The modus operandi that the US is applying seems to be raw economic warfare through primary and “secondary” sanctions, with the whole point of this asymmetrical assault being to compel Russia into agreeing to a lopsided deal that’s tilted against its grand strategic interests but is publicly presented as a “New Detente” in order for Putin to “save face”. For as much as Alt-Media might dismiss this as a “neocon conspiracy theory”, it shouldn’t be overlooked just how sensitive Russia is to economic shocks at this moment, particularly in terms of the political and strategic consequences that they might lead to.

Two Decades Of Missed Opportunities

Despite being in office for nearly two decades already, Putin failed to reform Russia’s economy, and its state budget is still significantly dependent on natural resource (energy and mineral) and arms exports. The US’ sanctioning of these industries is intended to reduce the amount of revenue that Russia receives from them precisely at the moment when it needs those funds the most, which could in turn jeopardize the “Great Society” socio-economic development plan and possibly inflict irreversible damage to its overall competitiveness in the technologically driven Multipolar World Order. Although Russia currently holds a monopoly on hypersonic missile technology, it’s been unable to leverage this beyond the military sphere of defensively upholding its nuclear second-strike capabilities and actually reaping real-sector economic dividends from it for its people. In the event that some of the “Great Society’s” projects are curtailed or outright canceled, Russia’s already restive and highly influential oligarchic elite might once again begin rumbling for regime change ahead of PP-24.

The Return Of The Oligarchs

There’s no credible threat to Putin’s presidency, but since he’s basically a “lame duck” in the sense that this is his final term in office, he might gradually lose the power to determine his successor if his meticulously crafted domestic political “balancing” act of the past two decades begins to unravel as a result of the US’ sanctions assault at what would be precisely the worst time for that to happen. It should be remembered that while Putin made a notable example out of several oligarchs who refused to stop meddling in politics during the early 2000s, he actually never got rid of this class like his “Putinist” followers abroad assumed that he did but only “incentivized” them through those dramatic precedents to remain outside the political sphere in exchange for not being investigated for tax and other crimes by the FSB (which he led right before the presidency). The oligarchs are still very much in power in Russia, it’s just that they’re all allied with Putin nowadays, though that could change if the country’s macroeconomic conditions worsen and they don’t receive the “payoff” they expected from the “Great Society” if Trump’s sanctions hit the Kremlin’s coffers hard enough in the future.

Hard Truths

After all, it’s precisely because of the effect that these weaponized economic instruments could have on the oligarchic class that the Obama Administration initially wielded them in the first place, only to be intensified under Trump who has personal knowledge of what makes people like him tick. That actually explains why Russia has been so desperate to lift the sanctions ever since they were first imposed half a decade ago in spite of its many media surrogates playing “reverse-psychology” and pretending that that’s the last thing that the country wants. It’s true that there have been many unintended benefits of the sanctions and that these have more often than not been in the interests of the average Russian (especially in the sense of encouraging domestic production and inspiring their country’s overall reorientation to the “Global South”), but they’ve been absolutely detrimental to the oligarchs’ interests, which is why they’ve been intensely lobbying Putin to get them lifted as soon as possible. It’s with this in mind why he’s so interested in reaching a “New Detente” as soon as possible so long as it results in at least partial sanctions relief.

The Perfect Storm?

According to chaos theory, the drastic reduction of budgetary revenue caused by America’s sanctions regime could threaten the success of the “Great Society” and lead to a chain reaction of political consequences that might complicate PP24, both of which are only in their initial stages and therefore highly vulnerable to external disruptions that could disproportionately influence their ultimate outcomes and altogether massively disadvantage Russia by possibly inflicting irreparable damage on its strategic competitiveness in what is also coincidentally the beginning of the global systemic transition to the Multipolar World Order. Russia is therefore unprecedentedly vulnerable to the effect that American sanctions could have on its three interconnected systemic transitions of the “Great Society”, PP-24, and the Multipolar World Order, something that Putin appears to have finally grasped after his meeting on Monday with Pompeo. That’s why he’s worried for the first time ever about the future of Nord Stream II, since it’s one of the most prominent examples of where the US is trying to hit Russia the hardest in compelling it to compromise as much as possible as part of a “New Detente”.

*

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

This 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.

History books may never tell the full story of the dictatorship that terrorized Argentina from 1976 to 1984.

But newly declassified United States military and intelligence documents recently delivered to Argentina offer new details about the country’s brutal military junta.

The archival documents were the fourth and final batch of 43,000 declassified U.S. telegrams, military records, intelligence and confidential memos given to Argentina following an extraordinary 2016 agreement between Argentine President Mauricio Macri and former U.S. President Barack Obama.

“Argentines now have more information about a dark period of our history that will allow us to continue strengthening justice, seeking and finding the truth,” Macri said on Twitter after receiving the 7,500-document report on April 12.

The archives narrate the human rights abuses committed by Argentina’s military government, often with the assistance of the United States. They include the forced disappearances of 30,000 people, international assassination squads that stalked their victims abroad and the kidnapping of hundreds of babies born in detention.

Source: National Security Archive

Bloody history of US intervention

The U.S. declassification effort began under persistent pressure from Argentine human rights groups founded to uncover the atrocities of the dictatorship – a period I have spent my academic career studying.

Argentine democracy was interrupted by military coups six times in the 20th century.

The declassified documents outline what happened after the last coup, staged in 1976 by Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla. It gave way to the cruelest, most repressive and violent eight years of Argentina’s history.

In August 2000 representatives from Argentina’s Center for Legal and Social Studies and the original Grandmothers and Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo – a human rights group that locates the lost children of the dictatorship, which has since splintered into several factions – met with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

That encounter led to the declassification of 4,700 State Department documents in 2002. Those documents included U.S. diplomatic cables, memoranda, reports and meeting notes related to the Argentine dictatorship, and revealed clear U.S. involvement in the junta’s “dirty war.”

Now, Argentina has the military and intelligence archives behind these operations, too.

The declassified documents show that U.S. intervention in Latin America went well beyond giving “a little encouragement” to Latin American military regimes, as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it in 1976.

Argentina was the operations center for Plan Condor, a U.S-organized alliance between the dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, created in 1975 and operational until around 1980.

Fearing the spread of communism across the Americas, the Ford administration offered these rightist military regimes everything from counterinsurgency training and financial assistance to intelligence briefings.

With U.S. support, Argentina’s junta kidnapped leftists, dissidents, union leaders and anyone who looked remotely like a threat. They tortured detainees, and then threw them alive and conscious out of airplanes into the River Plate, near Buenos Aires, or dumped their bodies in mass graves.

Pregnant women were killed after giving birth, their babies adopted by the families of childless generals. Neighbors under police surveillance informed on other neighbors to appease the junta, then were abducted and tortured anyway.

The U.S. eventually grew uncomfortable with the activities of its Argentine allies.

In 1976 Robert C. Hill, U.S. ambassador to Argentina, reported to Washington that the number of people detained by the junta must “run into the thousands” and, with Kissinger’s knowledge, confronted the Argentine government about its human rights abuses.

“[Argentina’s] security forces are totally out of control,” Assistant Secretary of State Harry Shlaudeman told Kissinger in 1976.

The U.S. withdrew its support from Plan Condor after Jimmy Carter became president in January 1977. Carter, a Democrat, hoped to see democracy restored in Argentina.

That would take another six years.

A bloody history learned little by little

Argentines have learned the details of this sadistic regime little by little.

Even in the waning days of the dictatorship, human rights groups began filing freedom of information requests and writs of habeas corpus with the dictatorship, to little effect.

The law began to work in democracy’s favor again after Argentina’s first post-dictatorship leader, the late President Raúl Alfonsín, was elected in 1983. He created a truth commission that uncovered 340 secret detention centers across Argentina and identified 8,690 “disappeared” people.

Once some perpetrators and victims were known, the victims’ families could file suits to hold the people who oversaw torture centers criminally responsible for their loved ones’ disappearance.

Painstaking archival research, interviews, investigations, lawsuits and prosecutions have followed under every administration since, albeit with differing levels of priority.

Much of what is known about the fates of those abducted by the military regime was discovered in the basement of the Argentine Air Force in 2013, where “black lists” of identified leftists were archived.

The newly declassified U.S. archives offer little new information that might bring closure to thousands of Argentine families whose loved ones remain, officially, “disappeared.”

As of 2017, 2,979 people had been tried for their role in the dictatorship. The charges include crimes against humanity, arbitrary detention and kidnapping. Another 593 cases remained in process.

‘Never again’

The newly declassified U.S. telegrams and confidential communications may spur new prosecutions.

They include the names of government officials and informants complicit in Plan Condor, as well as details on the torture techniques used to extract information from detainees.

“The release of these documents stands as a uniquely valuable contribution to the cause of human rights, the cause of justice and the cause of our fundamental right-to-know,” said Carlos Osorio, a Latin America analyst at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.

In 2014, under President Cristina Fernández, Argentina began its own declassification program, alongside that of the United States. Among other disclosures, it published thousands of dictatorship-era archives, including 648 pages documenting the staffing and day-to-day operations of the military junta’s foreign ministry, including its relations with the United States.

Argentina’s commitment to uncovering every dark detail of the dictatorship derives from a national sentiment that its democracy depends on understanding the past.

“Nunca mas” – “never again” – has become the rallying cry of a population that insists that history should not repeat itself.

*

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

Prof. Rut Diamint is Political Science Professor, Torcuato di Tella University.

Featured image is from IC on the Record

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR): During Protests In Commemoration of 71^st Anniversary of Palestinian Nakba: Israeli Forces Wound 144 Palestinian Civilians, including 49 Children, 4 Women and 1 Paramedic:

On Wednesday, 15 May 2019, Israeli forces wounded 144 Palestinian civilians, including 49 children, 4 women, and 1 paramedic, in excessive use of force against the peaceful participants in the protests organized in commemoration of the 71^st anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba.

Those protests- which were called for by the Supreme National Authority of the Great March of Return and Breaking the Siege under the name of “Millions for Land and Return” in commemoration of the 71^st anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba- were preceded by the Israeli forces’ military reinforcements along the border fence with the Gaza Strip, indicating a deliberate intent to use excessive force against the protesters.

PCHR’s fieldworkers monitored the deployment of dozens of Palestinian police officers to control the situation and try to prevent the protesters from approaching the border fence. Meanwhile, the protesters acted in a fully peaceful manner as there were no attempts to burn tires.

However, in very limited incidents, some protesters approached the border fence and tried to throw stones at the fence.

According to PCHR’s fieldworkers, the Israeli forces stationed in prone positions and in their military jeeps along the border fence with Israel continued to use excessive force against the protesters.

They fired live bullets and teargas canisters at the protesters, wounding dozens of them without posing any imminent threat or danger to the soldiers’ life.

The Israeli forces also used skunk water cannons against the protesters, particularly in Khan Younis and eastern al-Boreij, in addition to using drones that fire teargas canisters amid the protesters, who were hundreds of meters away from the border fence.

The incidents on 15 May 2019 were as follows:

At approximately 13:00, thousands of civilians, including women, children and entire families, started swarming to the five encampments established by the Supreme National Authority of Great March of Return and Breaking the Siege adjacent to the border fence with Israel in eastern Gaza Strip cities.

Hundreds of protesters, including children and women, gathered adjacent to the border fence with Israel in front of each encampment and its vicinity and protested between tens and hundreds of meters away from the fence.

The protesters chanted slogans, raised flags, and in very limited incidents attempted to approach the border fence and throw stones at the Israeli forces.

The Israeli shooting, which continued until around 18:00, resulted in the injury of 144 Palestinian civilians, including 49 children, 4 women and 1 paramedic, with live and rubber bullets and by being directly hit with teargas canisters.

Meanwhile, dozens of protesters, paramedics, journalists and PCHR’s fieldworkers suffered tear gas inhalation and seizures due to tear gas canisters that were fired by the Israeli forces from the military jeeps, riffles and drones in the eastern Gaza Strip.

The following table shows the number of civilian casualties due to the Israeli forces’ suppression of the Great March of Return since its beginning on 30 March 2018:

PCHR reiterates Palestinians’ right to peaceful assembly to confront Israel and its forces’ denial of the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to self-determination, right to return and right to end the occupation of the Palestinian territory.

PCHR stresses that the Israeli forces should stop using excessive force and respond to the legitimate demands of the protesters, particularly in regard with lifting the closure that is the real solution to end the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

PCHR emphasizes that continuously targeting civilians, who exercise their right to peaceful assembly or while carrying out their humanitarian duty, is a serious violation of the rules of international law, international humanitarian law, the ICC Rome Statute and Fourth Geneva Convention.

Thus, PCHR reiterates its call upon the ICC Prosecutor to open an official investigation in these crimes and to prosecute and hold accountable all those involved in issuing or applying orders within the Israeli forces either at the security or political echelons.

PCHR also emphasizes that the High Contracting Parties to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention should fulfill their obligation under Article 1; i.e., to respect and ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances and their obligations under Article 146 to prosecute persons alleged to commit grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

PCHR calls upon Switzerland, in its capacity as the Depository State for the Convention, to demand the High Contracting Parties to convene and ensure Israel’s respect for this Convention, noting that these grave breaches constitute war crimes under Article 147 of the same Convention and Protocol (I) Additional to the Geneva Conventions regarding the guarantee of Palestinian civilians’ right to protection in the occupied territories.

*

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

Featured image is from IMEMC News

ICAN and its partner organisation Pax have released a report with full profiles of 28 companies connected to the production of nuclear weapons.

Here are the 28 companies on ICAN’s Red Flag list. Download the full report here.

1. Aecom (United States)
   Aecom is involved in work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, it is involved in research, design, development and production of nuclear weapons including the life extension program of the B61 nuclear bomb10 and of the W80-1 nuclear warhead for air-launched cruise missiles. Aecom has held this US $45.5 million (€ 40.1 million) per year contract since 2007.
2. Aerojet Rocketdyne (United States)
   Aerojet Rocketdyne is involved in maintaining the propulsion systems for Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles for the US, under a US $28.9 million (€ 25.5 million) contract initially awarded in 2013. It also produces propulsion systems for the Trident II (D5) missiles for the US and UK.  Aerojet Rocketdyne is also a subcontractor on the new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent for the US arsenal. In 2018, Aerojet Rocketdyne secured an additional five-year contract for US $20 million (€ 17.6 million) for solid boost technology that will be applied to the next generation of weapons systems.
3. Airbus (Netherlands)
   Airbus is a Netherlands based company involved in the ongoing maintenance and development of several nuclear armed missiles for the French nuclear arsenal through ArianeGroup, a joint venture with the French company Safran. Airbus is also part of the joint venture MBDA that supplies medium-range air to surface missiles, also for the French arsenal.
4. BAE Systems (United Kingdom)
   BAE Systems has a maximum value US$ 368.7 million (€ 328 million) contract originally from October 2014 that will run until 2021 that is paid by the US and UK governments for key components for Trident II (D5) missiles. BAE also has a US$ 951.4 million (€ 830.8 million) contract from the US Air Force for Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) system, which will run until 2022. BAE is also involved in the French arsenal directly, through MBDA Systems, developing the mediumrange air-to-surface missile ASMPA and its successor, ASN4G. In July 2017, BAE got a new US$ 45.2 million (€ 39.6 million) modification to an existing contract for development work on the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missile replacement programme.
5. Bechtel (United States)
   Bechtel is a family run company involved in nuclear weapon development at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Y-12 Complex, and the Pantex Plant. Bechtel currently has approximately US $ 1,174 million (€ 1,035 million) in outstanding contracts at these facilities. Bechtel is also involved in one of the new nuclear weapons under design in the US, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, though their exact contract amount is unclear.
6. Bharat Dynamics Limited (India)
   Bhrat Dynamics Limited produces key components for the Prithvi-II and Agni- V nuclear capable missiles for the Indian arsenal.
   
7. Boeing (United States)
   Boeing is building new nuclear weapons for the US. These include a 2017 contract for US$ 349.2 million (€ 297 million) for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent to replace the Minuteman III ICBMs. Boeing is also involved in the Long-Range Standoff weapon development and has been awarded several contracts since 2017 for this new nuclear weapon, valued at US $ 344.5 million (€ 304 million). Boeing holds several contracts related to the the US long-range nuclear Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM). Boeing currently has contracts valued at over US$ 703.3 million (€ 620 million) for key components for the Minuteman system. One of these contracts includes the development of ‘kill switches’ to cause the missile to self-destruct after launch. Boeing received a new US$ 26.7 million (€ 23.0 million) contract from the US and UK for Trident II (D5) work in October 2018.25 This is in addition to existing outstanding contracts for work related to the system valued at over US$ 88.9 million (€ 79.0 million). Boeing is also producing the tail-kit assembly for the new B61 bombs. More than half of all these bombs are currently deployed by the US in five European countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey). The US$ 185 million (€ 163 million) in contracts will mean the new B61-12 bombs are ready for use by May 2019. It is yet unclear when the new bombs will be delivered to their European locations, other companies are currently modifying the storage facilities in the host countries.
8. BWX Technologies (United States)
   BWX Technologies has a new US$ 76 million (€ 70.8 million) contract for Trident II (D5) components for the US and UK navies. BWXT also got a US$ 505 million (€ 427.5 million) contract to prepare for additional US nuclear materials production for nuclear weapons, this will initially be Tritium production, but there are also plans to produce additional nuclear materials in the near term. BWXT is also involved in the partnership that oversees the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, including the life extension program of the B61 nuclear bomb and of the W80-1 nuclear warhead for air-launched cruise missiles. The partnership receives US$ 45.5 million (€ 37.6 million) a year for this work.
9. Charles Stark Draper Laboratory (United States)
   Charles Stark Draper Laboratory has a US$ 370.2 (€350.5 million) contract, paid by the US and the UK, for work on the Trident II (D5) system. In 2018, Draper got another US & UK funded to US$ 109.5 million (€ 95.9 million) contract for additional work on the Trident system, including hypersonic guidance and support for hypersonic flight experiments, to be concluded by September 2019.
10. Constructions Industrielles de la Méditerranée (France)
    Constructions Industrielles de la Méditerranée is included for the first time as more information on the specifically designed key components for the French nuclear arsenal has become available. CNIM designs and manufactures the submarine launching systems designed for the nuclear-armed M51 missiles.
11. Fluor (United States)
    Fluor is involved at several US nuclear weapons enterprise facilities. Through a joint venture, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) it has an US$ 8 billion (€ 7.1 billion) contract for efforts related to key components for the W88 Alt 370 program, the nuclear warhead deployed on the Trident II (D5).
12. General Dynamics (United States)
    General Dynamics has a number of contracts related key components for the UK & US Trident II (D5) systems. An initial US$ 30.6 million (€ 28.2 million) contract awarded in 2015 has been modified repeatedly (including five times between November 2017 and December 2018) bringing the total contract value to over US$ 174.4 million (€ 155.6 million). Another General Dynamics subsidiary, General Dynamics Electric Boat received a maximum dollar value of US$ 46.5 (€ 43.4 million) contract in September 2017 for integration work for United Kingdom Strategic Weapon Support System kit manufacturing for the Columbia class ballistic missile submarines. In 2018 this contract was modified significantly, first in April for US$ 126.2 million (€ 102.4 million), and again for US$ 480.6 million (€ 414 million) in September 2018.
13. Honeywell International (United States)
    Honeywell International manages and operates the National Security Campus (NSC) (formerly Kansas City Plant), the facility responsible for producing an estimated 85% of the non-nuclear components for US nuclear weapons under a five year US$ 900 million (€ 817.4 million) contract awarded in July 2015. It is also a co-owner of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) which has a US$ 8 billion (€ 7.1 billion) contract for efforts related to key components for the W88 Alt 370 program, the nuclear warhead deployed on the Trident II (D5). Honeywell is also associated with other US nuclear weapons enterprise facilities, including an outstanding US$ 5 billion (€ 4.6 billion) contract for the Nevada National Security Site and a US$ 2.6 billion (€ 2.5 billion) contract for the Sandia National Laboratory. Both facilities are responsible for warhead production, testing, and design. Also, Honeywell received new contracts in 2018 valued at US$ 19.0 million (€ 16.2 million) for the PIGA guidance instrument for the Minuteman III.
14. Huntington Ingalls Industries (United States)
    Huntington Ingalls Industries took over the management and operations for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2018 with a five-year contracted with an estimated value of US$ 2.5 billion (€ 2.2 billion) annually. Huntington Ingalls Industries will be providing “personnel, systems, tools and corporate reachback in the areas of pit production, plutonium manufacturing, production scale-up and nuclear operations and manufacturing”. Huntington Ingalls Industries is also part of a US$ 5 billion (€ 4.6 billion) contract at the Nevada National Security Site, and the US$ 8 billion (€ 7.1 billion) contract at the US Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site and Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina.
15. Jacobs Engineering (United Kingdom)
    Jacobs Engineering is part of the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment, which currently has a 25-year £ 25.4 billion (€29.6 billion) contract for maintenance of the UK Trident arsenal. Jacobs was also part of the group that took over management and operations of the Nevada National Security Site in 2017 under a 10-year US$ 5 billion (€ 4.6 billion) contract.
16. Larsen and Toubro (India)
    are involved in producing key components for the Indian nuclear arsenal. These include the launcher system for the nuclear-capable Prithvi II missile. It is also involved in the Dhanush, the ship-based variant of the Prithvi-II.
17. Leidos (United States)
    Leidos is a minority partner of Consolidated Nuclear Services LLC (CNS), which took over the management and operation of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and the Pantex Plant in Texas under the same US$ 446 million (€ 326.5 million) contract in 2014. These facilities are involved in producing Tritium for US nuclear weapons as well as the M76/MK4A, W76-2, W80-1 and, W88 warhead modifications.
18. Leonardo (Italy)
    Leonardo is an Italian company (formerly known as Finmeccanica) involved in the French nuclear arsenal through MBDA-Systems. In contracts from 2016, MBDA began design and development of the mid-life upgrade of the ASMPA to keep it in the French arsenal through 2035. In the 2019 French Ministry of Defence Budget, three deliveries of upgraded ASMPAs are planned after 2019. MBDA is also involved in work on the successor system (ASN4G) which is meant to be operational after 2035.
19. Lockheed Martin (United States)
    Lockheed Martin has outstanding Trident II (D5) contracts valued at approximately US$ 6,550.1 million (€5,730.4 million). Of these US$ 918.9 million (€ 801.9) were awarded in between March 2018 and January 2019. Lockheed also has at least US$ 495 million (€ 413.6 million) in outstanding contracts related to the Minuteman III ICBM. It is also involved in a US$ 900 million (€ 764.2 million) research and design contract for the new US the Air Force Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) missile. Lockheed Martin’s nuclear weapon associated activities aren’t limited to US missile production alone. It is also part of the 25-year £ 25.4 billion (€29.6 billion) contract for the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment.
20. Moog (United States)
    Moog has developed launch vehicle and strategic missile controls for the Minuteman III and Trident (D5) missiles. Moog is also part of the Boeing team that won a US$ 349.2 million (€ 297.0 million) contract in 2017 for technology maturation and risk reduction activities for the new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent.
21. Northrop Grumman (United States)
    Northrop Grumman is currently handing over responsibilities to BAE Systems as the prime contractor for the Minuteman III ICBM system. This process began in 2013, but there have been repeated ‘bridge’ contracts valued at over US$ 165.0 million (€ 128.3 million), most recently in September 2018. Now the handover process is expected to be complete in April 2019. Although Northrop Grumman is no longer the prime ICBM contractor, it still has additional US ICBM related contracts including those it took over when it acquired Orbital ATK. These additional contracts were mostly awarded in 2015, with a total value of approximately US$ 1,852.9 million (€ 1,642.9 million). Northrop Grumman, via ATK Launch Systems was also awarded another Minuteman related contract for US$ 86.4 million (€ 74.5 million) in September 2018. Northrop Grumman is also involved in the Trident II (D5) systems for the US and the UK, with outstanding contracts valued at approximately US$ 531.3 million (€ 493.2 million). Many of these Trident II (D5) related production activities are meant to conclude in 2020. Northrop Grumman is also connected to the nuclear weapons facilities at the Pantex and Y-12 through at US$ 446 million (€ 326.5 million) contract to the Consolidated Nuclear Services (CNS) joint venture.
22. Raytheon (United States)
    Raytheon has an outstanding US$ 33.4 million (€ 24.8 million) contract for work related to the Minuteman III ICBMs. Raytheon is also involved in new nuclear weapons development for the US. It is part of the Boeing team working on the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, and in August 2017, Raytheon received a five-year contract for US$ 900 million (€ 764.2 million) for the new Long-Range Standoff weapon.
23. Safran (France)
    Safran is a French company and two of their subsidiaries (Snecma and Sagem) are developing key components for the M51 missiles for the French nuclear weapons arsenal. Safran is also part of the joint venture with Dutch company Airbus, responsible for ongoing production and maintenance of the missile system overall.  This joint venture is also contracted to carry out the 2019 budgeted tasks of the French Ministry of Defence for three deliveries of upgraded ASMPAs after 2019.
24. Serco (United Kingdom)
    Serco is a UK company involved in management and operations of the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) under 25-year contract (1999 to 2024) valued at £ 25.4 billion (€29.6 billion).
25. Textron (United States)
    Textron has an outstanding US$ 17.2 million (€ 12.5 million) contract to convert up to six Minuteman III MK 12A re-entry vehicles to the Mod 5F configuration.
26. Thales (France)
    According to the French Ministry of Defence, Thales is one of MBDA’s subcontractors supplying medium-range air-to-surface missile ASMPA to the French air force.
27. United Technologies Corporation (United States)
    United Technologies Corporation acquired Rockwell Collins in November 2018 and renamed it Collins Aerospace Systems. This company has an outstanding US$ 76 million (€ 67 million) contract for the Airborne Launch Control System Replacement for the Minuteman III ICBM missiles.
28. Walchandnagar Industries Limited (India)
    Walchandnagar Industries Limited produces launching systems for the Indian Agni series of nuclear armed missiles.

*

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

Featured image is from ICAN

Clashes between the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led coalition of militant groups continue in northwestern Hama and northern Lattakia.

4 SAA soldiers were killed and 7 others  were injured in a failed attack on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham positions near the town of Kabani, according to pro-militant sources. Militants captured bodies of 2 killed SAA soldiers and decapitated them.

After this, the SAA’s 4^th Division delivered a series of strikes on militant positions near Kabani with Golan-1000 heavy rocket launcher 500mm improvised rocket-assisted munitions.

Last week, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham repelled a similar SAA attack in the same area. Than, a source in the 4^th Division told SouthFront that the SAA was determined to continue its offensive actions in the area.

In northwestern Hama, the SAA and the Tiger Forces imposed control of the villages of al-Huwayz and Huriya and the nearby agricultural strip. Militants employed at least 2 battle tanks and 5 other armoured vehicles in attempts to repel the ongoing SAA advance. However, they failed. Most of the equipment were eliminated.

The main clashes are now ongoing in the area of al-Huwayz. The scale of the SAA operation remains limited, but it continues to make gains almost on a daily basis.

ISIS announced that it had carried out an attack on SAA positions near the Khounayfis phosphate mine in the province of Homs. The situation in the area remains unclear.

On May 15, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and its security forces, commonly known as Asayish, launched a large-scale security operation in southeastern Deir Ezzor.

The operation targeted the remaining ISIS cells in the Middle Euphrates River Valley, especially in the town of al-Shheell, which witnessed a wave of protests against US-backed forces in the last few weeks.

According to the SDF, 20 ISIS terrorists and a large quantity of armament were captured in two tunnels in the village of al-Shheell. The Kurdish Hawar News Agency (ANHA) reported that four of the arrested terrorists were participating in al-Shheell protests.

Last week, the SDF and the US-led coalition killed six civilians during a failed security operation in Shheell. The incident provoked a new wave of anti-SDF protests in the town, which was met with a violent response from Asayish.

*

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

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

The author delivered this speech at the Perdana Global Peace Forum 2006 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on June 22, 2006. That year the U.S. had deployed aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf and tensions then, as now, were high. 

Little has changed in the imperialist tendencies of American foreign policy since the founding of the United States of America in 1789. The fledgling United States opened the 19th century by stealing the continent of North America from the Indians, while in the process ethnically cleansing them and then finally deporting the pitiful few survivors by means of death marches (à la Bataan) to Bantustans, which in America we call reservations, as in instance of America’s “Manifest Destiny” to rule the world.

Then, the imperial government of the United States opened the 20th century by stealing a colonial empire from Spain — in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, then inflicting a near-genocidal war against the Filipino people. While at the same time, purporting to annex, the kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the native Hawaiian people to near-genocidal conditions from which they still suffer today. All in the name of securing America’s so-called place in the sun.

And today at the dawn of the 21st century, the world witnesses the effort by the imperial government of the United States of America to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples, surrounding central Asia and the Persian Gulf under the pretext of fighting a war against international terrorism or eliminating weapons of mass destruction or promoting democracy, which is total nonsense.

The imperialist foreign policy of the United States of America since its foundation, has been predicated upon racism, aggression, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes and outright genocide. At the dawn of the third millennium of humankind’s parlous existence, nothing has changed about the operational dynamics of American imperial policy. And we see this today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and what appears to be an illegal attack upon Iran.

Now the assigned topic today is “The Middle East Agenda: Oil, Dollar Hegemony and Islam.” So, I’m only going to limit my comments to that subject. We have to begin the story with the Arab oil embargo in 1973.

As you know in 1967, Israel launched an illegal war of aggression against the surrounding Arab states, stole their land and ethnically cleansed their people. But eventually Egypt offered a peace treaty to Israel, which Israel rejected and the Egyptians and the Arab states decided then to use force to recover their lands. Israel almost collapsed, the United States and Europe came to its support by providing weapons and in reaction the Arab states imposed an oil embargo on the United States and Europe, and brought their economies to their knees.

Whereupon, then U.S Secretary of State Henry Kissinger threatened them and said: “This will never happen again, and if you do, we will prevent it.” And it was not just a threat. The United States government then, at that time, planned, prepared and conspired, to steal the oil of the Persian Gulf. They did not have the military capability to do this at that time, to carry out the Kissinger threat, which was also then repeated by the Ford administration, and the Carter administration under [Secretary of Defense] Harold Brown and [National Security Advisor] Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Arrival of U.S. Central Command

So they put into planning an interventionary force, designed expressly for the purpose of stealing Arab oil fields, and that was called the Rapid Deployment Force. And it took 10 years of training, planning, positioning, and supply to build that interventionary force of that capability and eventually it was called the U.S. Central Command.

The purpose of the U.S. Central Command is to steal and control and dominate the oil and gas resources of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. And that’s exactly what the U.S. Central Command proceeded to do in the Bush Sr. war against Iraq, their first military expedition.

And as we know, that war exterminated probably 200,000 Iraqis. Half of them innocent civilians. Simply wiped out in a bombing campaign and a military expedition of unprecedented dimensions. But remember, it took 15 years for the Pentagon and three different administrations both Republicans and Democrats to get the capability to do this. And then, when that genocide or conflict was over, what happened?

The United States carved Iraq up into three pieces with their air force, the so-called no-fly zones, a zone for the Kurds in the North, a zone for the Shi’ah in the South, and the Sunni in the middle. Why? To destroy Iraq as an effectively viable state.

In his book, “Clash of Civilizations,” Samuel Huntington from Harvard, who advised the Pentagon and the State Department, pointed out that the only Arab state with the capability to lead the Arab world and challenge the United States and Israel was Iraq. And so, Iraq had to be destroyed, to maintain the domination of the United States and its proxy, Israel. And remember after 1973, whatever it was before then, Israel is nothing more than a catspaw of the United States. They do what America tells them to do! Otherwise Israel is nothing more than a failed state.

In addition then, to destroying Iraq as a state, carving it up into three pieces, was the decision to debilitate and destroy the Iraqi people. And so, they continued the genocidal economic sanctions on the people of Iraq, that my colleagues, Denis Halliday, Hans Von Sponeck, so courageously resisted and finally resigned from the United Nations as a matter of principle, calling them by what they really were: genocide. The United States and Britain maliciously and criminally imposed genocidal sanctions on the people of Iraq, that killed approximately 1.5 million Iraqis, all of whom were innocent civilians.

Albright: 500,000 Dead Children ‘Worth It’ 

And when U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright (later secretary of state) was asked about the 500,000 dead children, she said that she thought the price was worth it. Now, I could have taken that statement to the International Court of Justice, and filed it against the United States as evidence of genocidal intent against the people of Iraq in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. And indeed, I offered to do so to the then president of Iraq, but for whatever reasons he decided against doing that.

So, 1.5 million Iraqis died as the result of these genocidal sanctions. And then came Sept. 11. And we know for a fact that the second Bush administration knew that a major terrorist attack was going to be launched on the United States. And they let it happen anyway deliberately and on purpose. Why? They wanted a pretext for war. And not just one war but for a long war which they are talking about today.

Afghanistan Invasion Plotted Since 1997 

Indeed, from my research, the war plans drawn up by the Pentagon for the war against Afghanistan were formulated as early as 1997. Enormous military forces fielded by that same U.S. Central Command, were already in and around and surrounding the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean before Sept. 11. This war had been long-planned against Afghanistan. And armed, equipped, supplied, trained and war-gamed and ready to go. They just needed the pretext and that was Sept. 11. Why? The United States wanted access to the oil and natural gas of Central Asia.

That had been a Pentagon objective since at least before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. And the 9/11 attack gave them the pretext to make this major grab for the oil and gas of Central Asia. And they are there today with their bases, with their troops, in the surrounding countries in Central Asia. We don’t even have an estimate of the Muslims in  Afghanistan who were killed in the air bombardment: 20,000 or 25,000; maybe more. And tens of thousands of others starved to death and still suffering today.

But that, as we know from all the records was only the first step in the process. They wanted to finish the job in Iraq. And so immediately after Sept. 11, Bush ordered [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld to update and operationalize the plans for attacking and invading Iraq. It had nothing at all to do with weapons of mass destruction. We in the peace movement in America had been saying that all along. The United Nations had determined there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These were lies designed to scaremonger the American people and Congress into supporting an illegal war of aggression, a Nuremberg crime against peace, against Iraq. And they told whatever lies and broke what international laws they had to break in order to attack Iraq.

And today the estimate, again we don’t know. Perhaps 200,000 people in Iraq had been killed outright by the United States and Britain, their allies in Iraq. And again, most of them civilians.

Clearly if you add up what United States government has done to Iraq from August of 1990, when it imposed the genocidal economic embargo until today, the United States and Britain have inflicted outright genocide on the Muslim and Christian people of Iraq and they are predominately Muslim as we know.

Dominate Oil and Gas of Persian Gulf

Now comes the third step in the Pentagon’s pre-existing plan, to control and dominate the oil and gas resources of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. It sounds a bit like the plan that Hitler and the Nazis had in the 1930s. Does it not? First go into Austria, then go into Czechoslovakia, then go into Poland. So first Afghanistan, then Iraq, and now Iran. Iran is going to be the next victim of these outright criminals unless you and I can stop them.

Right now [in 2006] there are three aircraft carrier task forces in the Persian Gulf. And whenever they had put three aircraft carrier task forcesover there, it’s always to prepare for an attack. And according to Seymour Hersh, the award winning journalist, it will probably be an aerial bombardment, along the lines of what they did to Yugoslavia in 1999.

As you remember there, 78 days of aerial bombardmentby the United States and NATO with no authorization from the UN Security Council. Clearly illegal. Killing again, we don’t know the exact number outright; four-to-five thousand innocent civilians. And targeting civilian infrastructure, all up and down, from which the people still suffer today. The use of depleted uranium ammunitions, with consequent outbreaks of cancer are documented today.

So this is what, is being planned right now as we speak; an attack upon Iran. Using jet fighter aircraft, fighter bombers, on these three aircraft carrier task forces, using cruise missiles on submarines. Of course, Israel will be involved and have a role to play, doing exactlywhat the Americans tell them to do. In addition, it appears that ifthey attack Iran, they will also attack Syria. Yesterday, if you heard President Bush’s press conference in Vienna, he threatened Syria, right? There’s no other word for it. He threatened Syria.

Take Out Syria as Favor to Israel 

These neoconservatives want to take out Syria as a favor to Israel. Remember, many of them are affiliated personally and professionally with the Likhud Party in Israel and Ariel Sharon, the Butcher of Beirut, the man who exterminated 20,000 thousand Arabs in Lebanon, most of them were Muslims. And in addition, slaughtered 2,000 completely innocent Palestinian women, children and old men at Sabra and Shatila.

Ariel Sharon, the man who went to Haram Al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam, where Muhammad, (Peace Be Upon Him) ascended into heaven, and desecrated the Haram on Sept. 28th, 2000, and deliberately provoked the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and has inflicted death and destruction on the Palestinian people since then. Close to 3700 Palestinians since then alone have been killed….most of them shot down like dogs in the street, and what has the Muslim world done about this?

My Palestinian friends tell me that they are worried that the government of Malaysia might recognize Israel and establish diplomatic relations with Israel. I certainly hope this is not true. We must treat the criminal apartheid regime in Israel, the same way the world treated the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa.

If the United States attacks Iran, it will probably attack Syria with the Israeli air force and they will attack Lebanon to take out the Islamic resistance movement in southern Lebanon; Hezbollah that defended the legitimate rights of Lebanon and the Lebanese people and expelled the invading longstanding occupying Israeli army that had the full support of the United States government for over 20 years.

So they could attack Iran, Syria, Southern Lebanon and inflict yet another round of ethnic cleansing on the suffering Palestinian people. Remember Sharon and Likhud believe that Jordan is Palestine. And they want to drive as many Palestinians as possible out of their homes and into Jordan.

So if the United States as reported by Hersh and other reliable sources, goes ahead and attacks Iran, we could see warfare erupt all the way from Egypt to the border with India. This whole area convulsed in warfare. And who will be the primary victims of this war? Muslims.

Disregard for Muslim Life

The United States could not care less about Muslim life. Look at the demonization and victimization of Muslims that we have seen inflicted by the United States and its surrogate, Israel. Look at Guantanamo, where 600 Muslim men have been treated like dogs in a kennel. Pretty much the way the Nazis treated the Jews. Look at Abu Ghraib and the sadism and sexual exploitation and perversion of Muslims by their American captors. And the same thing has been done in Baghran in Afghanistan.

And when Professor Sharif Bassiouni, the U.N. special rapporteur, filed the report with the Security Council against U.S. practices in Afghanistan, the Americans had Kofi Annan [then UN secretary-general] fire him. Just as they had Kofi Annan fire Mary Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, when she protested what was going on down in Guantanamo.

The United States could not care less about Muslim life. And the same is true for the genocidal apartheid regime in Israel. They would be happy to use nuclear weapons against Iran. They would be happy to break the taboo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki against Muslims in Iran. It would create no problem at all for them.

Indeed, I went to school with these neoconservatives at the University of Chicago. [Paul] Wolfowitz was there, [Ahmed] Chalabi, [Zalmay] Khalilzad, [Abram] Shulsky, all the rest of them. I went through the exact same program. Their mentor was Professor Leo Strauss. And who was his teacher in Germany and his sponsor? Professor Carl Schmitt, who went on to  become the most notorious Nazi law professor of his day, justifying every atrocity that the Nazis inflicted oneveryone.

We must understand that these neoconservatives are in fact neo-Nazis. They have espoused the Nazi doctrine of Schmitt and Strauss and Machiavelli and Nietzsche, the “superman.” They are the supermen, and the Muslims are the scum of the earth.

Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Now, I do not believe the United States will initially start bombing Iran with nuclear weapons. But if things get out of control they are fully prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons. And here in our materials, you have the Pentagon’s Joint Publication 3-12, which you can get on the internet…. just do a Google search and read it. And you will see there, dated March 15, 2005; nuclear, tactical nuclear weaponshave been fully integrated into United States conventional forces.

So if Iran were to defend itself, human wave attacks, whatever, they will be happy to use nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. Remember, these neo-Nazis, neocons want to break the taboo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They want to use tactical nuclear weapons, to be able to say to the rest of the world, you do what we tell you to do or else look what we did to the Iranians!

It’s a very serious situation. And this could even get further out of control. Remember that before Bush invaded Iraq, President Vladimir Putin of Russia said that if he invades Iraq he could set off World War Three. Well, I interpreted that as an implicit threat. Even the famous American news broadcaster Walter Cronkite said that if Bush invaded Iraq he could set off World War Three. Two weeks ago we had the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; China, Russia and Iran. So again, if Bush were to attack Iran, he very well could set off a Third World War, a nuclear war.

*

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

This article was originally published on Consortiumnews.

Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Among his many books is “Destroying World Order.”

All images in this article are from Consortiumnews

It’s been 71 years now, to the day, and the Jewish State of Israel is still “thriving” among us as the fictitious “ancestral homeland” of Jews — a deceptive rhetorical ploy Thomas Friedman, among many others, has been spouting, without check — until recently.

“The term ‘Jew’ is fuzzy at this time,” writes. Yossi Gurvitz in “Tom Friedman’s belief in an ‘ancestral homeland’ is a toxic myth and not history — Updated”, a long piece that thoroughly debunks the hoax and explains how the myth was started in the Middle Ages.

And still, the obfuscation persists and Palestinian heart-rending testimony is flicked away like a piece of dust, despite the weight of the evidence. In a recent interview about the creation of the Jewish State of Israel and our Jewish-state Nakba, Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib, U.S. Representative for Michigan’s 13th congressional district, has said:

“all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.”

Forced on us then and about to be forced on us again.

“Under the US plan known as ‘the deal of the century’, the Israeli military would retain control over settlements, the Jordan Valley and borders for five years as final status negotiations continue, a senior US diplomat working on the deal has told Middle East Eye.”

The phrase “for five years as final status negotiations continue” is eerily and frighteningly familiar — reminiscent of another “five-year interim period” that lasted for over two decades.

It doesn’t take much imagination to realize what will happen again — endless maneuvers, deceptions and delays, and in the end, deadlock.

“Rarely were nations able to achieve so much in negotiations while making so few cosmetic concessions in return,” wrote Naseer H. Aruri in 2003 about Israel’s negotiations gains in the Madrid and Oslo “peace process” of the 1990s. What’s happening now is a consolidation of these “negotiations” gains.

The so-called “peace process” wasn’t about peace; it was a negotiating strategy for Israel, and so is Trump’s “deal”.

Through the “peace process”, Israel gained significant benefits: full peace with Jordan, de facto normalization with many Arab states, and full relations with many Islamic and third-world states that had boycotted Israel earlier.

As a result of that “process”, Israel and the Zionist movement accomplished a vital strategic goal, on which Israel and the U.S. are now capitalizing: Making a separate peace with Arab states that is not contingent on the necessity of fulfilling any obligations to the Palestinian people as spelled out in various U.N. resolutions.

The West Bank and Gaza, which Israel does not consider occupied, are not an issue in the negotiations (as, for example, a small desert area in southern Jordan was an issue in the negotiations between Israel and Jordan). And neither is Syria’s Golan Heights, as we are now hearing.

Palestinians who rejected Oslo are totally vindicated — and have been so for a long while, in fact. Those who joined Arafat’s bandwagon in the 1980s, whether reluctantly, against their better judgment, or with hope, are now totally disillusioned.

Every single Palestinian in the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip, child and up, realizes that “negotiations” is a code word for sidelining Palestinians and that the US, especially as headed by Trump who sold Jerusalem down the river, is a dishonest broker.

Israel’s conquest of Jerusalem was the defining issue of the 1967 war, which Israel started without seeking the assistance of the United States with the objective of “adjusting” its 1948 borders by capturing the West Bank, and Jerusalem as a first priority. Jerusalem was annexed within days of the end of the war, every inch of it having been mapped long beforehand. Trump’s deal is nothing more than a U.S. rubber stamp on the status quo.

It is easy for Palestinians, those on the inside and outside, to conclude now that that there is no other alternative to the imposition of the status quo upon them than to make it a hell for Israel. That eventuality may spell continued disaster for the Palestinians, but possibly for Israelis as well. Under Oslo, Palestinian obligations for Israeli security has come to include settlements, and that cannot possibly hold if the deal of the century is rejected. And the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is burgeoning.

From the Paris Peace Conference (the meeting of the victorious Allied Powers following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers) of 1919 to the Paris Protocol (the framework establishing the interim-period economic relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority) of 2012, the idea that the Jewish people had an inherent and inalienable right to Palestine was paramount.

And if the Palestinians could not reconcile themselves to this devilish notion to usurp their homeland right from under their feet, why, then, force majeure, not compromise, was and remains the only feasible response, despite abundant proof, then and now, that Palestinians continue to cling to their national identity, their property and heritage in Palestine in the most adverse and bloody circumstances.

The principles adopted, not only by the Zionist movement, but also by its Western-power enablers continue to be, as follows:

1. The Zionist movement is inherently righteous and meets an overwhelming need among Jews worldwide that trumps Palestinian misery.
2. Religious zealots of both the Jewish and Christian variety continue to state the above in religious terms, describing Palestine as a real-estate divine promise to the “tribes of Israel”.
3. The dispossession of Palestinians and their ongoing oppression is the only solution to solving the problem of virulent anti-Semitism in the West — then and now.
4. Arab nationalism is a legitimate, though highly unlikely movement, but Palestinian nationalism is regarded as either illegitimate or nonexistent.
5. Jewish European culture is superior to indigenous Arab, predominantly Muslim, culture.

That last point, in fact, was the ostensible reason (or part of it) why the Madrid and Oslo process dragged on for so long; Quartet funding poured in to civilize Palestinians through endless NGO workshops — to build their “capacity” for state building, for democracy, for planning, for women’s liberation, children’s rights, legal reform — you name it.

As a result of this intensive “training”, almost every other Palestinian can whip up a vision/mission statement for anything under the sun and a detailed strategic plan. It was a pathetic game played by funders on the one hand, and the Palestinian Authority and civil society on the other. Toward the end of this farce, the funders began demanding, as the cost of doing business with Palestinians, normalization practices with Israeli organization. No “final status negotiations”, as we know, were ever even close on the horizon at any point in the process. And, of c0urse, a vision of an unpartitioned Palestine as a solution was, of course verboten.

By the way, ‘The Quartet’ refers to the “foursome of nations and international and supranational entities involved in mediating the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. The Quartet comprises the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and Russia.” This time around, the U.S. is acting unilaterally.

The hope now is that the Palestinian Authority, which has caused a schism between itself and Palestinian grassroots and the international solidarity movement as a result of the 1990s Oslo arrangements, will now be able to extricate itself from that unfortunate vise and find a way to avoid jumping into the fire.

*

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

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

While a price placed on the Earth, estimated at $5000 trillion (New Formula Values Earth), belongs to the unthinkable, the haggle by conservatives over the price of mitigation of climate change underpins the reality of the Faustian Bargain, manifested by extreme weather events (Fig. 1).Under a plethora of misconceptions and cover-ups the current elections take little account of the scientific evidence, with greenhouse gas level reaching 411.97ppm CO₂ and more than 460ppm CO₂-equivalent (CO₂+methane+nitric oxide).

This is just below the 500-600 ppm stability threshold of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. A slow-down or arrest of carbon emissions is no longer sufficient to stabilize the climate, because the warming effect of the high greenhouse gas level is triggering amplifying feedback effects from land, oceans, melting ice sheets and permafrost. As the Arctic warms at twice the rate of lower latitudes and thereby the jet stream and polar boundary are weakening, cold air masses penetrate southward and warm air masses penetrate northward, ensuing in further melting and leading to intensification of extreme weather events.

Fig. 1. (a) distribution of extreme natural events 2017; (b) Number of natural catastrophes 1980-2016. Munich-Re. See this

All but ignored by the main parties and in a sense by the mainstream media:

• The conservatives’ ideology could not have been expressed more clearly than when the current PM introduced a lump of coal into parliament as an ideological statement.
• The opportunism of the alternative government is manifested in accepting the mining and export of coal.
• Even the Greens appear to hesitate in conveying the full science-based consequences of the climate catastrophe to the public, as to not to scare voters.
• The culture of the mainstream media hinges on political, economic and social issues, much less on science and nature, hence a bias away from the underlying factors of global warming and environmental destruction.

Between 1870 and 2014 cumulative emissions totaled about 545 billion tons of carbon (GtC), global annual mean CO₂concentration having increased by more than 47% since the start of the Industrial Revolution.  CO₂emissions are partitioned among the atmosphere (~230 GtC or 42%), ocean (~155 GtC or 28%) and land (~160 GtC or 29%). This represents the largest transfer of carbon from the Earth crust to the atmosphere since the Paleocene-Eocene boundary thermal maximum (PETM) 56 million years ago.

Further transfer of carbon from the known fossil fuel reserve (larger than 3000 GtC) to the atmosphere is threatening a fundamental shift of state in the terrestrial climate, exceeding the stability threshold of the large ice sheets and trigger amplifying feedbacks from land (desiccation of vegetation and fires), ocean (decreased sequestration of CO₂), melting ice sheets and permafrost.

Fig. 2. Fossil fuel CO₂emissions and carbon content. (2.12 GtC = 1 ppm atmospheric CO₂). Estimates of reserves (profitable to extract at current prices) and resources (potentially recoverable with advanced technology and/or at higher prices) are the mean of estimates of Energy. Hansen et al. 2013. See this

The principal method of “manufactured consent” is the Big Lie, articulated by George Orwell as Newspeak, “a controlled language of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary, meant to limit the freedom of thought, personal identity, self-expression, free will, that threatens the ideology of the régime”. Contemporary examples intended to cover-up on the increasing carbon saturation of the terrestrial atmosphere include:

• A climate change denial industry well-funded by fossil fuel corporations and mouthpieces in the media and government is proceeding unabated, disowning the basic laws of physics (the blackbody radiation law of Stefan Boltzmann, Planck and Kirchhoff and direct observations in nature by the peer reviewed scientific literature and the IPCC).
• The common misconception as if restriction of carbon emissions is in itself sufficient to arrest global warming, as unfortunately the stage has been reached when it is no longer sufficient and CO₂draw-down efforts need to be undertaken as well as sharp cutting in emissions in order to stabilize the climate.
• The extraterritorial drilling and the export of fossil fuels are hardly mentioned. In Norway the limits on domestic emissions cannot hide ocean drilling while in Australia coal export results in approximately twice as much the domestic emissions.
• Politicians frequently talk about the future of the economy, prosperity, and children. Unfortunately the rate and scale of global warming in the 21^st century pose serious questions on such  predictions.

Current global warming is expressed by a series of extreme events (Fig. 1) around the world, including both sharp rises in temperature as well as sharp freeze events induced by flow of ice melt water from melting ice sheets and penetration of polar fronts through a weakened Arctic Jet stream boundary. A 3 to 4 degrees Celsius warming, projected by the IPCC toward the end of the 21^stcentury, represents an absolute calamity on a geological scale, exceeding those of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) at 56 million years ago. Whereas the onset of the PETM is estimated at approximately ~10,000 years long or less, the rate of the Anthropocene global warming is more extreme, i.e. 1.5^oC over the continents in less than 250 years.

Only a global effort at down-draw (sequestering) of atmospheric carbon, if successful, may be able to arrest this trend, a measure hardly considered by the powers that be. As nations spend $trillions on armaments and war, including nuclear missiles, which are the very resources needed to protect the environment, bar lip service and non-binding agreements governments are now presiding over the demise of much of nature and human civilization.

*

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

Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and Paleo-climate science, Australia National University (ANU) School of Anthropology and Archaeology, ANU Planetary Science Institute, ANU Climate Change Institute, Honorary Associate Professor, Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence, University of Queensland. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Takver/flickr/cc

The Following text is the last section of

The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War,

by the Italian Committee No War No NATO

*

Documentation presented at the International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of NATO, Florence, April 7, 2019

In the course of the next two weeks, Global Research will publish the 16 sections of this important document, which will also be available as an E-book.

*
Contents 

1. NATO is born from the Bomb
2. In the post-Cold War, NATO is renewed
3. NATO demolishes the Yugoslav state
4. NATO expands eastward to Russia
5. US and NATO attack Afghanistan and Iraq
6. NATO demolishes the Libyan state
7. The US/NATO war to demolish Syria
8. Israel and the Emirates in NATO
9. The US/NATO orchestration of the coup in Ukraine
10. US/NATO escalation in Europe
11. Italy, the aircraft carrier on the war front
12. US and NATO reject the UN treaty and deploy new nuclear weapons in Europe
13. US and NATO sink the INF Treaty
14. The Western American Empire plays the war card
15. The US/NATO planetary war system
16. Exiting the war system of NATO

***

NATO-Exit

1. While the acceleration of ongoing conflicts increases the risk of a great war that, with the use of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, would jeopardize the very existence of humanity and planet Earth, It is vitally important to multiply efforts to get out of the war system. This raises the question of Italy’s membership in NATO.

2. There are those who say that one can stay in NATO while preserving his autonomy of choice, meaning having the possibility to decide from time to time in the national parliament whether or not to participate in a specific initiative of the Atlantic Alliance. It’s an illusion or worse. The North-Atlantic Council has established the NATO rules in which “there is no vote or majority decision”.  “Decisions are taken unanimously and by mutual agreement”, meaning in agreement with the United States of America, which they are entitled to by the right of controlling the position of Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and other key commands, including that of the Nuclear Planning Group.

3. In the great media spectacle of politics, magicians and acrobats launch appeals for a world without nuclear weapons, which is currently impossible, but they do nothing to achieve what today would be possible: a decisive political battle to free Italy from nuclear weapons, which do not serve our security but expose us to increasing risks. Taking a real step forward towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons is the only way in which Italy could really contribute to defusing the escalation that leads to nuclear war,.

4. To do this, we need to fight in the open for Italy to stop violating the non-proliferation treaty it has ratified, requiring the United States to immediately remove its nuclear weapons from our national territory. By doing so, Italy would adhere to the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

5. The principles of our Constitution and our real national interests make indispensable the removal from our national territory not only nuclear weapons, but U.S. and NATO bases under US command. In other words, the Big Taboo that dominates the political and institutional world must be broken, clearly indicating the goal to be achieved: Italy’s exit from NATO and NATO from Italy in order to contribute to the dissolution of the Atlantic Alliance and  any other military alliance.  It may be an objective considered crazy by those who see the Atlantic Alliance as something sacred and untouchable and be considered dangerous by those who know that by putting themselves against NATO, they put their political careers at risk. It may also be considered impossible by those who think that a sovereign and neutral Italy cannot exist.

6. The obstacles that stand in the way of achieving this goal are enormous. The dominant power bases its strength not only on political, economic and military instruments, but on the control of minds, made possible by a pervasive media that, above all through television, leads us to believe that only what is seen exists and what is not seen does not exist. The control of minds through the dominant media apparatus allows politicans, on the one hand, to reassure public opinion by hiding real threats, and on the other to alarm it by making holograms of dangerous enemies appear, so as to justify rearmament policies, military operations and wars, justifying at the same time a military expenditure that in Italy amounts to about 70 million euros a day and, according to the commitments made in NATO, will have to rise to around 100 million euros a day. And, again as a result of mind control, there is the spectacle of those who have supported the wars that have demolished entire states (the last one in Libya) and have caused dramatic mass exodus now in the front row welcoming the victims of these same wars with open arms.

7. The vast majority, therefore, know nothing or almost nothing about the mechanisms that determine the increasingly rapid escalation of war, making the scenario of the third (and last) world war ever more real: the thermonuclear one. It is spoken of in small circles of “experts”, in “gray rooms” (with reference to the color of hair as a person ages) from which the young are largely absent. It’s about getting out of the closet, finding ways and languages to make people understand that time is running out, that it is absolutely necessary to move while we have time. What to do is in the hands of each of us.

8. In the face of impending danger, we must show that there is still an Italy that remembers, not only in words, its own Constitution; an Italy for which the word “sovereignty” is not just a term for political change; an Italy that refuses to remain caged in an alliance that under foreign command damages us and brings us to the brink of catastrophe; an Italy capable of emerging from the anti-historical vision of a West perched in defense of its supremacy; an Italy capable of playing an active role in the construction of a multipolar world in which the aspirations of peoples for freedom and social justice are based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

*

This text was translated from the Italian document which was distributed to participants at the April 7 Conference. It does not include sources and references.

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

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

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

.

.

If, like us, this is a future you wish to avoid, please help sustain Global Research’s activities by making a donation or taking out a membership now!

Click to donate or click here to become a member of Global Research.

*     *     *

Washington Pushes to Brink of War against Iran

By Bill Van Auken, May 15, 2019

The abrupt trip staged by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Brussels to push Washington’s hard line against Iran, combined with the deployment of still more US military assets to the Persian Gulf, point to Washington’s calculated escalation of a war crisis in the region.

Warnings of ‘Gulf of Tonkin 2.0’ as Trump Officials Blame Iran for Oil Tanker Attacks

By Jake Johnson, May 15, 2019

The military plan was reportedly crafted by Bolton, who last week used the routine deployment of a U.S. aircraft carrier and bomber task force to threaten Iran with “relentless force” if it attacks U.S. forces. Bolton did not cite any evidence indicating Iran was planning such an attack.

White House Reviews US Military Plan for 120,000 Troops for Iran War

By Jason Ditz, May 15, 2019

John Bolton ordered the Pentagon to come up with an “updated” plan for getting more American troops into the Middle East to fight a war against Iran. The plans are in now, according to officials, who say that the options envision 120,000 US ground troops in the Middle East.

The Media’s Handling of Bolton’s Iran Threats, Recalls the Run-Up to the Iraq War

By Ben Armbruster, May 14, 2019

Media-savvy U.S. government officials, political operatives, and lawmakers and their staffs from all political parties and ideological persuasions have no doubt, throughout the history of our great country, duped a fair-minded but unwitting reporter into writing a juicy story in order to get a piece of information into the public bloodstream without their fingerprints on it.

Maximum Pressure in the Strait of Hormuz: The US-Iran Standoff

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, May 14, 2019

The Iran-US standoff is finding a surge of increments, provocations and howlers.  Since the Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 Iran Nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) last year, Tehran has gnawed and scratched at the arrangements.

Pre-emptive Nuclear War: The Role of Israel in Triggering an Attack on Iran

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 11, 2019

The stockpiling and deployment of advanced weapons systems directed against Iran started in the immediate wake of the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq. From the outset, these war plans were led by the U.S. in liaison with NATO and Israel.

Why the U.S. Labeled Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a Terrorist Organization

By Prof. Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, May 10, 2019

It can be readily demonstrated that the proffered U.S. justifications for labeling Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization are no more than hare-brained excuses designed to put further pressure on the Iranian people in pursuit of its long-standing policy of regime change from within.

*

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

Featured image is from The Duran

The abrupt trip staged by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Brussels to push Washington’s hard line against Iran, combined with the deployment of still more US military assets to the Persian Gulf, point to Washington’s calculated escalation of a war crisis in the region.

Late Monday, the New York Times posted an article under the headline “White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War.” The article cited as sources “more than half a dozen national security officials” and reported that a meeting of President Trump’s top national security aides last week discussed a plan to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East.

The spark for an all-out conflict can come from any one of a number of staged provocations, including the alleged sabotage of two Saudi oil tankers and two other vessels off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) reported on Sunday.

Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih stressed that one of the Saudi tankers that was allegedly damaged was en route to pick up Saudi oil to take to the United States, a detail apparently highlighted to make the case that “US interests” were at stake in the incident.

Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton and other US officials have repeatedly vowed to take “swift and decisive” military action in defense of US interests in the oil-rich region. They have threatened to unleash “unrelenting” force against Iran in retaliation for any action alleged to be carried out by a wide array of forces dubbed by Washington as Iranian “proxies,” ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and various Shia militias in Iraq and Syria.

The alleged sabotage of the four vessels took place in the Gulf of Oman, east of Fujairah, a major oil port that lies approximately 85 miles south of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which passes roughly one-third of the world’s oil transported by sea.

Saudi and UAE officials indicated that there were no casualties and no oil spills resulting from the alleged sabotage. A video posted online showed a hole torn into the hull of a Norwegian-owned ship at its waterline.

The timing of the incident dovetailed neatly with the US escalation of tensions in the region. It came just days after the May 9 warning issued by the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) that commercial ships, including oil tankers, could be targeted in the growing buildup to war.

“Iran or its proxies could respond by targeting commercial vessels, including oil tankers, or US military vessels in the Red Sea, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, or the Persian Gulf,” the MARAD statement said.

Iranian officials expressed concern over the incident. Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Moussavi described the incident as “lamentable” and “worrying” and called for a thorough investigation. Moussavi also warned countries of the Persian Gulf to stay vigilant in the face of potential “adventurism by foreign players” or any “conspiracy orchestrated by ill-wishers” to undermine maritime security.

There has been no clear explanation from either the UAE or the Saudi monarchy of what exactly took place in the Gulf of Oman. The involvement of covert operations aimed at creating the pretext for war, either on the part of Washington or its two principal regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia itself, both of which have long sought to bring the US into a war with Iran, is a very real possibility.

One thing is certain. Nothing coming from the US government or its propaganda servants in the corporate media regarding the crisis in the Persian Gulf can be believed. The pretexts for war this time around will prove as fabricated as Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” or the lies about a US warship being attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin that were used to justify the War in Vietnam.

The Trump administration has continued to escalate its military intervention in the region, dispatching a Patriot missile battery to the Persian Gulf along with a Navy amphibious assault ship. This follows last week’s arrival in the Red Sea of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier battle group, as well as the landing of a bomber strike wing consisting of four B-52s at the US Al Udeid airbase in Qatar.

The Pentagon announced on Monday that the B-52s had carried out their “first mission… to defend American forces and interests in the region,” consisting of operations near Iranian airspace.

Such is the war threat that even a White House reporter questioned Trump during his Monday appearance with the far-right prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán: “Are you at war with Iran? Are you seeking regime change there?”

Trump did not deny the looming war threat, declaring:

“If they do anything, they will suffer greatly. We’ll see what happens with Iran.”

Underscoring the brazen recklessness of the US drive to war, Secretary Pompeo abruptly shifted his travel plans for the second time in a week, canceling a trip to Moscow to fly to Brussels and effectively crash a scheduled meeting of European foreign ministers called to discuss their response to the Persian Gulf crisis.

The US military buildup as well as the tightening of US sanctions described by the Trump administration as “maximum pressure” against Iran, designed to suffocate the country’s economy and drive its oil exports down to zero, have sharpened tensions between Washington and its erstwhile European allies.

Since the beginning of the month, Washington has withdrawn waivers that had allowed China, South Korea, Japan, India and Turkey to continue purchasing oil from Iran, and has imposed a new round of sanctions aimed at halting all exports of Iranian iron, steel, aluminum and copper.

The US and the major European powers have been divided since Trump unilaterally abrogated the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement reached between Iran and the US, Russia, China, Germany, the UK and France. Washington reimposed sanctions that are tantamount to a state of war. The European governments, as well as the UN nuclear inspection agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, have insisted that Iran has remained in compliance with the agreement, which was supposed to combine strict limits on the Iranian nuclear program with the lifting of economic sanctions.

The issue for the Trump administration, however, has never been the nuclear deal, but rather the drive for regime-change, i.e., the restoration of a US-backed puppet dictatorship in the oil-rich country like that of the Shah.

As Bolton, one of the architects of the current military buildup, put it a year before becoming national security adviser:

“The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran… The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself.”

Pompeo’s meetings in Brussels with the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and the foreign ministers of Germany, France and the UK only underscored the transatlantic tensions over Iran. Mogherini said the European representatives had stressed that the crisis in the Persian Gulf had produced a “crucial delicate moment” in which “maximum restraint and avoiding any escalation on the military side” was necessary.

She said the European ministers “continue to fully support the nuclear deal with Iran,” meaning the normalization of trade and investment. She added that this included the “operationalization” of the so-called Instrument in Support of Trade Exchange (INSTEX), which is supposed to create a non-dollar direct payment channel with Iran to circumvent US sanctions. Transactions through this exchange, she claimed, would begin within the next few weeks.

Tehran last week put the European signatories to the accord on notice that it would resume uranium enrichment at a higher grade within 60 days unless they took measures to allow Iran to export its oil and access financial markets. European companies and banks, which had previously seen an opportunity for exploiting the country’s oil wealth, have withdrawn in the face of threats to be frozen out of the US market.

The European powers’ opposition to the US drive toward war against Iran is based not on any concern for the fate of 80 million Iranians, but rather on the pursuit of their own imperialist interests in the region. The conflict exposes fault lines that point to the danger of a new military conflict in the Persian Gulf becoming the antechamber of a third, nuclear, world war.

*

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

Featured image: US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Suez Canal (Source: WSWS)

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

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Nakba Day, the Day of the Catastrophe, is commemorated on the 15th May, the day after the Jewish terrorist Ben Gurion unilaterally proclaimed the Israeli Declaration of Independence on a gaping fault line of delegitimisation.

1. The Balfour Declaration illegally promising to facilitate a Jewish national homeland in Palestine with the stipulation – “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” is null and void:

“Its promise to use its best endeavours to facilitate the Zionist project could be interpreted as a promise to give to the Zionists what Britain did not have to give, in violation of the established legal maxim nemo dat quod non habet(nobody can give what he does not possess).”    Might over Right, Adel Safty, p.22 (A highly recommended read.)

2. It follows then that Palestine’s independence enshrined in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which is still binding for all members states of the UN under UN Charter Article 80, remains pending. Palestine was a Class A Mandate guaranteeing self-determination:

“Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.”

3. According to eminent professor of international law, Francis Boyle, the UN had (and has) no legal power to approve or enforce partition under Resolution 181 after Britain terminated its administration of Palestine on 15 May 1948,

“The United Nations had no business offering the nation of one people to the people of many nations. Its General Assembly had neither the legal nor the legislative powers to impose such a resolution or to convey title of a territory; Articles 10, 11 and 14 of the UN Charter bestows the right on the General Assembly merely to recommend resolutions.”

4. Reasonably, Palestinians opposed the illegal partition just as any western nation would if a rogue UN gave the nod to partition it, but surely without the generosity of Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League, who nobly offered equality between Arab and Jew,

“We are fighting for an Arab Palestine. Whatever the outcome the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like. In areas where they predominate they will have complete autonomy.”

5. Therefore, Israel’s unilateral declaration of Independence, ‘citing Resolution 181 as constituting “recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State”’ has no legal basis:

“U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 neither legally partitioned Palestine nor conferred upon the Zionist leadership any legal authority to unilaterally declare the existence of the Jewish state of Israel. It merely recommended that the UNSCOP partition plan be accepted and implemented by the concerned parties. Naturally, to have any weight of law, the plan, like any contract, would have to have been formally agreed upon by both parties, which it was not. Nor could the General Assembly have legally partitioned Palestine or otherwise conferred legal authority for the creation of Israel to the Zionist leadership, as it simply had no such authority to confer.” Jeremy Hammond

6. Today, the Israeli unilateral declaration and UN recognition of the Jewish State of Israel sets a free-for-all sovereignty precedent. It provides legal loopholes making  all nations vulnerable to spurious ancient religious/ historic claims by migrant minorities.

For example, Catholic immigrants, armed by Catholic nations, may unilaterally proclaim the USA as the State of Catholic Christendom and then initiated the New Crusades against Americans to expel and deport the Protestants, Jews etc to Canada and elsewhere. Or British Italians and modern Italians could reclaim England citing 350 years of Roman occupation.

7. The 71 years of the Palestinian Nakba since the brutal establishment of the Jewish State of Terror is a catastrophe for the Jewish colonists and their descendants: it transformed the once decent surviving victims of European antisemitism and the Holocaust into terrorists, killers, thieves, racists, and liars – into the mirror image of their Nazi persecutors. And the same perverted brush tainted the UN and Western governments as collaborators of the sickest and most sadistic society in the world.

Israel has compelled the criminalisation of Holocaust denial in Europe and elsewhere even though it has enacted domestic laws criminalising Nakba commemoration. The flaccid reaction of world governments to Israel’s galling double standards is as ethically contemptible as Israel’s effrontery to expunge an oppressed people and their lineal land.

8. Throughout the 71 years of systematic Jewish terrorism, the Jewish occupiers have been  resolutely confronted by their nemesis – Palestine, steadfast and eternal,

“I tell the Zionist usurper entity that your terrorism, your massacres, your bullets, your bulldozers, your walls and your bombs will not break the will of my children, will not kill me, for I will continue to resist, I will continue to exist, I am here to stay because this land is me. I am Palestine from the River to the Sea, from Ras In-Naqourah to Im-Ir-Rishrash. Ana Falsteen min il bahar lal nahr, min Ras In-Naqourah la Im-Ir-Rishrash.” Reham Alhelsi

9. Zionists are doomed not to live in a promised land for like all the invaders of historic Palestine, they too will pass. Palestinians, however, wherever they are scattered, live in their beloved Palestine:

“They [zionists] will never comprehend that it’s a clear-cut case, a hopeless case: it is a case of eternal love, of an unbreakable bond…. It is a case of a people, a land, an identity… it is a case of Palestine, her culture and people…. It is a case of being Palestinian. zionists and co will never comprehend that it is a hopeless case of eternal love because Palestine is us and we are Palestine.” Reham Alhelsi

10. The chimerical two state solution is dead. Ironically Israel’s rapacious settlement expansion killed it. Palestine, inevitably has come full circle; support for a one state where Palestinians and Israelis “live under the same constitution and same social contract that provides them with freedom, justice and dignity for all.” is gaining traction.

*

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

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters and editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry, I remember my name. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of  Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.

Featured image is from the author

At the front gate of the residential Al-Qamar building, which was flattened by an Israeli air strike a week ago, a Palestinian band arrives with their instruments. They sweep away small stones and building remnants as they prepare to start their concert. The concert in Gaza is being held at the same time as a similar concert was starting just 70 kilometers away in Tel Aviv’s Charles Clore park to kick off the week-long Eurovision song contest.

Holding a guitar, Mohammed Ukasheh, 28, launches into “Gaza Message” with his both of his drummers. The song calls for the Eurovision contest to be boycotted.

The band start singing lyrics of the Lebanese iconic singer Wadih al-Safi, under the destroyed building’s crumbling roof.

Oh, immigrants return… Homeland is precious
Listen to the voice of Palestine… The voice of blame is loudly

I will write your name my country
Above the sun, that does not sets
Nor my sons neither my wealth
Above your love, there is no love

May god brings back our happiness and laughter
And our home filled in smile and happiness

The seven-story building in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in the Gaza City was leveled by six Israeli missiles, when an anonymous Israeli officer gave all tenants in the building five minutes to evacuate. The building had been home to more than 40 residents and commercial tenants including a beauty salon, mini market and tire store.

For the past year, there have been grisly scenes on the Gaza-Israel border where Israel has violently put down the Great March of Return. Palestinian artists called on Eurovision song contestants to boycott the international event that Tel Aviv is hosting this week.

The Gaza Strip-based Palestinian Artists Association said on a brief statement that Israel is using the event to “perpetuate oppression, promote injustice or whitewash a brutal apartheid regime”.

Image on the right: Kamel Musallam (Photo: Mohammed Asad)

The artists cited the killing of more than 60 Palestinian demonstrators at Gaza-Israeli fence on May 14 last year, just two days after Israel won the 2018 edition of Eurovision.

“How can an international event be hosted on the ruins of the Palestinian village Sheikh Munis?,” Kamel Musallam, coordinator of the concert, asked. “Our message to Europe and the US is, both are participating in Gaza bloodshed by taking part in Eurovision,” he added.

Sabreen Juma’a al-Najjar, mother of slain paramedic Razan Al-Najjar, whose killing in June prompted international outrage, was among the dozen of attendees at the Al-Qamar building.

“Israel seeks to whitewashes its lethal acts against the Palestinians by hosting such a musical event, but having a look at one single destroyed building will erase all of Israel’s reputation for democracy and morality,” Juma’a al-Najjar told Mondoweiss. “Why won’t pop superstar Madonna hold her concert at this building, or at the place where Razan was killed near the fence?” she asked.

Image below: Sabreen Juma’a al-Najjar (Photo: Mohammed Asad)

Madonna is scheduled to perform two songs in Tel Aviv to kick Eurovision off despite calls for her to boycott the show.

“Why doesn’t Eurovision arrange an event to let the music of dead, bombed-out buildings, and for the voices of mothers of the slain to be heard?” Juma’a al-Najjar added.

Haaretz has reported that the Israeli military has deployed “extensive” Iron Dome aerial defense batteries and ordered its forces stationed by Gaza to act with greater “restraint” during the Eurovision competition, which will last until Saturday, May 18.

This follows last week’s Israeli attack on Gaza, where 25 Palestinians were killed in the attacks and 800 homes were destroyed. Four Israeli were killed by retaliatory strikes.

Tuesday is also the first anniversary of the United States Embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and the bloody mass protest along the Gaza fence, when scores of Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire.

Wednesday is Nakba Day, when Palestinians commemorate the flight and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees during the hostilities surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.

A concert in the ruins of the al-Qamar building (Photo: Mohammed Asad)

Jamal abu Arar, 61, was unsure that the local concert could “deliver the message.” Abu Arar said that

“music is divided into two; romance for the rich and the killer, while the sounds of artillery and explosions are only for the poor and the victims.”

*

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

Ahmad Kabariti is a freelance journalist based in Gaza.

Featured image: Children watch the concert in the ruins of the al-Qamar building (Photo: Mohammed Asad)

U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo visited the Russian Black Sea city of Sochi for talks with his Russian counterpart Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday after abruptly canceling the first part of his trip to Moscow on Monday in order to brief European leaders in Brussels on his country’s alleged intelligence about so-called Iranian threats in the wider Persian Gulf region.

Pompeo’s trip occurred against the backdrop of the “RussiaGate” scandal being debunked as a conspiracy theory by “deep state” coup plotters within the U.S.’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies, which therefore gave President Donald Trump much more flexibility to handle bilateral affairs with Russia that he originally promised during his 2016 campaign. The American leader preached the need for what would essentially amount to a “New Detente” in order to pragmatically promote his country’s interests, believing that the Obama Administration irresponsibly ruined relations with Russia in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

Pompeo tweeted before the meeting that “on some issues we may agree, on others we may disagree, but when it’s in our national interests, it is our responsibility to find a way forward”, which set the tone for the talks and naturally led to him reaffirming Trump’s intent to improve relations with Russia.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) offers a ball of the 2018 football World Cup to U.S. President Donald Trump during a joint press conference after a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, July 16, 2018. /VCG Photo

The most important from a Russian perspective are the simmering crisis with Iran regarding the nuclear deal and regional attacks that the U.S. blames on its proxies, the ongoing conflict in Syria, the rolling regime change operation against Venezuela, the DPRK nuclear negotiations, Ukraine’s new president, and the possibility of a new nuclear accord with the U.S.

In other words, Russia is most interested in candidly discussing geopolitical and strategic issues to identify the most likely areas of mutual compromise between it and the U.S. as part of a comprehensive “New Detente” that could stabilize the emerging Multipolar World Order and lift the Western sanctions against Moscow.

Given how sensitive these talks are, scant details were leaked about their contents, though the overall atmosphere was visibly upbeat and the rhetoric coming from both sides was pragmatic and promising.

Therefore, observers can only speculate about the content of the “package deals” that might have been discussed concerning quid pro quos on each of these issues (ex: Russia encouraging Iran’s dignified but “phased withdrawal” from Syria in exchange for America encouraging Ukraine’s new president to abide by the Minsk Agreements), but it should not be taken for granted that some degree of progress was made behind the scenes.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during their talks in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Russia, May 14, 2019. /VCG Photo

Russia and the U.S. are competing in many theaters all across the world, so coming to an understanding on each of these issues through mutual compromises will be beneficial not only for their own individual interests but also for the countries in which their rivalry is unfolding. Syria and Ukraine were literally torn apart because of this, though both of them might finally see a lasting and sustainable peace if these powers decide to reach a deal.

Venezuela, for its part, might be saved from the same fate if an agreement can be reached there too as part of this “New Detente”. On the global level, there’s no reason for Russia and the U.S. to enter into another costly and destabilizing arms race; hence why both parties expressed sincere interest in negotiating an extension to the new start.

Taken together, Russian-American relations can become a stabilizing force in International Affairs if a “New Detente” is eventually reached and each of them finally recognizes that they have more to gain by compromising with one another in a win-win manner than competing in a zero-sum one.

*

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

This article was originally published on CGTN.

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

Featured image is from CGTN

It is openly admitted that the current Right-wing Israeli government is the key driver of the Trump administration’s intention to destroy the economy of the sovereign state of Iran – one of the world’s oldest civilisations – by a strategy of compulsory implementation of global US trade sanctions which include a total embargo on Iranian oil to any NATO country or any other nation currently trading with the United States.

Since May 2018, the Trump administration has withdrawn from the JCPOA major powers agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program, re-imposed punishing sanctions on Tehran, demanded that allies choose between Iranian oil and trading with the American market, and declared the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to be a terrorist organization.

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement and re-impose sanctions jeopardizes the landmark arms control agreement, under which Iran dismantled much of its nuclear program and international inspectors gained extensive access to monitor its compliance. The agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was a vital peace initiative for the Gulf region and the Middle East, is now dead.

Of course, the state of Israel’s huge nuclear weapons arsenals are not subject to any UN inspection or compliance with international agreements. It is the world’s only undeclared nuclear state and possesses stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction estimated to include up to 400 nuclear and/or chemical warheads.

It was reported that at a meeting of President Trump’s top national security aides last week, the administration published an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 American troops to the Middle East should Iran accelerate work on nuclear weapons as a consequence of US attempts to destroy its economy. It is unclear whether any Israeli troops would be involved initially but cruise missiles would be deployed from its German- supplied nuclear-armed submarine fleet and missiles from its US-built F-35i bomber squadrons.

US Secretary of State Pompeo’s efforts to recruit European countries to back the administration’s aggressive posture on Iran are being received with disdain bordering on contempt and Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, called for “maximum restraint” after meeting in Brussels with Mr. Pompeo, who is a proponent of provoking maximum pressure against Iran.

If this continues to its logical conclusion it means that there will inevitably be an attack initially by Israeli cruise missiles with nuclear warheads against Iranian targets in an attempt to demolish Iranian deep defence installations and by the US 5th Fleet in Bahrain to keep open the strategic waterway through the Strait of Hormuz.

Such a nuclear attack would signal the start of WW3 as other nuclear states such as India and Pakistan, France and Britain, China and Russia, take up opposing positions. As for the UK, as a supporter of the Netanyahu regime it will continue its bilateral trade with Israel from the safety of its distance. However, the Middle East as a whole including Israel will also suffer the catastrophic effect of ionising radiation upon food and water supplies and upon the human population. Casualties could run into hundreds of thousands on both sides as the conflict escalates and extends into Europe.

Now is the time for the EU to act urgently and decisively to divorce itself from the US-Israeli warmongering that is becoming such a dangerous threat to global peace, and the United Nations Security Council must intervene without delay to avoid a catastrophic nuclear war.

*

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

Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NDTV

The alleged chemical attack on Douma in April 2018 was the pretext for airstrikes on Syria by France, UK and US. The final report on the alleged attack published by the OPCW left unexplained why its Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) had made no engineering assessments during its visit to Douma in April 2018, when experts could have inspected the sites with cylinders in position, rather than six months later when inspection was no longer possible and assessments had to rely on images and measurements obtained by others. A Briefing Note by the Working Group on Syria Propaganda & Media highlighted this as an obvious anomaly.

OPCW staff members have communicated with the Working Group.

We have learned that an investigation was undertaken by an engineering sub-team of the FFM, beginning with on-site inspections in April-May 2018, followed by a detailed engineering analysis including collaboration on computer modelling studies with two European universities. The report of this investigation was excluded from the published Final Report of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission, which referred only to assessments sought from unidentified “engineering experts” commissioned in October 2018 and obtained in December 2018.

A copy of a 15-page Executive Summary of the report entitled “Engineering Assessment of two cylinders observed at the Douma incident” is posted here. (Anyone who wishes to post their own link to the document is kindly requested to download the document and link from their own server, so as not to overload the Working Group’s.)

The Working Group has provided a commentary on the document: see ‘Assessment by the engineering sub-team of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission investigating the alleged chemical attack in Douma in April 2018‘, by Paul McKeigue, David Miller and Piers Robinson.

Some of the commentary’s key points:

• As the Working Group has repeatedly emphasised, evidence can be evaluated only by comparison of competing hypotheses. A key weakness of the published FFM Final Report was that no competing hypotheses were considered. The FFM’s unpublished Engineering Assessment does not make this error: competing hypotheses are clearly set out in advance.
• The conclusion of the Engineering Assessment is unequivocal: the “alternative hypothesis” that the cylinders were placed in position is “the only plausible explanation for observations at the scene”.
• These findings establish beyond reasonable doubt that the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April 2018 was staged.
• This raises the question of where and how did the victims seen in the images recorded at location 2 die?
• The conclusion appears inescapable that the staging of the Douma incident entailed mass murder of at least 35 civilians to provide the bodies at Location 2.

Furthermore, we note that the Douma incident was the first alleged chemical attack in Syria where OPCW investigators were able to carry out an unimpeded on-site inspection. Since previous OPCW Fact-Finding Missions did not include on-site inspections, the finding that the Douma incident was staged may cast doubt on the findings of those earlier FFMs.

*

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

Is the Trump administration attempting to concoct a false pretext to justify launching a war against Iran?

That question has become increasingly common and urgent among anti-war commentators and activists in recent days as U.S. intelligence officials—without citing any concrete evidence—blamed Iran for reported attacks on Saudi and UAE oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend.

Commentators quickly likened the accusations to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, referring to the “fabricated” event that President Lyndon Johnson used to massively escalate America’s war in Vietnam.

Be ready for Gulf of Tonkin 2.0

War is good for re-election.
And bad for America.#Iran

— Sunjeev Bery (@SunjeevBery) May 13, 2019

“Anyone who knows history of [the] 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident and U.S. escalation in Vietnam should be shocked, alarmed at what’s happening in [the] Persian Gulf, including unverified claims of boat attacks,” Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer tweeted.

Journalist Rania Khalek echoed Bunch, warning that national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “are trying to create a Gulf of Tonkin incident with Iran.”

It’s obvious that Bolton and Pompeo are trying to create a Gulf of Tonkin incident with Iran. When that happens, will media fall in line and amplify whatever false victimhood story this administration pushes to drag us into war?

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) May 14, 2019

According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. officials “didn’t offer details about what led to the assessment” that Iran carried out the attacks on the oil tankers.

“We are in grave danger of being sleepwalked into military confrontation with Iran over an incident that is blamed wrongly on Iran,” author and journalist Gareth Porter said in a statement. “Corporate media have given Bolton and his conniving to achieve such a crisis a free pass.”

As The New Yorker‘s Robin Wright wrote Monday, the United States “has a long history of provoking, instigating, or launching wars based on dubious, flimsy, or manufactured threats,” including in Iraq, Lybia, Vietnam, and elsewhere.

“Today, the question in Washington—and surely in Tehran, too—is whether President Trump is making moves that will provoke, instigate, or inadvertently drag the United States into a war with Iran,” Wright wrote. “The problem, as U.S. history proves, is that the momentum of confrontation is harder to reverse with each escalatory step.”

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump said he’s “hearing little stories about Iran”—apparently referring to U.S. intelligence officials’ unsubstantiated claim that Iran was behind the alleged tanker attacks. Iran has denied any involvement.

“If they do anything, they will suffer greatly,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens with Iran.”

The president’s threat came just hours before the New York Times reported late Monday that the president last week reviewed a plan to send 120,000 U.S. ground troops to the Middle East in the event that Iran launches an “attack” on American forces or moves to develop a nuclear weapon.

The military plan was reportedly crafted by Bolton, who last week used the routine deployment of a U.S. aircraft carrier and bomber task force to threaten Iran with “relentless force” if it attacks U.S. forces. Bolton did not cite any evidence indicating Iran was planning such an attack.

Observers warned that the Trump administration’s actions have moved the two nations dangerously close to an all-out military conflict, which analysts have warned could be even more devastating than the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“John Bolton is trying to provoke the Iranians to do something so that he can get the war with Iran that he’s been looking for, for more than 20 years,” Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), said Tuesday in an interview on The Real News.

“He’s, of course, presenting it as an effort to scare and deter the Iranians,” Parsi said. “I don’t think that has worked at all, but it has created a scenario in which everyone is now very worried that some form of an accidental war at a minimum is very likely because you have too many U.S. forces and Iranian forces into too small of an area.”

“And then you have John Bolton in the White House, who has a track record of lying, cheating, and fabricating evidence in order to start wars,” Parsi added, referring to Bolton’s role in the invasion of Iraq.

Progressive members of Congress joined the chorus of voices speaking out against the Trump administration’s march to war with Iran.

“The one thing we learned from the last time we sent 120,000 American troops to the Middle East is don’t send 120,000 American troops to the Middle East,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote on Twitter.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 presidential candidate, warned that a war with Iran “would be an unmitigated disaster.”

“We must stop Trump and his national security advisor, John Bolton—someone who likes endless wars,” Sanders tweeted.

*

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

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

Featured image is from FAIR

For the third time in less than a year, a California jury has delivered a stinging blow to Bayer-Monsanto, finding that the company’s Roundup weedkiller caused cancer in a California couple and awarding them a staggering $2.055 billion in damages.

Today the jury in Alameda County Superior Court found that glyphosate, the signature ingredient in Roundup, was the cause of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in both Alva and Alberta Pilliod of Livermore, who have used the herbicide since the 1970s.

It is the third trial since August 2018 in which a jury found that glyphosate caused cancer. More than 13,000 similar lawsuits have been filed against the company.

“The cloud hanging over Bayer will only grow bigger and darker, as more juries hear how Monsanto manipulated its own research, colluded with regulators and intimidated scientists to keep secret the cancer risks from glyphosate,” said EWG President Ken Cook.

Bayer has seen its stock price plummet 40 percent since it purchased Monsanto last year for $63 billion. At its recent annual meeting, a shareholder revolt ensued, with more than half of the shareholders voting against absolving management for its decision to acquire the St. Louis-based seed and pesticide company.

“By now, most Bayer executives, its board and shareholders must all be questioning the decision to acquire Monsanto and its mounting liability over its cancer-causing weedkiller,” Cook said. “Bayer must also wonder if Monsanto deployed the same underhanded tactics during their courtship that courtroom disclosures have shown permeated its corporate culture: deep deception, prevarication and denial in a headlong pursuit of profit, human and environmental consequences be damned.”

Glyphosate is the most heavily used herbicide in the world. People who are not farm workers or groundskeepers are being exposed to the cancer-causing chemical.

A 2015 EWG analysis mapped the year-to-year growth in glyphosate use on American farmland from 1992 to 2012. According to the Department of Agriculture, in 2014, approximately 240 million pounds of glyphosate were sprayed in the U.S. As a result of widespread use, glyphosate has now been found to contaminate air, water and soil across vast expanses of the U.S. It also shows up in the food Americans eat every day.

Two separate rounds of laboratory tests commissioned last year by EWG found glyphosate in nearly every sample of popular oat-based cereals and other oat-based food marketed to children. The brands in which glyphosate was detected included several cereals and breakfast bars made by General Mills and Quaker. More than 236,000 consumers have signed EWG’s petition calling on General Mills and Quaker to stop using oats sprayed with glyphosate.

Joined by nearly 20 food and nutrition companies, EWG petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to sharply limit glyphosate residues allowed on oats and prohibit the pesticide’s use as a pre-harvest drying agent, which is how the cancer-causing weedkiller gets into popular oat-based breakfast cereals.

*

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

Featured image is from EWG

John Bolton ordered the Pentagon to come up with an “updated” plan for getting more American troops into the Middle East to fight a war against Iran. The plans are in now, according to officials, who say that the options envision 120,000 US ground troops in the Middle East.

Incredibly, this option appears to just be the start of the war, as officials say that the 120,000 plan does not include a US ground invasion of Iran. Officials concede that the ground invasion would require far more troops.

Instead, the 120,000 is just  the next step in the ongoing US escalations toward war, and is envisioned as a response to any Iranian threat on US forces or interests, or any hint of acceleration of its nuclear program.

US officials quoted in the media about the plan are everywhere and always supportive of the idea, and the underlying narrative of an “Iranian threat.” Some argue that the fact that the Pentagon would send 120,000 troops and not even invade proves how big the threat is, while others say that the 120,000 troops would be a “scare tactic” to warn Iran off any aggressive moves.

This is quite contrary to Europe’s take on US policy, with European officials calling on the US to exercise some restraint, and expressing concern that US moves are liable to miscalculate and start a war through sheer accident.

*

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

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Featured image is from NEO

“It is hard to overstate the significance of this revelation,” tweets former British MP George Galloway of a new report by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM). “The war-machine has now been caught red-handed in a staged chemical weapons attack for the purposes of deceiving our democracies into what could have turned into a full-scale war amongst the great-powers.”

“An important #Douma #Syria ‘Assad chemical weapon attack’ development and yet more evidence to suggest the ‘attack’ was staged, as it’s now revealed that @OPCW suppressed expert engineers report that found the cylinders were likely not dropped from the air,” tweets former Scotland Yard detective and counterterrorism intelligence officer Charles Shoebridge.

“The engineering assessment confirms our earlier conclusion,” the excellent Moon of Alabama blog writes. “The whole scene as depicted by ‘rebels’ and propaganda organs was staged. The more than 34 dead on the scene were murdered elsewhere under unknown circumstances.”

An important #Douma #Syria ‘Assad chemical weapon attack’ development and yet more evidence to suggest the ‘attack’ was staged, as it’s now revealed that @OPCW suppressed expert engineers report that found the cylinders were likely not dropped from the airhttps://t.co/hZCP2Ujlbk

— Charles Shoebridge (@ShoebridgeC) May 13, 2019

The report has grabbed the attention of those who’ve expressed skepticism of establishment Syria narratives because it casts serious doubts on the official story we’ve been told to believe about an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria in April of last year. A document titled “Engineering Assessment of two cylinders observed at the Douma incident” has been leaked to the WGSPM which reveals that an engineering sub-team of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) fact-finding mission in Douma came to conclusions which differ wildly from the OPCW’s official findings on the Douma incident, yet we the public were never permitted to see this assessment.

The assessment’s findings, which you can locate on pages five through eight of the document, put forward multiple hypothetical scenarios in which two gas cylinders could have wound up in the locations(Location 2 and Location 4) that they were photographed and video recorded as having been found after the alleged attack. The assessment concludes that “The dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the cylinders, and the surrounding scene of the incidents, were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder being delivered from an aircraft. In each case the alternative hypothesis produced the only plausible explanation for observations at the scene.”

The assessment says more thoroughly and technically what I argued in an article last year, that the physics of the air-dropped cylinder narrative make no sense whatsoever. This is a problem, because the reason we were given for the US, UK and France launching airstrikes on Syrian government targets in April of 2018 was that two cylinders full of poison gas had been dropped from aircraft by the Syrian air force and killed dozens of civilians.

The assessment is signed by Ian Henderson, who the WGSPM were able to verify as a longtime OPCW-trained inspection team leader. The OPCW reportedly denied that Henderson was involved in its Douma fact-finding mission, but the WGSPM counters that “This statement is false. The engineering sub-team could not have been carrying out studies in Douma at Locations 2 and 4 unless they had been notified by OPCW to the Syrian National Authority (the body that oversees compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention) as FFM inspectors: it is unlikely that Henderson arrived on a tourist visa.”

So far this is the establishment narrative management machine's only attempt at refuting the latest revelations indicating that the #Douma attack last year was staged. It basically boils down to "They're conspiracy theorists and the official narrative disagrees with them." https://t.co/04iFa24do8

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 13, 2019

Just as interesting as this new report has been the response of the usual establishment Syria narrative managers to it, or rather the lack thereof. NATO narrative management firm Bellingcat, which normally jumps all over these kinds of revelations in an attempt to discredit them, has been maintaining radio silence as of this writing. Its founder, Eliot Higgins, has had nothing to say on the matter other than to retweet a pathetic rebuttal by his mini-me Scott Lucas and take a few childish jabs at me for highlighting this fact.

Scott Lucas’ Facebook post on the WGSPM report remains as of this writing the only attempt from the Syria narrative management machine to address it, and it boils down to nothing more than assertions that the report contradicts the official OPCW narrative (duh) and that the WGSPM are conspiracy theorists. Lucas may have thought it a good idea to author this post believing that he had a more substantial argument than he actually had, but it was pointed out shortly after publication that his claim about Henderson refusing to consider other possible scenarios in his assessment is directly contradicted by the words that are in the assessment, and Lucas was forced to make a hasty revision.

There will be other counter-narratives released by the Syria narrative management machine, to be sure, but the fact that this report has been out for the better part of the day with nary a peep from that lot reveals a great deal about the difficulties they’re having with this one.

We are being lied to about Syria. Anyone who believes unproven assertions about governments targeted for toppling by the US-centralized empire has failed to learn the lessons of history. The Syrian government had literally nothing to gain strategically from using chemical weapons in Douma, a battle it had already won, and knew full well that doing so would provoke an attack from the empire. Douma was occupied by the Al Qaeda-linked Jaysh Al-Islam, who had at that point nothing to lose and everything to gain by staging a false flag attack in a last-ditch attempt to get NATO powers to function as its air force.

If you still believe at this point that the Syrian government dropped poison gas on Douma last year, then I’ve got some Iraqi WMDs to sell you.

*

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

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerrilla poet. Utopia prepper.

Featured image is from Medium

On May 9, a jury in US District Court for Washington, DC found a former US diplomat guilty on 14 counts of threatening me and other employees of the Arab American Institute (AAI) “because of [our] race and ethnicity” and “because of [our] efforts to encourage Arab Americans to participate in the political life in the United States”.

So read the opening of a press release issued by the US Department of Justice (DoJ).

These convictions bring to a close a 12-year long ordeal, during which time the same individual had repeatedly sent emails threatening me, my staff and the Arab-American community. He had already been convicted of the same crime in 2008 for sending threatening e-mails and making phone calls to my office. At that time, he admitted his guilt, saying that he had intended to threaten us and even apologised for his actions. Despite this admission, after serving time in prison and a period on probation, he began threatening us again between 2012 and 2017.

The renewed threats grew in intensity after several terrorist acts that occurred here in the US and abroad. The severity of the language he used caused us deep concern, especially when seen against the backdrop of the increasing frequency of mass shootings occurring here in the US.

The indictment of the defendant cited his repeated use of lines like, “the only good Arab American is a dead Arab American” or “America cleansed of Arab Americans will be America free of terror” or “America will never be safe until America is cleansed of James Zogby…” or “Death to all Arab Americans” or “the Arab American Institute is a terrorist organistion”.

The trial lasted three days, during which time members of my family, my staff and I testified on these threats he had on us, our families and on our ability to do our advocacy work on behalf of our community. After closing arguments, the jury deliberated and the next day they issued their verdict finding the culprit guilty on all of the charges against him.

The DoJ’s press release summed up the case in the following manner:

“Threats aimed at individuals because of their race and national origin have no place in our society and violate federal civil rights laws,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband. “The Department of Justice will continue to hold criminals accountable who commit such acts of hate so that all individuals in this country can engage in civic life and political discourse.”

“Evidence presented at trial established that from 2012 to 2017, [the charged individual] sent over 700 e-mails to AAI employees, culminating in five death threats in 2017. According to court documents, [he] previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to sending threatening emails to AAI employees. Evidence presented at trial showed that [he] used nearly identical language that he admitted were threats in 2008 as he did in 2017.

“According to testimony in court, AAI employees were frightened of [the charged individual], because he had sent them death threats in the past and continued to do so over a decade later. Additionally, according to witness testimony, many AAI employees lived in fear that [he] would follow through his threats and physically harm them. They further testified to the toll it took on them personally and their families and loved ones.”

This is not the first time we have faced threats of violence or actual violence. As I testified in court, I received my first death threat in 1970, my office was fire-bombed in 1980, my friend and colleague, Alex Odeh, was murdered at his office in 1985 and two other individuals were convicted of death threats against me and sentenced to terms in prison in the years since the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

While we, of course, know that the danger of new threats will always be with us, needless to say, we are enormously relieved by these guilty verdicts and are deeply gratified by the tireless efforts made by the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to defend our rights to engage in our advocacy work on behalf of our community and our country without fear of threats of hate-based threats of violence.

*

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

James J. Zogby is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.

Arms manufacturers of old, and many of the current stable, did not care much where their products went.  The profit incentive often came before the patriotic one, and led to such dark suspicions as those voiced by the Nye Committee in the 1930s.  Known formally as the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, the US Senate Committee, chaired by US Senator Gerald Nye (R-ND) supplies a distant echo on the nature of armaments and their influence.

The Nye Committee had one pressing concern: that the United States might fall for the same mistake it did in 1917 in committing to a foreign conflict while fattening the pockets of arms manufacturers.  As Chairman Senator Nye promised,

“When the Senate investigation is over, we shall see that war and preparation for war is not a matter of national honour and national defence, but a matter of profit for the few.”

Despite the current sophisticated state of modern weaponry, along with modern offshoots (cybertools, spyware, the use of malware), the principle of ubiquitous spread is still present.  Companies in the business of developing malware and spyware, modern merchants of disruption and harm, face charges that their products are being used for ill, a nastiness finding its way to hungry security services keen to monitor dissent and target contrarians.  While the scale of their damage may be less than those alleged by Nye’s Munitions Committee, the implications are there: products made are products used; the ethical code can be shelved. 

The NSO Group, a tech outfit based in Herzliya, a stone’s throw from Tel Aviv, specialises in producing such invasive software tools as Pegasus.  The reputation of Pegasus is considerable, supposedly able to access data on targeted phones including switching on their cameras and microphones.

NSO’s spyware merchandise has now attained a certain, viral notoriety. When Mexican investigative journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas was butchered in broad daylight on a street in Culiacán, the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, something reeked.  The killing on May 15, 2017 had been designated a cartel hit, an initially plausible explanation given Valdez’s avid interest in prying into the affairs of organised crime in Sinaloa.  But the smell went further.  As Mexican media outlets reported in June 2017, the government of former president Enrique Peña Nieto had purchased the good merchandise of Pegasus.  Three Mexican agencies had purchased spyware to the tune of $80 million since 2011. 

Since then, Canadian research group Citizen Lab, in collaboration with Mexican digital rights outfit R3D and freedom of expression group Article 19, have made the case that the widow of the slain journalist, Griselda Triana, became a target of Pegasus spyware within 10 days of her husband’s death in 2017.  According to the report, she was also targeted “a week after infection attempts against two of Valdez’s colleagues, Andrés Villareal and Ismael Bojórquez.”  The group behind the infection attempts, named RECKLESS-1, is alleged to have links with the Mexican government. 

Canadian-based Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz can also count himself amongst those targeted by Pegasus.  In 2018, he claimed that his phone was tapped by NSO-made spyware, leading to a gruesome implication: that the Saudi authorities would have had access to hundreds of messages exchanged with the doomed Saudi journalist and fellow comrade-in-dissent Jamal Khashoggi. 

In December, a suit was filed in Israel by Abdulaziz’s representatives Alaa Mahajna and Mazen Masri, alleging that the NSO Group had hacked his phone in the service of Riyadh.  In court papers, it was alleged that the dissident was harangued by the same individuals behind Khashoggi’s murder, insisting that he pack his bags and return to Saudi Arabia. 

Buried in the court documentation was the receipt of a text message purportedly tracking the shipment of a package; instead, it masked a link to the NSO Group.  Once clicked, the link installed the spyware, turning the phone into an effective agent of surveillance.  Soon after this took place, Abdulaziz’s family home in Jidda was raided by Saudi security forces.  Two brothers were subsequently detained.

Last January, Maariv, an Israeli daily, investigated reports about telephone spyware supposedly used to bug the phone of the murdered Khashoggi.  Khashoggi’s ending at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, facilitated by a death squad, was not handiwork NSO wanted to be associated with.  The group had been, according to a statement in December, “licensed for the sole use of providing governments and law enforcement agencies the ability to lawfully fight terrorism and crime”.  Misuse of products would lead to investigation and, depending on appropriate findings, a suspension or termination of the contract.   

Shalev Hulio, the company’s CEO, was clear to emphasise his humanity, before distancing himself and his company from the killing.  

“As a human being and as an Israeli, what happened to Khashoggi was a shocking murder.” 

Hulio was also adamant that “

Khashoggi was not targeted by any NSO product or technology, including listening, monitoring, location tracking and intelligence collection.” 

Could such precise denials be inadvertent confessions?

The cooperative umbrella for Israel is broadening. It seeks allies, or at least some form of accommodation with regional powers, to counter common enemies.  With Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, one common foe remains a constant: Iran.  The Israeli state’s licensing of such companies as the NSO Group implicates the policy of permitting the distribution of Pegasus and such products.  License their use; license their consequences.  Molly Malekar, of Amnesty International’s Israeli office, puts it simply:

“By continuing to approve of NSO Group, the Ministry of Defence is practically admitting to knowingly cooperating with NSO Group as their software is used to commit human rights abuses.” 

Monitoring and killing dissidents and intrepid journalists tend to be nasty by-products.  They, in a sense, have become the modern merchants of death, whose clients remain unsavoury regimes.

*

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

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 The Unz Review

This past week the US and China failed to reach agreement on a new trade deal, despite high level China representative Lie He meeting in Washington on Thursday-Friday, May 9-10.

In the wake of the meeting, Trump and his administration mouthpieces attempt to put a positive spin on the collapsed talks, while placing blame on China for the break up.  The ‘spin’ at first was that China had reneged on a prior agreement and changed its terms when they arrived in Washington.  China had caused the breakdown, not the US. The stock markets swooned. Trump quickly jumped in and said he got a nice letter from China president, Xi, and that it wasn’t all that bad.

But make no mistake, a trade negotiations ‘rubicon’ has been reached. The real trade war may be starting.  Or, it may all be theater to make it look like both sides are acting tough and that an agreement will be reached this summer. But that scenario may now be fading. Trade wars—like hot wars—have their own dynamic. Once launched, they drive their adversaries in directions they may not have initially sought.

So who’s actually responsible for last week’s trade breakdown?

To listen to Trump and his neocons running the US foreign (and trade) policy show now, it was the Chinese. They changed the agreement at the last minute. But who really did the changes? Who set off the process? And how?

If the Chinese backtracked on some terms of the deal, it was clearly in response to the Trump-Neocon trade team initiating the backtracking. Here’s what the Trump team did:

• The US publicly declared the week before that the US would keep tariffs on even after an agreement. This violated the understanding that both sides would remove the new tariffs once an agreement was reached ($100 billion China on US; $250 billion US on China)
• Trump threatened tariffs on the remaining $300 billion of China imports
• The US signaled that China would have to not only stop technology transfer from US corporations doing business in China, but that China would have to share its tech development with the US if it wanted an agreement. That included the military-sensitive nextgen technologies like 5G, AI, and cybersecurity.
• The US demanded that China stop subsidizing its state owned enterprises (SOEs) with low interest rate loans that put US multinational corporations in an uncompetitive position in China (even as the US continued to subsidize via tax cuts, trade credits, etc.)
• The US indicated it would continue its global efforts to prevent US allies from doing business with China tech companies like Huawai, ZTE, China Mobile, etc. regardless if an agreement was reached.

If one wanted to scuttle negotiations at the last minute, this was certainly a way to do it.  And as this writer has been saying for the past year, scuttling is just what the neocon China hard-liners driving the US negotiations have wanted all along.  They don’t want a deal to reduce the US goods trade deficit with China, and they are willing to forego China’s significant concessions already made to the US in negotiations on US company access to China markets, if they can’t also stop China’s technology development—especially in the key nextgen technologies of AI, cybersecurity and 5G.

These are not only the new industries of the next decade, they are also the new technologies with major military implications. Should China reach parity or leapfrog the US in these areas, it could upset the US empire’s military dominance.

From the very beginning of negotiations with China, back in March 2018, the tech issue was central.  Neocon, China hard-liner and head of the US negotiation team, Robert Lighthizer, issued way back in August 2017 a warning report that China’s 2025 plan aimed at surpassing the US in these three tech areas. That report promised to show that China was in fact stealing US technology from US companies in those areas. Lighthizer’s March 2018 subsequent report than allegedly proved it. The US-China trade war was then launched that month.

At first it was led by Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin. He led a team to Beijing and came back indicating a deal was reached with China. As part of the deal, it was later revealed publicly, China had agreed to allow US banks and businesses a 51% or more ownership of joint venture companies in China. This was the US bankers’ main demand. China also indicated, revealed later, that it would purchase $1 trillion more of new farm, natural gas, and manufacturing goods from the US over the next five years. So much for the goods trade deficit imbalance and issue.  Both concessions were major wins for Mnuchin and the US.  But China refused apparently to budge on the major issue of nextgen tech. It suggested concessions, but, failing a final agreement, would not agree to US demands beforehand or up front.

Over the summer in 2018 the neocon faction reasserted control over the US trade negotiating team. Mnuchin’s firing of anti-China neocon, Peter Navarro, was reversed and Lighthizer put him back on the team. Over the summer Neocons deepened their influence and control of the Trump foreign policy, as Pompeo policy took charge at the State Dept., and as notorious neocon, John Bolton, took over as main Trump foreign policy adviser.  His buddies (Abrams, Miller, etc.) were given enhanced roles in the administration as well. These were the guys that gave us Iraq war in 2003 and after. And they’re on the same path again.

In the area of trade they have clearly convinced Trump that a more aggressive stance on trade negotiations will eventually produce a bigger ‘win’ for the US. They are the originators of the ‘use national security’ as an excuse to impose sanctions and use tariffs and sanctions to intimidate and force opponents (including allies) into major concessions.

We see this aggressive, high risk brinkmanship not only in trade negotiations with China. It’s behind the collapse of negotiations with North Korea on missiles and nukes. (The North Koreans offered to dismantle a number of sites if the US removed an equal number of sanctions. But the neocons refused, saying all the sites must be dismantled before the US would even consider lifting any sanctions at all.  That’s a non-starter in negotiations with anyone. If effect, it says: capitulate and then we’ll think about lifting sanctions).  It’s there in the imminent attack and invasion of Venezuela. The recent US failed coup there is only the beginning. It’s there in the refusal to stop supporting Saudi Arabia in Yemen. It’s there in the escalation of military threats toward Iran. It’s even there in the current threat of sanctions on Germany if it doesn’t stop buying Russian gas and buy US gas instead. It’s everywhere in US foreign policy. And it’s there in the recent blowup of negotiations on trade with China.

The neocon, anti-China hardliners—Lighthizer, Navarro, and Bolton—don’t want an agreement with China. They want a capitulation on the tech issue. They are aligned with the US Pentagon, Military Industrial Complex, Congress right wing—faction on the US trade team.

There has been in fighting on the trade team from the beginning. The neocon faction has been contending with the US bankers-big business faction that want the 51% and the deeper control in China. China has already conceded that and in fact has begun implementing it. The farm-manufacturing-natural gas faction wants more purchases of their products. China has already agreed on that as well. But since last mid-2018 the neocon faction has Trump’s ear and they are driving the policy.

That’s why the US ‘moved the goalposts’ the week before the China delegation was to come to Washington last week to finalize a deal. They announced or leaked all the backtracking US terms well before the China team was to come: the retaining of US tariffs despite an agreement, the required sharing of tech regardless of limits on tech transfer in China, the demands that China stop subsidizing its SOEs (even as the US would continue subsidizing US corporations via massive tax cuts, export-import bank, and direct payments from the US government), and so on.

China’s reply was to send its vice-chairman and head of its negotiating team, Liu He, to Washington last week nevertheless. Their reply was they would respond in kind to US tariffs with more tariffs of their own and that China would not capitulate on matters of ‘principle’ (read technology development and its 2025 plan).

So where does it go from here? Is this a bona fide breakdown or just a hiatus, with both sides posturing to look tough?

Trump advisor, Larry Kudlow, trotted out on national syndicated talk shows on Sunday, May 12, and admitted that Trump and China president Xi would not meet until June at the next G20 meeting—maybe.  No doubt some discussions will continue next in Beijing in the interim. But it is now far less likely a deal will be made this year. But that’s what the US necons prefer, short of China capitulation.

The neocons have apparently convinced Trump a deeper trade war with China would be good politics domestically. The US economy is showing signs of slowing in key areas of business investment and household consumption.  The trade war with China has produced a sharp decline of imports from China. Lower imports translates into higher ‘net exports’, a category in US GDP calculations that raises GDP. So less imports from tariffs means higher GDP. That could offset some of the slowing US economy in 2019-20.

The neocons believe China’s economy is also slowing and that its stock market is fragile. China cannot conduct a deeper trade war over tariffs with the US. It will eventually capitulate and agree to US demands, including tech, they no doubt argue. And Trump buys it.

But there are potential economic consequences to wars, including trade wars, that the neocons and their obsession with US imperial power do not understand or else do not want to acknowledge. Maybe they think they’ll prevail before the economic negatives occur. The negatives mean a corresponding severe contraction of US stock values as well. This now appears emerging. The negatives include a sharp rise in US consumer inflation, as the higher tariffs on China imports get passed on in the US economy. That will reduce an already fragile US consumer spending and US business investing, as costs rise for both.  Both business and consumer confidence are poised for a major contraction, and the trade war may just be enough to tip the balance. And rising inflation may force a new conflict with the central bank, the Fed, as it raises interest rates again to fund an even larger US budget deficit and debt caused by the economic slowdown.

But if the worse economically happens, the neocons no doubt are whispering in Trump’s ear that he can then blame the US stock market collapse and economic recession coming on the Chinese—as well as on the Democrats.  He can resurrect his extreme ‘economic nationalism’ appeals of 2016 to his base, once again claiming it’s the ‘foreigners’ and the ‘socialists’ (e.g. everyone proposing a reversal of his war spending, tax cuts for the rich, cuts to education and social programs, etc.).

These are indeed dangerous times for the US, economically and politically.  As even Democrat Party leaders are now saying, a bona fide Constitutional Crisis is brewing in the US as Trump insists on governing for his 35% supporters and to hell with the rest of the country, and as he governs increasingly at the expense of Congress’ s constitutional rights.

It is also a dangerous time for the US economy, and the global economy as well.  We can thank the growing influence, and disastrous policies, of the neocons who are now again firmly in control of US policy as Trump is now aligned with them on almost every policy front.

*

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

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Jack Rasmus.

Dr. Rasmus is author of the forthcoming ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, September 2019; and the just published ‘Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of the Fed’, Lexington Books, March 2019. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and hosts the radio show, ‘Alternative Visions’. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.

Further evidence has emerged indicating that the alleged 2018 Douma, Syria chemical attack was staged by US-backed militants, not the Syrian government.

With the US plotting war from South America to the South China Sea, understanding how US-backed militants staged the attack, allowing the Western media to sell US military intervention to the global public based on a lie – will help guard against similarly staged attacks in the near future.

Recent revelations mean the US not only falsely accused Damascus of having carried out the attack – but launched military strikes against Syria based on an entirely false pretext. To date, the US has categorically failed to produce any convincing evidence backing their original claims.

Conversely, a subsequent investigation carried out by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) produced damning evidence suggesting a false flag event was carried out by US-backed militants. This included a chlorine gas cylinder found in a militant weapons workshop inspected by OPCW investigators closely matching the two cylinders allegedly used in the 2018 Douma attack itself.

While US-backed militants insisted two gas cylinders were dropped on Douma by government helicopters, the OPCW noted that the alleged craters caused by the cylinders’ impact matched those on nearby buildings clearly caused by high-explosive ordnance.

The final OPCW report regarding the Douma incident claimed:

The [the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in Syria] team noted that a similar crater was present on a nearby building. 

The implication is that the cylinders may not have created the craters attributed to them by US-backed militants and the Western media supporting their version of the story. Instead, it implies that the cylinders were manually put into place near preexisting craters created by conventional ordnance.

While the final OPCW report included photographs of damage on the adjacent building, it did not elaborate further or explore the obvious implications of similar craters seen nearby explicitly.

However, more recently, a previously unpublished report by the OPCW titled, “Engineering Assessment of Two Cylinders Obsered at the Douma Incident – Executive Summary” (PDF), did elaborate (emphasis added):

Experts were consulted to assess the appearance of the crater observed at Location 2, particularly the underside. The expert view was that it was more consistent with that expected as a result of blast/energetics (for example from a HE mortar or rocket artillery round) rather than a result of impact from the falling object. This was also borne out by the observation of deformed rebar splayed out at the underside of the crater, which was not explained by the apparent non-penetration and minimal damage of the cylinder. The likelihood of the crater having been created by a mortar/artillery round or similar, was also supported by the presence of more than one crater of very similar appearance in concrete slabs on top of nearby buildings, by an (unusually elevated, but possible) fragmentation pattern on upper walls, by the indications of concrete spalling under the crater, and (whist it was observed that a fire had been created in the corner of the room ) black scorching on the crater underside and ceiling.

The engineering assessment would conclude (emphasis added):

In summary, observation at the scene of the two locations, together with subsequent analysis, suggest that there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft. 

The assessment further adds weight to what many analysts concluded at the time when the OPCW published its final, official report on the incident – that the event was staged.

At face value Damascus lacked any motivation to carry out the 2018 attack. It occurred on the eve of total victory for Syrian forces over US-backed militants dug in around the Syrian capital. Syria had used extensive conventional force to overcome militant positions and even if Damascus believed the use of chemical weapons would expedite victory, it is unlikely it would drop only 2 gas cylinders containing a negligible amount of chlorine toward that end.

Conversely – US-backed militants facing inevitable and complete defeat along with a US government in desperate need of a pretext to use military force to slow down or stop the advance of Syrian troops – had every motivation to stage the attack, blame it on Damascus, and lie about it ever since.

If political analysis of the alleged attack exploring the possible motivations of both sides in carrying out the attack weren’t conclusive enough, this recently published OPCW engineering assessment further lays the issue to rest.

Why Douma Still Matters

Washington’s propensity toward staging provocations as a pretext toward wider war is not confined to Douma, Syria alone. The lead up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq was predicated entirely on a deliberate lie built atop fabricated evidence.

And the US still seeks to provoke war in Ukraine, in Venezuela, against Iran, and likely again in Syria itself as government forces begin to retake Idlib.

Understanding how US-backed militants staged the Douma attack in 2018, how the Western media lied to the global public in the aftermath to sell subsequent Western military intervention, and how investigators exposed evidence revealing the attack as a false flag operation – will all aid in blunting the political impact of future false flag provocations.

*

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

Tony Cartalucci is Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

President John Bolton has put his signature on a plan to send 120,000 troops to the Middle East in a move all too reminiscent of the invasion of Iraq. The number is close to that during the invasion and destruction of Iraq. 

.

.

Trump White House reviews military plans against Iran, including sending up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East, in echoes of Iraq War https://t.co/pDKl0rT1o4

— Eric Schmitt (@EricSchmittNYT) May 14, 2019

Meanwhile, the cigar store Indian president sits behind the big desk attacking a large array of  enemies with daily salvos of noisome tweets pounded into an overheated smartphone. He’s not in the loop on this one. Harry Truman’s buck no longer stops at the “Resolute Desk.” 

From CNN:

Citing administration officials, the Times said it is unknown whether President Donald Trump has been briefed on the plan, including the number of troops. The Times said the meeting occurred days after the Trump administration cited “specific and credible” intelligence last week that suggested Iranian forces and proxies were targeting US forces in Syria, Iraq and at sea.

President Bolton has his ducks in a row. The CIA and Pentagon have worked feverishly to stir up trouble within Iran’s ethnic minorities since the reign of Bush the Lesser. He signed off—or maybe it was President Cheney—on Operation Olympic Games, a cyber operation aimed at Iran’s centrifuges while at the same time Israel hunted down and assassinated Iran’s nuclear scientists. 

It is interesting at least four of the targets were assassinated with magnetic bombs attached to cars. It appears the “sabotage attacks”—or rather unsubstantiated attacks—near Fujairah port, just outside the Strait of Hormuz, consisted of limpet magnetic bombs (the explosions occurred below the waterline). 

“No evidence has emerged to show that Iran was involved. The affected countries are yet to assign blame,” reports the BBC. 

However, that hasn’t stopped President Bolton and his cabal of neocons from declaring Iran is the culprit—never mind the stupidity of the idea Iran would do such a thing a couple days after the US said they would—and the neocon habit of telling brazen lies to get mass murder campaigns rolling. 

It’s possible the headline grabbing maritime attack in fact did not occur. 

Global maritime news website have questioned the details surrounding the incident. The influential Lloyds List Maritime Intelligence, for example, criticised the authorities for “scant” information.

Quoting the maritime security company Dryad Global, it said: “Saudi reticence to report the incident accurately within their own media channels and the current failure to provide imagery evidence of the attack raises important questions as to the nature of the attack.”

The FleetMon website said: “What happened exactly, how bad were explosions and fire, if there were any, and what definition ‘act of sabotage’ means, how much true is indeed, the whole story, is so far anyone’s guess.”

Meanwhile, technology and conflict website The Drive said the lack of hard evidence added to the increased risk of regional conflict.

President Bolton will have his (and Bibi’s) war while the megalomanic Trump fights his “deep state” enemies, never mind the deep state operatives within his own administration. 

The real antiwar presidential candidates, meanwhile, are ignored by the corporate war propaganda media.

Trump says he doesn't want war with Iran, but that's exactly what he wants, because that's exactly what Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu, al-Qaeda, Bolton, Haley, and other NeoCons/NeoLibs want. That’s what he put first–not America. pic.twitter.com/kAPyxlKXDs

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) May 14, 2019

*

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

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

This study was originally published in 2016.

Introduction: “Something strange”

“How does the newspaper know what it knows?” The answer to this question is likely to surprise some newspaper readers: “The main source of information is stories from news agencies. The almost anonymously operating news agencies are in a way the key to world events. So what are the names of these agencies, how do they work and who finances them? To judge how well one is informed about events in East and West, one should know the answers to these questions.” (Höhne 1977, p. 11)

A Swiss media researcher points out:

“The news agencies are the most important suppliers of material to mass media. No daily media outlet can manage without them. () So the news agencies influence our image of the world; above all, we get to know what they have selected.” (Blum 1995, p. 9)

In view of their essential importance, it is all the more astonishing that these agencies are hardly known to the public:

“A large part of society is unaware that news agencies exist at all … In fact, they play an enormously important role in the media market. But despite this great importance, little attention has been paid to them in the past.” (Schulten-Jaspers 2013, p. 13)

Even the head of a news agency noted:

“There is something strange about news agencies. They are little known to the public. Unlike a newspaper, their activity is not so much in the spotlight, yet they can always be found at the source of the story.” (Segbers 2007, p. 9)

“The Invisible Nerve Center of the Media System”

So what are the names of these agencies that are “always at the source of the story”? There are now only three global agencies left:

1. The American Associated Press (AP) with over 4000 employees worldwide. The AP belongs to US media companies and has its main editorial office in New York. AP news is used by around 12,000 international media outlets, reaching more than half of the world’s population every day.
2. The quasi-governmental French Agence France-Presse (AFP) based in Paris and with around 4000 employees. The AFP sends over 3000 stories and photos every day to media all over the world.
3. The British agency Reuters in London, which is privately owned and employs just over 3000 people. Reuters was acquired in 2008 by Canadian media entrepreneur Thomson – one of the 25 richest people in the world – and merged into Thomson Reuters, headquartered in New York.

In addition, many countries run their own news agencies. However, when it comes to international news, these usually rely on the three global agencies and simply copy and translate their reports.

The three global news agencies Reuters, AFP and AP, and the three national agencies of the German-speaking countries of Austria (APA), Germany (DPA) and Switzerland (SDA).

Wolfgang Vyslozil, former managing director of the Austrian APA, described the key role of news agencies with these words:

“News agencies are rarely in the public eye. Yet they are one of the most influential and at the same time one of the least known media types. They are key institutions of substantial importance to any media system. They are the invisible nerve center that connects all parts of this system.” (Segbers 2007, p.10)

Small abbreviation, great effect

However, there is a simple reason why the global agencies, despite their importance, are virtually unknown to the general public. To quote a Swiss media professor: “Radio and television usually do not name their sources, and only specialists can decipher references in magazines.” (Blum 1995, P. 9)

The motive for this discretion, however, should be clear: news outlets are not particularly keen to let readers know that they haven’t researched most of their contributions themselves.

The following figure shows some examples of source tagging in popular German-language newspapers. Next to the agency abbreviations we find the initials of editors who have edited the respective agency report.

News agencies as sources in newspaper articles

Occasionally, newspapers use agency material but do not label it at all. A study in 2011 from the Swiss Research Institute for the Public Sphere and Society at the University of Zurich came to the following conclusions (FOEG 2011):

“Agency contributions are exploited integrally without labeling them, or they are partially rewritten to make them appear as an editorial contribution. In addition, there is a practice of ’spicing up‘ agency reports with little effort; for example, visualization techniques are used: unpublished agency reports are enriched with images and graphics and presented as comprehensive reports.”

The agencies play a prominent role not only in the press, but also in private and public broadcasting. This is confirmed by Volker Braeutigam, who worked for the German state broadcaster ARD for ten years and views the dominance of these agencies critically:

“One fundamental problem is that the newsroom at ARD sources its information mainly from three sources: the news agencies DPA/AP, Reuters and AFP: one German/American, one British and one French. () The editor working on a news topic only needs to select a few text passages on the screen that he considers essential, rearrange them and glue them together with a few flourishes.”

Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), too, largely bases itself on reports from these agencies. Asked by viewers why a peace march in Ukraine was not reported, the editors said: “To date, we have not received a single report of this march from the independent agencies Reuters, AP and AFP.”

In fact, not only the text, but also the images, sound and video recordings that we encounter in our media every day, are mostly from the very same agencies. What the uninitiated audience might think of as contributions from their local newspaper or TV station, are actually copied reports from New York, London and Paris.

Some media have even gone a step further and have, for lack of resources, outsourced their entire foreign editorial office to an agency. Moreover, it is well known that many news portals on the internet mostly publish agency reports (see e.g., Paterson 2007, Johnston 2011, MacGregor 2013).

In the end, this dependency on the global agencies creates a striking similarity in international reporting: from Vienna to Washington, our media often report the same topics, using many of the same phrases – a phenomenon that would otherwise rather be associated with »controlled media« in authoritarian states.

The following graphic shows some examples from German and international publications. As you can see, despite the claimed objectivity, a slight (geo-)political bias sometimes creeps in.

“Putin threatens”, “Iran provokes”, “NATO concerned”, “Assad stronghold”: Similarities in content and wording due to reports by global news agencies.

The role of correspondents

Much of our media does not have own foreign correspondents, so they have no choice but to rely completely on global agencies for foreign news. But what about the big daily newspapers and TV stations that have their own international correspondents? In German-speaking countries, for example, these include newspapers such NZZ, FAZ, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Welt, and public broadcasters.

First of all, the size ratios should be kept in mind: while the global agencies have several thousand employees worldwide, even the Swiss newspaper NZZ, known for its international reporting, maintains only 35 foreign correspondents (including their business correspondents). In huge countries such as China or India, only one correspondent is stationed; all of South America is covered by only two journalists, while in even larger Africa no-one is on the ground permanently.

Moreover, in war zones, correspondents rarely venture out. On the Syria war, for example, many journalists “reported” from cities such as Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo or even from Cyprus. In addition, many journalists lack the language skills to understand local people and media.

How do correspondents under such circumstances know what the “news” is in their region of the world? The main answer is once again: from global agencies. The Dutch Middle East correspondent Joris Luyendijk has impressively described how correspondents work and how they depend on the world agencies in his book “People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East”:

“I’d imagined correspondents to be historians-of-the-moment. When something important happened, they’d go after it, find out what was going on, and report on it. But I didn’t go off to find out what was going on; that had been done long before. I went along to present an on-the-spot report. ()

The editors in the Netherlands called when something happened, they faxed or emailed the press releases, and I’d retell them in my own words on the radio, or rework them into an article for the newspaper. This was the reason my editors found it more important that I could be reached in the place itself than that I knew what was going on. The news agencies provided enough information for you to be able to write or talk you way through any crisis or summit meeting.

That’s why you often come across the same images and stories if you leaf through a few different newspapers or click the news channels.

Our men and women in London, Paris, Berlin and Washington bureaus – all thought that wrong topics were dominating the news and that we were following the standards of the news agencies too slavishly. ()

The common idea about correspondents is that they ‘have the story’, () but the reality is that the news is a conveyor belt in a bread factory. The correspondents stand at the end of the conveyor belt, pretending we’ve baked that white loaf ourselves, while in fact all we’ve done is put it in its wrapping. ()

Afterwards, a friend asked me how I’d managed to answer all the questions during those cross-talks, every hour and without hesitation. When I told him that, like on the TV-news, you knew all the questions in advance, his e-mailed response came packed with expletives. My friend had relalized that, for decades, what he’d been watching and listening to on the news was pure theatre.” (Luyendjik 2009, p. 20-22, 76, 189)

In other words, the typical correspondent is in general not able to do independent research, but rather deals with and reinforces those topics that are already prescribed by the news agencies – the notorious “mainstream effect”.

In addition, for cost-saving reasons many media outlets nowadays have to share their few foreign correspondents, and within individual media groups, foreign reports are often used by several publications – none of which contributes to diversity in reporting.

“What the agency does not report, does not take place”

The central role of news agencies also explains why, in geopolitical conflicts, most media use the same original sources. In the Syrian war, for example, the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” – a dubious one-man organization based in London –  featured prominently. The media rarely inquired directly at this “Observatory”, as its operator was in fact difficult to reach, even for journalists.

Rather, the “Observatory” delivered its stories to global agencies, which then forwarded them to thousands of media outlets, which in turn “informed” hundreds of millions of readers and viewers worldwide. The reason why the agencies, of all places, referred to this strange “Observatory” in their reporting – and who really financed it – is a question that was rarely asked.

The former chief editor of the German news agency DPA, Manfred Steffens, therefore states in his book “The Business of News”:

“A news story does not become more correct simply because one is able to provide a source for it. It is indeed rather questionable to trust a news story more just because a source is cited. () Behind the protective shield such a ’source‘ means for a news story, some people are quite inclined to spread rather adventurous things, even if they themselves have legitimate doubts about their correctness; the responsibility, at least morally, can always be attributed to the cited source.” (Steffens 1969, p. 106)

Dependence on global agencies is also a major reason why media coverage of geopolitical conflicts is often superficial and erratic, while historic relationships and background are fragmented or altogether absent. As put by Steffens:

“News agencies receive their impulses almost exclusively from current events and are therefore by their very nature ahistoric. They are reluctant to add any more context than is strictly required.” (Steffens 1969, p. 32)

Finally, the dominance of global agencies explains why certain geopolitical issues and events – which often do not fit very well into the US/NATO narrative or are too “unimportant” – are not mentioned in our media at all: if the agencies do not report on something, then most Western media will not be aware of it. As pointed out on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the German DPA: “What the agency does not report, does not take place.” (Wilke 2000, p. 1)

“Adding questionable stories“

While some topics do not appear at all in our media, other topics are very prominent – even though they shouldn’t actually be: “Often the mass media do not report on reality, but on a constructed or staged reality. () Several studies have shown that the mass media are predominantly determined by PR activities and that passive, receptive attitudes outweigh active-researching ones.” (Blum 1995, p. 16)

In fact, due to the rather low journalistic performance of our media and their high dependence on a few news agencies, it is easy for interested parties to spread propaganda and disinformation in a supposedly respectable format to a worldwide audience. DPA editor Steffens warned of this danger:

“The critical sense gets more lulled the more respected the news agency or newspaper is. Someone who wants to introduce a questionable story into the world press only needs to try to put his story in a reasonably reputable agency, to be sure that it then appears a little later in the others. Sometimes it happens that a hoax passes from agency to agency and becomes ever more credible.” (Steffens 1969, p. 234)

Among the most active actors in “injecting” questionable geopolitical news are the military and defense ministries. For example, in 2009, the head of the American news agency AP, Tom Curley, made public that the Pentagon employs more than 27,000 PR specialists who, with a budget of nearly $ 5 billion a year, are working the media and circulating targeted manipulations. In addition, high-ranking US generals had threatened that they would “ruin” the AP and him if the journalists reported too critically on the US military.

Despite – or because of? – such threats our media regularly publish dubious stories sourced to some unnamed  “informants” from “US defense circles”.

Ulrich Tilgner, a veteran Middle East correspondent for German and Swiss television, warned in 2003, shortly after the Iraq war, of acts of deception by the military and the role played by the media:

“With the help of the media, the military determine the public perception and use it for their plans. They manage to stir expectations and spread scenarios and deceptions. In this new kind of war, the PR strategists of the US administration fulfill a similar function as the bomber pilots. The special departments for public relations in the Pentagon and in the secret services have become combatants in the information war. () The US military specifically uses the lack of transparency in media coverage for their deception maneuvers. The way they spread information, which is then picked up and distributed by newspapers and broadcasters, makes it impossible for readers, listeners or viewers to trace the original source. Thus, the audience will fail to recognize the actual intention of the military.” (Tilgner 2003, p. 132)

What is known to the US military, would not be foreign to US intelligence services. In a remarkable  report by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical conflicts:

Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Stockwell said of his work in the Angolan war,

“The basic theme was to make it look like an [enemy] aggression in Angola. So any kind of story that you could write and get into the media anywhere in the world, that pushed that line, we did. One third of my staff in this task force were covert action, were propagandists, whose professional career job was to make up stories and finding ways of getting them into the press. () The editors in most Western newspapers are not too skeptical of messages that conform to general views and prejudices. () So we came up with another story, and it was kept going for weeks. () [But] it was all fiction.”

Fred Bridgland looked back on his work as a war correspondent for the Reuters agency: “We based our reports on official communications. It was not until years later that I learned a little CIA disinformation expert had sat in the US embassy, in Lusaka and composed that communiqué, and it bore no relation at all to truth. () Basically, and to put it very crudely, you can publish any old crap and it will get newspaper room.”

And former CIA analyst David MacMichael described his work in the Contra War in Nicaragua with these words:

“They said our intelligence of Nicaragua was so good that we could even register when someone flushed a toilet. But I had the feeling that the stories we were giving to the press came straight out of the toilet.” (Hird 1985)

Of course, the intelligence services also have a large number of direct contacts in our media, which can be “leaked” information to if necessary. But without the central role of the global news agencies, the worldwide synchronization of propaganda and disinformation would never be so efficient.

Through this “propaganda multiplier”, dubious stories from PR experts working for governments, military and intelligence services reach the general public more or less unchecked and unfiltered. The journalists refer to the news agencies and the news agencies refer to their sources. Although they often attempt to point out uncertainties with terms such as “apparent”, “alleged” and the like – by then the rumor has long been spread to the world and its effect taken place.

The Propaganda Multiplier: Governments, military and intelligence services using global news agencies to disseminate their messages to a worldwide audience.

As the New York Times reported …

In addition to global news agencies, there is another source that is often used by media outlets around the world to report on geopolitical conflicts, namely the major publications in Great Britain and the US.

For example, news outlets like the New York Times or BBC have up to 100 foreign correspondents and other external employees. However, Middle East correspondent Luyendijk points out:

“Dutch news teams, me included, fed on the selection of news made by quality media like CNN,the BBC, and the New York Times. We did that on the assumption that their correspondents understood the Arab world and commanded a view of it – but many of them turned out not to speak Arabic, or at least not enough to be able to have a conversation in it or to follow the local media. Many of the top dogs at CNN, the BBC, the Independent, the Guardian, the New Yorker, and the NYT were more often than not dependent on assistants and translators.” (Luyendijk p. 47)

In addition, the sources of these media outlets are often not easy to verify (“military circles”, “anonymous government officials”, “intelligence officials” and the like) and can therefore also be used for the dissemination of propaganda. In any case, the widespread orientation towards the Anglo-Saxon publications leads to a further convergence in the geopolitical coverage in our media.

The following figure shows some examples of such citation based on the Syria coverage of the largest daily newspaper in Switzerland, Tages-Anzeiger. The articles are all from the first days of October 2015, when Russia for the first time intervened directly in the Syrian war (US/UK sources are highlighted):

Frequent citation of British and US media, exemplified by the Syria war coverage of Swiss daily newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in October 2015.

The desired narrative

But why do journalists in our media not simply try to research and report independently of the global agencies and the Anglo-Saxon media? Middle East correspondent Luyendijk describes his experiences:

“You might suggest that I should have looked for sources I could trust. I did try, but whenever I wanted to write a story without using news agencies, the main Anglo-Saxon media, or talking heads, it fell apart. () Obviously I, as a correspondent, could tell very different stories about one and the same situation. But the media could only present one of them, and often enough, that was exactly the story that confirmed the prevailing image.” (Luyendijk p.54ff)

Media researcher Noam Chomsky has described this effect in his essay “What makes the mainstream media mainstream” as follows: “If you leave the official line, if you produce dissenting reports, then you will soon feel this. () There are many ways to get you back in line quickly. If you don’t follow the guidelines, you will not keep your job long. This system works pretty well, and it reflects established power structures.” (Chomsky 1997)

Nevertheless, some of the leading journalists continue to believe that nobody can tell them what to write. How does this add up? Media researcher Chomsky clarifies the apparent contradiction:

“[T]he point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. () They have been through the socialization system.” (Chomsky 1997)

Ultimately, this “socialization process” leads to a journalism that generally no longer independently researches and critically reports on geopolitical conflicts (and some other topics), but seeks to consolidate the desired narrative through appropriate editorials, commentary, and interviewees.

Conclusion: The “First Law of Journalism”

Former AP journalist Herbert Altschull called it the First Law of Journalism:

“In all press systems, the news media are instruments of those who exercise political and economic power. Newspapers, periodicals, radio and television stations do not act independently, although they have the possibility of independent exercise of power.” (Altschull 1984/1995, p. 298)

In that sense, it is logical that our traditional media – which are predominantly financed by advertising or the state – represent the geopolitical interests of the transatlantic alliance, given that both the advertising corporations as well as the states themselves are dependent on the US dominated transatlantic economic and security architecture.

In addition, our leading media and their key people are – in the spirit of Chomsky’s “socialization” –  often themselves part of the networks of the transatlantic elite. Some of the most important institutions in this regard include the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission (see in-depth study of these networks).

Indeed, most well-known publications basically may be seen as “establishment media”. This is because, in the past, the freedom of the press was rather theoretical, given significant entry barriers such as broadcasting licenses, frequency slots, requirements for financing and technical infrastructure, limited sales channels, dependence on advertising, and other restrictions.

It was only due to the Internet that Altschull’s First Law has been broken to some extent. Thus, in recent years a high-quality, reader-funded journalism has emerged, often outperforming traditional media in terms of critical reporting. Some of these “alternative” publications already reach a very large audience, showing that the „mass“ does not have to be a problem for the quality of a media outlet.

Nevertheless, up to now the traditional media has been able to attract a solid majority of online visitors, too. This, in turn, is closely linked to the hidden role of news agencies, whose up-to-the-minute reports form the backbone of most news portals.

Will “political and economic power”, according to Altschull’s Law, retain control over the news, or will “uncontrolled” news change the political and economic power structure? The coming years will show.

Case study: Syria war coverage

As part of a case study, the Syria war coverage of nine leading daily newspapers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland were examined for plurality of viewpoints and reliance on news agencies. The following newspapers were selected:

• For Germany: Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)
• For Switzerland: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Tagesanzeiger (TA), and Basler Zeitung (BaZ)
• For Austria: Standard, Kurier, and Die Presse

The investigation period was defined as October 1 to 15, 2015, i.e. the first two weeks after Russia’s direct intervention in the Syrian conflict. The entire print and online coverage of these newspapers was taken into account. Any Sunday editions were not taken into account, as not all of the newspapers examined have such. In total, 381 newspaper articles met the stated criteria.

In a first step, the articles were classified according to their properties into the following groups:

1. Agencies: Reports from news agencies (with agency code)
2. Mixed: Simple reports (with author names) that are based in whole or in part on agency reports
3. Reports: Editorial background reports and analyzes
4. Opinions/Comments: Opinions and guest comments
5. Interviews: interviews with experts, politicians etc.
6. Investigative: Investigative research that reveals new information or context

The following Figure 1 shows the composition of the articles for the nine newspapers analyzed in total. As can be seen, 55% of articles were news agency reports; 23% editorial reports based on agency material; 9% background reports; 10% opinions and guest comments; 2% interviews; and 0% based on investigative research.

Figure 1: Types of articles (total; n=381)

The pure agency texts – from short notices to the detailed reports – were mostly on the Internet pages of the daily newspapers: on the one hand, the pressure for breaking news is higher than in the printed edition, on the other hand, there are no space restrictions. Most other types of articles were found in both the online and printed editions; some exclusive interviews and background reports were found only in the printed editions. All items were collected only once for the investigation.

The following Figure 2 shows the same classification on a per newspaper basis. During the observation period (two weeks), most newspapers published between 40 and 50 articles on the Syrian conflict (print and online). In the German newspaper Die Welt there were more (58), in the Basler Zeitung and the Austrian Kurier, however, significantly less (29 or 33).

Depending on which newspaper, the share of agency reports is almost 50% (Welt, Süddeutsche, NZZ, Basler Zeitung), just under 60% (FAZ, Tagesanzeiger), and 60 to 70% (Presse, Standard, Kurier). Together with the agency-based reports, the proportion in most newspapers is between approx. 70% and 80%. These proportions are consistent with previous media studies (e.g., Blum 1995, Johnston 2011, MacGregor 2013, Paterson 2007).

In the background reports, the Swiss newspapers were leading (five to six pieces), followed by Welt, Süddeutsche and Standard (four each) and the other newspapers (one to three). The background reports and analyzes were in particular devoted to the situation and development in the Middle East, as well as to the motives and interests of individual actors (for example Russia, Turkey, the Islamic State).

However, most of the commentaries were to be found in the German newspapers (seven comments each), followed by Standard (five), NZZ and Tagesanzeiger (four each). Basler Zeitung did not publish any commentaries during the observation period, but two interviews. Other interviews were conducted by Standard (three) and Kurier and Presse (one each). Investigative research, however, could not be found in any of the newspapers.

In particular, in the case of the three German newspapers, a journalistically problematic blending of opinion pieces and reports was noted. Reports contained strong expressions of opinion even though they were not marked as commentary. The present study was in any case based on the article labeling by the newspaper.

Figure 2: Types of articles per newspaper

The following Figure 3 shows the breakdown of agency stories (by agency abbreviation) for each news agency, in total and per country. The 211 agency reports carried a total of 277 agency codes (a story may consist of material from more than one agency). In total, 24% of agency reports came from the AFP; about 20% each by the DPA, APA and Reuters; 9% of the SDA; 6% of the AP; and 11% were unknown (no labeling or blanket term “agencies”).

In Germany, the DPA, AFP and Reuters each have a share of about one third of the news stories. In Switzerland, the SDA and the AFP are in the lead, and in Austria, the APA and Reuters.

In fact, the shares of the global agencies AFP, AP and Reuters are likely to be even higher, as the Swiss SDA and the Austrian APA obtain their international reports mainly from the global agencies and the German DPA cooperates closely with the American AP.

It should also be noted that, for historical reasons, the global agencies are represented differently in different regions of the world. For events in Asia, Ukraine or Africa, the share of each agency will therefore be different than from events in the Middle East.

Figure 3: Share of news agencies, total (n=277) and per country

In the next step, central statements were used to rate the orientation of editorial opinions (28), guest comments (10) and interview partners (7) (a total of 45 articles). As Figure 4 shows, 82% of the contributions were generally US/NATO friendly, 16% neutral or balanced, and 2% predominantly US/NATO critical.

The only predominantly US/NATO-critical contribution was an op-ed in the Austrian Standard on October 2, 2015, titled: “The strategy of regime change has failed. A distinction between ‚good‘ and ‚bad‘ terrorist groups in Syria makes the Western policy untrustworthy.”

Figure 4: Orientation of editorial opinions, guest comments, and interviewees (total; n=45).

The following Figure 5  shows the orientation of the contributions, guest comments and interviewees, in turn broken down by individual newspapers. As can be seen, Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, NZZ, Zürcher Tagesanzeiger and the Austrian newspaper Kurier presented exclusively US/NATO-friendly opinion and guest contributions; this goes for FAZ too, with the exception of one neutral/balanced contribution. The Standard brought four US/NATO friendly, three balanced/neutral, as well as the already mentioned US/NATO critical opinion contributions.

Presse was the only one of the examined newspapers to predominantly publish neutral/balanced opinions and guest contributions. The Basler Zeitung published one US/NATO-friendly and one balanced contribution. Shortly after the observation period (October 16, 2015), Basler Zeitung also published an interview with the President of the Russian Parliament. This would of course have been counted as a contribution critical of the US/NATO.

Figure 5: Basic orientation of opinion pieces and interviewees per newspaper

In a further analysis, a full-text keyword search for “propaganda” (and word combinations thereof) was used to investigate in which cases the newspapers themselves identified propaganda in one of the two geopolitical conflict sides, USA/NATO or Russia (the participant “IS/ISIS” was not considered). In total, twenty such cases were identified. Figure 6 shows the result: in 85% of the cases, propaganda was identified on the Russian side of the conflict, in 15% the identification was neutral or unstated, and in 0% of the cases propaganda was identified on the USA/NATO side of the conflict.

It should be noted that about half of the cases (nine) were in the Swiss NZZ, which spoke of Russian propaganda quite frequently (“Kremlin propaganda”, “Moscow propaganda machine”, “propaganda stories”, “Russian propaganda apparatus” etc.), followed by German FAZ (three), Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung (two each) and the Austrian newspaper Kurier (one). The other newspapers did not mention propaganda, or only in a neutral context (or in the context of IS).

Figure 6: Attribution of propaganda to conflict parties (total; n=20).

Conclusion

In this case study, the geopolitical coverage in nine leading daily newspapers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland was examined for diversity and journalistic performance using the example of the Syrian war.

The results confirm the high dependence on the global news agencies (63 to 90%, excluding commentaries and interviews) and the lack of own investigative research, as well as the rather biased commenting on events in favor of the US/NATO side (82% positive; 2% negative), whose stories were not checked by the newspapers for any propaganda.

*

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

English translation provided by Terje Maloy.

Sources

Altschull, Herbert J. (1984/1995): Agents of power. The media and public policy. Longman, New York.

Becker, Jörg (2015): Medien im Krieg – Krieg in den Medien. Springer Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften,Wiesbaden.

Blum, Roger et al. (Hrsg.) (1995): Die AktualiTäter. Nachrichtenagenturen in der Schweiz. Verlag Paul Haupt, Bern.

Chomsky, Noam (1997): What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream. Z Magazine, MA. (PDF)

Forschungsinstitut für Öffentlichkeit und Gesellschaft der Universität Zürich (FOEG) (2011): Jahrbuch Qualität der Medien, Ausgabe 2011. Schwabe, Basel.

Gritsch, Kurt (2010): Inszenierung eines gerechten Krieges? Intellektuelle, Medien und der „Kosovo-Krieg“ 1999. Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim.

Hird, Christopher (1985): Standard Techniques. Diverse Reports, Channel 4 TV. 30. Oktober 1985. (Link)

Höhne, Hansjoachim (1977): Report über Nachrichtenagenturen. Band 1: Die Situation auf den Nachrichtenmärkten der Welt. Band 2: Die Geschichte der Nachricht und ihrer Verbreiter. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden.

Johnston, Jane & Forde, Susan (2011): The Silent Partner: News Agencies and 21st Century News. International Journal of Communication 5 (2011), p. 195–214. (PDF)

Krüger, Uwe (2013): Meinungsmacht. Der Einfluss von Eliten auf Leitmedien und Alpha-Journalisten – eine kritische Netzwerkanalyse. Herbert von Halem Verlag, Köln.

Luyendijk, Joris (2015): Von Bildern und Lügen in Zeiten des Krieges: Aus dem Leben eines Kriegsberichterstatters – Aktualisierte Neuausgabe. Tropen, Stuttgart.

MacGregor, Phil (2013): International News Agencies. Global eyes that never blink. In: Fowler-Watt/Allan (ed.): Journalism: New Challenges. Centre for Journalism & Communication Research,Bournemouth University. (PDF)

Mükke, Lutz (2014): Korrespondenten im Kalten Krieg. Zwischen Propaganda und Selbstbehauptung. Herbert von Halem Verlag, Köln.

Paterson, Chris (2007): International news on the internet. The International Journal of Communication Ethics. Vol 4, No 1/2 2007. (PDF)

Queval, Jean (1945): Première page, Cinquième colonne. Arthème Fayard, Paris.

Schulten-Jaspers, Yasmin (2013): Zukunft der Nachrichtenagenturen. Situation, Entwicklung, Prognosen. Nomos, Baden-Baden.

Segbers, Michael (2007): Die Ware Nachricht. Wie Nachrichtenagenturen ticken. UVK, Konstanz.

Steffens, Manfred [Ziegler, Stefan] (1969): Das Geschäft mit der Nachricht. Agenturen, Redaktionen, Journalisten. Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg.

Tilgner, Ulrich (2003): Der inszenierte Krieg – Täuschung und Wahrheit beim Sturz Saddam Husseins. Rowohlt, Reinbek.

Wilke, Jürgen (Hrsg.) (2000): Von der Agentur zur Redaktion. Böhlau, Köln.

Featured image is from UK Column

U.S. President Donald Trump has come up with what he calls the “Deal of the Century,” the sole purpose of which is to finally remove Palestine from the world stage and put an end to the existence of the state.

***

U.S. President Donald Trump has come up with what he calls the “Deal of the Century,” the sole purpose of which is to finally remove Palestine from the world stage and put an end to the existence of the state.

With great fanfare, the tycoon-come-president, using several of his advisors, intends to deceive the world with a formula to fully favor Israel and deny territory and freedom for the Arab population.

According to a document leaked in Tel Aviv, the deal would be a “tripartite agreement” signed between Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Hamas to establish a so-called “New Palestine” in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but this would exclude Israel’s illegally built settlements, which will remain in the hands of the Zionist government.

Jerusalem would remain under Israeli control, and the Arab population that lives there would be citizens of the New Palestine. The deal represents a coup de grâce to the Palestinian right to East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine, recognized by the UN and other international bodies.

According to the leak, “New Palestine” would not have an army, just a police force. A protection treaty would be signed with Israel, with Palestine having to pay for its services to defend it from any external attack. Hamas would hand all its weapons, including personal weapons, to Egyptian authorities.

I do not think it necessary to write any more on the matter to know that this so-called “Deal of the Century,” conceived by Trump, is doomed to failure.

In recent days, the Israeli army has killed more than a dozen Palestinians in Gaza, in an attack that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has described as a “prelude” to the Deal of the Century.

The PNA also stated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to further Israeli and U.S. interests by consolidating the division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Sputnik cites Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who notes that any deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a road to nowhere if the principle of two States, one Arab-Palestinian and one Jewish, is ignored.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said that those who believe that PLO will be pressured by the United States are mistaken.

“We say no and 1,000 no’s to any initiative that does not meet the minimum demands of the Palestinian people,” he stressed.

And since everything that comes from Trump ultimately carries with it a threat, this time Washington has warned that if the PLO and Hamas reject the agreement, the United States will cancel all its financial support to the Palestinians.

*

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

Featured image is from Voice of the Cape

Last year, TruePublica published an article about how the British government were now going ‘full Orwellian‘ in their attempt to build a national biometric database. The opening line to the article was – “We said that the government would eventually take the biometric data of every single citizen living in Britain and use it for nefarious reasons.  DNA, fingerprint, face, and even voice data will be included. But that’s not all.” 

And so it came to pass. The government has indeed been building a biometric database – the equivalent of a digital ID card for every UK citizen and it is illegal. But the legality of the creation of a centralised biometric database will not stop a government who have been repeatedly caught breaking the law when it comes to privacy and data collection.

Police, immigration, and passport agencies already collect DNA, face, and fingerprint data. On the latter, police forces across Britain now have fingerprint scanners on the streets of Britain with officers providing no more than a promise that fingerprint data taken will be erased if the person stopped is innocent of any crime.

The government’s face database already has 12.5 million people – or so it has admitted to. The Home Office, embroiled in all sorts of privacy and surveillance legal cases caused a scandal last April when an official said it would simply be too expensive to remove innocent people from its criminal face databases of mugshots.

A health database is being added along with other data collected by one of the 23 official government department’s involved – and that even includes the creation of a voiceprint database.

In June 2018, TruePublica published a Big Brother Watch investigation, which revealed that HM Revenue and Customs had accumulated a little-known database of 5.1 million taxpayers’ voiceprints from callers to the helplines without their consent. The Government scheme not only broke taxpayers’ trust, but it also breached their data protection and privacy rights. HMRC was building a biometric ID database by the backdoor – the largest state-held voice database in the world.

Big Brother Watch handed their findings to the Information Commissioner and formally requested that the ICO conduct an investigation. An investigation subsequently began.

In January 2019, BBW conducted a six-month review using Freedom of Information requests. They found that HMRC had updated their system so that callers who had previously been railroaded into the ID scheme were offered the option to delete their voiceprint. We also found that the shady scheme had suffered a huge backlash and, within months, 160,000 people had utilised the option to delete their voice record from the Government database.

BBW cautioned that this change was not enough. Their director, Silkie Carlo, said:

“Now it is down to the ICO to take robust action and show that the Government isn’t above the law. HMRC took millions of Voice IDs without taxpayers’ legal consent – the only satisfactory outcome is for those millions of Voice IDs to be deleted.”

Following the investigation and BBW’s report to the Information Commissioner’s Office, HMRC has now been told by the ICO to delete 5 million of these records which were obtained unlawfully, without people’s consent.

The announcement marks one of the most robust enforcement actions the ICO has taken against a Government department. It is the biggest ever deletion of biometric data from a state-held database in the UK.

Director of Big Brother Watch Silkie Carlo, said:

“This is a massive success for Big Brother Watch, restoring data rights for millions of ordinary people around the country. To our knowledge, this is the biggest ever deletion of biometric IDs from a state-held database.

This sets a vital precedent for biometrics collection and the database state, showing that campaigners and the ICO have real teeth and no Government department is above the law.”

*

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

Featured image is from TP