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As predicted, the Sri Lankan Easter Day blasts which killed hundreds and injured hundreds more – have been connected to the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS).

US Ambassador to Sri Lanka – Alaina Teplitz – would openly claim foreign groups were most likely behind the attacks. Reuters in an article titled, “Foreign groups likely behind Sri Lanka attacks, U.S. ambassador says,” would report:

The scale and sophistication of the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka suggested the involvement of an external group such as Islamic State, the U.S. ambassador said on Wednesday as the death toll jumped to 359.

ISIS itself would also later claim responsibility for the attacks. The Washington Post in an article titled, “Sri Lankan Easter bombings, claimed by ISIS, show the group maintains influence even though its caliphate is gone,” would claim:

On Tuesday, video emerged of the suspected ringleader of the attacks and seven followers, their faces obscured by scarves, swearing allegiance to the Islamic State and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Islamic State also issued a formal communique asserting responsibility for the attacks, which it said targeted Christians and “coalition countries.”

Absent from US diplomatic statements and Western media reports is any mention of ISIS’ inception, its state sponsors, and even admissions by Western intelligence agencies themselves of Washington and its allies’ role in the terrorist organization’s rise.

At face value – devastating and disruptive terrorist attacks visited upon Sri Lanka – a nation that has recently and decisively pivoted from West to East and is now a major partner of Beijing’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative – is suspiciously coincidental.

Examining the West’s decades of using terrorism – particularly terrorism fuelled by Saudi Wahhabism – and the inception of ISIS itself – leaves Washington and its partners as the prime suspects behind Sri Lanka’s tragic terrorist attack – with its motivation strikingly similar to what prompted the US-Saudi aided rise and use of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda throughout the Cold War.

DIA Admitted West Sought “Salafist Principality” in Eastern Syria 

When US-engineered regime change stalled in Syria between 2011-2012, it became clear more drastic and open measures would be required. This included not only the Western media mobilizing a massive propaganda campaign to account for the increasingly overt role terrorist organizations were playing among supposed “moderate rebel” formations – but also in the sudden appearance, rise, and overwhelming force of the “Islamic State.”

Source: NEO

It was in a leaked 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo (PDF) – however – that revealed it was the US and its allies’ deliberate intent to create what it called a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria. The memo would explicitly state that (emphasis added):

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

On clarifying who these supporting powers were, the DIA memo would state:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

The “Salafist” (Islamic) “principality” (State) would indeed be created precisely in eastern Syria as US policymakers and their allies had set out to do. It would be branded as the “Islamic State” and be used first to wage a more muscular proxy war against Damascus, and when that failed, to invite US military forces to intervene in the conflict directly.

Since then, ISIS has been used as a convenient and even predictable element amid Washington’s various gambits as it struggles globally to maintain its unipolar world order.

Washington’s “Salafist Principality” vs China 

In Asia where Washington’s self-proclaimed primacy has waned in recent years as China rises, traditional “allies” like the Philippines have begun to seek bilateral ties with Beijing negating Washington’s supposed role in underwriting what it calls its “free, open, and rules-based“ order in the Indo-Pacific region.

In 2016, Manila sought to have US troops removed from its territory.

An October 2016 article by the Independent titled, “Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte orders US forces out of country, cutting 65 years of military ties,” would report:

The president of the Philippines has promised to dismantle the nation’s 65-year military alliance with the United States, warning Washington not to treat the nation “like a doormat”. 

Rodrigo Duterte has ordered 28 annual military exercises with US forces to be halted and an ongoing US-Philippines amphibious beach landing exercise to be the last in his six-year presidency. 

“This year would be the last,” said Mr Duterte, referring to military exercises involving the US in a speech on Friday in southern Davao city.

The Independent would also report (emphasis added):

“For as long as I am there, do not treat us like a doormat because you’ll be sorry for it. I will not speak with you. I can always go to China.”

The following year, beginning in May 2017, ISIS terrorists suddenly appeared, overrunning the city of Marawi. The US used the “serendipitous” development to not only insert US military forces into the fighting – the NYT reported, but has since used the threat of ISIS’ resurgence in the Philippines as a pretext to pressure Manila in maintaining a permanent US military presence in the Southeast Asian state.

US government-funded propaganda outlet “Rappler” would report in a 2019 article titled, “[ANALYSIS] Despite Duterte rhetoric, US military gains forward base in PH,” that:

The United States has gained a forward base for its Pacific Air Force in the Philippines despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s rhetoric against the country’s oldest security ally and former colonial master and his pivot to China.

And despite the “terror” pretext Washington has used to cling to its military holdings in the Philippines, Rappler itself admits that the true goal is confronting China:

The forward deployment of US air assets in the Philippines is important in light of the increasing tension between Washington and Beijing in the disputed South China Sea, a strategic waterway where about $3 trillion of seaborne goods pass every year and where China has constructed man-made islands and begun installing military structures, including possible missile sites.

US-Saudi backed extremism in another Southeast Asian state – Myanmar – has created a growing conflict in Rakhine state where China is attempting to build another major leg of its OBOR initiative.

In neighboring Thailand – another pivotal OBOR partner – similar US-Saudi led efforts to sow ethnoreligious tensions and create a vector for ISIS-style terrorism are underway.

Even in China itself – the threat of ISIS militants returning from Syria and expanding an already looming US-Saudi backed extremist threat in Xinjiang – plays into Washington’s wider efforts to sabotage OBOR and contain China’s regional and global rise.

The recent blasts in Sri Lanka and ISIS’ now supposed “interest” in the South Asian state follows massive inroads made by China in including the nation in its OBOR initiative. Highways, railways, and ports developed with China’s assistance have transformed Sri Lanka into a strategically valuable partner for Beijing, and yet another example to the world of Washington’s waning influence not only in Indo-Pacific – but globally.

The US went as far as creating ISIS in the first place in a desperate bid to rescue its failed regime change campaign in Syria. It and its partners in Riyadh are now the prime suspects behind ISIS’ coincidental arrival on the shores of a newly established and major OBOR partner.

ISIS is the New Al Qaeda

If the US using extremism to fight its major power rivals sounds familiar – that’s because the US and its Saudi partners used Al Qaeda in precisely the same way throughout the Cold War vis-a-vis the Soviet Union.

Al Qaeda’s precursor – the Muslim Brotherhood – took part in a failed attempt to overthrow Syria – then a Soviet ally – in the early 1980s. Many of the fighters that took part in the failed uprising fled to Afghanistan and participated in the US-Saudi backed war against the Soviet Union there.

The virulent perversion of the Islamic faith that serves as the ideological bedrock of groups like Al Qaeda and now ISIS – Wahhabism – is admittedly a political tool used by Riyadh in the aid of Washington’s decades-spanning geopolitical ambitions.

In a 2018 Washington Post article titled, “Saudi prince denies Kushner is ‘in his pocket’,” it was admitted (emphasis added):

Asked about the Saudi-funded spread of Wahhabism, the austere faith that is dominant in the kingdom and that some have accused of being a source of global terrorism, Mohammed said that investments in mosques and madrassas overseas were rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union.

Thus it is all but admitted that the US and Saudi Arabia used extremism as a geopolitical tool to hinder the Soviet Union and both protect and expand Western hegemony globally.

It is admitted that the US and its partners sought the creation of ISIS – its sudden appearance everywhere China is attempting to do business fits the now documented and admitted pattern of Washington’s use of extremism to fight and coerce wherever its standing armies cannot afford to intervene and a degree of “plausible deniability” is desired.

When terrorism strikes – as in any sort of criminal investigation – the first question that must be asked is “cui bono?” To whose benefit? The US played a central role in deliberately creating ISIS. If ISIS is indeed behind the attack on Sri Lanka, then it is by extension an act of terror carried out by Washington.

Destabilizing Sri Lanka – a critical South Asian partner of Beijing and its OBOR initiative – with terrorism and ethnoreligious conflict, serves only the interests of China’s overt global opponent – Washington – as well as elements within India’s ruling elite and intelligence agencies.

The US is both arsonist and self-appointed fireman. And until this racket is fully and repeatedly exposed – until after each terrorist attack the US is put forth as the primary suspect and made to pay a high political price for its use of global terrorism – this game of arson-firefighting will continue at the cost of innocent lives, national development, and global peace and stability.

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Tony Cartalucci is Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from the author

5G From Space

In November of 2018, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorised the rocket company SpaceX, owned by the entrepreneur Elon Musk, to launch a fleet of 7,518 satellites to complete SpaceX’s ambitious scheme to provide global satellite broadband services to every corner of the Earth.

The satellites will operate at a height of approximately 210 miles, and irradiate the Earth with extremely high frequencies between 37.5 GHz and 42 GHz. This fleet will be in addition to a smaller SpaceX fleet of 4,425 satellites, already authorised earlier in the year by the FCC, which will orbit the Earth at a height of approximately 750 miles and is set to bathe us in frequencies between 12 GHz and 30 GHz. The grand total of SpaceX satellites is thus projected to reach just under 12,000.

There are at present approximately two thousand fully functioning satellites orbiting the Earth. Some beam down commercial GPS (or “SatNav”), some provide TV, some provide mobile phone services, and some bounce radar back and forth to produce images for meteorologists and military surveillance. The Earth is thus already comprehensively irradiated from outer space.

But the new SpaceX fleets will constitute a massive increase in the number of satellites in the skies above us, and a correspondingly massive increase in the radiation reaching the Earth from them. The SpaceX satellite fleet is, however, just one of several that are due to be launched in the next few years, all serving the same purpose of providing global broadband services. Other companies, including Boeing, One Web and Spire Global are each launching their own smaller fleets, bringing the total number of projected new broadband satellites to around 20,000 – every one of them dedicated to irradiating the Earth at similar frequencies (fig. 1). ¹

Why is there this sudden flurry of activity? The new satellite fleets are contributing to a concerted global effort to “upgrade” the electromagnetic environment of the Earth. The upgrade is commonly referred to as 5G, or fifth generation wireless network. It has become customary in tech circles to talk about the introduction of 5G as involving the creation of a new global “electronic ecosystem”. It amounts to geo-engineering on a scale never before attempted. While this is being sold to the public as an enhancement of the quality of video streaming for media and entertainment, what is really driving it is the creation of the conditions within which electronic or “artificial” intelligence will be able to assume an ever greater presence in our lives.

In a previous article for New View, (“Radiation, Robot Bees and 5G”, New View, 85, Autumn 2017), I described how the introduction of 5G will require hundreds of thousands of new mini mobile phone masts (also referred to as “base stations”) in urban centres throughout the UK, and literally millions of new masts in cities throughout the rest of the world, all emitting radiation at frequencies and at power levels far higher than those to which we are presently subjected.

These new masts are much smaller than the masts we currently see beside our motorways and on top of buildings. They will be discreetly attached to the side of shops and offices or secured to lampposts. The 20,000 satellites are a necessary supplement to this land-based effort, for they will guarantee that rural areas, lakes, mountains, forests, oceans and wildernesses, where there are neither buildings nor lampposts, will all be incorporated into the new electronic infrastructure. Not one inch of the globe will be free of radiation.

Given the scale of the project, it is surprising how few people are aware of the enormity of what is now just beginning to unfold all around us. Very few people have even heard about the 20,000 new satellites that are due to transform the planet into a so-called “smart planet”, irradiating us night and day. In the national media, we do not hear voices questioning the wisdom, let alone the ethics, of geo-engineering a new global electromagnetic environment.

Instead, there is a blithe acceptance that technology must continue to progress, and the presence in our lives of increasingly “smart” machines and gadgets that each year become cleverer and more capable is an inevitable part of this progress. And who doesn’t want progress? Almost everyone loves their sleek and seductively designed phones, pads and virtual assistants, and regards them as an indispensible part of their lives.

But the question we should ask is whether we also want increasingly intense exposure of the natural environment and all living creatures, including ourselves, to more and more electromagnetic radiation. Is it likely that this does not entail any adverse health consequences, as both government and industry claim? If the electromagnetic waves that connect our smartphones to the Internet travel through brick, stone and cement, then what happens when these same waves encounter our bodies?

Be assured that they do not just bounce off us! They travel into the human body. The degree to which they are absorbed can be precisely measured in what is called the Specific Absorption Rate, expressed in Watts per kilogram of biological tissue. When we fill our houses with Wi Fi, we are irradiating our bodies continuously. When we hold a smartphone to our ear, electromagnetic waves irradiate our brains (fig.2). Do we really believe this could be completely harmless?

Waves and Frequencies

At present, mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, most Wi Fi and so on all operate at under 3 GHz in what is called the “microwave” region of the electromagnetic spectrum. If you could see and measure their wavelengths, you would find that they are many centimetres (or inches) long. A smartphone operating at 800 MHz, for example, sends and receives signals with wavelengths of 37.5 centimetres (just under 15 inches). Operating at 1.9 GHz, the wavelengths are 16 centimetres (just over 6 inches). Wi Fi uses the 2.4 GHz frequency band with 12 centimetre wavelengths (just under 5 inches long).

The introduction of 5G will entail the use of considerably higher frequencies than these, with correspondingly shorter wavelengths. Above 30 GHz, wavelengths are just millimetres rather than centimetres long. The millimetre waveband (from 30 GHz to 300 GHz) is referred to as Extremely High Frequency, and its wavelengths are between 10 millimetres and 1 millimetre in length.³ Up to the present time, Extremely High Frequency electromagnetic radiation has not been widely propagated, and its introduction marks a significant step change in the kind of electromagnetic energy that will become present in the natural environment (fig.3).

The reason why millimetre waves are to be used for 5G is that much larger bands of spectrum are available in the Extremely High Frequencies than at lower frequencies. This means that there can be much broader “bandwidth”. Broader bandwidth means that larger quantities of data can be transferred and the speed of transfer of the data will be significantly faster.

One of the effects of this is that it reduces what is called “latency”, or time-lag, in the system, so it improves the quality of video streaming. But in so doing, it also enables a greater seamlessness between the data accessible from virtual sources and our perceptions of objects in the real world, as is required, for example, in Augmented Reality applications. Greater seamlessness means that we more effortlessly inhabit the natural and the electronic worlds as if they were a single reality.

One of the technical problems of using frequencies in the millimetre region of the spectrum is that, because the waves carrying the data are so tiny, being only millimetres long, they are less able to pass through physical barriers, like walls and trees, than are the longer waves of lower frequencies. This is why it is necessary to have so many more new phone masts or “base stations”. They will need to be spaced at 100 metres apart in cities because beyond this distance their signals weaken and are therefore less able to penetrate buildings, and connect with the devices inside. As well as being more closely spaced, the 5G base stations will operate at much higher power than current phone masts, in order to ensure that the signals are sufficiently strong.

Because the wavelengths are so much smaller, the antennas transmitting and receiving them will also be much smaller than those of current phone masts and electronic devices. A single 5G transmitter/receiver will have a large number of tiny antennas, grouped together in one unit. An array of just over a thousand such antennas measures only four square inches, so will easily fit into a small base station on a lamppost, while the smartphone in your pocket will probably have sixteen (fig.4).

Both 5G satellites and 5G land-based masts will use a system called the “phased array”. In the phased array, groups of antennas are co-ordinated to radiate pulses in a specific direction and in a specified time sequence. This allows a concentrated beam of radio waves to be exactly aimed at designated targets, to enable signals to be sent or received. Because the beams are concentrated in this way, this adds to their power, which means they are able more easily to penetrate buildings.

But it also means that any living creature that gets in the way of such a concentrated beam will be subjected to a powerful dose of extremely high frequency radiant electricity. A study published earlier this year demonstrated that certain insects, because of their small body-size, are particularly vulnerable to the millimetre waves of the higher frequencies to be utilised by 5G (fig. 5).⁵ Other studies have shown that bacteria and plants are also vulnerable, and so also (as one might expect) are the skin and the eyes of animals including, of course, human beings.⁶

As well as its ability to concentrate power in focused beams, phased array technology has a further complicating factor. Either side of the main beam, the time intervals between the pulses are different from the time intervals between those of the main beam, but they may overlap each other in such a way as to produce extremely rapid changes in the electromagnetic field. This can have a particularly detrimental effect on living organisms, because instead of the radiation decaying when it is absorbed into living tissue, it can be re-radiated within the body.

The moving charges streaming into the body effectively become antennas that re-radiate the electromagnetic field and send it deeper into the organism. These re-radiated waves are known as Brillouin precursors, named after the French physicist Leon Brillouin, who first described them in 1914. Research suggests that they can have a significant and highly detrimental impact on living cells.⁸

The Un-reassuring Assurances of Government and Industry

The Government body charged with protecting public health, Public Health England, advises us that there is no convincing evidence that Radio Frequency radiation (which radio, television, mobile phones, smartphones and 5G all use) has any adverse health effects on either adults or children.

This advice is based on the recommendations of a supposedly independent body called AGNIR (Advisory Group on Non-Ionising Radiation), which produced a report in 2012 on the safety of Radio Frequency radiation. The report stated that there was a lack of “convincing” and “conclusive” evidence for any adverse health effects.⁹ It was like giving a blank cheque to the telecommunications industry to move on into the higher frequencies, without any heed for the consequences.

It turns out that far from being independent, AGNIR has a high proportion of members with blatant conflicts of interests, and their report distorted or simply left out of account evidence that should have compelled them to reach the opposite conclusion to the one they arrived at. In a forensic analysis of the report, the environmental health researcher, Sarah Starkey, makes it clear that only a wilful disregard of the available scientific evidence could explain its internal contradictions and apparent incompetence.¹⁰

And yet it is the basis of current UK Government policy, allowing government to roll out 5G without so much as even a nod towards the need for prior health and safety assessment.¹¹Health and safety simply do not feature in Government thinking, despite a veritable mountain of literally thousands of research papers demonstrating adverse health effects, which continues to grow at the rate of roughly 350 per year, on average practically one every day.¹²

One of the reasons for ignoring this evidence in the hell-for-leather dash to create the 5G electronic ecosystem is the conviction in government circles that, unless we introduce it immediately, we will be “left behind” and our economic growth and competitiveness will be put at risk. There is simply no time to consider the possible health consequences.

The National Infrastructure Commission, whose 2016 report, Connected Future, forms the basis of current Government policy, pushed this panicky vision of the UK falling behind other nations and urged the government to ensure that the new digital infrastructure is fully in place by 2025.¹³ The NIC report repeatedly points out that the rewards of the “connected future” are to be measured in billions of pounds worth of revenue.

The mind-boggling amounts involved are well exemplified in a recent estimate that the global media industry alone stands to gain $1.3 trillion from 5G by 2025, not least because 5G will “unlock the potential of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)”.¹⁴ The irony that the “connected” future is one in which dizzying profits stand to be made from technologies that disconnect us more and more from the real world is entirely missed.

The sums involved are sufficient to explain why the telecoms industry has for the last twenty-five years done its utmost to ensure that research into the health effects of wireless technologies produce negative or inconclusive results. Since 1993, the industry has financed a large number of studies, saving governments a great deal of expense and at the same time preserving the convenient illusion that the jury is still out on whether exposure to Radio Frequency radiation causes harm.

Earlier this year, The Guardian published an article citing research which showed that while 67% of independently funded studies found a biological effect of exposure to Radio Frequency radiation, only 28% of industry-funded studies did. Industry-funded studies are almost two and a half times less likely than independent studies to find health effects.¹⁵ The authors of the Guardian article explain that the telecoms industry doesn’t need to win the scientific argument about safety, but simply keep the argument running indefinitely by producing studies with results that fail to verify, or even better contradict, the research that does find adverse health effects.

One of the most notorious is the mammoth, industry-funded “Interphone Study”, which managed to conclude that holding a mobile phone to the head actually protects the user from brain tumours! This study, which is full of contradictions and suffers from grievous design flaws, is often quoted as the most authoritative to date, while it has in fact been thoroughly discredited.¹⁶

Nevertheless, the impression is maintained that there is no scientific consensus, and so there are not sufficient grounds for action to be taken. Needless to say, this suits Government just as much as it suits industry.

Beyond the health effects there is another level altogether of what the roll out of 5G actually entails. Read Dr. Naydler’s full article.

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Originally posted in New View, 90 (January – March 2019), pp.33-40 as “5G: The Final Assault”.

Notes

1 One of the best sources for this information is the website of the Global Union Against Radiation Deployment from Space (GUARDS) at www.stopglobalwifi.org, and the related Cellular Phone Task Force website at www.cellphonetaskforce.org. Both organisations are informed and inspired by the tireless research and campaigning of Arthur Firstenberg, to whom this article is greatly indebted.

2 Source: ISEE/ISEA Conference: Environmental Epidemiology and Exposure. Paris, 5/9/2006.

3 The rule is: the higher the frequency at which the wave oscillates, the shorter the wavelength will be.

4 Source: Qualcomm. July, 2018.

5 Arno Thielens et al., “Exposure of Insects to Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Fields from 2 to 120 GHz”, Nature, 8: 3924 (2018):
“The insects show a maximum in absorbed radio frequency power at wavelengths that are comparable to their body size… The studied insects that are smaller than 1cm show a peak in absorption at frequencies (above 6 GHz), which are currently not often used for telecommunication, but are planned to be used in the next generation of wireless communication systems.”

6 Cindy Russell, “A 5G Wireless Future”, The Bulletin (January/February, 2017, pp.20-23 reviews the research, and lists a large number of adverse health effects of millimetre wave electromagnetic radiation including arrythmia, antibiotic resistance, cataracts, compromised immune system, etc.

7 Source: Arno Thielens et al., “Exposure of Insects to Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Fields from 2 to 120 GHz”, Nature, 8: 3924 (2018), fig.4.

8 Kurt Oughstun, interview on “Brillouin Precursors”, Microwave News, 22, 2 (2002), p.10. According to Oughstun, a professor of electrical engineering and mathematics at the University of Vermont,
“A single Brillouin precursor can open small channels through the cell membrane because, as it passes through the membrane, it can induce a significant change in electrostatic potential across that membrane.”
See also Arthur Firstenberg “5G – From Blankets to Bullets” January 17th, 2018), at www.cellphonetaskforce.org.

9 Report of the Advisory Group on Non-Ionising Radiation, Health Effects from Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields (2012).

10 Sarah J. Starkey, “Inaccurate official assessment of radiofrequency safety by the Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation”, Review of Environmental Health, 31:4 (2016), pp.493-503.

11 The Department for Culture, Media and Sport and H. M. Treasury, Next Generation Mobile Technologies: A 5G Strategy for the UK, March, 2017, which sets out the government’s strategy for the roll out of 5G, does not mention health and safety precautions.

12 One of the best sources for this mountain of research is The BioInitiative Report (2012), which helpfully gathers it into manageable sections, and is regularly updated. It can be accessed online at http://www.bioinitiative.org. According to the Report, between 2007 and 2012, approximately 1800 new studies demonstrated adverse health effects, i.e. on average 350 per year.

13 National Infrastructure Report, Connected Future (December, 2016), p.11. The authors argue that only by so doing could the UK “take full advantage of technologies such as artificial intelligence and augmented reality.” The report is available at www. nic.org.

14 Ovum, “5G Economics of Entertainment Report” (October, 2018). The report was commissioned by Intel, and a summary is available at www.newsroom.intel.com.

15 Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie, “The inconvenient truth about cancer and mobile phones”, TheGuardian, 14th July, 2018. The blatant funding bias was first exposed in 2006 by Louis Slesin, “’Radiation Research’ and the Cult of Negative Results”, Microwave News, 26.4 (July, 2006), pp.1-5. A good summary of the problem is given in “Bias and Confounding in EMF Science”, on the Powerwatch website: www.powerwatch.org.uk/science/bias.asp.

16 The Interphone Study is devastatingly critiqued in L. Lloyd Morgan et al., Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern (2009), available online at www. electromagnetichealth.org.

Back in July 2011, David Cameron made a speech about transparency. He told the electorate of Britain that a new dawn of government transparency had arrived and the release of official data would change the way government delivered public services.

“In so many ways, information is a national asset, and it’s time it was shared,” he said. “So today, we are making new commitments to transparency. What we’re proposing is something entirely different. Our aim is to provide similar information on performance right across the public services”

Cameron spoke eloquently about this “revolution in transparency” and the ‘profound impact” it would have. What he didn’t say was that the government were also using an architecture of illegal surveillance tools as well. He didn’t say that the security services were taking images of you and your family (16 per cent of which were naked images or compromising in nature). He forgot to mention that every website you visited, every message you sent, every person you made contact with was logged and stored. His convenient amnesia included forgetting to mention operations Tempora, Echelon, Optic Nerve and other illegal mass surveillance systems. Or that the government was recording what news or other information subscriptions you paid, how and who you spent your money with, what sexual orientation you may be and any other personal information the state has no business knowing about.

Two years later the Edward Snowden revelations blew the lies of his government wide open. Now we had some real transparency. David Cameron then demonstrated his real passion for transparency by warning and threatening journalists that “if they don’t demonstrate some social responsibility it will be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act.” The state then forced their way into the offices of The Guardian and its henchmen from the security services destroyed the Snowden files and evidence it brought to light.

This state intervention into our lives has now extended to creating a biometric database, linked to a health database. To all intents, this represents nothing less than a national digital ID card system. National ID cards have been roundly rejected by the electorate and by parliament in the past – but that has not stopped this most secretive of governments.

All manner of government agencies, the people employed by them and the third party companies that design these systems – have access to your most private data. Tens of thousands of largely unknown people, many from foreign states have access (as the software is often designed by foreign companies).

After the unearthing of Theresa May’s racist project of illegally and immorally ejecting black people from Britain in the Windrush Scandal – is it any surprise the government is secretly building a new surveillance architecture to sniff out any possibility of an immigrant not being quite good enough for Britain. Other than national security, and immigration is not an issue of national security, the only reason why the state does things in secret is that the electorate would not endorse their actions – or that they are illegal in the first place.

Secret establishment of new database

In January this year, an inspection report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) revealed Home Office ambitions to:

“establish a system that obtains and shares an individual’s immigration status in real time with authorised users, providing proof of entitlement to a range of public and private services, such as work, rented accommodation, healthcare and benefits.”

It took this report to confirm that the Home Office is indeed building a massive hostile environment database, known internally as the “Status Checking Project”.

When, in autumn 2018, the Data Protection Bill included a sweeping immigration control exemption that would allow more or less any controller to set aside a person’s data protection rights for immigration control purposes, Liberty, the human rights organisation were keen to find out exactly what the Government intended it to be used for. As Liberty briefed at the time, referencing a draft policy document leaked to the Guardian:

“this exemption could ostensibly be used to facilitate the sharing of personal data of any individual interacting with public services … amounting in effect to a digital ID card.”

So there you have it. But Ministers remained curiously silent about the Status Checking Project. They insisted that the exemption would be used for tracking children of undocumented parents through their school records, or concealing the source of tip-offs to immigration enforcement (both things that can be done through existing crime-related exemptions to data protection law). The closest we had come before the ICIBI report to a public reference is a euphemistic mention of “new digital checking services” in the Immigration White Paper.

The report also suggests that the system will be available to police in the future, despite ongoing concerns that overlap between policing and immigration enforcement is undermining public safety.

Quietly entrenching the hostile environment

Liberty writes –

“The secrecy surrounding the so-called Status Checking Project is astonishing given that it has potentially huge human rights implications, both if it works, and if it doesn’t.

It’s one thing to send a text to someone telling them to leave the country, as happened in 2012, when the Home Office contracted Capita to send 39,000 texts to apparently undocumented migrants, some of whom were not, leading to a deluge of complaints. It’s another thing entirely to communicate a person’s status to landlords, employers, NHS providers, banks, police, and who knows who else, locking them out of the goods and services essential to a dignified life and the exercise of their fundamental rights.

That’s what happens when the Home Office gets it ‘right’. And that in itself is a serious problem. But the Home Office is also very likely to get things wrong. Its hostile environment data-sharing schemes already run with an alarming error rate. Ten per cent of bank account refusals sampled during one inspection were found to have been made in error. In 2015, the DVLA was forced to reinstate more than 250 wrongly-revoked licences. And the Home Office has repeatedly refused to clean up its database on undocumented migrants, despite the National Audit Office and the ICIBI recommending that it does so.”

The Windrush scandal exposed the devastating human impact of the hostile environment, as well as the Kafkaesque nightmare faced by people wrongly accused of being in the UK unlawfully. But it was not produced by a mere lack of documentation on the part of Commonwealth citizens. It was the product of a series of policy and legislative decisions that progressively stripped rights from a group of people who came to the UK as citizens and implemented a hostile environment despite warnings that those people might be locked out of essential services. In some cases, evidence that would have been useful to Windrush citizens was destroyed, and extensive evidence that they provided was ignored on the grounds that it did not cover a few years out of decades.

Windrush proves the credentials of this government when it comes to discrimination. Illegal state surveillance proves the credentials of this government when it comes to the mass invasion of the state into our privacy. Now add both into the architecture of state control. What you start to see is a government willing to break all the rules, laws, ethics and all morality to pinpoint people, groups, communities, dissidents, protestors, organisations – in fact, anything it doesn’t like and then deal with it in its own mendacious way.

This is all leading to one place and one place only. Behave according to the state (not necessarily by the laws of the land), or be punished by it.

Who gave the state the mandate to build a £multi-billion system to surveil our lives down to the tiniest detail? No-one did. The state did that all on its own. The building of this new database is yet another instalment of a state out of control. You might want to ask yourself if you’re happy with where this is all going.

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Unless action is taken swiftly — and Israel with its anti-Arab, anti-Islamic policies is forced to stop — the world risks losing the most iconic symbol of Jerusalem, and one of the oldest and most beautiful religious structures ever created.

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There is a story about the Khalifa Umar bin al-Khattab, the Muslim leader who conquered Jerusalem in 637 C.E. It is said that upon entering the city he asked to see the site of the temple built by King Solomon, but could find no one who knew where it was. According to the story, he then came across a poor Jewish beggar sitting in the street. The beggar told the Kalifa that he could take him to the site where the temple once stood. When they arrived at the site Umar realized that the site had been used as the city trash dump. He then went down on his knees and, together with the Jewish beggar, cleaned the site and vowed to build a sanctuary that would for all eternity protect the holy site.

This sanctuary is the Dome of the Rock and with its golden dome it has become the most iconic symbol of Jerusalem. Today, Zionists in Israel plan to destroy it and replace it with what amounts to no more than a slaughterhouse where Jewish fanatics will sacrifice animals in rituals whose time has long past.

The Zionist system of takeovers

If we observe what is happening at the Haram Al-Sharif — the Holy Sanctuary in Jerusalem, where the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock are situated — and compare it to the history of Zionist takeovers of land, towns, neighborhoods and homes elsewhere in Palestine, the only possible conclusion that can be reached is that Israel is intending to push Palestinians and Muslims out and allow more Zionist zealots in. In case it is not abundantly clear at the outset, all people should treat this issue with the gravest concern.

From the earliest days of the Zionist takeover of Palestine, the method employed to take over land has been to send young zealots to confront the Arab population, while the establishment maintains a pretense that this is just a prank by youthful enthusiasts. Then the Zionist establishment allows these young zealots to create what they call “facts on the ground;” and then, gradually, services like water, electricity, roads, and of course security are provided, until this “youthful prank” becomes a Zionist settlement.

This was true in the pre-1948 years; then, after 1967, this system was revived, initially with settlements like the ones in Hebron and Sebastia. Today the system is used to take over areas that are slightly more controversial and in which the state officially does not want to get involved. These are what Israel calls “illegal outposts” — which eventually become “legal,” and then full-fledged settlements.

According to Peace Now: “Under Netanyahu’s government, we have seen intensive activity to restore the widespread phenomenon of illegal outposts deep inside the West Bank.”

Peace Now goes on to say:

The history of the settlements shows that many times an agricultural farm is actually the basis of the establishment of a whole new settlement. At the beginning, the settlers receive an approval to farm the land, then to build a house, and then, with or without an approval, they establish a neighborhood.”

Haram Al-Sharif

Knesset member Yehuda Glick is an Israeli politician who made the building of a Jewish temple in place of the Islamic monuments that have existed in Jerusalem for over a thousand years his life’s mission. According to Glick, 30 years ago when zealots like himself began to enter the compound — which they call “Har Habayit,” or the Temple Mount — there were about a hundred who went. In 2018 there were some 30,000 and this year they expect 50,000 Jewish zealots to enter the compound.

In an interview with an Israeli television program about the Temple Mount faithful, “Rabbi” Yoel Elitzur, another zealot leader of this group, states: “We will advance one step at a time, we will do what they allow us and we will advance. This has proven itself.”

“You mean a slow confiscation?” the reporter asked him. “Yes.”

The Israeli provocations into the Haram Al-Sharif are very well organized and documented. They are done in coordination with the Israeli security forces and are more like a march of force than an innocent tour. From time to time the boys who give the tours and who go to the sanctuary to create a provocation will drop to the ground and prostrate themselves and get arrested. In a tweet by “Hozrim La’Har” (Returning to the Mount), one can see young men doing this on video.

יהודים צדיקים שהשתחוו בהר לכבוד הרגל.
מוזמנים לעלות לרגל למקום הקדוש ביותר לעם היהודי! pic.twitter.com/rpeXzYhYCR

— חוזרים להר (@CozrimLahar) April 22, 2019

It is not only about access

Over the years there has been a growing movement of messianic Jewish fanatics who have been holding seminars and practice sessions on how to build the temple and how to conduct animal sacrifices. Priests dressed in costume and all the paraphernalia required are present and hundreds of participants attend the events, which are growing in popularity. Classes and camps for children are also held so as to educate a new generation of Israelis who will want to eliminate all signs of Muslims from Jerusalem, a city that has been Muslim and tolerant of other religions for over a thousand years. Having listened to interviews with members of the Temple Mount Faithful, it seems they have an obsession with burning a red cow and slaughtering young goats and then covering the place with blood pouring from the ritual slaughter. A practice hardly compatible with the quiet spirituality one finds at the Holy Sanctuary today.

A still from the documentary, Roni Kuban and the Temple Mount Faithful

Ne’emani Har Ha’bait, or the Temple Mount Faithful, have been financing these events and for the past eight years have been financing an architect in order to make this maniacal, destructive hallucination into a reality. The architect, Yoram Ginzburg, is an Israeli secular Jew who seems to be as enthusiastic about this vision as are all the others. His plan includes creation of a “Greater Jerusalem” that includes the cities of Ramallah and Al-Bire in the north and Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jala in the south. “As for the Arabs” who live in these areas, he offers what he calls “two interesting options:” one is expulsion, or, as he calls it, “Evacuation-Compensation;” and the other mass conversion — that all the Palestinians will convert to Judaism. Non-Jews may remain as long as they are loyal to this “Jewish project.”

Yoram Ginzburg with heads of “Temple Mount Faithful” discussing plans for the third Jewish temple

A serious threat

Jared Kushner’s Deal of the Century is one in which Israel takes all and Palestinians are denied any rights. The Neo-Nazi thugs like Betsalel Smutritch and Michael Ben-Ari, with whom Netanyahu made a pact prior to the April 2019 elections, seem likely to be his coalition partners. Under these circumstances, the dream that the “Temple Mount” loyalists hope to see materialize no longer seems far-fetched.

The history of the past seven decades shows that the masters of the land — the most vicious, violent and racist elements within Israel — always get their way. Unless action is taken swiftly — and Israel with its anti-Arab, anti-Islamic policies is forced to stop — the world risks losing the most iconic symbol of Jerusalem, and one of the oldest and most beautiful religious structures ever created.

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Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. He is the author of “The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”

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The Washington Post’s surprise revelation that Trump agreed to pay North Korea $2 million in exchange for releasing imprisoned student Otto Warmbier is intended to challenge his credibility by drawing “politically uncomfortable” comparisons between him and his predecessor.

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The Washington Post published a surprise revelation late last week alleging that Trump agreed to a North Korean demand that the US pay $2 million in “hospital bills” in exchange for releasing imprisoned student Otto Warmbier, a claim that the American leader promptly denied. In his tweet, Trump wrote that

“No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else. This is not the Obama Administration that paid 1.8 Billion Dollars for four hostages, or gave five terroist hostages plus, who soon went back to battle, for traitor Sgt. Bergdahl!”

His rebuke was obviously meant to preemptively contradict any comparisons between him and his predecessor that his political foes might attempt to draw in an effort to challenge his credibility by exposing his attacks against the Obama Administration for those two aforementioned events as the height of hypocrisy.

This is relevant in the current domestic political context because former Vice President Joe Biden just announced that he’ll be running as the Democrats’ candidate for president so it’s predictable that Trump will try to tie him to all of the many Obama-era scandals such as the two that he touched upon in his tweet. That might be more difficult to do nowadays after the Washington Post’s revelation in spite of Trump and National security Advisor Bolton‘s insistence that no money was ever paid even though Special Representative for North Korea Joseph Yun signed a document promising to do so after receiving authorization from the American leader himself. It’s therefore unclear exactly what transpired during that time nearly two years ago, but another question that naturally arises is about the timing of this very report. It’s unlikely that the Washington Post knew about this from the get-go but held onto the story until now, so it must have just been tipped off about it fairly recently.

Trump’s many “deep state” enemies are actively working to undermine his foreign policy, but it’s strange that not one of them leaked this scandalous detail to the media earlier when the revelation could have ruined his two summits with Chairman Kim. It could very well be that the sources didn’t come across this information until now, but that still doesn’t answer the question of why the original holder(s) of this knowledge didn’t share it with those individuals until now. One possible explanation could be that it it was carelessly revealed during casual conversation while another might be that the individual(s) was triggered to do so for one reason or another, perhaps pertaining to the Hanoi Summit’s failure or some other matter. Either way, the political consequences of this report are that it casts doubt on Trump’s much-touted negotiating prowess and also makes Kim lose “face” after he met with his American counterpart despite supposedly not having received any money for Warmbier’s release.

Altogether, the combined effect is that Trump might have more difficulty discrediting Biden for the Obama era’s many scandals just like he might also have difficulty restarting the North Korean nuclear talks. The Mainstream Media also has another scandal to harp on about after Russiagate was exposed as a hoax driven by a shadowy cabal of coup plotters inside the country’s permanent bureaucracy, therefore giving Trump’s enemies an opportunity to distract Americans with this the juicy narrative that he might have swallowed his principles and cut a deal with a “dictator” despite accusing Obama of doing the same thing vis-a-vis Iran. Only time will tell whether this scandal has the same staying power as Russiagate or if it’ll just fizzle out like practically every other one surrounding the Trump Administration, but it’s nevertheless interesting to think about its timing and possible overall political implications.

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

The Following text is Section 4 of

The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War,

by the Italian Committee No War No NATO

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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.

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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

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1. In 1990, on the eve of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, US Secretary of State James Baker assured USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev that “NATO will not extend by a single inch to the east”. But in twenty years, after having demolished the Yugoslavian Federation, NATO extended from 16 to 30 countries, expanding more and more eastwards to Russia.

2. In 1999, it incorporated the first three countries of the former Warsaw Pact: Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. In 2004, it extended to other countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (formerly part of the USSR); Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia (formerly part of the Warsaw Pact); Slovenia (formerly part of the Yugoslavian Federation). In 2009, it incorporated Albania (formerly a member of the Warsaw Pact) and Croatia (formerly part of the Yugoslavian Federation) and, in 2017, Montenegro; in 2019, it signed the protocol of accession of Northern Macedonia as the 30th member. Three other countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina (formerly part of the Yugoslavian Federation), Georgia and Ukraine (formerly part of the USSR) – are currently candidates for entry into NATO.

3. So Washington ties these countries not so much to the Alliance as directly to the US, strengthening its influence within the European Union. Of the ten Central and Eastern European countries entering NATO between 1999 and 2004, seven entered the European Union between 2004 and 2007. As the European Union expands to the East, the United States is effectively extending its control over Europe through NATO. Clearly, Washington’s strategic plan is revealed: to use the expansion of NATO to the East as a means of establishing relations of force even more favorable to the United States and, thus, further isolate the “old Europe” that could one day become autonomous.

4. Besides these, the expansion of NATO to the East has other implications. Incorporating not only the countries of the former Warsaw Pact but also the three Baltic republics that were once part of the USSR, NATO has reached the borders of the Russian Federation. Despite Washington’s assurances of its peaceful intentions, this constitutes a threat, even nuclear, to Russia.

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Sections 5-16 of the 70 Years of NATO, From War to War, forthcoming on Global Research

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.

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Birds are, quite literally, the proverbial “canary in the coal mine.” How birds fare in the world indicates how all wildlife and habitat, and by extension human populations, will fare. It is not just poetry that led Rachel Carson to title her seminal work, Silent Spring. All the past administrations for which we have worked have struck a balance and worked diligently and in good faith with industries that had significant impacts on birds, such as oil and gas, coal, electric utilities, commercial fishing, communications, transportation, national defense, and others to reasonably address unintended take. It can be done. In fact, it has been done. Successes in applying this law to minimize the incidental killing of birds are numerous. – Letter of January 10, 2018, from 17 former government conservation professionals objecting to Department of Interior memorandum unilaterally voiding century-old law

One of the ways American politics works these days is to ignore the rule of law while putting on a great fake show of legal probity. The example here is the Trump administration’s secret reversal of migratory bird protection law, later imposed on the nation by its own authoritarian fiat, making law without the participation of Congress or any other government agency. The administration’s procedure effectively reduces due process of law to the arbitrary ruling of one person. This seems patently unconstitutional on its face, since the Constitution (Article II, section 3) requires that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

The bilateral 1916 Migratory Bird Treaty was signed by the United States and Canada, then still part of Great Britain. The Bird Treaty was one of the earliest environmental protection laws, incorporated by Congress into US law in 1918 as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (16 USC 703ff). For a hundred years, administrations of both parties have faithfully executed the act to protect migratory birds from a host of evolving threats from industries to whom the life or death of birds was inconsequential. These industries became increasingly resentful toward government intrusion on their profits for the sake of wild birds, of all things.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) enforced migratory bird law on behalf of the Interior Department in bipartisan fashion across all administrations since the 1970s, from Nixon through Obama.

Image on the right: Shortly after leaving the Port of Valdez, the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef. The picture below was taken 3 days after the vessel grounded, just before a storm arrived.

In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker wreck in Alaska killed some 300,000 birds. The Exxon oil company settled criminal misdemeanor charges brought by the US under the migratory bird act, paying $125 million in fines and restitution (part of Exxon’s overall liability of about $1 billion in other legal actions). At the time, Exxon’s fine was the largest ever imposed for an environmental crime. As of July 2013, Exxon still had not paid $92 million of the settlement. In October 2015, the US abandoned its claim against Exxon. The Alaskan coast remains polluted by Exxon oil.

In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and 87-day oil gusher killed 11 people and hundreds of thousands of birds in the Gulf of Mexico. BP (British Petroleum) settled criminal misdemeanor charges brought by the US under the migratory bird act, paying $100 million in fines (part of BP’s overall liability of more than $20 billion in other legal actions). In 2012, BP pleaded guilty to manslaughter (among 14 felony counts) and paid $4 billion in criminal fines and penalties. The BP oil spill (over 3 million gallons) was 20 times larger than Exxon’s.

The penalties generated by these two events, Exxon and BP, represent 97 percent of the total revenue generated by the migratory bird law for the Fish and Wildlife Service, according to the Washington Post. As of March 2017, the US Fish and Wildlife Service  website stated misleadingly:

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act makes it illegal for anyone to take, possess, import, export, transport, sell, purchase, barter, or offer for sale, purchase, or barter, any migratory bird, or the parts, nests, or eggs of such a bird except under the terms of a valid permit issued pursuant to Federal regulations.

The FSW misstated the law, which includes the word “kill” among its illegalities. The law (16 US Code 703) is titled: “Taking, killing, or possessing migratory birds unlawful.” The law states in relevant, unambiguous part:

Unless and except as permitted by regulations made as hereinafter provided in this subchapter, it shall be unlawful at any time, by any means or in any manner, to … kill … any migratory bird….

Until 2017, administrations of both parties understood the law to apply equally to any migratory bird killing without a permit, regardless of whether the killing was intentional or unintentional. The Exxon and BP mass bird kills were presumably unintentional. Neither Exxon nor BP challenged that long-established understanding of the law under which they were charged and accepted guilt.

Before 2017, efforts to weaken or repeal the migratory bird law had been ineffective. Congress made changes in migratory bird law on numerous occasions, including in 1960, 1986, 1998, 2002, and 2003, without once changing the law’s clear prohibition against killing migratory birds, intentionally or not.

In 1986, in response to a Sixth Circuit federal court ruling, Congress required that any felony charged under the law required an element of intent by the wrongdoer. Congress, as it had before, left misdemeanors to be prosecuted without intent, under strict liability. In other words, if you kill migratory birds then you’re liable, whether you intended to or not.

In 2002, Congress explicitly carved out an exception to migratory bird law, allowing the US military to kill birds unintentionally, but only during military readiness activities.” Other military activities that killed migratory birds, intentionally or not, were still prohibited. The legislation directed Fish and Wildlife to issue regulations under the authority of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which FWS did in 2007. In 2015, Republicans in the House introduced bills to reduce the scope and the financial penalties of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Neither bill became law.

In December 2011, the American Bird Conservancy petitioned Fish and Wildlife to undertake the rulemaking process to create regulations under the authority of the migratory bird act that would regulate the impacts of industrial wind power projects on migratory birds. In March 2012, FWS responded, agreeing with the conservancy’s analysis of its authority under the law to regulate unintentional bird kills by windmills. But FWS denied the conservancy’s request for regulation on the basis that FWS was still working with the wind industry on voluntary guidelines.

The American Bird Conservancy renewed its call for regulation in 2015. On May 26, FWS issued a notice of intent to undertake an Environmental Impact Statement (consistent with the National Environmental Policy Act) in support of regulating unintentional bird kills by windmills, and invited public input in the process.

On January 10, 2017, in the waning days of the Obama administration, the Interior Department’s solicitor (agency lawyer) issued a memorandum now deleted from the department’s website. The memorandum, Opinion M-37041, was titled “Incidental Take Prohibited Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act,” referring to unintentional bird kills by industrial and commercial operations, specifically including windmills. This memorandum of 30 pages confirmed the department’s policy over preceding decades. Solicitor Hilary Tompkins pointed out that, regarding some disputed words in the law:

… even if the traditional common-law meaning of “take” introduces some ambiguity as to whether that term applies to incidental take, “kill” is unambiguous.

In other words, the government’s consistent reading of the law is that killing migratory birds, regardless of intent, is nevertheless illegal. It is incumbent on industrial and commercial actors to anticipate obvious dangers and take actions to mitigate them. Otherwise, they risk prosecution by the government.

The incoming Trump administration didn’t see it that way. Trump and many of his supporters were generally anti-regulation, almost any regulation. One billionaire Trump supporter, Harold Hamm (image on the left), founder and CEO of the oil company Continental Resources, had characterized regulation as “death by a thousand cuts.” In 2015, Hamm leaned on the University of Oklahoma to dismiss scientists studying the connection between oil fracking and more frequent earthquakes.

In 2011, Hamm had his own unpleasant encounter with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Continental and several other oil companies operating in North Dakota were charged with killing birds by failing to put protective netting over oil waste pools. That allowed birds to fly in, get oil-soaked, and die. Continental was charged with killing one phoebe.  Hamm was outraged and challenged the charges in US District Court in North Dakota. In January 2012, Judge Daniel Hovland granted the oil companies’ motion and dismissed the charges, ruling that the migratory bird law of 1918 was too vague to justify the indictments, even though the law had been enforced this way for decades.  The judge wrote, in part, ultimately relying on mind-reading the intent of the 1918 Congress:

All parties involved in this dispute have acted in good faith, and there is case law which supports the legal arguments both sides have presented. Nevertheless, the criminalization of lawful, commercial activity which may indirectly injure or kill migratory birds is not warranted under the Migratory Bird Treat Act as it is currently written.

This Court believes that it is highly unlikely that Congress ever intended to impose criminal liability on the acts or omissions of persons involved in lawful commercial activity which may indirectly cause the death of birds protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

This is an apt expression of the mindset of many members of the incoming Trump administration, especially the political appointees at the Interior Department. It’s not as though there’s no reasonable argument to be had here. Indicting a company on the basis of a single dead phoebe seems ludicrous, but the danger of unprotected waste oil pits is real. The rule of law provides numerous avenues for addressing such competing interests. The Trump administration demonstrated no interest in following anything like the rule of law in any substantive way.

On February 6, 2017, shortly after taking office, the Trump administration suspended the Interior Department’s January memorandum supporting decades of precedent in enforcing the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. What happened next was ugly, as described in a lawsuit filed by the National Audubon Society in May 2018:

Representatives of the oil and gas industry, among others, then lobbied DOI [Interior Dept.]  to issue a new directive that would eviscerate any obligation to take migratory bird impacts into consideration when engaging in various industrial activities. For example, on August 31, 2017, the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and natural gas companies, sent Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke a letter complaining that the “implementation and enforcement of incidental take of migratory birds (including nests and their habitat) … is inhibiting oil and natural gas development.” The letter urged Secretary Zinke to issue “guidance that [the] MBTA [Migratory Bird Treaty Act] does not give FWS the authority to regulate incidental take for [sic] migratory birds.”

On November 3, 2017, the Director of Government Relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America wrote to the Deputy Director of DOI’s Office of External Affairs with the subject line “MBTA” asking, “Any word on the solicitor’s opinion yet?”

Within the Interior Department, the review of the migratory bird law was proceeding in private.

The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 relating to rule making (5 USC 553) requires the rule making agency to make public announcement of and provide for public comment on any rule before adopting it: “the agency shall give interested persons an opportunity to participate in the rule making through submission of written data, views, or arguments….” Without explaining why, the Trump administration ignored this federal law. The only interested persons known to be involved in the process were lobbyists for oil, gas, and other industries.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 contemplates public knowledge of and participation in environmental policy decisions. A November 2017 federal court decision in Montana addressed the failure of the Obama administration to conduct a proper environmental impact statement before approving the TransCanada pipeline:

No agency possesses discretion whether to comply with procedural requirements such as NEPA. The relevant information provided by a NEPA analysis needs to be available to the public and the people who play a role in the decision-making process. This process includes the President.

The environmental policy act requires that for all “major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment,” the federal agency taking the action must prepare an environmental impact statement that analyzes the “impact of the proposed action,” and “alternatives to the proposed action.” (42 U.S.C. § 4332(C)) The Trump Interior Department did not undertake an environmental impact statement relating to migratory bird law and it did not explain its inaction.

The environmental policy act also allows an agency to prepare an environmental assessment to determine the need for an environmental impact statement. The Trump Interior Department did not undertake an environmental assessment relating to migratory bird law and it did not explain its inaction.

On December 22, 2017, without prior notice, the Interior Department’s solicitor Daniel Jorjani issued a memorandum, M-37050, holding that “the Migrant Bird Treaty Act does not prohibit incidental take,” meaning that oil companies and others can kill migratory birds without limit as long as they didn’t intend to do so. Jorjani’s memo took effect immediately, with force of law, permanently replacing the January memo that had restated settled law regarding migratory birds. Smithsonian.com had a December 27 story with a ho-hum attitude, although it did include oil industry lies about lax enforcement against windmills that kill birds.

Effectively, Jorjani determined that black is white. He did it in secret with industry and bureaucratic co-conspirators. There is no evidence that he acted in good faith and there is no further review possible of his memo within the executive branch. He reversed a hundred years of evolving environmental policy protecting migratory birds. He did it with one fell fascist swipe of the pen.

This blatantly undemocratic manner of law-making was largely ignored at the time and has been ever since, with occasional quiet and polite demurrers. There were limited, minor media reports, but no objection from Congress over its usurped authority.

On January 10, 2018, less than three weeks after the decision was made public, 17 former government conservation professionals wrote the letter quoted at the top of this piece. They are “very concerned” by Jorjani’s memo and beseech Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to modify the memo. They write:

This is a new, contrived legal standard that creates a huge loophole in the MBTA [Migratory Bird Treaty Act], allowing companies to engage in activities that routinely kill migratory birds so long as they were not intending that their operations would “render an animal subject to human control.” Indeed, as your solicitor’s opinion necessarily acknowledged, several district and circuit courts have soundly rejected the narrow reading of the law that your Department is now embracing….

The MBTA can and has been successfully used to reduce gross negligence by companies that simply do not recognize the value of birds to society or the practical means to minimize harm. Your new interpretation needlessly undermines a history of great progress, undermines the effectiveness of the migratory bird treaties, and diminishes U.S. leadership.

There is no record that the ethically-challenged Zinke responded before he left office under a cloud. But there is no record of anyone else at the Interior Department responding either. After a few months of stonewalling silence, the department issued a memo on April 11, 2018, offering “Guidance on the recent M-Opinion [37050] affecting the Migratory Bird Treaty Act,” addressing “what changes to prior practice should be made” to conform to the 180-degree reversal of department policy. The Washington Post covered this superficially, as if it were both recent and unimportant. The memo asserts, without apparent irony, that:

The mission of the Service is to work with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. Migratory bird conservation remains an integral part of our mission.

This dishonest assertion seems designed to blur reality. It states that the National Environmental Policy Act should be followed, even though it was ignored in creating the memo it purports to explain. In the real world, the changes that the Interior Department has made amount to an abdication of any significant responsibility for migratory birds. The Fish and Wildlife Service is no longer enforcing any law against industrial bird kills. The Fish and Wildlife Service is no longer investigating or even keeping records on industrial bird kills. Elizabeth Shogren reports that FWS “saved about $2.5 million by not filling ten positions primarily related to investigating violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.” After a century of some protection by the US government, migratory birds are on their own.

Canada has indicated that it will continue to enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty as best it can. It’s not clear what Mexico, Japan, and Russia are doing about American treaty violations. It’s not clear whether the Trump administration has bothered to inform any other governments of its reversal of the treaty’s lawful requirements.

On May 24, 2018, four plaintiffs – the National  Audubon Society, the American Bird Conservancy, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Defenders of Wildlife – filed suit against the Interior Department, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and solicitor Jorjani. The plaintiffs’ 35-page filing in US District Court for the Southern District of New York challenges Jorjani’s 2017 memo as “unlawful and arbitrary and capricious.” The complaint argues that:

For decades Defendants [US government agencies] have construed the MBTA [Migratory Bird Treaty Act], consistent with its plain language, as protecting migratory bird populations from foreseeable “incidental” killing or “take” caused by major industrial activities that are not specifically directed at migratory birds but nevertheless kill them in large numbers. This interpretation has helped to conserve migratory birds for decades in keeping with the purpose of the MBTA and the international treaties the Act implements.

The plaintiffs ask the court to reinstate the January 2017 solicitor’s opinion that restated the settled law of the past century. They also ask the court to vacate Jorjani’s December 2017 memo as well as the April 2018 memo issuing “guidelines.” The government has moved to dismiss the case. Federal judge Valerie Caproni has not yet ruled on the government’s motion. The judge was appointed by President Obama in 2013, before which she was General Counsel of the FBI under Robert Mueller.  There have been no hearings on the merits of the case.

On September 5, 2018, the attorneys general for eight states filed suit against the same Defendants – Interior Department, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Jorjani. Led by Barbara Underwood of New York, the other states were California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Oregon. The states’ 26-page complaint asks the court to declare “that the Jorjani opinion is arbitrary, capricious, or not in accordance with law” and to vacate the opinion, which would restore the Solicitor’s memo of January 2017 restating a century of settled law. The states argue in part that:

The Jorjani opinion is inconsistent with the Act’s text and purposes, is contrary to defendants’ previous longstanding interpretation of the Act and decades of consistent application of that interpretation, drastically limits the scope of the Act, subjects migratory birds to increased likelihood of death or injury from industrial and other human activities that immediately take or kill or are foreseeably likely to take or kill migratory birds, and harms the States’ sovereign, ecological, and economic interests in robust federal protections of migratory birds.

This case is also before Judge Valerie Caproni. There have been no hearings and none are scheduled. The only pending motion is for Dianna Shin of New Jersey to appear pro hac vice.

On April 11, the Senate voted 56-41 to confirm David Bernhardt, a career lawyer/lobbyist for the oil industry and their ilk, as Secretary of the Interior. While he served as deputy secretary, Bernhardt was deeply involved in gutting the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, as reported by Elizabeth Shogren of Reveal (and not much of anyone else). Solicitor Jorjani’s email October 27, 2017, confirms that Bernhardt “has been plugged in since Day 1” in gutting the migratory bird law. Bernhardt was unanimously confirmed by Republican senators with their longstanding antipathy to environmental laws. They were joined by three other corrupt senators, Democrats-in-name-only Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

On April 15, the inspector general of the Interior Department opened an investigation into ethics complaints against Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. The investigation was requested by eight Senate Democrats and four government watchdog groups.

This is about more than just corrupt Democratic senators, this is about more than notoriously corrupt Republican senators, this is about more than just a US cabinet agency engaging in a secret process that reverses a hundred years of legal precedent, this is about more than the failure of mainstream media to cover blatantly unlawful government, this is about more than the failure of the court system to respond in timely fashion to contempt for law, this is about more than the failure of Democrats generally and Democratic presidential candidates in particular to notice the raw success of the Trump administration carrying off the impeachable offense of failing to take care that the law be faithfully executed.

This is about the institutional triumph of American fascism.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Reader Supported News.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Featured image is from Sierra Club

Actually I thought I was sufficiently informed by the books of my friend Manfred Paulus about the shameful excesses of human trafficking and sex slavery. But his meritorious lifelong research is mainly related to Germany and Europe. An article by the American constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead in “Global Research” of 24 April 2019 “The Essence of Evil: Sex with Children Has Become Big Bussiness in America” shows that the sex trade – especially the purchase and sale of young girls  – has become “Big Business” in America. This buying and selling has become the fastest growing organized crime business and the second most important good after drugs and weapons. This is America’s dirty little secret. This decadent “Western Value Society” will one day perish like the decadent Roman Empire.

“Battlefield America. The war against the American people”

I recommend to every reader of these lines – especially parents and educators – to read the shocking state report of American society here in order to form their own opinion. In the following I quote from the report. Whitehead portrays a frighteningly decadent nation. Already in 2015 he published a book entitled “Battlefield America. The War on the American People”. It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged child sex workers in the U.S.

The average age of those being trafficked is 13. But the average means there are children younger than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-old. Every year, the girls being bought and sold gets younger and younger. Every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry. According to USA Today, adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States. They are ordinary people from all walks of life, including men in socially respected professions such as doctors and pastors. On average, a child might be raped by 6.000 men during a five-year period of servitude. It’s happening everywhere, right under our nose, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.

For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to the end.

These girls aren’t volunteering to be sex slaves. Some of these children are forcefully abducted or lured by force. Many are runaways or throwaways, others are sold to the system by relatives and acquaintances. In most cases, they have no choice. Social media makes it all too easy for pimps to find girls. They look on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks. They and their assistants cruise malls, high schools and middle schools. They pick them up at bus stops. Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime targets for traffickers. It is a “trading of flesh”.

For the victims of human trafficking, it’s a nightmare from beginning to the end. A living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging, degradation, threats, disease, pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, torture, pain, and always the constant fear of being killed. They were frequently beaten to keep them off-balance and obedient. Every night they would have to meet a certain quota. Sometimes they were videotaped while being forced to have sex with adults or one another. In a so-called “damage group”, the clients can hit them or do anything they want to.

The Result of a Decadent Western Civilization

“The Essence of Evil“ is what Whitehead calls his article. In the text he asks the question: “Where did this appetite for young girls come from?” And he answers:

“Look around you. Young girls have been sexualized for years now in music videos, on billboards, in television ads, and in clothing stores. Marketers have created a demand for young flesh and a ready supply of over-sexualized children”.

Whitehead then quotes from a report in the U.S. magazine “Newsweek”. There, a certain Jessica Bennett writes:

“Latex, corsets and stripper heels, once the fashion of porn stars, have made their way into middle and high school. (…) It’s the ‘pornification of a generation’, (…) sex, if not porn, has invaded our lives.”

Whitehead says:

“Culture is grooming these young people to be preyed upon by sexual predator. And then we wonder why our young women are being preyed on, trafficked and abused?“

Because of the growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women eligible for abduction, this problem will not go away in the near future, Whitehead thinks.

So what can you do?

Whitehead answers the self-imposed question: “So what can you do? with a series of detailed practical recommendations. I quote some that I have translated:

“Educate yourselves and your children about this growing menace in our communities.

Stop feeding the monster: Sex trafficking is part of a larger continuum in America that runs the gamut from homelessness, poverty, and self-esteem issues to sexualized television, the glorification of a pimp/ho culture—what is often referred to as the pornification of America—and a billion dollar sex industry built on the back of pornography, music, entertainment, etc.

This epidemic is largely one of our own making, especially in a corporate age where the value placed on human life takes a backseat to profit. It is estimated that the porn industry brings in more money than Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo. Call on your city councils, elected officials and police departments to make the battle against sex trafficking a top priority, more so even than the so-called war on terror and drugs and the militarization of law enforcement. (…) 

That so many women and children continue to be victimized, brutalized and treated like human cargo is due to three things: one, a consumer demand that is increasingly lucrative for everyone involved—except the victims; two, a level of corruption so invasive on both a local and international scale that there is little hope of working through established channels for change; and three, an eerie silence from individuals who fail to speak out against such atrocities.

But the truth is that we are all guilty of contributing to this human suffering. The traffickers are guilty. The consumers are guilty. The corrupt law enforcement officials are guilty. The women’s groups who do nothing are guilty. The foreign peacekeepers and aid workers who contribute to the demand for sex slaves are guilty. Most of all, every individual who does not raise a hue and cry over the atrocities being committed against women and children in almost every nation around the globe—including the United States—is guilty.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a psychologist and educationalist.

The small wooden boats slowly make their way down the brown waters of the Mekong at sunset. Flowing meditation – just enjoying the silence, watching the river flow. Then, suddenly, in the distance, an apparition – a row of cement Ts.

Like a high-tech divinity, the 21^st century irrupts across the immemorial Mekong, which in Laos is appropriately named Mae Nam Khong or the Mother of Waters.

Welcome to the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, one of the key planks of the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).     

The apparition on the Mekong is an under-construction bridge, part of the 420 km-long, US$6 billion worth high-speed railway connecting Kunming, in Yunnan province, to the Lao capital Vientiane and then, further on down the road, bound to unite mainland Southeast Asia all the way to Singapore.

Spiritual beginnings

It’s tempting to regard the bridge as a post-modern naga. In the inestimable The Enduring Sacred Landscape of the Naga, published by Mekong Press, Lao scholars Mayoury and Pheuiphanh Ngaosrivathana track the literally fantastic world of animated beings in the Mekong basin – totemized reptiles such as the serpent, or ngu, the salt-water crocodile (ngeuak) and supernatural beings such as the naga.

These tutelary spirits, controllers of water and rainfall, local proprietors of the soil and guardians of its fertility, wealth and welfare – these are the autochthonous spirits tamed by Buddhism collectively known as naga. Worship of the naga – in rituals, festivals, daily life – has shaped the lives and life cycles of Mekong populations for millennia.

The new naga will take the form of Made in China high-speed trains – for passengers of course, but mostly for cargo – crossing the Mekong back and forth and crucially bypassing the Maritime Silk Road along the South China Sea.     

The numbers by the Lao Ministry of Public Works and Transport are impressive – the Kunming-Vientiane high-speed railway, started in 2016 and to be completed in 2021, features 72 tunnels, 170 bridges and will have trains speeding along at 160 km an hour.

The China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor is one of the six main BRI corridors identified back in March 2015. These are BRI’s land arteries – the backbone of an intricate, integrated continental landmass featuring multiple layers of transportation, telecom, energy infrastructure, financial, trade, political and economic projects and agreements. 

The Lao mini-boom

Northern Laos, a maze of mountains, jungles and a few rivers, for a long time was virtually isolated until the opening of borders with Vietnam and China led to immense economic and demographic transformations – with traditional rice-based agriculture giving way to speculative commercial agriculture.

Laos is landlocked between powerful neighbors China and Thailand.

A North-South economic corridor has been the favored strategy by both China and Thailand to develop commerce, tourism and investments in Laos. Mountain people minorities linked to Chinese culture such as the Chin Haw, Akha, Yao and Hmong, who speak Lao and know Lao culture, were cast as the perfect intermediaries and partners.

Especially in the BRI era, connections with China, both in the formal and informal economy, are now overtaking connections with Thailand. Vientiane – not exactly a transparent government – has encouraged Chinese investments of extremely dubious value in luxury hotels, malls and casinos in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) along the Chinese border.   

At the same time, Chinese companies have been pouring billions of dollars into the productive development of these SEZs, as well as in dams, mines and rubber plantations.

Railway on track

There’s a sort of mini-boom now in the three northern Lao provinces of Luang Namtha, Oudomxay and Luang Prabang. More than 7,000 Lao people are working on the Kunming-Vientiane railway, most of them residents who live nearby.

But that still pales compared to the more than 40,000 Chinese working for six Chinese contractors, in six different segments, duly supervised by Huang Difu, chairman of the Laos-China Railway Company and general manager of China Railway International.

The railway will be 70% financed by Beijing, the remaining 30% for Vientiane – roughly $840 million – are supported by a low-interest Chinese loan of $500 million. A Lao bauxite mine plus three potash mines secure the Chinese loan.

Kunming-Vientiane is a stark example of how BRI projects usually face a maze of political and financial hurdles. The original design, from 2011, predates the New Silk Roads, which were launched in 2013. Much of the problems have to do with the toxic land for development equation – a situation not much different in Cambodia and Myanmar.   

In Luang Prabang, I was told of countless cases of villagers forced to leave their homes and who are still waiting for fair compensation from Vientiane. In Laos there are a dizzying 242 different categories of compensation – spanning everything from mango trees five years of age or older, to hardwood and teak trees less than one year old, not to mention crucial land in main transportation hubs.

In fact, the former royal capital – a fragile jewel that must be preserved from the mass tourism hordes at all costs – receives more attention from the EU and Asean, not to mention Unesco, than from the bureaucrats in Vientiane.

 An aerial view of the Unesco heritage town of Luang Prabang in Laos. Photo: iStock

All these worries at least disappear every single morning at the binthabat, or rice-collecting ritual, when rows of Buddhist monks are offered rice in their earthen bowls by rows of women on their knees. 

The Silk (jungle) road

In Global South terms, Laos is booming. In mainland Southeast Asia, the Chinese strategy is mostly focused on Laos and Thailand. Beijing expects that the lure of those cross-border SEZs is able to convince skeptical Vietnam and Myanmar of Chinese “flexibility.”

Much more than interest rates on Chinese loans – which in fact are small – the red alert on BRI-related projects in Laos concerns the environmental impact, and the fact that Laos is a poor, landlocked transit nation, it may be paying in the future a disproportionate social and environmental cost for projects that mainly benefit the Chinese economy. 

A sharp contrast is offered by Ock Pop Tok, or East meets West in Lao, an indigenous model of fair trade, sustainable business, socially conscious enterprise founded by a Lao and an Englishwoman in 2000, managed by women, and for the benefit of Lao women.

Ock Pop Tok started with five weavers and now links to more than 500 in villages across Laos. Textile production in Laos carries an immensely significant cultural value. Technical and esoteric knowledge has been transmitted from generation to generation in each village specific to a subgroup, a powerful sign of strong cultural identity. 

Silk has been cultivated in Laos for more than 1,000 years. Ock Pop Tok managed to assemble master weavers using techniques practiced by the Tai Kadai ethnic group since 800 BC, when they left Yunnan.

Everything, of course, is bio – natural dyes, handmade. I could not resist an absolutely stunning silk prayer flag weaved by Meng. Support for this added-value artisan knowledge translates into rural populations staying in their communities instead of betting on a usually troublesome urban exodus.

Ock Pop Tok also promotes Hmong artisans. Hmongs are animists who came from Tibet and Mongolia by the early 19^th century. There are more than 49 ethnic groups in Laos. Westerners classify them by language – Mon, Khmer, Sino-Tibetan, Tai, Kadai – while in Laos they are recognized by where they live – on the plains, in plateaus or high in the mountains. 

It’s this extremely complex, fragile, social and environmental system that from 2021 will have to learn to coexist with the era of the high-speed naga. 

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Millions of tonnes of sardines, anchovies, mackerel, herring, krill and other species are caught and ground into fishmeal and fish oil, known as FMFO. This is fed to salmon caged in hundreds of farms along the west coast.

Now an 80-page report by campaign groups, Changing Markets Foundation and Compassion in World Farming, warns that growing dependence on FMFO is threatening human food security, putting marine wildlife at risk and harming animal welfare.

The report, however, has been attacked by the international FMFO industry as “unbalanced”, “biased” and “inaccurate”. The industry insists that the majority of FMFO is “responsibly sourced”.

The new report says that almost a fifth of the world’s total catch of wild fish is currently processed into FMFO, most of which is used to feed farmed fish. The global fishmeal market was worth approximately £4.6 billion in 2017.

Pressures to catch more are likely to increase as the fish farm industry expands. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has predicted that global production of farmed fish will reach 109 million tonnes by 2030, and provide 60 per cent of the world’s fish consumption.

The fish farming industry argues that it has the potential to deliver affordable, healthy protein. This can be done, it says, with little carbon pollution while reducing the overexploitation of wild fish for human consumption.

But the industry is failing to deliver on these promises, the report claims.

“Grinding wild fish into FMFO to feed a growing aquaculture industry raises concerns of overfishing, poor animal welfare and disruption of aquatic food webs,” it concludes.

“It also undermines food security, as less fish is available for direct human consumption. Given the rapid growth of the sector, it is clear that the aquaculture industry’s business-as-usual approach is pushing marine resources beyond planetary boundaries and disregarding the welfare of hundreds of billions of sentient animals.”

Campaigners are calling for salmon companies working in Scotland to mend their ways.

“The farming of carnivorous fish such as salmon is putting huge pressure on wild fish stocks and poses a threat to food security in some of the world’s poorest countries,” Natasha Hurley from the Changing Markets Foundation told The Ferret.

“As one of the biggest global producers of farmed salmon, the Scottish aquaculture sector is playing a big part in this. We urge Scottish companies to do the responsible thing and take swift action to phase out the use of wild-caught fish in feed.”

This was possible, she insisted.

“We are calling on aquafeed producers to switch to sustainable alternatives that do not give rise to other ecological problems.”

According to the report, up to 45 mostly Chinese-owned fishmeal factories have been built along the West African coast from Senegal to Mauritania in recent years. This has led to more than half the fish in the region being over-exploited, it says.

Compassion in World Farming argued that there had been a “huge impact” on animal welfare.

“As industrial aquaculture grows, the number of animals suffering in these intensive farming systems multiplies and brings in another hidden layer,” said the group’s head of fish policy, Dr Krzysztof Wojtas.

“Most people are not aware of the additional suffering of hundreds of billions of small fish that die horribly on huge industrial fishing vessels in order to fuel these underwater factory farms. The industry must urgently address this crisis.”

The Scottish salmon farmed industry accepted that it needed more alternatives to wild-caught fish.

“Scottish salmon farming produces a nutritious food and a valuable source of essential Omega 3 fatty acids,” said the chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation, Julie Hesketh-Laird.

“As a sector, we are committed to the use of fish feed made from responsibly sourced ingredients from strictly managed or certified fisheries to support healthy salmon growth and provide human health benefits.”

She added:

“We agree with the authors of the report that the search for fish-free aquafeed products needs to be scaled up and reinforced across the sector.

“We wish to work with those with an interest in the sustainability of feeds, alongside the sector’s feed producers, to bolster the ongoing work into the use of novel and other sustainable raw materials like seafood trimmings and certified soy as replacements for marine-sourced ingredients.”

IFFO, the international trade organisation that represents the fishmeal and fish oil industry, issued a detailed statement criticising the new report. It pointed out that a study by the independent Sustainable Fisheries Partnership in 2018 had concluded that 91 per cent of FMFO stocks studied were “reasonably-well managed, or better”.

“IFFO is disappointed to read an inaccurate document which ignores the facts and realities of the fishmeal and fish oil sector,” said IFFO director general, Petter Martin Johannessen.

“The majority of wild-caught fish is responsibly sourced and is an essential resource in support of global protein production. Moreover the use of trimmings and byproduct from seafood processing represents at least 33 per cent of total world fishmeal production, that would otherwise predominantly go to landfill.”

He added:

“IFFO rebuts the allegations contained in this report and provides a full analysis on its website.”

IFFO technical director, Neil Auchterlonie, described the new report as “unbalanced”. The authors had “sided with some of the most uninformed players” in the community of non-governmental organisations, he said.

“Changing Markets Foundation appear to be well resourced, producing a glossy document and running a campaign via social media. Given the weakness of their arguments, they perhaps should have spent more of that resource on determining the facts and realities of the fishmeal and fish oil sector, rather than developing their own biased narrative.”

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Demonstrating solidarity with the embattled Bolivarian republic of Venezuela is today’s litmus test of anti-imperialism.

As African/Black internationalists, we stand in the tradition of our people’s historic anti-war and anti-imperialist positions. We understand that when our folks are clear, they don’t accept the smoke-and-mirrors stunts that call themselves the “interim president” or the “most trusted name in news.”

Some of our folks based in the Washington, D.C., area have stepped up to support the Embassy Protection Collective over the past few days. Though the threat of arrest looms, the collective has been able to remain in the building. Article 22 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations stipulates the U.S. government is prohibited from entering, searching and seizing items from another country’s building. That, as well as protection provided by city tenancy laws, have been communicated to the U.S. Department of State.

BAP member Vanessa Beck held it down at a rally Thursday in front of the Venezuelan embassy, representing Black, working-class internationalists who oppose U.S. gangsterism abroad.

Yesterday, we showed up again—this time for a spontaneous rally. BAP member Jacqueline Luqman spoke about the solidarity our people have for an oppressed country struggling for self-determination. Watch her talk.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in his imperial arrogance, gloated recently that while he was CIA Director, agency members lied, cheated and stole. If that wasn’t revealing enough, he added the CIA represented “the glory of the American experiment.” The Resistance and the Democratic Party have aligned themselves with the national security state, for they view it as opposition to Trump. But in this regard, they are just as dangerous. We’re not fooled. U.S. security agencies, just like the military, regularly subvert and overthrow Black and Brown countries targeted for regime change.

“The Secretary of State’s candid remarks remind us that U.S. foreign policy is intended to punish those targeted as enemies, keep friends as vassal states, and disregard international law,” writes BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley in Black Agenda Report.

The U.S. military, in addition to killing innocent Black and Brown people, is the world’s largest polluter, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined. The military is accelerating climate change and has left a toxic legacy across the world and on sovereign nations inside the United States. For a U.S. state committed to upholding white supremacy, Black and Brown lives are disposable, as is our very environment. This is why we say the war on African/Black people domestically is connected to the war on Black and Brown people abroad.

BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA) has been in Cuba over the past week with the 14th May Day International Brigade to commemorate International Workers’ Day alongside internationalist delegations from 32 countries.

BAP is proud to endorse the May Day on Wall Street rally and march happening in New York City.

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First published by Natural News and Global Research in February 2015

Parents concerned about their vaccinated children potentially contracting measles from unvaccinated children may want to consider the fact that the bigger health threat is technically the vaccine, not the disease itself. Comparative data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reveal that nobody has died from measles in more than 10 years, while at least 108 deaths reported in VAERS during the same time frame have been linked to measles vaccines.

Many of our older readers probably remember a time when measles wasn’t viewed with the obscene level of paranoid hysterics being witnessed today. Like chickenpox, measles was a common childhood infection that, after running its typically mild course, imparted lifelong immunity in those who contracted it. The risk of serious complications or death from measles has always been overwhelmingly minimal, in other words, with previous generations viewing it as something of a rite of passage.

Fast forward to today and all rationality and common sense has gone out the window on this issue. The media is reporting a few isolated cases of measles as if it were the black plague, calling for those who don’t vaccinate their children to be ostracized from their communities or even jailed for “putting others at unnecessary risk.” But where are the facts in all this unsubstantiated mania, which unfairly tags the unvaccinated as dangerous lepers?

Once again, the media is discarding factual reporting in favor of mindless sensationalism, attributing an alleged measles resurgence — even this claim is specious — to the unvaccinated. Whether or not this claim is actually true pales in importance compared to the fact that measles really isn’t much of a threat in the first place. The measles vaccine, on the other hand, is a whole different story.

“There have been no measles deaths reported in the U.S. since 2003,” the Associate Press reported based off statements made by Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Meanwhile, VAERS, which captures only a very small percentage of the actual number of injuries and deaths associated with measles vaccines, reports at least 108 deaths associated with measles vaccines since 2003. Of these, a shocking 96 deaths were reported in conjunction with MMR, which is now the preferred vaccine for measles immunization.

Measles deaths were virtually nonexistent prior to introduction of vaccine, which is now triggering outbreaks

Some will try to argue that measles deaths are essentially nonexistent now because of measles vaccines, the first of which was introduced in 1963. But this argument holds no water — U.S. measles mortality data shows that deaths from measles rapidly declined in the years leading up to when the first vaccine was introduced, validating the success of improved sanitation and better nutrition in making measles a non-problem.

This plotted graph from HealthSentinel.com visually illustrates this:

“What you may not have heard, is that by 1963, the death rate from measles in the United States had already dropped by approximately 98%,” explains the International Medical Council on Vaccination (IMCV).

Not long after it was introduced, the first measles vaccine was actually found to manifest worse symptoms of measles in vaccinated patients than if they hadn’t gotten the vaccine at all. The vaccine also suppressed the normal rash and fever associated with measles, obstructing the normal immune response and ultimately leading to future health problems for vaccinated individuals once they reached adulthood.

“[W]hereas natural measles exposure generally left the person with reliable lifelong immunity, measles vaccines leave the individual with waning immunity,” adds IMCV. “This dynamic of waning immunity means we will probably see measles epidemics even in highly vaccinated populations.”

Sources:

http://vaccineimpact.com

http://www.healthsentinel.com

http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org

http://science.naturalnews.com

Our objective at Global Research is to recruit one thousand committed “volunteers” among our more than 50,000 Newsletter subscribers to support the distribution of Global Research articles (email lists, social media, crossposts). 

Do not send us money. Under Plan A, we call upon our readers to donate 5 minutes a day to Global Research.

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Genetically Modified Bt Brinjal Aubergine Illegally Growing in India: Who Is Really Pulling the Strings?

By Colin Todhunter, April 28, 2019

In February 2010, the Indian government placed an indefinite moratorium on the commercial release of Bt brinjal. (Genetically Modified Aubergine or EggPlant) Prior to this decision, numerous independent scientists from India and abroad had pointed out safety concerns regarding Bt brinjal based on data and reports in the biosafety dossier that Mahyco, the crop developer, had submitted to the regulators.

Genetically Modified Babies. The Genetic Editing of Human Life is “Big Business”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 28, 2019

Last November, He Jiankui, a Chinese biology professor at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUST) in Shenzhen (Guangdong Province) announced that he and his team had createdthe World’s first “genetically edited babies”: twin babies Lula and Nana.

Canada and the Propaganda War on Venezuela

By Michael Welch, Yves Engler, Dimitri Lascaris, and Eva Bartlett, April 27, 2019

Mainstream media, pundits, and popular television comedy show hosts like John Oliver are only too happy to uncritically echo these interpretations of the plight of the Venezuelan people. More to the point, they appear to be presenting as fact an embellishment of the difficulties facing ordinary and poor Venezuelans.

Glyphosate Worse than We Could Imagine. “It’s Everywhere”

By F. William Engdahl, April 27, 2019

Glyphosate residues have been found in tap water, orange juice, children’s urine, breast milk, chips, snacks, beer, wine, cereals, eggs, oatmeal, wheat products, and most conventional foods tested. It’s everywhere, in brief.

The 2020 Presidential Race: Is Mayor Pete Buttigieg the Real Deal?

By Renee Parsons, April 26, 2019

It seems totally implausible that the 2020 Presidential race has already reached a near fever pitch as the previously obscure Mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg has taken third place in the latest polls leaving at least five US Senators in the dust – just as he delivered a well-aimed arrow with doubts that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders can beat President Trump in a general election citing that “people were refreshed by the novelty of that boldness” in 2016 but those ideas ‘are now less exciting.’

The Alarming Rise of Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi MPs Since the 2014 “Pro-democracy Revolution”

By Shane Quinn, April 26, 2019

Bereza is a member of fascist-infiltrated party, People’s Front, which counts among its prominent MPs the neo-Nazi Andriy Parubiy, Chairman of the Ukrainian parliament since April 2016. In the early 1990s, Parubiy co-founded the far-right Social-National Party of Ukraine with fellow extremist Oleh Tyahnybok, that later became known as the Svoboda (Freedom) party.

NATO Demolishes Yugoslavia

By Comitato No Nato, April 26, 2019

The “new strategic concept” of NATO was put into practice in the Balkans, where the crisis of the Yugoslav Federation, due to the contrasts between the power groups and the centrifugal thrusts of the republics, had reached the breaking point.

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The world is still reeling in horror from the deadly Sri Lanka bombings that may have been the work of Islamic State madmen. Poor Sri Lanka has suffered so much after three decades of civil war and communal strife. We weep for this beautiful and once gentle nation.

But behind the horror in Sri Lanka, a huge crisis was building up of which the world has so far taken insufficient notice: renewed tensions in the oil-producing Gulf. This is the latest attempt by the United States to crush Iran’s independent-minded government and return it to American tutelage.

The Trump administration has demanded that the principal importers of 1.2 billion barrels of Iranian oil halt purchases almost immediately. This imperial diktat includes China, South Korea, Turkey, India and Japan. The comprehensive embargo is very close to an all-out act of war. In 1941, America’s cut-off of oil to Japan provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The oil embargo not only violates international law, it sets the US on a collision course with some of its most important allies and vassal states. Brazen threats against Iran by Trump’s two main enforcers, National Security advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have reinforced America’s unfortunate image as an imperial power that threatens war against disobedient satraps and independent-minded nations.

Iran, a proud, ancient nation of 80 million, has become, with Turkey, the most effective opposition to America’s imperial domination of the Mideast and a key supporter of Palestinian rights and statehood. This has put Iran on a collision course with Israel and its influential American supporters, notably the Evangelical hard right which somehow believes that Jesus will only return to earth after Israel expands its border and mankind is destroyed.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration, which has now become indistinguishable from Israel’s hard-line far right ruling coalition, has declared virtual war against Iran.

To benefit Israel, the White House cancelled a $20 billion order from Iran for Boeing aircraft, embargoed trade with Iran, reneged on the internationally backed nuclear deal with Tehran, cut off all aid to Palestinians, and keeps sustaining the savage Saudi/Emirati war against Yemen that has caused mass starvation and epidemics.

Trump has just unilaterally approved Israel’s illegal seizure of Syria’s Golan Heights, an act worthy of the 1916 Sykes-Picot treaty dividing up the Ottoman Mideast between Britain and France. US threats against Venezuela and Cuba grow louder.

Washington plans to use its naval forces massed around Iran to interdict Tehran’s oil exports. Two US aircraft carriers are now on station within striking range of Iran. I went to sea on one, the ‘Abraham Lincoln.’

China faces dire trade punishments for dealing with Iran. Welcome back to 19th century gunboat diplomacy. Even Washington’s European allies may be scourged for buying Iranian oil.

Iran, which has faced similar threats in the past, is digging in and threatens to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz if its oil exports are interdicted. Twenty percent of the world’s oil passes through the Strait. At its narrowest point, this strategic passage is only 21 miles (34 km) wide.

Iran could seriously interfere with oil tankers in the Strait, using armed speedboats, mines and land-based, Chinese-made missiles. Equally important, insurance rates for tankers would skyrocket. Add all this together, and Trump & Co.’s warlike actions will cause the price of gasoline to surge, just as America’s busy summer driving season is getting underway.

America’s satraps Saudi Arabia (which just cut off the heads of 37 of its subjects) and sidekick the Emirates have promised to make up oil shortfalls, but neighbor Iran’s special forces may have very different ideas. Look for missiles and commando attacks on Saudi oil installations.

Adding to this dangerous mess, Beijing may slow down or even abort its trade talks with Washington, which are of vital importance to the US economy. US markets have already factored in a deal being made.

Trump’s irrational quest to crush Iran could very well turn the rest of the world against Washington. But Trump & Co. don’t seem to care. Someone must tell Trump’s out of control administration to stop trying to overthrow governments it does not like around the globe and promoting itself as the Second Coming of Christ.

“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” Verily.

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Featured image is from The Duran

While Justin Trudeau’s government embraces repressive Middle East monarchies, they want us to believe their campaign to oust Venezuela’s government is motivated by support for democracy and human rights.

On a tour of the Middle East last week Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan met his United Arab Emirates counterpart Mohammed bin Ahmed Al Bowardi in Abu Dhabi. According to Emirates News Agency, Canadian and UAE officials discussed “cooperation  in the military and defence sectors” at a time when the oil rich nation plays a key role in the horrendous violence in Yemen.

The Trudeau government is promoting arm sales to the UAE and other regional monarchies. With support from “15 trade commissioners and representatives from the Government of Ontario, National Defence, Global Affairs Canada, and the Canadian Commercial Corporation”, 50 Canadian arms companies flogged their wares at the Abu Dhabi-based International Defence Exhibition and Conference (IDEX) in February. To help the arms companies move their wares, Commander of the Bahrain-based Combined Task Force 150, Commodore Darren Garnier, led a Canadian military delegation to IDEX.

During his recent tour Sajjan met King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein in Jordan. He discussed military cooperation with a monarch known for prosecuting individuals for “extending one’s tongue” (having a big mouth) against the King. At the end of March, Trudeau phoned King Abdullah II.

On April 9 the Canadian and Jordanian armed forces broke ground on a road project along the Jordanian-Syrian border. During a ceremony for the Canadian-funded initiative Commander of the Canadian Joint Operations Command, Lieutenant General Michael Rouleau, said:

“this important road rehabilitation project is a tangible example of the close relationship between Jordan and Canada. It will help keep the people of Jordan safe by allowing the Jordanian armed forces to deter, monitor and interdict incursions along the northern border with Syria, which will help to enhance security in Jordan and in the region.”

On his Middle East tour Sajjan also met Kuwait’s Prime Minister and Defence Minister Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah who is part of a family that has ruled for 250 years. According to the Kuwait News Agency, Canada’s defence minister “stressed deep relations between Kuwait and Canada and pointed out mutual willingness to bolster and consolidate bilateral ties.”

Earlier in the month finance minister Bill Morneau and Parliamentary Secretary Omar Alghabra participated in the inaugural Kuwait and Canada Investment Forum. At the time Alghabra wrote,

“let’s celebrate and continue our efforts to grow the relationship between Canada and Kuwait in investments, trade and defence.”

Military ties with Kuwait are important because the Canadian forces have a small base there. In December the Canadian Navy took command of Combined Task Force 150 from their Saudi counterparts. Canada also has a small number of troops in the monarchies of Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar.

Last month Canada’s Ambassador to Qatar Stefanie McCollum boasted of growing relations between the countries, claiming “our values structures are very similar.” In an interview with Al Bawaba the Canadian diplomat also said Ottawa is seeking to deepen business ties with the natural gas rich monarchy and that the two countries are in the final stage of signing a defence cooperation agreement.

Notwithstanding the diplomatic spat last summer, the Trudeau government has mostly continued business as usual with the most powerful and repressive monarchy in the region. Recently foreign minister Chrystia Freeland looked the other way when Saudi student Mohammed Zuraibi Alzoabi fled Canada — presumably with help from the embassy — to avoid sexual assault charges in Cape Breton. While Freeland told reporters that Global Affairs was investigating the matter, Halifax Chronicle Herald journalist Aaron Beswick’s Access to Information request suggests they didn’t even bother contacting the Saudi embassy concerning the matter.

According to an access request by PhD researcher Anthony Fenton, Freeland phoned new Saudi foreign minister Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Assaf in January. In briefing notes for the (unannounced) discussion Freeland was encouraged to tell her counterpart (under the headline “points to register” regarding Yemen):

“Appreciate the hard work and heavy lifting by the Saudis and encourage ongoing efforts in this regard.”

Despite their devastating war in Yemen and dismembering of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the consulate in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia continues to receive large shipments of Canadian weaponry. 2018 was a record year for Canadian rifle and armoured vehicle sales to the Saudis. $17.64 million in rifles were exported to the kingdom last year and another $1.896 million worth of guns were delivered in February. In the first month of this year Canada exported $367 million worth of “tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles” to the Saudis.

As Fenton has documented in detail on his highly informative Twitter handle, armoured vehicles made by Canadian company Streit Group in the UAE have been repeatedly videoed in Yemen. Equipment from three other Canadian armoured vehicle makers – Terradyne, IAG Guardian and General Dynamics – was found with Saudi-backed forces in Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition used Canadian-made rifles as well.

On Tuesday the Saudis beheaded 37 mostly minority Shiites. Ottawa waited 48 hours — after many other countries criticized the mass execution — to release a “muted” statement. The Trudeau government has stayed mum on the Saudi’s recent effort to derail pro-democracy demonstrations in Sudan and Algeria as well as Riyadh’s funding for Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar’s bid to seize Tripoli by force.

The close and friendly relationships between the Trudeau government and repressive Middle East monarchies demonstrates how little the Liberals care about democracy abroad and illustrates the hypocrisy of Canada’s claims that its efforts to oust Venezuela’s government is all about supporting human rights and democracy.

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Featured image: Canada’s Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan was on a tour of the Middle East last week. (Source: Yves Engler)

As Notre Dame burned, as the flames leapt from its roof of ancient timbers, many of us watched in grim horror. Hour after hour, on screen after screen, channel after channel, you could see that 850-year-old cathedral, a visiting spot for 13 million people annually, being gutted, its roof timbers flaring into the evening sky, its steeple collapsing in a ball of fire.

It was dramatic and deeply disturbing — and, of course, unwilling to be left out of any headline-making event, President Trump promptly tweeted his advice to the French authorities: “Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!” No matter that water from such planes would probably have taken the cathedral’s towers down and endangered lives as well — “the equivalent,” according to a French fire chief, “of dropping three tons of concrete at 250 kilometers per hour [on] the ancient monument.”

Still, who could doubt that watching such a monument to the human endeavor being transformed into a shell of its former self was a reminder that everything human is mortal; that, whether in a single lifetime or 850 years, even the most ancient of our artifacts, like those in Iraq and Syria recently, will sooner or later be scourged by the equivalent of (or even quite literally by) fire and sword; that nothing truly lasts, even the most seemingly permanent of things like, until now, Notre Dame?

That cathedral in flames, unlike so much else in our moment (including you-know-who in his every waking moment), deserved the front-and-center media attention it got. Historically speaking, it was a burning event of the first order. Still, it’s strange that the most unnerving, deeply terrifying burning underway today, not of that ancient place of worship that lived with humanity for so many tumultuous centuries but of the planet itself, remains largely in the background.

When the cathedral in which Napoleon briefly crowned himself emperor seemed likely to collapse, it was certifiably an event of headline importance. When, however, the cathedral (if you care to think of it that way) in which humanity has been nurtured all these tens of thousands of years, on which we spread, developed, and became what we are today — I mean, of course, the planet itself — is in danger of an unprecedented sort from fires we continue to set, that’s hardly news at all. It’s largely relegated to the back pages of our attention, lost any day of the week to headlines about a disturbed, suicidal young woman obsessed with the Columbine school massacre or an attorney general obsessed with protecting the president.

And let’s not kid ourselves, this planet of ours is beginning to burn — and not just last week or month either. It’s been smoldering for decades now. Last summer, for instance, amid global heat records (Ouargla, Algeria, 124 degrees Fahrenheit; Hong Kong, over 91 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 straight days; Nawabsha, Pakistan, 122 degrees Fahrenheit; Oslo, Norway, over 86 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 consecutive days; Los Angeles, 108 degrees Fahrenheit), wildfires raged inside the Arctic Circle. This March, in case you hadn’t noticed — and why would you, since it’s gotten so little attention? — the temperature in Alaska was, on average, 20 degrees (yes, that is not a misprint) above normal and typical ice roads between villages and towns across parts of that state were melting and collapsing with deaths ensuing.

Meanwhile, in the Antarctic, ice is melting at a rate startling to scientists. If the process accelerates, global sea levels could rise far faster than expected, beginning to drown coastal cities like Miami, New York, and Shanghai more quickly than previously imagined. Meanwhile, globally, the wildfire season is lengthening. Fearsome fires are on the rise, as are droughts, and that’s just to begin to paint a picture of a heating planet and its ever more extreme weather systems and storms, of (if you care to think of it that way) a Whole Earth version of Notre Dame.

The Arsonists Arrive

As was true with Notre Dame, when it comes to the planet, there were fire alarms before an actual blaze was fully noted. Take, for example, the advisory panel of scientists reporting to President Lyndon Johnson on the phenomenon of global warming back in 1965. They would, in fact, predict with remarkable accuracy how our world was going to change for the worse by this twenty-first-century moment. (And Johnson, in turn, would bring the subject upofficially for perhaps the first time in a Special Message to Congress on February 5, 1965, 54 years before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal proposal.) As that panel wrote at the time, “Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment. Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years…” In other words, the alarm was first sounded more than half a century ago.

When it comes to climate change, however, as the smoke began to appear and, in our own moment, the first flames began to leap — after all, the last four years have been the hottest on record and, despite the growth of ever less expensive alternative energy sources, carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are still rising, not falling — no firemen arrived (just children). There were essentially no adults to put out the blaze. Yes, there was the Paris climate accord but it was largely an agreement in principle without enforcement power of any genuine sort.

In fact, across significant parts of the planet, those who appeared weren’t firefighters at all, but fire feeders who will likely prove to be the ultimate arsonists of human history. In a way, it’s been an extraordinary performance. Leaders who vied for, or actually gained, power not only refused to recognize the existence of climate change but were quite literally eager to aid and abet the phenomenon. This is true, for instance, of the new president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who came to power prepared to turn the already endangered carbon sink of the Amazon rain forest into a playground for corporate and agricultural destroyers. It is similarly true in Europe, where right-wing populist movements have begun to successfully opposegestures toward dealing with climate change, gaining both attention and votes in the process. In Poland, for instance, just such a party led by President Andrzej Duda has come to power and the promotion of coal production has become the order of the day.

And none of that compared to developments in the richest, most powerful country of all, the one that historically has put more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere than any other. On taking office, Donald Trump appointed more climate-change deniers to his cabinet than might have previously seemed possible and swore fealty to “American energy dominance,” while working to kneecap the development of alternative energy systems.  He and his men tried to open new areas to oil and gas drilling, while in every way imaginable striving to remove what limits there had been on Big Energy, so that it could release its carbon emissions into the atmosphere unimpeded. And as the planetary cathedral began to burn, the president set the mood for the moment (at least for his vaunted “base”) by tweetingsuch things as “It’s really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!” or, on alternative energy, “You would be doing wind, windmills, and if it doesn’t if it doesn’t blow you can forget about television for that night… Darling, I want to watch television. I’m sorry, the wind isn’t blowing.”

Among those who will someday be considered the greatest criminals in history, don’t forget the Big Energy CEOs who, knowing the truth about climate change from their own hired scientists, did everything they could to increase global doubts by funding climate-denying groups, while continuing to be among the most profitable companies around. They even hedged their bets by, among other things, investing in alternative energy and using it to more effectively drill for oil and natural gas.

Meanwhile, of course, the planet that had proven such a comfortable home for humanity was visibly going down. No, climate change won’t actually destroy the Earth itself, just the conditions under which humanity (and so many other species) thrived on it. Sooner or later, if the global temperature is indeed allowed to rise a catastrophic seven degrees Fahrenheit or four degrees Celsius, as an environmental impact statement from the Trump administration suggested it would by 2100, parts of the planet could become uninhabitable, hundreds of millions of human beings could be set in desperate motion, and the weather could intensify in ways that might be nearly unbearable for human habitation. Just read David Wallace-Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth, if you doubt me.

This isn’t even contestable information anymore and yet it’s perfectly possible that Donald Trump could be elected to a second term in 2020. It’s perfectly possible that more right-wing populist movements could sweep into power in Europe. It’s perfectly possible that Vladimir Putin’s version of great powerdom — a sagging Russian petro-state — could continue on its present globally warming path well into the future.

Understand this: Trump, Bolsonaro, Duda, Putin, and the others are just part of human history. Sooner or later, they will be gone. Climate change, however, is not part of human history (whatever it may do to civilization as we know it). Its effects could, in human terms, last for almost unimaginable periods of time. It operates on a different time scale entirely, which means that, unlike the tragedies and nightmares of human history, it is not just a passing matter.

Of course, the planet will survive, as will some life forms (as would be true even if humanity were to succumb to that other possible path to an apocalypse, a nuclear holocaust resulting in “nuclear winter”).  But that should be considered small consolation indeed.

Putting the Planet on a Suicide Watch

Consider global warming a story for the ages, one that should put Notre Dame’s near-destruction after almost nine centuries in grim perspective. And yet the planetary version of burning, which should be humanity’s crisis of all crises, has been met with a general lack of media attention, reflecting a lack of just about every other kind of attention in our world (except by those outraged children who know that they are going to inherit a degraded world and are increasingly making their displeasure about it felt).

To take just one example of that lack of obvious attention, the response of the mega-wealthy to the burning of Notre Dame was an almost instantaneous burst of giving. The euro equivalent of nearly a billion dollars was raised more or less overnight from the wealthiest of French families and other .01%ers. Remind me of the equivalent for climate change as the planet’s spire threatens to come down?

As for arsonists like Donald Trump and the matter of collusion, there’s not even a question mark on the subject. In the United States, such collusion with the destroyers of human life on Planet Earth is written all over their actions. It’s beyond evident in the appointment of former oil and gas lobbyists and fellow travelers to positions of power. Will there, however, be the equivalent of a Mueller investigation? Will the president be howling “witch hunt” again? Not a chance. When it comes to Donald Trump and climate change, there will be neither a Mueller Report, nor the need for a classic Barr defense. And yet collusion — hell, yeah! The evidence is beyond overwhelming.

We are, of course, talking about nothing short of the ultimate crime, but on any given day of our lives, you’d hardly notice that it was underway. Even for an old man like me, it’s a terrifying thing to watch humanity make a decision, however inchoate, to essentially commit suicide. In effect, there is now a suicide watch on Planet Earth. Let’s hope the kids can make a difference.

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Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He runs TomDispatch.com and is a fellow of the Type Media Center. His sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War (Dispatch Books).

Featured image is from Sky News

The “Independent Group” of MPs has now launched itself as a political party under the name “Change UK.”

Given its support for capitalism, corporate power, Nato and Trident, a more accurate name might be “Keep Things Pretty Much The Same UK.”

The group likes to be described as “moderate” and “centrist.” It says something about the state of British politics that its views are considered moderate.

When it comes to issues of peace and war, almost all of its members have consistently voted in favour of the more militaristic of any two options placed in front of them.

Of Change UK’s 11 MPs, four were in Parliament at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003: Ann Coffey, Make Gapes, Chris Leslie and Joan Ryan. They all voted for it.

Ryan was a teller for the “Ayes.” Gapes later described the establishment of the Chilcot inquiry into the war as a waste of public money, attributing it to “hysterical” prejudice against Tony Blair.

In 2011, Parliament was again asked to vote for a new war, this time in Libya. Ryan had lost her seat in 2010 (she re-entered Parliament in 2015) and Heidi Allen was not elected until 2015.

But the other nine MPs who were later to become Change UK willingly followed David Cameron and Nick Clegg in voting to bomb Libya.

There was a success for the peace movement two years later, when the Commons voted against bombing Syria after the Labour leadership accepted pressure from the public and party membership to resist yet another call to war.

To be fair to the Labour MPs who later joined Change UK, they all joined Ed Miliband in voting against immediate bombing, with the exception of Angela Smith, who abstained.

Of the Tories who later signed up for Change UK, Anna Soubry voted for bombing Syria in 2013, but Sarah Wollaston deserves some credit for resisting the Tory leadership and voting against (and Allen was not yet an MP).

However, in November 2014, all nine of the then MPs who were later to form Change UK voted for yet more bombing of Iraq, supposedly against Isis (in practice meaning areas controlled by Isis, full of innocent civilians).

In 2015, Allen was elected to Parliament for the first time, while Ryan returned after a five-year absence. They were therefore able to join their future Change UK colleagues in December that year in voting to bomb Syria.

Gavin Shuker deserves credit for being the only future Change UK MP to vote against bombing Syria at this point.

On July 18 2016, the Commons debated the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system. In the course of the debate, Theresa May was asked if she would use Trident to kill hundreds of thousands of people. May replied that she would if she “had to.”

The Prime Minister did not explain in what conceivable situation she would “have to” kill hundreds of thousands of people (the figure is an underestimate — Trident would kill millions). But all future Change UK MPs joined her in the division lobby.

The only exception was Chuka Umunna, who was absent but made his support for Trident renewal clear.

Parliament’s next major vote on military action should have been in April 2018, when May sent the RAF to bomb Syria again. But May displayed contempt for Parliament by not even asking them to vote on the bombing (she could well have lost such a vote, given that opinion polls showed only around a quarter of the British public supported it).

In short, nearly all Change UK MPs have always voted for the more militaristic of any two options (unless their party policy is against it, as with then Labour MPs in 2013).

The only two exceptions I can find are Wollaston, on Syria in 2013, and Shuker, on Syria in 2015. If I have missed any evidence that goes against this conclusion, please let me know and I will be happy to apologise and make a correction.

Allen claims that Change UK is the “natural home” of Remain voters. There have been calls for a united “pro-Remain” slate in the European elections.

It is vital that none of us — whatever our views on the EU — fall for the idea that Brexit is the only issue that matters.

Left-wing, pro-peace Remainers and left-wing, pro-peace Leavers need to work together.

Thankfully, pro-Remain parties on the left, such as the Greens and Plaid Cyrmu, have rejected any idea of an alliance with Change UK.

Then again, it seems unlikely that Change UK would want an alliance with anyone on the left or with parties that are anti-Trident and anti-Nato.

Militarism should be seen as a key political issue in Britain. It is a class issue. The poorest people are targeted for military recruitment. They are brutalised through military training before being sent to kill other poor people elsewhere in the world and are then often dumped back into poverty in Britain when they return.

This is all done in the interests of ministers, generals, arms dealers and other members of the ruling class.

This is sustained by the everyday militarism that has seen the introduction of initiatives such as Armed Forces Day and the ploughing of £50 million of public money into expanding cadet forces in state schools — just as other youth services are being cut.

This is before we even think about the indirect fuelling of war through the arms trade and the supply of military training to regimes such as Saudi Arabia.

After years of being called an “extremist,” Martin Luther King decided to accept the description. The issue, he said, is not whether we are extreme or moderate, but what we are extreme or moderate about.

I suggest we should be willing to be extremists for peace. While Change UK are constantly described as moderates, their voting record makes clear that they are extremists for war.

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Symon Hill works for the Peace Pledge Union, which includes members of several parties and none, and both Leave and Remain voters. This article is written in a personal capacity.

Featured image is from Morning Star

There is great speculation about the “Deal of the Century” for the Middle East, about which very little is known. What is known is that the Trump administration formulated the plan basically through bilateral talks with the Israeli government, as the Palestinian Authority has refused to talk to the Trump administration since the relocation of the U.S. embassy from occupied Jaffa (Tel Aviv) to occupied Jerusalem. 

The release of the plan has been delayed: first until after the Israeli election and now until sometime in the summer. None of the individuals tasked with formulating the plan have expertise in the Middle East, although in Washington, D.C., strong advocacy on behalf of the Israeli occupation often counts as a substitute.

This plan will be the latest attempt by a U.S. administration to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict — once and for all.  There was the Nixon administration’s famous Rogers’ Plan (named after Secretary of State William Rogers, who later resigned after complaining about National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s usurpation of his authority).

Before the Nixon administration, President John F. Kennedy also tried to deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict only to be rebuffed by strong Zionist figures within the Democratic Party.

The origins of U.S. intervention were initially clear: that the U.S. would push for a deal based on UN Security Council Resolution  242, which calls on Israel to withdraw from “territories” it occupied in the 1967 war in return for Arab recognition and acceptance of the Israeli occupation state within the 1948 occupation. But Kissinger attached a secret appendix to the Sinai II agreement in 1975 (between Egypt and Israel) in which he pledged to boycott and ostracize the PLO, which all Arabs accepted as the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people.  This exclusion of Palestinian political representation was consistent with UNSC 242, which did not mention the word “Palestinian” once, although it made a passing reference to the “refugee problem.”

Zionist Influence

And while the management of the American-led “peace process” was, during the early decades, handled by Middle East experts (known then as “Arabists,”) strong Zionist influences in successive U.S. administrations and houses of Congress marginalized their influence and slowed down the progress of the “process” — in terms of U.S. pressure on Israel.

But the American-led “peace process” lived on for decades, not as a testimony of U.S. interest in peace in the Middle East, nor as evidence of American interest in solving the Palestinian problem, but as a way to provide Israeli occupation and aggression with a cloak of international legitimacy and to give Palestinians the illusion of “progress.”

With the Reagan administration a change occurred in the management of the “peace process;” it was taken from the Arabists and given to ardent Zionists who had no background in the Middle East. (Dennis Ross, for example, never studied the Middle East and was in fact a Soviet expert in the 1980s, before he was put in charge of the “peace process.”)

 Ross, at right, in 2010, with Dan Shapiro, NSC senior director for the Middle East. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at left. (White House/Pete Souza)

The “peace process” underwent major transformations over the years, largely to accommodate Israeli needs and preferences.  The Rogers’ Plan started as a response to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s emphasis on a “comprehensive and just” peace, which clearly precluded separate deals between Israel and any Arab state. It was this which prevented King Hussein of Jordan from reaching a separate deal with Israel.

Nevertheless, President Jimmy Carter brokered the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel (which basically committed the U.S. to provide the Egyptian despot, President Anwar Sadat and his successors, with an annual large bribe to maintain peace with Israel despite the disapproval of the Egyptian people).  With Camp David, the “peace process” was splintered into separate “peace” deals.

The U.S. official ban on contact with the PLO was removed in the Reagan administration when Yasser Arafat agreed to read a statement faxed to him — word-for-word — by the U.S. Department of State.  The PLO was allowed into the “peace process” but only on conditions set by Israel: that the agenda would be set by U.S. and Israel and not by any Arab party.

Initially, the U.S. worked for decades to sidestep PLO participation by anointing the Jordanian king (who is remembered by the Palestinians for the massacres of Black September in 1970) as the representative of both Jordan and the Palestinian people. But the Intifada in 1987 finally convinced the U.S. that the Palestinians are determined to insist on their self-determination.  And during the George W. Bush administration the idea of a Palestinian state was finally formally advocated by the U.S. but only within boundaries set by Israel.

No Mystery 

The new “Deal of the Century” is not a mystery.  We can read the writing on the wall and on the ground in Palestine.  The U.S. is working on a formula that does not necessarily operate on the assumption that the creation of a Palestinian state is a prerequisite for peace.  Furthermore, the U.S. plans to reduce the size of the Palestinian territory which would be theoretically managed by the Palestinian people.  The Palestinians have historically insisted on liberating 100 percent of their homeland, i.e. historic Palestine in which the Palestinians have enjoyed a majority for many centuries, and in which the Jews — as a small minority — were considered part of the local native population.

But the Zionist forces — through terrorism and through Western indulgences — persuaded Western powers that Palestinian rights to 1948 Palestine (what became declared by force as “Israel” in 1948) should never be acknowledged.

With that principle, Western powers worked to convince Palestinians to confine their national aspirations to no more than 45 percent (in the UN Partition plan of 1947) and then to no more than 22 percent since 1967. With the U.S. entry into direct negotiations with Palestinian representatives since the Madrid Conference of 1991 (disguised as non-PLO), the Palestinians were told that they can have a homeland over most —but not all — the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem. But the American stance was not categorical because it always left it to Israel to decide on how much of the 22 percent of Palestine should the Palestinians have control over, and under which juridical conditions.

Sadat, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin acknowledge applause during joint session of Congress during which President Jimmy Carter announced the Camp David Accords, Sept. 18, 1978. (Warren Leffler via Wikimedia Commons)

President Bill Clinton, in the famous Camp David negotiations, wanted the Palestinians to accept 91 percent of the 22 percent of Palestine, while sovereignty over the “holy sanctuary” would be shared between Israelis and Palestinians, with the Israelis having control over the land and what is underneath it (which Palestinians consider a threat to the very foundations of Al-Aqsa).  Camp David fell and Clinton — typical of him — blamed the Palestinians after having promised Yasser Arafat that he would not blame the Palestinians if the talks did not bear fruits.

What will emerge out of the “Deal of the Century” is even less than what the Palestinians have been offered before — and which they rejected.  The Palestinians will probably be promised Gaza and Area A (under the Oslo agreement, which basically covers areas that the Palestinians — only in theory—control), and East Jerusalem will be part of a united capital for Israel while the Palestinians will be allowed to name areas outside of Jerusalem as their own “East Jerusalem.”

The Israelis will continue, of course, to maintain control of air, land and sea over all Palestinian areas, and the Israeli occupation army will continue to decide who can enter and who can exit Palestinian areas.  And Israeli settlements will be untouched by any of the terms of the “deal.”

Sovereignty over those small Palestinian areas won’t be considered as the U.S. and Israel both have recently reneged on previous promises of statehood. Instead, the plan will revert to what Israel’s Menachem Begin called “autonomy” (under the Camp David negotiations), according to which the Palestinians will exercise limited municipal management of their areas (trash collection, postal service, sewage, etc).

But it is quite clear that the Palestinians who had rejected such plans in a previous century won’t agree to them now, especially that the octogenarian Mahmoud Abbas (who is already despised and detested by his people for his corruption and fealty to the occupation) won’t dare agree to what Arafat before him had rejected.

But Trump and his team assume that an infusion of foreign aid and new business in Palestinian areas would serve as a compensation to the Palestinians for the loss of their homeland.   But that assumption is based on a false premise: that people live by bread alone.

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As’ad AbuKhalil is a Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of the “Historical Dictionary of Lebanon” (1998), “Bin Laden, Islam and America’s New War on Terrorism (2002), and “The Battle for Saudi Arabia” (2004). He tweets as @asadabukhalil

Featured image:  Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir with Nixon and Kissinger in 1973, Oval Office. (Oliver Atkins, via Wikimedia Commons)

On Friday, 26 April 2019, in excessive use of force against peaceful protesters on the 56^th Friday of the Great March of Return and Breaking the Siege, Israeli forces wounded 110 civilians, including 37 children, 3 women, 4 paramedics, and a journalist, in the eastern Gaza Strip.  Two of those wounded sustained serious wounds.

According to observations by PCHR’s fieldworkers, the Israeli forces who stationed in prone positions and in military jeeps along the fence with Israel continued to use excessive force against the protesters by firing bullets and tear gas canisters at them.  As a result, dozens of the protesters were hit with bullets and teargas canisters without posing any imminent threat or danger to the life of soldiers.

During this week, Israeli forces have escalated their attacks against the medical personnel in the field, wounding 4 members of them. This indicates that there is an Israeli systematic policy to target the medical personnel and obstruct their humanitarian work that is guaranteed under the rules of the international humanitarian law.

On Friday, 26 April 2019, the incidents were as follows:

At approximately 16:00, 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 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.

Although the protesters gathered in areas open to the Israeli snipers stationed on the top of the sand berms and military watchtowers and inside and behind the military jeeps, the Israeli forces fired live and rubber bullets in addition to a barrage of tear gas canisters. The Israeli shooting, which continued at around 19:00, resulted in the injury of 110 civilians, including 37 children, 3 women, 4 paramedics, and a journalist.

Ninty-five of those wounded were hit with live bullets and shrapnel, 43 were directly hit with tear gas canisters and 8 were hit with rubber bullets. In addition, dozens of civilians suffered tear gas inhalation and seizures due to tear gas canisters that were fired by the Israeli forces from the military jeeps and riffles 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:

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 demonstrators, particularly lifting the closure which is the real solution to end the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

PCHR reiterates the reported published in February by the UN Commission of Inquiry which emphasizes what came by PCHR and other Palestinian and international human rights organizations.  The report at the time concluded that the Israeli violations may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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 applying or involved in issuing orders within the Israeli Forces at the security and 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 a meeting 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.

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Featured image is from IMEMC

Last November, He Jiankui, a Chinese biology professor at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUST) in Shenzhen (Guangdong Province) announced that he and his team had created the World’s first “genetically edited babies”: twin babies Lula and Nana.

Dr. He Jiankui, used the CRISPR technology “to alter the embryos of seven couples [allegedly] to make them resistant to HIV”.  He Jiankui made his announcement at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing held at the University of Hong Kong.  

Dr. He claims to have used CRISP “to tweak the DNA of human embryos during in vitro fertilization”. 

The broad implications of this experiment are far-reaching. The genetic editing of human life forms including embryos has a bearing on the future of humanity.

It opens up the pandora’s box of genetic engineering applied to human beings.

It undermines the “reproduction of real life”. Potentially, it destroys humanity.

Screenshot Source Nature News Carl Zimmer, Click image to enlarge

The experiment raises important scientific and ethical issues. Human embryos are not commodities.

The Chinese government immediately opened an investigation, Dr He Jiankui was fired by his University in January 2019.

Corporate Interests: Genetic Editing is “Big Business”

Despite government regulations and ethical issues, there are powerful corporate interests involved in the development and patenting of genetic editing of life forms including Dr. He’s findings on “genetically modified babies”.

While Dr. He’s University based lab biology project at SUST has been closed down, he nonetheless remains Chairman and  major stakeholder of the Shenzhen based Direct Genomics Biotechnology, “a genome sequencing” firm, with extensive financial resources.  Direct Genomics received at least US$43 million in funding from both Chinese and international investors:

The ability to precisely edit the genome of a living cell holds enormous potential to accelerate life science research, improve biotechnology, and even treat human disease.

While the Broad Institute owns the intellectual technology, CRISPR-Cas9 was invented by a Chinese American scientist Dr. Feng Zhang based at the Broad Institute and MIT.

MIT Prof. Feng Zhang responding to Dr He’s controversial announcement calls for “a moratorium on implantation of edited [human] embryos …until we have come up with a thoughtful set of safety requirements first.”

This statement represents the interests of the Broad Institute. According to Feng Zhang’s colleague Professor David Liu (also on behalf of the Broad Institute):

“[Dr He’s] reported use of CRISPR nuclease to edit CCR5 in human embryos, resulting in live births, … [constitutes] a serious breach of ethics … Foremost, that edited human babies were generated without the full engagement of independent scientific and ethics experts, relevant regulatory institutions, and governing bodies is appalling.” (emphasis added)

These statements are tantamount to “crocodile tears”. Failing effective government regulation (e.g. by the Trump administration), the ethical considerations will eventually be scrapped or bypassed.

“Moratorium” rather than “Abolition” of a potentially dangerous technology is the talking point: “We have a legal moratorium on that here,” said U.S. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb… The potential applications are also relatively dangerous if they get into the hands of people who don’t have good judgment or have ill intent.” (Bloomberg SFGate,  November 27, 2018)

A moratorium on behalf of those who own the CRISPR patent does not foreclose the development and marketing for profit of genetic editing of human embryos. Money is the driving force. The Moratorium will eventually be lifted. Potentially, what is at stake is a multi-billion dollar undertaking.

In all likelihood, there will be a battle for the intellectual property rights pertaining to CRISPR-Cas9 technology, involving both US and Chinese corporate interests.

 While the Broad Institute was granted ownership of the CRISPR-Cas9 patent by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, less than 3 months prior to Dr. He’s announcement in Hong Kong, the ownership of CRISP is actively contested. The University of California at Berkeley is also involved in the fight for patent ownership against the Cambridge based Broad Institute. (Wired, September 11, 2018).

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“I have ground zero information on everything that happens there. And trust me, what the Canadian public, and the American public and the international community are watching is a huge Hollywood show.”

– Venezuelan in Canada, from an interview with Eva Bartlett

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The US and Canada have long sought regime change in Venezuela.

In order to enable this agenda, the political leadership of the two countries have been drowning their populations with propaganda. According to the standard account, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has undemocratically ceased power, and is oppressing his own people. President Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez are singularly to blame for a devastating economic situation forcing millions to flee the once prosperous South American nation. [1]

Mainstream media, pundits, and popular television comedy show hosts like John Oliver are only too happy to uncritically echo these interpretations of the plight of the Venezuelan people. More to the point, they appear to be presenting as fact an embellishment of the difficulties facing ordinary and poor Venezuelans.

Among standard talking points: people across the nation are taking to the streets to oppose Maduro’s rule, leading to violent reprisals by the government and crackdowns on dissident media. Maduro’s mismanagement of the economy has led to empty grocery store shelves. President Maduro, back in February, authorized the destruction of aid entering the country from neighbouring Columbia. Maduro’s presidency is illegitimate and the opposition National Assembly’s recognition of Juan Guaidó as interim President is constitutionally valid.

Audiences in the U.S. and Canada are led to believe the people of Venezuela overwhelmingly oppose Maduro’s ‘grip’ on power, but are helpless to challenge his ‘authoritarian’ rule.

As with ‘humanitarian wars’ Western nations have sanctioned over the last two decades, even liberal critics of their nations’ interventionist policies feel the need to express their position with a disclaimer of sorts along the lines of ‘He may be a bad guy, but…’

Aggressive foreign policy toward Venezuela or any other country requires at least tacit support from domestic populations in nominally democratic countries like Canada, hence the need by Western leaders to control the foreign policy narrative. This is why it is necessary for the broader public to ascertain the actual facts on the ground, and confront the assertions providing a pretext for foreign interference, particularly military intervention, in another country’s internal affairs.

This week, the Global Research News Hour takes on conventional messaging on the Venezuela situation with three provocative interview guests.

In the first half hour, frequent guest Yves Engler joins us to share some insights into Canada’s actual interests in Venezuela as well as provide background on a specific Canadian think tank, known as the Canadian International Council, which is acting to shape Canadian policy in an imperialistic direction. Excerpts of a recent talk by former Canadian Ambassador to Venezuela, Ben Rowswell are incorporated into this discussion.

In the second half hour, two Canadian journalists, Eva Bartlett and Dimitri Lascaris, talk about what they saw and experienced in Venezuela during their recent visits to the country. They also help us make sense of social and mainstream media distortion of the realities on the ground.

Yves Engler is one of Canada’s foremost Canadian foreign policy critics and dissidents. He is the author of nine books on Canadian foreign policy including The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy (2009), and his most recent, Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada. His articles have appeared at rabble.ca, canadiandimension.com, and on his own site yvesengler.com.

Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, activist, and journalist. A former partner with Siskinds LLP, Lascaris was once named one of Canada’s most influential lawyers by Canadian Lawyer Magazine. He is currently a correspondent and Board member of The Real News Network and the Chair of the Board of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine. She is a recipient of the International Journalism Award for International Reporting. Eva recently returned from a visit to Venezuela. She will be speaking in Hamilton on Monday April 29th.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 257)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . Excerpts of the show have begun airing on Rabble Radio and appear as podcasts at rabble.ca.

The Global Research News Hour now airs Fridays at 6pm PST, 8pm CST and 9pm EST on Alternative Current Radio (alternativecurrentradio.com)

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

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

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

RIOT RADIO, the visual radio station based out of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario has begun airing the Global Research News Hour on an occasional basis. Tune in at dcstudentsinc.ca/services/riot-radio/

Radio Fanshawe: Fanshawe’s 106.9 The X (CIXX-FM) out of London, Ontario airs the Global Research News Hour Sundays at 6am with an encore at 4pm.

Los Angeles, California based Thepowerofvoices.com airs the Global Research News Hour every Monday from 6-7pm Pacific time.

Notes:

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-363198772.html

The following research article is an attempt to analyze the reasons behind the increasing drift of right-wing politics in Israeli parliamentary elections in the last two decades. It also evaluates the impact of national insecurity and scaremongering on the political behavior of Israeli Jewish voters. Finally, the article explores the possibility of the demise of rightwing predominance in Israeli parliamentary elections.

New Parties, Splits, and Mergers

It has been observed by political analysts that prior to Israel’s parliamentary elections, a number of election developments erupt, such as the formation of new and small parties, including parties formed by ex-military generals, and splits in some of the large parties. This process will be followed by the merger of small parties in order to produce larger election lists and blocs.

The helpful factor that makes these developments possible is the existence of a number of common denominators among Israeli political parties. With the exception of the Israeli Communist Party and the Arab political parties in Israel, Israeli ‘Jewish’ parties share a number of  common denominators such as the Zionist ideology, the drift for right wing politics, the rejection of the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, the denial of Arab issues in their political agendas, the support for the establishment of colonial settlements on Palestinian indigenous lands, and objection to vacate existing colonial settlements. All these denominators create loose boundaries among Zionist parties and allow Israeli politicians to cross them.

No Palestinian Partner

It was the Zionist Left[1] that espoused, in 1996, the political solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Prime Minister Yitshaq Rabin proposed the “Oslo Agreement” as a negotiated solution with the PLO that was led by Yasser Arataf’s and dominated by Fateh right-wing faction.

Palestinian-Israeli negotiations did not go well due to Israel’s insistence to expand colonial settlements inside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. After the failure of the Camp David negotiations between Ehud Bark and Yasser Arafat in 2000, Barak who desired to offer an imposed and therefore, unacceptable conditions on Arafat, concluded that there is “no Palestinian partner” to negotiate with.

Soon after, the situation deteriorated and the Palestinians responded with violent operations that targeted Israeli civilians. The Israeli right, led by the Likud, blamed the Zionist Left for the deteriorating situation and manipulated the insecurity of the Israeli electorate who in turn chose in 2001 the hawkish right-wing general Eric Sharon as their “protector”. This right-wing campaign was certainly assisted by the “no Palestinian partner” slogan that was propagated by the Zionist Left.

Threats and National Insecurity

To begin with, the impact of psychological perceptions in societies creates dynamic political pressures of their own that are bound to affect the political behavior of electorates. This development became clear within the Israeli Jewish society during the period that extended from the First Intifada in the 1987 to the last Israeli parliamentary election in 2019.

Any threat, real or imaginary, posed by the ongoing resistance of the indigenous Palestinian population, is bound to be perceived by the Israeli settlers, as harmful and causing panic and insecurity to their national well-being. Therefore, such a threat must be neutralized by the use of military force. The frightened Israeli public is inclined to seek help for this task from Israeli hawkish leaders who claim to have a suitable solution.

Consequently, these hawkish leaders, who usually are right-wing Zionist ultra nationalists, do sense the fears and the insecurity of the public. They capitalize on them in their political narratives and successfully manipulate them in their election propaganda, so as to increase their supporters and voters.

Ultimately, the insecurity of the settlers will be articulated politically by a movement to more right-wing positions. The hardening of settler’s nationalist positions will drive them to support right-wing politicians, who are recently more hawkish and racist. The more the Israeli Jewish public feels insecure, the more they express right-wing positions.

Scaremongering in political speeches

The election propaganda of the present Israeli parties was based on the employment of security fears by the majority of Israeli parties.[2] For example, Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu, who is  entangled in three corruption scandals that could lead to his indictment, concentrated his election propaganda campaign on a number of basic factors such as fear of Israeli citizens from the: “Irani danger”, Hizballah rockets, and the rockets of Palestinian resistance. During the last few years, Netanyahu repeated in his speeches and interviews “information” about the horror that could emanate from Iran claiming that “Iran is attempting to secure a nuclear bomb and intends to use it to annihilate the Jewish people of Israel.”[3]

Moreover, Netanyahu concentrated in his election propaganda on his right-wing political and ideological positions, using his charisma as a media tool. His Likud party decided that during the previous and recent election campaigns, it did not need to publish a political, social and economic agenda. His “I believe” was a sufficient agenda for the electorate.

The rest of the right-wing politicians and ideologues use the socio-psychological impact of this panic to back up their political positions and to increase their supporters during election campaigns. They succeeded in employing the “… scaremongering security agendas to curry favor with the Israeli public…”[4]

An attempted explanation for expansion of right-wing electorate

In her analysis of the right-wing drift upward of Israeli electorate, Dahlia Scheindlin wrote that:

“… Seismic shifts during the Second Intifada led to a migration of left-wingers to the self-defined political center. They added to that camp but also replaced some centrists who migrated right, causing the percentage of Jewish right-wingers to drift upward over the decade…”[5]

She added that as a result:

 “… the portion of all Israelis who call themselves right wing stands at around 46 percent — among the Jewish population,” while the “… number of self-defined centrists is roughly one-quarter, and the portion of left-wingers is stable at about one-fifth.”[6]

Moreover, when it comes to Israeli youth, the percentage of those identifying themselves as right wing, is much higher. In their analysis of why the Israeli electorate is right wing, both Laura Adkins and Ben Sales wrote that:

“According to the 2018 Israeli Democracy Index (an annual study by the Israeli Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan Israeli think tank), approximately 64 percent of Israeli Jews aged 18-34 identify as right wing, compared to 47 percent of those 35 and older…”[7]

These potential young Israeli voters create a suitable hotbed for Israeli right-wing parties. With the help of an acquiescent Israeli media, they get constantly bombarded by right wing Israeli politicians who openly voice out racist, segregationist, anti-democratic, and pro-ethnic cleansing declarations.

Deterioration of Political Speech

In addition to the panic speech, the Israeli right wing parties employed racist positions in their propaganda. They used outright racist incitement against Arab Palestinian citizens, the indigenous Palestinians of the colonized territories and against foreign workers and African asylum seekers.

In their “Israeli Election Guide 2019”, the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) published a collection of these declarations. The following are few examples of declarations by high-ranking government officials of the Likud-led coalition government.[8]

• Miri Regev, Minister of Culture and Sports, is known for fueling racism and violence against Palestinians and other non-Jews. In 2012, she helped incite a wave of anti-African violence, including assaults and arson attacks, targeting people from countries like Sudan and Eritrea, telling an angry mob that asylum seekers “are a cancer in our body.” The same year, she told an interviewer, “I’m happy to be a fascist”;
• Ayelet Shaked, a New Right co-leader and outgoing Minister of Justice produced an ad showing her spraying on perfume called “fascism”;
• Oren Hazan, former Likud Knesset member, released an ad depicting himself shooting and killing a leader of a political party that represents Palestinian citizens of Israel;
• Eli Ben-Dahan, Deputy Minister of Defense. In 2013, then-Deputy Minister for Religious Affairs Ben-Dahan declared, “[Palestinians] are beasts, they are not human”;
• Bezalel Smotrich, a notorious racist and extremist, Jewish Home member. Smotrich lives in an illegal settlement on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank. He supports a shoot to kill policy for Palestinians, including children, who throw stones at their Israeli occupiers. In 2015, he claimed that the arson attack by Jewish extremists that killed three members of the Dawabsha family, including an 18-month-old baby, was not an act of terrorism;
• Avigdor Lieberman: Former Minister of Defence is an immigrant and former nightclub bouncer from Moldova in the former Soviet Union.  Currently, he lives in one of the colonial settlements in the West Bank. In 1999, Lieberman founded his party Yisrael Beiteinu which is a secular, ultranationalist right-wing party. It espouses hardline, racist policies towards Palestinian citizens of Israel. In March 2015, Lieberman called for Palestinian citizens of Israel who do not support the Jewish character of the state and its policies to be beheaded, declaring: “Those who are with us deserve everything, but those who are against us deserve to have their heads chopped off with an axe”.

General Benny Gantz, used three videos for his election campaign. His first video shows the General “…bragging about how much killing and destruction he committed in Gaza…” The video displays on screen that during his military service General Benny Gantz destroyed “6,231 targets” and killed “1,364 terrorists”. The video’s title included the words “Parts of Gaza were returned to the stone ages.” While the second video “… displays a kill-counter on screen racking up bodies until the number 1,364 is reached. In the background Palestinians are seen conducting funerals”.[9]

Israeli activist and author Miko Peled, who is living in Britain, commented on Gantz’s new ads by saying that it would be “hard to imagine a more violent neo-fascist campaign than this one, by the new kid in Israel’s elections, war criminal general Benny Gantz.”[10]

In her analysis of the degree of racist hatred by Israeli political candidates, Elizabeth Tsurkov wrote in Forward, a progressive Jewish magazine, that “a disturbing new trend has emerged in the political ads of the Israeli elections. Campaign ads seem to be competing over which candidate has killed the most Palestinians.”[11]

When a number of Israeli right wing politicians adopt in their election advertisement: incitement for racism and violence, dehumanization of Palestinians and Africans, glorification for murder of Palestinians, segregationist positions, and fascistic tendencies, they are bound to provide a certain legitimacy for this inevitable hawkish world view. At the same time their speech of hatred will actually convert brutality into an accepted and legitimate ideology.

Ultimately, the impact of this rotten political speech will be detrimental for Israeli youth because it will create for them a right-wing frame of mind and will encourage the development of a right wing culture based on intolerance for others and the glorification of killing and destruction. This in turn will help in bringing more voters for the right-wing parties.

Conducive Political Environment

After years of incitement by Israeli right wing politicians, Israeli society became a conducive political environment provided by the dominant ideology of settler colonialism which is known as Political Zionism. This right-wing ideology becomes more extreme whence fear dominates the consciousness of the average Israeli Jewish citizen who feels the weakness of the Zionist state as a result of defeat in two consecutive wars in Lebanon (the 2000 and 2006 wars) and due to challenges that could come from Syria, Lebanon and Iran and as a result of the present internal challenges that could come from Palestinian resistance. The panic stricken Jewish voters will finally seek tough rightwing protectors as a solution for their psychological dire need.

The Employment of Racism in Election Campaign

The coalition right wing parties succeeded in legislating numerous racist laws in the Israeli parliament. According to the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), an Israeli think tank,

“There are more than 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. directly or indirectly, based solely on their ethnicity, rendering them second or third class citizens in their own homeland.”[12] Moreover, “In recent years, the right has made it all too easy to brand its entire camp as racist, nationalist, populist and fascist…”[13]

Therefore, it could be ascertained that the present Israeli coalition government is the most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history.

As a result, the measure of Israeli patriotism became a combination of three factors: the level of racist hatred towards the indigenous Palestinian population, the level of brutality of the Zionist leaders and the total destruction caused to Palestinian property and cities.

The state of racist hatred, scaremongering campaign and level of brutal violence are all reflective symptoms of the settler colonial nature of the Israeli Zionist state.

The Replacement of Vital Issues

It is noticeable that most election agendas of Israeli political parties dealt with political and security-related issues, but ignored to tackle the vital issues of Israeli society such as: health, education, housing, economy, standard of living, and unemployment. The political narrative, especially the election propaganda, focused on scaremongering, racist hatred, security-related issues, and colonial violence. These issues usually create psychological pressures on the collective consciousness of the Israeli citizen. It pushes the citizens to solidify and get along with these issues. Zionist leaders have succeeded in making them appear as components of the Israeli national consensus.

According to a survey conducted by Israeli Television Chanel 13, it appeared that the election propaganda of most Israeli parties concentrated on the following issues: 28 percent on personal issues of the contenders, 16 percent on security issues and 10 percent on issues smearing the other contender. The survey added that 50 percent of election propaganda dealt with non-sense. While the issue of health, education, economy, and housing did not take any attention.[14]

These pressuring psychological impact aim at driving the consciousness of the Israeli citizen away from the real, vital and burning issues that affect their way of living. Currently, the Israeli citizen suffers from: deteriorating health services, especially at government hospitals, costly education and housing services, financial and institutional corruption, and an increasing level of social violence.

Those Israelis who have adopted the rightwing frame of mind are in solidarity with their parties. They are ready to identify with the ideology of their leaders to the point where they are willing to ignore their financial corruption, provided that they feel protected and secure. For example, Netanyahu has been accused by the Attorney General on three cases of corruption, but went on in his election campaign. He has not been charged yet but will be put to trial after he manages to establish a new coalition government. Apparently, the accusation of corruption did not harm his image nor reputation as a tough and hawkish right-wing leader.

External Support and Rising Criticism

In addition to local internal support by a significant portion of Israeli pro-rightwing voters, Israeli rightwing governments have enjoyed the support of most of the European governments, the American administration, especially that of the rightwing Donald Trump, and the support of a number of reactionary Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman.

Israeli rightwing governments have received huge military and economic assistance from Western countries, especially the various American administrations. Outright political support was provided to Israeli rightwing governments, especially at the United Nations. This questionable assistance was given even when Israeli rightwing governments blatantly violated both international law and human rights. Israeli violations were, mostly, not condemned but encouraged. War crimes were and still being committed by the Israeli army and by Zionist settlers against the indigenous Palestinian civilians, yet, no Israeli war criminal was brought to justice at the International Court of Justice.

Moreover, Israeli rightwing governments have been supported for years by the dominant Western media, capitalist think tanks, a significant part of Western academics and intellectuals, and a great portion of world public opinion. In turn, Israeli policies towards the indigenous Palestinian people have been defended as necessary acts of “defense” in face of Arab “terrorism”.

The totality of this varied support for the policies of Israeli rightwing governments provided Israel with a protective shield and sanctioned its internal and external policies that violate international law and contravene human rights. It also prevented the United Nations and the International Court of Justice from making Israel become accountable for its war crimes.

However, Israel is a settler colonialist entity that was created both by British imperialism and Political Zionism inside Palestine, which was populated by the indigenous Palestinian Arabs. In his evaluation of the impact of the colonization process on Israeli society Bashir Abu-Manneh, wrote that:

Israeli society is not merely a society of immigrants; it is one of settlers. This society, including its working class, was shaped through a process of colonization…. The permanent conflict between settlers’ society and the indigenous, displaced Palestinian Arabs has never stopped and it has shaped the very structure of Israeli sociology, politics, and economics.[15]

Justification of Zionist crimes and harsh policies towards the indigenous Palestinians needed a reasoning, an ideological tool, an enemy and scaremongering. The creation of an enemy for Zionist Israel has been a strategic asset of both rightwing and leftwing Zionism. This asset has been elaborated by both Bill and Kathleen Christison, who wrote a research article, in which they put the following reasoning for both the creation and employment of the ‘enemy’ in Zionist political speech.

Indeed, the most pernicious aspect of a political philosophy like Zionism that masquerades as democratic is that it requires an enemy in order to survive and, where an enemy does not already exist, it requires that one be created. In order to justify racist repression and dispossession, particularly in a system purporting to be democratic, those being repressed and displaced must be portrayed as murderous and predatory. And in order to keep its own population in line, to prevent a humane people from objecting to their own government’s repressive policies, it requires that fear be instilled in the population: fear of “the other,” fear of the terrorist, fear of the Jew-hater. The Jews of Israel must always be made to believe that they are the preyed-upon. This justifies having forced these enemies to leave, it justifies discriminating against those who remained, it justifies denying democratic rights to those who later came under Israel’s control in the occupied territories.[16]

Due to the fact that Israel is a product of ongoing settler colonialism, a process of rightwing political socialization is still thriving and crystallizing among the Jewish settler society. This process was affected by US-Israeli relationship, which in turn was  consolidated since 1967. Bashir Abu-Manneh reflected on that relationship by writing the following description.

… The United States has been determining major economic and political outcomes in the Middle East since at least 1967, with Israel continuing to play a crucial role in their realization. In Israel-Palestine, this has meant that force and colonial peace have alternated as main instruments of policy, with the main objective being a constant: Jewish supremacy in Palestine—as much land as possible, as few Palestinians as possible. The United States has exploited this Zionist imperative for its own interests in the region, and has fostered a militarized and fundamentalist Israel in the process. This reality can be gauged in Israel’s most recent parliamentary elections…[17]

James Petras described Jewish solidarity with Israel, among the educated strata, as in fact, being a choice to “…embrace an ‘ethno-religious’ Supremacist dogma, which binds them to an apartheid, militarist state and ideology ready to drag the world into a global war.”[18]

However, a new phenomenon is on the rise among Diaspora Jewry. Young Jews are increasingly becoming critical of and disenchanted with Israeli policies. The increasing weight of this phenomenon and the accumulated world public pressure, are bound to affect Israeli policies towards the indigenous Palestinians. According to the evaluation of James Petras,

Jews, especially young Jews, are increasingly repelled by Israel’s crimes against humanity. The next step for them (and for us) is to criticize, demystify and stand up to the toxic supremacist ideology linking the powerful domestic Zionist power configuration and its political clones with Israel.[19]

All settler colonial societies exhibit rightwing tendencies because of espousing ultra nationalist ideologies. During the conflict with the indigenous population, colonial settlers develop a racist frame of mind and a narrow minded world view. The more inhuman crimes the settlers perpetuate, the more extreme rightwing positions they adopt.

The Trump administration announced today that it will waive dozens of environmental laws to speed construction of 18- to 30-foot-tall border walls across 80 miles of borderlands in Arizona and New Mexico. The bollard-style barriers will block the natural migrations of wildlife, damage ecosystems and harm border communities.

The three waivers sweep aside dozens of laws that protect clean air, clean water, public lands and endangered wildlife. They cover plans to build 46 miles of new wall in New Mexico, 6.5 miles of new wall along the Colorado River south of Yuma, and 27.5 miles of replacement wall southeast of Yuma. These are the first wall-construction projects using military funds authorized by Trump’s emergency declaration.

“It’s bad enough that Trump’s bulldozing the borderlands for a senseless wall, but now he’s stealing money from the military to do it,” said Laiken Jordahl, borderlands campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The only thing permanent about Trump’s wall will be its destruction of wildlife and wild places. It will do nothing to stop asylum seekers or drug smugglers. Waiving these laws is an affront to borderland communities, and we’ll continue to challenge it in court.”

The waivers, which will take effect Wednesday, bring the number of waivers issued by the Trump administration under the REAL ID Act to nine.

The New Mexico wall will cut through the remote Chihuahuan Desert and sever a known migratory corridor for Mexican gray wolves, among the rarest mammals on the continent. The New Mexico area is also home to the endangered Aplomado falcon, as well as kit foxes, bighorn sheep and ringtails.

The Yuma wall will block people and wildlife from accessing the Lower Colorado River. It will also harm habitat for endangered birds including yellow-billed cuckoos, southwestern willow flycatchers and Yuma clapper rails.

Map of border wall waivers by Kara Clauser, Center for Biological Diversity.

The waivers are being issued during open comment periods where the public is invited to weigh in with concerns. Comments remain open until May 8. Construction contracts already have been issued for these projects.

The Center and allies have sued to challenge Trump’s emergency declaration to fund border walls. The Center also has sued the administration to challenge border-wall construction in the Rio Grande Valley and near the Santa Teresa Port of Entry in New Mexico. The Center’s first border-related lawsuit ― filed in 2017 in U.S. District Court in Tucson with U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva ― seeks to require the Trump administration to do a detailed analysis of the environmental impacts of its border-enforcement program. All of these suits are pending.

A 2017 study by the Center identified more than 90 endangered or threatened species that would be threatened by wall construction along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

Beyond jeopardizing wildlife, endangered species and public lands, the U.S.-Mexico border wall is part of a larger strategy of ongoing border militarization that damages human rights, civil liberties, native lands, local businesses and international relations. The border wall impedes the natural migrations of people and wildlife that are essential to healthy diversity.

The waivers cast aside these laws:

1. The National Environmental Policy Act
2. The Endangered Species Act
3. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act
4. The National Historic Preservation Act
5. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act
6. The Migratory Bird Conservation Act
7. The Clean Air Act
8. The Archeological Resources Protection Act
9. The Paleontological Resources Preservation Act
10. The Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988
11. The National Trails System Act
12. The Safe Drinking Water Act
13. The Noise Control Act
14. The Solid Waste Disposal Act
15. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act
16. The Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act
17. The Antiquities Act
18. The Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act
19. The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
20. The Farmland Protection Policy Act
21. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act
22. The National Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956
23. The Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act
24. The Wild Horse and Burro Act
25. The Administrative Procedure Act
26. The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899
27. The Eagle Protection Act
28. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
29. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act
30. The Military Lands Withdrawal Act of 1999
31. The Sikes Act
32. The Reclamation Project Act of 1939

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I think that I have something of a head-start over others, including many Americans, so far as the Democratic presidential aspirant Pete Buttigieg is concerned. As one who takes note of a wide range of figures on what is termed the ‘alternative media’, I am quite familiar with the philosophy and the views of E. Michael Jones, a Catholic conservative, who is a long-term resident of South Bend Indiana, which is Buttigeig’s hometown.

Jones has been absolutely scathing about Buttigieg’s persona, as well as his record as mayor. And even if one removes the fact that Buttigieg’s homosexuality is a central reason for Jones’ hostility, there is a coalescence of analysis between the right-wing Jones and the left-wing humourist Jimmy Dore, who is an astute commentator on America’s domestic politics as well as on geopolitical issues.

To Dore, Buttigieg’s image of a down-to-earth, sleeves-rolled-up operator is one sign of a guy who is “trying too hard”. In fact, noted Dore in a recent episode of his youtube show, “he’s trying too hard to make it look like he’s not trying.” But while Dore’s analysis is based on what he can garner from Buttigieg’s performance in the media now that he is in the national spotlight, Jones has over the last few years incessantly spoken in detail about Buttegieg’s record as mayor, during which time he has succeeded in alienating large sections of the population of South Bend.

Buttigieg’s formula of “practical leadership guided by progressive values” has been subjected to devastating criticism by those familiar with his 9-year mayoral record in South Bend.

One example relates to Buttigieg’s decision to phase out the city’s trash collecting regime for cost-cutting purposes. Previously, a two-man team would drive down residential alleys to retrieve refuse bins, but the new design trucks cannot fit through most alleys which means that residents have to put out their garbage in the front of their homes, a situation which has led to bouts of odour infestation and a ‘rough’ looking appearance on collection days. Buttigieg’s decision was not a practical one, given the lack of diligence in researching the replacement trucks. And although more modern in appearance and facility, the laying off of many refuse collectors -many of whom were from minority backgrounds- added to the city’s unemployment figures.

Buttigieg’s decision to sack South Bend’s popular black police chief Darryl Boykins, is also viewed as a disastrous move. It was a move which he has admitted was his “first serious mistake as mayor”. His claims to have been “troubled” by Barack Obama’s clemency for Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning, who exposed US war crimes, as well as his praise of Israeli security measures as being “moving” and “clear-eyed”, despite the fact that he was on a visit to the country last May when Israeli Defence Force snipers were shooting unarmed Palestinian protesters, do little to convince observers that he can genuinely be called a progressive. Indeed, there is little of the vocabulary or deeds associated with progressive politics in Buttigieg such as relates to social justice and employee rights.

Buttigeig has also been called out for his tendency to narcissism. A measure of his self-obsessed persona can be garnered from the fact that his book Shortest Way Home devoted more words to his recollection of his playing piano on “Rhapsody in Blue” with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra than on the issue of social poverty.

The marketing of American political aspirants has become more sophisticated from the time when strategizing his son John’s campaign for the White House, Joe Kennedy Snr. said “we’re going to sell Jack like soap flakes”. Becoming president not only involves utilising the modern innovations of Madison Avenue, it also entails brokering deals with the establishment who have ensured that whoever is elected as the latest saviour of the nation is nonetheless a captive of their overarching policies. No objective observer, for instance, can fail to note the fundamental continuum by Donald Trump of a foreign policy followed by Barack Obama who carried on from where George W. Bush left off.

To get straight to the point: ‘Mayor Pete’ is a creature of the oligarchs; a so-called ‘progressive’ who is really a hardline conservative on many issues. A man who is being moulded and sold to America by a number of the people who were behind the meteoric rise of a certain senator named Barack Obama.

It will be useful to bear this in mind were Pete Buttigieg to defy the odds by becoming president of the United States.

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Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

President Putin left nothing to doubt when he proudly proclaimed that Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union regional integration organization that it leads are strategically merging with China and its Belt & Road Initiative, with this process having unprecedentedly far-reaching strategic consequences for the supercontinent and 21st-century geopolitics as a whole.

This year’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) Forum is a monumental event bringing together several dozen heads of state and providing a platform for the international community to better understand this world-changing vision. President Putin gave an important speech during this event that can be summarized as his proud proclamation that Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAU) regional integration organization that it leads are strategically merging with China and its BRI. There’s no doubt that this process will have unprecedentedly far-reaching strategic consequences for the supercontinent and 21st-century geopolitics as a whole, which is why his entire address deserves to be analyzed in full. What therefore follows is the transcript of his speech interspersed with brief interpretations of the text in order to help the reader appreciate just how significant of an event this was and what his words might mean for the future of Russian grand strategy:

Passage:

“President Xi Jinping, Ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to thank my good friend President of China Xi Jinping for inviting me to attend the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. I would like to express my appreciation for the opportunity to be here in such a large representative group and to meet with each other, to discuss current issues of global development and principles of cooperation.

I have listened with great interest – as I am sure many other people in this hall have – about the principles and goals of China’s development, that is, how the People’s Republic of China, the world’s largest economy today in terms of purchasing power parity, is planning to develop and build relationships with its partners. This is of fundamental importance both for Russia and, I am sure, for many of our colleagues who have gathered here in Beijing today.”

Interpretation:

When China talks, the world listens.

Passage:

“It is obvious that the implementation of this ambitious project, Belt and Road, promoted by our Chinese colleagues, is aimed at strengthening the constructive cooperation of the Eurasian states. Its truly unifying goal is to ensure harmonious and sustainable economic development and economic growth throughout the Eurasian space.

Russia has emphasised on numerous occasions that PRC President’s Belt and Road initiative rimes with Russia’s idea to establish a Greater Eurasian Partnership, a project designed to ‘integrate integration frameworks’, and therefore to promote a closer alignment of various bilateral and multilateral integration processes that are currently underway in Eurasia.”

Interpretation:

China’s Silk Road vision of Eurasian integration is complementary to Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership, with the key concept being that both Great Powers are now ready to “integrate (their) integration frameworks”, which confirms what the Russian Ambassador to China said earlier this month and strongly implies Moscow’s unstated but de-facto participation in BRI’s flagship project of CPEC, too.

Passage:

“Russia is ready to undertake efforts for creating a transparent and enabling environment in order to promote cooperation across Eurasia.

It is important that we come up with effective ways of responding to the risks of a fragmented global political, economic and technological landscape and growing protectionism, with illegitimate unilateral restrictions imposed bypassing the UN Security Council or, even worse, trade wars as its most dangerous expressions.

It is our firm belief that only by working together can we counter urgent challenges such as decelerating economic growth, the deepening prosperity gap among nations as well as technological backwardness.”

Interpretation:

Only multilateral economic cooperation such as the sort proposed by China’s BRI and Russia’s EAU (to say nothing of these integration projects’ impending merger) can counteract the systemically destabilizing consequences of the US’ “trade war” and the “Trumpist” worldview that inspired it.

Passage:

“Let me repeat what I have said on numerous occasions: these negative trends feed terrorism, extremism and illegal migration flows, causing old regional conflicts to resurface and new ones to emerge.”

Interpretation:

Russian President Putin, Chinese President Xi, and Prime Minister Khan of the global pivot state of Pakistan are all on the same page regarding the fact that the source of many security threats can be traced back to economic problems, hence the interest that the new Multipolar Trilateral has in pursuing the integration of the EAU, BRI, and CPEC.

Passage:

“I strongly believe that Eurasia can become a role model in devising a meaningful and positive agenda for overcoming these and other urgent international problems. Peoples of various cultures, religions and traditions have inhabited the vast Eurasian space for millennia.

Of course, there were wars and conflicts throughout the continent’s history, but sooner or later they subsided, while common sense and the natural aspiration of the people to peace and communication always triumphed at the end of the day.”

Interpretation:

Despite its diversity, Eurasia won’t be the scene of a destabilizing so-called “Clash of Civilizations” that shadowy forces are actively trying to spark, but rather the platform for a Convergence of Civilizations that will stabilize the supercontinent following the integration of the aforementioned integration frameworks (EAU, BRI, CPEC).

Passage:

“Russia is interested in the closest cooperation with all Eurasian partners on the basis of unshakable principles of respect for the sovereignty, rights and legitimate interests of each state. It is on these principles that we are building the Eurasian Economic Union, with our partners – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Soon, on May 29, the EAEU will have been in existence for five years. Over this period, a common market has been created, and conditions are being created to ensure the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour.

Common markets have been formed, as well as a common digital space.

In his remarks just now, President Xi Jinping spoke about linking his initiatives with similar ones and with other associations that are forming in our vast space. This absolutely fits into our plans. The EAEU states are actively working to strengthen industrial and technological cooperation, to build efficient transport and logistics chains. And we, too, together with our Chinese friends, with all our partners, will talk more during our meetings today and tomorrow, we will continue coordinating this work, work of a global nature.”

Interpretation:

The Russian-led EAU is the core of Moscow’s supercontinental integration strategy, and it perfectly dovetails with China’s BRI.

Passage:

“We also continue pursuing the policy of harmonising our monetary and fiscal policies. At the same time, the Eurasian Economic Union strives for the widest possible cooperation with all interested countries and associations. I am primarily referring to the People’s Republic of China, the country we consider to be our key supporter, our natural partner in the integrated development of the continent.

The five EAEU member states have unanimously supported the idea of pairing the EAEU development and the Chinese Silk Road Economic Belt project. The agreements reached in this regard are being successfully implemented. In the coming months, the Agreement on Trade and Economic Cooperation between the EAEU and China will enter into force.”

Interpretation:

The EAU will continue harmonizing its economic strategy with China, Russia’s key supporter and natural partner in jointly integrating Eurasia, with more cooperation agreements to be forthcoming.

Passage:

“The Eurasian Union is committed to liberalising economic ties with its other partners as well, and has already signed a free trade agreement with Vietnam and a provisional agreement with Iran paving the way to the creation of a free trade area. The preparation of similar instruments with Singapore and Serbia is nearing completion, and talks are underway with Israel, Egypt and India.

We cooperate actively with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

We undoubtedly stand for expanding business ties with the European Union, our long-standing and traditional partner, in a constructive and equitable manner. Even if there are currently some differences between us, they cannot and should not cast a shadow on our shared responsibility for the future of Europe and all of Eurasia.”

Interpretation:

Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership vision is truly all-encompassing and seeks to spread multipolarity into every corner of the supercontinent, even doing what most observers had hitherto thought to be politically impossible by connecting Iran and its hated “Israeli” foe together through the same multilateral trade framework of the EAU.

Passage:

“Let me emphasise that the Great Eurasian Partnership and Belt and Road concepts are both rooted in the principles and values that everyone understands: the natural aspiration of nations to live in peace and harmony, benefit from free access to the latest scientific achievements and innovative development, while preserving their culture and unique spiritual identity. In other words, we are united by our strategic, long-term interests.

I strongly believe that the comprehensive approach that underpins both concepts will help us further enhance economic cooperation within the continent, develop shared transport and energy infrastructure and promote digital technology. This way, integration will serve the interests of our peoples and all Eurasian nations to the fullest extent.”

Interpretation:

“Win-win” isn’t high-sounding rhetoric exclusive to the Chinese, but is a credible Eurasian-wide vision that can ultimately improve the living standards of the supercontinent’s many people if it’s successfully pursued by all nations in full coordination with one another.

Passage:

“Once again, I would like to thank our partners, our Chinese friends for this initiative. Thank you for your attention.”

Interpretation:

No one should ever forget that while the vision of “win-win” is completely inclusive, it wouldn’t be possible to seriously implement in practice had it not been for China’s BRI, therefore making the People’s Republic the core of this paradigm-changing 21st-century process that’s poised to irreversibly revolutionize global geopolitics.

Read the full speech of President Putin here.

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This article was originally published on Oriental Review.

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

All images in this article are from Oriental Review

Values, values and more values.  Another dreary dish added to the smorgasbord of Democratic hopefuls for the White House.  This one is a bit cured and worn, smoked by history.  Biden, having performed the role of Vice President for Barack Obama and senator for Delaware, is making his third attempt to not so much gallop as crawl into the US executive.

That said, there was initial promise, a teaser sent out to media outlets that the venue of his launch on Wednesday would be Charlottesville, Virginia.  Memories of August 2017, with the death of protestor Heather Heyer at the white-supremacist riot, hung heavy. “That’s daring,” thought Joan Walsh at first blush, writing in The Nation.  “Maybe he’s going to run a campaign that’s in step with the new, multiracial, progressive Democratic Party.”  Not so, as Walsh and the rest of the campaign watchers found out.  First came the video launch on Thursday.  Then it was Pittsburgh. Unions; blue-collar focused.

His video was far from impressive.   For one, it did the inexplicable by actually giving a platform for the very individuals he wished to condemn: far right, torch-bearing yahoos which he associated with the vile history of 1930s Europe.  Then he did what many a US politician has done: thrown in good lashings of Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.  Taking such a moral high ground suggests that he has little intention of winning Trump supporters so much as seducing them; they remain, in Democratic-speak, that thatched “basket of deplorables”. (Biden’s own words referred to President Donald Trump’s “very fine people”.)

Another term of Trump, he warns, “will forever and fundamentally alter the character of the nation.”  This is undue flattery, given that the inexorable decline of the US Republic was well and truly fast-tracked by Biden’s own legislative record across a range of social policies, one that left the ground rich for Trump’s debut.

Then comes the more insidious element to the Biden campaign.  To woo the unions, he will have to tantalise and deceive by enlisting the bidding of corporate America.  He will throw in references to the spirit of D-Day and Iwo Jima while embracing, warmly, the robbing titans on Wall Street.  For Biden, USA Inc. is a political home from which he can speak to distant, blue-collar folk who are less people than electoral units.  In his 2008 campaign, he gave a prototypic example, fed by Washington lobbyists and PACs nourished by the likes of T-Mobile, eBay and Bank of America.

His love affair with credit and its agents is known and, if not, should be run on incessant loop through the advertising campaigns of his opponents.   MBNA, a financial services company with Delaware origins, has been particularly keen to oil the wheels of Biden’s efforts. In 2008, the company had already been supplying largesse to the then Senator for two decades.  Mutual back scratching extended to Biden’s son, Hunter, gaining a position at MBNA and becoming a lobbyist for the company.  But that was not all.

As is a matter of legislative record, Biden threw in his lot with the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.  He was one of the first Democrats to the plate in supporting it, and added his vote four times through the course of its final passage in March 2005.  The bill made it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection, a measure cheered on by those in the financial services industry concerned that profits were being eaten into.

David Wade, a spokesman for then Senator Barack Obama suggested that the level of enthusiasm shown by the Delaware senator for the bill was constructive, designed to blunt its sharper edges in the name of accommodation.  (Obama, for his part, did oppose the legislative measure.)

“Senator Biden took on entrenched interests and succeeded in improving the bill for low-income workers, women and children.”

But Wade did not stop there, adding a few more fictional baubles to his sale:

“Senator Biden has a 35-year record fighting for people against powerful interests, whether it’s drug companies, oil companies or insurance companies.”

Such obfuscation did not trick The New York Times.  His voting record was more than amenable to those “entrenched” interests he had supposedly battled with avid courage; Biden “joined Republicans to defeat attempts by his Democratic colleagues, including Mr Obama, to soften the bill’s impact on those same constituencies.”  In one instance, Biden, along with five other Democrats, voted against a proposal mandating credit companies to more effectively warn consumers about paying only the minimum due each month.  Protections for those forced into bankruptcy by being deep in medical debt, and even those in the military, were also deemed unnecessary.

The tradition is set to continue.  On Thursday, Biden kept company at a fundraiser in with Comcast Senior Executive Vice President David Cohen and health insurance executive Daniel Hilferty.  Within twenty-four hours, he had netted $6.3 million in contributions, $700,000 of which came from the Philadelphia fundraiser.

His appearance as a contender for the Democratic nomination stirred rival Senator Elizabeth Warren to tell those attending an event in Iowa that, “Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies.”  Her 2014 autobiography broadened that claim.  Split in the Senate, “Democratic powerhouse Joe Biden” and a few other Democrats were keen to back the bill.  “Never mind that the country was sunk in an ugly recession and millions of families were struggling – the banking industry pressed forward and Congress obliged.”

Biden’s entry into a race that now chokes with some 20 Democratic contenders is unlikely to put President Trump off his stroke.  It is another sign that the Democrats will, when the time comes, consume themselves in acts of self-mutilation and saturnalia, something they have become rather adept at doing.  With Biden weakening the progressive line, the likes of Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders have herculean feats to perform.

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

Soon after deep insider and favored water carrier for the financial elite, Joe Biden, announced his candidacy the corporate propaganda media ramped up its support and floated a meme that Trump is petrified of a Biden challenge next year. 

“Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Trump by 8 percentage points in a hypothetical 2020 general election matchup, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico poll,” The Hill Reported in the days prior to Biden’s announcement. 

The state and its propaganda media love corporate news polls and they hope this one will convince Americans to vote establishment once again.

Trump has privately expressed concern to advisers that Biden could beat him: report https://t.co/Ya8s8lg828 pic.twitter.com/sgD9gfLZE3

— The Hill (@thehill) April 26, 2019

Biden likes to portray himself as an Average Joe—remember “Lunch Bucket Joe”?—a commoner sharing the trials and tribulations of the masses, never mind his vote to make it more difficult for average Americans, victims of a predatory elite, to file bankruptcy. His presidential campaign team is rife with corporate lobbyists. Joe is a favorite of credit card and insurance companies. 

Back in the day, Biden admitted he is a whore for corporate interests. 

Democrats suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome will vote for anybody the DNC throws out into the rigged political arena, even an admitted ring kisser like Joe who is now crawling to corporations and big donors to finance his campaign. 

Due to DNC shenanigans—similar to those used against Bernie Sanders—insider Joe masquerading as Mr. Normal may end up being the Democrat nominee. First, however, competition in a crowded field needs to be swept clean. Bernie, Elizabeth, Kamala, Beto, and Mayor Pete, to name a few, need to be marginalized. 

It’s not likely, however, that any of these people will make it to the White House in 2020. 

Trump will be re-elected, not because he promised anything he is able to actually deliver, but as a protest vote against the establishment, never mind Trump is following through on the neoliberal agenda, in particular in regard to forever war. He has put his own personal spin on the imperial presidency. 

It doesn’t matter who wins in November, 2020. The “swamp” will once again be triumphant, the financial class will continue its rape and pillage of the economy, and the wars will go on indefinitely, or at least until the economic house of cards collapses and the state shows its real face. 

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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.

The Chinese government has invited its Syrian counterpart to the global summit for the Chinese flagship Belt and Road initiative taking place in Beijing April 25 through April 27 among 120 countries.

Syria’s invitation, attendance, and contribution in the mega development being an essential part in West Asia is a clear indication that the Chinese government does not weigh the unilateral sanctions and blockade the regimes of Donald Trump and his EU lackeys and Gulfies satellite fiefdoms impose on the Arab Republic.

Belt and Road is China’s strategic 3 decades infrastructure investment project with countries along the ancient Chinese Silk Road, and beyond, engaging all the countries in its route economically away from political pressures and dominance and to the best of the nations involved, and the rest of the world.

The junta leading the USA have done their best to complete what their predecessor regime of Barack Obama started in destroying and dividing Syria including the direct bombing of Syrian strategic military assets multiple times unashamedly aiding ISIS and other terrorists against the Syrian state, and when their attempts to control Syria were defeated they resorted to the collective punishment of the Syrian people, a crime against humanity.

“The Chinese invitation to Syria to attend the Belt and Road Summit is a significant challenge to the sanctions imposed by the United States of America against Syria,” political and media advisor to the Syrian presidency Bouthaina Shaaban stated.

Mrs. Shaaban added:

“The Silk Road will not be a Silk Road if it doesn’t go through Syria, Iraq, and Iran, where Syria has a special place in this summit is an essential part of the historic Silk Road, and because of its sacrifices in combating terrorism is being appreciated by the people of China and all the people in the world that believe in peace, love, and humanity.”

Mrs. Shaaban speaking to Lebanese news channel al-Mayadeen clarified that what the United States of America is doing will have dangerous repercussions on the USA where it detains women and children in the Rukban Concentration Camp, and protects terrorists in the al-Tanf area, occupying Syrian territories.

“The Turks must leave the Syrian territories, and we will not give up any inch of the Syrian land”, Mrs. Shaaban told al-Mayadeen, adding: “The regime of Erdogan (in Turkey) has not abided by the agreement with regards to Idlib” which was agreed upon in the Astana talks.”

The Syrian presidency advisor reminded that ‘Erdogan regime is responsible for smuggling all the terrorists who came into Syria.’

Mrs. Shaaban meets Mr. Xiaodong in Beijing (Source: Syria News)

“China will not change its policies towards Syria, it didn’t and will never change” China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong reiterated to Mrs. Shaaban during a meeting on the sidelines of the Belt and Road Summit in Beijing – as quoted by SANA.

Mr. Xiaodong noted China’s desire and seriousness in contributing in the rebuilding process in Syria and confirmed the Chinese government always encourages Chinese corporations to invest in Syria.

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Whenever, in ordinary circumstances, the subject of violence comes up, most people throw up their hands in horror and comment along the lines that it is ‘in our genes’, ‘nothing can be done about it’ or other words that reflect the powerlessness that most people feel around violence.

It is true that violence is virtually ubiquitous, has a near-infinite variety of manifestations and, at its most grotesque (as nuclear war or run-away climate catastrophe), even threatens human extinction in the near-term.

Nevertheless, anyone who pays attention to the subject of violence in any detail soon discovers that plenty of people are interested in tackling this problem, even if it is ‘impossible’. Moreover, of course, at least some people recognize that while we must tackle each manifestation of violence, understanding the cause of violence is imperative if we are to successfully tackle its many manifestations at their source. To do all of this effectively, however, is a team effort. And hopefully, one day, this team will include all of us.

In the meantime, let me start by telling you a little about some of the people who are already working to end violence by tackling one or more of its many manifestations. These individuals are part of a worldwide network set up to focus on ending violence – ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ – and they have signed a pledge to do so.

Concerned about US government threats to Iran and Venezuela, several Charter signatories were part of one or both recent peace delegations to Iran and Venezuela respectively. These delegations were designed to open more lines of communication and to demonstrate solidarity with those who do not submit to US hegemony.

The 28-member US peace delegation to Iran from 25 February to 6 March 2019 included long-term nonviolent activists Margaret Flowers, Kevin Zeese and David Hartsough. Unfortunately for David, author of Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist and director of Peaceworkers, his trip didn’t go as planned. If you would like to read a compelling account of his time in Iran with some wonderful Iranians, while learning something about what it means to be on the wrong end of US sanctions, you will find it here: ‘An American Casualty of U.S. Economic Sanctions on Iran’. Glad you got the lifesaving medical treatment from our Iranian friends that you needed David, despite the sanctions! And it is a tragedy that Iran has recently suffered even more, as a result of the devastating floods that have hit the country, with the sanctions cruelly denying them vital emergency assistance. See ‘Stop the ongoing U.S. economic terrorism against Iran and help its people!’

People gather at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC to prevent takeover by the opposition. (Source: Popular Resistance)

In relation to Venezuela, a 13-member peace and solidarity delegation from North America landed in Caracas, Venezuela on the weekend of 9-10 March 2019. The delegation included leaders of antiwar groups from the US and Canada and, once again, Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers of ‘Popular Resistance’ and ‘Clearing the Fog’ podcasts. You can read an account of this delegation’s findings in Kevin and Margaret’s highly informative report ‘Venezuela: US Imperialism Is Based On Lies And Threats’.

Another initiative to support Venezuelans was outlined in the article ‘A Nonviolent Strategy to Defeat a US Military Invasion of Venezuela’.

Traveling widely to witness and demonstrate solidarity with those on the receiving end of US military violence, another long-term nonviolent activist, Kathy Kelly, recently wrote an article pointing out that ‘Every War Is a War against Children’ in which she evocatively documented examples of what this means for those children living in the war zones we call Yemen and Afghanistan. In an earlier article, Kathy questioned the morality of those corporations – such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics and Raytheon – that profit from the killing their weapons inflict. See ‘Can We Divest from Weapons Dealers?’

Environmental journalist Robert Hunziker continues to fearlessly research and truthfully document the ongoing assaults that humans are inflicting on Earth’s biosphere. In his most recent article ‘The Blue Ocean Event and Collapsing Ecosystems’, Robert straightforwardly explains the content of a recent interview of Dr. Peter Wadhams, the world’s leading Arctic scientist. Robert notes that

‘Currently, the Arctic is heating up about 4 times faster than the rest of the planet… the temp difference between the Arctic and the tropics is dropping precipitously… thus, driving the jet streams less… creating meandering jet streams… in turn, producing extreme weather events throughout the Northern Hemisphere, especially in mid-latitudes where most of the world’s food is grown.’

Robert also notes that the study of ancient ice cores by a team from the British Antarctic Survey, University of Cambridge and University of Birmingham found ‘major reductions in sea ice in the Arctic’ which will crank up (via temperature amplification as a result of no Arctic sea ice) Greenland regional temperatures ‘by 16°C in less than a decade’ with horrific implications for life on Earth. Thank you, Robert, for reporting what the corporate media won’t touch and even many activists find too terrifying to seriously contemplate.

In Chile, Pía Figueroa continues her heavy involvement in efforts to network those committed to peace and nonviolence and to develop media channels that report the truth. Pía reports that

‘Pressenza International Press Agency’, which celebrated its tenth anniversary last November ‘in more than 40 places of the world’, continues to advance its contribution ‘with a journalism focused on peace and nonviolence, to a world in which all human beings have a place and their rights are fully respected, in a framework of disarmed and demilitarized societies, capable of re-establishing the ecological balance through governments of real and participatory democracy.’

Since attending the Media Forum organized in the city of Chongqing, China, by CCTV+ and CGTN, in October last year, Pía has been busy organizing the upcoming Latin-American Humanist Forum in Santiago with the objective of ‘Building Convergences’, as its slogan points out. It will be held on 10-12 May with the participation of many grassroots and social organizations involved in more than twenty networks of nonviolent action and inspired by the European Humanist Forum that took place in Madrid, Spain, in May 2018.

Anwar A. Khan was born into ‘a liberal Muslim family in Bangladesh’. As a 16-year-old college student, he participated in the ‘Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, which resulted in horrendous loss of life, genocide against Bangladesh’s intelligentsia and systematic rapes.’ This experience taught him the nature of the US establishment as he was ‘on the battle field along with so many friends of mine and Indian soldiers to fight back the obnoxious nexus of the Pakistani military regime and the Whitehouse establishment’ to create Bangladesh. Khan Bhai went on to complete a post-graduate education, before embarking on a 43-year (so far) business career, involving many different levels of corporate engagement and which took him to many countries of the world, including Venezuela in 2010 where he met both Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro.

He also writes regularly in his spare time and recently wrote an article highlighting the adverse impact of the lack of infrastructure under which many impoverished countries suffer, given the way in which the global economy functions to exploit them. In the article, he describes an inferno that started on the night of 20 February 2019 in a building at Chawkbazar, a 300-year-old Dhaka neighbourhood, ‘where chemicals for making deodorants and other household uses were illegally stored’. The fire ‘quickly spread to four nearby buildings where many people were trapped. Hundreds of firefighters rushed to the scene but traffic jams in the narrow streets held them up. It took almost 12 hours to bring the fire under control….’ The horrific inferno claimed about 100 lives and more were injured. For the full account, see ‘After Nimtali, now Chawkbazar inferno hell, a crisis of humanity’.

Commenting on the current project that she is organizing with friends, Lori Lightning outlines the rationale behind ‘Bear Bones Parenting’:

‘There’s no course or exam to pass to become a parent, and most try to figure this out once a parent, and usually in an exhausted overwhelmed state. Bedtimes, meals, chores, and healthy open communication all become a task without a trusted framework in place.

‘Based on 51 years of combined wisdom as educators, counselors, health practitioners, moms, step moms and foster moms, Bear Bones Parenting offers an intuitive formula to demystify the basics of parenting and a workbook with tools for reflection and wellness practices to take you actively through day to day living no matter where you are at in your life. You dedicate 15 minutes a day and in trade stop being overwhelmed. A “do it yourself” workbook filled with tools to turn life into what you envision for yourself and your family.

‘Our cast of puppets help to inspire playful reflection on our children’s temperaments and our own. Eventual creation of short videos will be easily accessible for busy parents and provide some examples of how things typically play out with temperaments and inspiration of the Bear way, which is curious, intuitive, firm and loving.

‘We hope that BBP can help reduce parental stress and frustration so there is time to connect in joy and curiosity with our children and foster their independence.’

For more information, you can contact Lori at this email address: <[email protected]>

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh is volunteer Director of The Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) and the Palestine Museum of Natural History (PMNH) but he is also actively engaged in the Palestinian struggle for liberation from Israeli occupation. As he evocatively noted in a recent Easter reflection:

‘This is the tenth Easter I celebrate after returning to Palestine in 2008. When we native Christian Palestinians have a few moments to meditate and reflect in this season, we reflect that some 2.5 billion human beings believe in a message that originated with a Palestinian baby born in a manger here and was crucified for being the first revolutionary Palestinian to push for caring for the sick and the poor.

‘We reflect on the real message of Jesus, a message of love and coexistence. The harsh reality on the ground reminds us of our responsibility to shape a better future.

‘We are hopeful because we take a long view of history. Some 150,000 years ago, humans migrated from Africa using Palestine as the passage way to Western Asia and then the rest of the world. 12,000 years ago, this area became the center of development for agriculture (the Fertile Crescent). This was where we humans first domesticated animals like goats and donkeys and plants like wheat, barley, chickpeas, and lentils. This transformation allowed our ancestors time to evolve what we now call “civilization”. Hence, the first writings, the first music, and art, and the first thoughts of deities. From our Aramaic alphabet came the Latin, Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew alphabets. Aramaic was the language of Jesus and much of our current Palestinian Arabic is still Aramaic words.’

Mazin continues to travel regularly, lecturing about initiatives of the museum but also about the political reality in Palestine. If you would like to volunteer to assist the museum’s projects, or to donate money, books, natural history items or anything else that would be useful, you are welcome to contact Mazin and his colleagues at [email protected].

Finally, we are deeply saddened to report the passing of Tom Shea, a long-time stalwart in the struggle for a better world and one of the original team of individuals who launched ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ on 11 November 2011. We include below the testament of his great friend and fellow nonviolent activist, Leonard Eiger:

‘For Tom Shea, Peace WAS the Way

‘My dear friend and fellow Ground Zero member Tom Shea passed away peacefully in the early morning hours of April 3rd surrounded by his family.

‘Earlier in his life Tom had been a Jesuit, a high school teacher, and had started an alternative high school and Jesuit Volunteer Corp: Midwest. He had also been involved in social justice issues on the national level with the Jesuits. Ground Zero member Bernie Meyer remembers Tom with great fondness, from being a student at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland where Tom was teaching, to resisting together at Ground Zero many years later.

‘Tom was 47 when he left Cleveland for Traverse City, Michigan in 1977. There he met his partner Darylene, and they were inseparable from then on. Together, they participated in the Nuclear Freeze movement, and were part of the Michigan Peace Team. They traveled to New York for the second Conference on Disarmament in 1982. They protested both the first Gulf War and the war in Iraq. They also engaged in war tax resistance.

‘At Darylene’s suggestion, they attended a course in conflict mediation in the early ‘80s at a time when there was little written on the subject. That experience led them to a course taught by Quakers at Swarthmore College in 1986. In 1990 Tom and Darylene founded the five-county Conflict Resolution Service in Northern Michigan and trained the first group of volunteer mediators. Their mission was to promote peace and civility in the community through the use of mediator guided dialogue. In the early days of the program, volunteers met in church basements and around kitchen tables to train, role play and share experiences. They would travel to the homes of people needing mediation, focusing on resolving family and neighborhood conflicts.

‘Tom and Darylene moved to Snoqualmie, Washington in 2007 to spend more time with Darylene’s children. Tom got involved in community issues and continued his war tax resistance work. You could find him every April 15th, in front of the local post office, offering tax resistance information.

‘I was still leading a social justice ministry at the Snoqualmie United Methodist Church when one day Tom called the church office and asked who was doing social justice work in the area. We connected immediately due to common work and friends. Soon, Tom and I were making the pilgrimage together across the water to Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, and the rest (as they say) is history.

‘I have spent countless hours with Tom and Darylene, discussing world affairs and working together on strategies and tactics for our work with Ground Zero. Tom and Darylene have been inseparable as both life partners and co-conspirators for peace. Tom once said that Darylene is like a Jesuit herself: “Jesuits are taken as very scholarly people and she’s very scholarly.”

‘In addition to working on media and communications for Ground Zero, and planning vigils and nonviolent direct actions at the Bangor Trident nuclear submarine base, Tom put himself on the line many times, often entering the roadway blocking traffic, both on the County and Federal sides, symbolically closing the base and risking arrest. Tom also created street theatre scripts that have been used during vigils at the submarine base to entertain and educate people.

‘Robert Burrowes, who cofounded ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’, said that“Tom was one of the true legends in my life. A long-standing symbol of, and nonviolent fighter for, everything that could be in our world.” When all is said and done, Tom’s life can be summed up by A.J Muste: “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

‘We will be scattering some of Tom’s ashes (per his wishes) at Ground Zero Center during our August Hiroshima-Nagasaki weekend of remembrance and action.

‘I invite you to honor Tom’s memory by supporting the work of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. There are many ways we can engage in war tax resistance in the context of a broad range of nonviolent strategies for social change.’

While diminished by the passing of Tom, the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action continues ‘to explore the meaning and practice of nonviolence from a perspective of deep spiritual reflection, providing a means for witnessing to and resisting all nuclear weapons, especially Trident. We seek to go to the root of violence and injustice in our world and experience the transforming power of love through nonviolent direct action.’ You can read about their ongoing efforts on their website, Ground Zero, which also features a ‘Current Action Alert: Stop the “Low-Yield” Trident Warhead!’

Each of the individuals mentioned above is part of the ongoing and steadily expanding effort to end the violence in our world. They refuse to accept that violence cannot be ended, and each has chosen to focus on working to end one or more manifestations of violence, according to their particular interests. If you would like to join these people, you are welcome to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

If your own interest is campaigning on a peace, climate, environment or social justice issue, consider doing it strategically. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

If your focus is a defense or liberation struggle being undertaken by a national group, consider enhancing its strategic impact. See Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

If your preference is addressing the climate and environmental catastrophes systematically, consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

If you would like to tackle violence at its source, consider revising your parenting in accordance with ‘My Promise to Children’. If you want the evidence to understand why this is so crucial, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

If you are aware enough to know that you are not dealing effectively with our deepening crisis, consider doing the personal healing necessary to do so. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

It may be that ending human violence is impossible, as many believe. But there are a great number of people around the world who do not accept this and who are struggling, relentlessly, to end violence before it ends us. What about you?

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

Featured image: Activists gather in front of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC in March, 2019.

The first eight months of WWII with no fighting – was called The Phoney War. Using millimetre waves as a fifth-generation or 5G wireless communications technology is a phoney war of another kind.

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This phoney war is also silent, but this time shots are being fired – in the form of laser-like beams of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from banks of thousands of tiny antennas^[1] – and almost no one in the firing line knows that they are being silently, seriously and irreparably injured.

In the first instance, 5G is likely to make people electro-hypersensitive (EHS).^[2] Perhaps it was sitting in front of two big computer screens for many of the 18 years I worked at the UN that made me EHS. When the UN Office at Vienna installed powerful WiFi and cellphone access points – designed to serve large, public areas – in narrow, metal-walled corridors throughout the Vienna International Centre in December 2015, I was ill continuously for seven months.

I did my best for two and a half years to alert the UN staff union, administration and medical service to the danger to the health of UN staff of EMR from these access points, but was ignored. That’s why, in May 2018, I took the issue to the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres [transcript]. He is a physicist and electrical engineer and lectured on telecommunications signals early in his career, yet asserted that he knew nothing about this. He undertook to ask the World Health Organization to look into it, but seven months later those public access points remain in place. I received no replies to my many follow-up emails.

As a result, I welcomed the opportunity to join the effort to publish an International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space because it was clear to me that, despite there having been 43 earlier scientific appeals, very few people understood the dangers of EMR. My experience as an editor could help ensure that a new 5G appeal, including the issue of beaming 5G from space, was clear, comprehensive, explanatory, and accessible to the non-scientist. The International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space is fully referenced, citing over a hundred scientific papers among the tens of thousands on the biological effects of EMR published over the last 80 years.^[3]

Having spent years editing UN documents dealing with space, I know that outer space is hotly contested geopolitically and any untoward event involving a military satellite risks triggering a catastrophic response.^[4] Space law is so inadequate – just one example is the complexity of space liability law ^[5],[6] – that we could really call the Earth orbits a new Wild West. China caused international consternation in 2007 when it demonstrated an anti-satellite weapon by destroying its own satellite. Space debris is the main concern among space-faring nations, with a so-called Kessler syndrome positing a cascade of space debris that could make the Earth orbits unusable for a thousand years.^[7] Does launching 20,000+ commercial 5G satellites in such circumstances sound rational to you?

I live in Vienna, Austria, where the 5G rollout is suddenly upon us. Within the last five weeks, pre-5G has been officially announced at Vienna airport and 5G at the Rathausplatz, the main square in Vienna, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors to its Christmas market each December and skating rink each January, which are special treats for children. Along with birds and insects, children are the most vulnerable to 5G depredation because of their little bodies.^[8]

Friends and acquaintances and their children in Vienna are already reporting the classic symptoms of EMR poisoning:^[9] nosebleeds, headaches, eye pains, chest pains, nausea, fatigue, vomiting, tinnitus, dizziness, flu-like symptoms, and cardiac pain. They also report a tight band around the head; pressure on the top of the head; short, stabbing pains around the body; and buzzing internal organs. Other biological effects such as tumours and dementia usually take longer to manifest, but in the case of 5G, which has never been tested for health or safety, who knows?^[10]

Seemingly overnight a forest of 5G infrastructure has sprouted in Austria. In the space of three weeks one friend has gone from robust health to fleeing this country, where she has lived for 30 years. Each person experiences EMR differently. For her, it was extreme torture so she and I spent her last two nights in Austria sleeping in the woods. Interestingly, as she drove across southern Germany, she suffered torture even worse than in Austria, while in northern Germany she had no symptoms at all and felt completely normal, which suggests that there has been as yet no 5G rollout there.

There are no legal limits on exposure to EMR. Conveniently for the telecommunications industry, there are only non-legally enforceable guidelines such as those produced by the grandly named International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection, which turns out to be like the Wizard of Oz, just a tiny little NGO in Germany that appoints its own members, none of whom is a medical doctor or environmental expert.^[11]

Like the Wizard of Oz, ICNIRP seems to have magical powers. Its prestidigitation makes non-thermal (non-heating) effects of EMR exposure disappear into thin air, for taking into account the tens of thousands of research studies demonstrating the biological effects of EMR would invalidate its so-called safety guidelines.^[12]It has bewitched the International Telecommunication Union, part of the UN family, into recognising these guidelines.^[13] And one little email sent to ICNIRP in October 2018 to submit Professor Martin Pall’s comments on ICNIRP’s new draft guidelines conjured up an immediate explosion of interest in the sender’s online presence – which had hitherto attracted none – from companies and individuals worldwide, one country’s immigration authorities, the office of the Austrian Chancellor (head of government), a firm of lawyers in Vienna and even Interpol!^[14],[15]

I hope that people read and share our Stop 5G Space Appeal to wake up themselves and others quickly and use it to take action themselves to stop 5G. Even eight short months of this 5G Phoney War could spell catastrophe for all life on Earth. Elon Musk is set to launch the first 4,425 5G satellites in June 2019 and “blanket” the Earth with 5G, in breach of countless international treaties. This could initiate the last great extinction, courtesy of the multi-trillion-US-dollar 5G, the biggest biological experiment and most heinous manifestation of hubris and greed in human history.[10]

People’s first reaction to the idea that 5G may be an existential threat to all life on Earth is usually disbelief and/or cognitive dissonance. Once they examine the facts, however, their second reaction is often terror.

We need to transcend this in order to see 5G as an opportunity to empower ourselves, take responsibility and take action. We may have already lost 80 per cent of our insects to EMR in the last 20 years.^[16] Our trees risk being cut down by the millions in order to ensure continuous 5G signalling for self-driving cars, buses and trains.^[17] Are we going to stand by and see ourselves and our children irradiated, our food systems decimated, our natural surroundings destroyed?

Our newspapers are now casually popularising the meme that human extinction would be a good thing,^[18],[19] but when the question becomes not rhetorical but real, when it’s your life, your child, your community, your environment that is under immediate threat, can you really subscribe to such a suggestion? If you don’t, please sign the Stop 5G Appeal and get active in contacting everyone you can think of who has the power to stop 5G, especially Elon Musk^[20] and the CEOs of all the other companies planning to launch 5G satellites, starting in just 20 weeks from now. Life on Earth needs your help now.

The transcript of my exchange with the UN Secretary-General of 14 May 2018 follows:

Staff member: Mr. Secretary-General

UN staff have repeatedly been told that they are the most important resource of this Organization.

Since December 2015, the staff here at the Vienna International Centre have been exposed to off-the-scale electromagnetic radiation from WiFi and mobile phone boosters installed on very low ceilings throughout the buildings. Current public exposure levels are at least one quintillion times (that’s 18 zeros) above natural background radiation according to Professor Olle Johansson of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

The highly dangerous biological effects of EMFs have been documented by thousands of studies since 1932 indicating that we may be facing a global health catastrophe orders of magnitude worse than those caused by tobacco and asbestos.

Mr. Secretary-General, on the basis of the Precautionary Principle, I urge you to have these EMF-emitting devices removed immediately and to call a halt to any rollout of 5G at UN duty stations, because it is designed to deliver concentrated and focused electromagnetic radiation in excess of 100 times current levels in the same way as do directed energy weapons.

In line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, to “Protect, Respect and Remedy”, 5G technologies MUST be subjected to an independent health and safety assessment before they are launched anywhere in the world.

There is currently an international appeal (https://www.emfscientist.org/index. php/emf-scientist-appeal) signed by 237 EMF scientists from 41 nations urging the UN and particularly the WHO to exert strong leadership in fostering the development of more protective EMF guidelines, encouraging precautionary measures, and educating the public about health risks, particularly risk to children and fetal development.

Mr. Secretary-General, we have a unique opportunity here at the UN Office at Vienna. Since our medical records are digitised, you have the possibility of releasing data on a closed population exposed to off-the-scale levels of electromagnetic radiation to establish if there have already been abnormal health consequences for the UN staff here in the last 28 months.

I urge you to do so and stop any 5G rollout in these buildings immediately.

Thank you.

UN Secretary-General: Sorry, because you are talking to someone who is a little bit ignorant on these things. You’re talking about the WiFi systems?

Staff member: On the ceilings of these buildings, WiFi boosters and cell phone boosters were installed without consultation, without information to staff in December 2015. Now, if you understand electromagnetic radiation, the signal is – if you cannot get a signal from your mobile phone, the signal goes to maximum strength and that then bounces off metal walls affecting the body multiple times at maximum exposure levels. So the situation here is extremely dangerous. I have heard anecdotally of many people who have had health problems. I don’t know if they are related but the Precautionary Principle would dictate that we use our medical records to look into this and that we remove these dangerous devices immediately. Thank you.

UN Secretary-General: Well, I’m worried because I put those devices in my house.[Laughter & applause]

Staff member: Not a good idea!

UN Secretary-General: This I will have to – I confess my ignorance on this but I’m going to raise this with WHO [World Health Organization] – which I think is the organisation that might be able to deal with it properly for them to put someone – their staff or organisations to work on that because I must confess I was not aware of that danger – [humorously] to the extent that I put those things in the rooms of my house – in the ceiling.

Staff member: I would suggest that everybody start looking into this issue and particularly into 5G, which 237 scientists from 41 countries consider a threat that is far worse than the tobacco and asbestos threats of the past.

UN Secretary-General: Well, maybe I have learned something completely new. I hope it will be very useful to me but I confess it is the first time I hear about it.

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Claire Edwards, BA Hons, MA, worked for the United Nations as Editor and Trainer in Intercultural Writing from 1999 to 2017. Claire warned the Secretary-General about the dangers of 5G during a meeting with UN staff in May 2018, calling for a halt to its rollout at UN duty stations.  She part-authored, designed, administered the 30 language versions, and edited the entirety of the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space (www.5gspaceappeal.org) and vigorously campaigned to promote it throughout 2019. In January 2020, she severed connection with the Appeal when its administrator, Arthur Firstenberg, joined forces with a third-party group, stop5ginternational, which brought itself into disrepute at its foundation by associating with the Club of Rome/Club of Budapest eugenicist movement. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Delos, Peter. “The Way to a New Phased Array Radar Architecture.” TechTime: Electronics & Technology News. January 15, 2018. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://techtime.news/2018/01/ 15/analog-devices-phased-array-radar/. “Although there is a lot of discussion of massive MIMO and automotive radar, it should not be forgotten that most of the recent radar development and beamforming R&D has been in the defense industry, and it is now being adapted for commercial applications. While phased array and beamforming moved from R&D efforts to reality in the 2000s, a new wave of defense focused arrays are now expected, enabled by industrial technology offering solutions that were previously cost prohibitive.”

[2] “Electrosensitive Testimonials.” We Are The Evidence. 2018. Accessed January 1, 2019.http://wearetheevidence.org/adults-who-developed-electro-sensitivity/. “WATE intends to expose the suppressed epidemic of sickness, suffering and human rights crisis created by wireless technology radiation; elevate the voice of those injured; defend and secure their rights and compel society and governments to take corrective actions and inform the public of the harm.”

[3] Glaser, Lt. Z. “Cumulated Index to the Bibliography of Reported Biological Phenomena (‘effects’) and Clinical Manifestations Attributed to Microwave and Radio-frequency Radiation: Report, Supplements (no. 1-9).” BEMS Newsletter B-1 through B-464 (1984). Accessed January 1, 2019. http://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Zory-Glasers-index.pdf. Lt. Zorach Glaser, PhD, catalogued 5,083 studies, books and conference reports for the US Navy through 1981.

[4] “Space Sustainability: A Practical Guide.” Secure World Foundation, 2014, 21. Accessed January 1, 2019.https://swfound.org/media/206289/swf_space_sustainability-a_practical_guide_2018__1.pdf.

“However, as more countries integrate space into their national military capabilities and rely on space-based information for national security, there is an increased chance that any interference (either actual or perceived) with satellites could spark or escalate tensions and conflict in space or on Earth. This is made all the more difficult by the challenge of determining the exact cause of a satellite malfunction: whether it was due to a space weather event, impact by space debris, unintentional interference, or deliberate act of aggression.”

[5] “Space Law: Liability for Space Debris.” Panish, Shea & Boyle LLP. 2018. Accessed January 1, 2019.https://www.aviationdisasterlaw.com/liability-for-space-debris/. “Filing a lawsuit against SpaceX for space debris is a little different than one against the commercial industry or state-sponsored launch. Since SpaceX is a private company, injured parties can file claims directly against the establishment in accord with the state’s personal injury laws. For the claim to be successful, the plaintiff will have to prove that SpaceX was negligent in some way that caused the space debris collision. Space law is notoriously complex, making it very difficult for injured parties to recover for [sic] their damages in California.”

[6]Von Der Dunk, Frans G. “Liability versus Responsibility in Space Law: Misconception or Misconstruction?” University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Law: Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program Faculty Publications 21 (1992). Accessed January 1, 2019. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/spacelaw/21/?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu/spacelaw/

[7]Kessler, D. J., P. M. Landry, B. G. Cour-Palais, and R. E. Taylor. “Aerospace: Collision Avoidance in Space: Proliferating Payloads and Space Debris Prompt Action to Prevent Accidents.” IEEE Spectrum 17, no. 6 (1980): 37-41.

[8] Morgan, L. Lloyd, Santosh Kesari, and Devra Lee Davis. “Why Children Absorb More Microwave Radiation than Adults: The Consequences.” Journal of Microscopy and Ultrastructure 2, no. 4 (December 2014): 197-204. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://www.sciencedirect.com/ science/article/pii/S2213879X14000583. Highlights: (1) Children absorb more microwave radiation (MWR) than adults. (2) MWR is a Class 2B (possible) carcinogen. (3) The fetus is in greater danger than children from exposure to MWR. (4) The legal exposure limits have remained unchanged for decades. (5) Cellphone manuals warnings and the 20 cm rule for tablets/laptops violate the “normal operating position” regulation.

[9]Electro Hypersensitivity: Talking to Your Doctor. PDF. Canadian Initiative to Stop Wireless, Electric, and Electromagnetic Pollution. http://weepinitiative.org/talkingtoyourdoctor.pdf.

[10]FCC Chairman on 5G: “We won’t study it, regulate it, have standards for it.” Youtube. June 20, 2016. Accessed January 1, 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwgwe01SIMc. Notes in video: Ultra-high frequency radiation (24 to 100 GHz or more); aimed and amplified signals; massive deployment of towers; worth billions; no standards, no testing; sharing with satellite and military operations; all areas (including rural areas) to be saturated with radiation; all local deployments to be fast-tracked; everything to be microchipped.

[11] Dariusz Leszczynski, PhD. “Is ICNIRP Reliable Enough to Dictate Meaning of Science to the Governmental Risk Regulators?” Between a Rock and a Hard Place(blog), April 8, 2018. Accessed January 2, 2019.https://betweenrockandhardplace.wordpress.com/type/gallery/. “The major problems of ICNIRP are: (1) it is a “private club” where members elect new members without need to justify selection; (2) lack of accountability before anyone; (3) lack of transparency of their activities; (4) complete lack of supervision of its activities; (5) skewed science evaluation because of the close similarity of the opinions of all members of the Main Commission and all of the other scientists selected as advisors to the Main Commission.”

[12] Matthes, Rüdiger. “EMF Safety Guidelines: The ICNIRP View.” International Telecommunications Union Workshop on Human Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields, May 9, 2013. Accessed January 1, 2019.https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/climatechange/emf-1305/Documents/Presentations/s2part1p1-Rued igerMatthes.pdf.

[13] ITU Telecommunication Development Sector Study Group 2: Session on Modern Policies, Guidelines, Regulations and Assessments of Human Exposure to RF-EMF. Session 1: Recent Activities on Human Exposure to RF-EMF in ITU and ICNIRP, Geneva, Switzerland. October 10, 2018. Accessed January 2, 2019.www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Study-Groups/2018-2021/Pages/ meetings/session-Q7-2-oct18.aspx. “Session 1 will discuss some of the recent activities held in ITU and describe the latest updates to the ICNIRP (International Commission on Non‐Ionizing Radiation Protection) guidelines.”

[14] Martin L. Pall, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences, Washington State University. Response to 2018 ICNIRP Draft Guidelines and Appendices on Limiting Exposure to Time-Varying Electric, Magnetic and Electromagnetic Fields (100 KHz to 300 GHz). October 8, 2018. Accessed January 2, 2019.www.5gexposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/FINAL-Martin-L-Pall-Response-to-2018-Draft-Guidelines-8.10.18.pdf.

[15] Cooperation Agreement Between The International Criminal Police Organization Interpol and The International Telecommunication Union. Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-18) Dubai 29 October–16 November 2018. Accessed January 2, 2019. https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-s/md/18/pp/c/S18-PP-C-0047!!MSW-E.docx. “2. In implementing the Agreement, each Party shall act within their respective areas of competence. More specifically, the implementation of the Agreement by ITU shall not exceed beyond its mandate pertaining to building confidence and security in the use of ICTs, in accordance to Plenipotentiary Conference Resolution 130 (Rev. Busan, 2014) and to its role on child online protection in accordance to Plenipotentiary Conference Resolution 179 (Rev. Busan, 2014), whereas the implementation of the Agreement by INTERPOL shall not exceed its mandate as defined by article 2 of its Constitution which include activities pertaining to cybercrime and online child exploitation”. (emphasis added)

[16] Hallmann C.A., M. Sorg and E. Jongejans. “More than 75 per cent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas.” PLOS One 12, no. 10 (2017): e0185809.http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809&type=printable. Accessed January 1, 2019.

[17] Laville, Sandra. “Millions of Trees at Risk in Secretive Network Rail Felling Programme.” The Guardian, April 29, 2018. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/ apr/29/millions-of-trees-at-risk-in-secretive-network-rail-felling-programme.

[18] May, Todd. “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?” The New York Times, December 17, 2018. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/opinion/human-extinction-climate-change.html.

[19] Davis, Nicola. “Falling total fertility rate should be welcomed, population expert says: figures showing declining birth rates are ‘cause for celebration’, not alarm.” The Guardian, December 26, 2018. Accessed January 3, 2019. www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/26/falling-total-fertility-rate-should-be-welcomed-population-expert-says.

[20] “Planet Earth: Worldwide 5G Radiation from Orbit?” Letter from Claus Scheingraber, Roland Wolff and others to Elon Musk. June 18, 2018. Brunnthal, Germany. “… We are sure that your satellite project is already at an advanced stage. But even if much money has been invested, one should consider that it is only a matter of time until the fact of damaging health potential of mobile communications – and especially of 5G-mobile communication – can no longer we overlooked. Therefore we emphatically recommend not to implement the satellite project.” (Letter in German) (Letter in English)

Featured image is from TruePublica

First posted on Global Research on February 14, 2019

Mobile and wireless technologies are a ubiquitous feature of modern life. Most U.S. adults own smartphones, a growing proportion are “smartphone-only” Internet users and over a fourth report being online “almost constantly.” As for children, a 2014 survey of high-income nations reported that almost seven in ten children used a mobile phone, and two-thirds of those had a smartphone, usually by age 10. As described by Nielsen, it is now as common to see “a kid with a smartphone in their hand” as it was to see “a kid playing with a yo-yo in the years before the digital age.”

The enthusiasm with which the public has embraced each new mobile and wireless technology—most of which have never undergone any appropriate safety testing or standards development—suggests that consumers rarely stop to consider the health implications of the infrastructure shoring up their ability to browse, stream and download anytime and “on the go.” Consumers are not entirely to blame for their lack of awareness—it is not easy to disentangle the technologies’ health risks in the face of the telecommunications industry’s steady and calculated disinformation efforts and a captured Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that “follows the script of fabulously wealthy, bullying, billion-dollar beneficiaries of wireless.”

… powerful 5G (fifth-generation) networks and technology are about to subject everyone, on a continuous basis, to unprecedented forms and amounts of mandatory irradiation—without prior study of the potential health impact or any assurance of safety.

Now, however, a global 5G “frenzy” is upon us and is coming into full force. The rollout of “blazing fast” 5G technology will “dramatically increase the number of transmitters sending signals to cellphones and a host of new Internet-enabled devices.” The time is ripe for greater grassroots awareness of the undisclosed tradeoffs between convenience and 5G’s potentially catastrophic health effects. Far from a simple “next-gen” upgrade, powerful 5G (fifth-generation) networks and technology are about to subject everyone, on a continuous basis, to unprecedented forms and amounts of what retired U.S. government physicist Dr. Ronald Powell calls “mandatory irradiation”—without “prior study of the potential health impact” or any assurance of safety. Considering that young people (with their smaller body mass and developing brains) are particularly vulnerable to radiation, the Environmental Health Trust has termed 5G “the next great unknown experiment on our children”—and the entire human population.

Early warnings

In fact, the “giant uncontrolled experiment” on children and adults has already begun, despite an urgent international appeal by tens of thousands of scientists, doctors, environmental organizations and citizens calling for a halt to 5G deployment. In 2018, telecom carriers in the U.S. and Europe began rolling out 5G technology in dozens of cities. Focusing (for now) on “dense urban and high-traffic areas” in the U.S., AT&T began positioning its 5G infrastructure in major cities in eight states, and Verizon started offering 5G home broadband service in “select neighborhoods” in a handful of cities.

… health problems such as insomnia, miscarriage, memory problems and other neurological issues, and there are widespread reports of annihilation of insect and bird populations.

For the most part, health concerns have ranked as a tiny footnote in the midst of the massive hoopla about 5G’s speed and capacity, although trade magazines admit that there may be “some objections” to 5G due to “concerns over potential health risks.” In both Europe and the U.S., however, individuals living and working in proximity to newly installed 5G towers and antennas are telling a different story. Many have immediately started experiencing health problems such as insomnia, miscarriage, memory problems and other neurological issues, and there are widespread reports of annihilation of insect and bird populations.

In response to complaints from fire fighters subjected to 5G antennas, the International Association of Fire Fighters has gone on record as opposing “the use of fire stations as base stations for towers and/or antennas for the conduction of cell phone transmissions until a study with the highest scientific merit and integrity…is conducted and it is proven that such sitings are not hazardous to the health of our members.”

A United Nations whistleblower recently drew attention to 5G’s dramatic impact on health in a widely circulated series of comments about 5G’s “seemingly overnight” rollout in Vienna, Austria. Describing 5G as a “silent war,” she commented:

“…Children are the most vulnerable to 5G depredation because of their little bodies. Friends and acquaintances and their children in Vienna are already reporting the classic symptoms of EMR [electromagnetic radiation] poisoning: nosebleeds, headaches, eye pains, chest pains, nausea, fatigue, vomiting, tinnitus, dizziness, flu-like symptoms, and cardiac pain. They also report a tight band around the head; pressure on the top of the head; short, stabbing pains around the body; and buzzing internal organs.”

Above and below

One of the novel dangers introduced by 5G technology is its reliance on high-frequency millimeter waves (MMWs), a bountiful and not previously commercialized portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. While 5G’s enthusiasts are quick to promise support for literally billions of devices, there is one catch—the shorter millimeter wavelengths cannot travel as far as the lower frequencies used for earlier generations of mobile technology. Thus, while there were about 300,000 wireless antennas on U.S. cell towers and buildings as of 2016 (a doubling since 2002), 5G will require “exponentially more”—millions of small cell towers every 500 feet “on every street corner.”

Organizations concerned about the health hazards of wireless radiation note that “Right now, you don’t have to live next to a cell tower….but once they have these [5G] cell antennas everywhere, you won’t be able to [move away].” Unfortunately, the “nowhere to hide” aspects of 5G are even more serious, because ground-based 5G systems will be supplemented by satellite-based systems. In March, 2018, the FCC approved the initial launch of over 4,400 low-Earth-orbit 5G communication satellites, to be followed by thousands more over the next two years—with the eventual result being 11 times more satellites orbiting the Earth than currently. The satellites will send “tightly focused beams of intense microwave radiation at each specific 5G device that is on the Earth,” while each device then sends “a beam of radiation back to the satellite.”

In practical terms, this means that in crowded locations such as airports, individuals’ bodies “will be penetrated by numerous beams of radiation as they walk or as other people walk around them with their 5G smartphones.” But even in the home environment, “5G technology [will] blast through walls and cribs,” making a mockery of “the notion that ‘your home is your castle’ in which you are supposed to be safe.”

More than skin-deep

Scientists, doctors and experts from around the world have issued repeated warnings about 5G’s risks, drawing on published research on MMWs as well as thousands of studies showing the harms caused by other mobile and wireless technologies.

In this context, industry and government claims that 5G technology is safe are completely disingenuous. In fact, the health effects of MMWs are already quite familiar to the U.S. military and defense agencies around the world. The U.S. has at its disposal non-lethal crowd control weapon systems (euphemistically named Active Denial Systems) that use millimeter waves to penetrate the skin of targeted individuals, “instantly producing an intolerable heating sensation that causes them to flee.” In research commissioned by the U.S. Army “to find out why people ran away when the beam touched them,” they discovered that targets “feel like [their] body is on fire.” Researchers also have warned that “the same parts of the human skin that allow us to sweat also respond to 5G radiation much like an antenna that can receive signals.”

Moratorium urgently needed

When the FCC endorsed the transition to 5G in 2016, then-Chairman Tom Wheeler (a former telecom industry lobbyist) vowed “to allow new [5G] technologies and innovations to evolve and flourish without needlessly prescriptive regulations.” Thus, even though 5G represented a radical shift in technology, the FCC proposed no further safety studies, instead continuing to rely on its “outdated, excessively permissive, and thus widely criticized, radiation-exposure guidelines that…are based primarily on a 30-year-old analysis…many years before the emergence of most of the digital wireless technology in use today.” A recent government study by the National Toxicology Program—which determined that cell phone radiation causes cancer—deemed the three-decade-old guidelines “unprotective.”

The UN whistleblower states,

“People’s first reaction to the idea that 5G may be an existential threat to all life on Earth is usually disbelief and/or cognitive dissonance. Once they examine the facts, however, their second reaction is often terror. We need to transcend this in order to see 5G as an opportunity to empower ourselves, take responsibility and take action.”

Some of the actions that people have taken include signing the International Appeal;

-learning about the multiple reasons to be concerned about 5G radiation and telling others;

-talking to legislators about why rushing legislation that streamlines the deployment of 5G small cells is a bad idea (and also raising the awareness of legislators and state utility commissions about the risks of smart meters); and changing their relationship to their devices, including using wired rather than wireless Internet connections (or turning off WiFi routers at night) and adopting other simple steps.

5G promises to create an even “denser soup of electrosmog,” with incalculable health effects. In fact, any sane person who examines the evidence must concur with the authors and over 40,000 signatories of the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space, who agree that the rush to blanket the planet with 5G “constitutes an experiment on humanity and the environment that is defined as a crime under international law.”

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Featured image is from CHD

The recent, tragic Easter attack in the South Asian state of Sri Lanka – killing and injuring hundreds – follows a now unfortunately all too familiar formula.

The New York Times has reported in its article, “What We Know and Don’t Know About the Sri Lanka Attacks,” that:

The authorities in Sri Lanka said a little-known radical Islamist group, the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, [believed to have ties to the Islamic State] carried out the attacks, with help from international militants.

It is also reported that these extremists received assistance for the large-scale attack from foreign sponsors. The attack has put Sri Lanka on the map for many in the general public for the first time – but for all the wrong reasons.

Countering OBOR: Divide and Destroy 

Sri Lanka has recently and decisively pivoted toward Beijing as a major partner of the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative. This is despite Washington’s best efforts to prevent it from doing so.

Consequently, extremists fuelled by Washington’s “clash of civilizations” have helped set the stage for growing violence between Sir Lanka’s majority Buddhists and its minority Muslim communities. The resulting violence serves as a medium for US coercion, destabilization, and intervention aimed at undermining Sri Lanka’s unity as a nation, and thus its viability as a partner for China.

A nearly identical ploy has been used in nearby Myanmar where US-backed Buddhist extremists battle against US-Saudi-Qatari backed extremism rising from the ranks of the nation’s Muslim Rohingya minority.

The resulting violence and growing humanitarian crisis – without coincidence – is unfolding in Myanmar’s Rakhine state – precisely where China is attempting to build another leg of its region-spanning OBOR initiative.

Sri Lanka has signed on to OBOR in a big way, with major rail, port, airport, and highway projects all moving forward with Beijing’s support. Sri Lanka is also considered by Western policymakers as one of several among China’s strategic “String of Pearls,” strong points where China can secure maritime routes through waters traditionally dominated by the United States.

These projects are derided across the Western media with headlines like the New York Times’ article, “How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port” and France24’s article, “In Sri Lanka, the new Chinese Silk Road is a disappointment” – characterizing Washington’s growing opposition to China’s expanding influence across Asia – a region Washington has long presumed primacy over.

Washington’s ability to compete with China regarding regional development is nonexistent. Instead, the US has tried to tempt nations like Sri Lanka with military aid.

AFP in an article titled, “US gives Sri Lankan military US$39 million, countering China’s investments in strategic island,” would claim:

The US funding for Sri Lanka is part of a US$300 million package Washington is setting aside for South and Southeast Asia to ensure a “free, open, and rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region”.

This “free, open, and rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region,” is how the US regularly refers to US primacy in Asia throughout policy papers, diplomatic statements, and even political speeches.

It is obvious that “military aid” can in no way compete with massive investments by China aimed at spurring national development through tangible infrastructure projects.

America’s inability to compete openly and on equal economic footing has given way to political interference and even the use of violence.

Sri Lanka’s Crisis Linked to US-Driven Crisis in Myanmar 

In Myanmar, the US is documented to have supported ethnic violence for years. The US all but installed current “State Counsellor” Aung San Suu Kyi into power along with her political party – the National League for Democracy (NLD) lined top to bottom with US State Department-funded “activists.“

Despite the liberal facade constructed by the Western media around Suu Kyi, her political party, and factions supporting both – rampant bigotry and racism pervades all three.

Simultaneously, US-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have worked to co-opt and wield Rohingya communities as an equal but opposing political weapon while US-allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar have begun radicalizing and arming factions within Rohingya communities to carry out armed violence across Rakhine state.

The resulting conflagration affords the US and its partners a pretext to intervene on an ever expanding scale – giving Washington access to and leverage over Myanmar to counter Beijing’s growing influence.

And in precisely the same way the US has inserted itself into the heart of Myanmar’s political affairs – it is attempting to do so again in other Asian nations – including now Sri Lanka.

Articles from across the Western media including the UK Independent’s 2018 article titled, “Violent Buddhist extremists are targeting Muslims in Sri Lanka,” even establish direct links between Myanmar’s and Sri Lanka’s growing conflicts.
The article would admit (emphasis added):

Currently, Sri Lanka’s most active Buddhist extremist group is Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist power force, or BBS). BBS entered politics in 2012 with a Buddhist-nationalist ideology and agenda, its leaders claiming that Sri Lankans had become immoral and turned away from Buddhism. And whom does it blame? Sri Lankan Muslims.

BBS’s rhetoric takes its cue from other populist anti-Muslim movements around the globe, claiming that Muslims are “taking over” the country thanks to a high birth rate. It also accuses Muslim organisations of funding international terrorism with money from Halal-certified food industries. These aren’t just empty words; in 2014, one of their anti-Muslim protest rallies in the southern town of Aluthgama ended with the death of four Muslims.

BBS also has links to Myanmar’s extremist 969 movement. Led by nationalist monk Ashin Wirathu, who calls himself the “Burmese Bin Laden”, it is notorious for its hardline rhetoric against the Rohingya Muslim community.

The West’s use of “Islamophobia” to sell its serial wars of aggression and to divide nations around the globe is a classic example of “divide and conquer.

While the West no longer possesses any real means to “conquer” the nations it is now targeting – it does possess the capacity to use resulting divisions to destroy them. If the US cannot hold primacy over Asia – no one will. It is a “War on Peace” waged under the guise of a “War on Terrorism.”

Sri Lanka appears to be but the latest victim of Washington’s now trademark “slash and burn” foreign policy – where it is fueling conflict to consume political orders that oppose its interests, and building upon the ashes ones that do serve them instead.

In the coming days, weeks, and months – not only will more information emerge linking the recent attacks in Sri Lanka to Washington, Riyadh, and Doha’s global network of terrorism – but additional pressure will also be mounted upon Sri Lanka to divest from Beijing and pivot back toward the West.

In reality – Sri Lanka’s violence is an artificial construct carried out by a tiny minority of extremists on either side of an equally artificial ethnoreligious divide. The nation and the region must unite in purpose – as peace and stability benefit them all – while chaos benefits only a handful of waning interests from afar.

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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.

Featured image is from NEO

 Last night (April 25th) I gave a talk on some of what I had seen in Venezuela, March-April, sharing photos and clips–with an emphasis of allowing people to hear voices our media generally silences or pretends don’t exist.

In Q & A, the issue of discrimination and racism in Venezuela was raised. This eloquent Venezuelan musician replied to the question so articulately, and disturbingly, that I asked him to re-address it on camera after the event.

Do listen to his words not only on the racism that still exists (not only in Venezuela but in media portrayal of Venezuelans), that in the 80s there actually was a crisis, unlike today, and that the people won’t let their revolution end.

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Excerpts:

“In 1999, for the 1st time every in any country in South America, a law was passed to not discriminate against people of colour. People that never had a voice now have one and will never give it up again. You can go to the remotest area in my country and everybody can read. Everybody knows their rights and knows that their voice counts.”

“In Venezuela, its a racism that’s very alive, but hidden under class status. When you come to Canada, you just don’t see Venezuelans that look like me, at all. Or even if you go to the States, anywhere you go, you’re not gonna see Venezuelans that look like me.”

“What the Canadian public, the American public and the international community are watching is a huge Hollywood show.”

“I have a challenge for anyone in the opposition to simply answer one question: What would they do different? What is their plan? If they’re planning to go back to those great old days (sarcasm), the people are not having it. Two million militias, old people, young people, everybody knows what the United States is doing. My mother is 70, she’s about to join the militia!”

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine. She is a recipient of the International Journalism Award for International Reporting. Eva recently returned from a visit to Venezuela. She will be speaking in Hamilton on Monday April 29th.

Visit her personal blog, In Gaza, and support her work on Patreon.

Read Eva Bartlett’s Articles on Global Research

Author’s Note and Update

The following article first published in February 2007 focusses on the history of war planning: The “War on Iran” has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since the mid-1990s under US Central Command’s (USCENTCOM) “Strategy of Dual Containment’  directed against “the Rogue States of Iraq and Iran” formulated during the Clinton administration. 

“First Iraq, then Iran”: 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 US, in liaison with NATO and Israel.

Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration identified Iran and Syria as the next stage of “the road map to war”.  

Under the Trump administration, a US Attack on Iran is currently contemplated with the support of Israel and Saudi Arabia. The US design is to incite its Middle East allies “to threaten Iran on behalf of Washington”.

The article reviews the details of a leaked secret 2003 plan and scenario of a war on Iran entitled “Theater Iran Near Term” (TIRANNT). 

This Pentagon blueprint had identified several thousand targets inside Iran as part of a “Shock and Awe” Blitzkrieg. In all likelihood, these targets are still on the drawing board of the Pentagon.  

Economic Warfare vs. The Military Option

In recent developments, US sanctions against Iran have gone into high gear. Washington’s strategy is to “Force Iranian Oil Exports to Zero” with a view destabilizing Iran’s national economy. Formulated by Mike Pompeo:

“The goal of the policy is to drive up the costs of Iran’s malign behavior and more strongly address the broad range of threats to peace and security their regime presents,” according to State Department official. (quoted by WaPo). 

While the “military option” against Iran is “temporarily” on hold, a  “surprise war” on Lebanon is contemplated by Israel with the support of the US as part Washington’s broader Middle East military agenda. 

According to Elijah J. Magnier, “Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah held a private meeting this week with his top military commanders in which he warned them to prepare for a hot Summer because Israel plans to launch a surprise war against Lebanon.“

How this planned “surprise war” against Lebanon will evolve is uncertain. The structure of geopolitical alliances is crucial: Turkey’s rapprochement with Iran has created an unspoken crisis within NATO which for the moment tends to undermine America’s military option against Iran. Moreover, Putin’s personal relationship with Netanyahu is also of significance. 

For US military planners, the “surprise war” on Lebanon is part of a military time-line. It constitutes a strategic stepping stone for war on Iran. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, April 27, 2019

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Code named by US military planners as TIRANNT,  “Theater Iran Near Term” has identified several thousand targets inside Iran as part of a “Shock and Awe” Blitzkrieg, which is now in its final planning stages.

According to the Kuwait-based Arab Times, an attack on Iran under TIRANNT could occur any time between late February and the end of April. This assessment, however, does not take into account the disarray of US ground forces in Iraq as well as the untimely withdrawal of several thousand British troops from the Iraq war theater, many of whom were stationed in Southern Iraq on the immediate border with Iran.

Revealed last April by William Arkin, a former US intelligence analyst, writing in the Washington Post, TIRANNT was first established in May 2003, following the invasion of Iraq.

“In early 2003, even as U.S. forces were on the brink of war with Iraq, the Army had already begun conducting an analysis for a full-scale war with Iran. The analysis, called TIRANNT, for “theater Iran near term,” was coupled with a mock scenario for a Marine Corps invasion and a simulation of the Iranian missile force. U.S. and British planners conducted a Caspian Sea war game around the same time. And Bush directed the U.S. Strategic Command to draw up a global strike war plan for an attack against Iranian weapons of mass destruction. All of this will ultimately feed into a new war plan for “major combat operations” against Iran that military sources confirm now exists in draft form. [This contingency plan entitled CONPLAN 8022 would be activated in the eventuality of a Second 9/11, on the presumption that Iran would be behind it]

… Under TIRANNT, Army and U.S. Central Command planners have been examining both near-term and out-year scenarios for war with Iran, including all aspects of a major combat operation, from mobilization and deployment of forces through postwar stability operations after regime change.” (William Arkin, Washington Post, 16 April 2006)

First Iraq, then Iran

The 2003 decision to target Iran under TIRANNT should come as no surprise. It is part of the broader military roadmap. Already during the Clinton administration, US Central Command (USCENTCOM) had formulated in 1995  “in war theater plans” to invade first Iraq and then Iran.

“The broad national security interests and objectives expressed in the President’s National Security Strategy (NSS) and the Chairman’s National Military Strategy (NMS) form the foundation of the United States Central Command’s theater strategy. The NSS directs implementation of a strategy of dual containment of the rogue states of Iraq and Iran as long as those states pose a threat to U.S. interests, to other states in the region, and to their own citizens. Dual containment is designed to maintain the balance of power in the region without depending on either Iraq or Iran. USCENTCOM’s theater strategy is interest-based and threat-focused. The purpose of U.S. engagement, as espoused in the NSS, is to protect the United States’ vital interest in the region – uninterrupted, secure U.S./Allied access to Gulf oil.”

(USCENTCOM, http://www.milnet.com/milnet/pentagon/centcom/chap1/stratgic.htm#USPolicy , emphasis  added)

Consistent with CENTCOM’s 1995 “sequencing” of theater operations, the plans to target Iran were activated under TIRANNT in the immediate wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Confirmed by Arkin, the active component of the Iran military agenda was launched in May 2003 “when modelers and intelligence specialists pulled together the data needed for theater-level (meaning large-scale) scenario analysis for Iran.” (Arkin, op cit). In October 2003, different theater scenarios for an Iran war were contemplated:

“The US army, navy, air force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for “Operation Iranian Freedom”. Admiral Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, has inherited computerized plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).” (New Statesman, 19 Feb 2007)

[Former] CENTCOM Commander Admiral Fallon

Concurrently, the various parallel components of TIRANNT were put in place including the Marines “Concept of Operations”:

“The Marines, meanwhile, have not only been involved in CENTCOM’s war planning, but have been focused on their own specialty, “forcible entry.” In April 2003, the Corps published its “Concept of Operations” for a maneuver against a mock country that explores the possibility of moving forces from ship to shore against a determined enemy without establishing a beachhead first. Though the Marine Corps enemy is described only as a deeply religious revolutionary country named Karona, it is — with its Revolutionary Guards, WMD and oil wealth — unmistakably meant to be Iran.

Various scenarios involving Iran’s missile force have also been examined in another study, initiated in 2004 and known as BMD-I (ballistic missile defense — Iran). In this study, the Center for Army Analysis modeled the performance of U.S. and Iranian weapons systems to determine the number of Iranian missiles expected to leak through a coalition defense.

The day-to-day planning for dealing with Iran’s missile force falls to the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha. In June 2004, Rumsfeld alerted the command to be prepared to implement CONPLAN 8022, a global strike plan that includes Iran. CONPLAN 8022 calls for bombers and missiles to be able to act within 12 hours of a presidential order. The new task force, sources have told me, mostly worries that if it were called upon to deliver “prompt” global strikes against certain targets in Iran under some emergency circumstances, the president might have to be told that the only option is a nuclear one. (William Arkin, Washington Post, 16 April 2006)

“Shock and Awe”

US military planning  includes specific roles to be performed by NATO and Israel in the event of an attack on Iran. The German navy is deployed formally under a UN mandate in the Eastern Mediterranean. NATO bases in Europe would also be involved.

Documented by Global Research, extensive war games were conducted since last Summer by Iran and its allies of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,  including Russia and China. In turn, the US has conducted war games off the Iranian coastline.

The Pentagon’s Second 9/11

What is now being contemplated by Washington is an overwhelming use of military force in retaliation to Iran’s alleged non-compliance. This of course is the pretext, the justification for waging war. The Pentagon has also contemplated retaliating against Iran in the case of a second 9/11 attack:

“A third plan sets out how the military can both disrupt and respond to another major terrorist strike on the United States. It includes lengthy annexes that offer a menu of options for the military to retaliate quickly against specific terrorist groups, individuals or state sponsors depending on who is believed to be behind an attack. Another attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets, according to current and former defense officials familiar with the plan.

This plan details “what terrorists or bad guys we would hit if the gloves came off. The gloves are not off,” said one official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. (emphasis added, WP 23 April 2006)

The presumption of this military document, is that a Second 911 attack “which is lacking today” would usefully create both a “justification and an opportunity” to wage war on “some known targets [Iran and Syria]”.

Civilian Targets

Press reports in the Middle East confirm that the planned air strikes are by no means limited to Iran’s nuclear facilities. Central Command Headquarters in Florida (CENTCOM) has already selected a comprehensive list of  military and civilian targets. Industrial sites, civilian infrastructure including roads, water systems, bridges,  electric power plants telecommunications towers, government buildings are part of the assumptions underlying the Blitzkrieg.  “A single raid could result in 10,000 targets being hit with warplanes flying from the US and Diego Garcia” (Gulf News, 21 Feb 2007, emphasis added)

Meanwhile, the US has been mustering support for its agenda following the holding of a regional Security Conference in the UAE.

Nuclear War

Military planners are said to favor the use of conventional weapons. The use of tactical nuclear weapons, which are now part of the Middle East war theater arsenal, are not explicitly contemplated, at least in the first round of the US sponsored Blitzkrieg. However, the fact that nuclear weapons are acknowledged as a possible choice in the conventional war theater is indicative that their use is an integral part of military planning.

In November 2004, US Strategic Command conducted a major exercise of a “global strike plan” entitled “Global Lightening”. The latter involved a simulated attack using both conventional and nuclear weapons against a “fictitious enemy” [Iran]. Following the “Global Lightening” exercise, US Strategic Command declared an advanced state of readiness.

In this context, CONPLAN is the operational plan pursuant to the Global Strike Plan. It is described as “an actual plan that the Navy and the Air Force translate into strike package for their submarines and bombers,’

CONPLAN 8022 is ‘the overall umbrella plan for sort of the pre-planned strategic scenarios involving nuclear weapons.’

‘It’s specifically focused on these new types of threats — Iran, North Korea — proliferators and potentially terrorists too,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing that says that they can’t use CONPLAN 8022 in limited scenarios against Russian and Chinese targets.’ (According to Hans Kristensen, of the Nuclear Information Project, quoted in Japanese economic News Wire, op cit)

The use of tactical nuclear weapons is contemplated under CONPLAN 8022 alongside conventional  weapons, as part of the Bush administration’s preemptive war doctrine. In May 2004, National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 35 entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization was issued. While its contents remains classified, the presumption is that NSPD 35 pertains to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the Middle East war theater in compliance with CONPLAN 8022.

(For further details on the US nuclear option, see Michel Chossudovsky, Nuclear War against Iran, January 2006, The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War, February 2006, Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust , February 2006)

Israel in a State of Readiness

War preparations in Israel have been ongoing since late 2004. The Israeli Air Force would attack Iran’s nuclear facility at Bushehr using US as well Israeli produced bunker buster bombs. The attacks are slated to be carried out in three separate waves “with the radar and communications jamming protection being provided by U.S. Air Force AWACS and other U.S. aircraft in the area”. (See W Madsen, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD410A.html

The bunker buster bombs can also be used to deliver tactical nuclear bombs. The B61-11 is the “nuclear version” of the “conventional” BLU 113. It can be delivered in much same way as the conventional bunker buster bomb.

(See Michel Chossudovsky, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO112C.html , see also http://www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=jf03norris ) .

Left: B61-11 at the Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri

According to a recent report in the London’s Sunday Times (7 January 2007): “Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.”

If Iran were to respond to US-Israeli attacks in the form of targeted strikes on US military facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf States, the war would escalate to the entire region. In this case, the US could retaliate in the form of “pre-emptive” nuclear attacks on Iran using bunker buster tactical nuclear war heads.

The most likely scenario is that Iran, in the logic of its own military planning, would indeed respond to the US sponsored attacks as well as deploy ground forces inside occupied Iraq.

Naval Deployment

Three strike groups including the Stennis, the Eisenhower and the Nimitz are being deployed in the Persian Gulf. According to Gulf News, “The Stennis strike group…  is now strengthening a high level of US Navy presence in the Gulf. The Stennis and the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, already in the region, will soon be joined by the carrier Nimitz. (Gulf News,  21 Feb 2007). According to British military sources, the US navy can put six carriers into battle at a month’s notice.

USS Nimitz and USS Dwight Eisenhower

Redeployment of US Troops 

Confirmed by military sources, some 8500 of US troops are being redeployed from US military facilities in Germany and Italy to Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which border on Iran. One assumes that they are being dispatched to the Middle East war theater in the eventuality that the air strikes will lead into a ground war with Iran.

The Pentagon, contradicting its own statements, has dismissed as “ludicrous” the press reports that the US is planning an all out attack on Iran in the “near term”.

Meanwhile, Iran has launched a three days war games entitled Eghtedar or Grandeur. These exercises which involve naval, air and ground forces are larger than those conducted last Summer. They are slated to take place in 16 out of Iran’s 30 provinces. The stated objective is to establish a state of readiness to defend Iran in the eventuality of a US attack.

Vigilant Shield 07 War Games

From September through December 2006, the US conducted a New Cold War scenario of all out war directed against Iran and its Cold war era enemies: Entitled Vigilant Shield 07, the war games are not limited to a single Middle East war theater (e.g. Iran), they also include Russia, China and North Korea.

The details of the Vigilant Shield 07 exercise scenario, is contained in a U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) briefing dated August 2006 (revealed by William Arkin in a WP article) .

The enemies are Irmingham [Iran], Nemazee [North Korea], Ruebek [Russia], Churya [China]

Details and Sequencing:

“• Road to Conflict (RTC): 11 Sep – 15 Oct 06

 – Initial Irmingham Enrichment I&W [indications and warning]
– Initial Ruebeki & Irmingham Involvement
– Ruebek I&W, PACFLT [U.S. Pacific Fleet] Sub Deployments
– Initial Nemazee ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] I&W
– Initial MHLD [homeland defense?] I&W
– Strategic IO [information operations (cyber warfare)] operations (Ruebek & Churya)
– Ruebek & Irmingham Conduct Joint AD [air defense] Exercise

• Phase 1 / Deployment: 4 – 8 Dec 06

 – Rogue LRA [Russian long-range aviation] w/CALCM [conventional air launched cruise missile] Launch
– Continue Monitoring Strategic Situation
– Continue Monitoring Nemazee Situation

  • Possible Nuclear Testing
• Probable ICBM Preparation

– Continue Monitoring MHLD Situation

• Five VOIs [vessels of interest]
• Churya Flagged VOI into Dutch Harbor Supports BMDS [ballistic missile defense system] Threat to Ft Greely

 – Continue Monitoring IO Activities
– Nemazee Conducts SLV [space launch vehicle] Launch – 8 Dec 06

• Phase 2 Minus 42 Days:

 • Additional Nemazee ICBM Shipments to Launch Facilities
• RMOB [Russian main operating bases] Acft Conduct LR Navigation Flights
• AS-15 [nuclear armed cruise missile] Handling at RMOBs

 – Minus 41 Days:
• Additional Nemazee ICBM Preps at Launch Pad # 2
– Minus 40 Days:
• Activity at Nemazee Nuclear Test Facilities
– Minus 35 Days:
• DOS [Department of State] Travel Warning
– Minus 30 Days:
• Ruebek LRA Deploys Acft to Anadyr & Vorkuta

• Phase 2 Minus 30 Days:

 • Growing International Condemnation of Ruebek
• Ruebek Deploys Submarines

 – Minus 20 Days:
• Nemazee Recalls Reservists
– Minus 14 Days:
• DOS Draw-down Sequencing
– Minus 13 Days:
• Ruebek Closes US Embassy in Washington DC
– Minus 11 Days:
• Nemazee Conducts Fueling of Additional ICBMs
• Ruebeki Presidential Statement on Possible US Attack

• Phase 2 Minus 10 Days:

 • POTUS Addresses Congress on War Powers Act

– Minus 6 Days:
• Ruebek President Calls “Situation Grave”
– Minus 5 Days:
• CALCM Activity at Anadyr, Vorkuta, and Tiksi
• Ruebeki SS-25 [nuclear armed mobile ICBMs] Conduct out of Garrison Deployments
• Nemazee Assembling ICBM for Probable Launch
– Minus 4 Days:
• Ruebek Closes US Embassy in Washington DC
• Ruebek Acft Conduct Outer ADIZ [air defense identification zone] Pentrations
• Mid-Air Collison w/NORAD Acft During ADIZ Penetration

• Phase 2 Minus 4 Days:

 • Nemazee ICBM Launch Azimuth Threatens US

 – Minus 3 Days:
• NATO Diplomatic Efforts Fail to Diffuse Crisis
• USAMB to Ruebek Recalled for Consultation
• POTUS Addresses Nation
– Minus 2 Days:
• Nemazee Leadership Movement
– Minus 1 Day:
• Ruebek Expels US Mission

• Phase 2 / Execution: 10 – 14 Dec 06

 – Pre-Attack I & W
– Imminent Terrorist Attack on Pentagon Suggests Pentagon COOP [continuity of operations plan]
– Nemazee Conducts 2 x ICBM Combat Launches Against United States
– Ruebek Conducts Limited Strategic Attack on United States
• Wave 1 – 8 x Bear H Defense Suppression w/CALCM
• Wave 2 – Limited ICBM & SLBM Attack
– 2 x ICBM Launched (1 impacts CMOC [Cheyenne Mountain], 1 malfunctions)
– 2 x SLBM Launched Pierside (1 impacts SITE-R [“Raven Rock” bunker on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border], 1 malfunctions)
– 3 x Bear H from Dispersal Bases w/ALCM (Eielson AFB, CANR, Cold Lake)
– US Conducts Limited Retaliatory Attack on Ruebek
• 1 x ICBM C2 Facility
• 1 x ICBM Against ICBM Launch Location
• Phase 2 / Execution:
– Ruebek Prepares Additional Attack on United States
• Wave 3 – Prepares for Additional Strategic Attacks
– 1 x ICBM Movement, NO Launch
– 3 x SLBM PACFLT Pierside Missile Handling Activity (NO Launch)
– 6 x BEAR H (launch & RTB [return to base]) w/6 x ALCM (NO launch)”  [source Northern Command and William Arkin]

Complacency of Western Public Opinion

The complacency of Western public opinion (including the US anti-war movement) is disturbing. No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of  these attacks, which could evolve towards a World War III scenario, with Russia and China siding with Iran.

With the exception of the Middle East, the war on Iran and the dangers of escalation are not considered “front page news.”  All of which contributes to the real possibility that the war could be carried out, leading to the unthinkable: a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East. It should be noted that a nuclear nighmare would occur even if nuclear weapons are not used. The bombing of Iran’s nuclear facitlities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing a Chernobyl type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout.

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best America’s “War on Terrorism”  Second Edition, Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization. 

To order Chossudovsky’s book  America’s “War on Terrorism”, click here

Note: Readers are welcome to cross-post this article with a view to spreading the word and warning people of the dangers of a broader Middle East war. Please indicate the source and copyright note.

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Turkey’s planned purchase of Russia’s S-400s has created a serious crisis within NATO and might lead to the Mideast country’s de-facto departure from the bloc

***

Turkish-American ties have been seriously strained over the past few years since the US started arming Syrian-based Kurdish fighters that Ankara considers to be terrorists and the Mideast country’s officials strongly implied that Washington had a hand in the failed summer 2016 coup attempt against President Erdogan.

It’s little wonder then that Turkey began to reorient itself eastward towards Russia and plans to purchase the S-400s, seeing as how this air defense system could neutralize any prospective threat emanating either from the American Air Force or possibly even an American-backed Kurdish one that might one day take shape in northeastern Syria.

Russia’s “military diplomacy” seeks to maintain the balance of power everywhere in the world in order to facilitate diplomatic solutions to seemingly intractable conflicts, which in this context could see Turkey improving its defenses to the point of strengthening its negotiating hand with the US over the coup and Kurdish issues that lay at the heart of their “security dilemma”. Moscow also knows that the sale of high-level equipment such as the S-400s precedes the establishment of long-term military-to-military partnerships that could facilitate the recipient’s embrace of multipolarity as it seeks to step away from the US’ unipolar-controlled sphere of influence.

Such transitions take time for logistical and other reasons, but the process might accelerate in the Turkish case after the US threatened to exclude its nominal NATO partner from the F-35 program, which in turn prompted unnamed Turkish defense officials to reportedly claim that their country can just turn to Russia for replacements instead. In the event that Turkey’s purchase of the S-400s leads to the US carrying through on its F-35 threats and Ankara reactively reaches out to Russia for Sukhois or other warplanes, then the intra-NATO crisis would enter a qualitatively new and much more intense phase.

It’s not to suggest that Russia’s “military diplomacy” was aimed at deviously advancing this “master plan” all along, but just to point out the role that Moscow played in this chain of events that developed outside of its control. Had it not been for the US’ support of Syrian-based Kurdish militants and the shadowy role that it probably played in the failed 2016 coup attempt, then Turkey’s trust in its decades-long partner wouldn’t have deteriorated to the point where Ankara felt compelled to reach out to Washington’s rivals in Moscow in order to ensure its national security needs, something that Russia was eager to assist it with.

Turkey is rapidly developing its mutually beneficial strategic partnership with Russia, which serves the grand strategic interests of both multipolar Great Powers. This new Russian-Turkish relationship has greatly stabilized the military situation in Syria and holds the promise of improving the prospects of a political solution to the long-running conflict there, even if it’s still somewhat imperfect and some kinks remain to be worked out. Nevertheless, Russia obtains a reliable partner with enormous commercial market potential while Turkey receives reliable energy supplies from a country with impressive military-technology capabilities that it’s more than willing to export.

As for the US, it doubly loses because one of its main geostrategic rivals has successfully “poached” one of Washington’s top Mideast allies as a result of America’s reckless regional policies that got it into this mess in the first place. The US and Turkey will still try to retain some degree of pragmatic relations on issues of shared interest, but the partnership will never be the same again unless President Erdogan and the ruling AKP are deposed of and a vehemently pro-American replacement rises to power, which appears unlikely for the time being but nevertheless can’t be ruled out.

Going forward, the odds are that Turkey won’t be formally removed from NATO because no such mechanism exists but will instead probably be de-facto isolated from most of the bloc’s working activities, especially those related to intelligence sharing and joint military exercises. The US can’t take the risk of unraveling the military alliance on which so much of its European influence depends, no matter how divided and ineffective it is in practice, so indefinitely putting Turkey in “time-out” is the most realistic option available to it for mitigating the strategic fallout of Ankara switching sides as a result of Moscow’s “military diplomacy”.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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 InfoRos

As one flows into the ‘senior years’ questions never really asked become prevalent. Why are we here, or what does this so called ‘life’ mean?

Setting aside those who feel that the earth and this 3rd dimensional life was created strictly by random, this writer still holds dear to an afterlife. If then in fact there is another dimension beyond this ‘veil of dreams’, as the eastern philosophies teach, then there must be some sort of order to all of this.

If there is an order, then, to quote from the New Testament “What we sow so shall we reap.” When the Judeo- Christian religions preach “The Lord said vengeance is mine” to this writer that may translate into Karma. Webster’s dictionary defines Karma as ‘The force created by a person’s actions that some people believe causes good or bad things to happen to that person.’

Look for a moment at the Karma our own nation has experienced. When we were first a nation look how we exterminated many of the Native American population, taking their lands as we destroyed them.

Now, generations later, as many of them still reside on reservations, Karma gave them the ownership of gambling casinos nationwide. Not a great trade off, but a move in the right direction metaphysically. Look at how our young nation ramrodded, via the bullsh**t of Manifest Destiny, our way to take the territories of Mexico: Texas, California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. The Karmic consequences of this are evident, as we continue to have the undocumented living and working in those states and many others. The whole ‘border wall’ is a testament to the heights of hypocrisy: Keeping the descendents of the very people we stole from OUT of what was rightfully theirs! How about the whole racial divide issue that has polarized our nation since its inception? This was fermented by the institution of slavery. Let’s be truthful here. Many white Americans, especially those of the far right way of thinking, hate having Afro-Americans live nearby, when it was the elders of white America that wanted them here in the first place: to slave for them!

Karma can be an international thing folks. Look at the terrible problem of refugees coming into Europe and parts of the Middle East. Well, a grade school kid should be able to comprehend the fact of why there are millions of Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans and Syrians coming into the NATO countries for safe haven.

Duh, if Bush Jr., Obama and now Trump did not make pre-emptive war upon those nations, with help of course from our ‘Coalition’ allies in Europe, there would be NO refugee crisis to such a great extent. You bomb the hell out of a weaker nation, destroy its infrastructure and culture, and then occupy it (or attempt to) and you have chaos! Between the aforementioned refugee crisis and our upcoming financial crisis here (right around the corner, sadly) the cost of phony wars will bankrupt us! How few of my fellow citizens even focus on all this. That is the real Karma.

You know, people in my Italian American neighborhood of Brooklyn always had the saying, when someone got screwed around: “What goes around comes around.” Well, I pray that my fellow Americans finally see the light and stop this madness of empire.

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

Reuters quoted “deep state” sources as reporting that the US will accelerate its diplomatic drawdown in Afghanistan, with this breaking news coming on the same day as its representatives met with their Russian and Chinese counterparts in Moscow to discuss the future of the Taliban peace talks, making it very unlikely that the timing of this possible downscaling is coincidental and adding credence to the theory that it might instead be the result of a backroom deal clinched during Thursday’s summit.

A Quid-Pro-Quo?

Reuters just released an exclusive article quoting “deep state” sources who report that the US Secretary of State will accelerate his country’s diplomatic drawdown in Afghanistan by dramatically moving up the timeline for halving its number of diplomats in the war-torn country. The outlet’s insiders say that the process will start at the end of next month instead of sometime next year like was originally planned, with this news breaking on the same day as the US, Russia, and China met in Moscow to discuss the future of the Taliban peace talks. The author’s piece earlier this week about this event predicted that some backroom deals will be clinched during this event, and while it can only be speculated what this reported move might have been made in exchange for, it nevertheless appears to be the first possible outcome of that summit.

Sour Grapes

Trump’s “deep state” opponents are already taking to the media to portray this decision as an extremely short-sighted one made by an impulsive president who’s internationally inept, a weaponized narrative that also satisfies the strategic soft power objectives of India, which has sour grapes over the US’ Taliban peace talks. Being self-excluded from this process as a result of its refusal to endorse other countries’ pragmatic peacemaking outreaches to the most powerful armed force in Afghanistan, India instead endeavors to either sabotage their plans or at the very least apply some of its “Bollywood magic” to craft the perception that the talks are a failure and disastrous for the interests of all those involved, except of course for its Pakistani rival that it wants the world to believe is manipulating the international community into doing its bidding.

India’s Interests

In actuality, however, it’s India that’s the real manipulator because its RAW intelligence agency is doing all that it can to keep the US in Afghanistan, including through its efforts to provoke a domestic public outcry against Trump’s policies as a means of pressuring him “from below” ahead of the 2020 elections. Peace in Afghanistan doesn’t suit Indian interests because the South Asian state regards the landlocked country as providing it with “strategic depth” vis-a-vis Pakistan and functioning as a sanctuary for RAW-backed Baloch and TTP terrorists to receive training prior to the attacks that they’re ordered by their overseers to carry out as part of the Hybrid War on CPEC. An American withdrawal, or even a large-scale military-diplomatic drawdown, would greatly hinder India’s ability to wage its proxy war against Pakistan.

Simultaneous Signals

That’s exactly what seems to be in the works, however, since this report would represent a huge policy shift in American strategic planning if it’s true, one that might presumably be due to some kind of backroom deal being reached during the latest round of the Moscow peace talks seeing as how the news broke on the exact same day. Provided that there’s some truth to it, then the US would be sending simultaneous signals to the Taliban and Kabul; the armed group should see that Washington is negotiating in good faith and therefore reconsider its reluctance to talk with Kabul, while the “government” should understand that its days are numbered and that it’s better for them to begin immediately making political concessions to the Taliban before it’s too late. Both of these messages, it should be said, would be extremely disturbing for Indian strategists.

“Keep America Great”!

From the looks of it, the US might indeed be planning to “cut and run” from Afghanistan by sometime next year so that Trump can use the withdrawal (whether it be a full one by that time or just a drastic drawdown) as proof that he’s fulfilling his campaign pledge to “Make America Great Again” by saving it billions of dollars every year on its most costly war ever so that voters re-elect him to “Keep America Great”. The US President keenly understands that his Afghan policy might be the key to winning the heated 2020 elections, which might be why he’s clinching whatever pragmatic deals he needs to with all relevant stakeholders in order to obtain the optics of a major foreign policy victory that might guarantee him a victory at next year’s polls.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

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The Trump administration once again has graphically demonstrated that in the young, turbulent 21^st century, “international law” and “national sovereignty” already belong to the Realm of the Walking Dead.

As if a deluge of sanctions against a great deal of the planet was not enough, the latest “offer you can’t refuse” conveyed by a gangster posing as diplomat, Consul Minimus Mike Pompeo, now essentially orders the whole planet to submit to the one and only arbiter of world trade: Washington.

First the Trump administration unilaterally smashed a multinational, UN-endorsed agreement, the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal. Now the waivers that magnanimously allowed eight nations to import oil from Iran without incurring imperial wrath in the form of sanctions will expire on May 2 and won’t be renewed.

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal upheld his highest obligation: to protect the safety and security of the American people.

Why Iran sanctions are necessary: https://t.co/YQtmSA9hZX pic.twitter.com/n5r8mhZTl5

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 6, 2018

The eight nations are a mix of Eurasian powers: China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Italy and Greece.

Apart from the trademark toxic cocktail of hubris, illegality, arrogance/ignorance and geopolitical/geo–economic infantilism inbuilt in this foreign policy decision, the notion that Washington can decide who’s allowed to be an energy provider to emerging superpower China does not even qualify as laughable. Much more alarming is the fact that imposing a total embargo of Iranian oil exports is no less than an act of war.

Ultimate Neocon Wet Dream 

Those subscribing to the ultimate U.S, neocon and Zionist wet dream – regime change in Iran – may rejoice at this declaration of war. But as Professor Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran has elegantly argued,

 “If the Trump regime miscalculates, the house can easily come crashing down on its head.”

Reflecting the fact Tehran seems to have no illusions regarding the utter folly ahead, the Iranian leadership — if provoked to a point of no return, Marandi additionally told me — can get as far as “destroying everything on the other side of the Persian Gulf and chasing the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. When the U.S. escalates, Iran escalates. Now it depends on the U.S. how far things go.”

This red alert from a sensible academic perfectly dovetails with what’s happening with the structure of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — recently branded a “terrorist organization” by the United States. In perfect symmetry, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council also branded the U.S. Central Command — CENTCOM — and “all the forces connected to it” as a terrorist group.

The new IRGC commander-in-chief is Brigadier General Hossein Salami, 58. Since 2009 he was the deputy of previous commander Mohamamd al-Jafari, a soft spoken but tough as nails gentleman I met in Tehran two years ago. Salami, as well as Jafari, is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war; that is, he has actual combat experience. And Tehran sources assure me that he can be even tougher than Jafari.

Source: Consortiumnews

In tandem, IRGC Navy Commander Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri has evoked the unthinkable in terms of what might develop out of the U.S. total embargo on Iran oil exports; Tehran could block the Strait of Hormuz.

Western Oblivion 

Vast swathes of the ruling classes across the West seem to be oblivious to the reality that if Hormuz is shut down, the result will be an absolutely cataclysmic global economic depression.

Warren Buffett, among other investors, has routinely qualified the 2.5 quadrillion derivatives market as a weapon of financial mass destruction. As it stands, these derivatives are used — illegally — to drain no less than a trillion U.S. dollars a year out of the market in manipulated profits.

Considering historical precedents, Washington may eventually be able to set up a Persian Gulf of Tonkin false flag. But what next?

If Tehran were totally cornered by Washington, with no way out, the de facto nuclear option of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz would instantly cut off 25 percent of the global oil supply. Oil prices could rise to over $500 a barrel, to even $1000 a barrel. The 2.5 quadrillion of derivatives would start a chain reaction of destruction.

Unlike the shortage of credit during the 2008 financial crisis, the shortage of oil could not be made up by fiat instruments. Simply because the oil is not there. Not even Russia would be able to re-stabilize the market.

It’s an open secret in private conversations at the Harvard Club – or at Pentagon war-games for that matter – that in case of a war on Iran, the U.S. Navy would not be able to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. 

Russian SS-NX-26 Yakhont missiles — with a top speed of Mach 2.9 — are lining up the Iranian northern shore of the Strait of Hormuz. There’s no way U.S. aircraft carriers can defend a  barrage of Yakhont missiles.

Then there are the SS-N-22 Sunburn supersonic anti-ship missiles — already exported to China and India — flying ultra-low at 1,500 miles an hour with dodging capacity, and extremely mobile; they can be fired from a flatbed truck, and were designed to defeat the U.S. Aegis radar defense system.

What Will China Do?

The full–frontal attack on Iran reveals how the Trump administration bets on breaking Eurasia integration via what would be its weakeast node; the three key nodes are China, Russia and Iran. These three actors interconnect the whole spectrum; Belt and Road Initiative; the Eurasia Economic Union; the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; the International North-South Transportation Corridor; the expansion of BRICS Plus.

So there’s no question the Russia-China strategic partnership will be watching Iran’s back. It’s no accident that the trio is among the top existential “threats” to the U.S., according to the Pentagon. Beijing knows how the U.S. Navy is able to cut it off from its energy sources. And that’s why Beijing is strategically increasing imports of oil and natural gas from Russia; engineering the “escape from Malacca” also must take into account a hypothetical U.S. takeover of the Strait of Hormuz.

Night view of coast of Oman, including Strait of Hormuz. (Intl Space Station photo via Wikimedia)

A plausible scenario involves Moscow acting to defuse the extremely volatile U.S.-Iran confrontation, with the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense trying to persuade President Donald Trump and the Pentagon from any direct attack against the IRGC. The inevitable counterpart is the rise of covert ops, the possible staging of false flags and all manner of shady Hybrid War techniques deployed not only against the IRGC, directly and indirectly, but against Iranian interests everywhere. For all practical purposes, the U.S. and Iran are at war.

Within the framework of the larger Eurasia break-up scenario, the Trump administration does profit from Wahhabi and Zionist psychopathic hatred of Shi’ites. The “maximum pressure” on Iran counts on Jared of Arabia Kushner’s close WhatsApp pal Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) in Riyadh and MbS’s mentor in Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed, to replace the shortfall of Iranian oil in the market. Bu that’s nonsense — as quite a few wily Persian Gulf traders are adamant Riyadh won’t “absorb Iran’s market share” because the extra oil is not there.

Much of what lies ahead in the oil embargo saga depends on the reaction of assorted vassals and semi-vassals. Japan won’t have the guts to go against Washington. Turkey will put up a fight. Italy, via Salvini, will lobby for a waiver. India is very complicated; New Delhi is investing in Iran’s Chabahar port as the key hub of its own Silk Road, and closely cooperates with Tehran within the INSTC framework. Would a shameful betrayal be in the cards?

China, it goes without saying, will simply ignore Washington.

Iran will find ways to get the oil flowing because the demand won’t simply vanish with a magic wave of an American hand. It’s time for creative solutions. Why not, for instance, refuel ships in international waters, accepting gold, all sorts of cash, debit cards, bank transfers in rubles, yuan, rupees and rials — and everything bookable on a website?

Now that’s a way Iran can use its tanker fleet to make a killing. Some of the tankers could be parked in — you got it — the Strait of Hormuz, with an eye on the price at Jebel Ali in the UAE to make sure this is the real deal. Add to it a duty free for the ships crews. What’s not to like? Ship owners will save fortunes on fuel bills, and crews will get all sorts of stuff at 90 percent discount in the duty free.

And let’s see whether the EU has grown a spine —  and really turbo-charge their Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) alternative payment network conceived after the Trump administration ditched the JCPOA. Because more than breaking up Eurasia integration and implementing neocon regime change, this is about the ultimate anathema; Iran is being mercilessly punished because it has bypassed the U.S. dollar on energy trade.

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Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is “2030.” Follow him on Facebook.

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.

In recent years, Israel has proved capable of reading between the lines to assess accurately the politico-military situation in the Middle East, exploiting timely opportunities to hit targets of its enemies in Syria and Iraq. Domestic, regional and unlimited US support for far-right Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu permitted his military machine to close in on his nearby opponents in the region, i.e. Syria, Iraq, Hezbollah, and Iranian targets in Syria, at moments of weakness without triggering much of a response from their side.

Today more than ever, the possibilities of war are increasing, a war that may be triggered by Israel and the US due to the consequences of the harsh sanctions on Iran and its partner the Lebanese Hezbollah that will be certainly end up weakening the local Lebanese and Iranian economies. Moreover, and most importantly, any sign of weakness on the part of Israel’s opponents, if analysed inadequately, could push Israel to provoke Hezbollah in Lebanon and its allies to a war.

The history of Israeli aggression towards Lebanon is long. Lebanese domestic reaction to the report of last week’s meeting of the Hezbollah leadership and the analysis of the situation may yet again give wrong signals to Israel, signalling that it can attack neighbouring countries in what it perceives as a moment of weakness. However, if these signs and signals do indeed lead to war, that will certainly be devastating to Lebanon, more than the 2006 war, and most likely also destructive to Israel at a level it has not experienced since 1973.

Lebanese reaction to the prospect of a war this summer – despite the personal evaluation of Hezbollah leader who said otherwise, opposing his military commander’s assessments according to what he said during his speech – could be significant. The Lebanese people are no longer ready to pay the price of another war (after the 2006 war and the eight-years of war attempting to impose regime change on Syria).

Indeed, the popular reaction revealed many other crucial, underlying issues: the number of casualties Hezbollah has suffered and is not enthusiastic to go through the same losses; the current poor relationship between Hezbollah and the oil-rich countries which will reduce tourism and prevent any investment in reconstructing the country if it is devastated by a war initiated by Israel (as in 2006); the harsh sanctions on Iran imposing a tight budget now mostly allocated domestically, thereby limiting support to its partners overseas to cover the costs of Israeli-caused damage in case of war; the impossibility of resupplying Hezbollah with weapons at the same speed Iran was capable of between 2006 and 2018; the superiority of the Israeli war machine in inflicting  great damage on Lebanon, considered by the US and Israel as responsible as a whole for embracing Hezbollah; and the ability of Israel’s friends and allies to resupply Tel Aviv with weapons and financial support to reconstruct any heavy damage Hezbollah could inflict in the “unlikely” event of a future war. All these factors do not decrease the likelihood of a future war in the Middle East; they are portents of danger and potential escalation.

The Hezbollah leadership’s personal assessment of the “unlikelihood” of a war this summer may be correct regarding the timing because the initiative has always been in the hands of Israel. Nevertheless, every military and political leader takes into consideration the worst-case scenario. Saying otherwise or spreading optimism may serve to promote an inaccurate feeling of well-being. On the other hand, it might indeed help avoiding domestic bickering, but would also represent an evasion of tangible concerns and the prospect of an even bleaker reality. Part of Lebanese are already labouring under heavy sanctions and the US is taking every possible opportunity to increase these sanctions on Hezbollah and on its rich and generous donors and businessmen.

The report of the outline of Hezbollah’s commanders gathering with their chief was not well-received by local society. This reaction illustrates how sharply the country is divided between supporters and opponents of Hezbollah. It also indicates how powerful is the effect of local and regional media on decision makers when they attack Hezbollah and its view of current politico-military affairs- and how fragile is the alignment behind Hezbollah’s readiness to respond to any future war. And lastly, it gives a clear warning that Hezbollah supporters are not ready to accept the loss of their leader in case of war, a destiny no-on have a say in it.

These messages are read by friends of Hezbollah, its members and commanders, but also by the enemies of Hezbollah. Israel – the country responsible for initiating every single war inflicted on Lebanon – is also reading the flow of information provided unwittingly by the reaction of the population and that of Hezbollah leadership. Nevertheless, the Israeli leadership needs to consider that, if cornered, Hezbollah can empty every silo and rain down on Israel and every single missile and rocket in its possession- abandoning the “Rules of Engagement” tacitly agreed between the two parties in case of war.

Because Hezbollah will have nothing to lose in case of war, it can empty its arsenal against Israel and play its cards right to the end. The question is: even if Israel enjoys the support of the world media, financial and many militarily powerful friends, is it ready to go through a long and horrific war just to empty Hezbollah’s missiles and rocket stock? If that is the Israeli objective, its chances of success are slim. Hezbollah is part of the society and cannot be removed unless several hundred thousand people are eliminated from Lebanon, the number that represents the society protecting and part of Hezbollah. Why would the US and or Israel declare a general war when financial sanctions are much more effective at little or no cost?

Iran, Hezbollah’s main partner and ally, is headed towards the unknown. The US has announced its intention to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero, ending Iran oil waivers to US partners. Although it is virtually impossible to reach this desired and strict level of sanctions because many countries – mainly China, Iraq and Turkey – will not abide by the US’s will at this first stage, it is certain that Iran will not be capable of exporting all of its two million barrels of oil daily (Iran produces 3.45 million b/d). The US is not imposing an explicit embargo on Iran, otherwise, it would be considered an act of war and would spark an immediate warlike retaliation by Iran and its allies. The US is seeking to impose economic sanctions on the countries who buy Iranian oil, thus cornering Hezbollah’s main financier.

It is a war of strangulation that in the short and medium term is showing itself effective. Although this kind of efficient war was run in Syria on a micro level, will it work on a wider level- and what will be the reaction of Iran and its allies if cornered? A difficult question to answer today as the clouds gather above the Middle East.

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Across Ontario, in more than one hundred hospitals and healthcare facilities, staff and patient advocates staged an “Health Action Day” on Tuesday April 23rd. In an unprecedented show of unity, more than 150,000 health professionals and workers and tens of thousands of patient advocates wore a sticker that said “Stop Health Privatization” and distributed leaflets warning about the Ford government’s radical healthcare restructuring plans. The Ford government has given itself unprecedented powers to order the privatization of virtually all healthcare services and leaked documents that show plans are underway to begin privatization of a range of healthcare services. The Coalition has vowed to fight to protect local healthcare services from cuts, privatization, and mergers.

The Ford government has rammed a radical health restructuring law through the Legislature in an unprecedented undemocratic process, refusing to hear from thousands who applied for hearings and sent in submissions. All amendments prohibiting privatization were voted down by the Conservatives. The new law gives the Minister of Health and the government’s appointees in the new “Super Agency” the ability to force privatization of services as well as to merge, transfer services from town to town and from provider to provider, and close down services including public hospitals, long-term care, home care, community care, mental health, primary care, palliative care, cancer care, eHealth, air ambulance, laboratories and others.

In addition, the list of healthcare cuts under the Ford government is mounting:

• Cut OHIP+ forcing families with sick children to pay deductibles and co-payments. (June 2018)
• Cut planned mental health funding by more than $330-million. (July 2018)
• Cancelled all new planned overdose prevention sites. (Autumn 2018)
• Let surge funding run out. Surge beds are now closed without replacement, despite overcrowding crisis.
• Cut and restructured autism funding. (Winter 2018/19)
• Set healthcare funding at less than the rate of inflation and population growth, let alone aging. This means service levels cannot keep up with population need and will force cuts/privatization. (2019 Budget)
• Set public hospital funding at less than the rate of inflation alone. This means real dollar (inflation adjusted dollar) funding cuts and serious service cuts/privatization. (2019 Budget)
• Cut provincial public health funding by 27% and cut public health units from 35 to 10. (2019 Budget)
• Introduced Bill 74 which gives sweeping new powers to the Minister and Super Agency to force privatization and restructuring of the entire health system. (February/March 2019)
• Plan to cut and restructure ambulance services, down from 59 to 10. (April 2019)
• Plan to cut half a billion dollars in OHIP services. (April 2019)

The Health Coalition is mobilizing for a massive Healthcare rally outside the Ontario Legislature next week on Tuesday April 30 at noon. The rally is expected to draw thousands concerned about OHIP cuts, hospital cuts, privatization, mergers and centralization of healthcare services.

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Ford’s Ambulance and Public Health Cuts Come with High Costs, Reduced Services

It has been done before and it resulted in enormous costs, not savings, and it compromised services. This was the message of the Ontario Health Coalition in reaction to the growing array of healthcare services that the Doug Ford government plans to restructure and cut. The coalition released their tally of Doug Ford’s healthcare cuts to date:

• Cut OHIP+ so families with sick children will have to seek private coverage first and pay deductibles and co-payments.
• Cut planned mental health funding by more than $330-million.
• Cancelled all new planned overdose prevention sites.
• Cut funding for the dementia strategy.
• Let surge funding run out for hospital overcrowding. Surge beds are now closed without replacement, despite overcrowding crisis.
• Cut and restructured autism funding.
• 2019 Budget set overall health funding at less than the rate of inflation and population growth, let alone aging. This means service levels cannot keep up with population need.
• 2019 Budget set public hospital funding at less than the rate of inflation. This means real dollar (inflation adjusted dollar) cuts and serious service cuts.
• 2019 Budget – cut provincial funding for public health by almost 1/3 (27%) and cut public health units from 35 to 10.
• Introduced Bill 74 which gives sweeping new powers to the minster and Super Agency to force restructuring of the entire health system.
• Municipalities revealed Ford government plan to cut and restructure ambulance services, down from 59 to 10.

Ambulance Cuts/Restructuring

“The current EMS system in Ontario was created by Mike Harris’ restructuring,” noted Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition. “The evidence from that round of restructuring is that costs grew dramatically post-restructuring.”

The coalition is concerned that already there are problems of slower response times in rural areas due to long travel distances, and inadequate numbers of ambulances available in urban centres due to crisis-level hospital overcrowding and paramedic costs in long offload delays. The restructuring plan does not address any of the causes of too long EMS response time, it does not ameliorate services even where there is evidence of significant need.

“Cutting and centralizing the ambulance services down to ten giant regions means that smaller rural and northern communities will be lesser priorities and risk their service levels,” she warned.

Public Health Cuts/Restructuring

“Severe cuts amounting to almost one-third of provincial funding for public health threatens vital local services including food and water safety, infectious disease tracking and prevention, immunizations, prenatal training and safety, overdose prevention, safe needle and biohazard programs and many others. The Ford government has not explained how these services are supposed to be provided for at one-third of the cost,” said Ms. Mehra.

Overall Restructuring/Cuts

The Ford government is now clearly embarking on the most aggressive and radical healthcare restructuring that Ontario has ever seen, warns the Ontario Health Coalition. The Mike Harris government hospital restructuring cost $3.9-billion, according to the Provincial Auditor General, to cut $800-million from public hospitals. It led to for-profit privatization and new user fees for an array of services. The costs were never recovered and many of the current problems that we face in healthcare can be traced back to the last two rounds of restructuring.

“Again, restructuring itself has proven to be enormously costly, taking billions of public dollars away from services to lay off healthcare staff, move buildings, rename services, create new boards, renovate buildings and so on,” concluded Ms. Mehra. “Mr. Ford has taken what Mike Harris did and is now doing it again on a more radical, more massive scale. But the public is livid about the consequences of the last two rounds of restructuring. Ford seems to be oblivious to the fact that the last restructuring siphoned billions of dollars away from patient care and led to a gutting of services particularly in medium and smaller communities across Ontario but also impacting cities negatively.”

“Mr. Ford has no mandate for any of this. Not one of the cuts and none of the plans for massive restructuring, mega-mergers and service closures and transfers was ever mentioned in the election. The public has never been consulted,” said Ms. Mehra. “Instead the government is now covering by holding invitation-only ‘engagement’ sessions with government-funded managers who cannot speak freely, and in any case are not real consultations by any normal criteria.”

The truth is that the plan to cut, restructure and privatize healthcare has been hatched in secret with a set of advisors and insiders, a number of whom have private interests and many of whom have been wrong before and bear significant responsibility for many of the problems we now face. We are planning mass protests and escalating actions in response and we demand that Mr. Ford stop his high handed undemocratic destruction of services and removal of local control over healthcare services that our communities have spent more than 100 years building.

The coalition has called for a mass rally at Queen’s Park, outside the Main Legislative Building on Tuesday, April 30 at noon.

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Are you ready to cough up $220,000 to pay your share?  One of the reasons why a day of reckoning for the U.S. economy is inevitable is because we are in way too much debt.  The 22 trillion dollar debt that the federal government has accumulated gets most of the attention, but the truth is that we would still be 50 trillion dollars in debt even if the national debt was eliminated somehow.  Today, debt levels are exploding on every level of society.  Corporate debt has more than doubled since the last financial crisis, U.S. consumers are more than 13 trillion dollars in debt, and state and local governments are piling up debt as if tomorrow will never come.  According to a Federal Reserve chart that you can find right here, the total amount of debt in the U.S. financial system has now reached an astounding 72 trillion dollars.

My father was a math teacher for many years, and so I like numbers.

I divided $72,000,000,000,000 by the current population of the United States (Google says it is 327.2 million), and I discovered that it breaks down to more than $220,000 for every man, woman and child in the entire country.

So if you have a family of four, your share of all this debt is $880,000.

This debt bubble has been growing much, much faster than the overall economy for a very long time.  When Ronald Reagan took office the total amount of debt in our system was less than 5 trillion dollars, and when George W. Bush took office the total amount of debt in our system was just over 29 trillion dollars.

Just prior to the last financial crisis we surpassed the 54 trillion dollar mark, and so since that time we have added nearly 18 trillion dollars to our total.

Of course all of this debt will never actually be paid off.  The only thing left to do is to keep this debt bubble going for as long as possible, and the only way to do that is to keep it growing at a faster pace than the overall economy is growing.

And our financial engineers have definitely been successful in extending this Ponzi scheme for a lot longer than many of us had anticipated, but they can’t keep doing this indefinitely.

Every financial bubble in history has eventually ended, and this one will too.  I really like what Charles Hugh Smith had to say to Greg Hunter just the other day…

Journalist and book author Charles Hugh Smith says the next market crash and recession will unfold like the bursting of the 2000 Dotcom bubble. Smith explains, “The bubble popped or deflated not for any crisis, but simply because there was too much debt, too much leverage, too much euphoria and unrealistic valuations. I think we are seeing that now in stocks, housing and a lot of other assets around the world. The valuations just exceed what makes financial sense. . . . And remember, we are at the longest expansion in history. It’s over 10 years, and the average expansion lasts 5, 6 or 7 years. So, this expansion is pretty long in tooth. . . . You will get a slowdown, and that is a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Once people stop buying houses and once people stop buying cars . . . then you are going to get people being laid off, less people being able to afford to eat out, and then you get a self-reinforcing recession. It’s not a crisis, but like an erosion because everybody is kind of tapped out.”

In the end, nobody can “fix” our system, because our debt-based financial system was fundamentally flawed when it was designed.  This is something that I have repeatedly pointed out, but unfortunately most Americans still don’t seem to understand this very basic concept.

If you have a financial system that is literally designed to endlessly create more debt, more money and more inflation, then you are living in a “bubble economy”.

And a “bubble economy” can seem fine as long as the bubble is inflating and economic activity seems to be humming along, but when things start to go bad they can go really, really bad very rapidly.

Individually, there is very little that we can do about our national debt, state and local government debt or corporate debt.  We can try to vote people into office that want to do the right thing, but unfortunately fiscal responsibility and financial reform are not hot button political issues right now.

But what we can do is get our own financial houses in order.  Now is not the time to take on more debt, and paying off any debt that you have already accumulated would be a very good thing.  This is something that Mac Slavo commented on in one of his recent articles…

The real truth that no one seems to want to hear, is that those who took out these loans signed on the line and voluntarily entered into a contract.  If they didn’t understand the contract, it’s their responsibility (a big scary word) to ask or seek clarity before the agreement is made and signed. That’s called personal responsibility for your actions.  However, it’s lacking all over the globe, but particularly in the United States where people are always looking to blame others for their poor decisions that they themselves have made. “Blame the rich for my decision to go into debt and agree to bad terms!”

The debt crisis the U.S. has found itself in could very well cause another recession such as the one that started in 2008. This is exactly why personal wealth gurus such as Dave Ramsey andFuture Money Trends‘ James Davis tell people to avoid debt if at all possible. Doing so will protect you when others start to default on their loans.  You can’t default if you haven’t borrowed money. It also won’t matter what type of predatory loans exist if people aren’t borrowing that money. Personal responsibility could help lead to more freedom. If people are not free to make bad decisions as well as good decisions, people are not free.

As for the nation as a whole, we can only hope that there is as much time as possible before the inevitable implosion comes.

For decades we have been making exceedingly foolish decisions, and the consequences of those decisions are going to be exceedingly painful indeed.

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The monarchical dictatorship of Saudi Arabia announced on Tuesday that it had carried out another killing spree, publicly executing 37 people in the cities of Riyadh, Medina and Mecca, as well as in central Qassim Province and in the kingdom’s Eastern Province.

One of the headless corpses was then crucified and left hanging in public as a hideous warning to anyone who would even contemplate opposing the absolute power of the ruling royal family.

The regime announced that those who were brought into public squares to be decapitated with swords had been punished “for adopting terrorist and extremist thinking and for forming terrorist cells to corrupt and destabilize security.”

In Saudi Arabia, an antiterrorism law adopted in 2017 defines as a “terrorist” anyone “disturbing public order,” “shaking the security of the community and the stability of the State” or “exposing its national unity to danger.” The law essentially provides the death penalty for anyone daring to criticize the Saudi monarchy or its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Under bin Salman, the Trump administration’s closest ally in the Arab world, the number of executions has doubled. While last year, the regime beheaded 149 people, it has already chopped off the heads of 105 people in 2019.

It is known that at least 33 of the 37 put to death this week were Saudi Shias. In the case of 14 of them, their alleged “crimes” stemmed from the mass protests that swept Saudi Arabia’s predominantly Shiite Eastern Province in 2011, expressing popular demands for democratic reforms and an end to the discrimination and oppression of the Shiite population at the hands of a Sunni monarchy, whose rule is bound up with the official, state-sponsored religious doctrine of Wahhabism, an ultraconservative Sunni sect.

Another 11 were accused of spying for Iran.

None of these individuals were allowed to speak to lawyers during investigations that were carried out by means of torture. They were denied visits from their families and kept in solitary confinement during these ordeals, and were sentenced to death in sham mass trials that lacked even a modicum of due process.

The barbaric mass state murders carried out by the regime in Riyadh constituted a calculated political act driven by both domestic and international objectives. Its immediate aim is to intimidate the Shia minority, which constitutes approximately 15 percent of the population and is concentrated in the Eastern Province, a key oil-producing region.

At least three of those put to death were minors at the time of their alleged offenses, making their executions a flagrant violation of international law barring the death penalty for children.

Abdulkarim al-Hawaj, was 16 when he was arrested and charged with participating in demonstrations and using social media to incite opposition to the monarchy. He also was alleged to have helped make banners with slogans denouncing the regime. He was convicted based on a confession extracted through torture, including electric shocks and being held with his hands chained above his head.

Salman Qureish was arrested just after his 18th birthday for alleged crimes that took place when he was a juvenile. Denied his basic legal rights, he was sentenced to death in a mass trial.

Mujtaba al-Sweikat (image on the right) was 17 when he was arrested at King Fahd International Airport, grabbed as he prepared to board a plane to the United States to begin life as a student at Western Michigan University. He was severely tortured and beaten, including on the soles of his feet, until he provided his torturers with a confession.

The faculty at Western Michigan University issued a statement in 2017 in response to the news of al-Sweikat’s imprisonment:

“As academics and teachers, we take pride in defending the rights of all people, wherever they may be in the world, to speak freely and debate openly without hindrance or fear. We publicly declare our support for Mujtaba’a and the 13 others facing imminent execution. No one should face beheading for expressing beliefs in public protests.

“Mujtaba’a showed great promise as an applicant for English language and pre-finance studies. He was arrested at the airport gates as he readied to board a plane to visit our campus. We were unaware that at the moment we were ready to welcome him, he was locked away, beaten and tortured and made to ‘confess’ to acts for which he was condemned to death.”

The Saudi regime, headed by its de facto ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman, ignored this protest along with others from United Nations and human rights organizations, convinced that it enjoys absolute impunity based upon the support it enjoys from Washington.

The bloodbath organized by the Saudi regime on Tuesday was the largest since 2016, when it beheaded 47 men in a single day, including the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqral-Nimr, a leading spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s oppressed Shiite minority. The state killings touched off angry protests in the region, including in Tehran, where crowds stormed the Saudi embassy. The furor was seized upon by Riyadh as the pretext for breaking diplomatic relations with Tehran and escalating its anti-Iranian campaign throughout the Middle East.

Since then, relentless repression in the Eastern Province has been joined with the near-genocidal war that is being waged by Saudi-led forces against Yemen, claiming the lives of at least 80,000 Yemenis and leaving more than 24 million people—80 per cent of the population—in need of humanitarian assistance, many of them on the brink of starvation.

The Sunni monarchy views the rise of the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a potential threat to its own internal situation, fearing that it could inspire the oppressed Shia population to revolt.

The main responsibility for the crimes of the Saudi regime rests with its principal patron, US imperialism. The savage monarchy in Saudi Arabia, with its public beheadings, is not merely some remnant of feudal backwardness. It is rather the direct product of US imperialist intervention in the Middle East, from the concessions secured by Texaco and Standard Oil in the 1930s and 1940s to the current massive arms sales that make the Saudi monarchy today’s number one customer of the US military-industrial complex.

Washington has responded to the mass beheadings in Saudi Arabia with a deafening silence. While the day before the beheadings were announced, the State Department issued a statement in connection with its severe tightening of punishing sanctions against Iran, demanding that it “respect the rights of its people,” there was no such appeal to Riyadh, much less any condemnation of minors having their heads chopped off in public squares.

The Pentagon and the CIA are full partners in the Saudi monarchy’s repression at home, just as the US has provided the bombs and targeting information, along with the midair refueling of Saudi bombers, that have made possible the criminal war against Yemen.

While the savage state murder and dismemberment of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the monarchy’s consulate in Istanbul last October touched off a brief flurry of recriminations against Saudi Arabia, this heinous crime has largely been forgotten.

While Riyadh is going through the motions of a trial of 15 state officials charged with carrying out the gruesome killing, no action is being taken against Crown Prince bin Salman, who ordered the killing, or his senior adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, who reportedly supervised the torture, murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi via a Skype connection from Riyadh.

Barely a year ago, Crown Prince bin Salman was feted as a “reformer” by the US government, Harvard and MIT, as well as a host of US billionaires, from Bill Gates to Jeff Bezos and Oprah Winfrey.

With the media’s attention to the Khashoggi murder grown cold, this myth is once again being revived, even in the face of the mass beheadings. The day after the executions, top Wall Street financiers took the stage with regime representatives at a financial conference sponsored by the monarchy in Riyadh.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, HSBC CEO John Flint and JPMorgan’s Chief Operating Officer Daniel Pinto were all present, along with Morgan Stanley’s Asia managing director, Chin Chou, all of them anxious to cash in on a proposed initial public offering (IPO) by its national oil giant Aramco, were in attendance.

BlackRock’s Fink brushed off a question about the mass executions, stating,

“The fact that there are issues in the press does not tell me I must run away from a place. In many cases it tells me I should run to and invest because what we are most frightened of are things that we don’t talk about.”

The executions in Saudi Arabia provide an appropriate prism for viewing the entire US policy in the Middle East. The bloodbath is a manifestation of the predatory aims pursued by US imperialism in the region. Washington’s defense of and reliance upon this ultrareactionary regime expose all of the pretexts given for successive US military interventions, from the so-called “war on terrorism” to the supposed promotion of “democracy” and “human rights.”

In the end, a US foreign policy that is founded upon a strategic alliance with the House of Saud will inevitably prove to be a house of cards that will come crashing down with the revival of the class struggle in the Middle East, the United States and internationally.

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At the start of the year, on January 9, The Hill, a leading US political newspaper, as if setting the year’s agenda put out an article entitled “Managing Russia’s dissolution”. The article reviews the measures needed to dismantle Russia and instigate civil conflicts on the territory of Eurasia. The author, Bugajski, describes Russia as “a declining state that disguises its internal infirmities with external offensives”. He further claims that “Russia is heading toward fragmentation” under “rising social, ethnic and regional pressures” and simultaneously blamed the federal government both for failing “to develop into a nation state with a strong ethnic or civic identity” and for working to centralize control over the regions.

The article continues with speculations that “regions such as Sakha and Magadan in the far east, with their substantial mineral wealth, could be successful states without Moscow’s exploitation” and that “emerging states will benefit from forging closer economic and political contacts with neighboring countries rather than depending on Moscow”. Siberia and Russia’s far east are also named among the regions that “will become” separated from the center “thus encouraging demands for secession and sovereignty”.

“Washington needs to return to the core principles that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union by supporting democratization, pluralism, minority rights, genuine federalism, decentralization and regional self-determination among Russia’s disparate regions and ethnic groups.”

“Washington should promote regional and ethnic self-determination inside the Russian Federation.”

“To manage the process of dissolution and lessen the likelihood of conflict that spills over state borders, the West needs to establish links with Russia’s diverse regions and promote their peaceful transition toward statehood.”

The article openly calls on NATO and Washington to start preparations “for engaging with emerging post-Russia entities”.

“Some regions could join countries such as Finland, Ukraine, China and Japan, from whom Moscow has forcefully appropriated territories in the past. Other republics in the North Caucasus, Middle Volga, Siberia and the far east could become fully independent states and forge relations with China, Japan, the U.S. and Europe.”

Bugajski’s ideas are not new at all. Globalist think tanks have been advancing the same for decades.

Mud-slinging in order to undermine Russian statehood aims at fueling radicalism, nationalism and regionalism. It has wave-like behavior. The previous wave targeted pretty much the same regions: the North Caucasus, Middle Volga, Siberia and the Far East. The tricks and methods employed don’t change. The only difference between them is geographical location and the names of the ethnic groups to be influenced.

These approaches could be provisionally labelled the “Polish style”. This term has no links to modern Poland. We employ it only because the approaches are quite similar to the ones that were first used to fuel Polish nationalism in the 19^th and 20^th centuries and the same geopolitical area is affected.

The main elements of this model are:

• Creation of a pseudo-history of a nation or ethnic group. Usually this pseudo-history is dated back to the ancient world and legendary times. This “history” is based on pseudo-historical works and research papers composed by authors unknown to the global academic community.
• Promotion of ideas of exceptionalism among members of the nation or ethnic group. These ideas argue that the nation or ethnic group is superior to its neighbors and instigate a grotesque sense of national identity (exceptionalism based on ethnicity).
• Creation of the myth of a historical archenemy, who has been oppressing the nation or ethnic group, often attempting to eliminate its “exceptional” culture. This historical archenemy is described as the reason for the group’s undoing and thus its poor state in the modern world. The historical archenemy can be constructed from various states existing in different periods of history but, through which a historical succession or links can be traced. For example, the Golden Horde, the  Moscow state, the Russian Empire, the USSR and the Russian Federation. The myth is actively fueled by speculation regarding historical events, which can neither be confirmed nor denied using factual data.
• Creation and promotion of the idea of the nation as once great but now defective, where this position of greatness has been stolen from it.
• Instigation of religious or intra-religious tensions, if the nation or ethnic group has a similar religion to that of its neighbors. The main approaches employed are:
  • Promotion and creation of religious cults, including heathen customs, which are allegedly linked to the “ancient history” of the nation or ethnic group;
  • Promotion of discords or sectarianism within the main religion of the nation. For example, for Orthodox Christianity: the Old Believers or Schismatic cults; for Islam: Sunni sects or Shia branches;
  • Instigation of religious tensions between the religion of the ethnic group and other religions of the state. For example: Islam/Christianity or Orthodox Christianity/Catholicism.
• Promotion of myths about rich natural resources in the territory, where the ethnic group lives. Thus, if this ethnic group were to rule this area “independently”, its wealth would grow and grow. A part of this effort is propaganda against government actions concerning the use of natural resources from the territory, where this ethnic group lives. The negative impact on the ecological situation grows to nightmare proportions by the dissemination of myths about the barbaric exploitation of nature. A vivid example is the information disseminated about the alleged irreparable damage to Lake Baikal that was harmed by a plant producing bottled mineral water.
• Instigation of territorial and intraregional economic disputes between neighboring nations or ethnic groups.
• Discredit of everything linked with the dominating state culture, language and history. For example, bashing everything “Russian”, the creation and promotion of offensive language and terms (Russian – Vatnik), a wide spread of derogatory language and the mutilation of words, terms and names.

The previous wave of information onslaught on nations and ethnic groups of Russia was aimed at the following targets:

The Northern Caucasus. The influence was mostly aimed at the Kabardians living in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, Stavropol Krai and the Republic of Adygea. The Ossetians in the Republic of North Ossetia – Alania were also targeted. Recently the Ingushs living in the Republic of Ingushetia, Moscow and St. Petersburg were again considered as a priority goal in “the Northern Caucasus target list”.

The Southern Federal District. The main effort was to instigate nationalism, regionalism and separatism among the Cossacks, mostly in Rostov Oblast. The Cossacks are not an ethnic group. However, they are a large social group, which makes them a likely target.

The Northwestern Federal District. The goal was to instigate regional nationalism among Finno-Ugric ethnic groups. Another point of pressure was to create nationalist tendencies among the ethnic Russian population in the Republic of Karelia and Arkhangelsk Oblast in order to form a new large ethnosocial group. For example, in April, the city of Arkhangelsk experienced a series of rallies held in breach of law. This situation happened under the passive eye of regional authorities. Furthermore, the initial reaction and attitude of the regional authorities played a notable role in fueling the mood of protest. These protests, caused by a landfill site project in the nearby area, is being actively exploited by the so-called non-system opposition and “liberal media” to fuel tensions between various groups in the local population as well as the regional government.

Separate efforts were made to influence the population of Saint Petersburg, which in terms of culture is one of the most westernized cities of Russia along with Kaliningrad. There was also an attempt to instigate local separatism using the concept of Ingermanland.

The Volga region. Ethnic nationalism and religious radicalism were stirred up among the Kalmyks, Bashkirs and Tatars. Small ethnic groups and nations, often described as Russians: the Mokshas and Erzyas also became the target of foreign influence. Among small ethnic groups and nations, local nationalism can take ugly forms.

Western Siberia. The goal was to create a separate ethnic-social group describing itself as the citizens of Siberia and separating itself from the rest of Russian citizens. The main targets were the Altai Republic, Novosibirsk Oblast and the city of Novosibirsk (the capital of the Siberian Federal District). Foreign influence achieved notable successes in these areas.

Eastern Siberia. The campaign in this region was aimed mostly at Buryats and Tuvans. Yakuts were also a target.

The Far East. Local regionalism and separatism were actively fueled in Khabarovsk Krai and Primorsky Krai, especially in the cities of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. Besides this, foreign influence is actively exploiting simultaneously both pro-Chinese intentions and the myth of the Chinese threat.

It should be noted that the article “Managing Russia’s dissolution” published by The Hill points to these same regions for further operations designed to dismantle Russia. These operations will be more dangerous than the previous ones because they will exploit the successes already achieved in some fields. For example:

• The nationalism and religion issues in the North Caucasus;
• the nationalism of ethnic groups in the Volga region – Bashkirs, Tatars, Erzyas, Moshkas;
• the nationalism and regionalism of Buryats in eastern Siberia.
• the creation of a new separate pro-western identity by a good part of the people living in the cities of Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad, which distances them from the rest of Russia;
• the creation of a separate ethnic-social identity in Western Siberia:

The regions have been targeted by multiple campaigns undermining and discrediting nationwide traditions and behaviors, such as  the traditional family holidays at the New Year, social events of Soviet or Old Russian origin as well as the common history of Russia.  Individualism, neoliberal attitudes and values are successfully promoted in Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Western Siberia. Education is simplified and westernized. Meanwhile stakeholders describe these same tendencies to the residents of the North Caucasus, southern Russian and other regions as ugly and hostile examples of ultra-hardline or far right ideology. Local regionalism and ideological tensions are being successfully fueled.

In large, this situation has become possible due to the de-facto inaction of or even unofficial ideological protection from the authorities. If one takes a detailed look at the Russian elite, one will find that a significant part of it consists of westernized adherents of the “liberal democratic order” while another part consists of representatives of national family clans. Many of these individuals do not associate themselves with the common population and consider the territory of Russia only as a source which can increase their personal wealth. The term “new aristocracy”, which has recently  spread in Russian media, initially appeared as a proud self-designation among Russian elite families emphasizing the exceptionality of their members.

Nonetheless, supporters of Bugajski’s ideas do not consider the aforementioned tendencies alone as sufficient to dismantle Russian statehood. While on the regional level they have achieved some results, the identified nationwide goals have not been accomplished. The system of Russia has not yet come close to an imbalance, that is, to the condition where destructive trends are already beginning to grow on their own, without additional artificial influence. The negative tendencies so far set in motion could still be stopped and reversed. In this situation, we can expect a new wave of the information onslaught against Russia, traditionally backed by Western funds.

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The Veto tracks the evolution of the propaganda campaign waged by Western media against Syria. From Baba Amr in Homs 2011/2012 until the modern day “propaganda construct” – the NATO-member-state funded White Helmets.

It honours Russia and China’s vetoes that have consistently defended Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the UN.

George Orwell said ““The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

Western media has been tasked with writing the history of the Syrian conflict to serve the aggressors in the US Coalition of terrorism.

As Dr Shaaban also told me:

“The US alliance and its media are focusing on our history, material history, cultural history, identity, our army. Any power that keeps you as an entire state, or any statesman that represents strength or unity will be demonized and destroyed.”

The Veto exposes the criminal intentions of Western media and it archives the progression of the propaganda war waged by the West against Syria. Syrians are writing the history of the Syrian conflict because Syria and her allies have courageously resisted the Imperialist machine.

As Rafiq has said so eloquently “ we are the Veto” and we must use it against the Industrial Media Complex in the West. Syria’s history belongs to the Syrians and Syria’s final victory must ensure that Western media is never again given the power to destroy a nation, divide its people and promote international terrorism both military and economic.

The Veto

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It seems totally implausible that the 2020 Presidential race has already reached a near fever pitch as the previously obscure Mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg has taken third place in the latest polls leaving at least five US Senators in the dust – just as he delivered a well-aimed arrow with doubts that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders can beat President Trump in a general election citing that “people were refreshed by the novelty of that boldness” in 2016 but those ideas ‘are now less exciting.’

From the get-go, Mayor Pete’s candidacy appeared to fit neatly into a manufactured identity with the creation as a ‘perfect’ candidate label as if he was deliberately groomed to be totally inoffensive and politically correct; even tempered with no edge. The latest bright, shiny penny to gain prominence, Buttigieg experienced a meteoric rise in the polls raising $7 million and qualified for the June debate before he formally announced he was IN. His unparalleled success as a virtual unknown in a matter of weeks may be credited to some very effective behind-the-scenes movers n shakers willing to fund and provide the necessary organizational support to increase his credibility.

His ‘perfect’ status as a candidate has been noted with attributes carefully shaped to satisfy a wide cross-section of American voters:  he is gay, 37 years old, compares himself to JFK, is an elected municipal official, a ‘devout’ Christian and an Afghanistan war veteran with ‘executive government experience.”

Clearly, millennial Mayor Pete has had friends in high places for some time. The first news article suggesting Buttigieg as a Presidential candidate was a June, 2016 NYT article  “The First Gay President?” That article appeared two weeks after President Obama happened to swing through South Bend and before Mayor Pete ran for DNC Chair in 2017.

All of these interviews and articles occurred in 2019, many of them before he formally announced his candidacy with multiple appearances on The View, Morning Joe, CNN, MSNBC, CBS and other outlets:  Morning Joe, The View, Bill Maher, ABC with George Stephanopoulos, Fox News with Chris Wallace, Rachel Maddow, Tonight Show with Jimmie Fallon, CBS Sunday Morning,  MTP Daily on MSNBC, The Ellen Show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,  The Van Jones Show,  Buzzfeed, NPR,  Vice News, TMZ Live, The Breakfast Club, Vox News with Ezra Klein,  CNN Town Hall,  Late Night with Seth Meyers as well as assorted print media articles including but not limited to three New Yorker features,  multiple Washington Post and NY Times articles, a New York magazine article, NBC News,  The Hill, USA Today, The Economist, The Daily Beast, Business Insider, Newsweek,  The Financial Times, People,  Rolling Stone,  Esquire,  Slate and Vogue magazines.

In addition, Buttigieg participated in the American Jewish Committee tour of Israel in 2018; prior to publicly announcing his presidential aspirations, and then received an endorsement from the former AIPAC President Steve Grossman. Mayor Pete has since repudiated Rep. Omar’s comments regarding Israel.

So how exactly does a previously unknown mayor from Indiana, who has not yet announced his candidacy or staffed up for a national campaign, warrant that kind of first rate attention from prominent media outlets and why would they be willing to provide that level of air time worth millions and millions of advertising dollars?  Clearly, this intensity of media exposure, within weeks of each other, does not occur overnight or spontaneously or coincidentally without some high level sophisticated orchestration; high powered people with connections.

As the benefits of a well coordinated media campaign dramatically increased the Mayor’s identity and political viability, it especially encouraged two dozen of the big Democratic money elite to link up with the Mayor to schedule a series of fund raising events.  These are many of the same funders who were reliable HRC and Obama financial backers.  You might say the wheels are greased.

It is easily apparent from the roster of interviews that Mayor Pete prefers to steer clear of specific policy pronouncements and focus instead on appealing personality traits.  He is a verbally facile, a political centrist with a glib smoothness and enough smarts to dodge any off-script policy discussion that might end up in the weeds.  It is fair to say that he appears clueless with a 1950’s understanding that the Empire is failing as he exhibits a confident persona trained to smile on cue; all of which makes me wonder when we will see our first AI candidate and how will we recognize that machine when it appears?

While Buttigieg has touted his military background as an Afghanistan ‘war veteran’ including the claim that he has “more military experience than I think anybody to  go into that office since GHW Bush,” he is vague about the details which he says remains classified.

Here’s the background:  He enlisted as a Navy Reservist in 2009 and served until 2017 as a Navy Intelligence officer earning the rank of Lieutenant.  In 2014, Buttigieg was deployed to Afghanistan for six months as part of the Operation Enduring Freedom shutdown in December, 2014.  He was assigned as an ‘individual augmentee” in what appears to have been a desk job in Kabul with a “counterterrorism organization called the Afghan Threat Finance Cell” whose “mission is to protect the homeland and target the most dangerous drug trafficking organizations in Afghanistan.”

Given his short time in Afghanistan, Buttigieg’s experience may not measure up to what the public thinks of when they hear someone self-described as an Afghan “war veteran.”  In addition, someone might let the Mayor know that JFK was a bona fide ‘war hero’ which I know to be true because my mother’s cousin served on PT109.

The Mayor may be surprised to discover that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has been a Major in the Army Reserve  for fifteen years, served two tours in Iraq with a medical unit and not only has a higher rank but also served more time out of country.

Buttigieg made a ‘coming out’ statement as a homosexual in 2015 at the age of 33 soon after his return from Afghanistan. In a recent Slate article, he was referred to as a ‘finely tuned gaydar” with limited identification as a gay man and not particularly integrated into the gay community.  While his status is mentioned in almost all interviews, he does not wrap himself in gayness as a seminal issue but rather as a matter-of-fact life experience more akin to an upper class, establishment ethic.  His recent comment that “people like me get strung up in Iran” establishes the underlying message justifying gay support for a war against Iran.

It is audacious of Buttigieg to not wait four years on his way to the top until you cogitate on one possible scenario and this scenario may apply not just to Buttigieg:  it is reasonable to expect that most of the twenty or so other candidates would be more than content to take the second spot as the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate – and it is speculated that either Biden or Bernie will be at the top of the ticket as the Democratic candidate for President,   The reality is that both are well into their 70’s which may or may not be a factor regarding their longevity in the Oval Office – which makes the Vice Presidential selection of more critical importance than ever.

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

The Following text is Section 3 of

The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War,

by the Italian Committee No War No NATO

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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.

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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

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1. The “new strategic concept” of NATO was put into practice in the Balkans, where the crisis of the Yugoslav Federation, due to the contrasts between the power groups and the centrifugal thrusts of the republics, had reached the breaking point.

2. In November 1990, the Congress of the United States approved the direct funding of all the new “democratic” formations of Yugoslavia, thus encouraging secessionist tendencies. In December, the parliament of the Croatian Republic, controlled by the party of Franjo Tudjman, issued a new constitution according to which Croatia is only “home of the Croats” and is sovereign over its territory. Six months later, in June 1991, in addition to Croatia, Slovenia also proclaimed its independence. Immediately afterwards, clashes between the federal army and the separatists broke out. In October, in Croatia, the Tudjman government expeled over 25,000 Serbs while its militias occupied Vukovar. The federal army responded by taking the city back. The civil war began to spread, but it could still be stopped.

3. The path that was taken was instead diametrically opposite. Germany, committed to extending its economic and political influence in the Balkan region, in December 1991, unilaterally recognized Croatia and Slovenia as independent states. As a consequence, the day after, the Serbs of Croatia proclaimed self-determination, thereby forming the Serbian Republic of Krajna. In January 1992, first the Vatican and then the Europe of the Twelve recognized Slovenia as well as Croatia. At this point, Bosnia and Herzegovina were also set on fire, which, in a small way, represented the entire range of ethnic and religious nodes of the Yugoslavian Federation.

4. The UN blue helmets, sent to Bosnia as a force of interposition between the warring factions, was deliberately deployed in insufficient numbers and without adequate means nor precise directives, ending up becoming hostages in the middle of the fighting. Everything contributed to demonstrating the “failure of the UN” and the need for NATO to take matters into its own hands. In July 1992, NATO launched the first “crisis response” operation and imposed an embargo on Yugoslavia.

5. In February 1994, NATO aircraft shot down a Serbian-Bosnian aircraft flying over Bosnia. It was the first war action since the foundation of the Alliance. With it, NATO violated Article  5 of his own constituent charter, since the war action was not motivated by the attack on an Alliance member and was carried out outside its geographical area.

6. When the fire in Bosnia was extinguished (where the fire remained under the ashes of the division in ethnic states), NATO threw petrol on the Kosovo outbreak, where a claim of independence by the Albanian majority had been underway for years. Through underground channels largely managed by the CIA, a river of arms and funding, between the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999, went to feed the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), an armed wing of the Kosovo separatist movement. Albanian. CIA agents later reported that they entered Kosovo in 1998 and 1999 as OSCE observers in charge of verifying the ceasefire, providing US military training manuals and satellite phones to the UCK so that the commanders of the guerrillas could stay in touch with NATO and Washington. The KLA could thus launch an offensive against Serbian federal troops and civilians, with hundreds of attacks and abductions.

7. While the clashes between the Yugoslav and KLA forces were provoking victims on both sides, a powerful political-media campaign prepared international public opinion for the intervention of NATO, presented as the only way to stop the “ethnic cleansing” of Serbians in Kosovo. A priority target was the president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, accused of “ethnic cleansing”.

8. The war, called “Operation Allied Force”, began March 24, 1999. The role of Italy was decisive. The D’Alema government put the Italian territory, particularly the airports, at the disposal of the United States armed forces and other countries to implement what the prime minister called “the right of humanitarian interference”. For 78 days, taking off mainly from the Italian bases, 1,100 planes made 38,000 sorties, releasing 23,000 bombs and missiles. 75 percent of the aircraft and 90 percent of the bombs and missiles were supplied by the United States. The US was also the communication, command, control and intelligence network through which operations were conducted. “Of the 2,000 targets hit by NATO aircraft in Serbia – later documented by the Pentagon – 1,999 were chosen by US intelligence and only one by Europeans.”

9. Systematically, the bombings dismantled the structures and infrastructure of Serbia, causing victims especially among civilians. The resulting damage to health and the environment was unquantifiable. Thousands of tons of highly toxic chemicals (including dioxins and mercury) came out of the Pancevo refinery alone. Other damage was caused by the massive use of depleted uranium projectiles by NATO in Serbia and Kosovo. These projectiles had already been used in the first Gulf War.

10. 54 Italian aircraft also took part in the bombings, attacking the objectives indicated by the US command. “By number of aircraft, we were second only to the USA. Italy is a great country, and we should not be surprised at the commitment shown in this war,” stated the president of the D’Alema council during a visit on 10 June 1999 at the base of Amendola, stressing that, for the pilots who participated in it, it was “a great human and professional experience”.

11. On June 10, 1999, Yugoslavian troops began to withdraw from Kosovo, and NATO put an end to the bombings. UN Security Council Resolution 1244 provided that the international presence must have “substantial NATO participation”. “Today, NATO faces its new mission: to govern”, commented The Washington Post.

12. After the war, more than 60 FBI agents were sent to Kosovo from the United States, but no traces of such excuses were found to justify the accusation made of the Serbs of “ethnic cleansing”. Slobodan Milosevic, of the former Yugoslavia, was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He  died after five years in prison. The same court exonerated him in 2016 from the accusation of “ethnic cleansing”.

13. Kosovo, where the US installed a large military base (Camp Bondsteel), became a sort of NATO protectorate. At the same time, under the cover of the “Peace Force”, the former UCK in power terrorized and expelled over 250,000 Serbs, Roma, Jews and Albanians and branded them as collaborators. In 2008, with the self-proclamation of Kosovo as an independent state, the demolition of the Yugoslavian Federation was completed.

14. While the war against Yugoslavia was in progress, the summit that formalized the transformation of NATO was convened in Washington on April 23-25, 1999, by an alliance which, pursuant to Article 5 of the Treaty of 4 April 1949, commited member countries to assist the armed forces of a member country which is attacked in the North-Atlantic area. It was transformed into an alliance which, on the basis of the “new strategic concept” also commited member countries to “conduct crisis response operations not provided for by Article 5 outside the territory of the Alliance”. In other words, NATO was preparing to project its military force beyond its borders not only in Europe but also in other regions of the world.

15. What did not change in the mutation of NATO was the hierarchy within it. The President of the United States has always been able to appoint the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, who is still a US general, while the Allies can merely ratifying the President’s choice. The same is true for the other key commands.

16. The document that commited member countries to operate outside the Alliance, signed by European leaders on April 24, 1999 in Washington, reaffirmed that NATO “fully supports the development of the European defense identity within the Alliance”. The concept is clear: Western Europe can have its own “defense identity”, but it must remain within the Alliance, i.e. under US command.

17. The subordination of the European Union to NATO was thus confirmed and consolidated. Subordination established by the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992, which recognized the right of the EU States to be part of NATO, was defined as the foundation of the defense of the European Union.

18. By participating in the war against Yugoslavia, a country that had not taken any aggressive action against either Italy or against other NATO members, Italy confirmed that it had adopted a new military policy and, at the same time, a new foreign policy. Since this involved using military force as a tool, it violated the constitutional principle, affirmed by Article 11, that “Italy repudiates war as an instrument of offense against the freedom of other peoples and as a means of resolving international disputes”.

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Sections 4-16 of the 70 Years of NATO, From War to War, forthcoming on Global Research

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.

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Last week New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez introduced a Senate Resolution commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. It “calls on the United States and the international community to cooperate in preventing and responding to genocide and crimes against humanity in nations across the globe.”

Like the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act passed in December 2018, the Menendez resolution bolsters the “humanitarian interventionist” argument that U.S. policymakers have deployed to justify bombing, special forces and/or sanctions in Libya, Syria and now Venezuela. It describes the 1994 Rwandan Genocide as the genocide of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis by Hutu extremists, but Canadian investigative journalist Judi Rever’s “In Praise of Blood: Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front” is just one of the latest books that upends that version of events.

Those previously published books include “Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction” by Robin Philpot, “Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire” by Marie Beatrice Umutesi, “Dying to Live: A Rwandan Family’s Five-Year Flight Across the Congo” by Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga, “How Paul Kagame Deliberately Sacrificed the Tutsi” by Jean-Marie Ngadimana, “Enduring Lies: Rwanda in the Propaganda System 20 Years On” by Ed Herman and David Peterson, and “The Accidental Genocide,” a compendium of primary-source documents compiled by former ICTR defense attorney Peter Erlinder.

Judi Rever was scheduled to speak about her book at Tarrant County College in Hurst, Texas, on April 1, but some Rwandans in the U.S. protested, calling her a genocide denier. Rwandan war and genocide survivor Claude Gatebuke published a counter-argument headlined “Tarrant Community College: Why Author Judi Rever’s Scheduled Presentation Must Go Ahead” in the Black Star News, and the talk went ahead, despite a few protestors wearing t-shirts accusing her of genocide denial.

Kagame’s Rwanda has a longstanding alliance with Netanyahu’s Israel based on their constant equation of the Nazi Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide, but these two tragedies were in fact not at all similar. The Jews did not invade Germany or any other European nation. They did not seize territory or wage a four-year war. They did not seize state power at the end of a war. The European Jews who perished in the Holocaust were a minority driven to concentration camps and murdered en masse by xenophobic white Christian supremacists.

The Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Gen. Paul Kagame was in fact a division of the Ugandan Army, and it did invade Rwanda on Oct. 1, 1990. It did wage a four-year war against the Rwandan Army and the civilian population, 85 percent of whom were Hutu. They massacred hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus before seizing power in Kigali on July 4, 1994. So who’s denying genocide?

Hutu and Tutsi genocide

Judi Rever, in “In Praise of Blood: Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front,” did not deny the Tutsi Genocide in which hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis died between April 6 and July 4, 1994. Nor do any of the other aforementioned authors. They instead add the history and documentation of the Hutu Genocide committed by the Tutsi army before, during and after the Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda.

Rever’s book implicates Gen. Paul Kagame and his Tutsi army in the massacres of both Hutu and Tutsi people.

“Kagame did not stop the genocide,” she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., “because at the same time that ethnic Tutsis were being killed in Hutu-controlled zones, his Tutsi troops were killing with equal zeal and organization. And in every zone that Kagame’s army entered and controlled, they killed Hutus massively.”

Not only that, Rever writes, Kagame’s army also fueled the genocide against the Tutsi. They infiltrated the Hutu militias very successfully. This is not only well-documented by Rever but is also wholly credible because Hutus and Tutsis are Rwandans who speak the same language, share the same culture, and even marry one another, although the Hutu and Tutsi identity are patrilineal. The sons and daughters of a Tutsi father are Tutsi, the sons and daughters of a Hutu father are Hutu, regardless of their appearance.

According to Rever, the Tutsi infiltrators of Hutu militias baited the violence; they egged it on, and some of their commandos even participated in the slaughter of some Tutsis at roadblocks. Why? Because Kagame and his inner circle knew that the massacre of the Tutsi would later provide an excuse for the dictatorship by the Tutsi minority who would then be able to claim victim status.

That is why the Rwandan government and its supporters encourage the world to believe that the genocide was a Tutsi genocide only and that it occurred in 90 days, between April 6 and July 4, 1994. They would rather no one dwell on the four-year war during which the Tutsi army massacred Hutus, or the ensuing wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when Kagame’s army chased and massacred hundreds of thousands of Hutus fleeing across the Congo and caused the death of millions of Congolese as well.

Rever provides documentary evidence from testimony of defectors from Kagame’s Tutsi army, many of whom said that they fueled the genocide against the Tutsis and committed a genocide against the Hutu as well.

In an interview with the CBC, Rever said:

“At least 500,000 Hutus were killed by Kagame’s troops during the genocide and in the months after the genocide. Now, some people have said that figure could be as high as a million.

“The killing in RPF controlled zones was not investigated. And I point out that Human Rights Watch was on the ground after the genocide and didn’t fully investigate the areas that Kagame controlled.

“So, number one, there’s a problem with the human rights organizations that were there.

“Number two, the journalists who were there during the genocide had a very hard time figuring out what was going on at first. And when they did go into RPF zones, they were under RPF escort.

“Number three, we had an incredible campaign of propaganda going on that started with an NGO called African Rights. And they basically primed world opinion and journalistic opinion on what happened during the genocide.

“And this was an organization that, we have learned, was a front organization for the RPF, for Kagame’s political party. This was an organization that received funding from the government, from Kagame’s government, afterwards. And so we’re able to look at how they did research, then how that research from African Rights was absorbed and regurgitated by even Human Rights Watch and by journalists worldwide.”

Western powers, including Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. have sustained that propaganda campaign for 25 years and made it a centerpiece of their “humanitarian” interventionist argument. Now the Senate resolution introduced by New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez continues what Judi Rever calls their “praise of blood.”

Rever writes:

“It seemed that the RPF could now commit crimes out in the open and still receive billions of dollars in aid. And Kagame could continue to receive human rights awards despite these murders, the Spanish indictment and Amnesty’s reports – buoyed by propaganda and protected by powerful friends in the West.

“What were these Western allies supporting? From the point of view of the RPF’s victims, it all seemed to be in praise of blood, an endorsement of mass murder.”

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This article was originally published on San Francisco Bay View.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected]. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

After 19 years since a part of the international community, under the auspices of NATO and the US, took control over the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, following two ethnic pogroms of the Serbs and non-Albanians occurred in 1999 and in 2004, which resulted in ethnic cleansing of around 250 000 Serbs and other non Albanians, the rest of Serbian population still survive in ghettos across the territory of self-proclaimed independent Republic of Kosovo.

The Self proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, as a creation of the USA/NATO joint aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, and as a final stage in the destruction of Yugoslavia by the abovementioned actors, still represents the only place in Europe where particular ethnic minorities survive in real ghettos, often known as enclaves. This “privilege” of living in ghettos is exclusively reserved for the Serbs, Romani people (Gypsies) and for other ethnic/religious minorities of Serbian origin.

People in these enclaves survive without having guaranteed basic human rights such as personal freedom and security. Serbian children must be transported to their schools in a UN armoured vehicles under protection of UN military personnel, without such a protection Serbs would be stoned to death by their Albanian coevals.

Image on the right: Serbian child with Serbian priest greeting journalists behind barbed wire on a property of Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and Metohija

Serbs and other non-Albanians survive in extreme poverty often without basic living conditions such as electricity, heating, potable water and sanitary water, the only income they have is a 50 euros per month paid to them by the Serbian Government. Some of them still live in half-destroyed/burnt houses without walls, windows and doors. Their farms are confiscated by local Albanians and they cannot cultivate their own fields nor cut the wood for the heating.  Serbian enclaves, churches and monasteries are constantly surrounded by barbed wire, they can leave these ghettos only under UN escort, otherwise they risk to be eliminated by their Albanian neighbours. Those Serbs who live in a cities/towns/villages with Albanian majority, they cannot even leave their households, they can only move within the limits of a Serbian households. Those who must cultivate their farms or graze their cattle outside of their households, they risk of being killed once they leave their safe ghettos. Every day Serbs are beaten, stoned, attacked, sometimes even raped and killed by Albanian neighbours  across Kosovo and Metohija, the local police ignores and hushes up any crime or act of violence committed against Serbs.

The US and the EU strongly support the independence of Republic of Kosovo, in violation of international law, while  forcing Serbia to recognize the de jure independence of Kosovo in return for EU membership.

Following the strategy of systematic discrimination, humiliation and ambiguousness towards Serbs, the US and its Western allies, are regularly complimenting Kosovo’s “respect” for human and minority rights.

All current and past crimes against Serbs are systematically “erased” by Kosovo’s authorities under the patronage of international community.

During 1998 and 1999 the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) committed thousands of brutal murders of Serbs, Albanians, Gypsies and dozens of foreign citizens. Several thousand Serbian civilians were kidnapped and transferred to secure locations in Kosovo and Metohija and in Albania for blood and organ trafficking.

Yugoslavian authorities have identified dozens of improvised mini-laboratories across Kosovo and Metohija where KLA was collecting the blood from kidnapped Serbs (on average they were taking 2,5 liters of blood from one adult). The main centers for the collection of the organs from kidnapped victims were located in Albania: camps were stationed in Kukes, Elbasan, Fljora, Drac and Tirana.

Authorities of the Republic of Albania were also involved in this disgusting crime, including former Albanian prime ministers Sali Berisha and Fatos Nano, Bernard Kouchner, French Foreign Affairs Minister and former head of UNMIK. Other involved parties included Hashim Thachi (former KLA Commander who became president of Kosvo), Halim Omer Osmani and Ramus Haradinaj.

Additionally, some highly ranking international officials from KFOR and UNMIK were also involved and representatives of some international humanitarian organizations. After the UN Mission in Kosovo collected evidence from the field and sent it to the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the evidence was intentionally destroyed by the Tribunal in order to hush up the crimes of this joint venture. Carla Del Ponte, former Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY, was removed from her post, soon after she revealed the story about organ trafficking of the kidnapped Serbs in Kosovo during the 1998/1999.

Image below: Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija pilgrimaging at Serbian Orthodox Christian Monastery surrounded by barbed wire

Reports on organized crime in Kosovo made by UN intelligence and other Western intelligence agencies are being also hidden from the public by the governments of the most powerful countries because their governments were also involved in creation of Kosovo’s independence, including the creation, arming and training of the KLA, a terrorist entity. Yugoslav Intelligence agencies discovered that KLA terrorists were trained by NATO personnel in 1996/1997/1998 at different military camps across Europe and the USA (e.g. Atlantic Brigade) in Germany and even in “neutral” Switzerland, then the terrorists were sent directly to Albania to join the existing forces which consisted of NATO trained terrorists (some of them were members of Al-Qaeda), foreign mercenaries and regular Albanian Army of the Republic of Albania.

Image below: Serbs living in extreme poverty in Kosovo and Metohija, a brother with two sisters, living in a family house burnt by Albanians during the ethnic cleansing, the house is without roof, windows, doors, sanitary, toilet… just a bare walls 

Kosovo’s authorities together with its majority Albanian population are intentionally destroying  the evidence of Serbian cultural and historical presence in this holly Serbian land.

Serbian churches (Orthodox Christian) are intentionally turned into public toilets, church properties are being confiscated, Serbian graves are being mined and turned into parking lots.

The majority of the private property in Kosovo is still legally in a possession of  the Serbs, but most of the properties are confiscated by local Albanians and Kosovo’s government. The total number of Serbian returnees in Kosovo is around 1% of the number of those who are expelled during the ethnic cleansing in 1999 and 2004. Renovated houses of Serbian returnees are being constantly destroyed by local Albanians. Kosovo’s government and its Western sponsors are undermining the return of Serbs to their homes, because if the Serbs would return to Kosovo and Metohija, they would strengthen the Serbian population and thus make Serbian sovereignty more powerful, which is contrary to the American, EU and Kosovo’s plans of achieving full de jure independence of this criminal entity.

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All images in this article are from the author; featured image: “Yellow house” near the city of Burelj in the north of Albania, the location where organs from kidnapped Serbs were taken, confirmed by forensic investigation done by UN Mission in Kosovo, the collected evidence was intentionally destroyed later at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague.

On the 23rd April, many of us marked Saint George’s Day, an occasion to reflect on our history, it being ‘the feast day of Saint George’ as celebrated by the majority of England’s Christian Churches and by the several nations, kingdoms, countries, and cities of which Saint George is the patron of England including even certain regions of Portugal and Spain.

Saint George’s Day is also known as ‘the Feast of Saint George’.

In a letter published to the Daily Telegraph of London written by a Mark Hudson of Ashford, Kent, he very rightly pointed out that it was understandable that “British architects of secularism”, the most guilty of whom always was and has been Tony Blair, were concerned about the then Prime Minister David Cameron’s claim that Britain is a Christian country and that the reappearance of Christianity in public life would be very inconvenient for them though they admit that Britain is constitutionally Christian.

Mr. Hudson further pointed out that

“The Coronation service and the Coronation oath are shot through with Christian beliefs and values, without which they would make no sense. So is that other great pillar of our liberties: the Magna Carta. Parliament convenes with prayer, and bishops of the Church of England sit in the House of Lords. National and civic occasions are marked by Christian ceremonies, and the calendar remains unabashedly Christian.”

Her Majesty the Queen has in the past explained her role as ‘Defender of the Faith’, and having an established Church in the Church of England, meant that the freedom of everyone to practise their faith as they wished was protected.

However, how corrupted by Arab money, have successive British governments been, both Labour and Conservative?

Particularly money from Islamic extremist and subversive groups such as The Muslim Brotherhood, notably via their main benefactor, the tiny island State of Qatar?

Instead of pontificating at length on all the common sense reasons why what you are reading its fact, its existence, is wrong, all that needs be said is that the vast majority of British people will think this revelation is abhorrent.

But the fact is historic buildings such as Admiralty House and at least four other Whitehall buildings are now operating in accordance with Sharia rules – including a ban on alcohol.

These properties must comply with some aspects of Sharia under the terms of special bonds known as ‘sukuk’, announced by then Chancellor George Osborne, two years ago, with minimal publicity, when the UK became the first Western country to issue them.

What is also not commonly known is more than £200m of Sharia compliant ‘sukuk’ bonds have been sold to Muslim investors in the UK and to major Islamic finance centres in the Middle East and Asia.

Under Sharia law, charging interest, or usury, is forbidden. So to allow Islamic investors to receive rent, the ‘sukuk’ bonds pay them the rental income on certain buildings instead. Semantics about the words ‘financial interest payments’.

One newspaper that did report it, two years ago, the MailOnline stated merely that certain landmark Whitehall buildings were now owned by people bent on enforcing Sharia law in our Country.

Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire has been quoted as saying: “I do find it unbelievable government buildings are governed by Sharia law. I don’t see the bars as being an essential part of Parliament but it’s the principle that matters. Most of our constituents will be absolutely amazed that the principle could ever have been authorised.”

The Government buildings in question, those known about, are Richmond House, and Wellington House.

“The sukuk is issued under, and governed by, English law which applies at all times.” a spokesman for the UK Treasury commented.

Other than banning alcohol use in such buildings, it is unclear which other aspects of Sharia are being adhered to by the managers of the buildings concerned, but a government source further added it had been agreed that serving pork in Richmond House would not affect the Sharia compliance of the sukuk.

“Alcohol being served hasn’t arisen, as you would expect for a government building,” a spokesperson added.

In January, The Times reported that a plan to relocate MPs to Richmond House to allow refurbishment work at Westminster was meeting resistance because Richmond House was ‘dry’ under the terms of the sukuk agreement.

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It’s finally official — Trump and his team didn’t “collude” with Russia like the Democrats and their supporters incessantly claimed for nearly the past three years. Positive coverage of candidate Trump’s promising foreign policy platform by Russian international media and truthful reporting about Clinton’s aggressive one don’t amount to “hacking” an election, nor do some internet researchers from Russia supposedly sharing some political memes on Facebook. It’s now been revealed that Russiagate was one long series of hoaxes designed to discredit Trump and pave the way for his impeachment after it first failed to stop him from winning the presidency. Like the American leader himself has said on several occasions already, Russiagate was an unconstitutional coup attempt against the country’s democratically elected leadership, which deserves to be analyzed more in depth.

Russia, and specifically President Putin, were presented as the ultimate global bogeyman after Crimea’s 2014 reunification and Moscow’s 2015 anti-terrorist military intervention in Syria changed the balance of power around the world and unquestionably ushered in the multipolar era after two and a half decades of American unipolarity. It was therefore thought by the ruling anti-Trump faction of the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) at the time that they could easily convince the electorate to vote against the seemingly “anti-systemic” political insurgent by implying that he’s a “Russian puppet” and then later, after that didn’t work, manufacturing so-called “evidence” purporting to prove this through unverified fake news claims designed to defame him.

According to the Mueller report and taking its findings at face value, it does indeed appear as though there was some factual basis to several of the claims, but that the events themselves that were manipulatively spun as “collusion” by the “deep state’s” media surrogates were actually nothing of the sort. Take for example the “Track II” diplomatic outreaches that former campaign advisor George Papadopoulos and former National Security Advisor Flynn were allegedly involved in. There’s nothing illegal, or even unethical, about them because that’s just how the world of international diplomacy actually works, yet to the unaware American who had never thought about these things or heard of them before, it might have seemed like something suspicious was really going on behind the scenes.

That wasn’t the case, but the innuendo and optics were enough to frame those events as something conspiratorial and therefore “legally” warrant an investigation, even though the argument can now convincingly be made that George Papadopoulos was set up by Joseph Mifsud (a shadowy academic who’s since disappeared) in order to create the pretext for Obama’s Clinton-allied “deep state” to spy on the Trump campaign. Once the billionaire won, his “deep state” opponents transformed from political operatives to actual coup plotters just as their strategy morphed from “proving” the “collusion” that they knew all along didn’t exist to triggering Trump into committing “obstruction of justice” so that they can dramatically take him down in a Nixonian fashion.

His “deep state” foes hate his nationalist policies that are the polar opposite of their liberal-globalist ones, and they feared his promised rapprochement with Russia would undermine the global system that they’ve been endeavoring to build since the end of the Old Cold War. This explains the obsession that they have with getting rid of him in spite of Trump actually buckling under some of this same “deep state” pressure into “modifying” his foreign policy by taking a tougher stance against Russia. Regardless, he’ll always be “public enemy number one” to them because he beat Hillary and stopped her from ascending to the presidency that she and her “deep state” backers truly believe that she was “entitled” to.

All countries have their own political scandals and this has been a mainstay of the human story since the very first political entities were created and primitive societies were formed, but what makes Russiagate so unprecedented is that it finally dispelled the greatest myth about America by proving to the world that it isn’t a “shining city on a hill” and that it’s much-touted “democratic” system isn’t “exceptional”. “Democratic proselytism”, the public excuse for “justifying” American interventions all across the world, has now been discredited, dealing an enormous self-inflicted wound to the US’ soft power from which its international reputation might never recover.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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.

SITUAM, Sindicato Independiente de Trabajadores de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Independent Union of Workers of the Metropolitan Autonomous University), is an industrially organized university union; that is, it represents scholars as well as both blue-collar and white-collar workers. The Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) is the third largest federal university¹ in Mexico by size and ranks second in research projects, just below UNAM, the Mexico National Autonomous University. It has 60,000 students and 8,000 employees spread over five campuses (Azcapotzalco, Iztapalapa, Xochimilco, Cuajimalpa y Lerma) in the greater Mexico City area. 75% (6000) of its 8,000 workers are members of the union.

The union has a militant tradition, as many of its professors had been politically influenced by their participation in the massive student movement of 1968² and hired by the newly formed UAM in its first six years of existence, 1974-1980. As well, a large portion of the blue-collar workers are internal migrants from Oaxaca, Mexico’s most indigenous state, as well as from other indigenous areas of Mexico. They bring rich cultural traditions to the workplace and the union, which include a strong sense of solidarity and collective struggle.

Campaign Promise Unfulfilled, Collective Contract Violations, and Fallen Wages

The ongoing strike, which started February 1, 2019, is the longest in the history of the university, as well as the largest and most protracted strike in the first period of the government of AMLO (Andrés Manuel López Obrador), which took office on December 1, 2018. The strike of SITUAM has converged with the first major mobilizations of the dissident teachers in this new period. The teachers of Oaxaca, Michoacán, and Chiapas have carried out massive protest marches in Mexico City, as well as surrounding and disrupting the activities of the National Congress on at least four occasions since last November 20.

They are protesting the new government’s failure to fulfill its campaign promise of completely revoking the neoliberal educational reforms enacted between 2013 and 2017. They are demanding the total abrogation of these reforms, reforms aimed at building authoritarian control, typical of private companies, over public schools throughout the country. The inquisitorial evaluations of the teachers during this period led to hundreds of unjustified dismissals in what was known as the cycle of the Neoliberal Educational Reform.

The new government has promised to expand workers’ rights within a strategy of development aimed at attracting foreign investment and avoiding hostility from the U.S. government, and U.S. and Mexican business. The SITUAM strike, as well as the teachers’ mobilizations and the strike wave in the maquilas of Matamoros in the first three months of 2019, follow a long period with very few strikes, a period of pride for the Mexican government in showcasing Mexico as a business-friendly country. There were no strikes of workers under federal jurisdiction³ in the 2016-2018 period.

The union has called for an across-the-board wage increase of 20% and a solution to various violations of the collective contract. Real wages of workers have fallen by 60% since the founding of the UAM in 1974 and, in a deliberate attempt to weaken the union, the University has violated the collective contract, most importantly in the categorizing of many newly-hired workers as empleados de confianza, thus excluding them from union membership and making an end-run around the closed shop section of the collective contract. The ISSSTE (Institutode Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado – Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers) calculates that the UAM has thus hired 1,800 workers outside the Collective Contract. This managerial strategy violates both the Collective Contract and the Federal Labour Law, and the inflated salaries of these 1,800 employees absorbs 31% of the total budget of the University – almost double of that received by the 4,500 blue-collar workers of UAM.

The SITUAM strike is being watched carefully by workers and unions throughout the country as a test case of the capacity and possibilities of union militancy to break the control and wage chains of neoliberal policies. The recent strikes of Los Mineros (the miners’ and steelworkers’ union) as well as those of the maquila workers in Matamoros provide precedents in the private sector, as the workers won settlements above inflation in 2018. However, the strike of SITUAM is especially sensitive because it is the first strike of workers under federal labour jurisdiction defying the AMLO government’s “republican” austerity policy, which has defined a rigid 3.5% salary cap. The SITUAM strike challenges the tacit policy of AMLO for financing his social policy on the backs of public sector workers’ salaries and working conditions rather than increasing taxes on Mexico’s powerful rich whose contribution to the public Treasury is practically nil. Taxing big capital would break with tradition and undermine the strategy of partnership with big business for development.

The Context of the SITUAM Strike

Mexican workers form the nucleus of the largest industrial proletariat in all Latin America. They are even more numerous than the Brazilian industrial work force, a work force diminished by the severe recession of recent years. There were 4.8 million factory workers registered with the IMSS (Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social – Mexican Social Security Institute) at the end of 2015. The ENOE (Encuesta Nacional de Ocupación y Empleo – National Survey of Occupation and Employment) estimates that if this figure included the underground industrial economy, which operates in small maquilas and home industries but is even more exploited than the formal sector workers registered with IMSS, the number of industrial workers would rise to 8.3 million.

There is also an intense migration process among industrial workers as a consequence of the wage differences between Mexico and the United States. Latina/o workers in the U.S., most of them Mexican born or of Mexican ancestry, make up almost 1 of every 6 industrial workers in the U.S., 2,488,000 of the total industrial workers in the USA. If we add the within-Mexico industrial labour force to the U.S. Latino industrial labour force, we can estimate that the Latin American industrial force in the NAFTA scenario reaches 11 million people, without including the small number of Latino industrial workers in Canada.

Given that the labour law reform of the AMLO government has as its main objective the preservation of labour peace and the containment of union action within the moderate policy of the new government, the SITUAM strike presents an awkward challenge for the AMLO government. The strike goes on as the Senate prepares to discuss the hotly debated and limited federal labour law next week. The MORENA⁴ majority in the Senate has shown itself to be much more independent than the Morena majority in the Chamber of Deputies, which has already approved the labour law reform.

And as May Day approaches, a day in which AMLO hopes to celebrate the marriage between his class harmony strategy and his populism, the ongoing SITUAM strike threatens to disrupt the marriage and the celebration. It’s crucial for the future of workers in Mexico and North America that Mexico’s labour-reform commitment to the new NAFTA (USMCA) does not lead to a compromise with the past undemocratic practices of Mexico but contains genuine legislative changes that return real bargaining power to workers.

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The Following text is Section 2  of

The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War,

by the Italian Committee No War No NATO

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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.

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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

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1. In the second half of the 1980s, the climate of the Cold War began to change. The first sign of thawing was the Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF), signed in Washington on December 8, 1987, by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev. According to the INF, the United States and the Soviet Union were to undertake to eliminate all missiles of this category, including the Pershing II and the cruise missiles deployed by the US in European NATO countries and the SS-20 deployed by the USSR in their territory. By May 1991, a total of 2,692 missiles in this category were removed.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed a landmark nuclear arms control treaty in 1987. (Photo: White House Photographic Office/National Archives and Records Administration)

2. This important result was essentially due to the “disarmament offensive” launched by the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. On January 15, 1986, it proposed not only to eliminate Soviet and US intermediate range missiles, but to implement an overall program to eliminate nuclear weapons by 2000. In Washington, they knew that Gorbachev really wanted the complete elimination of these weapons, but they also knew that in the Warsaw Pact and in the Soviet Union itself a process of disintegration was taking place, a process that the United States and their allies favored by all possible means.

3. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the Warsaw Pact dissolved in July 1991. The six central and eastern European countries that were part of it were no longer allies of the USSR. In December 1991, the Soviet Union itself dissolved. Fifteen states were formed in place of a single state. The disappearance of the USSR and its block of alliances created an entirely new geopolitical situation in the European and Central Asian regions. At the same time, the disintegration of the USSR and the deep political and economic crisis affecting the Russian Federation marked the end of the only superpower able to rival that of the United States.

4. The United States immediately took advantage of the “détente” in Europe to concentrate their forces in the strategic area of ​​the Persian Gulf, where, with a clever maneuver, they prepared the conditions to unleash what the Pentagon called “the first post-Cold War conflict, a determining event in the global leadership of the United States”. On 17 January 1991, the US launched Operation Desert Storm against the Iraqi Army – “the most intense bombing campaign in history”. Over 43 days, the US and its allies (including the Italy) used 2,800 aircraft to drop about 250,000 bombs, including cluster bombs, which issued a total of over 10 million submunitions, while flying gunships, helicopters and tanks shot over a million depleted uranium projectiles. On 23rd February, the coalition troops, comprising over half a million soldiers, launched a ground offensive, which, after a hundred hours of carnage, ended on 28th February with a “temporary ceasefire” proclaimed by President Bush.

5. NATO, while not participating as such in the Gulf War, provided the backing of all its infrastructure to coalition forces. They took part in the bombings, along with the US, British, French, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Canadian air forces and naval forces, while British and French forces joined US forces in the land-based offensive.

6. A new strategy, published by the White House in August 1991 called the “National Security Strategy of the United States”, was officially announced six months after the end of the Gulf War. The central concept was that “the United States remains the only state with a force, a scale and influence in every dimension – political, economic and military – truly global: there is no substitute for American leadership. Our responsibility, even in the new era, is of cardinal and inescapable importance.

7. A Pentagon document, drawn up in February 1992, clarified that “our primary objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, which poses a threat in the order of the one previously posed by the Soviet Union. The new strategy requires that we work to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would be sufficient, if tightly controlled, to generate global power. This strategy will be adopted in all ‘critical US security regions, which include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, South-West Asia and the territory of the former Soviet Union.’ We also have important interests in Latin America, Oceania and Sub-Saharan Africa”.

8. “A key issue – the White House underlines in the National Security Strategy 1991– is how the role of America as the leader of the Alliance, and indeed our own alliances, will be influenced, especially in Europe, by the reduction of the Soviet threat. The differences between the allies will probably become more evident as the traditional security concern that brought them together at the beginning.” In other words, the European allies could make divergent choices from those of the United States, questioning the US leadership or even leaving NATO, now outdated by the new geopolitical situation. It was, therefore, of the utmost urgency for the United States to redefine not only the strategy but the role of NATO itself.

9. On November 7, 1991, the heads of state and governments of the 16 NATO countries, meeting in Rome in the Atlantic Council, launched “The new strategic concept of the Alliance”. Although on the one hand “the monolithic, massive threat that has been the main concern of the Alliance in its first forty years has disappeared,” – the document states – “the risks that remain for the Alliance’s security are multifaceted and multidirectional in nature.  The military dimension of our Alliance therefore remains an essential factor, but the new fact is that it will be more than ever at the service of a broad concept of security “. In this way, the Atlantic Alliance fundamentally redefined its role along the lines drawn up by the USA.

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Sections 3-16 of the 70 Years of NATO, From War to War, forthcoming on Global Research

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.

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The second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation is about to open in Beijing. It will take place from 25 ^th to 27^th April, 2019. The Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to deliver the keynote address.

It is expected to be an event of tremendous proportions and importance: leaders from 37 countries will participate, including Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and President Duterte of the Philippines. Beijing will host 5,000 guests from 150 countries, as well as 90 international organizations.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has already been reshaping the world, fundamentally. Previously at the mercy of the Western imperialist powers, their armies, propaganda apparatuses and brutal financial institutions; Africa, the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia have suddenly discovered that they have alternatives and choices. For various parts of the world, decades and centuries of stagnation and humiliation under colonialist and post-colonialist regimes have begun to come to an end. Entire nations have been freeing themselves, realizing their great hidden potential.

All this because of BRI; because of China as well as its close ally, Russia.

Entire huge railroad projects in East Africa as well as in the once devastated Laos (devastated by the insanely brutal Western carpet-bombing campaigns, which are still called a “Secret War”) are now connecting continents. Along the railway lines, schools are growing, and so are medical facilities, community learning centers and cultural institutions.

Africa – BRI. New China-built highway

The BRI is not only about the economy, not only about infrastructure and development, it also about the well-being of the people, about the culture, health and knowledge. It is aiming at connecting people of different races, life philosophies, and beliefs.

And the rulers in the West are horrified. Nothing outrages them more than the prospect of losing absolute control over the world. For them, it is not (and never was) about improving the lives of hundreds of millions of impoverished people. They had centuries of absolute power over the planet, and all they did was to enrich themselves, murdering and robbing in all corners of the globe. For them, it is about ‘winning or losing’, about maintaining its colonies and ‘client’ states; by all means, even by the most brutal ones.

For China, (through BRI), it is all about spreading wealth everywhere. The firm belief in Beijing was and is: If the world is doing well, China will prosper, too.

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And so, in Washington and London, and in so many other centers of Western might, thousands of ‘professionals’ are now employed and busy smearing China and its most ambitious international (and internationalist) projects. Smearing and spreading nihilism is an extremely well-paid job, and for as long as China is rising and the West declining, it appears to be a permanent one. There will be no deficit when it comes to funding all those anti-Chinese ‘academic reports’, fake analyses and articles. The more of them, the better; the more ridiculous they get, the better remunerated they are.

Take this one, for instance: “Grading China’s Belt and Road”.

With all those footnotes and ‘references’, it looks professional and academic. It can impress millions of China-phobes and China-bashers in Europe and North America. Suffering from complexes of superiority and “Yellow-Peril mentality”, they are searching for, and then welcoming all vicious attacks against Beijing and its initiatives.

Look closer, and it is ‘reports’ like this that are clearly nothing more than thinly disguised propaganda work ordered by those who are aiming at discrediting China and its internationalist efforts.

In its Executive Summary, the report states:

“Since its launch in 2013, what China calls “One Belt, One Road” has emerged as the corner- stone of Beijing’s economic statecraft. Under the umbrella of the Belt and Road, Beijing seeks to promote a more connected world brought together by a web of Chinese-funded physical and digital infrastructure. The infrastructure needs in Asia and beyond are significant, but the Belt and Road is more than just an economic initiative; it is a central tool for advancing China’s geo-political ambitions. Through the economic activities bundled under the Belt and Road, Beijing is pursuing a vision of the 21^stcentury defined by great power spheres of influence, state-directed economic interactions, and creeping authoritarianism.¹

As Beijing prepares to host the second Belt and Road Forum in late April 2019, countries that once welcomed Chinese investment have become increasingly vocal about the downsides. This report is intended to serve as a resource for governments, corporations, journalists, and civil society groups now re-evaluating the costs and benefits of Belt and Road projects…”

In brief, it is propaganda; anti-Chinese propaganda, anti-Communist (or call it ‘anti-central-planning- propaganda).

It is also a tool for all those who are ready to criticize China, defining its marvelous efforts as a ‘debt trap’, among various other derogatory terms.

A leading academic at the University of the Philippines (U.P.), Roland G. Simbulan, agreed to analyze the origin of the CNAS report for this essay:

“The April 2019 Report “Grading China’s Belt and Road” by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) seems to be one of the latest findings and studies of American conservative think tanks which are in fact aimed at discrediting China’s economic thrusts through China-financed infrastructure, land and sea transport, investments, etc. These are China’s answer to the U.S.’ global military build-up and encirclement of its fast rising rival superpower. China is trying to avoid the mistakes of the Western powers including the U.S. and the former USSR by not engaging in a tit for tat arms race. Instead, it is answering back with its Belt Road Initiative as well as other economic and market initiatives aimed at reinforcing China’s strengths while avoiding a direct attack on where the U.S. is strongest and has more advantage: the U.S. global military forces.

It is obvious from the backgrounds of the CNAS fellows who are authors of the report that they are all connected with the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. National Security Council. The American Enterprise Institute is a quasi-U.S. federal government think tank composed of recycled officials of the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of State. It is also obvious that they have consolidated the economic and political reports of all the U.S. intelligence community which are coordinated by the U.S. National Security Adviser.”

And obviously, CNAS is not hiding where it stands, ideologically. It quotes such right-wing warriors as the French President, Emmanuel Macron, the International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, the Minister of Energy in the defunct and discredited Ecuadorian government, Carlos Perez, and other unsavory figures.

Roland G. Simbulan continues:

“While the CNAS Report may indeed have identified some of China’s vulnerabilities in the management of its China-funded projects which can easily merit criticism, i.e., sovereignty eroding, non-transparent, unsustainable financial burdens, locally disengaged, geopolitically risky, environmentally unsustainable, and corruption-prone), let us remember that China’s BRI was only launched in 2013. The U.S. and its Western Allies, including the multilateral institutions that they have created to assure U.S. neoliberal control of national economies since 1945 have engaged in practicing these “challenges” and dangers that it accuses China of initiating through BRI projects “for China’s geopolitical ambitions.”

These may be valid as in the case of the 10 case studies identified by the CNAS Report. But it is too soon to make conclusions in such a short time from 2013-2018. For these are also practices that have long been inflicted by the U.S. Empire and its allies since the end of World War 2 to assure economic, political and military hegemony. Unintentionally, the seven (7) challenges or dangers of China’s BRI identified by the CNAS are really challenges that are continually being inflicted by the U.S. Empire and its Western allies on weaker and smaller countries. Precisely, many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America are turning towards alternative international institutions such as ALBA in Latin America and BRI BECAUSE of the onslaught that they have long experienced with the PAX AMERICANA i.e. the U.S. and its allies.

Can the CNAS show that their sponsors and patrons are doing better, or can do better? The best way for the U.S. to counter the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) is to show AND prove that they can offer a better deal with developing countries in need of assistance for their infrastructure and development projects.”

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Mr. Sidqy LP Suyitno, an Indonesian high government official and former State Finance and Monetary Analysis Director of the Ministry of National Development Planning, is also puzzled by some of the wording in the report. When asked about the BRI project to build the bullet train from the Indonesian capital Jakarta to its city of Bandung, he contradicted the report:

“Geopolitically Risky? It seems NOT to be. It seems more like making bilateral relations with Japan uncomfortable. The Japanese have been enjoying the benefits when it comes to relations with Indonesia, ever since Suharto’s dictatorship: the automotive industry is more like an oligopoly for Japanese cars in Indonesia. And what do we get back? We still don’t have our own car industry, our national car or our own national motorcycles production. Even though we have a very large “captive market”; in 2018, 1.1 million cars & 6.5 million motorcycles were sold in Indonesia.”

Apparently, what he is referring to, is that while Japanese car industry flooded Indonesia with its cars and badly polluting scooters, there were no benefits to the state or to the people of Indonesia. I can go much further and point out that according to my investigation, Japanese car industry corrupted the government officials in most of the Southeast Asian countries, “convincing them” not to build public transportation, instead choking both cities and the countryside with outdated models of private motor vehicles, consequently bankrupting citizens in the process.

In brief: Japan has managed to ruin Southeast Asian cities, preventing them from developing public transportation. And now should it be trusted in such places like Indonesia to develop a high-speed rail system? Indonesia, Laos and Thailand do not think they should trust Japan too much. They trust China much more. And the same goes for the Philippines. Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, when re-elected last year, stopped several high-profile projects with China, but now, it seems, has been discovering an appetite for cooperation with Beijing.

Laos – BRI project. China building high-speed train

But the report speaks (using unacademic language, suddenly) about how China poached the high speed train project from the Japanese.

Professor Mira Lubis, from Tanjungpura University in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia, stated for this essay, her hope that BRI could improve life and environment on her devastated island:

“From what I know about BRI, I believe that its efforts would be mutually beneficial for both Indonesia and PRC. In Southeast Asia, the focus of BRI will be what could be described as the Maritime Silk Road. Indonesia is an archipelago with over 17,000 islands. Since 2014, our government is aiming at transforming Indonesia into what it calls the ‘Global Maritime Axis’. It means, developing ports and shipping lanes among other vital projects. This would be in synergy with BRI; BRI could strengthen Indonesia as a maritime power.  

My island, Borneo, is ecologically damaged. I hope that it could directly benefit from the cooperation with China and its BRI. China is at the forefront of the struggle for ecological civilization, and I believe in its wisdom. I’m optimistic that BRI might help tobring sustainable development to Borneo.”

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The CNAS report is ‘all over the place’, selectively attacking BRI and China for its involvement in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South Pacific (Oceania).

In his essay “China’s road to a win-win ahead of BRI forum”published by the Asia Times, renowned Brazilian analyst Pepe Escobar wrote:

“Relentless reports that the New Silk Roads, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), are a perfidious neo-imperial debt trap set up by Yellow Peril 2.0 are vastly exaggerated. 

Beijing clinched a proverbial showering of BRI deals with 17 Arab nations, including Egypt, Lebanon and Oman. Not by accident, the forum this year was called Build the Belt and Road, Share Development and Prosperity. Up to 2018, 21 Arab nations had signed BRI memoranda of understanding.

These nations are not only BRI partners, but 12 of them also went for strategic partnerships with China…”

Little wonder why!

Say China or BRI in Africa, just pronounce those names, and most of the people will show great enthusiasm. Every, even the Western surveys, clearly indicate that all over the continent, people harbor extremely positive feelings forwards China.

In Kenya (where I used to live), I repeatedly heard those who were working on countless Chinese projects, repeat:

“This is the first time we are treated by the foreigners like human beings.”

Kenya – BRI. New government building in Nairobi

People in Europe and North America love to adopt ‘politically correct speech’, but words somehow do not translate into deeds. Chinese workers may sometimes be rough, but they treat Africans like brothers and sisters. They also try to compensate them as if they would be their own.

But the CNAS report only criticizes China’s involvement in Africa, while African voices are rarely allowed to penetrate the uniform and dogmatic Western mainstream media.

An influential Ugandan analyst and opposition figure, Arthur Tewungwa, wrote for this essay:

“The basic assumption of Africans is that they are stupid and ignorant of history, politics, and the global financial arrangement of the world. The scaremongering of Chinese global domination does not really wash on a continent that is still under a sustained attack from the very forces that led us into slavery, colonialism and its manifestation, neo-colonialism. Using the Ugandan opposition’s criticisms of the government’s (a staunch ally of the US and its regional sheriff) misuse and theft of Chinese aid while ignoring the fact that the same has been going on for the last 30 years with IMF and World Bank funds which the opposition has been criticizing, confirms that assumption.

Ugandans don’t view China as a dangerous hegemon; they are still too busy trying to extract themselves from the current relationship with hegemon that has had its boot on the country’s neck for the last 300 years. The opposition criticism was aimed at the conduct of America’s principal, not the misrepresented intentions of China. The IMF and World Bank have not covered themselves in glory in Africa and ignoring that fact just plays more into China’s hands.” 

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In the South Pacific (Oceania) where I also spent several years of my life (writing a book about the plight of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia), CNAS dishonestly criticizes the BRI project in Vanuatu.

Let me be brutally frank here: The West has almost ruined the entire Oceania by its unbridled consumption, by neo-colonialist policies; from the Solomon Islands to the Marshall Islands. Global warming has caused the near disappearance of such wonderful countries like Kiribati, Marshall Island and Tuvalu.

What has the West done to save them? Nothing! Just dumping junk food on Samoa and Tonga, on the Federated States of Micronesia, or on the Marshall Islands (RMI).

China has patiently and full-heartedly been trying to help: by planting mangroves, building anti-tsunami walls, elevating government offices, schools and medical posts up on stilts. It has built stadiums in order to improve the health of the desperately obese local population (on some islands, around 90% of the population are suffering from diabetes).

And what has the West done, after observing the great success of China? It went to Taiwan, and as the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the RMI, Tony de Brum explained to me, began ‘encouraging Taipei’ to bribe local governments, so they would recognize Taiwan as an independent country; something that even the West has not done. As a result, predictably, Beijing was forced to break diplomatic relations and to withdrow its help. The result: Taiwan has done nothing for Oceania. Only the ordinary people in South Pacific have become the victims.

Those South Pacific countries that ‘stayed with China’ are doing incomparably better. Why don’t we hear about all this, from the West-sponsored reports? Why do we only read dirt, as well as nihilist speculation? Why not facts? Why not the truth, that it is the West that is destroying the world, and has been for decades and centuries?

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BRI is not perfect, yet, but on the global scale, it is the best that humanity has right now. And it has been improving, month after month.

Ugandans had 300 years of horrors of ‘Western democracy’ and ‘freedom’. Latin Americans have been beaten into submission for over 500 years.

Kenya – BRI. New moder train terminal in Nairobi

In Washington, London and Paris, they love to say: “we are all the same”. Such ‘logic’ washes out their crimes. It means: “everyone is as greedy and brutal as we are”. But no, we are not the same! Cultures are different, on all corners of the globe. Some countries are expansionist, aggressive and obsessed with self-righteousness as well as complexes of superiority. Some are not. China is not. It never was. It never will be. If attacked or antagonized, it defends itself; and if threatened in the future, it will defend itself again. But it does not build its wealth on plunder, and on the corpses of the others, as the West has been doing for long centuries.

BRI is the exact contrast to the Western colonialism and imperialism. I say it not because I am defending some theory on these pages, but because I have seen the Chinese ‘New Silk Road’ in action, in places where I have lived and worked: Asia, the Middle East, Oceania, Latin America and Africa. In places where almost no one dares or cares to go: except for those few tough and ‘insane’ individuals like myself, and for the Chinese internationalists! I know such places intimately. Places where local people are almost never given an opportunity to speak; they never appear on the pages of the Western mass media, or on television screens, or in reports such as the one published by CNAS.

Until recently, their voices and lives mattered nothing. Now they do. They matter a lot.

These people exist; these people are alive; they want to breath, to live and to dream. I swear they do. And for them, especially for them, now exists the BRI!

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Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Four of his latest books are China and Ecological Civilizationwith John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

All images in this article are from the author; featured image: Laos – BRI. Bridge over Mekong River for high-speed train

President Putin’s decree simplifying the granting of Russian citizenship to the people of Donbass won’t result in the region’s unification with Russia but is one of several tactics designed to put pressure on Ukraine’s new president to peacefully implement the Minsk Accords.

A Proactive Infowar With Substance

The whole world is talking about President Putin’s recent decree simplifying the granting of Russian citizenship to the people of Donbass, which both the Mainstream and Alt-Medias are convinced for different reasons will result in the region’s inevitable unification with Russia. That’s probably not in the cards, though, since it’s more likely that this is but one of several tactics designed to put pressure on Ukraine’s new president to peacefully implement the Minsk Accords, which has always been Moscow’s main goal since their signing. President-elect Zelensky promised to “launch a very powerful information war to end the war in Donbass”, but it looks like President Putin just beat him to it by making a major soft power move that now has the whole world talking, to say nothing of reinforcing Moscow’s years-long victory for the hearts and minds of the region’s people.

Donbass ≠ Abkhazia & South Ossetia

Even so, observers shouldn’t over-exaggerate the impact of this decision despite it admittedly having very similar optics to the inter-war situations in Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia prior to Russia’s recognition of them as independent countries after its 2008 peacemaking operations there. Actually, that’s entirely the whole point — to make the people of Donbass, the Ukrainian government, and the international community expect this eventuality — because Russia can then “surprise” the world by not doing what everyone anticipates it’s about to do (recognize Donbass as an independent country possibly prior to its de-facto integration into Russia along the lines of the South Ossetian model) and then make a big deal out of its “gesture of peace” as a superficial quid-pro-quo “concession” in exchange for post-Poroshenko Ukraine’s peaceful implementation of the Minsk Accords.

Playing “Hard To Get”

This isn’t mere speculation either since Reuters reported last week that one of Russia’s political allies in Ukraine and a close friend of Vladimir Putin’s, Viktor Medvedchuk, was sending strong signals that a possible deal could be in the works whereby Russia would facilitate Donbass’ political reintegration into Ukraine if Kiev enters into talks with Moscow and takes tangible steps to restore their lost strategic partnership. Evidently, Russia wants Ukraine to come to it — or rather, Putin wants Zelensky to come to him — instead of the reverse, which explains why Moscow is playing “hard to get” and putting on a very tough front with moves such as the recent citizenship decree. Other pressure tactics include Prime Minister Medvedev announcing that Russia will ban crude oil, petroleum, and coal exports to Ukraine beginning in June and President Putin refusing to congratulate his Ukraine counterpart on his landslide victory.

An Anti-Fascist Exit Strategy For “Replacement Migration”

It might therefore look like the Kremlin’s patience has all but run out with Kiev and that it’s finally preparing to de-facto integrate Donbass into Russia, but appearances can be very misleading sometimes, especially when it comes to Russia. While it’s true that the citizenship decree could grant Russia the right to conventionally intervene in Ukraine in defense of its nationals, it’s much more likely that this will just result in many of Donbass’ people migrating from their war-torn region to Russia in search of a better life, something that they’d be more inclined to do in the event that Moscow actively facilitates Donbass’ reintegration into Ukraine per a possibly forthcoming deal between Presidents Putin and Zelensky. That would satisfy Russia’s humanitarian interests by giving the locals the chance to flee if they fear an impending fascist takeover while simultaneously functioning as civilizationally similar “replacement migration” for the host state’s dwindling population.

Breadcrumbs And Loafs

Furthermore, the possible Russian-backed reintegration of Donbass into Ukraine could also set the basis for the much-sought-after “New Detente” between Moscow and Washington whereby the East Ukrainian region becomes just one of several pieces on the “19th-Centuy Great Power Chessboard” that could be “traded” as part of a much larger deal between these two Great Powers in the New Cold War. For instance, “Putinyahu’s Rusrael” already created the on-the-ground conditions that made Trump’s recognition of “Israel’s” Golan Heights annexation possible, the same as Moscow’s recognition of “North Macedonia” goes along with the West’s plan for a “New Balkans“. In other words, President Putin is giving the people of Donbass breadcrumbs such as access to measly Russian pensions of approximately $200 a month and the right to vote in elections while simultaneously trading full geopolitical loafs with Trump.

Concluding Thoughts

Nobody should get their hopes up about Donbass uniting with Russia in the territorial sense after President Putin’s simplified citizenship decree because that much-publicized move is more about a tactical retreat than a strategic expansion. Instead of being used to enlarge Russia’s borders like both its supporters and detractors alike are anticipating, it’s actually much more likely to be utilized as an exit strategy for the Donbass people following their region’s Kremlin-facilitated reintegration with Kiev as part of a larger deal between the two fraternal Slavic Orthodox people and as the basis for a much grander “New Detente” between Moscow and Washington. President Putin simply wants his Ukrainian counterpart to come to him first in this “game of chicken” instead of the reverse, so his government is doing all that it came to bring him to the table on their own terms. Had Russia really wanted to integrate Donbass, it would have done so half a decade ago.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

An historic conference entitled “Freedom for the Unjustly Incarcerated” was held on April 20 in the Midtown District of Detroit when MOVE organizer Pam Africa and the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor spoke extensively on the plight of political prisoners and the criminal industrial complex in the United States.

The event took place at the Cass Commons located in the First Unitarian Universalist Church which serves as a center for popular education and activism in the city.

Pam Africa arrived in Detroit from Philadelphia during the early morning hours of April 19 along with Razakhan Wali of Judicial Research, Inc., an organization which provides assistance to incarcerated people throughout the country. During the course of the day both veteran organizers met with local activists working on issues involving the status of juvenile lifers in Michigan, environmental justice, police brutality, housing foreclosures, gentrification and the overall struggle against institutional racism and economic exploitation.

Image on the right: Kimberly A. Woodson speaking at the Freedom for the Unjustly Incarcerated Conference in Detroit on April 20, 2019 

These activists who met with Africa and Wali included: Jeanetta Lewis of the Detroit People’s Task Force; Darryl Jordan of the Cass Commons; Kimberly A. Woodson of Redeeming Kimberly; Blair Anderson, former Black Panther Party member in Illinois; Derek Grigsby, Mike Shane and Debra Simmons, all of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition, co-sponsors of the events over the weekend.

The visit by the two guests from Philadelphia came on the heels of a major legal decision which has paved the way for an appeal hearing on the initial conviction of former Black Panther Party leader in Philadelphia, Mumia Abu-Jamal. The revolutionary writer and activist has been incarcerated in Pennsylvania since December 1981. Abu-Jamal was wrongfully convicted in the death of a white police officer in Philadelphia and was sentenced to death. He spent over 25 years on death row and was eventually given life without the possibility of parole in the aftermath of a major international campaign in his defense.

Prosecutors in Philadelphia had attempted to block the decision to grant Abu-Jamal an appeal complicating the process which could have resulted in further unnecessary legal wrangling, stalling the potential release of Mumia, an award-winning journalist, radio commentator and supporter of the MOVE organization. Pam Africa has served as a principal organizer in the case since the 1980s, when the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal was formed.

Nonetheless, another global campaign was waged to demand that the prosecutors withdraw their motion to halt the appeal. This occurred the same week in which Africa and Wali arrived in Detroit adding to the momentum in the broader struggle to free Mumia and all political prisoners being held throughout the country.

The U.S. has the highest per capita imprisoned population in the world which is disproportionately African American and Latinx. Almost exclusively composed of the nationally oppressed, working class and the impoverished, the more than two million prison population has become a major source of profit and social containment of the most marginalized sectors of the country.

Conference Demands Freedom for Political Prisoners

Pam Africa began the program on April 20 giving a chronological history of the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the movement to save his life. There were two death warrants signed against Abu-Jamal in 1995 and 1999. It would take a militant campaign spanning numerous continents to have the executions stayed by the Philadelphia courts.

As a result of similar pressure and legal actions, Mumia was removed from death row finally in 2011. He was sentenced to life without parole which is unacceptable to his supporters. Abu-Jamal has never admitted guilt in the death of police officer Daniel Faulkner. The Fraternal Order of the Police (FOP) and other law-enforcement groups has sought to have him executed and detained in prison for life.

Africa noted that it was the power of the people which has kept Mumia alive. In recent years Abu-Jamal was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, a liver ailment which could be fatal. A cure for the disease is available with an over 90 percent rate of effectiveness. Prison officials had refused to treat Mumia necessitating his supporters to file legal actions which won him the right to medical care along with many other inmates in the Pennsylvania penal system.

Image below: Rev. Edward Pinkney speaking at the Freedom for the Unjustly Incarcerated Conference in Detroit on April 20, 2019

Other speakers included Rev. Edward Pinkney of Berrien County, located in the southwest region of the state of Michigan. Pinkney, a former political prisoner, was railroaded through the courts after being accused of changing five dates on recall petitions aimed at removing the mayor of Benton Harbor. Hundreds had signed the petitions due to the perception that the then mayor was compliant with the policies of Whirlpool Corporation based in the city.

Pinkney was sentenced to 2.5 to 10 years in the state prison system. After being incarcerated he was subjected to harassment by correction officers and officials. Nationwide support in his defense was able to lift the harassment and win his release after 30 months in detention.

Later on May 1, 2018, the Michigan Supreme Court in a unanimous decision acquitted Pinkney of all charges in the case, saying that there was no law in existence under which he was convicted in late 2014. At present Pinkney is assisting the people of Benton Harbor, an overwhelming African American municipality just emerging from emergency management.

The Need to Free Juvenile Lifers

A second panel during the conference was chaired by Elena Herrada, former member of the Detroit Board of Education and a radio host on 910 am in Detroit. Herrada interviewed Pam Africa just one week prior to her visit to the city.

Herrada has highlighted the injustices imposed upon those convicted of serious crimes in their juvenile years. Her weekly radio program often features prisoners and advocates for the wrongly convicted.

Several recently-released juvenile lifers addressed the conference as well. Kimberly A. Woodson spent 29 years in prison for a crime she did not commit. Since being released in 2017 she has married and given birth to a baby. Woodson is seeking resources to assist returning inmates who have spent many years behind bars.

Efren Paredes, Jr., another juvenile lifer still incarcerated for a conviction issued when he was a teenager, called into the conference from state prison. He is working tirelessly to bring about the enactment of a U.S. Supreme Court decision mandating the resentencing of those convicted of serious crimes as juveniles.

Since the release of Jose Burgos, another former juvenile lifer without parole, he has been recounting the circumstances under which he was imprisoned and spent over two decades in correctional institutions. He spoke to the audience about the years-long process of gaining his freedom just several months ago.

Jeanetta Lewis of the Detroit People’s Task Force (DPTF) read a moving essay about efforts to win the release of her son incarcerated in Michigan. Debra Simmons of Moratorium NOW! Coalition spoke on the problems with the Highland Park Police Department in hiring and promoting officers implicated in illegal and unethical practices.

Image on the right: Siwato-Salema Ra speaks at the Freedom for the Unjustly Incarcerated Conference in Detroit on April 20, 2019

Another former prisoner, who is out of bond pending appeal, Siwato-Salema Ra, convicted in 2017 on a weapons charge even though she held a permit to carry a concealed weapon, thanked members of the audience for the work done to win her release while she awaits another trial.  Siwato gave birth while shackled in a state prison for women. Her case gained widespread support throughout the state.

Hush House Community Museum and Leadership Training Institute owners Charles and Sandra Simmons discussed the situation of their son in the state of California who is serving an extended sentence in prison. The son called into the conference and reported on the conditions prevailing in the correctional facilities in California.

Mandates from the Conference

Participants agreed to work harder for the release of all political prisoners and juvenile lifers. A demonstration outside the Highland Park police headquarters on May 2 was endorsed by the gathering.

Moreover, the general theme was to link the struggle of the people fighting against injustice on the outside with those on the inside. Prisons are merely another form of exploitation and oppression designed to enhance the authority and profit-making capacity of the ruling class and will inevitably have to be abolished in the course of the transformation process in the U.S.

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

All images in this article are from the author; featured image: Pam Africa Speaks in Detroit at the Freedom for the Unjustly Incarcerated Conference, April 20, 2019

We told the State Department that if they enter the Venezuelan Embassy, they are violating international law, and if they arrest members of the Collective for trespass or unlawful entry, these will be unlawful arrests. Members of the Collective are in the embassy with the permission of the elected government of Venezuela.

In two messages to the State Department today, the Collective explained that we are not violating the law and if there are unlawful arrests we will pursue legal action to hold people responsible for ordering arrests or making arrests.

We made this clear in writing to the State Department even before April 24, but we reiterated this today after the Secret Service came to the embassy and photographed the outside building to prepare plans to illegally enter the building and make unlawful arrests.

Tonight, when the Collective held an amazing forum with John Kiriakou, a former CIA official who spoke about an “Insiders View of US Regime Change,” outside there were Secret Service and DC police. This act of intimidation included not only the threat of arrest but also intimidated journalists, some of whom were asked for photo identification and press information.

During this forum, both Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, our lawyer from the Partnership for Civil Justice, and I publicly made the points below so there was a video record of our concerns with the threats from the State Department police and the illegality of any arrests of Collective members.

We were not intimidated because members of the Collective are not breaking ANY laws.

In my second message to the State Department, I wrote in the Subject Line: “Any arrest in the Venezuelan embassy would be unlawful” and wrote:

The State Department is on public notice that it will be violating the law if it enters the embassy. Below are messages I sent to the State Department.