Global Research

Your Geopolitical Quiz for the Day:

Two countries are embroiled in a ferocious rivalry. One country’s meteoric growth has put it on a path to become the world’s biggest economic superpower while the other country appears to be slipping into irreversible decline. Which country will lead the world into the future?

Country A builds factories and plants, it employees zillions of people who manufacture things, it launches massive infrastructure programs, paves millions of miles of highways and roads, opens new sea lanes, vastly expands its high-speed rail network, and pumps profits back into productive operations that turbo-charge its economy and bolster its stature among the nations of the world.

Country B has the finest military in the world, it has more than 800 bases scattered across the planet, and spends more on weapons systems and war-making than all the other nations combined. Country B has gutted its industrial core, hollowed out its factory base, allowed its vital infrastructure to crumble, outsourced millions of jobs, off-shored thousands of businesses, plunged the center of the country into permanent recession, delivered control of its economy to the Central Bank, and recycled 96 percent of its corporate and financial profits into a stock buyback scam that sucks critical capital out of the economy and into the pockets of corrupt Wall Street plutocrats whose voracious greed is pushing the world towards another catastrophic meltdown.

Which of these two countries is going to lead the world into the future? Which of these two countries offers a path to security and prosperity that doesn’t involve black sites, extraordinary rendition, extrajudicial assassinations, color-coded revolutions, waterboarding, strategic disinformation, false-flag provocations, regime change and perennial war?

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Tectonic Shift in the Geopolitical Balance of Power

Over the weekend, more than 5,000 delegates from across the world met in Beijing for The Second Belt and Road Forum For International Cooperation. The conference provided an opportunity for public and private investors to learn more about Xi Jinping’s “signature infrastructure project” that is reshaping trade relations across Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

According to journalist Pepe Escobar,   “The BRI is now supported by no less than 126 states and territories, plus a host of international organizations” and will involve “six major connectivity corridors spanning Eurasia.” The massive development project is “one of the largest infrastructure and investment projects in history, ….including 65% of the world’s population and 40% of the global gross domestic product as of 2017.” (Wikipedia) The improvements to road, rail and sea routes will vastly increase connectivity, lower shipping costs, boost productivity, and enhance widespread prosperity. The BRI is China’s attempt to replace the crumbling post-WW2 “liberal” order with a system that respects the rights of sovereign nations, rejects unilateralism, and relies on market-based principles to effect a more equitable distribution of wealth. The Belt and Road Initiative is China’s blueprint for a New World Order. It is the face of 21st century capitalism.

The prestigious event in Beijing was barely covered by the western media which sees the project as a looming threat to US plans to pivot to Asia and become the dominant player in the most prosperous and populous region in the world. Growing international support for the Chinese roadmap suggests that Washington’s hegemonic ambitions are likely to be short-circuited by an aggressive development agenda that eclipses anything the US is currently doing or plans to do in the foreseeable future.

The Chinese plan will funnel trillions of dollars into state of the art transportation projects that draw the continents closer together in a webbing of high-speed rail and energy pipelines (Russia). Far-flung locations in Central Asia will be modernized while standards of living will steadily rise. By creating an integrated economic space, in which low tariffs and the free flow of capital help to promote investment, the BRI initiative will produce the world’s biggest free trade zone, a common market in which business is transacted in Chinese or EU currency. There will be no need to trade in USD’s despite the dollar’s historic role as the world’s reserve currency. The shift in currencies will inevitably increase the flow of dollars back to the United States increasing the already-ginormous $22 trillion dollar National Debt while precipitating an excruciating period of adjustment.

Chinese and Russian leaders are taking steps to “harmonize” their two economic initiatives, the Belt and Road and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). This will be a challenging task as the expansion of infrastructure implies compatibility between leaders, mutual security guarantees, new rules and regulations for the common economic space, and supranational political structures to oversee trade, tariffs, foreign investment and immigration. Despite the hurtles, both Putin and Xi appear to be fully committed to their vision of economic integration which they see as based on the “unconditional adherence to the primacy of national sovereignty and the central role of the United Nations.”

It comes at no surprise that US powerbrokers see Putin’s plan as a significant threat to their regional ambitions, in fact, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted as much in 2012 when she said, “It’s going to be called a customs union, it will be called the Eurasian Union and all of that, but let’s make no mistake about it. We know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.” Washington opposes any free trade project in which it is excluded or cannot control. Both the EEU and the BRI fall into that category.

The United States continues to demonize countries that simply want to use the market to improve the lives of their people and increase their prospects for prosperity. Washington’s hostile approach is both misguided and counterproductive. Competition should be seen as a way to improve productivity and lower costs, not as a threat to over-bloated, inefficient industries that have outlived their usefulness. Here’s an excerpt from an article that Putin wrote in 2011. It helps to show that Putin is not the scheming tyrant he is made out to be in the western media, but a free market capitalist who enthusiastically supports globalization:

“For the first time in the history of humanity, the world is becoming truly global, in both politics and economics. A central part of this globalization is the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region as compared to the EuroAtlantic world in the global economy. Asia’s rise is lifting with it the economies of countries outside Asia that have managed to latch onto the “Asian economic engine”….The US has also effectively hitched itself to this “engine”, creating an economic and financial network with China and other countries in the region…

The “supercontinent” of Eurasia is home to two-thirds of the world’s population and produces over 60 percent of its economic output. Because of the dramatic opening of China and the former Soviet Union to the world, almost all the countries in Eurasia are becoming more economically, politically, and culturally interdependent. …

There is huge potential for development in infrastructure, in spite of some formidable bottlenecks. …A unified and homogeneous common power market stretching from Lisbon to Hanoi via Vladivostok is not necessary, because electric power markets do not function in that way. But the creation of infrastructure that could support a number of regional and sub-regional common markets would do much for the economic development of Greater Eurasia.” (Russian newspaper, Izvestia, 2011)

Keep in mind, the article was written back in 2011 long before Xi had even conjured up his grand pan-Asia infrastructure scheme. Putin was already a committed capitalist looking for ways to put the Soviet era behind him and skillfully use the markets to build his nation’s power and prosperity. Regrettably, he has been blocked at every turn. Washington does not want others to effectively use the markets. Washington wants to threaten, bully, sanction and harass its competitors so that outcomes can be controlled and more of the world’s wealth can be skimmed off the top by the noncompetitive, monopolistic corporate behemoths that diktat foreign policy to their political underlings (in congress and the White House) and who see rivals as blood enemies that must be ground into dust.

Is it any wonder why Russia and China have emerged as Washington’s biggest enemies? It has nothing to do with the fictitious claims of election meddling or so-called “hostile behavior” in the South China Sea. That’s nonsense. Washington is terrified that the Russo-Chinese economic integration plan will replace the US-dominated “liberal” world order, that cutting edge infrastructure will create an Asia-Europe super-continent that no longer trades in dollars or recirculates profits into US debt instruments. They are afraid that an expansive free trade zone that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok will inevitably lead to new institutions for lending, oversight and governance. They are afraid that a revamped 21st century capitalism will result in more ferocious competition for their clunker corporations, less opportunity for unilateralism and meddling, and a rules-based system where the playing field is painstakingly kept level. That’s what scares Washington.

The Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union represent the changing of the guard. The US-backed ‘neoliberal’ model of globalisation is being rejected everywhere, from the streets of Paris, to Brexit, to the rise of right wings groups across Europe, to the unexpected election of Donald Trump in 2016. The Russo-Chinese model is built on a more solid, and less extractive, foundation. This new vision anticipates an interconnected multipolar world where the rules governing commerce are decided by the participants, where the rights of every state are respected equally, and where the new guarantors for regional security scrupulously keep the peace. It is this vision of ‘revitalized capitalism’ that Washington sees as its mortal enemy.

This article was first published on the UNZ Review

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Featured image is from The Unz Review

In the aftermath of another tragic shooting at another synagogue, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon has again called for the criminalization of antisemitic speech.

I have previously written about such international efforts to criminalize speech, including a proposal supported by the Obama Administration. The implications of such laws for free speech are easy to dismiss amidst the sorrow of another attack. However, the free speech community must remain firm that free speech is not the cause of hate, it is solution to hate.

Danon declared

“The time for talking and having a conversation is over. What Israel and the Jewish community around the world demand is action – and now.”

Over the course of the last 50 years, the French, English and Germans have waged an open war on free speech by criminalizing speech deemed insulting, harassing or intimidating. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, (here and here and here and here and here and here and here) and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). There are encroachments appearing in the United States, particularly on college campuses. Notably, the media celebrated the speech of French President Emmanuel Macron before Congress where he called on the United States to follow the model of Europe on hate speech.

Danon argues that “Until it becomes criminal, this bigotry will persist; it will fester. It is only a matter of time until it erupts again in violence and bloodshed.”

The cause-and-effect relationship between speech and violence is increasingly claimed by those who want to criminalize speech. The effort of Muslim countries to create an international blasphemy law is an example of how new calls for censorship and regulation of speech is being repackaged. We have seen how these laws create insatiable appetites for greater and greater speech criminalization. These calls are the strongest after violent attacks when defending free speech can be easily misconstrued as a lack of sympathy or concern for the victims of hate. Politicians often seek responses to tragedies and limiting rights like speech can be remarkably easy. After all, free speech is an abstraction when an attack is a real and traumatic fact.

I readily admit to following the classic liberal view of free speech. The solution to bad speech — even hateful speech — to more speech. It is free speech that allows people of conscience to contest the flawed and hateful ideas of bigots. Germany has proven the fallacy of changing minds through threatened prosecution.  While I am certainly sympathetic to the Germans in seeking to end the scourge of fascism, I have long been a critic of the German laws prohibiting certain symbols and phrases, I view it as not just a violation of free speech but a futile effort to stamp but extremism by barring certain symbols. Instead, extremists have rallied around an underground culture and embraced symbols that closely resemble those banned by the government. I fail to see how arresting a man for a Hitler ringtone is achieving a meaningful level of deterrence, even if you ignore the free speech implications.

Ambassador Danon is right that we must all fight the scourge of antisemitism and recognize its rise around the world. The disagreement is only with the means used to achieve that worthy end. Criminalizing speech has never produced any results other than fostering even greater speech criminalization.

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A friend of ours who works in public relations told us once that the only group he really worries about are the people who shop at Whole Foods. And by this, we imagine he meant people who care about the food they eat and the world around them, who read labels, pay attention to science, and don’t hesitate to do whatever is needed to protect their families from harm.

The instinct to protect is so basic to being a human being that we take it for granted. We grab the hands of small children to cross the street. We dress them in warm clothes to play in the snow. We slather them with sun block or make them wear shirts at the beach. We feed them healthy food.

And while it may be possible to pay a politician enough money to vote a certain way on an issue, you can’t pay a parent enough money to allow you to expose his or her child to something harmful. That’s just human nature.

So why would parents be so complacent about the construction of up to a million new wireless antennas near homes and apartments in residential areas across the country – antennas that emit radio-frequency microwave radiation 24/7, paving the way for the next generation of wireless technology known as “5G”?

It’s not a lack of science. Hundreds, if not thousands, of published, peer-reviewed scientific studies have demonstrated how long-term, low-level exposures to this type of wireless radiation can eventually overwhelm the body’s biological, chemical and electrical systems, creating an opportunity for serious medical issues ranging from neurological problems and cognitive deficits to cancer. Children are more vulnerable to these effects, as their physiology is still developing.

Back in the 1960s, the U.S. and Russia were both conducting extensive experiments on the health impacts of wireless radiation on military personnel, and what they found (and documented) was worrisome. These studies, some classified until just recently, were among the first to show neurological and cognitive harm from microwave exposure levels far below current government standards.

A recent 10-year, $30-million-dollar study by the National Toxicology Program of our National Institutes of Health corroborated what numerous other studies have shown: clear evidence that long-term exposure to wireless radiation increases the risk of several cancers, particularly malignancies of the heart, brain and adrenal gland.

A 2018 study by the Ramazzini Institute in Italy found that lab animals exposed to the radiation emitted by distant cell towers had a greater chance of developing heart tumors than those not exposed. This study, funded in part by the U. S. government, was the first large-scale study to show clear evidence of cancer risk from far-field exposures.

Given the science, you would expect that the sight of wireless companies installing powerful new antennas in close proximity to homes and apartments would elicit cries of protest from parents. But curiously, they have been silent.

Until now.

On May 15th, a national coalition of more than 90 local organizations across the country will participate in simultaneous rallies in front of retail wireless establishments, demanding that wireless companies stop their deployment of so-called “small cell” wireless antennas in residential areas until their technology can be proven safe.

The groups are counting on public opinion to do what the government has so far been unable or unwilling to do. Current government guidelines for exposure to wireless radiation are more than 20 years old, and pertain only to thermal exposures (How close do you need to get to an antenna before it burns your skin?) and nothing at all to do with biological impacts, which have been the subject of hundreds of recent studies showing harm. Despite repeated requests from consumers, the medical research community and the General Accounting Office, the FCC has declined to update its guidelines.

Local officials have been stymied in their efforts to slow the deployment and protect their citizens; recent rulings by the FCC, which have the force of law, essentially prevent any local municipality from stopping the deployment of wireless antennas, even when local communities can prove there is no gap in coverage and no need for them.

Senator Richard Blumenthal has been outspoken in his criticism of wireless companies and the FCC for permitting the deployment of small cells without proof of safety, and several members of the House of Representatives have introduced legislation to un-do the recent rulings of the FCC and restore authority to local officials. But their efforts are not receiving widespread support, and given the speed with which legislation moves in Washington, it is highly unlikely that any action by the Federal government will stop the deployment in time.

Which leaves us with public opinion, and those people who truly care about the world we live in and the world our kids will inherit. Most parents feel a natural instinct to protect their children, and this May 15th, they have a unique opportunity to demonstrate their concern. Please join us.

For more information about the 5G National Day of Action, please visit 5GCrisis.com.

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Who won, who lost, was it Remain, Leave, blah, blah.  Let’s not beat about the bush here and say what this really means and not the garbage that the mainstream media would have you believe.

Change UK changed nothing at all and the electorate ignored them.

The Tories were hammered. Let’s not forget that in the 23 months since the last general election 47 ministers have resigned or been sacked from Theresa May’s government. That’s just about two a month.

Labour, against a backdrop of rising hatred to everything that the Tories stand for – and for not taking the stand of their own party members on Brexit, were embarrassingly given a public beating by their own. Any party looking to gain power would need to make solid gains. The did the opposite.

The Lib Dems and Greens did really well as a protest vote, but don’t have what it takes to gain enough to lead anything.

The Independents that stood were the biggest winners but will translate into nothing at all at a general election.

The Tory state media has attempted to portray the results as a crisis for Labour but haven’t actually worked out why. It is, but nothing compared to the drubbing the Tories themselves got. The last time something like this happened, they were thrown out of power for well over a decade and even then had to form a coalition to get back into No 10. Their performance since has been a national disaster.

As for Labour, the political editor of TalkRadio quite rightly points out that – “Jeremy Corbyn is set to have lost more than 400 Labour councillors in four years. That may make him the worst performing leader of the opposition at local elections for 40 years.” Anyone who thinks Labour didn’t so do bad – wake up.

So what we can surmise from all that if interpreted into a general election?  Not much. If anything, just that voters were once again faced with the least worst of utterly awful. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn do not have what it takes to be future leaders of Britain.

Whilst I have said since well before Theresa May lost her majority in a snap election and shoe-horned herself in by aligning with thugs from Northern Ireland, that she would be a dictator listening to no-one – I have also said that Jeremy Corbyn would do anything to seize power, irrespective of the consequences to the nation and not listen to the party membership. Sadly, I was right on both occasions.

Labour, who stand the best chance of being elected in a future general election, will take these results as some sort of mandate for a Brexit deal – a deal they can’t be seen to be agreeing in negotiations with the Tories and couldn’t solve even if they were in power. They are ignoring loyal Remainers in their party and taking them completely for granted whilst hunting down some disaffected Leave voters from the Tories. That’s it. Bugger the nation. Literally.

Labour should take notice of the fact that their own support in poll after poll does not give them a commanding lead and the local elections do not confirm anything else.

As for Brexit – the local elections mean nothing. Both Tory and Labour have confirmed that their awful results mean only that Brexit must be done – or not. But not something in no-mans-land as it is.

But how about taking another view of all of this political instability.

Brexit – was an unexpected result. Theresa May’s snap election was unexpected. Politicians on both sides of the house agreed to trigger Article 50 without knowing the first thing of its consequences. Strong and stable is dead. Taking back control is dead. All the slogans from the left/right, remain/leave are dead.

Is something else not emerging? That of rising national dissent.

Are the people not looking at the events that have disturbingly ‘taken control’ of their lives, stolen their ‘stability’ in the few short years of this century.

It started with Iraq – an international disaster we have all had to endure. The attack of Libya and Syria then added to the collapse of those nations and caused a mass migration movement that destabilised the European Union that was seized upon by a MSM hellbent on spewing out guttural racist claptrap – also known as propaganda.

Inequality, homelessness, working families and child poverty, the crisis of everything – from the health service to military service – it’s all a shambles. We’ve had to endure cover-ups from paedophiles at the highest in public life to illegal wars and more. The state is spying, hacking and tracking all of us. Bankers bonuses on the one hand and austerity-driven nutritional famine on the other. From bad credit to universal credit.

The social contract between nation and state has been broken. Trust between them has all but vanished as it has with the very institutions originally designed to protect us from this anarchy by the rich and powerful.

Even the political correspondent of Sky News agrees.

“The conduct of the prime minister and her ministers imperil (parliament) its  long-term vitality, undermine its authority and threaten to unstitch the seams between people and parliament.”

Have we not had enough of the political class that has discarded social justice. Human rights – fought for by our predecessors will soon become maybe’s. Looking at the arrest of recent non-violent protestors around the climate crisis, fracking or Assange for instance – clearly demonstrates that our civil liberty is being dismantled right before our eyes. Look at the banker’s non-stop crimes without punishment and then the arrests and imprisonment of starving beggars on high streets and the whole concept of equality before the law becomes nothing more than a political sound-bite to protect those above it.

What does all this mean? It means to everyone else that British politics is not fit for purpose. The state cannot work out what it is or what it stands for. It knows it wants to protect before all things its power, influence and wealth and other than the latter, it can’t even achieve its most self-important goals any more.

This political class have not bothered to attempt to protect this nation from the malicious threats of the 21st century such as unchecked corporate power and its insidious lobbying. They’ve allowed our own surveillance agency to do as they please, allowed foreign threats from unaccountable agencies including America’s NSA, Israel, China, Russia and so on. It has failed to concentrate on hackers, to protect our fundamental right to privacy and doing the opposite by forcing upon us all secret national ID cards via biometrics, illegal facial recognition systems and the like. It has failed to protect us from terrorism and even encouraged it with the rise of the far-right, now a bigger threat than extremists who traditionally will stop at nothing to kill us and our way of life for their own warped ideologies.

Extinction Rebellion has taught us something. Take action before this political class – the establishment, completely destroys what is left of Great Britain.

The rise of the Independents at the local elections – a great result for a bunch of totally unconnected individuals with no party backing or anything like the funding of their competitors says a lot – something the ever-shrinking mainstream media have again rejected as a consideration.

The group now called ‘None-Of-The-Above’ is a clear sign that the political ecosystem that has been utterly abused by all those walking the corridors of power is now at risk of imminent implosion.

What we have left is that neither main party seems able to cobble something remotely like a deal acceptable enough for either them or the electorate when it comes to something like Brexit. You cannot imagine the dire consequences if this lot were facing the challenges of 1939.

The reality is this. Both political parties have been punished by A) those who voted to Remain and blamed them for even offering it in the first place and B) by those who voted to Leave and then not doing so.

About 30 per cent of party loyalty on either side is embedded – and that is not as big as you imagine. They would vote for their tribe irrespective of the consequences – but that leaves a significant force in the middle who have just pushed their heads up above the parapet. Neither Tory nor Labour have listened or taken heed. The EU elections are next (assuming May doesn’t desperately do some sort of deal with Corbyn to avoid them) – and a new message will emerge.

By the time we get to the next general election, the circumstances are there that there will be no viable government as more and more Independent’s stand and the undecided/hacked off/none-of-the-above look for a new political home. By then, Britain will be in a critical state and at that moment the crisis could turn into a catastrophe.

The Tories will disintegrate, Labour could well split. The fuse for a populist leader is set alight. Farage is a good demonstration of that. Worse, from Blair to May – these corrupt administrations gave themselves new unprecedented powers that should never be given to authoritarians.

These local elections tell us that there is no electoral consensus either way. Britain’s leadership has collapsed. The ‘establishment’ is no longer leading, defending or managing in the national interest and the people know it. Our best hope is that an insurgent centre ground political force rises up. It isn’t Chukka & Co that’s for sure. Other than that – Britain is in big, big trouble.

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Tuesday’s abortive coup attempt initiated by the US puppet and self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó in Venezuela has served once again to expose the criminal role of the US corporate media.

Guaidó’s video of himself and Leopoldo Lopez, the leader of Guaidó’s extreme right-wing CIA-funded party, Voluntad Popular, appearing with a few dozen armed men in uniform and calling for a military uprising, was greeted with undisguised glee by the major media outlets.

This stunt was staged as the 100-day “reign” of Mr. Guaidó, existing only in the greedy imagination of US imperialism and Big Oil, appeared no closer to establishing control over Venezuela. Even as it became evident that it had turned into an unmitigated fiasco, the media continued to broadcast reports suggesting that the military was divided, and the people were in revolt.

As the failure of the coup attempt became increasingly undeniable, CNN and the major networks all repeated the farfetched claims made by the regime-change operation’s principal protagonists within the Trump administration as if they were incontrovertible fact.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the media that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was set to board a jet waiting on the tarmac in Caracas to whisk him away to Havana but had only been persuaded at the last minute by the “Russians” to stay.

Did any of the talking heads who repeated this claim over and over have any evidence beyond the words of the former CIA director to substantiate its veracity? If so, they didn’t bother to share it with their audience.

John Bolton, Trump’s warmongering national security adviser, issued a statement on the White House lawn in which he asserted that Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, the head of the country’s supreme court and the chief of the palace guard had all “agreed that Maduro had to go” and now had to act on their “commitments” or “go down with the ship.”

This likewise was treated as fact, despite the public denunciations of Guaidó’s actions by both Padrino and the supreme court. Bolton’s peculiar repetition three times of the three men’s names in the course of his remarks was an unmistakable sign that the national security adviser was engaged in a bit of information warfare aimed at disrupting the Venezuelan government.

The Washington Post, owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, weighed in with an editorial on the very night of the US-backed coup under the headline, “Don’t call it a coup. Venezuelans have a right to replace an oppressive, toxic regime.” It might have benefited from an underline, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

The Post editors declared,

“Venezuelans responded to Mr. Guaidó’s call for street protests and were met by troops loyal to Mr. Maduro. By late afternoon, clashes were taking place, regime officials were promising a decisive ‘counterattack,’ and there was no way to know whether ‘Operation Liberty,’ as Mr. Guaidó dubbed this high-risk move, would succeed or be crushed — or devolve into civil war.

“What is not, or should not be, ambiguous is the political and moral essence of this volatile situation,” the Post declared.

The “moral essence” of the situation, all the invocations of “liberty” notwithstanding, smells decidedly of oil and excrement.

There was no “decisive counterattack” by the government because none was needed. Neither troops nor any sizeable number of civilians rallied to Guaidó’s tweeted video calling for the storming of the La Carlota Air Base and the armed overthrow of the Maduro government. By the end of the day, Lopez, the apparent architect of the coup attempt, had sought refuge in first the Chilean and then the Spanish embassy. The handful of soldiers who stayed with the right-wing US puppets, some 25 in all, asked for protection in the embassy of Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

Guaidó’s political party has its roots in Venezuela’s reactionary traditional ruling oligarchy, responsible for the oppression of the working class and poor and for such crimes as the massacre of thousands who rose up against IMF austerity in the caracazo uprising of 1989, which far eclipses any repression carried out under Maduro or his predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

There are clearly millions of Venezuelans, who, despite their anger over deteriorating social conditions as well as the Maduro government’s corruption and its defense of a privileged capitalist layer known as the boliburguesía, see in Guaidó and his ilk the traditional enemy of the country’s working people.

The genuine overthrow of a government by its people, which in the present epoch can be successfully prosecuted only by means of the independent political mobilization of the working class against the entire capitalist setup, is defined as a revolution. The attempt to oust a sitting president by mobilizing small groups of armed men to storm a military base with the backing of a foreign power is, whether the Post likes it or not, a coup.

The New York Times, in the wake of the coup fiasco, made its own contribution to Washington’s regime-change operation, publishing an article based upon a supposed “secret dossier” ostensibly provided by a turncoat Venezuelan intelligence officer and confirmed by a cohort claiming that former Venezuelan vice president and current industry minister Tareck El Aissami, the son of Syrian immigrants, had “pushed to bring Hezbollah into Venezuela.”

The “dossier” has all the earmarks of the kind of reporting that the Times did about “weapons of mass destruction” in the advance of the 2003 US war of aggression against Iraq.

The Times’ own readers responded to the story with suspicion and contempt. Among the top-rated readers’ comments was the observation that “the report has all the smell of a conjured-up pretext the same as the basis to race into Iraq and wreak havoc and destabilize the Mideast. In fact, the smell is even more pungent.”

Another reader wrote:

“So why are ‘secret dossiers’ on the Venezuelan government suddenly appearing? Why not secret dossiers on Saudi Arabia? Why not secret dossiers on Egypt? Why not secret dossiers on Israel? Why not secret dossiers on Kazakhstan? Why? Because the US is 100 percent focused on regime change in Venezuela, and already has the regimes it wants in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, and other countries.”

There has been not a single critical voice raised within the so-called mainstream media against the US regime-change operation in Venezuela. The newspapers and television news programs are filled with lies and propaganda preparing for the realization of the continuously invoked threat that “all options are on the table.”

The media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) recently published the results of a survey of the main trend-setting media outlets, both print and broadcast, covering the three-month period between January and April of this year. It concluded: “zero opinion pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post took an anti-regime change or pro-Maduro/Chavista position. Not a single commentator on the big three Sunday morning talk shows or PBS NewsHour came out against President Nicolas Maduro stepping down from the Venezuelan government.”

Underlying the corporate media’s lockstep, shameless and undisguised support for another imperialist regime-change operation and coup in Latin America are the overriding interests of crisis-ridden US capitalism in asserting its unfettered control over Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest on the planet, and in rolling back the growing economic and political influence of both China and Russia in a hemisphere that Washington has historically regarded as is own “backyard.”

The US media has undergone a protracted degeneration, corresponding with the abandonment by the US capitalist ruling elite of any semblance of support for democratic rights and processes. While there was never a golden age of the capitalist press in the United States, the days when the New York Timesand the Washington Post could publish the Pentagon Papers, defying the US government to bring the criminal policy of US imperialism in Southeast Asia to the attention of the American public in the midst of a bitter war, are long gone.

Those attempting to carry out a similar function in today’s environment confront the full weight of capitalist repression, with the media talking heads and columnists egging the state on.

That is the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, sentenced on Wednesday to almost a year in prison by a UK judge and facing the threat of rendition to the US and a potential death sentence for the crime of exposing Washington’s war crimes. Like him, Chelsea Manning, the army whistleblower who provided WikiLeaks with files exposing US crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and conspiracies around the world, has been jailed for nearly two months, much of it in solitary confinement and without needed medical care, for refusing to provide state’s evidence against Assange.

The struggle against the threat of war on Venezuela and the defense of Assange and Manning lies with the international working class, whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of the warmongers in the American ruling class and their lackeys in the media.

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

The federal system under which the Canadian state operates, places a great deal of decision making power in the hands of its provinces. While the dubiously progressive Trudeau Liberals run things federally (for the present), the provincial level of government is now dominated by the Conservatives and other hard right political parties. Ontario’s right wing Tory Premier, Doug Ford, recently greeted the electoral victory of his political co-thinkers in Alberta by declaring in the Legislature that, “We see just a blue wave going across this country from west to east.” Through clenched teeth, it is necessary to admit that he is not wrong.  Six of the ten Canadian provinces are now governed by hard right political regimes and the great majority of the country’s population and economic capacity is to be found within that block, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains.

Right wing attack

All of these right wing governments are on the attack, with a combination of social cutbacks and regressive and racist policies. In March, the Conservative government of New Brunswick, on the east coast, tabled a budget based on austerity driven ‘hard decisions.’ Titled ‘Acting with Urgency,’ it imposed cuts on social benefits, child welfare, affordable housing and attacked disabled people in particular. The measures it took and the rhetoric it cloaked itself in will be sadly familiar to those who have experienced cutting edge austerity regimes.

The election last autumn of the xenophobic and populist Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), gained attention across North America, largely because of its hard line anti-immigrant positions. They are implementing legislation that would prevent Quebec’s public sector workers from wearing clothing or items associated with their religious beliefs. While the pretence is made that this is about an equally enforced commitment to ‘secularism’, it is quite clear that Muslim women are the real targets. The Quebec National Assembly, where bills are passed into law, prominently displays a large crucifix on the walls of its main chamber.

To the west of Ontario, British Columbia is the only province that is not governed by the conservative right. In Manitoba, the government of Brian Pallister his taken the path of harsh austerity, an attack on public healthcare and an assault on trade unions and workers’ rights. The right wing Saskatchewan Party has proved to be a formidible austerity regime in the Canadian province that was ‘the North American birthplace of social democracy.’ That party has pursued a course of social cutbacks, privatisation and a systematic attack on workers rights. The viciousness of the assault is perhaps most clearly shown in the disastrous elimination of a provincial bus service that was utterly vital to rural and Indigenous communities.

On April 16, the United Conservative Party (UCP) won office in Alberta and pushed out the governing (social democratic) New Democratic Party (NDP). This represents a victory for the right in Canada’s major oil producing province.  UCP leader, Jason Kenny, notorious as a hard line rightist from his days as federal Immigration Minister, led a campaign that leaned heavily on climate denial and racism.  His government will certainly embrace vicious austerity, an assault on workers’ rights and a reckless pandering to the oil industry regardless of environmental cost.

Tory Ontario

As stated at the outset, Ontario’s Tory leader, Doug Ford, greeted the Alberta result with jubilation. Ever the right wing populist, Ford styles his regime as a ‘Government for the People’ that proudly proclaims that ‘Ontario is open for business.’ The Tories began their attack, after being elected last year, by cancelling an increase in the minimum wage and launching an attack on basic workplace rights.  They tabled their first provincial budget on April 11 and it contains some staggeringly harmful cutbacks. Funding for the enforcement of employment standards has been gutted and a website for employers set up so they can ‘educate themselves’ on their legal obligations to workers! Public healthcare and education are attacked. The Ministry of Indigenous Affairs has been massively de-funded. Huge cuts to legal aid have been introduced and funding for legal representation in immigration and refugee cases has been discontinued. Unemployed and disabled people living on wretchedly inadequate social assistance benefits will have their incomes frozen. The Ontario Federation of Labour (the equivalent here of the TUC) has described it as a ‘scorched earth budget.’

The ‘blue wave’ may well extend beyond provincial politics this autumn, when a federal election will take place. Justin Trudeau’s government is beset by scandal and epitomises the inability of regimes of the neoliberal centre to fend off the challenge from the right. If the Conservative Party of Canada forms the government in Ottawa, the right wing tide will surge dramatically.

Worsening threat

The conservative right is as much a work in progress as the agenda of austerity and privatisation it is most qualified to implement. Certainly, the UK experience since 2010 testifies to this. Margaret Thatcher viewed the sell off of the Royal Mail as ‘step too far’ but the far less formidable David Cameron felt able to take it. In much the same way, the conservative right in Canada is ready and able to inflict more damage than in previous decades. This is partly because the accumulating impact of austerity has so weakened the social infrastructure that present day cuts go right into the bone. Here in Ontario, Doug Ford’s brutal measures follow fifteen years of more stealthy but profoundly damaging Liberal austerity. It is also true that present attacks take place in the context of more than a decade of sluggish recovery for the global economy that appears to be going over to conditions of economic downturn. Government cutbacks are far more punishing when the need for a ‘social safety net’ is at its greatest.

The conservatives in Canada, moreover, very much in line with developments internationally, are moving in ever more right wing directions. When he ran for party leader in Ontario, Doug Ford was not the choice of the conservative establishment but a populist maverick, with disturbingly friendly relations with religious bigots and far right racists. The federal party leader, Andrew Scheer, has become notorious for his connection to such people. The far right in Canada has made a point of linking its racism to climate denial and calls for the building of more pipelines. Scheer spoke at one of their rallies in Ottawa, where he shared the stage with the notorious white supremacist, Faith Goldy, who received a disturbing 25,000 votes when she ran in the Toronto mayoral race. The conservative right’s commitment to deepening austerity is matched by a dangerous pushing of the boundaries in terms of overt racism and xenophobia.

Resisting the Right

It is clear that the blue wave can’t be turned back by the neoliberal centre, whether that is represented by liberals or right wing social democrats who refuse to break with the austerity consensus. It is equally clear that mass social action is urgently required to disrupt and seriously challenge the hard right governments installed across Canada. In Ontario, a recent rally of teachers, students and parents against the the attack on public education was far larger than expected and it followed a walkout by over 100,000 school students. The prospects for the building of a working class common front of social resistance are increasing as people shake off initial shock and react with anger to the reality of the destructive agenda of Canada’s blue wave.

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John Clarke became an organiser with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty when it was formed in 1990 and has been involved in mobilising poor communities under attack ever since.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Should journalism ever have a deity worth His, Her or Its salt, looking down upon the recent proceedings against Julian Assange will provide endless choking fits of confusion and dismay.  The prosecution continues in the twisted logic that engaging a source to disclose something secret while also protecting anonymity is somehow unnatural in the world of journalism.  Most prosecutions in this regard tend to be ignorant of history and its various contortions; theirs is to simply fulfil the brief of a vengeful employer, in the now, in the falsely clear present.  If their reasoning could be extended, the likes of those in press land would spend far more time in prisons than out of them.

The savagery being meted out to Assange is evident by receiving the maximum sentence for skipping bail.  Fifty weeks may not seem like much in the scheme of things, but when you consider relative punishments, it smacks of a certain state vindictiveness.  What the decision also ignores is the entire context of Assange’s escape to the Ecuadorean embassy in 2012. Since then, Britain has abandoned that beastly instrument known as the European Arrest Warrant, the Swedish allegations against him for sexual assault have been withdrawn and he, importantly, was found to be living in conditions of arbitrary detention by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

The refusal to take the decision of the UN Working Group seriously has been a hallmark of British justice, one skewed in favour of handing out to Assange the worst treatment it can find.  In 2016, the body, chaired by Seong-Phil Hong, found that “various forms of deprivation of liberty to which Julian Assange has been subjected to constitute a form of arbitrary detention.”  The Working Group further maintained “that the arbitrary detention of Mr. Assange should be brought to an end, that his physical integrity and freedom of movement be respected, and that he should be entitled to an enforceable right to compensation.”

The UK Government, for its part, decided to rebuff the decision.  “The original conclusions of the UN Working Group are inaccurate,” came a scoffing statement, “and should be reviewed.”  Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire insisted at the time that the working group had erred for not being “in possession of the full facts.”  Assange had remained in the embassy purely on his own volition, a fantastic form of reasoning that denied the broader context of US efforts to seek his scalp, and the prospect of extradition should he have been sent to Sweden.  On this issue, WikiLeaks and Assange have proven to be right, but critics remain deaf and dumb to the record.

The same Working Group also expressed bafflement at the stiff sentence, noting that the Swedish allegations had been withdrawn, meaning that the original bail terms be negated as a result.  The entire treatment “appears to contravene the principles of necessity and proportionality envisaged by human rights standards.”  It was also “further concerned that Mr. Assange has been detained since 11 April 2019 in Belmarsh prison, a high-security prison, as if he were convicted for a serious criminal offence.”

Kristinn Hrafnsson, who currently holds the reins as editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, told gathered press members that Assange had been confined for periods of 23 hours a day at Belmarsh.  The publisher was, effectively, keeping company with the less savoury while facing the damnable conditions of solitary confinement.

Only a day after the rough determination, Assange faced an extradition hearing in which the UK legal system, pressured by US lawyers and officials, will again have a chance to display its ignominious streak.  The hearing, lasting a few minutes, took place via video link in Westminster Magistrates Court.

“I do not wish,” Assange told the court, “to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that has won many, many awards and protected many people.”  (Perhaps Assange might have eased off on his accolades, but history has its callings.)

Assange’s legal team is clear: focus the issue on publishing, thereby bringing the work of their client within the ambit of free speech and traditional journalism.  As his lawyer Jennifer Robinson has explained, to accept the validity of the US charge would result in a “massive chill on investigative journalism.”  Assange’s involvement with Chelsea Manning was “about a journalist and a publisher who had conversations with a source about accessing material, encouraged that source to provide material and spoke to that source about how to protect their identity.”

The prosecution team, aided in the wings by hundreds of press vultures who seem intentionally malicious or keen to distance Assange from such protections, are obsessed by the hacking argument.  Even left as it is, the effort here seems skimpy at best.

Hrafnsson, on a worried note, does not shy away from the consequences to Assange’s own being.  “What is at stake here could be a question of life or death for Mr. Assange.”  And more than that, it involved “a major journalistic principle.”  The former point is salient: the moment Assange is rendered into the clutches of the United States, the prosecution is bound to bloat with various charges.

With Assange being treated as a felon of grave importance; and Manning’s continued detention for her ongoing refusal to cooperate with the investigative grand jury in the United States, the press corps of the world should be both revolted and alarmed.  What a delightful World Press Freedom Day it turned out to be.

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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]

«Ciência sem consciência é a ruína da alma» (François Rabelais)

Ultimamente, a revista semanal política e económica de renome mundial The Economist cativou a atenção dos media internacionais. Com razão. 

No fim de cada ano, a revista publica há décadas uma edição especial, ansiosamente aguardada, com o prognóstico das grandes tendências políticas, económicas e sociais do ano vindouro. Contrariamente ao habitual, o número de Dezembro de 2018, intitulado The World in 2019 (O Mundo em 2019), demarcou-se com uma característica única e interessante: a publicação de duas capas sucessivas e enigmáticas. No espaço de alguns dias, a fotografia da capa da 33ª edição da revista – parcialmente detida pela família Rothschild e conhecida porta-voz da elite mundial e da sua agenda (2) -passou do preto integral à quase magia negra! 

E uma vez que a página oficial da revista não permite elucidar o mistério das duas capas – especialmente a da 2ª versão, que apresenta um vasto leque de imagens e de símbolos crípticos –o leitor depara-se com a necessidade desconfortável de recorrer a leituras esotéricas, ocultas e maçónicas. Felizmente, um artigo elucidativo (3) do blog The Vigilant Citizen – cujo lema, “Os sinais e os símbolos governam o mundo, não as palavras nem as leis”, é atribuído a Confúcio -fornece uma descrição esclarecedora daqueles símbolos, maioritariamente apocalípticos e illuminati. 

No centro da página ergue-se o ‘Homem de Vitrúvio’, uma das obras de arte mais célebres de Leonardo da Vinci, além da Gioconda. Em 2019, prevê-se, precisamente, comemorar o 500º aniversário da morte deste génio misterioso do Renascimento, com pompa e circunstância, em muitos países ocidentais.

Analisando a característica principal da capa do The Economist, o blog explica que o ‘Homem de Vitrúvio’ “moderno” tem “óculos de visão nocturna ou até um capacete de realidade virtual […]. Nas suas mãos, segura uma folha de canábis, uma bola de basquetebol e um smartphone. Poderia argumentar-se que empresas farmacêuticas, da big tech e do divertimento utilizam estes objectos para distrair e pacificar o homem moderno. O ‘Homem Vitruviano’ tem também duas tatuagens. No seu antebraço, ostenta uma dupla hélice, símbolo que representa o ADN e constitui uma referência provável à pesquisa intensa desenvolvida pelo sector privado em matéria de modificação do ADN. Terá o ADN do ‘Homem de Vitrúvio’ sido alterado?”

O artigo termina com observações chave que levantam duas questões cruciais: “O ‘Homem Vitruviano’ moderno aparece globalmente como um ser cego, fraco, distraído e reprimido. O círculo que o envolve e que outrora simbolizava o mundo espiritual agora representa a Terra.  Terá o ‘Homem de Vitrúvio’ perdido a sua alma? Será que lhe interessem apenas as realidades profanas e materiais?”

Vale a pena sublinhar que, para o seu desenho (realizado cerca de 1490), Leonardo da Vinci se inspirou profusamente nas obras de Marcus Vitruvius Pollo, célebre arquitecto romano, engenheiro civil e militar e autor. No seu tratado (4), que foi traduzido do latim com o título Os dez Livros sobre a Arquitectura, Vitrúvio demonstrou que o corpo humano “ideal” encaixava perfeitamente num círculo e num quadrado –dois motivos geométricos fundamentais da ordem cósmica– ilustrando deste modo a sua convicção de que existe uma ligação entre as formas geométricas perfeitas e o corpo perfeito. Mais significativamente ainda, Vitrúvio era considerado um dos “Grandes Mestres” e uma figura central –juntamente com o rei Salomão de Israel, o rei Hiram de Tir e Hiram Abif, três figuras bíblicas estreitamente associadas à construção do Templo do rei Salomão– da alegoria ligada à passagem para o Terceiro Grau na Maçonaria (5), cujo emblemático logo associa dois instrumentos utilizados na arquitectura: um esquadro e um compasso reunidos, aos quais é frequentemente associada a letra “G”, no centro.

Na simbologia maçónica (6), o compasso representa a ferramenta que traça um círculo; sem princípio nem fim, o círculo simboliza a alma (o espírito ou a eternidade). O esquadro, por sua vez, permite desenhar um quadrado, símbolo antigo que representa o corpo (físico e temporário) e encarna o mundo material, com os seus 4 pontos cardeais, as 4 estações, os 4 elementos e os 4 estados da matéria. Juntos, representam aquele que é supostamente o objectivo final da maçonaria: criar o “homem perfeito” através da quadratura do círculo –ou, por outras palavras, através da harmonização dos mundos opostos, físico e espiritual– e atingir, assim, o estado divino! Não é, por conseguinte, de estranhar que a maçonaria esteja aberta aos “homens de todas as religiões, mas que a religião não possa ser discutida nas reuniões maçónicas”. (7)

Não será o ‘Homem de Vitrúvio’ moderno do The Economist o mesmo homem imaginário que o ‘Übermensch’ de Friedrich Nietzsche, esse ‘Super-homem’ que nem Zaratustra nem o discípulo do filósofo alemão encontraram e que acabaria por conduzir este último à loucura e à morte? (8) E não estaremos perante a mesma busca louca, senão suicidária, actualmente prosseguida –de maneira mais obstinada e com conhecimentos científicos infinitamente mais vastos e meios tecnológicos cada vez mais poderosos– em muitos laboratórios das várias ‘Silicon Valleys’ do mundo “desenvolvido”? 

No seu livro particularmente assustador –“altamente recomendado” por Bill Gates– o filósofo sueco e director fundador do Future of Humanity Institute da Universidade de Oxford, Nick Bostrum (9), sublinha que se um dia construirmos cérebros de máquinas que ultrapassem o cérebro humano em inteligência geral, esta nova superinteligência poderá tornar-se muito poderosa. E “tal como o destino dos gorilas hoje depende mais de nós, humanos, do que dos próprios gorilas, o destino da nossa espécie passará a depender das acções da superinteligência artificial”. Bostrum e muitos outros transhumanistas encaram o transhumanismo como uma extensão do humanismo -do qual deriva, em parte- e desejam seguir caminhos de vida que, cedo ou tarde, exigirão que nos transformemos em pessoas pós-humanas. Eles aspiram a “atingir picos intelectuais tão altos e distantes do génio humano comum quanto os humanos distam de outros primatas; a ser resistentes às doenças e impermeáveis ao envelhecimento; a ter uma juventude e um vigor ilimitados; a exercer um controlo sobre os seus próprios desejos, humores e estados mentais; a ser capazes de evitar sentirem-se cansados, odiosos e irritados com coisas fúteis; a ter uma capacidade acrescida de prazer, de amor, de apreciação artística e de serenidade; a fazer a experiência de novos estados de consciência aos quais o cérebro humano comum não consegue aceder.” (10)

Neste mundo maravilhoso e tecno-geek, inteira e exclusivamente dedicado ao lazer individual, às pulsões sensuais e à rêverie, os pós-humanos tanto “poderão vir a ser inteligências artificiais completamente sintéticas, como uploads melhorados ou o resultado de numerosos acrescentos mais pequenos, mas cumulativamente mais profundos, introduzidos no homem biológico. Esta última alternativa exigiria provavelmente uma nova concepção do organismo humano baseado na utilização de nanotecnologia avançada ou o seu aperfeiçoamento radical mediante o uso de uma combinação de tecnologias como a engenharia genética, a psicofarmacologia, as terapias contra o envelhecimento, as interfaces neuronais, as ferramentas avançadas de gestão da informação, o desempenho da memória, os medicamentos, os computadores portáteis e as técnicas cognitivas”. (11) Contudo, as mudanças necessárias para nos transformarmos em pós-humanos são consideradas demasiado profundas para poderem ser conseguidas modificando apenas alguns aspectos da teoria psicológica ou do nosso modo de pensar sobre nós próprios. É por isso que são necessárias modificações tecnológicas radicais do nosso cérebro e do nosso corpo. 

Os transhumanistas estão, obviamente, perfeitamente conscientes que as transições tecnológicas vindouras constituem, sem dúvida, o desafio mais importante com que a humanidade se defrontará. Eles até admitem que toda a vida inteligente futura na Terra poderá depender do modo como forem geridas estas transições. Se fizermos as coisas como deve ser, dizem, “poderá abrir-se um futuro pós-humano maravilhoso com possibilidades ilimitadas de crescimento e de florescimento”. Mas previnem que, caso giramos mal estas transições, “a vida inteligente poderá extinguir-se”. Bostrom acredita que poderemos, em princípio, construir uma espécie de superinteligência que proteja os valores humanos. Mas, na prática, acrescenta, o problema do controlo –saber como controlar a superinteligência– parece bem difícil dado termos, aparentemente, uma única oportunidade. Seja como for, Bostrum avisa que caso venha a existir uma superinteligência “hostil”, esta nos impedirá de a substituir ou de modificar as suas preferências. Por conseguinte, “o nosso destino estará, então, selado”! (12) 

A todos aqueles que, à partida, preferem ignorar “uma tomada de controlo artificial” considerando-a pura ficção científica, os transhumanistas respondem ser provável que ela se produza no decurso deste século. Para nos convencer de que o seu ponto de vista e as previsões estão correctas não perdem uma única ocasião para exibir os dados disponibilizados por Derek Price. (13) Segundo estes, os indicadores com que são avaliadas a ciência e a tecnologia apresentam números que, desde o final do século XIX, têm duplicado de quinze em quinze anos. Extrapolando esta taxa de progresso exponencial, e salvo um reverso brutal das tendências actuais ou uma desaceleração inesperada, os transhumanistas prevêem mudanças espectaculares num futuro relativamente próximo e já não hesitam em proclamar Urbi et Orbi o advento tão esperado do Prometeu moderno! 

Na verdade, a contagem decrescente – sinónimo de ponto de não retorno –em direcção ao Frankenstein de Mary Shelley já está em curso. O processo começou na Suécia natal de Bostrum, onde a empresa de tecnologia BioHax International já “microchipou” muitos dos seus empregados. (14) O futuro também já chegou aos empregados da sociedade de tecnologia Three Square Market (32M), sediada no Wisconsin. O pequeno chip do tamanho de um grão de arroz –igual àquele que é utilizado nos cartões de crédito ou no telefone portátil– é inserido entre o polegar e o índex. Utilizando a tecnologia de identificação por frequência radio (RIFD), permite aos empregados fazer funcionar as fotocopiadoras, abrir portas, conectar-se a computadores e mais, mediante um simples gesto da mão e sem que seja necessário utilizar o clássico cartão de acesso. (15)

Mas, como diz o provérbio, o “melhor” ainda está para vir, em duas frentes. 

Primeiro, ao nível das empresas. Existe uma concorrência feroz entre as várias ‘Silicon Valleys’ do mundo que é, essencialmente, alimentada pela imaginação desenfreada, pela avidez material e pela vontade de poder de certos dirigentes como Marc Zuckerberg e Elon Musk. (16) Nos Estados-Unidos, que são considerados o leader mundial nos campos da inteligência artificial (IA) e da aprendizagem automática (Machine Learning), os engenheiros e os neurocientistas trabalham silenciosamente, há mais de duas décadas, na construção de uma tecnologia revolucionária chamada BrainGate que permite conectar, sem fios, a mente humana aos computadores, mediante chips inseridos no cérebro humano. Estes cientistas estão actualmente a desenhar um mapa numérico do cérebro humano. E estão a experimentar e a modificar consideravelmente o comportamento humano e as funções cerebrais. (17)

Segundo, ao nível mundial, estão a ser feitos esforços incessantes e investidos recursos financeiros consideráveis na corrida pelo leadership mundial da IA, com especial enfoque na área militar, nomeadamente através do desenvolvimento de sistemas de armas autónomas letais. Este aspecto é de tal maneira grave e complexo que levou as Nações Unidas a iniciar um debate sobre a eventual elaboração de um tratado que proíba estas armas aterradoras. (18) O Presidente russo Vladimir Putin declarou sem rodeios que “a Inteligência Artificial é o futuro, não só da Rússia, mas da humanidade. Ela representa oportunidades colossais, mas também ameaças difíceis de prever. Quem for leader nesta área, será o dono do mundo.” (19) Reagindo às observações de Putin, Elon Musk declarou que a competição pela supremacia, a nível nacional, pela supremacia em matéria de IA será “a causa mais provável da 3ª guerra mundial”. Esclareceu que, do seu ponto de vista, a guerra não seria desencadeada por um chefe de fila mundial, mas por uma IA, a título de ataque preventivo. (20)

Esta evolução dramática e o seu impacto profundo na perenidade da civilização moderna será o tema principal de uma próxima análise.

Amir Nour*

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Artigo original em francês :

La quête éperdue de l’Übermensch: De l’Humanisme de la Renaissance à la naissance de l’homme robot

 

 

Referências

1. *Amir Nour : Investigador argelino, em relações internacionais, autor do livro “L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot” (“The Orient and the Occident in time of a new Sykes-Picot”), Edições Alem El Afkar, Argel, 2014: pode ser descarregado gratuitamente em: http://algerienetwork.com/blog/lorient-et-loccident-a-lheure-dun-nouveau-sykes-picot-par-amir-nour/ (Francês)
2. O antigo director da revista foi John Micklethwait (2006-2015), que participou em várias conferências secretas de Bilderberg e contribuiu para os seus debates e as suas conclusões secretas. Cf. a lista de participantes (http://bilderbergmeetings.org.participants.html) e os principais temas (http://cnbc.com/2018/06/06/bilderbergmeetings-elite-focuses-on-politics.html  da reunião anual de 2018, que decorreu em Turim (Itália) em Junho de 2018.
3. Ler: http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/the-economist-the-world-in-2019-is-  full-of-cryptic-messages/
4. Marcus Vitruvius Pollo, De Architectura Libri Decem, escrito ca. de 20-30 a.C. e “redescoberto” em 1414 pelo “humanista” italiano Poggio Bracciolini, na Abadia de Saint-Gall, na Suíça.
5. Uma loja maçónica denominada Vitruvius Lodge # 145 foi criada em 1860 em Bloomfield, na Califórnia. Continua activa.
6. Ler Richard Cassaro, What Does the Freemason’s ‘Square&Compass’ Symbol Really Stand For?, richardcassaro.com, 28 de Novembro de 2009.
7. Ler Statement of Freemasonry and Religion, Masonic Service Association of North America.
8. Segundo um estudo publicado na Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavia, em Dezembro  de 2006, a morte de Nietzsche não terá sido devida a uma paralisia demente (General Paralysis of the Insane – GPI), conforme se pensou durante muito tempo, mas a uma demência frontotemporal (Frontotemporal Dementia – FTD), que é uma demência crónica.
9. Nick Bostrum, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford University Press, 2014.
10. (10) Ler Transhumanist FAQ, version 3.0, em:   http://whatistranshumanism.org
11. (11)Idem, Op. cit.
12. (12) Nick Bostrum, Op. cit.
13. (13) Derek J. de Solla Price, Little Silence, Big Science… and Beyond, Columbia      University Press, 1988.
14. (14) Jonathan Margolis, I am microchipped and have no regrets, The Financial Times,  8 de Maio de 2018.
15. (15) Haley Weiss, Why You’re Probably Getting a Microchip Implant Someday, The Atlantic, 21 Septembre 2018.
16. (16) Cofundador da empresa americana de neurotecnologia Neuralink, conhecida por desenvolver Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) implantáveis.
17. (17) Jeff Stibel, Hacking the Brain: The Future Computer Chips in Your Head,  Forbes.com, 10 de Julho de 2017.
18. (18) Ver 2017 UN report:      http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/6036958.69445801.html
19. (19) RT, Whoever leads in AI will rule the world: Putin to Russian Children on  Knowledge Day, 1 de Setembro de 2017.
20. (20) Karla Lant, Elon Musk: Competition for All Superiority at National Level Will Be The ‘Most Likely Cause of WW3, Futurism, 4 de Setembro de 2017.

The Following text is Section 9 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 operation conducted by the USA and NATO in Ukraine began in 1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Warsaw Pact, which was a part of the Soviet Union, also disintegrated. The United States and its European allies moved immediately to take full advantage of the new geopolitical situation.

2. Ukraine – whose territory acts as a buffer between NATO and Russia and is crossed by energy corridors between Russia and the EU – did not enter NATO directly. However, within the framework of NATO, it joined the “Partnership for Peace” contributing to “peacekeeping” operations in the Balkans.

3. The “NATO-Ukraine Action Plan” was adopted in 2002, and President Kuchma announced his intention to join NATO. In 2005, in the wake of the “Orange Revolution” (orchestrated and financed by the US and European powers), President Yushchenko was invited to a NATO summit in Brussels. Immediately afterwards, an “intensified dialogue on the aspiration of Ukraine to become a member of NATO” was launched, and in 2008 the Bucharest summit gave a green light to its entry.

4. That same year, the Georgian army, which had been fighting South Ossetia that wanted to become independent from Georgia since 1991 (when the Soviet Union disintegrated), was trained and armed by the United States and at the same time by Israel through “private” military contractors. On the night of 8 August 2008, Georgia, backed by NATO, launched a military offensive to regain control of the disputed region. A few hours later Russia intervened militarily, rejecting the Georgian invasion, and South Ossetia effectively became independent of Georgia. It was the first sign of the offensive that NATO, under US command, was preparing on the eastern front to force Russia to react.

5. In Ukraine, in 2009, Kiev signed an agreement that allowed the transit from its territory of supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan. Membership now seemed certain but, in 2010, the newly elected president Yanukovych announced that, while continuing cooperation, NATO membership was not on his government’s agenda. Meanwhile, however, since 1991, NATO had woven a network of ties within the Ukrainian armed forces. Senior officers had been attending courses at the NATO Defense College in Rome and in Oberammergau (Germany) for years. Also contributing to the network of ties was the establishment, at the Ukrainian Military Academy, of a new “multinational faculty” with NATO professors. The scientific and technical cooperation in the field of armaments had also been greatly developed to facilitate the participation of Ukrainian armed forces in NATO-led “joint peace operations”.

6. Since there were other ties beyond what we could see, it was clear that NATO was building a network of connections in military and civilian environments much larger than it appeared. Through the CIA and other secret services, neo-Nazi militants had been recruited, financed, trained and armed for years. A photographic record showed young Ukrainian UN-UNSO neo-Nazi militants being trained in Estonia in 2006 by NATO instructors, who taught them urban combat techniques and the use of explosives for sabotage and attacks.

7. The same methods were used by NATO during the Cold War to form the secret paramilitary structure “Gladio”. It was also active in Italy where, at Camp Darby and other bases, neo-fascist groups were trained, preparing them for attacks and possible coup d’états.

8. The paramilitary structure of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups came into action in 2014 in Maidan Square in Kiev. An anti-government demonstration, which began with just claims against the rampant corruption and the worsening of living conditions, was rapidly transformed into a real battlefield. While armed groups attacked the government buildings, snipers (purposely brought into Kiev from Georgia) used the same sniper rifles on both demonstrators and policemen.

9. On 20 February 2014, the NATO Secretary General addressed the Ukrainian armed forces with a commanding tone, warning them to “remain neutral” on pain of “serious negative consequences for our relations”. Abandoned by the leaders of the armed forces and much of the government apparatus, President Viktor Yanukovych was forced to flee. Andriy Parubiy – co-founder of the National Social Party, established in 1991 on the model of the National Socialist Party of Adolf Hitler, and head of the neo-Nazi paramilitary groups – was put in charge of the “National Security and Defense Council”.

10. The Maidan Square putsch was accompanied by a persecutory campaign, directed in particular against the Communist Party and the unions, similar to those that marked the advent of fascism in Italy and of Nazism in Germany. Party headquarters were destroyed,  leaders were lynched and tortured, and journalists murdered; activists were burned alive in the Odessa Chamber of Labor; unarmed inhabitants of eastern Ukraine of Russian origin were massacred in Mariupol and bombarded with white phosphorus in Slaviansk, Lugansk, Donetsk.

11. A real coup under US/NATO direction was underway with the strategic aim of provoking a new cold war in Europe to strike and isolate Russia and at the same time strengthen the influence and military presence of the United States in Europe. Faced with the coup d’état and the offensive against the Russians of Ukraine, the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea – Russian territory that was given to Ukraine during the Soviet period in 1954 – voted to secede from Kiev and requested to be re-connected to the Russian Federation, a decision that was confirmed with 97% of the votes in favor by a popular referendum. On March 18, 2014, President Putin signed the treaty for the accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation with the status of an autonomous republic. At this point Russia was accused by NATO and the EU of illegally annexing Crimea and was subjected to sanctions. Russia responded with counter-sanctions that mainly affected the economies of the EU, including the Italian economy.

12. While in Donbass, the self-proclaimed Popular Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, supported by Russia, resisted the Kiev offensive that caused thousands of civilian deaths. A roadmap for NATO-Ukraine technical-military cooperation was signed in December 2015, which, in fact, integrated the armed forces and the arms industry of Kiev into those of the US-led Alliance.

13. In 2019, Ukraine took an unprecedented step: it included in its constitution the commitment to officially enter NATO and, at the same time, into the European Union. On February 7, at the suggestion of President Petro Poroshenko – the oligarch enriched from the looting of state property and who was returned to the presidency – the Kiev parliament approved (with 334 votes against 35 and 16 absent) the amendments to the Constitution to implement these steps. The Preamble states “the irreversible course of Ukraine towards Euro-Atlantic integration”: Articles 85 and 116 decree that the fundamental task of parliament and the government is “to obtain the full membership of Ukraine into NATO and the EU”; Article 102 states that “the president of Ukraine is the guarantor of the strategic course of the state to obtain full membership in NATO and the EU”.

14. The inclusion in the Constitution of the commitment to officially enter NATO involves very serious consequences. Internally, it binds the future of Ukraine to this choice, excluding any alternative, and effectively makes it illegal for any party or person to oppose the choice. On the international level, it should be kept in mind that Ukraine is already in fact in NATO, of which it is a partner country. For example, the Azov battalion, whose Nazi imprint is represented by the emblem modeled on that of the SS Das Reich, has been transformed into a special operations regiment, equipped with armored vehicles and trained by US instructors of the 173th Airborne Division, transferred from Vicenza to Ukraine and flanked by others from NATO. Because Russia is accused of illegally annexing Crimea and carrying out military actions against Ukraine, if Ukraine officially joined NATO, the other 30 members of the Alliance, according to Art. 5, should “assist the attacked party by taking action deemed necessary, including the use of armed force”. In other words, they should go to war against Russia. On these dangerous implications of the modification of the Ukrainian Constitution – behind which there are certainly the long hands of US/NATO strategists – political and media silence has fallen over Europe.

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Sections 10-16 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 Chinese and Laotian Presidents signed an action plan to build a community of shared future earlier this week after the latter’s trip to the People’s Republic to attend the recent BRI Forum. These two nations might seem to be an odd pair to the unaware observer who would instantly notice the obvious asymmetries in their geographic and demographic sizes, but these two countries actually share very close and fraternal relations with one another that are destined to strengthen following the completion of the China-Laos railway by the end of this year, therefore making the agreement that their two leaders just signed all the more relevant in the forthcoming strategic context. The aforementioned project isn’t a stand-alone one but is part of the larger Kunming-to-Singapore high-speed railway vision that forms the regional basis of China’s BRI investments in ASEAN, and the key to the success of this “ASEAN Silk Road” is none other than Laos.

Despite being tiny, Laos boasts an outsized geostrategic importance because it’s adjacent to all of the states in the Greater Mekong Subregion (mainland ASEAN), which is why its decision makers consider it to be “land-linked” instead of just landlocked. Furthermore, the country is investing heavily in dams along the Mekong River in order to become the “battery of Southeast Asia” through its planned export of hydroelectricity throughout the energy-hungry region. Both of these interconnected visions perfectly complement China’s integrational ones through the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), therefore making it the perfect partner for the People’s Republic to pair up with. Additionally, Laos is also a communist country just like China, which is yet another convergence of interests that these two neighbors share. In fact, its governing model and small population make it more likely that Laos will be able to fairly disperse the land-linked, hydroelectrical, and Silk Road wealth that it expects to earn in the coming future.

This is a very important point because Laos is still struggling to recover from the devastation of the Vietnam War-era when the US dropped more bombs on it than during the entirety of World War II, an infamous but little-known fact that former President Obama even apologized for during his historic 2016 visit to the country. Without Chinese support, Laos would have difficulty developing and bringing its people into the 21st century. The country’s geography is highly varied and very tough to traverse in some regions, though the ASEAN Silk Road will change all of that because of the many tunnels and bridges that are being built along its route, which are engineering marvels in their own right and will greatly contribute to connecting Laos’ people to the rest of the region and the world at large, especially by means of its Chinese and Thai neighbors.

The example being set by Chinese-Laotian relations is that win-win cooperation can still prevail regardless of the size asymmetries between states. China has an interest in developing Laos’ connectivity potential and helping it achieve its goal of becoming the land-linked core of the Greater Mekong Subregion because this provides the People’s Republic with reliable overland access to Thailand, which has the largest economy in mainland ASEAN. Laos, meanwhile, benefits from the billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure projects that China is funding and can turn the ASEAN Silk Road into the country’s primary developmental corridor by taking advantage of its irreplaceable role facilitating Chinese-Thai trade. As a result, both China and Laos can reap the benefits of their bilateral cooperation in spite of the glaring differences in their geographic and population sizes, proving that BRI is the ultimate equalizer between states and pioneering a new model of International Relations.

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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.

Featured image: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Lao President Bounnhang Vorachit (Source: Oriental Review)

On April 28, a general election, for the National Congress and the Senate, was held in Spain after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called new elections. Sánchez is the leader of the social-liberal, pro-European Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSO), in power since June 2018, when he led a successful motion of confidence against the government of Mariano Rajoy’s centre-right, conservative Partido Popular (PP).

The outcome of the election casts no doubt as to who the winner is: Pedro Sánchez himself. Not only did his party win an election for the first time in 11 years but also doubled the number of deputies attained by the second-in-line, the Partido Popular, which obtained the worst result in its history. The liberal right-wing, Spanish nationalist Ciudadanos consolidated a strong third position and continued an upward progression in all districts. Unidas Podemos, left-wing populists and socialists, lost parliamentary weight and retreated in large areas of the country. Vox a party of the extreme right, Spanish nationalists, and neo-fascists, broke into the Parliament but obtained a somewhat more modest result than expected.

The turnout (75.75%) was very high, matching that of past key electoral processes including the first elections after Franco in 1977, the first victory of PSOE-Felipe González in 1982, and the victory of Zapatero after the protests against the Iraq War and the 11-M attacks in 2004. The unwritten rule in modern Spanish politics is that whenever turnout is high, the left obtains great results and usually wins. This fact alone confirms the essentially progressive character of Spanish society.

The Final Results Leave Some Key Conclusions

The post-Franco bipartisan system, which lasted more than three decades in Spain, is officially dead. The current parliamentary fragmentation culminates a process started in 2015, with the arrival of Podemos and Ciudadanos on the political scene, and requires a culture of pact and compromise to develop. In this scenario, the Spanish left is expected to fare much better than the right.

The outcome of this election will likely give way to a phase of institutional stability, closing the period started during the 2008 financial crisis and leading to the subsequent social, political crisis; the turmoil that stirred a cycle of citizen protests from 2011 to 2014, and the phase of political volatility that ensued from 2015 to 2018. The so-called Regime of 78, based on the new Constitution and formed as a formal parliamentary democracy with the central role of the monarchy as an institutional central arrangement, now appears to be no longer at risk. Even though the PSOE decided to form a minority government, its strong position in relation to other forces will be a gravitational factor of stability.

The PSOE itself has successfully finished a process of renewal, and has reaffirmed itself as the structuring party of the Regime of 78. While the PP’s crisis deepens, Pedro Sánchez has come out victorious within the internal battles (against the barons of the party, like Felipe González, or the Andalusian leader, Susana Díaz), returned to occupy the political centre and recovered the lost credit among the citizenship. Also, the bourgeoisie – financial and economic elites, both national and European – have regained a trustworthy ally to navigate the complicated short-term scenario in Europe, i.e., Brexit, rise of right-wing populism, etc. The Spanish Crown is very satisfied with this result as well.

The Right

The political and social Spanish right lost a golden opportunity to obtain a political majority that would serve to implement a reactionary, hard-line conservative and neoliberal agenda in Spain. The collapse of the Partido Popular, the hegemonic party of the centre-right for more than three decades, has left conservative forces fragmented and competing for a decreasing political space.

The advance of the far-right (Vox) is remarkable – they set the tone and led the electoral campaign, forcing all other right-wing parties to radicalize their narratives, but they failed in reaching the Executive, their main goal – unlike Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Erdogan, Salvini, and Orban. This represents a potentially very important symbolic defeat, especially considering the upcoming European elections next month. In any case, the arrival of Vox to Spanish politics shows that the far-right does not need to be in government to contaminate the agenda and public debate. The Parliament will be a privileged platform which will be used to consolidate its confrontational and hateful discourse, thus increasing its visibility.

The top bureaucrats in Brussels are breathing a sigh of relief. Just one month ago, the victory of the Forum for Democracy in the Dutch election unleashed panic in the European institutions at the possibility that the growth of Vox put Spain in the orbit of far-right populism. With a hard-Brexit scenario more likely than ever, the European establishment in Brussels, as well as France and Germany, is happy to find a stronger ally in Pedro Sánchez.

The Left

The working class and its demands/interests were almost totally absent from the debates during the campaign. The Catalan Procès, and the social and political upheaval it created, was strategically used by the right to build an agenda based on topics like the defence of Spain against separatism, the risk of immigration, insecurity, etc., all played out with a confrontational tone and maximalist identitarian approaches. Only Unidos Podemos made an honest attempt to bring economic inequality, poverty, the eviction crisis, the retreat of the welfare state, etc., as topics for discussion during the campaign.

The far-right chose women and feminists as one of its favourite enemies. Accordingly, the response of the female vote was resounding: women, above all, but also young people and the working class, held back the advance of the right. The feminist wave that has been growing in Spain, as well as other countries in the world, has proven not only its potential for hegemony, but also a strong capacity to tactically resist the advance of fascist forces. In this sense, these elections could have an important ideological projection for the future.

The Basque and Catalan nationalist and independentist parties fared extremely well, and this happened as the three parties of the right massively failed in both territories. In the Basque Country, the three parties of the right didn’t manage to obtain a single deputy, while socialist, independentist EH Bildu reached its historical maximum, and the nationalist, conservative Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) consolidated its first position in the region. In Catalonia, the republican, independentista party Esquerra Republicana won a resounding victory, and together with JxSí, comprising nationalists and neoliberals, consolidated a strong presence of the Procès/independentist parties in Madrid. Ciudadanos maintained an important presence in Catalonia (especially in Barcelona), and the PP collapsed: it obtained a single deputy, whereas Vox gained one. Two ideas arise from these outcomes: first, the right wing does not want to do politics in Catalonia or Euskadi, but they use confrontation to make gains in the rest of Spain, but this strategy has failed; and second, contrary to what the right-wing forces have tried to argue, the Spanish people want dialogue and politics, and reject the agenda of repression and confrontation.

After several years with a reduced representation, or absence from Parliament altogether, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) took five deputies to Congress under the candidacy of Unidas Podemos. The most prominent communist MP is Enrique Santiago, Secretary General of the PCE, an expert in Latin American politics and a lawyer close to human rights organizations and the peace process in Colombia.

The Outcome?

The moderately positive outcome of the election – the far-right was stopped, the government remaining progressive – shouldn’t let us forget the weakness of social and popular organizations in the Spanish State as a whole. Before the crisis, mass organizations and social struggles were undermined whenever the PSOE obtained a strong electoral result. The exceptional circumstances of this election, as well as the successful process of renewal of the PSOE, could further weaken the social and organizational dynamics of militant organizations – how many more times will social democracy manage to deceive the people? However, there exist examples of conscious and active groups: Basque pensioners demonstrated today in Bilbao, demanding an increase in retirement pensions. Furthermore, Comisiones Obreras (Workers’ Commissions), the largest union in Spain, warned Pedro Sánchez today that they expect a clearer focus on policies in favour of the working class from now on.

On May 26, municipal elections of town councils, regional elections of regional parliaments, and European elections will be held in Spain. These new elections will define further the tendencies pointed out yesterday, and their projection toward local and European politics. There is still a sense of an emerging moment, and therefore, until after 26 May, it is unlikely that the formation of the new government will be announced.

The PSOE has several options. The first is to form a minority government – common in other countries but foreign to the political culture of Spain. The second is to count on the support of Unidas Podemos and use the support of one or several independentist forces to appoint Pedro Sánchez as president. Finally it could sign a deal with Ciudadanos but this is unlikely, since it would be viewed very unfavourably by the socialist bases and, from the point of view of Ciudadanos, it would compromise its intention to become the new hegemonic party of the Spanish right, a longer-term goal. In any case, the government – led by the PSOE, no matter what – that will come out of these elections will be stable and will have the approval of the European institutions.

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This article is available in Spanish at Elecciones Generales en España 2019 – Análisis del día después.

Sleeping drugs such as Ambien have been making people kill themselves in their sleep, says the Food and Drug Administration.  Drugs that supposedly help people sleep are linked to falls, burns, poisoning, limb loss, drowning, and even suicide.

According to The New York Times, this could all be solved by adding warning labels to the bottles of the pills instead of people trying to get off Big Pharma’s drugs.

Incidents related to sleeping pills have included “accidental overdoses, falls, burns, near drowning, exposure to extreme cold temperatures leading to loss of limb, carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning, hypothermia, motor vehicle collisions with the patient driving, and self-injuries such as gunshot wounds and apparent suicide attempts,” according to the FDA’s own research. But rather than tell people not to use such drugs, the FDA simply wants people to know they could kill themselves after taking the pills.

The FDA announced Tuesday that a prominent warning would be required on all medication guides for Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata, and the generic version of Ambien, which is called zolpidem. The FDA also mandates a separate warning against prescribing the drugs to anyone with a history of sleepwalking. –Futurism.

That’s a lovely side effect…

“Patients usually did not remember these events,” the agency wrote, according to Futurism. Bizarre actions have been widely reported after using sleeping pills, and the FDA has warned about this in the past – 12 years ago, in fact. That means this isn’t exactly new information.  Big Pharma’s drugs have been problematic for quite some time now, but it is comforting to see others take note of just how disastrous some of these medications can be to humanity.

Some have expressed their surprise at the FDA’s admission that these pills may not be all that safe for people to use. “I am surprised to see this warning come out now,” University of Pennsylvania physician Ilene Rosen told The NYT. “This is something I’ve been telling my patients for the last 15 years, and in the sleep community, this is well known. And I’d like to think we’ve done a good job putting the news out there, that these drugs have some risks.”

But all drugs have risks and hopefully, people will begin to realize that medications simply treat the symptom not the underlying problem that caused the issue to begin with.  Western medicine is about management, not treatment. And it isn’t just Ambien and sleeping drugs humanity should be worried about; it’s all the drugs pushed on the public every single day.

Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is great at explaining the dilemma we as a society have found ourselves in. We like to imagine that regulators have some code of ethics and let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve useless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients. This book shows the true scale of this murderous disaster. Goldacre believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct in the medical industry affects us on a global scale.

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Featured image is from SHTFplan.com

Despite the lack of visible preparation for war, the Lebanese authorities consider it important to take all necessary precautions for a possible Israeli attack on Lebanon. Israel is not alone; this time its forces enjoy unlimited military support from the US administration through the US forces stationed in Israel and in various bases in the Middle East. Israel also enjoys financial support from Middle Eastern countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, in case of a punitive war against non-state allies of Iran. Indeed, Israel sent a sharp message to the Lebanese authorities revealing its intention to bomb selected targets in the country, considered threatening by Israel. Lebanon answered: “a bombing of targets in Lebanon will be met with a similar bombing in Israel and we are ready for a possible escalation if it is imposed on us”.

The US and Israel are working side by side against Iran and its allies/partners in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Lebanese authorities received an official warning, via France, revealing the intention of Israel to bomb specific locations in Lebanon, claimed to host missile factories. The local authorities answered:

“Lebanon shall not initiate a war against Israel. But if any location in Lebanon is bombed, a similar and equivalent and precise location in Israel will be bombed. If Israel bombs several locations, Lebanon will respond by bombing an equivalent number of locations and objectives. If Israel escalates, Lebanon will follow and the response may spill over the borders of Lebanon where its allies may not hesitate to take part in a war against Israel”, said a well-informed source in the country.

“Unlike the US military, Israel has air force superiority in the Middle East. The US forces can only offer military advice, intelligence, interception missiles batteries, supply of weapons and ammunition, exert pressure on Middle Eastern countries (mainly Saudi Arabia and the Emirates) to finance a military campaign with the objective to cripple Iran’s allies in the region, and make sure the UN is not taking any resolution against any possible Israeli aggression. But real attacks are normally carried out by the Israel Air Force”, said the source.

Notwithstanding the non-state militant leadership in Lebanon who “personally estimate that the possibility of war is unlikely”, “worst-case scenarios have been laid down by the high military command”, as the leader of Hezbollah said in his last speech, reminding his listeners of “the treacherous capacity of Israel” (to start a sudden war).

Several war scenarios were discussed.

“In a first case scenario, it is unlikely that Israel would start bombing selective targets from its bank of objectives and then decide to stop because Lebanon would react by hitting specific targets drawn from its own bank of objectives and hurt Israel with its precision missiles”, said the source.

The non-state actor in Lebanon has several types of rockets and missiles, estimated by Israel at around 150,000, “capable of creating enough confusing to Israel’s interception missiles to limit their efficacy. It will be enough if 20% to 30% of these highly destructive and precise missiles reach their desired objectives. The question remains: is Netanyahu ready to engage himself in a long and destructive war? Our experience indicates the opposite, and Israel’s recent clash with the Palestinians in Gaza shows that it is hard for Israel to stand for a long and destructive war where missiles can reach the heart of Tel Aviv, its airports and infrastructures”, said the source.

Israel possess “Iron Dome” interception batteries to defend itself against rockets and missiles launched from Gaza or Lebanon. It has the “Arrow 3” and “Arrow 4” to intercept ballistic missiles. It has also the US “THAAD” System, the “Barak 8” and “David’s Sling”.

Nevertheless, the capability of Israel to intercept and destroy cruise missiles launched from different parts of Lebanon is doubtful. Moreover, Israel’s capability to defend its offshore oil and gas rigs as well as its harbour against the advanced anti-ship “Yakhont” missiles is highly doubtful, despite the deployment of Iron Dome on these platforms and protection vessels. Also, in Lebanon, anti-air missiles capable of downing helicopter or jets at low or medium altitude have been delivered by Syria. This means the Israeli Navy will be out of the possible war equation, along with Israeli helicopters. The Israeli Air Force will be in need, in this case, of highly expensive laser guided missiles launched from high altitude.

In past years and wars, Lebanese militants used to fight within the 2000 sq km of South Lebanon as its military operational area, deploying forces and effectives to launch missiles and rockets against Israel. In any possible future war, the area of operation will be enlarged to beyond 6000 sq km, more than half of Lebanon’s 10300 sq km, including the Bekaa valley and the Lebanese-Syrian borders. The capability and the possession of long-range solid fuel missiles with highly destructive warheads will allow a rapid deployment of effectives beyond the south of Lebanon, making it more difficult for the Israeli Air Force to localise, attack and destroy military positions in mountains and valleys spread all over the country.

Ground forces are the only possibility for Israel to make a change on the ground in case of war. One of the worse-case scenarios discussed and microscopically examined is the possibility of Israel pushing forces through the Golan heights, on the Syrian Zabadani axis, to reach the Lebanese-Syrian borders. This scenario was one of the possibilities contemplated during the 2006 war but not implemented. In this case, Israel could reach the Lebanese-Syrian borders and close them, imposing its conditions before leaving control over the borders to a United Nations forces capable of intercepting and blocking any flow of weapons into Lebanon in the future. But again, for Israel to force its way so far and stay until a negotiate political outcome is agreed is not a simple task and is full of risks. Syrian elite forces and their allies have established many traps on the way.

When military scenarios and possible plans are shared, it can be a message for both sides that these possibilities have been explored and taken into account. The aim is to tell belligerents that the element of surprise will no longer be effective, in order to reduce the possibilities of war where the objectives will be hard to achieve.

Are both sides ready to show their strength without using it?

Some in Lebanon believe Israel is not ready. Israeli military officials have indeed complained about the lack of readiness of the “internal front” in case of war. Military experts believe the internal front in any country is never fully ready in case of war, but there is a minimum of precautions to adopt to protect and warn the population in advance. Israel is working on these measures and considering seriously the possibility of dislodging and relocating Israeli settlements and villages to prevent casualties and possible cross-fire situations or kidnapping. All that would come at a high cost. Israel may very well opt for the less costly option: the financial strangulation of Lebanon.

Hezbollah may not be seriously affected by the US “strangulation war”. The US sanctions on Shia donations and wealthy Shia businessmen created peripheral damage to the non-state actor whose militants receive their regular salaries, enjoy free medical support and even receive a gift for the beginning of the month of Ramadan (6 of May) of $200 for each contractor and employee. Donations received from abroad were used to ease the life of militants willing to marry or furbish their homes. That bonus ceased but nothing else.

But the US administration and Israel want the Lebanese to complain about sanctions and blame Hezbollah as the cause of sanctions and the reason for the lack of financial support to the country.

In this context, a military war is unlikely. The US and Israel are better off adjusting to live with the presence of Lebanon defended by a non-state actor that is part of Lebanese society. This will reduce any need for the use of weapons in the long term.

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All images in this article are from the author

The effort on the part of the Trump administration to shut down Iran’s ability to export oil is predicated on the false notion that the rest of the world will fall in lockstep with U.S. policy. But has President Donald Trump really thought through what would happen to the economic health of the world if Iran retaliates, shutting the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s oil flows daily?

The Trump administration’s push to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero has entered a new, critical phase, with the United States refusing to extend the waivers it granted six months ago to eight nations, including China, India, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea, to purchase Iranian oil. Moreover, the United States has refused to allow for a “wind-down” period where impacted nations would be able to gradually wean themselves away from Iranian sources of energy. This means that, effective May 1, any nation purchasing oil from Iran will be subjected to punitive U.S. sanctions.

Iran has responded to the American decision not to extend oil waivers in typical fashion, with Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command (IRGC) naval forces, warning on April 23 that “if Iran’s benefits in the Strait of Hormuz, which according to international rules is an international waterway, are denied, we will close it”.

This threat was clarified the next day, April 24, by Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, who declared “ships can go through the Strait of Hormuz,” noting that

“if the U.S. wanted to continue to observe the rules of engagement, the rules of the game, the channels of communication, the prevailing protocols, then in spite of the fact that we consider U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf as inherently destabilizing, we’re not going to take any action.”

For now.

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most critical sea lanes in the world today, transiting some 18.5 million barrels of crude and refined products per day, representing roughly 20 percent of all oil produced globally. There is universal consensus among energy analysts that any closure of the Strait of Hormuz would result in “catastrophic” consequences for the global economy.

ArmanJan/Wikimedia/public domain.

Less certain is whether Iran is serious about carrying out its threats. In July 2018, following the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action, or JCPOA), Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened to close the Straits in retaliation for renewed U.S. economic sanctions. Calmer heads prevailed, and Iran ended up taking the diplomatic route, working with the other signatories of the JCPOA to find ways to bypass U.S. sanctions.

In the intervening time, Iran’s efforts at crafting a diplomatic solution have fizzled, with Europe unable (or unwilling) to implement a meaningful alternative to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system, a financial network based in Belgium that provides cross-border transfers for over 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. Because the SWIFT board includes executives from U.S. banks, federal law allows the U.S. government to sanction banks and regulators who operate in violation of U.S. law. As such, any financial transaction involving Iran or any other entity under U.S. sanction would provide a trigger for secondary sanctions to be applied to facilitating institutions and/or persons.

Iran has a history of bypassing U.S. sanctions, and while the Trump administration’s targeting of Iran’s oil exports has caused significant economic harm to the Islamic Republic, Iran remains confident that it would be able to continue to sell oil in enough quantity to keep its economy afloat. In a recent appearance, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared that the American effort to block Iran’s oil sales will fail.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will be exporting any amount of oil it would require, at will,” Khamenei said.

There is a major difference between 2018 and today, however. The recent decision by the Trump administration to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command (IRGC) a terrorist organization has complicated the issue of Iran’s oil sales, and America’s reaction in response.

The IRGC has long been subject to U.S. sanctions. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), determined that National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was an “agent or affiliate” of the IRGC and therefore is subject to sanctions under the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012 (ITRSHRA). Other Iranian oil companies have likewise been linked to the IRGC, including Kermanshah Petrochemical Industries Co., Pardis Petrochemical Co., Parsian Oil & Gas Development Co., and Shiraz Petrochemical Co.

While in 2012 the United States determined that there was insufficient information to link the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) as an affiliate of the IRGC, under the current sanctions regime imposed in 2018 the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and the NITC have been blacklisted in their entirety.

By linking the bulk of Iran’s oil exporting capacity to the IRGC, the United States has opened the door to means other than economic sanctions when it comes to enforcing its “zero” ban on Iranian oil sales. Any Iranian oil in transit would be classified as the property of a terrorist organization, as would any Iranian vessel carrying oil.

Likewise, any vessel from any nation that carried Iranian oil would be classified as providing material support to a terrorist organization, and thereby subject to interdiction, confiscation, and/or destruction. This is the distinction the world is missing when assessing Iran’s current threats to close the Strait of Hormuz. It’s one thing to sanction Iranian entities, including the IRGC—Iran has historically found enough work-arounds to defeat such efforts. It is an altogether different situation if the Unite States opts to physically impede Iran’s ability to ship oil. This would be a red line for Iran, and a trigger for it to shut down all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

So far the United States has not shown any inclination to physically confront Iranian shipping. Indeed, as Iran’s top military commander Major General Mohammad Baqeri recently told reporters, U.S. naval and commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz continue to respond to the queries transmitted by the IRGC naval forces responsible for securing Iran’s portion of the strategic waterway—an awkward reality given that the IRGC has been designated a terrorist organization, which means the U.S. Navy freely communicates and coordinates with terrorists.

“As oil and commodities of other countries are passing through the Strait of Hormuz, ours are also moving through it,” Bageri observed, declaring that “if our crude is not to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, others’ [crude] will not pass either.” Bageri went on to explain that “this does not mean [that we are going to] close the Strait of Hormuz. We do not intend to shut it unless the enemies’ hostile acts will leave us with no other option. We will be fully capable of closing it on that day.”

The challenge will come when the U.S. effort to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero fails—and most observers believe this will be the case. Iran’s Foreign Minister Javid Zarif has bragged that “Iran has a PhD in sanctions busting,” and historical precedence is on his side. If the Trump administration proves unable to shut down Iran’s ability to sell oil through sanctions, and therefore fails to blunt what it describes as Iran’s “malign activities” in the Middle East, there will be increased pressure to be seen as doing something—anything—to effectuate policy objectives, especially during the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, where the Trump administration would be loath to provide any fodder to its political opponents.

Because any effort to restrict or deny transit through the Strait of Hormuz would be rightfully seen as a provocative act worthy of military intervention, it is highly unlikely that Iran would take any precipitous action in that regard. Instead, Iran would most likely seek a gradual escalation of restrictions grounded in its legal interpretation of the 1982 United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea, which grants Iran control over “territorial waters” extending to a maximum of 12 nautical miles beyond its coastline. Any ships using the northern and eastern routes through the Strait of Hormuz to gain access to the Persian Gulf would have to transit through Iranian waters.

Under the convention, Iran is permitted to deny free transit passage to nations, like the United States, which have not ratified the agreement. If the United States interdicts Iranian shipping involved in the transit of oil, then it is most likely Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz to U.S. shipping, citing the 1982 convention as its justification. The United States would either be compelled to back down (unlikely), or resort to military force, certifying it as the aggressor in the eyes of international law.

The military debate over Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. ability to respond to such a threat, is moot—no insurance company will cover any oil tanker seeking to transit contested waters. The economic impact of any closure will be immediate, catastrophic and sustained. Even if the United States prevailed in a military conflict over the Strait of Hormuz (and it is not certain it would do so), any victory would be pyrrhic in nature, with the United States sacrificing its national economic health, and that of the rest of the world, on an alter of hubris that fails to advance the national interest in any meaningful fashion.

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Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of Dealbreaker: Donald Trump and the Unmaking of the Iran Nuclear Deal (2018) by Clarity Press.

Featured image: U.S. Navy Sailors Assigned to the harbor patrol boat unit off the coast of Bahrain in 2006. (U.S. Navy/public domain)

Venezuela’s judicial authorities have issued a new arrest warrant for fugitive opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez following his escape from house arrest early Tuesday morning.

Caracas’ Fifth Court revoked Lopez’s house arrest Thursday and ordered his immediate detention, indicating that once in custody, he will have to serve out his remaining sentence at the Ramo Verde military prison. Lopez had served five of a 13-year sentence for his role in the 2014 anti-government protests which left 43 people dead. The hardline opposition leader began his sentence in Ramo Verde having it commuted to house arrest in July 2017.

The court cited Lopez’s actions during Tuesday’s attempted coup d’etat which he led alongside self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaido, describing Lopez’s conduct as a “flagrant violation” of the terms of his sentence, specifically of his restriction of movement and ban on making public statements of a political nature.

In response to the arrest warrant, Lopez told press from his current location in the personal residence of the Spanish ambassador in Caracas that he will “dedicate all [his] time and effort” to Guaido’s cause. He also thanked the government of Spain, clarifying that he is a “guest” in the ambassador’s residence.

“I don’t want to return to prison, but I’m not afraid to do so,” he added.

Lopez had escaped from his home early Tuesday morning, allegedly with the help of rogue officers from the National Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN). He then appeared alongside Guaido outside La Carlota Air Base in eastern Caracas, with the men claiming to have control over key units of the armed forces and calling for them to oust Maduro.

Later that day, SEBIN Director Christopher Figueroa was dismissed by President Maduro and replaced with his predecessor, Gustavo Gonzalez Lopez.

Lopez and his wife, Lilian Tintori, remain in the residence of the Spanish ambassador in Caracas where they sought refuge on Tuesday afternoon while Guaido unsuccessfully attempted to lead a march into western Caracas. It is unclear how Venezuelan authorities plan to apprehend Lopez or if they will later apply for his extradition. No warrant has so far been issued for Guaido despite ongoing police investigations.

Likewise on Thursday, National Assembly Vice President Edgar Zambrano was charged by Venezuela’s Supreme Court with “treason, conspiracy, incitement to insurrection,” among other charges. Zambrano was one of several opposition figures who joined Guaido and Lopez in the Altamira overpass on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday and Wednesday saw violent clashes between opposition sectors and security forces in eastern Caracas. Violence also broke out in other parts of the country, such as in Barquisimeto, Lara State, with opposition demonstrators torching a local government building charged with child protection services allegedly claiming that there were Chavistas inside.

Opposition supporters march through Barquisimeto City as a local government child protection services office is torched. (@AndrewsAbreu / Twitter)

Following the day’s violence, NGOs reported another death Wednesday night, bringing the total since Tuesday to two.

The Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict informed that opposition activist Jurubith Rausseo García, 27, had died in Plaza Altamira in eastern Caracas on Wednesday night, allegedly due to a bullet to the head. NGO Provea had previously reported the death of Samuel Enrique Mendez (24) in Aragua State on Tuesday. The circumstances surrounding both deaths remain unclear at the time of writing.

Following the announcement of Rausseo’s death, Guaido took to Twitter, promising justice.

“The murderers will have to pay for their crimes. I will stake my life on this,” he wrote.

Me comprometo a hacer que la muerte en quirófano de Jurubith Rausseo, de sólo 27 años, le pese a quienes decidieron disparar contra un Pueblo que decidió ser libre.

Esto tiene que parar y los asesinos tendrán que hacerse cargo de sus crímenes. Pondré mi vida en que así sea.

— Juan Guaidó (@jguaido) May 2, 2019

Guaido also announced the next steps in so-called “Operation Freedom” via social media on Wednesday evening, including a call for a “escalated strikes” in the public sector starting Thursday.

Initial reports indicate normal levels of workplace participation in public institutions Thursday as the country returned to its day-to-day activities, with no major trade unions coming out in support of Guaido’s call.

Maduro leads military show of strength

Meanwhile, President Nicolas Maduro led military exercises involving some 4,000 soldiers at the south Caracas Fort Tiuna military base Thursday alongside Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino and other high ranking officers.

“Before the eyes of the world (…) in Venezuela there is a consequent, loyal, well molded and united Armed Forces as ever before, which defeat coups from traitors which sell themselves for dollars stemming from Washington,” Maduro affirmed.

A handful of soldiers supported Guaido’s thwarted military uprising on Tuesday, appearing on open top vehicles during the opposition march. Many, however, abandoned Guaido and Leopoldo Lopez, later explaining that they were deceived by their superiors into participating in a “training exercise,” The Venezuelan government suggested that as many as 80 percent of the soldiers who initially were seen with Guaido subsequently withdrew from the oppositions activities for this reason.

According to Brazil’s presidential spokesperson, General Rego Barros, 25 Venezuelan soldiers also took refuge in the Brazilian Embassy Tuesday afternoon.

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Featured image: Maduro leads a military march in Tiuna City, Caracas. (Presidential Press)

In statements to the press on Wednesday afternoon, the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s Deputy Director for the United States, Johana Tablada, reiterated that “Cuba does not participate with military troops or personnel in military operations in Venezuela”

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“There are no Cuban troops in Venezuela. There are no security forces from Cuba in Venezuela. Cuba does not participate with military troops or personnel in military operations in Venezuela. These falsehoods constitute an affront to the people of Cuba, the government of Cuba, the people of Venezuela, and the international community, sovereign states and the U.S. people who deserve to know the truth,” reiterated the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s Deputy Director for the United States, Johana Tablada, in statements offered to the press this Wednesday, May 1.

Tablada stressed that in recent weeks the Cuban government has denounced a series of accusations, falsehoods and slander regarding the nature of the cooperative relationship between Cuba and Venezuela, headed by “a pathological liar, former ambassador John Bolton, who has a long history of conflicts with the truth,” and today is National Security Advisor to the U.S. government.

She recalled that Bolton lied about the existence of chemical weapons in Iraq, and of biological weapons in Cuba in 2002, lies that cost him his appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, following a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, which led to his own party voting against him and recommending that he be prevented from returning to public office at such a high level.

The Cuban diplomat emphasized that the escalation in accusations in recent days is intended to conceal the failure of the sustained U.S. policy of aggression against Venezuela, and the frustration after the second coup attempt against the legitimate government of Nicolás Maduro was also defeated. “The objective is to shroud the real support that exists in Venezuela for the government and the Bolivarian Revolution, and the lack of support for the self-proclaimed or supposed leaders chosen by the United States.”

Tablada explained that the intention is to find the most convenient pretext to impose and justify new measures of aggression against the Cuban people, on claiming that the island has 20,000 soldiers posted in Venezuela and is interfering in its internal affairs, “something that even the U.S. government knows is untrue.”

She noted that as part of this same policy of hostility, the U.S. President threatened the island with the proclamation of a “full and complete embargo,” if its troops were not withdrawn from Venezuela.

“We can’t withdraw something that does not exist from Venezuela. This is a disrespectful statement that conceals the cruel nature of the scope of these measures against our people.”

Johana Tablada highlighted that such recent announcements appear to overlook the fact that for 60 years the people of Cuba have suffered the most wide-ranging, complex and absurd system of unilateral sanctions and coercive measures in history, and that “Bolton is delirious when he says that the whole world supports the sanctions.”

“This decision will be met by our country, by our people, by our government, as always: we will denounce it, but we will resist. The people of Cuba will resist and triumph,” she concluded.

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Featured image is Johana Tablada from Twitter

The death toll from the ongoing war in Yemen will reach a staggering 233,000 if it continues until the end of 2019, a new report from the United Nations said.

According to the UN report, of the 233,000 estimated deaths in Yemen, 102,000 will be combat-related and the remaining 131,000 due to malnutrition, cholera, and other diseases.

In another shocking statistic, the U.N. report said that 140,000 children will have been killed since the start of the conflict in March of 2015.

The report said that by the end of the year, one child will death will be reported every 11 minutes and 54 seconds.

These totals are only expected to increase substantially in the next three years, as the U.N. estimates the death toll will reach nearly 500,000 by 2022.

Unlike the war in Syria, the conflict in Yemen is rarely discussed in the international media.

Despite the fact that the Yemeni War is now the most violent conflict in the Middle East region, it still receives less coverage than other conflicts.

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Featured image is from Al-Masdar News

Amid the ruckus of Great Britain’s reckless Brexit saga, one might not have noticed the ongoing environmental battle that could put a sudden end to shale gas development in the UK. While Britain’s energy security does not have any direct links to Brexit – its hydrocarbon production went into decline in 2000 and has been falling ever since, although the mid-2010s evidenced a stabilization of output – the UK High Court decision over the nation’s shale gas projects might deal a painful blow to the little hope British producers had to kick-start something new. All 9 basins of the Greater North Sea are mature and it is only until 2025-2027 that the current output rebound can last, after that Britain’s oil output will plunge Venezuela-style unless additional measures are taken.

There is no scientific consensus on how much shale gas can be recovered across the United Kingdom. We might use the British Geological Survey’s 2013 report as a point of reference, which states that across central Britain (Bowland-Hodder shales) the aggregate shale gas reserves are somewhere within the 164-264-447 TCf interval (P90-P50-P10). Even if it were true, due to the rather difficult lithography of central Britain the actual recoverable volume would be substantially smaller. The USGS has put the total recoverable gas resources in the Midlands area of England at 8.3 TCf. The Weald Basin in southern Britain and Northern Ireland also has shale gas resources, but they are in a less advanced stage of development than shale finds in Lancashire or Nottinghamshire.

Partially motivated by the emotional drain of Brexit and the necessity to present itself as an employment creating party, the Conservative Party (seemingly) made great headway last year in advancing the cause of developing UK shale gas resources and creating the regulative norms required for it. It has promoted a package of reforms that ought to kick-start shale projects across the country by removing needless administrative obstacles and easing operations. For instance, the new set of rules stipulated that no planning permissions would be needed for shale plays as long as fracking is not involved, and classified shale projects as “nationally significant”, meaning that decisions on shale applications were moved away from the local and regional level.

The Conservative minority government also created a new shale-devoted entity, the Shale Environmental Regulator Group (SERG), to create a dedicated authority that would act as a uniting platform and appointed a first-ever commissioner for shale gas matters. Yet unlike most gas producers around the globe (perhaps only excepting continental Europe) shale operators in the United Kingdom have to face a very committed and highly organized opponent, environmental activists. Opponents of shale gas drilling, staging one protest after another and causing disruptions at the sites, led Ineos and Cuadrilla to secure legal protection at their shale sites – the Preston Crown Court even jailed several anti-shale activists for blocking access in late 2018.

Lacking the competence to ban fracking altogether, Local councils in the UK also started to craft new creative ways on how to nip the government’s shale push in its bud – for instance, the mayor of Greater Manchester introduced a so-called “presumption” with regard to new shale gas developments, effectively meaning that the default position of the local council would be to ban new projects in view of Greater Manchester’s grand target of becoming carbon neutral. As Greater Manchester hosts 10 exploration licenses, this is no small feat. Other local councils have taken similar steps to restrict fracking – even the city of London made the case for a “climate emergency” as the mayor Sadiq Khan pushed for a blanket shale gas ban.

The Scottish government, availing itself of the freedom it has on the matter, has prolonged indefinitely its shale moratorium until an already agreed-upon permanent ban is placed in vigor. Similarly, the Welsh government held public consultations throughout last year and thereupon decided to freeze all license issuing procedures for shale oil and gas, regardless of whether fracking is used or not. To a certain extent, the reaction of the populace across Britain is fully understandable – the several shale gas development sites currently in action are considered a cautionary tale of what is to come unless the public does something about it. Cuadrilla, the only company currently fracking in the UK at its Preston New Road site near Blackpool in Lancashire, has had a series of 0.5 magnitude tremors in early December 2018 and was forced to halt it for a longer period after causing a 1.5 magnitude mini-earthquake mid-December.

All this runs counter to the research shale proponents put forward, stipulating that fracking’s impact would be like dropping a melon – in fact the more advanced the stage of the fracking, the more powerful were the earthquakes. Cuadrilla is reportedly looking to drill a second horizontal well at the same site, however, it remains to be seen how expedient would it be under current circumstances. All the more so as the UK’s shale gas commissioner, MP Natascha Engel, resigned last week from her position after a mere 6 months of work. Yet perhaps the biggest obstacle of any further shale gas advances in the United Kingdom would be its own High Court, which has ruled this March that the government’s amendments of the National Planning Policy Framework to speed up shale projects was unlawful.

Here we return to an oft-repeated mistake – the UK High Court has found that the government’s disregard for an environmental study (the “Mobbs Report”) presented by the anti-shale group Talk Fracking was undeniable and that the government indeed underestimated the extent of shale gas emissions arising from fracking, at the same time overestimating Britain’s shale potential. This opens up the possibility for other anti-shale and anti-fracking groups to question the government’s shale policy by means of judicial review. All in all, with a frustrated government, constrained companies and a very organized array of environmental groups, the United Kingdom is just a couple of steps away from giving up on its shale gas altogether.

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Viktor Katona is an Group Physical Trader at MOL Group and Expert at the Russian International Affairs Council, currently based in Budapest.

In South Africa, public debt has recently been back in the news through a nationwide debate over the future of Eskom, the public electricity company. Major power cuts affected the country’s social and economic life in February 2019, drawing attention to this company.

The poorest sector of the South African population does not have easy access to electricity. In the townships, many residents set up makeshift electricity connections. Others manage to get a connection going again after Eskom employees have cut them off for not paying their bills. Meanwhile, over 40 % of power is consumed by only 30 big companies, mainly in the mining and metallurgy sectors. (See the Energy Intensive User Group of Southern Africa (EIUG) memorandum, who are lobbying in favour of privatization.

Map of Eskom power stations (Source : www.eskom.co.za)

Most of South Africa’s electricity is produced from coal, which is obviously very bad for the environment and public health. Two enormous new coal-fired power stations are under construction, one in Medupi and one in Kusile. This represents an enormous financial cost. The Japanese transnational company, Hitachi, responsible for the construction, is respecting neither the calendar nor the initial cost estimate. At the same time, they go in for large-scale bribery and corruption to keep the lucrative contract.

The World Bank granted a loan of 3.7 billion dollars to finance the construction of the Medupi plant. And the China Development Bank lent 2.5 billion dollars for the Kusile plant as well as 1.5 billion dollars for Medupi. Eskom will owe a total debt of over 33 billion dollars. That is colossal. The government has just made a new international loan to refinance the Eskom debt as it is on the brink of defaulting. The ANC government decided to break the company up into three parts thus laying the ground for partial or total privatization. The right wing would like to see rapid privatization. Social movements, including the unions, want the electricity production kept under public control and Eskom’s debts, identified as illegitimate, cancelled. Numerous movements, including AIDC and its partners, are demanding an end to coal-fired and nuclear power production along with the implementation of a vast programme of energy transition that would generate decent jobs and be better for the environment.

Regarding nuclear power, ex-president Jacob Zuma had mooted a project to develop South Africa’s nuclear power installations which fortunately caused such a hue and cry that it was dropped. / As well as Koeberg nuclear power plant, situated 30 km north of Cape Town and built during the Apartheid era with help from the French government and French companies, Zuma planned to build six to eight new reactors with a total capacity of 9 600 MW. To acquire these new reactors would have cost in the region of 1000 billion rand (about 70 billion euros), which would have meant a massive increase in South Africa’s public debt. Russia, France, South Korea and the United States put pressure on the ANC government to place orders. In the end, the project of adding to the present nuclear installations was put aside. [1]

The future of Eskom triggered a huge national debate. You can see a very interesting two-hour television debate broadcast by SABC on 24 March 2019. Irvin Jim, who heads NUMSA and the new Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party, took part as did Patrick Bond. Bond questioned the debt contracted by Eskom with the World Bank (see his article for more details about Eskom). Makoma Lekalakala, the leader of the environmental movement Earthlife Africa, emphasized the need for an energy transition phase to leave behind coal and nuclear power. Various proposals clearly show that hundreds of thousands, even a million jobs could be created as a result of an ambitious energy transition.

In the CADTM’s view, the public debt contracted by a government that has chosen to pursue electricity production using coal and/or nuclear power, is illegitimate. Such a debt is also odious because it was contracted against the interests of the population of South Africa. It was also contracted against the interests of the population of the entire planet. The lenders know full well that the money that they place at the disposal of Eskom is used to build coal-fired plants. Furthermore, they collude in the corruption that reigns around all the big Eskom contracts.

The government is well aware of the harm caused by continuing to produce electricity from coal. An expert report on Eskom’s coal plants shows that over a period of 21 months (April 2016 to December 2017), there were 3 200 cases when the limits were exceeded for sulfur dioxide (SO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx). In his report of 15 November 2018 Ranajit (Ron) Sahu, an independent consultant, writes:

“I have reviewed hardcopy monthly monitoring reports from 17 Eskom coal and gas power stations over a 21 month study period (April 2016 through December 2017). Based on my review, and after excluding the gas plants due to incomplete data, I have determined that the coal fired power stations reported nearly 3,200 exceedances of applicable daily Atmospheric Emissions Licenses (AEL) limits for particulate matter (PM), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and oxides of nitrogen (NOx).”(See “Eskom Power Station Exceedances of Applicable Atmospheric Emission License(AEL) Limit Values for PM, SO2 & NOx During April 2016 to December 2017” and this).

According to a study carried out by Eskom itself, the pollution produced by 13 of its coal-fired power stations causes 333 premature deaths a year, representing a cost to public health of over a billion euros a year. (“Emissions from 13 of Eskom’s 15 coal-fired power stations cause 333 premature deaths per year at a health cost of R17.6 billion.”).

Moreover, the contracts that are financed with loans from the World Bank or other banks or lenders who buy sovereign South African securities are marked by obvious illegal acts: corruption, extra billing, non-respect of specifications, etc. are observed.

Conclusion:

It is high time that repaying a public debt generated by fossil or nuclear power production should be questioned. The struggle to have this odious debt cancelled should be combined with one to instigate a vast programme creating jobs that are favourable to the energy transition. Power production can be decentralized by placing it entirely in the public domain and by using sustainable non fossil sources such as solar energy.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: CADTM.

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France.  He is the author of Bankocracy (2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc.

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[1] Despite the exorbitant costs, the safety and environmental hazards, and all the problems to be overcome to obtain nuclear technology, at a time when many countries are opting out, in Africa nuclear power is still attractive to governments and capitalists. Countries like Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan have made known their intentions to manage to produce nuclear energy. « In 2015, Egypt officially announced that Russia was building its first 1 000 MW nuclear power station in El-Dabaa, in the Libyan desert for 4 billion dollars and that it would be operational by 2025, while the Russian company Rosatom is building another nuclear power station in Nigeria.» Source: https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/is-africa-ready-for-nuclear-energy

April 25: Foreign Minister Arreaza Describes Excruciating Suffering of the Venezuelan People Resulting From US Sanctions; 

April 26: US Violates its Obligation as  UN Host Country and Sanctions the Foreign Minister for Speaking Truth to Power

“We are not only on the wrong side, we are the wrong side.”   Pentagon Papers Expert Daniel Elllsberg

“American sanctions are deliberately aiming to wreck Venezuela’s economy and thereby lead to regime change.  It’s a fruitless, heartless, illegal, and failed policy, causing grave harm to the Venezuelan people.”  Professor Jeffrey Sachs

US Maneuvers at the United Nations

The entire official schedule of meetings of the United Nations Commission on Disarmament – April 8 through April 29 – was forced to cancel because the United States, in violation of its obligations as host country, refused a visa to important Russian delegates.

On April 25, Venezuela’s brilliant, charismatic Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza (left) detailed, in a United Nations press briefing, the horrific suffering the Venezuelan people are enduring as a result of the dictatorship of US sanctions against his country, and US terrorization of each and every global institution and nation which the US is demanding sever all economic and diplomatic ties with Venezuela.

In a stealthy, deadly march to global dictatorship, and consistent with its attempt to subjugate the United Nations to the interests of US oligarchic power, the United States is abusing its membership in the United Nations, attempting to force regime change on Venezuela, using criminal methods in violation of the Hague Convention, the Geneva Convention, the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the Organization of American States, the Venezuelan Constitution, and in violation of U.S. law itself.

The U.S. maneuvers to destroy the Maduro government’s UN accreditation, and replace it with their puppet Guaido are horrifying and Machiavellian, and, quite realistically, since the US has absolutely no scruples, nor any respect for international law, there is an ominous possibility that they may succeed.  Numerous diplomats of many countries, with whom I have spoken, are terrified by the sanctions the US just placed on the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, recognizing the threat to their own sovereignty, and sophisticated Iranian specialists delineated the dangerous possibilities the US has to use this method to force out the Venezuelan delegation to the UN, and de facto denude the Maduro government’s access to the UN.  If the US succeeds in this criminal scheme, the credibility of the UN will be entirely and irreparably destroyed, as the many diplomats with whom I have spoken have confirmed.  Many delegates are now saying that the UN would be better based in another more reliable and respectful country.  Venezuela is Chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization of 120 member states. For the US to sanction her Foreign Minister is an unconscionable and intolerable abuse of the host country status.

The US has, furthermore, forged another mafia-style organization of flunkey Latin American “governments” which give every indication of becoming  a new Operation Condor, that systematically organized engine of murder arranged by Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger, (image left) an international organized criminal plan to exterminate all progressive and humanitarian efforts throughout Latin America and beyond.

Operation Condor orchestrated the slaughter of Chilean former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Sheridan Circle, Washington, DC in 1976. Letelier bled to death after a car bomb arranged by Anti-Castro Cuban terrorists tore off his legs. An American girl working for the Institute of Policy Studies, Ronni Moffett was also killed in that terrorist action.  In Argentina, Chilean General Carlos Prats was murdered when his Buenos Aires home was bombed;  in Rome, Chilean Senator Bernardo Leighton’s wife was crippled by an assassin’s bullet intended for him;  Operation Condor arranged the murder of former progressive Bolivian President Torres in Argentina.

Diabolic Methods Used by the US to Wreck Venezuela

In a colossal report entitled:  “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment:  The Case of Venezuela,” and corroborating everything stated by Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, economist Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot describe the diabolic methods used by the United States to wreck Venezuela and discredit socialism, resulting in the deliberate murder of at least 40,000 Venezuelan people, including children, the elderly, the infirm and other of the most vulnerable civilians. This is a systematic and deliberate policy of the US government, a heinous plan to exterminate socialism and massacre the Venezuelan people in order to steal their oil, a spectacular act of piracy brazenly conducted with the collusion of obedient puppets in Western Europe and Canada, and craven, obsequious Latin American states whose shameful obedience to Washington is breathtaking.

Complete Blockade

Washington is now threatening to completely blockade and sanction Cuba to force that country to sever relations with Venezuela. Nicaragua is, of course, also in the crosshairs.

Yesterday there was a failed coup, provoked by the Quisling Juan Guaido, (image right with Lopez) who incited a military revolt to violently overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicholas Maduro.  If Joseph Biden or Bernie Sanders, or any American citizen advocated the violent overthrow of the US government, they would be imprisoned and/or executed.  It is astounding that the Manchurian candidate Juan Guaido, advocating the violent overthrow of the Venezuelan government, is allowed to roam free, throughout Venezuela.  This is incontestable proof of the impeccably democratic character of the Maduro government. And perhaps it is proof of Maduro’s strength and trust in the Venezuelan people.  But Maduro’s life is at risk for his country. During yesterday’s emergency, Venezuelan Ambassador Samuel Moncada convened a UN press conference, and skillfully replied to often slanted and biased questions  for which Moncada was well prepared, and had no doubt anticipated.

The US government is disintegrating, and has been for many years, with the current administration rife with internecine warfare.  The French government is confronting an incipient popular revolution of the Yellow Jackets, the British government stymied by Brexit and separatist movements threatening the survival of the “United Kingdom.”  It is only with the most flagrant arrogance that they criticize Venezuela.

It is agonizing to witness the mass murder of a heroic and progressive Venezuelan people, by a psychopathic capitalism which has not one iota of human decency, and wallowing in its cannibalistic behavior, desecrates the very concept of human rights.  But that is the essence of monopoly capitalism, whose “highest” stage is fascism. One can only hope that Russia and China will recognize the future menace to their own survival, and will not indulge in the wishful thinking of a “win-win” arrangement with Washington. One can only hope that the crucible of Venezuela will prove to be the Stalingrad of this de facto World War III, and it will be on the battlefield of Venezuela, with its transgenerational legacy of Simon Bolivar, that fascism is defeated, and the future progressive destiny of humanity will be forged.

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

“We are complicit in crimes against humanity when we know about them and when we don’t stop them.” — Jacob Appelbaum

The unilaterally issued economic sanctions that the US leveled against Venezuela in 2017 and this year violate international laws the charters of the UN and the Organization of American States, according to a recently published report.

The 25-page report authored by Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs cites articles in the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) that prohibit sanctions.  Specifically, Article 19 states in part,

“No State or group or group of states has the right to intervene…for any reason whatsoever in the internal or exterior affairs of another state.”

Article 20 declares,

“No State may use… coercive measures of an economic or political character… to force the sovereign will of another State and obtain from it advantages of any kind.”

The authors conclude that the Trump administration’s sanctions against Venezuela “clearly violate both of these articles of the OAS Charter.”  Additionally, the report notes that legal scholars denounce the sanctions as violations of international law, specifically, the UN Charter and international human rights law (Weisbrot and Sachs 2019).

The August 2017 sanctions that the Trump regime initiated atop a debilitating recession had devastating effects on Venezuela’s most vulnerable: children, elderly, chronically sick and poverty ridden as Venezuelan oil production plummeted 42 percent during 2017 and 2018 amid harsh international banking restrictions created on orders from the US.  This directly impacted the imports of food, medicines and equipment that supports the electricity grid, water systems and public transportation.  The US Treasury Department in action tantamount to throwing gasoline on a raging fire issued a warning to international financing sources that collapsed Venezuelan banking institutions and evaporated credit sources   These demonstrably illegal actions by the US directly hinder the availability of life-saving goods for civilian Venezuelans (Weisbrot and Sachs 2019).

Beginning on January 28, 2019 Trump issued a barrage of executive orders.  Not the least of these was the Trump administration and its cabal of lapdog-courtier nations bringing forth Juan Guaidó, a political unknown in Venezuela where only about 19 percent of the population had ever heard of the 35-year-old, self-proclaimed “Interim President.”  Guaidó’s so-called parallel government along with other “sanctions resulting from further statements, threats or actions from the executive branch of the United States” must be included in the US outrages to crush the ability of a sovereign government to purchase essential imports (Weisbrot and Sachs 2019).

The ramification of the US sanctions is the “collective punishment” of the most vulnerable of Venezuela’s population.  An estimated 40,000 deaths have occurred subsequent the sanctions during 2017 and 2018, according to the National Survey on Living Conditions that was administered by three Venezuelan universities.  More than 300,000 were at risk during this period because of the unavailability of needed life-saving medicines that treat chronic disease.  The increased sanctions during 2019 will increase the risk of what amounts to death sentences for the chronically sick in Venezuela (Weisbrot and Sachs 2019).

Displaying in full the sadistic, mercenary and criminal nature of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on March 11 gloated during an exchange with Associated Press reporter Mike Lee, “The circle is tightening; the humanitarian crisis is increasing….  You can see the increasing pain and suffering that the Venezuelan people are suffering from.”  In January Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton blurted,

“We’re in conversation with major American companies now….  It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela” (Weisbrot and Sachs 2019).

Under the lie of humanitarian assistance, the US began its crippling sanctions that are designed to disrupt and collapse the Venezuelan economy specifically and its society in general.  The Trump administration unilaterally issued by executive order broad economic sanctions on the South American nation.  But Venezuela had been in the US crosshairs since Bill Clinton’s administration when President Hugo Chávez elected president in December 1998.  Chávez, who was Nicolás Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, served as Venezuela’s president between February 2, 1999 and his death from cancer on March 5, 2013 (Weisbrot and Sachs 2019).

The US policymakers’ hatred of Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro stem from the policies of these two Venezuelan leaders that turned the tide of poverty and failed social programs during the “Lost Years” of the 1980s under regimes supported by the US.  By 1998 most Venezuelans, disillusioned with the volatile neoliberal agenda of right-wing President Carlos Andrés Pérez, sought radical change in their government.  Chávez was elected Venezuela’s president with 56 percent of the popular vote that consisted largely of dark-skinned, urban poor.  Chávez continued to enjoy popularity in the face of a failed US-backed coup d’état, an economy-destroying oil strike, a recall election and a withering propaganda campaign of the white oligarchy-controlled media that historian Greg Grandin quipped “made Fox News look like PBS.”  Mismanagement of the decades-long US-backed regimes opened the door for Chavismo, that combines elements of socialism, left-wing populism, feminism and Bolivarian nationalism.  By 2004, Chávez controlled Venezuela’s oil as he delivered an ambitious program to improve social conditions for the poor.  Chávez embarked on an audacious program to weaken US hegemony in Latin America with “poly-polar equilibrium.”  During his period as president, Chávez survived 15 national votes that former US President Jimmy Carter called the “best in the world” (Beezy 2008; Grandin 2013).

Of course, Chávez’s brash and audacious humor rankled US neoconservatives to further hone their blades when in September 2006, he stood at the floor of the UN General Assembly in New York City and informed the diplomats assembled there that President George W. Bush was Beelzebub.

“Yesterday, the devil came here,” he said.  “Right here… And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.”

Then he made the sign of the cross, kissed his hand and winked at the audience (Grandin 2013).

Since the George W. Bush cadre of neoconservatives adopted the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) recipe for US global hegemony through manufactured public consent for the Iraq invasion in 2003, the government and its stooges in the corporate media recite the same rhetoric and protocol.  In every instance when the empire decides to bring “democracy” at the barrel of a gun to exploit weaker nations’ natural resources it follows the same scheme: (1) It declares the democratically elected leader is a dictator who is starving his people, while it issues illegal threats of regime change; (2) the US empire manipulates the world price of various commodities and access to international lending institutions to weaken the subject country’s economy; (3) the empire issues bribes, blackmails or threatens leaders of other nations to invoke a trade embargo that further collapses the economy; (4) the US and its allies seize assets of the targeted nation; (5) the CIA forms paramilitary forces to disrupt the targeted nation internally by creating false-flag operations and sabotage; (6) the CIA attempts to initiate a coup d’état within the targeted country’s military in the hope that the hardship created by propaganda and sanctions will cause a popular uprising.  Venezuela is a textbook example of these illegal and immoral processes are presently in motion in that beleaguered nation.

Since the dawn of the new millennium, the US has been involved in at least nine wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, the Indian Ocean, Libya, Uganda, Syria and Yemen.  Currently, the Trump administration, through Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, is making overt threats of the use of force to topple the Nicolás Maduro government in Venezuela, a violation of the US Constitution, UN charter and international laws.  Special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, who backed death squads in Central America during the Reagan administration, is now Trump’s point man in the US efforts to topple the Maduro government.

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Edward B. Winslow is a freelance writer in Illinois. Email: [email protected]

Sources

Beezy, Naomi Rose. 2008. Income Distribution in Venezuela Post Hugo Chávez. Pomona: California Polytechnic University, 77. Accessed May 1, 2019. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1276244.

Grandin, Greg. 2013. “Chávez: Why Venezuelans Love Him.” Nation 296 (13): 11-17.

Weisbrot, Mark, and Jeffrey Sachs. 2019. Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela.Washington: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 25. Accessed 30 April, 2019.http://cepr.net/publications/reports/economic-sanctions-as-collective-punishment-the-case-of-venezuela.

Featured image is from Washington Times

Call for a United Nations Independent and Impartial Investigation

We, the mothers, fathers, siblings, relatives and friends of the victims of the 2 May 2014 violence in Odessa, as well as Odessa residents supporting a return to the rule of law, and our call for justice, are turning our hopes to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to appoint a group of experts to undertake an independent, impartial, objective and credible investigation into the tragedy that led to the death of at least 48 residents, and possibly more.

2 May 2014: Violence in Odessa

On 2 May 2014, supporters of the Kiev’s authorities represented by various extremist organizations that supported the violent change of Government, and supporters of federalization that would enable Ukraine to maintain its integrity, came into conflict with each other in the streets of Odessa. These actions resulted in the deaths and injuries of many people. Six men died in the city’s center: two were Government supporters four were “pro-federalism” supporters. Later in the day, an aggressive mob went to Kulikovo square. First of all the attackers burned the camp of federalization activists in the square. In the course of these activities people have been attacked and severely beaten with baseball bats, iron chains and even shot with firearm. The camp was set on fire; as a result people took refuge in the building of Trade Unions House. Dozens of people were trapped. But even after the fire in the Trade Unions House the attackers continued beating to death people gathered in the building. Fleeing from the fire, some people jumped from the windows of the second and third floor. After they felt to the ground, some were beaten to death. Other besieged people sought refuge on the roof of the building, from where they were rescued later on. Some died from suffocation or burned alive.

According to Ukrainian media, 48 people were killed: 6 in street clashes and 42 at the Kulikovo Field area. Two of the victims were pro-government demonstrators. The 46 others were supporters of federalization.

Surviving victims were seriously injured and a part of them were taken to hospitals. Some died there of their injuries, one of them died just six months ago. Others were removed from hospitals by their relatives out of fear that they would be killed.

Unfortunately, it is not known how many persons really died and disappeared, except the available official information, namely – 48 people were killed in clashes.

These violent actions were unprecedented in the recent history of Odessa. What happened shocked and horrified the entire city, which had traditionally been haven for people of different nationalities, religions and languages.

All this occurred under the eyes of the police, which did not intervene, on the ground that it had “no orders”. The fire brigade, located nearby, was called repeatedly for assistance, but took 45 minutes to come.

Some of these events, including the violence in the Kulikovo square were partially monitored by the OHCHR monitoring mission in Ukraine.

In a number of cases, the police eventually provided protection some of the victims but surprisingly took them into custody. Some of those arrested were released the next day, under pressure from Odessa residents who protested against their detention. About 60 “pro-federalism” supporters arrested in the center of the city were taken away from Odessa and detained in other cities. Five people arrested at the time are under arrest in prison and 15 others are under house arrest. All 20 are “pro-federalism” supporters. They were all charged for “mass disorder” (Penal code, Section 294) instead of being individually charged of specific offenses. All indictments are identical, as if they had been cut and pasted from the same model.  None of the “pro-government” supporters responsible for the organization and implementation of the murders has been punished. All perpetrators are free (three were initially arrested, but two of them were released, and the third died in detention from TB). One of them is undergoing investigation for murder, but is free and regularly participates in public events.

Investigations into the 2 May Violence

The official investigations have thus far been inconclusive; there is little evidence against on trial; numerous legal and procedural violations have been observed; the court buildings in Odessa have been repeatedly invaded by extremist militants who have threatened judges, defense lawyers and families of the defendants, and have sometimes assaulted them; they have interrupted judicial proceedings and in several cases forced judges to recuse themselves; and many documents were fabricated.

Two years, the victims of the 2 May 2014 Odessa violence are still waiting for truth and justice. Five separate official investigations were ordered by the authorities (General Prosecutor; Ministry of Interior; Parliamentary Commission; Ombudsperson; as well as police department in Odessa). None has brought about any tangible result. No one has been punished for any of the deaths, injuries and possible disappearances. Even the social activists of the “2 May group”, which claims to have carried out an independent investigation, and whose conclusions are questionable, expressed serious reservations about the willingness of the authorities to effectively investigate these tragic events. They recently stated that the investigation was clearly being sabotaged at the highest level in the Ministry of Interior. The Council of Europe also conducted an assessment of the investigation effort but concluded that the authorities were not determined, nor able, to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths and injuries. The Council of Mothers agrees with the conclusions of the Council of Europe, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, arbitrary or summary executions, and the UN Assistant Secretary General for human rights, about “the lack of progress in the investigations and proceedings into the killings that happened [in Maidan], on 2 May 2014 in Odessa and 9 May 2014 in Mariupol. The slow progress in these cases undermines public confidence in the criminal justice system. It is essential that they be addressed promptly and with impartiality.”We also agree with the Council of Europe’s and the United Nations envoys that it is impossible to heal the deep wounds left by these tragic events under current political conditions. As the Council of Europe concluded in its assessment of the investigations of the Maidan violence “An important part of any such healing process is the conduct of an effective and independent investigation into the acts of violence. As has been widely acknowledged, there has been a clear lack of public confidence in Ukraine in any such investigations. On the contrary, there has been widespread perception of impunity on the part of law-enforcement agencies and of an unwillingness or inability on the part of the investigatory authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths and injuries. As is noted in the report, this perception has been highlighted on previous occasions by various Council of Europe bodies”. The report further notes “impunity must be fought as a matter of justice for the victims, as a deterrent to prevent new violations, and to uphold the rule of law and public trust in the justice system.” Unfortunately, the Council of Europe has reached very similar conclusions in its assessment of the investigations into the 2 May violence in Odessa. Two years later, no one has been brought to justice for the crimes committed, and there is no indication that anyone will.

Appeal of the Council of Mothers

As citizens of Ukraine, we believe that justice should be delivered to the people of Ukraine by the Ukrainian authorities.

However, in view of the lack of progress in any of the official investigations, and no indication that they will ever result in truth and justice, we are left with no other opportunity than turning to the United Nations as an independent and credible authority to effectively investigate these crimes, and bring perpetrators to justice. We hope that an investigation by the United Nations may encourage renewed effort by the Ukrainian authorities to deliver to the victims and their families a long-awaited and promised justice – which was one of the key demands of Maidan – and encourage them to effectively investigate and punish the real culprits (the organizers and perpetrators) of this tragedy.

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A detailed plan from “UNITED STATES SOUTHERN COMMAND” dated “23 FEBRUARY 2018” was issued with the title “PLAN TO OVERTHROW THE VENEZUELAN DICTATORSHIP ‘MASTERSTROKE’” and is here presented complete. 

This document was personally signed by Admiral Kurt W. Tidd, who was the Commander (the chief), at SOUTHCOM, and he was thus the top U.S. military official handling Venezuela. But this was far more than just a military plan. It was comprehensive — directing military, diplomatic, and propaganda, policies — regarding the Trump Administration’s planned “Overthrow” of Venezuela’s Government. His plan has since guided the Administration’s entire operation, including “the capacities of the psychological war,” regarding Venezuela.

It instructed SOUTHCOM:

“Encouraging popular dissatisfaction by increasing scarcity and rise in price of the foodstuffs, medicines and other essential goods for the inhabitants. Making more harrowing and painful the scarcities of the main basic merchandises.” …

“intensifying the undercapitalization of the country, the leaking out of foreign currency and the deterioration of its monetary base, bringing about the application of new inflationary measures.” …

“Fully obstruct imports, and at the same time discouraging potential foreign investors in order to make the situation more critical for the population.” …

“compelling him to fall into mistakes that generate greater distrust and rejection domestically” …

“To besiege him, to ridicule him and to pose him as symbol of awkwardness and incompetence. To expose him as a puppet of Cuba.” …

“Appealing to domestic allies as well as other people inserted from abroad in the national scenario in order to generate protests, riots and insecurity, plunders, thefts, assaults and highjacking of vessels as well as other means of transportation, with the intention of deserting this country in crisis through all borderlands and other possible ways, jeopardizing in such a way the National Security of neighboring frontier nations. Causing victims and holding the Government responsible for them. Magnifying, in front of the world, the humanitarian crisis in which the country has been submitted to.” …

“Structuring a plan to get the profuse desertion of the most qualified professionals from the country, in order ‘to leave it with no professionals at all’, which will aggravate even more the internal situation and along these lines putting the blame on of Government.” …

“the presence of combat units from the United States of America and the other named countries, under the command of a Joint General Staff led by the USA.”

It was posted online at the Voltairenet site, and was first copied to a web archive on 14 May 2018. So, it has been online since at least that date. However, because the photo in it of the document wasn’t made available via software which includes the individual symbols, but presented only the full visual image of the paper document, it still hasn’t yet gone viral on the Web. Here, therefore, is the first appearance, on the Web, of the full document, that’s manually copied, character-by-character, so that each phrase in this document becomes, for the first time, web-searchable, and thereby conveniently available for journalists and historians to quote from. This prophetic document — the source for what has happened afterward in and to Venezuela — might therefore finally receive the public attention that it so clearly merits. 

The document starts with propaganda against Venezuela’s existing Government (and it totally ignores the extent to which the pre-existing U.S. economic sanctions against Venezuela had actually caused these problems), and it then proceeds to present the U.S. plan to overthrow the ‘dictatorship’. (Tidd refers to Maduro only as “the Dictator,” except at the very start and very end. At the end, he commands “the denouncement toward Maduro’s regimen” and he also uses the phrase “the enemy” to refer to him — as if there had been the U.S. Constitutionally required authorization, by the U.S. Congress, of this “war.” The close urges “the dispatch of a UNO military force for the imposition of peace, once Nicolas Maduro’s corrupt dictatorship is defeated.” The U.N. is militarily to “impose” “peace,” after the U.S. and its allies have conquered Venezuela.) 

Although Tidd placed 100% of the blame for Venezuela’s problems upon Maduro, and ignored the crucial extent to which U.S. economic sanctions had caused them, his plan emphasized that the U.S. must actively make things even worse for the Venezuelan public than America’s economic sanctions had yet done. His coup-plan is loaded with such statements, and, in fact, opens with one: “Encouraging popular dissatisfaction by increasing scarcity and rise in price of the foodstuffs, medicines and other essential goods for the inhabitants. Making more harrowing and painful the scarcities of the main basic merchandises.” So: he wasn’t naive. America’s induced suffering upon Venezuelans was part of his plan for Venezuelans, in order to get them to do what the U.S. regime wants them to do — overthrow Maduro. Furthermore, the United States Government has had extensive successes in previous such operations. One example is that this was how Chile’s Salvador Allende was brought down in 1973 (at a time when the U.S. Government’s claims to have done it for ‘national security’ reasons had much more credibility than its current excuse of helping the Venezuelan people does, because the supposedly ideological Cold War was still on). The only excuse that the perpetrators can come up with, this time around, is “to put an end to the Venezuelan nightmare and the awakening of theirs beloved nation at a luminous dawn, in which the vision of fortune, true peace and tranquility predominate for their fellow citizens.” Impoverish the nation, in order to help Venezuelans attain “true peace and tranquility.” That’s the plan.  

Below is the document’s entire text.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

All images/documents in this article are from Voltairenet.org

As the son of an agricultural worker in NE Scotland, agricultural areas were always full of wonder and excitement for me. Places of clean, clear rivers where gigantic fish leapt enthusiastically for flies; home to mind boggling mass migrations of flying insects with their natural insect predators greedily in tow; places where light from a bedroom window could quickly attract 100 beautiful green lacewings, each staring implacably in with iridescent eyes to see what can be had.

When I see the barren industrial zones that agricultural areas in the UK and other economically developed nations have now become, my principle feeling is sadness, and some anger. Anger that this decimation can be treated with essentially a shrug of the shoulders by farmers, farm workers, politicians, the agri-industrialists that supply the weapons of destruction, and the general public alike. As a professional ecologist and academic I will explain here how intensive farming, principally through its incredibly abusive relationship with insects, is destroying not only the many beneficial insects such as pollinators that we depend up on but also the many larger, more charismatic animals such as birds and mammals that are visible to the public.

My focus here is on agriculture and insects. Why are insects so important to us and the natural world? The main reason why is that they are extremely abundant and diverse. Research done during the 1980s put the mass of insects in the United States at around 100 kg per hectare; comparable to the environmental abundance of bacteria and fungi. To put that in perspective, you could sum the mass of humans, birds and non-human mammals and it would still only be around 1/15 the mass of insects in the same area.

Figures for species richness are similarly impressive. Excluding fungi, algae and microbes (for which data is often poor) just over half the species on earth are insects and of those around half are plant-eating insects. Vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) by comparison make up a paltry 4% of species. All this has two major implications. The first you will have heard about: insects are important to us humans. In their role as pollinators, decomposers of nature’s waste materials and as natural regulators of pests, insects keep us in food and living in a relatively constant and healthy environment.

The second implication is perhaps less obvious: they are an incredibly important source of food for other animals. Their great species richness means that insects feature at the bottom of almost all food webs; a gigantic pot of food provisioned by mother nature to keep the feathered and furry animals higher up the food web with a full stomach. Mess with the abundance of insects and you are messing with the foundations of life itself. But that is exactly what humans are doing. Insect abundance right across the globe is dropping and it is dropping fast.

We have in fact known that insects are in trouble for some time but the recent publicity surrounding global insect decline appears to have coalesced round a piece of research done by a German team and published in 2017. Sampling flying insects across numerous German conservation sites, the team showed that numbers of flying insects had dropped by an incredible 75% in the 27 years since 1990. An influential review on global insect decline and a flurry of media interest has ensued. To my mind, what is interesting about these recent articles is the explicitness with which they point the finger at intensive agriculture and, in particular, pesticide use. Entomologists (insect scientists) have a well-concealed but very cosy relationship with agriculture and the agrochemical industry in particular. The British Royal Entomological Society, for example, which claims to be an organisation devoted to insect conservation, regularly invites agrochem scientists to its meetings to give presentations. I attended my final meeting of this organisation a few years back at a conference dedicated to insect decline where an agrochem rep gave a presentation that amounted essentially to displaying a catalogue of new insect pest control products his company were offering. So you can bet that if entomologists are pointing the finger at intensive agriculture they are really worried: their default position is to keep their mouth shut.

Agriculture impacts nature so profoundly by virtue of its scale. England, for example, is around 70% agricultural land by area with about half of that area dedicated to growing crops (arable) and the other half pasture for the rearing of animals. England is more or less all agricultural land and natural habitat is restricted to patches here and there. We scoff at countries like Indonesia clearing its forests for palm oil plantations at the expense of orangutans but the truth is that most economically developed nations cleared their natural environment a long, long time ago. By comparison, most economically developing nations have treated their natural environment with kid gloves. All this is to say that, in economically developed nations, if nature declines across agricultural land, it declines everywhere: the nature of agricultural areas is essentially the nature of the nation.

To get back to insects, agriculture leads a three pronged attack on these creatures. First line of attack is direct through spraying of ever more potent insecticides against insect crop pests. Using the UK as an example, the weight of pesticide applied in the UK has in fact halved since 1990, however this statistics is deceptive. The area treated has doubled, as has the number of applications per area. And crucially, the potency of pesticides has increased dramatically, particularly with the introduction of the ultra-potent neonicotinoids in the 1990s (all statistics here). Dave Goulson at the University of Sussex and colleagues calculate that the number of honeybee lethal doses applied to the 4.6 million hectares of arable land in the UK has increase roughly sixfold since 1990. And recall that these pesticides don’t just wipe out the problem insect pests that attack the crop; they kill almost all insects that happen to be living or resting in the crop. In essence, over and over, year after year, farmers kill pretty much every insect across just under half the land area of their nation. Can we reasonably expect to have a healthy insect fauna in nations where this intensity of spraying is so common place?

Second line of attack is herbicide spraying. Again using the UK as an example, the area of arable treated with the most commonly used herbicide, glyphosate (Roundup), has increased roughly 9-fold since 1990 to a staggering 2,634,573 hectares treatment area in 2016. As a boy I remember the surface of cereal fields and fields margins would be awash with a diversity of wild plants, with game birds scurrying among the crops to pick insects from them. Now go down on your knees and look across the surface of a cereal field and there is nothing but sandy soil and crop; a relative desert, and diversity in field margins is now largely restricted to grasses and a small number of dominant wild plants such as cow parsley. Recalling that almost half of all insects depend on wild plants for food, again, there is no way we can expect to have a healthy population of insects and the animals that eat them when almost half the land of nations is treated in this way.

The last line of attack on insects by intensive agriculture is intensification of pasture management. Traditionally, grass pastures were managed non-intensively, with low levels of chemical fertilisation, a low density of grazing animals, and prolonged periods of rest between grazing bouts. All this combined to make grass pasture an important habitat for plant and insect biodiversity with a high diversity of wild plants on which insects could feed. Now grass pasture can be viewed essentially as a high throughput system for the production of meat and milk. Huge quantities of chemical fertilisers are applied with the result that only a small number of dominant plant species can thrive, the length of time in between feeding bouts has been dramatically reduced, and many wet pastures have been drained as part of the intensification process. Now farmer’s pastures support nothing but grass and the large animals that graze on it. Like arable fields, they are a no go area for wild plants, the insects that feed on them, and the larger wild animals that feed on the insects in turn. Bearing in mind that grass pasture covers just under half of economically developed nations like England, this is a terrible blow to insects and nature in general.

So intensive agriculture is decimating insects and nature in general. What have we, the public, gotten in return? In a word: yield. Yield per area of arable and pasture have increased considerably in the last few decades. Proponents of high-intensity agriculture call this phenomenon ‘The Green Revolution’. When I talk to academic supporters of conventional agriculture they are always keen to tell me that this has led to cheaper food and greater food security. This is something of a mantra among such academics: they repeat it over and over again in conservation until they feel they have conveyed the message sufficiently forcefully. But the reality for the average citizen in many nations is far from so simple. Particularly in rapidly developing nations, this increased availability of food has led to a move away from healthy traditional diets to diets higher in fattening animal products and sugar with a resultant increase in obesity an ill health. In the UK no one can deny the ready availability of candy and junk food even to the poorest, but a recent report by the Food Foundation indicates that healthy food, the fruit and vegetables that we should be eating, remain out of reach for as many as 4 million of the UK’s least well off. As for food security, the ability of countries such as the UK to feed itself has been declining for many years. The UK produces roughly 60% of its own food with the rest imported. Food self-sufficiency in many economically developed nations has been subordinated to what is considered to be the more important function of international trade. The result is that any modifications to international trade leads to food insecurity and panic buying. In the UK the prospect of altered trade relations with the EU (Brexit) has lead to widespread fear of food shortages and panic buying. Only the staunchest supporters of intensive agriculture could claim that countries such as the UK are food secure. And with the worldwide rise of right wing zealots in positions of power, who knows what disturbances to international trade and food security lie ahead?

In the UK, the response of the ruling Conservative Party to the issues discussed in this article is a new Agriculture Bill. This promises to incentivise environmental improvements to farmland and if this leads to improved pasture management for nature then it is to be welcomed. However the bill barely mentions pesticide and herbicide spraying, suggesting that these key destroyers of the farmland environment for nature will remain untouched, which, to my mind, makes something of a mockery of the whole thing.

The solution to overuse of pesticide is simple. All crops have a threshold beyond which insect pest damage results in significant economic losses. These thresholds are typically expressed as number of insect pests per plant or head in the case of cereal. It would not take more than a small team of government scientists to produce yearly or dynamic within-year thresholds for the main crops grown in the UK. All that would then remain is for farmers to regularly sample their crop for pests to determine if threshold have been crossed, when spraying would then be allowed. This would, however, require legislation to restrict pesticide availability to farmers and some effort on the part of farmers. Farmers many years ago would regularly be seen among their crops examining plants but this ‘artisan’ aspect of farming in the UK seems to be all but gone. Modern farming appears to require skills in logistics and staff management rather than a knowledge of plant pathology and pest population dynamics. Herbicides could be treated similarly. A few weeds in a field won’t cause much loss and weed thresholds could be similarly applied. But as the current government won’t even mention pesticides and herbicides in their Agriculture Bill, these very reasonable solutions seems a very distant prospect.

Personally, I would like to see a mass mobilisation of citizens in defence of nature and against intensive farming in a way we are beginning to see in response to the problem of global warming. But waving placards in parliament square will achieve nothing regardless of how many people turn up. Our representatives in Westminster, Hollyrood, the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies, and in political assemblies all over the world only understand money and economics and only when activists begin to impact ‘the bottom line’ of nations will they sit up and take notice.

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani signed a bill into law on Tuesday declaring all US forces in the Middle East terrorists and calling the US government a sponsor of terrorism, says Reuters.

The bill was passed by parliament last week in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s decision this month to designate Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organisation.

It was not clear what the impact of the new law might be on US forces or their operations.

Rouhani instructed the ministry of intelligence, ministry of foreign affairs, the armed forces, and Iran’s supreme national security council to implement the law, state media reported.

The law specifically labels as a terrorist organisation the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for US military operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The United States has already blacklisted dozens of entities and people for affiliations with the Guards, but until Trump’s decision not the organisation as a whole.

Comprising an estimated 125,000-strong military with army, navy and air units, the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) also command the Basij, a religious volunteer paramilitary force, and control Iran’s ballistic missile programmes. The Guards’ overseas Quds forces have fought Iran’s proxy wars in the region.

The long-tense relations between Tehran and Washington took a turn for the worse last May when Trump pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, reached before he took office, and reimposed sanctions.

Revolutionary Guards commanders have repeatedly said that US bases in the Middle East and US aircraft carriers in the Gulf are within range of Iranian missiles.

Rouhani said on Tuesday that Iran will continue to export oil despite US sanctions aimed at reducing the country’s crude shipments to zero.

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Featured image is from Iranian Presidency/Anadolu Agency

Sadly, the uber rich, who seem to run just about everything, must be laughing all the way to their corporate headquarters, banks and brokerage houses. I mean, these sharks have had it so good for so long!

Speaking to an Austrian scientist on the treadmill next to mine at the gym, he summed it all up in a nutshell: “We’ve got 8 or so major political parties and you just always have column A and column B. Some democracy yeah?” Reminds one of the traditional comedy theme of the big fat dictator strutting around while his entire entourage fight with each other to impress him the best.

The Democrats now have 20 such minions running around (and soon to be at each other’s throats) to make ‘brownie points’ with this empire. With maybe with the exception of Ms. Gabbard they ALL seem to be banging the ‘Cold War with Russia’ drum along with their distaste for Venezuela’s elected government. One of them even distinguishes himself by accentuating that he is a socialist… oh sorry a ‘Democratic Socialist’. Some ‘Democratic Socialist’! Remember, he supported the horrific US orchestrated NATO carpet bombing and destruction of Libya in 2011. HIs alibi was that he was supporting the overthrow of their evil dictator (whose people had better health care than we have, and a better standard of living for the average Libyan). Matter of fact, here are a few facts on this:

• Education and medical treatment were free under Ghaddafi
• Newlyweds received U.S $50,000 from the government.
• Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project.
• Libya had no external debt and had reserves of $150 billion most of which were frozen globally by NATO’s instigation

Then, a few years ago, Sanders the ‘Democratic Socialist’ referred to the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela as ‘A dead dictator’. Yet, during Chavez’s time in office Venezuela had the lowest rate of income inequality than ANY country in Latin America and the Caribbean! Too bad Bernie, because you do make sense on the whole domestic front… to an extent of course.

At least Senator Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard actually talk about real and innovative change, he on domestic issues and she on foreign policy issues. The others, well, they really see the uber rich run Deep State as their wayward cousins and not their enemies. Meaning that they wish to serve and not really overturn this corporate ‘capitalism on steroids’ system.

You know, a little push here and a little push there… but never addressing the mortal sin of people earning mega millions while the working stiffs are a few paychecks from the gutter.

I mean, Senator Warren actually came out with a plan to have those earning $ 50 million a year to pay a 2% Surtax. Really! Boy, that is some way to level the playing field. She actually thinks that her idea is going to address the uber rich (I got this great old bridge in Brooklyn for sale… cheap). Other than their concerns, which are real and viable, for the indigent, the Democrats  talk a good talk about we working stiffs, but have done squat to make our lives easier. Squat! My old schoolmate Senator Schumer has been a big wheel on the Senate Banking Committee for years… and why hasn’t he done anything to lower the interest rates that the predatory credit card companies/banks are getting away with? Ditto for the personal bankruptcy rules that favor (as always) the banks over the people? Of course, God forbid if the corporate bankrupted had to have the same rules applied to their cases!

No, the Democratic lemmings serve their purpose well, and we know the other party gets their marching orders from the slew of uber rich run think tanks and foundations. So, my Austrian gym friend hit the nail on the head. So, let’s address how a true Socialist or even Socialist leaning party should tackle a few key issues:

You want to have the uber rich pay their fair share to help the 99+ % of us? Well, how about, for starters, a 50% Flat Surtax on all income over and above $ 1,000,000 a year, with NO deductions? Thus, instead of being taxed at the current 37%, our uber rich neighbors (even though they hardly allow we serfs to see them up close) would have to see Half of all income over one million dollars going right to the Treasury.

• National Health and Dental Care for ALL – Well, with the savings from the above new plan, we could have a total National Health and Dental plan whereupon we all contribute according to our income. No need for private insurers as Uncle Sam would be the payer for all services. The savings would be phenomenal, and all of us would have better minds, bodies and teeth.
• Cutting the military spending, which is now over 50% of each of our federal taxes. Even a 25% cut would see well over $ 600 billion for use towards the needs for infrastructure, first providers, schools, libraries  and who knows what else.
• Public funding of ALL elections… Period! With one stroke of the pen there would be very few paid lobbyists circling around our legislatures. The only way our elected officials could be influenced would be by ‘under the table’ bribery… a convictable offense. Meanwhile, many of us who now have not a prayer of getting on a ballot would see chances to reach the public with new ideas.

The title of this column is interesting. As with little ants nibbling on crumbs at a picnic, so the current mainstream minions of empire operate. Don’t all of we working stiffs deserve better representation?

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

Featured image is from Sky News

On May 1, the Turkish-backed coalition of militant groups, the National Front for Liberation, claimed that its members had killed 4 Russian servicemembers with mortar shelling in the village of Braidij in northern Hama.

The reports came amid a new round of escalation in the area caused by the constant militant attacks on positions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). According to pro-militant sources, Syrian and Russian aircraft carried out at least 50 strikes on militant targets in northern Hama and southern Idlib.

On the same day, government reinforcements reportedly arrived in the area in order to strengthen SAA positions near the so-called demilitarized zone. Pro-government sources immediately started a new round of speculation that this is a sign of an upcoming military operation near Idlib.

On May 2, the Russian Defense Ministry rejected claims about casualties among its servicemembers in northern Hama. Separately, the Russian military revealed that militants from the Idlib de-escalation zone had attempted to attack its Hmeymim airbase with multiple-launch rocket systems and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) 12 times over the past month. 8 of the 12 attacks were carried out with UAVs. Russian forces shot down 12 UAVs. No material damage or casualties were caused.

9 Turkish soldiers were killed and fourteen others injured in a series of attacks in the southern part of Afrin on April 30, the Afrin Liberation Forces (ALF) claimed in a new statement. The Turkish soldiers were supposedly killed when Kurdish fighters destroyed with ATGMs two BMC Kirpi Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles and a 4×4 Turkish military truck in the vicinity of the town of Qatamah. On the same day Kurdish fighters also ambushed a Turkish military unit near the same village. As a result of the ambush, six Turkish soldiers were injured, according to the ALF’s claims.

The Kurdish group’s claims are yet to be confirmed. The Turkish military, which usually announces his losses without any delay, has not commented on these claims so far.

ISIS units killed and captured a number of Syrian service members in two hit and run attacks in the eastern Homs countryside over the last few days. The attacks took place in the areas of Aatchane and Sukhna.

According to pro-government sources, the SAA’s Tiger Forces were recently sent to the Homs countryside in order to deal with the growing ISIS threat. The expected anti-ISIS operation in the desert however makes the possibility of an advance near Idlib questionable.

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Retaliation against Julian Assange over the past decade plus replicates a pattern of ruthless political retaliation against whistleblowers, in particular those who reveal truths hidden by illegal secrecy, VIPS says.

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DATE: April 30, 2019

MEMORANDUM FOR: The governments and people of the United Kingdom and the United States

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Extradition of Julian Assange Threatens Us All

On April 11, London police forcibly removed WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange from the embassy of Ecuador after that country’s president, Lenin Moreno, abruptly revoked his predecessor’s grant of asylum. The United States government immediately requested Assange’s extradition for prosecution under a charge of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Former U.S. Government officials promptly appeared in popular media offering soothing assurances that Assange’s arrest threatens neither constitutional rights nor the practice of journalism, and major newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post fell into line.

Not So Fast

Others found reason for concern in the details of the indictment. Carie DeCel, a staff attorney for the Knight First Amendment Institute, noted that the indictment goes beyond simply stating the computer intrusion charge and “includes many more allegations that reach more broadly into typical journalistic practices, including communication with a source, encouraging a source to share information, and protecting a source.”

In an analysis of the indictment’s implications, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) observed that it includes an allegation that “Assange and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure…including by removing usernames from the disclosed information and deleting chat logs between Assange and Manning,” and that they “used a special folder on a cloud drop box of WikiLeaks to transmit classified records.”

“These are not only legitimate but professionally advised journalistic practices for source protection,” notes POGO. It is worth noting that Manning had Top Secret clearance and did not need Assange’s assistance to gain access to databases, but only to hide her identity.

The indictment’s implied threat thus reaches beyond Assange and even beyond journalists. The threat to journalists and others does not vanish if they subsequently avoid practices identified in the government’s indictment. The NSA’s big bag of past communications offers abundant material from which to spin an indictment years later, and even circumstantial evidence can produce a conviction. Moreover, the secret landscape—a recent and arbitrary development—continually expands, making ever more of government off limits to public view.

When politician and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo labeled WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” he was describing the oft-stated duty of newspapers, “to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable.”

The Devil in the Big Picture

One can look so closely at the indictment details that one misses the big picture and with it vital truths. Standing back for a broader view, a long-running campaign of harassment by U.S. authorities and former officials focused on WikiLeaks’ publication of embarrassing secrets becomes visible. The Project on Government Oversight observes:

“Even if the motives for Assange’s indictment are entirely legitimate, the litany of high-ranking government officials who called for Assange to be prosecuted for publishing classified documents have likely already irreparably harmed the freedom of the press. It will be virtually impossible to fully disentangle the government’s desire to prosecute Assange for his publishing activities from the government’s current prosecution of him, and as a result there will to some degree be an unavoidable chilling effect stemming from his prosecution.”

Standing back still further, a crowd of similar cases comes into view: other truth tellers subjected to similar persecution. These are not journalists but another species of truth teller — national security whistleblowers— who have warned for years that this day would come.

A Pattern of Reprisal

Opinions of Julian Assange’s character and methods vary wildly but what is relevant to First Amendment freedoms is how the U.S. government perceives him. The big picture reveals that Assange, a publisher of whistleblower disclosures, is viewed the same way as whistleblowers: unwelcome lights shining on official wrongdoing who must be dimmed, deflected and shut off. What government bodies are doing to Assange they routinely have done to whistleblowers — Thomas Drake, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou, Thomas Tamm, William Binney, Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning and others—who disclosed for public benefit information the government finds politically troublesome.

Once the government develops animus toward a truth teller, it fishes indefinitely until it finds some means to retaliate—some pretext to punish that individual. A pattern of retaliation against high-profile national security whistleblowers includes the following tactics:

1. relentless campaigns of character assassination and misinformation about facts of the case;

2. hostile, lengthy government investigations, often for minor, never proven or circumstantial offenses;

3. terrorization of the whistleblower and associates with threats (see here and here), solitary confinement and armed home invasions for non-violent, alleged offenses;

4. pre-trial declarations of guilt from influential officials, such as Barack Obama’s declaration (as the military’s Commander-in-Chief) that Army Private Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning “broke the law” — potentially influencing the Army court that heard her case.

5. a Balkanized judicial process that restricts most such cases to onejudicial venue cherry-picked by prosecutors for speedy deference to government, a venue sealed off from public scrutiny and, some say, justice;

6. prosecution under the Espionage Act, a “vague” and “draconian” law, similar in those respects to the CFAA;

7. continuing persecution—isolation, marginalization, blacklisting, and more—after time has been served (see here and here) or after charges are dropped.

Reportedly, British and U.S. intelligence are interrogating Assange, possibly employing torture tactics, without access to legal counsel at a prison reserved for terrorists. U.S. officials apparently charged Assange as “a terrorist” in order to dodge the problem of the statute of limitations for conspiracy or computer intrusion by extending (via the Patriot Act and/or other terrorism laws) the normal statute of limitations from 5 to 8 years.

Not for Insiders

Even if charges against a whistleblower are later dropped, governments still win because the tactics used damage the truth teller professionally, financially, socially and psychologically, and foreseeably chill other whistleblowers.

Importantly, virtually all of the retaliatory actions described above are carried out or instigated by the elite political establishment—current and former political appointees and elected officials. Equally important is the fact that tactics used against whistleblowers are rarely if ever applied to political insiders who fail to protect classified information. Even actual spies who give or sell secrets directly to foreign governments have fared better than some well-meaning whistleblowers. In contrast to whistleblowers, political insiders who mistreat government secrets are publicly praised by the establishment, face lesser charges (if any), are treated with dignity by investigators, receive presidential pardons and move on to prestigious and lucrative positions.

The Takeaway

Retaliation against Julian Assange over the past decade plus replicates a pattern of ruthless political retaliationagainst whistleblowers, in particular those who reveal truths hidden by illegal secrecy. U.S. law prohibits classifying information “in order to conceal inefficiency, violations of law, or administrative error; to prevent embarrassmentto a person, organization, or agency.”

Whether U.S. authorities successfully prosecute Assange, accept a desperate plea deal or keep him tied up with endless litigation, they will succeed in sending the same chilling message to all journalists that they send to potential whistleblowers: Do not embarrass us or we’ll punish you—somehow, someday, however long it takes. In that respect, one could say damage to journalism already has been done but the battle is not over.

This extension of a whistleblower reprisal regime onto a publisher of disclosures poses an existential threat to all journalists and to the right of all people to speak and hear important truths. The U.S. indictment of Julian Assange tests our ability to perceive a direct threat to free speech, and tests our will to oppose that threat.Without freedom of press and the right and willingness to publish, whistleblowers even disclosing issues of grave, life and death public safety, will be like a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear.

The great American writer Henry David Thoreau wrote, “It takes two to speak the truth–one to speak and one to hear.” Today, it takes three to speak the truth–one to speak, one to hear, and one to defend the first two in court. If the U.S. Government has its way, there will be no defense, no truth.

For the Steering Groups of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence:

William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)

Richard H. Black, Senator of Virginia, 13th District; Colonel US Army (ret.); Former Chief, Criminal Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, the Pentagon (associate VIPS)

Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer & former Division Director in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (ret.)

Thomas Drake, former Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service and NSA whistleblower

Bogdan Dzakovic, former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

Katherine Gun, former linguist and Iraq War whistleblower in UK’s GCHQ (affiliate VIPS)

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq; former Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)

James George Jatras, former U.S. diplomat and former foreign policy adviser to Senate leadership (Associate VIPS)

Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF (ret.); ex-Master SERE Instructor for Strategic Reconnaissance Operations (NSA/DIA) and Special Mission Units (JSOC)

John Kiriakou, former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003

Clement J. Laniewski, LTC, U.S. Army (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Edward Loomis, NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)

Annie Machon, former intelligence officer in the UK’s MI5 domestic security service (affiliate VIPS)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA presidential briefer (ret.)

Craig Murray, former British diplomat and Ambassador to Uzbekistan, human rights activist and historian (affiliate VIPS)

Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East & CIA political analyst (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)

J. Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA (ret.)

Larry Wilkerson, Colonel, U.S. Army (ret.), former Chief of Staff for Secretary of State; Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary

Sarah Wilton, Commander, U.S. Naval Reserve (ret.) and Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.)

Robert Wing, former U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer (Associate VIPS)

Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War

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President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, tweeted last week that

“rumours that our peace vision includes a confederation between Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, or that the vision contemplates making Jordan the homeland for Palestinians, are incorrect”.

His response comes in the wake of repeated warnings by His Majesty King Abdullah that he will never relent over the Hashemite Custodianship of Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem, while rejecting plans to settle Palestinian refugees and turn Jordan into an alternative homeland.

The King’s unwavering stand on these three issues is in the crux of his long-standing position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; that the only path towards a just and lasting solution lies in a negotiated settlement based on the two-state formula, leading to the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. But this is not Jordan’s position only. It is the position of all Arab countries, as underlined in the Arab League’s resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative, the EU through its declarations and the international community through UN resolutions over many years. Until 2016, it was also the position of the United States.

But now we have a White House team, whose impartiality is in doubt, which, while revealing very little about the proposed regional plan, has been the driving force behind a number of unilateral steps taken by President Donald Trump’s administration in recent years. These steps, which include the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the attempt to defund UNRWA, the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s office in Washington and the suspension of USAID projects in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, all point to one goal: the dismantling of the main components of the Palestinian issue.

These components, once referred to as final-status issues, include Jerusalem, settlements, borders, refugees and statehood. King Abdullah’s firm stand against what the Trump administration is working on is not only warranted but needed as he raises red flags and issues warnings of the repercussions on regional stability if the plan is allowed to pass.

Greenblatt’s Tweet does little to mollify Jordanians. He says that there are no plans to turn Jordan into an alternative homeland for the Palestinians, neither Jordanians nor Palestinians will allow that to happen, but he ignores other issues, such as the settling of Palestinian refugees in host countries, the fate of Jerusalem and a possible future role for Jordan in administering what remains of the West Bank after the annexation of Jewish settlements and others areas.

Greenblatt, who has been tweeting about other issues as well, has little understanding, or sympathy, for Palestinian suffering and sacrifice under decades of illegal occupation. Neither does Jared Kushner, who heads the White House team, nor David Friedman, US ambassador in Israel.

What is especially dangerous in Trump’s peace plan is that it ignores the traditional legal benchmarks required for a just and lasting peace, whether UN resolutions on the conflict, the Oslo Accords and latter agreements. It attempts to legitimise what is and has always been an illegal occupation of Palestinian land. We have already seen this in the outrageous and unilateral recognition by Trump of the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

Such a precedent, whether in the West Bank or Golan Heights, throws all international conventions, resolutions and agreements out of the window. What Trump and his aides fail to recognise is even if they impose what would be fait accompli on the Palestinians, the region as a whole will not accept such an anomaly. It will not only polarise the international community, but most importantly, it will unleash waves of violence in the occupied territories.

For Jordan, it does not matter what Greenblatt says in his Tweets. The Trump plan, which is synchronised with Israel’s far right agenda, will have a domino effect that will end up hurting Israel, the Palestinians and countries that have a stake in the fate of the peace process like Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and beyond.

King Abdullah, who has been increasingly vociferous in his opposition of any deviation from the path of the two-state formula, understands the dangerous reverberations of Trump’s plan on Jordan and the region as a whole. Furthermore, he refuses to tie the liquidation of the Palestinian cause to other regional challenges. And he knows that standing against Trump’s plan will come at a cost. This is why it is important for other Arab leaders to come forward as well.

Apart from the Palestinians, Jordan stands to lose the most if Trump’s plan goes through. This is why the King has been mobilising Jordanians to express their support for his position and reject any solution that would deny Palestinians their legitimate right. Few weeks separate us from “the ultimate deal” and the region should get ready for a tense phase that would put pressure on every Arab leadership and may lead to a diplomatic face-off with Washington.

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Osama Al Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.

We are having a propaganda barrage about the great Trump economy. We have been hearing about the great economy for a decade while the labor force participation rate declined, real family incomes stagnated, and debt burdens rose.  The economy has been great only for large equity owners whose stock ownership benefitted from the trillions of dollars the Fed poured into financial markets and from buy-backs by corporations of their own stocks.

I have pointed out for years that the jobs reports are fabrications and that the jobs that do exist are lowly paid domestic service jobs such as waitresses and bartenders and health care and social assistance.  What has kept the American economy going is the expansion of consumer debt, not higher pay from higher producivity. The reported low unemployment rate is obtained by not counting discouraged workers who have given up on finding a job.

Do you remember all the corporate money that the Trump tax cut was supposed to bring back to America for investment?  It was all BS.  Yesterday I read reports that Apple is losing its trillion dollar market valuation because Apple is using its profits to buy back its own stock.  In other words, the demand for Apple’s products does not justify more investment. Therefore, the best use of the profit is to repurchase the equity shares, thus shrinking Apple’s capitalization. The great economy does not include expanding demand for Apple’s products.

I read also of endless store and mall closings, losses falsely attributed to online purchasing, which only accounts for a small percentage of sales. 

Federal Reserve data reports that a large percentage of the younger work force live at home with parents, because the jobs available to them are insufficient to pay for an independent existence. How then can the real estate, home furnishings, and appliance markets be strong?

When a couple of decades ago I first wrote of the danger of jobs offshoring to the American middle class, state and local government budgets, and pension funds, idiot critics raised the charge of Luddite.

The Luddites were wrong. Mechanization raised the productivity of labor and real wages, but jobs offshoring shifts jobs from the domestic economy to abroad.  Domestic labor is displaced, but overseas labor gets the jobs, thus boosting jobs there. In other words, labor income declines in the country that loses jobs and rises in the country to which the jobs are offshored.  This is the way American corporations spurred the economic development of China. It was due to jobs offshoring that China developed far more rapidly than the CIA expected. 

In contrast, Robotics, instead of displacing labor, eliminates it. Unlike jobs offshoring which shifted jobs from the US to China, robotics will cause jobs losses in both countries.  If consumer incomes fall, then demand for output also falls, and output will fall.  Robotics, then, is a way to shrink gross domestic product.

The tech nerds and corporaions who cannot wait for robotics to reduce labor cost in their profits calculation are incapable of understanding that when masses of people are without jobs, there is no consumer inome with which to purchase the products of robots.  The robots themselves do not need housing, food, clothing, entertainment, transportation, and medical care. The mega-rich owners of the robots cannot possibly consume the robotic output.  An economy without consumers is a profitless economy.

One would think that there would be a great deal of discussion about the economic effects of robotics before the problems are upon us, just as one would think there would be enormous concern about the high tensions Washington has caused between the US and Russia and China, just as one would think there would be preparations for the adverse economic consequences of global warming, whatever the cause.  Instead, the US, a country facing many crises, is focused on whether President Trump obstructed investigation of a crime that the special prosector said did not take place.  

A country incapable of dealing with real problems has no future.

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

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

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently recounted to an audience at Texas A&M University that when he was head of the Central Intelligence Agency he was responsible for “lying, cheating and stealing” to benefit the United States. “Like we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

The Secretary made the comment with a grin, noting that when he was a cadet at West Point he subscribed to the Academy honor code, which stated that “You will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do.” The largely student audience clearly appreciated the irony and laughed and applauded, though it is not clear what they made of the “glory of the American experiment.” The normally humorless Pompeo was suggesting ironically that yesterday’s Pompeo would be required to turn today’s Pompeo into the appropriate authorities for lying and also conniving at high crimes and misdemeanors while at the Agency.

Certainly, some might find Pompeo’s admission a bit lame though perhaps understandable as he arrived at the CIA without any experience in intelligence. Someone should have whispered in his ear, “That is what spy agencies do Mike.” And if he found the moral ambiguities vexing, he should have turned down the job. Equally lame has been the international media coverage of the comments (it was not reported in any major national news outlet in the US) which reflected both shock and vindication at finding a top-level official who would admit that Washington does all that sort of nasty stuff.

And Pompeo is not alone in his doing what would have hitherto been unthinkable as many senior figures in the Trump Administration who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution now find themselves conniving at starting various wars without the constitutionally required declaration of war from Congress. Pompeo has personally assured both the Venezuelans and Iranians that “all options are on the table,” while also arming the Ukrainians and warning the Russians to get out of Caracas or else face the consequences. And it is a good thing that he has now learned how to lie as he does so when he keeps insisting that the Iranians are the leading state sponsors of terrorism or that the Saudis are fighting a just war in Yemen.

And then there is the ethical dimension. The United States government is already involved in economic acts of war through use of its sanctions worldwide. It is currently dedicated to starving the Iranian and Venezuelan people to force them to change their governments. This week, a global boycott of Iranian oil sales to be enforced unilaterally by Washington kicks in with the objective, per Pompeo, of reducing “Iran’s oil exports to zero” to deny its government its “principal source of revenue.” The problem with the Pompeo objective is that attacking a foreign government normally rallies the people around their leadership. Also, denying a country income ultimately hurts ordinary people much more than it does those who make the decisions. One recalls the famous Madeleine Albright line about killing 500,000 Iraqi children through malnutrition and disease brought about by sanctions as “being worth it.”

Pompeo believes himself to be a good Christian. Indeed, a very good Christian in that he believes that the second coming of Jesus Christ is imminent and by virtue of his good deeds he will be saved and “raptured” directly to heaven. He, like Vice President Mike Pence, is referred to as a Dispensationalist, and he also believes that those who are not “born again” and accept Jesus will be doomed to hell. Most Dispensationalists think that the second coming will be preceded by a world war centered in the Middle East referred to as Armageddon, which will pit good against evil. How that shapes Pompeo’s thinking vis-à-vis encouraging a major armed conflict with Iran is certainly something that war-weary Americans should be considering.

One of the really interesting things about fanatics like Pompeo and his dos amigos Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Advisor John Bolton is how they are unable to figure out what comes next after the “lying, cheating, stealing” and shooting are over. After American air and naval power destroy Iran, what comes next? If Iraq and Afghanistan are anything to go by, “next” will be kind of figured out as one goes along. And as for an end game, fuggedaboutit.

Now let us suppose that with the crushing of the Mullahs all the requirements for Armageddon will be met and Jesus Christ makes his second appearance, what happens after that when the world as we know it ends? Presumably the rapture itself is painless but when Pompeo and Pence arrive at heaven what will they do all day? Play cards? There will be no television one presumes and no Muslims or Latinos to kick around as they will all be in hell. Drinking and smoking are probably not allowed and acquiring a girlfriend will likely be discouraged. One suspects that engaging in philosophical symposia to pass one’s time is not particularly favored by either gentleman.

Perhaps Pompeo and Pence look forward to something like the Mormon model, where they and their extended families going back genetically to the Pleistocene period will have their own planets where they can sit around and hobnob all day long. God, who, according to the Mormons, also has his own planet called Kolob, might just pop by for a visit every once in a while.

The point of all this is that we Americans are in the hands of a group of people who are adept at self- deception and who are also quite capable of doing some very dangerous things in light of their religious and personal views. It is one thing to have a strong foreign policy defending actual American interests but it is quite another to have a propensity to go to war to satisfy a personal predilection about how one goes about enabling a biblical prophecy. Equally, having a moral compass that is flexible depending who is on the receiving end is like having no real morals at all.

We have reached a point here in the United States where bad decisions and behavior best described as evil are masked by a certain kind of expressed piety and visions of national greatness. It is time to get rid of the Pompeos and Pences to end the charade and restore genuine morality unencumbered by the book of Revelations together with a national dignity that is not linked to threats or projection of military power.

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

The Washington favourite in Juan Guaido has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization of Venezuela. He has been groomed for 15 years as a long-term CIA project. It was, therefore, never any surprise to those watching that this was somehow a surprise. And of course, it is no surprise that his intentions are simply as an American stooge, to return Venezuela’s oil reserves to US hegemony and control. In the meantime, the British MSM slavishly follows orders.

America has a long history of attacking countries with oil reserves with one of two things – bombs or ‘liberal democracy.’ Usually, there’s a smattering of humanitarianism thrown in and coming from America, that is to be feared. To the recipient nations rarely do things end well. Think, Iraq, Libya and countless other countries at the end of America’s greed.

And like the attack of Iraq, where the British MSM stood idly by, looking the other way, not once properly challenging the obvious lies of the Tony Blair government and its made up story of WMD, the same is happening in Venezuela. The hypocrisy of Western media and its politicians is breathtaking in every sense when after such events in our recent history, we witness them again and again and nothing is said.

There is something insidious about Britain’s media – both printed and presented. That they themselves see a blatant overt military coup, cry about the human rights abuses and turn the real story around 180 degrees against the government that is defending itself against that very coup is at its most charitable described as hypocrisy. It’s a fraud that mocks the nation as nothing more than being dumb and irrelevant.

Former British ambassador Craig Murray has some words on the matter.

Today, miraculously, the MSM line is no coup attempt happened at all, it was just a spontaneous unarmed protest, and it is the evil government of Venezuela which attempts to portray it as a coup. BBC Breakfast this morning had the headline “President Maduro has accused the opposition of mounting a coup attempt”… Yet there is no doubt at all that, as a matter of plain fact, that is what happened.

The MSM today is full of video of water cannons against “protestors” and a horrible video of a military vehicle ramming a group. But it has all been very carefully edited to exclude hours of footage of the same military vehicles being pelted and set alight with molotov cocktails, and shot at. The presentation has been truly shocking.

In any civilised country, attempting to mount a military coup would lead to incarceration for life, and that is what should now happen to Juan Guaido. The attempt by the West to protect their puppet by pretending the failed military coup never happened, must be resisted, if only in the cause of intellectual honesty.

The resort to violence forces binary choice. I have been and am a critic of Maduro in many respects. I believe the constitutional changes to bypass Parliament were wrong, and the indirectly elected Constituent Assembly is not a good form of democracy. Venezuela does have a rampant corruption problem. US sanctions exacerbate but are not the root cause of economic mismanagement. There are human rights failings. But Chavez made revolutionary changes in educating and empowering the poor, and it is a far better governed country for the mass of its population than it would ever be under a US installed CIA puppet regime. Maduro was legitimately elected. The attempt at violence forces a binary choice.

I know which side I am on. It is not Guaido and the CIA.”

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Featured image is from TruePublica

As F. William Engdahl wrote in “Death of the Birds and the Bees Across America“:

Birds and bees are something most of us take for granted as part of nature. The expression “teaching about the birds and the bees” to explain the process of human reproduction to young people is not an accidental expression. Bees and birds contribute to the essence of life on our planet. A study by the US Department of Agriculture estimated that “…perhaps one-third of our total diet is dependent, directly or indirectly, upon insect-pollinated plants.”[1]

The honey bee, Apis mellifera, is the most important pollinator of agricultural crops. Honey bees pollinate over 70 out of 100 crops that in turn provide 90% of the world’s food. They pollinate most fruits and vegetables — including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots.[2] But while managed honey bee populations have increased over the last 50 years, bee colony populations have decreased significantly in many European and North American nations. Simultaneously, crops that are dependent on insects for pollination have increased. The phenomenon has received the curious designation of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), implying it could be caused by any number of factors. Serious recent scientific studies however point to a major cause: use of new highly toxic systemic pesticides in agriculture since about 2004.

If governments in the EU, USA and other countries fail to impose a total ban on certain chemical insecticides, not only could bees become a thing of the past. The human species could face staggering new challenges merely to survive. The immediate threat comes from the widespread proliferation of commercial insecticides containing the highly-toxic chemical with the improbable name, neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids are a group of insecticides chemically similar to nicotine. They act on the central nervous system of insects. But also on bees and  small song birds. Recent evidence suggests they could also affect human brain development in newborn.

Some five to six years back, reports began to circulate from around the world, especially out of the United States, and then increasingly from around the EU, especially in the UK, that entire bee colonies were disappearing. Since 2004 over a million beehives have died across the United States and beekeepers in 25 states report what is called Colony Collapse Disorder. In winter of 2009 an estimated one fifth of bee hives in the UK were lost, double the natural rate.[3] Government authorities claimed it was a mystery. Continue reading “Death of the Birds and the Bees Across America” by F. William Engdahl

Today more than ever, the world’s food resources are being hijacked by giant corporations that are turning farms into factories and replacing natural resources with genetically modified “food-like” substances.

F. William Engdahl is a leading researcher on the destruction of the planet’s food system and the profit-driven enterprises that are driving this devastating process.

To learn more, pick up your copy of “Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation“, published by Global Research. Now also available in PDF format.

Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
by F. William Engdahl (Paperback)

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

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

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

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

Engdahl’s carefully argued critique goes far beyond the familiar controversies surrounding the practice of genetic modification as a scientific technique. The book is an eye-opener, a must-read for all those committed to the causes of social justice and world peace.

Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

by F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

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May Day 2019. Throughout the World,

Let us act in solidarity with the people of Venezuela. Let us stand united against war. (Graphics by Massoud Nayeri)

The Trump administration is threatening to invade Venezuela with a view to “restoring democracy”, replacing an elected president (casually described by the Western media as a “dictator”) by a US proxy, speaker of Venezuela’s National Assembly. US intervention claims to be committed to “restoring democracy”. It’s a lie. (Michel Chossudovsky)

Juan Guaido has been groomed for 15 years as a long-term CIA project. His coup attempt yesterday, which so far appears to have stalled, was the culmination of these efforts to return Venezuela’s oil reserves to US hegemony. (Craig Murray)

“Millions of Venezuelans are mobilized in citizen assemblies to defend the revolution from internal and external efforts to undermine it, what Chavismo is all about, supporting the country’s social democracy, hostile to US imperial aims to destroy it.” (Stephen Lendman)

 

What is important to know, though, is that throughout the day of the attempted coup, 30 April, the US State Department, in the person of the pompous Pompeo, accompanied by the National Security Advisor, John Bolton, kept threatening President Maduro in a press round. Pompeo directly menaced President Maduro, saying –

“If they ask me if the US is prepared to consider military action [in Venezuela], if this is what is necessary to restore democracy in Venezuela, the President [Donald Trump] has been coherent and clear: The military option is available, if this is what we have to do.”– These threats are repeated throughout May 1 – day after the Venezuelan attempted coup defeat by both Pompeo and warrior Bolton.

Pompeo’s audacity didn’t stop there. He went as far as suggesting to President Maduro to flee to Cuba and leave his country to those that will bring back (sic) freedom and democracy. (Peter Koenig)

“But here’s the rub for a clueless Trump and his warmongering psychopaths: the mobilization of a “civil-military alliance” (una alianza cívica-militar) against the invaders. The military has not gone over to Guaidó and the upper classes for two simple reasons: military leaders were not trained at the School of the Americas during the rule of Chávez, and military officers were influenced by the teaching of Simón Bolivar and his ideas about national and popular sovereignty.” (Kurt Nimmo)

“Despite progressive critics and anti-war voices speaking forcefully against the Trump administration’s overt backing of the attempted coup d’état by rightwing opposition forces in Venezuela on Tuesday, 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden aligned himself with the White House by throwing his support behind the overthrow effort.(Jon Queally)

Nothing turns on the charlatan class of terrorism expertise than a video from an elusive, unknown destination, adjusted, modified and giving all the speculative trimmings.  In reading, E.B. White suggested the presence of two participants: the author as impregnator; the reader as respondent.  In the terrorism video, the maker consciously penetrates the shallow mind of the recipient, leaving its gurgling DNA to grow and mutate.

When Islamic State began its gruesome foray into the world of terrorist snuff videos, experts resembled overly keen cinephiles seeking the underlying message of a new wave.  The burning of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh in a cage in 2015 caused a certain rapture amongst members of a RAND panel.  Was this, perhaps, a celluloid standoff with rival al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, whose affiliates had just slaughtered the staff of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in their Parisian offices?

Senior Adviser to the RAND President, Brian Michael Jenkins, could not “recall a single incident in modern terrorism where terrorists deliberately killed a hostage with fire.”  There was “no religious basis for it this side of 17^th century witch burning.”

Senior political scientist Johan Blank turned to scripture, finding “at least one specific prohibition of death by fire in the ahadith literature” on “the grounds that it resembled hellfire.”  The inspiration had to stem from somewhere, and Blank’s judicious offering was Ibn Taymiyyah, “fountainhead of much current jihadi reinterpretation of longstanding Islamic orthodoxy.”  Andrew Liepman, senior policy analyst, saw the video as a lucid moment of proof. “I wonder how much more evidence we need to confirm that ISIS is acting outside the norms of Islam.” Not modish, it would seem.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the [alleged] leader of the Islamic State, has begun to resemble, in no small part, previous heads of franchise terrorist groups who have become reproductions and simulacra of themselves.  Terrorism is big business, stage sets and props, all tweeted for good measure; it is bestial theatre that draws out the voyeurs, the google-eyed analysts, and the lunatic converts.  Whether such heads are dead or not is of little consequence past a certain point: Baghdadi had supposedly been dead yet his corpse seems more than capable of putting together a presentation for audiences.  It is also incumbent on those seeking his capture or death to claim his general irrelevance.  Everyone did know one thing: the last time he performed on a public perform was the al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul in July 2014.

The video, aired on the Al Furqan network, is filmed in appropriately Spartan surrounds, but that is neither here nor there.  Iraq Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi thinks otherwise linking, erroneously, the making of the film with the current location of the protagonist.

“Regarding the location of Baghdadi, we can’t give intelligence information right now but it’s clear from the video that he’s in a remote area.”

As is the fashion, neither the date nor the authenticity of the recording is verifiable.  All else is a wonder, and even the Middle East Monitor is careful to suggest that the speaker was “a bearded man with Baghdadi’s appearance”.

Baghdadi lacks complexity in his message, never straying from the apocalyptic line.

“Our battle today is a battle of attrition, and we will prolong it for the enemy, and they must know that the jihad will continue until Judgment Day.”

He is mindful of the fruitful carnage inflicted by the Eastern Sunday bombers in Sri Lanka, and thanks them.  Such acts, he reasons, were retribution for the loss of Baghouz in Syria.

The speculations duly form a queue, and talking heads have been scrambled into studios and Skype portals.  This video may have been a retort, and reassurance, before the potential usurping moves of another ISIS figure of seniority, Abu Mohammed Husseini al-Hashimi.  Hashimi had staked a claim in stirring up discontent against Baghdadi’s more extreme tyrannical methods.  Not that he is averse to the application of hudud punishments (stoning for adultery excites him), and the quaint notion that the ruler of any Islamic State caliphate is bound to be a successor to the prophet Muhammed.  Modesty is a drawback in such line of work.

Colin P. Clarke, senior fellow at the Soufan Centre, aired his views that Baghdadi’s “sudden appearance will very likely serve as both a morale boost for ISIS supporters and remaining militants and as a catalyst for individuals or more groups to act.”  It was a reassurance that he remained the grand poohbah, atop “the command-and-control network of what remains of the group, not only in Iraq and Syria, but more broadly, in its far-flung franchises and affiliates.”

The teasing out and ponderings on minutiae are not far behind.  Resting upon a flowered mattress, and leaning against a cushion with an assault rifle by his side (nice touch for the old fox), it was bound to have an effect. The expansive beard caught the eye: The Washington Post noted that it “has greyed since his only other video appearance”. Previously, the paper noted, it had been “tinted with henna”.  Then there was the AK-74 prop, a rather popular Kalashnikov variant reprised from previous showings in the video work of Abu Musab Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden.

Such superficial renderings, the stuff of terrorism kitsch, lends itself to fundamental fact that Baghdadi might be somewhere, anywhere, or nowhere, a nonsense figure, to a degree, in a nonsense medium.  The modern terrorist franchise is fluid and far-reaching.  Followers need not feel estranged.  They can use social media, cosy-up and wait for eschatological endings.

The pioneer of this terror mania (global yet local) was al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden, a figure who, along with his sparring counterpart US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, formed a perfect symmetry of simulative nonsense, the gobbledygook of post-2011 security.  Each time US forces and their allies sought to target the slippery Saudi, he vanished.  The raid and bombing of the Tora Bora complex in Afghanistan yielded no returns; the man was nowhere to be seen, having escaped, possibly, in female garb. Sightings, and rumoured killings, remained regular till the penultimate slaying in Abbottabad in May 2011.  The man, declared dead on numerous occasions, was Lazarus in reverse.

Rumsfeld, for his part, insisted on those known knowns, known unknowns and “things we do not know we don’t know”. Unwittingly, he had given the age its aptly absurd epitaph, and with that, much work and fare for the witch doctors of terrorism keen to gorge upon the next video offering from their beloved subjects.  Ignorance in this case, not knowledge, is power.

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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]

Prime Minister Morawiecki’s op-ed for Politico articulated Poland’s five-point plan for pioneering a new future for the EU after this month’s European Parliamentary elections.

The Political Context Of Poland’s Op-Ed

The upcoming European Parliamentary elections later this month will be a watershed moment in the EU’s history if EuroRealist parties gain like they’re expected to at the expense of their EuroLiberal rivals. The reformist forces of Hungary’s Orban, Italy’s Salvini, and Poland’s “grey cardinal” Kaczynski are working hard to inspire their countries’ domestic and international supporters to vote against the status quo and give their ideological allies a shot at changing continental affairs. Poland is the rising Great Power of the geostrategic “Three Seas Initiative” in Central & Eastern Europe and it’s therefore fitting that its Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki just penned an op-ed for Politco articulating his country’s five-point plan for pioneering a new future for the EU after this month’s elections.

A Modern-Day Decolonization Demand

“Poland’s Vision For Europe” is clear in its message that a decentralized EU that returns sovereignty to its member states is much stronger and more sustainable than a “two-speed” centralized one that treats the countries east of the former “Iron Curtain” as conquered vassal states. The bloc’s Western European core has the same relationship to its Central & Eastern European periphery as former imperial metropoles had to their colonies, so in a sense, Morawiecki’s manifesto is a modern-day decolonization demand to free these subjugated countries from Brussels’ overbearing control and create a British Commonwealth-like arrangement that allows each of its members to remain on equal and cordial terms with one another after this “imperial reform” that Warsaw wants to lead after the upcoming elections.

Point By Point

As proof of this, the Polish Prime Minister wrote about the pressing need to fight international inequality as the first point in his op-ed, emphasizing that “inequalities exist not just between citizens, but also between countries”. “Set[ting] up a European innovation strategy that sets the agenda on artificial intelligence, the internet of things, big data and machine learning” would go a long way towards developing the Continent and promoting international equality if it’s successful, which is why he proposed a “bold EU budget” that could be partially funded by “the fair taxation of digital technology giants” as his second suggested policy. Third, he wrote that some EU states need to end their protectionist policies that discriminate against other members in parallel with “wag[ing] a real fight against global and regional monopolies, including online platforms and networks.”

His penultimate point is that defense spending must be increased and the protection of borders must be prioritized. This aligns with what Poland’s American ally has been demanding of the EU ever since Trump’s entrance into office, which isn’t coincidental since the ruling PiS party is in ideological alignment with the US President’s faction of the Republican Party and sees eye-to-eye with it on practically ever single issue, especially those dealing with hard power and national security. Morawiecki’s last point is indeed his most powerful, and it’s that Brussels mustn’t forget about democracy since he concludes his piece on the note that “Europe was founded on the idea that its member states are equal within the alliance and “only once [it] is truly a group of equal and self-respecting states, can the Continent become a superpower.”

EuroRealism In Practice

From the above point-by-point breakdown of Morawiecki’s manifesto, it can clearly be seen that Poland’s envisaged EuroRealist future for the bloc doesn’t involve the so-called “Polexit” that some of its critics have falsely fearmongered about as part of their infowar campaign against the country but is rather all about “balancing” between the bloc’s centralization and decentralization. Continental security and development strategies will be pursued collectively by the EU as a whole in order to make the continent more competitive in the 21st century, while socio-cultural and domestic legal issues will be decided individually by each member state. If Poland has it its way, then this reformed EU will fix its prior faults and be more efficient than before.

Concluding Thoughts

The EU is at a crossroads as the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative” prepares to pioneer a new future for Europe if their ideological EuroRealist allies make impressive gains during this month’s European Parliamentary elections. Structurally speaking, the reforms being put forth by the Polish Prime Minister amount to modern-day decolonization demands somewhat modeled off of the decolonization process that some British colonies experienced prior to their admission to the Commonwealth, with Warsaw wanting to see the return of international equality to the European realm in a similar fashion. The Central & Eastern European “colonies” are much too deeply tied to the Western European “metropole” to allow for a “clean split”, which is why Poland’s proposal is the most pragmatic set of compromises under these conditions.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from African Leadership Magazine

Multiple US attempts to topple Venezuela’s democratic government since April 2002 failed — a real-life David v. Goliath struggle, the Bolivarian Republic foiling mighty USA’s best shots time and again, short of unlikely, though possible, military intervention. More on this below.

If the Trump regime attacks Venezuela militarily, former UK MP George Galloway believes Vietnam on steroids would follow — endless guerrilla war, millions of Venezuelans involved in the struggle to preserve and protect their nation from the US imperial scourge.

In 2006, the Communal Council Law began the process of establishing communal councils throughout Venezuela nationwide – later replaced by the 2009 Communal Council Law.

Millions of Venezuelans are mobilized in citizen assemblies to defend the revolution from internal and external efforts to undermine it, what Chavismo is all about, supporting the country’s social democracy, hostile to US imperial aims to destroy it.

Maduro explained that over “five million Venezuelans (are) mobilized all over the country (to defend the republic) in support of the freedom…”

The fate of all empires awaits the US. It’s just a matter of time despite spending countless trillions of dollars to remain the dominant global superpower — pouring most of it down a black hole of waste, fraud and abuse, symptomatic of slow-motion decay.

It’s the same dynamic dooming all other empires in history. Nations decline because of their hubris, arrogance, and overreach.

For the US, it’s also about its ruinous military spending at the expense of vital homeland needs, waging endless wars against invented enemies, and unwillingness to change — both extremist right wings of its one-party rule supporting the same destructive agenda.

The following attempts aimed to replace Venezuela’s social democracy with fascist tyranny, mighty USA failing to gain another imperial trophy after nearly two decades of trying:

1. The aborted two-day April 2002 attempt to oust Hugo Chavez. Failure to get Venezuelan military support and popular resistance foiled it.

2. The 2002 – 03 general strike and oil management lockout, causing severe economic disruption and billions of dollars in losses.

3. The August 2004 national recall referendum, Hugo Chavez winning overwhelmingly with a 59% majority, thwarting the US-orchestrated attempt to remove him.

4. US sanctions war on Venezuela, begun by Bush/Cheney in 2006 for so-called non-cooperation in combatting international terrorism the US supports.

War on the Bolivarian Republic by other means continued under Obama, greatly escalated by Trump regime hardliners — targeting senior and other Venezuelan officials, the country’s enterprises, attempting to block its access to financial markets, along with aiming to reduce its oil sales to zero.

Annually since 2006, the State Department accused Venezuela of not “cooperating fully with United States anti-terrorism efforts” – pursuant to Section 40A of the Arms Export Control Act (22 USC 2781).

5. In 2005, the Bush/Cheney regime falsely accused the Bolivarian Republic of non-cooperation against narco-trafficking the US supports worldwide.

Annually since then, Washington falsely claimed Venezuela hasn’t fulfilled its obligations under international narcotics agreements.

6. In 2008, the Bush/Cheney regime imposed asset freezes and prohibitions on financial transactions, targeting designated Venezuelan nationals and enterprises.

7. The Obama regime’s responsibility for killing Chavez, by poisoning or infection with deadly cancer causing substances, a coup by other means, eliminating him, Chavismo remaining resilient.

8. Obama’s March 2015 executive order, falsely declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” declaring a fake ‘national emergency’ in order to confront” a nonexistent threat.

9. Intermittent violent street protests earlier and now, responsible for scores of deaths and hundreds of injuries — US-orchestrated color revolution attempts for regime change.

10. The August 2017 CIA-orchestrated terrorist attack on Fort Paramacay in Carabobo state, another foiled coup attempt.

11. The August 2018 attack on Maduro by drones armed with C-4 explosives, attempting to kill him.

12. Since taking office, Trump regime hardliners waged war on Venezuela by other means, greatly escalating things since January 2019 — including propaganda, economic, financial, and electricity war, along with other attacks on the country’s infrastructure, aiming to inflict enormous harm on its ordinary people, falsely believing they’ll blame Maduro for US criminal actions.

Chavez knew the US marked him for elimination. So does Maduro. He and other senior Venezuelan officials vulnerable to removal by coup d’etat or assassination.

The latest Trump regime coup attempt on Tuesday failed, the feeble effort foiled in hours after initiation, likely intended to turn out this way.

It’s just a matter of time before another attempt is made to oust Maduro and eliminate Venezuelan social democracy — likely a more serious effort next time, maybe launching a proxy war, using regional elements and perhaps ISIS, the jihadist group created and supported by the US.

Will next time be different? Will it succeed despite everything thrown at the country so far failing? US coup plots against Cuba for nearly 60 years, Iran for 40 years, and Venezuela for 20 years failed.

Failure is likely to continue against these countries short of US military intervention.

What’s likely coming in Venezuela? Perhaps before or along with a proxy war, the next shoe to drop may be an embargo, an act of war if imposed.

How Russia, China, and other Venezuelan allies respond to US regime change tactics are crucially important — if refusing to go along with its war by other means, Bolivarianism can survive over US aims to destroy it.

If US forces attack Venezuela militarily, unlikely but possible, all bets are off.

Regional countries oppose it, especially neighboring Brazil and Colombia, because of the hugely destabilizing spillover effects.

Galloway is likely right. US war on Venezuela would be hugely disruptive regionally. If US forces invade the country, lots of body bags will return to its shores for as long as conflict on the ground continues.

Given hardline extremists in charge of Trump’s geopolitical agenda, anything is possible — most likely proxy war, not Pentagon troops, if things go this far.

Will WW III begin in Venezuela? If not there, perhaps in Iran, similar Trump regime tactics used to topple its government.

If its oil sales are blocked, the Islamic Republic vowed to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

Over 18 million barrels of oil pass through it daily, around 20% of world production. If the strait is blocked, the US no doubt would respond militarily.

War with Iran would hugely disrupt the entire region, perhaps enough to cause WW III by accident or design.

Note: Why is the US hellbent to control Venezuela and Iran? Besides wanting their sovereign independence eliminated, it’s all about their huge oil reserves.

Henry Kissinger explained it, saying: “Control oil and you control nations. Control food and you control the people.” Control money and you control everything.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Six days after China celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy with an impressive parade of its ships, including the now operational Liaoning aircraft carrier, the new type 055 destroyers and a new type of nuclear submarine, a parade in which Russia, Vietnam, and India took part, and on the same day as Russian naval ships arrived in Qingdao to begin the joint Russian-Chinese naval Joint Sea Exercise 2019, two American destroyers entered the Taiwan Straights that lie between the coast of China proper and its island province of Taiwan thereby provoking an already tense situation.

The series of Chinese and Russian naval exercises are designed to test the ability of the two nations to operate together to counter common security threats. Both Russia and China claim no other nation is identified as a threat but everyone knows the threat is the United States and its allies. And the threat is real. For not only have the Americans been continually harassing China in the South China Sea by sending naval vessels with hostile intent into Chinese territorial waters around the Spratly Islands under the claim of free right of passage, they are also doing the same against Russia. The Kerch incident in which the Ukrainian navy was used as a proxy by the US to test a Russian response to an incursion into Russian waters near Crimea is part of a pattern shown again in December 2018 when they sent a destroyer into Peter the Great Bay near Vladivostok, entering Russian territorial waters, and threatening the Russian naval base there under the same pretext.

American ships have stepped up their show of strength in the Taiwan Straights from once a year before October to almost every month since October and they vow to keep up the pressure against Russia in the Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific and against China all along its coasts. The Americans recently committed an amphibious marine unit to Australia which has the purpose of “patrolling,” that is threatening to control, the Malacca Straights through which a large volume of Chinese shipping passes. The French have joined in the provocations by sending one of their war ships through the Straight on April 6, an action which China declared to be illegal. The Chinese, rightly convinced the US instigated the incident revoked France’s invitation to the PLA Navy celebrations. Britain has also rattled its sabres by stating its intention to send its aircraft carrier and support ships to the region to support the American threat.

The harassment of China by the US and its allies continues in other spheres with Trump’s trade war against China continuing, with the attempt to cut off Iranian oil supplies to China, and with the continued illegal detention by Canada of Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou, seized by Canadian authorities last December on a bogus US extradition request. She next appears in a Vancouver court on May 8 to set a date for the extradition hearings to take place. In retaliation China has stepped up its response to Canada’s action by blocking not only imports of Canadian canola, which has caused several billion dollars in export losses to Canadian farmers this winter, but this week, in advance of the May 8th hearing, has blocked imports of Canadian soybeans, peas and other agricultural products. The ban on these Canadian products is clearly timed to send a signal ahead of the court appearance by Meng, and it will not be the end.

The Global Times of China reported on April 30th that,

“There are growing calls in China for the government to take tough measures against Canada”

Wang Jun, deputy director of the Department of Information at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges stated, “If we start imposing sanctions on each other, I think it will hurt Canada more than it will China.”

Mei Xinyu, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation said,

“I think Canadians have only themselves to blames. China wants to resolve disputes without causing any turbulence. But if forced, China will take action. I think Canadians have misjudged the whole thing. They thought they would do the US a favor by arresting Meng. But they have found themselves increasingly forced to the wall because China and the US are now resolving their disputes and further escalation would not be in Canada’s interest because China is capable of taking more action, especially after we resolve the trade tensions with the US.”

There are now calls for the Chinese government to prohibit Chinese students from attending Canadian universities and private schools that depend on Chinese students for revenue.

But the Canadian government and opposition parties, instead of trying to solve the issue, to do the right thing, by releasing Meng Wanzhou and apologizing, are pushing for more confrontation with China, stating that they will search for measures to counter China, though what the Trudeau government can do is not clear. The Canadian Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer has called for the Canadian government to take China before the World Trade Organisation and to withdraw from the Asian Infrastructure Investment bank. Other Canadian diplomats have called for cessation of all bilateral trade talks and for kicking out Chinese athletes training in Canada for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. All of these would hurt Canada more than China and the suggestions reveal the complete moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Canadian leadership.

The American pressure on China in the economic and military spheres, the French and British threats to add to it by sending their war ships to the South China Sea, the Canadian action in arresting Meng Wanzhou, these are all expressions of the neo-colonial mindset of the western leaders and what Chinese leaders referred to as “white racism.” Their actions signal that they still see China as nation to be brought under their control and exploited instead of respected and treated as an equal.

But they forget that China threw off the colonial straight jacket with the May 4th Movement that began on May 4th 1919 in response to the Versailles negotiations after World War I at which the western leaders, led by US President Wilson, handed former German occupied lands of China to Japan instead of restoring them to Chinese sovereignty. Chinese students and intellectuals rose up and protested this act of colonialism, called for resistance to all forms of colonialism and imperialism and to the sellout government that allowed it to happen. A series of general strikes followed. Out of this movement arose a tide of nationalism and cultural and political renewal that has made China the great nation it is today. The 4th of May Movement was the manifestation of the refusal of the Chinese people to ever again be controlled by foreigners. It gave birth to both the Chinese Communist Party that succeeded in throwing off the yoke of colonialism and capitalism, as well as the Kuomintang nationalists who, locked in the past, ended by selling themselves to the interests of the United States and whose counter-revolutionary remnants are contained in Taiwan.

But as the 100th anniversary of the May 4th Movement is being celebrated across China to encourage the young generation to connect their own destiny with the destiny of China and contribute their share to social development, the west seems to have forgotten that it took place or acts like it never took place. But the China of 2019 is not the China of 1919. American gunboats can no longer sail up the Yangtze and impose their will. China is a nuclear power, a world economic power. Yet the United States and Canada act as if they are living in the past, as if history has passed them by, as if they have learned nothing and forget everything, for the American and Canadian provocations leading up to the May 4th celebration must be seen as a slap in the face to the Chinese people, as a denial of their aspirations and achievements.

The act of sending American ships through the Taiwan Straights is seen by China, not as an “exercise in right of passage through international waters,” as the Americans claim, but as an act of colonialism and imperialism by which the American ships, acting as a floating wall of steel, declare Taiwan to be there protectorate. The illegal arrest of Meng Wanzhou by Canada is a throwback to the Canadian anti-Chinese racism of the 19th century. Both nations are on the wrong side of history. They are aging anachronisms in a multipolar world, bereft of ideas, or of a future except what they can steal from others. But they don’t seem to learn except the hard way and if they keep pushing, China will teach them a very hard lesson indeed.

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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

Now that Trump’s coup has failed to oust Maduro in Venezuela, his administration is preparing for a military attack.

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U.S. military action in Venezuela is possibility if 'required': Pompeo https://t.co/XuB1ebJFUm pic.twitter.com/kHnWSkYoaT

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) May 1, 2019

Mike Pompeo on Venezuela: "The president has made very clear that all options are on the table, that certainly includes the military option." pic.twitter.com/6TOGDs063K

— The Hill (@thehill) May 1, 2019

Secretary of State Pompeo tried to escalate the situation when he said—without providing evidence, of course—that Maduro was ready to flee to Cuba when he was convinced by Russia to stay the course as Venezuela’s elected leader.  Both Venezuela and Russia had a field day poking holes in that unsubstantiated theory. 

#Maduro was 'getting prepared' to leave #Venezuela before #Russia persuaded him not to – #Pompeo pic.twitter.com/QqKT4q4F7v

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) May 1, 2019

The warmongering and slavish professional propaganda media wasted little time cranking up the heat so the war party might gain consensus—or at least appear to do so—from the American people.

The stakes couldn’t be higher in Venezuela. Either Venezuelans reclaim their freedom, or instability and misery will continue to radiate from Caracas through the Americas.https://t.co/gDyE2J4fmq

— WSJ Editorial Page (@WSJopinion) May 1, 2019

Happening now in Venezuela, a full blown crisis…thanks to the dictator Maduro and his patron, China.

Filipinos should not wait for this to happen here. We still have time, use our votes and dump team China!https://t.co/ej0vwr8qVc

— SyLicoNgaAko 裏科 OtsoDeretso (@SyLicoNgaAko) May 1, 2019

20,000 Russian Troops Hiding Their Nationality https://t.co/6BmJI0fB5J

— Newsmax (@newsmax) May 1, 2019

In February, FAIR posted a report on the extreme bias of the corporate media on the situation in Venezuela. 

“The corporate media have continued to peddle the Trump-as-humanitarian-champion line, even after it was revealed that a US plane was caught smuggling weapons into Venezuela, and even after Trump named Iran/Contra criminal Elliott Abrams to head up Venezuelan operations,” writes Mark Cook. “Abrams was in charge of the State Department Human Rights Office during the 1980s, when weapons to US-backed terrorists in Nicaragua were shipped in US planes disguised as ‘humanitarian’ relief.”

If you’re a cable tv news watcher, you won’t hear about the attack on Venezuela by the US military (most likely in coordination with other South American nations) until Caracas is engulfed in flames and Maduro faces the fate of Salvador Allende in Chile or that of Gaddafi in Libya. 

Pompeo told us the US will attack Venezuela now that it is obvious Juan Guaidó will not convince the military to defect and join the “opposition” (arranged by USAID) and the people are not going over to his side. Of course, he didn’t say it like that, instead telling us the US prefers diplomacy, while also mentioning military “options on the table” for the umpteenth time. 

Plan A—bloodlessly installing Guaidó—is now history. Plan B—mass murder and crimes against humanity—are now front and center. 

Plan B was discussed in mid-April during a meeting held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, a neocon-dominated organization that holds inordinate sway in Congress. 

Following the confidential CSIS meeting, Max Blumenthal tweeted:

Exclusive: DC's @CSIS hosted a who's who of Trump Latin America advisors for a private roundtable to discuss waging a US military assault on Venezuela. The meeting included the former head of SOUTHCOM, a Colombian general and USAID & NIC officials. https://t.co/qVlDZ2WdoT pic.twitter.com/fateSAwR0w

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 14, 2019

In short, the US has planned to attack Venezuela for some time. Trump’s neocons know the Venezuelan people—many of them recall the poverty and privation imposed by neoliberal regimes prior to Hugo Chávez’s rule—will never allow a spawn from the country’s financial and political elite to run Maduro out of office and permit a bankster and transnational feeding frenzy at their expense. 

There are a number of war profiteers waiting in the shadows. For instance, Eric Prince, founder of the brutal mercenary group Blackwater:

Erik Prince, billionaire heir & founder of private army Blackwater, wants to monetize Venezuela coup attempt by sending 5,000 mercenaries to overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected government. Cost to American taxpayers: $40M.#HandsOffVenezeulahttps://t.co/4vLYkgTwlB

— Elinor (@nellvwiley) May 1, 2019

In a matter of weeks or days, the US will attack Venezuela. The country will be subject to the same sort of “creative destruction” unleashed on Iraq and Libya. In Iraq, the US attacked civilian infrastructure, including water and food, and bombed hospitals, mosques, and schools (this tactic was perfected during Bill Clinton’s air war against Yugoslavia). This will be repeated in Venezuela. 

But here’s the rub for a clueless Trump and his warmongering psychopaths: the mobilization of a “civil-military alliance” (una alianza cívica-militar) against the invaders. 

The military has not gone over to Guaidó and the upper classes for two simple reasons: military leaders were not trained at the School of the Americas during the rule of Chávez, and military officers were influenced by the teaching of Simón Bolivar and his ideas about national and popular sovereignty. 

“Chavez wants 1 million armed men and women in the army reserve, and 150,000 have already joined, surpassing the regular military’s force of 100,000. Now Venezuelans are also organizing neighborhood-based militia units for Chavez’s Territorial Guard,” CBS News reported in 2006. 

The reservists were trained to engage in a guerrilla war and fashion weapons out of materials at hand, retired Rear Admiral Luis Cabrera Aguirre told the BBC in 2006.

In April, Maduro ordered an additional expansion of Venezuela’s civilian militia to exceed a million members. 

It will be interesting to see how the US plans to fight a guerrilla war with a million indoctrinated Venezuelans. Caracas may end up looking like Syria’s Raqqa—resembling Stalingrad after the Nazi Operation Barbarossa—but like the Russians, they will not give up until the invader is defeated. 

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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.

Introduction

US global power in the Trump period reflects the continuities and changes which are unfolding rapidly and deeply throughout the world and which are affecting the position of Washington.

Assessing the dynamics of US global power is a complex problem which requires examining multiple dimensions.

We will proceed by:

• Conceptualizing the principles which dictate empire building, specifically the power bases and the dynamic changes in relations and structures which shape the present and future position of the US.
• Identifying the spheres of influence and power and their growth and decline.
• Examining the regionsof conflict and contestation.
• The major and secondary rivalries.
• The stable and shifting relationsbetween existing and rising power centers.
• The internal dynamics shaping the relative strength of competing centers of global power.
• The instability of the regimes and states seeking to retain and expand global power.

Conceptualization of Global Power

US global power is built on several significant facts.  These include:  the US victory in World War II, its subsequent advanced economy and dominant military position throughout five continents.

The US advanced its dominance through a series of alliances in Europe via NATO; Asia via its hegemonic relationship with Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Taiwan as well as Australia and New Zealand in Oceana; Latin America via traditional client regimes; Africa via neo-colonial rulers imposed following independence.

US global power was built around encircling the USSR and China, undermining their economies and defeating their allies militarily via regional wars.

Post WWII global economic and military superiority created subordinated allies and established US global power, but it created the bases for gradual shifts in relations of dominance.

US global power was formidable but subject to economic and military changes over time and in space.

US Spheres of Power:  Then and Now

US global power exploited opportunities but also suffered military setbacks early on, particularly in Korea, Indo-China and Cuba. The US spheres of power were clearly in place in Western Europe and Latin America but was contested in Eastern Europe and Asia.

The most significant advance of US global power took place with the demise and disintegration of the USSR, the client states in Eastern Europe, as well as the transformation of China and Indo-China to capitalism during the 1980’s.

US ideologues declared the coming of a unipolar empire free of restraints and challenges to its global and regional power. The US turned to conquering peripheral adversaries.  Washington destroyed Yugoslavia and then Iraq – fragmenting them into mini-states. Wall Street promoted a multitude of multi-national corporations to invade China and Indo-China who reaped billions of profits exploiting cheap labor.

The believers of the enduring rule of US global power envisioned a century of US imperial rule.

In reality this was a short-sighted vision of a brief interlude.

The End of Unipolarity: New Rivalries and Global and Regional Centers of Power: An Overview

US global power led Washington into  ‘overreach’, in several crucial areas:  it launched a series of costly prolonged wars, specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan, which had three negative consequences:  the destruction of the Iraq armed forces and economy led to the rise of the Islamic State which overtook most of the country; the occupation in Afghanistan which led to the emergence of the Taliban and an ongoing twenty year war which cost hundreds of billions of dollars and several thousand wounded and dead US soldiers; as a result the majority of the US public turned negative toward wars and empire building

The US pillage and dominance of Russia ended, when President Putin replaced Yeltsin’s vassal state.  Russia rebuilt its industry, science, technology and military power.  Russia’s population recovered its living standards.

With Russian independence and advanced military weaponry, the US lost its unipolar  military power.  Nevertheless, Washington financed a coup which virtually annexed two thirds of the Ukraine.  The US incorporated the fragmented Yugoslavian ‘statelets’ into NATO.  Russia countered by annexing the Crimea and secured a mini-state adjacent Georgia.

China converted the economic invasion of US multi-national corporations into learning experiences for building its national economy and export platforms which contributed which led to its becoming an economic competitor and rival to the US.

US global empire building suffered important setbacks in Latin America resulting

from the  the so-called Washington Consensus.  The imposition of neo-liberal policies privatized and plundered their economies, impoverished the working and middle class, and provoked a series of popular uprising and the rise of radical social movements and center-left governments.

The US empire lost spheres of influence in some regions (China, Russia, Latin America, Middle East) though it retained influence among elites in contested regions and even launched new imperial wars in contested terrain.  Most notably the US attacked independent regimes in Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Somalia and Sudan via armed proxies.

The change from a unipolar to a multi polar world and the gradual emergence of regional rivals led US global strategists to rethink their strategy.  The Trump regime’s aggressive policies set the stage for political division within the regime and among allies.

The Obama – Trump Convergence and Differences on Empire Building

By the second decade of the 21^stcentury several new global power alignments emerged:  China had become the main economic competitor for world power and Russia was the major military challenger to US military supremacy at the regional level.  The US replaced the former European colonial empire in Africa.  Washington’s sphere of influence extended especially in North and Sub Sahara Africa:  Kenya, Libya, Somalia and Ethiopia.  Trump gained leverage in the Middle East namely in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Jordan.

Israel retained its peculiar role, converting the US as its sphere of influence.

But the US  faced regional rivals for sphere of influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Algeria.

In South Asia US faced competition for spheres of influence from China, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In Latin America sharp and abrupt shifts in spheres of influence were the norm.  US influence declined between 2000 – 2015 and recovered from 2015 to the  present.

Imperial Power Alignments Under President Trump

President Trump faced complex global, regional and local political and economic challenges.

Trump followed and deepened many of the policies launched by the Obama- Hillary Clinton policies with regard to other countries and regions . However Trump also radicalized and/or reversed policies of his predecessors. He combined flattery and aggression at the same time.

At no time did Trump recognize the limits of US global power.  Like the previous three presidents he persisted in the belief that the transitory period of a unipolar global empire could be re-imposed.

Toward Russia, a global competitor, Trump adopted a policy of ‘rollback’.  Trump imposed economic sanctions, with the strategic ‘hope’ that  by impoverishing Russia, degrading its financial and industrial sectors that he could force a regime change which would convert Moscow into a vassal state.

At the beginning of his Presidential campaign Trump flirted with the notion of a business accommodation with Putin. However, Trump’s ultra-belligerent appointments and domestic opposition soon turned him toward a highly militarized strategy, rejecting military – including nuclear – agreements, in favor of military escalation.

Toward China, Trump faced a dynamic and advancing technological competitor. Trump resorted to a ‘trade war’ that went far beyond ‘trade’ to encompass a war against Beijing’s economic structure and social relations.  The Trump regime-imposed sanctions and threatened a total boycott of Chinese exports.

Trump and his economic team demanded China privatize and denationalize its entire state backed industry.  They demanded the power to unilaterally decide when violations of US rules occurred and to be able to re-introduce sanctions without consultations.  Trump demanded all Chinese technological agreements, economic sectors and innovations were subject and open to US business interests.  In other words, Trump demanded the end of Chinese sovereignty and the reversal of the structural base for its global power.  The US was not interested in mere ‘trade’ – it wanted a return to imperial rule over a colonized China.

The Trump regime rejected negotiations and recognition of a shared power relation: it viewed its global rivals as potential clients.

Inevitably the Trump regime’s strategy would never reach any enduring agreements on any substantial issues under negotiations.  China has a successful strategy for global power built on a 6 trillion-dollar world-wide Road and Belt (R and B) development policy, which links 60 countries and several regions. R and B is building seaports, rail and air systems linking industries financed by development banks.

In contrast, the US banks exploits industry, speculates and operates within closed financial circuits.  The US spends trillions on wars, coups, sanctions and other parasitical activities which have nothing to do with economic competitiveness.

The Trump regime’s ‘allies’ in the Middle East namely Saudi Arabia and Israel, are parasitic allies who buy protection and provoke costly wars.

Europe complains about China’s increase in industrial exports and overlook imports of consumer goods.  Yet the EU plans to resist Trump’s sanctions which lead to a blind alley of stagnation!

Conclusion

The most recent period of the  peak of US global power, the decade between 1989-99 contained the seeds of its decline and the current resort to trade wars, sanctions and nuclear threats.

The structure of US global power changed over the past seven decades.  The US global empire building began with the US command over the rebuilding of Western European economies and the displacement of England, France, Portugal and Belgium from Asia and Africa.

The Empire spread and penetrated  South America via US multi-national corporations. However, US empire building was not a linear process as witness  its unsuccessful confrontation with national liberation movements in Korea, Indo China, Southern Africa (Angola, Congo, etc.) and the Caribbean (Cuba).  By the early 1960’s the US had displaced its European rivals and successfully incorporated them as subordinate allies.

Washington’s main rivals for spheres of influence was Communist China and the USSR with their allies among client state and overseas revolutionaries.

The US empire builders’ successes led to the transformation of their Communist and nationalist rivals into emergent capitalist competitors.

In a word US dominance led to the construction of capitalist rivals, especially China and Russia.

Subsequently, following US military defeats and prolonged wars, regional powers proliferated in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Regional blocs competed with US clients for power.

The diversification of power centers led to new and costly wars.  Washington lost exclusive control of markets, resources and alliances.  Competition reduced the spheres of US power.

In the face of these constraints on US global power the Trump regime envisioned a strategy to  recover  US dominance – ignoring the limited capacity and structure of US political , economic and class relations.

China absorbed US technology and went on to create new advances without following each previous stage.

Russia’s recovered from its losses and sanctions  and secured alternative trade relations to counter the new challenges to the US global empire.  Trump’s regime launched a ‘permanent trade war’ without stable allies. Moreover, he failed  to undermine China’s global infrastructure network; Europe demanded and secured autonomy to enter into trade deals with China, Iran and Russia.

Trump has pressured many regional powers who have ignored his threats.

The US still remains a global power.  But unlike the past, the US lacks the industrial base to ‘make America strong’.  Industry is subordinated to finance; technological innovations are not linked to skilled labor  to increase productivity.

Trump relies on sanctions and they have failed to undermine regional influentials.  Sanctions may temporarily reduce access to US markets’ but we have observed that new trade partners take their place.

Trump has gained client regimes in Latin America, but the gains are precarious and subject to reversal.

Under the Trump regime, big business and bankers have increased prices in the stock market and even the rate of growth of the  GDP, but he confronts severe domestic political instability, and high levels of turmoil among the branches of government.  In pursuit of loyalty over competence, Trump’s appointments have led to the ascendancy of cabinet officials who seek to wield unilateral power which the US no longer possesses.

Elliot Abrams can massacre a quarter-million Central Americans with impunity, but he has failed to impose US power over Venezuela and Cuba.  Pompeo can threaten North Kore, Iran and China but these countries fortify alliances with US rivals and competitors.  Bolton can advance the interests of Israel but their conversations take place in a telephone booth – it lacks resonance with any major powers.

Trump has won a presidential election, he has secured concessions from some countries but he has alienated regional and diplomatic allies.  Trump claims he is making America strong, but he has undermined lucrative strategic multi-lateral trade agreements.

US ‘Global Power’ does not prosper with bully-tactics.  Projections of power alone, have failed – they require recognition of realistic economic limitations and the losses from regional wars.

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Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

“Regime Change” is an old foreign policy of imperialist powers.

In 1800, the U.S. foreign policy was based on the idea of “Empire of Liberty”. Soon the concept of overthrowing unfriendly governments became the core principle of the U.S. foreign policy.

The successful 1950s CIA plotted coup d’état in Iran, Guatemala and other countries are the “glory” days of the U.S. foreign policy.

However, Mr. Trump with his unique “negotiating skills” simply has exposed the fallacy of U.S. foreign policy for good. Mr. Bolton is the best personification of the delusional foreign policy of the Trump administration today. He is still hopeful for a radical change in Venezuela after facing a demonstrative defeat and flopped coup attempt. Indeed, it is Mr. Bolton who has the “nerves of steel!”

Hands off Venezuela!

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Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The New York Times has begged readers’ forgiveness for printing a cartoon that supposedly “included anti-Semitic tropes” in its international edition, but no amount of shameless groveling will stop the Israeli weaponization of the “anti-Semitism” smear as it steamrolls America’s once-sacred First Amendment freedoms. This is a crusade to silence all legitimate criticism of a criminal regime, and if the Times has anything to apologize for, it is its complicity in that quest.

The offending cartoon depicts President Donald Trump as a blind man being led by a guide dog with the face of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, identified by a star-of-David collar. It’s unclear what the “anti-Semitic trope” in this case is supposed to be – the collar is arguably necessary to confirm the dog is Netanyahu, and the reader would have to be a political illiterate to interpret that as a stand-in for “all Jews.” The Times’ willingness to slap the “anti-Semitic trope” label on the cartoon regardless should put to rest the ridiculous “anti-Semitic trope” trope that is tirelessly deployed to smother accusations of wrongdoing by Israel or its lobbying organizations inside the US.

Source: The Times of Israel

Netanyahu himself has boasted that Trump acted on his orders when he declared Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization earlier this month, and Trump’s willingness to flout international law to unilaterally “give” the Golan Heights to Netanyahu as a re-election present shocked the world, unsettling even some Zionists who believe the land is rightfully theirs but worry the US’ official declaration will galvanize regional opposition to the occupation. Netanyahu’s last election campaign was arguably based on his ability to “lead” the US president blindly off the edge of a geopolitical cliff. Is he guilty of perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes for bragging about it?

Most papers only apologize when they’ve printed something erroneous. The Times has chosen instead to issue a correction for one of the few accurate depictions of the relationship between Israel and the White House, a glimmer of truth even more notable for its contrast with the paper’s usual disinformation painting Trump as some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Semite.

The Times’ decision to apologize for this cartoon while remaining silent when a cartoon depicting Trump in a gay love affair with Vladimir Putin was condemned by LGBT readers last year betrays the editorial board’s high moral dudgeon as the most transparent hypocrisy. US media has long smeared Putin’s government as homophobic, yet here they were presenting him half-clothed in a stomach-turning romantic embrace with Trump – a president who, it should be noted, has presided over the deterioration of US-Russia relations to levels not seen since the Cold War. But LGBT Twitter ultimately has little power in society, unlike the Israeli lobby, and the unfavorable depiction of Trump ensured most influential LGBT organizations steered clear of criticizing the cartoon. Outrage has become yet another commodity to be traded, not a genuine response to offense.l

If it’s in a repentant mood, however, the Times could apologize for its one-sided coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – much of it fed to them by The Israel Project, which skews US coverage of the facts on the ground in Israel by supplying American reporters with talking points in order to “neutralize undesired narratives.” From these spinmeisters we get the passive voice used to frame IDF soldiers mowing down unarmed protesters as “clashes occurred” and “Palestinian protesters were killed,” as well as breathless coverage of tunnels, kites, and rocket attacks that rarely seem to hit anyone.

The Times could apologize for its failure to expose the global campaign to redefine “anti-Zionism” as “anti-Semitism,” instead of playing into it by pretending a truthful cartoon is somehow an affront to Jews – as if all Jews support the racist policies of the Israeli government. Indeed, to assume all Jews back the criminal Netanyahu regime in its openly genocidal campaign to eradicate the Palestinians from the few enclaves of the West Bank in which they remain while maintaining an open-air concentration camp in Gaza is wildly anti-Semitic.

The Times could apologize for failing to report on the massive Israeli spying operation – funded, in no small part, by the US taxpayer – targeting American activists on American soil, exposed in detail in the suppressed al-Jazeera documentary “The Lobby,” which leaked last year to deafening silence in the media. Journalist Max Blumenthal actually spoke with a Times journalist who wanted to cover the explosive revelations of the documentary, but no story ever appeared. As Ali Abunimah, founder of the Electronic Intifada, has pointed out, the suppression of the documentary should have been a story in and of itself – and would have, had it involved any other country.

“Imagine that this had been an undercover documentary revealing supposed Russian interference, or Iranian interference…in US policy, and powerful groups had gone to work to suppress its broadcast and it had leaked out. Just that element of it – the suppression and the leak – should be front page news in the Washington Post and the New York Times,” he told Chris Hedges, whose RT program was the closest thing to mainstream coverage the documentary received in the US.

The Times instead chooses to cover up the actions of groups like the Israel on Campus Coalition as they surveil and smear pro-Palestinian activists – college students, professors, and others sympathetic to Israel’s sworn enemy – using a strategy the ICC’s executive director Jacob Baime admits is based on US General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. “The Lobby” revealed that agents working for the Israeli government infiltrate pro-Palestinian, pro-peace groups using fake social media accounts and report their findings back to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a shocking fact that none of the organizations named in the film have disputed. A foreign government operating a military-style surveillance network to target and smear American citizens in their own country – for nothing more than exercising their freedom of speech – gets a pass from the Times, but a cartoon showing Trump’s blind loyalty to Israel for what it is must be condemned.

It’s tough to electrify an outrage mob based on a story that wasn’t printed, but the Times’ failure to address the very real threat to Americans exercising their free speech – a threat all the more dire because it is funded by US tax dollars to the tune of $3.8 billion per year – merits at least a full-page apology. Compounding the insult is a domestic economic crisis, with many American cities facing record homelessness, skyrocketing cost of living, a dearth of secure employment and an excess of exploitative “gig economy” temp work, and a rapidly-disappearing social safety net. Israel is a wealthy country, as Netanyahu often boasts, a successful country. Only a truly blind government could continue to fork over such enormous sums of money while Americans languish in poverty.

“The anti-Semitism smear is not what it used to be,” one lobbyist laments to al-Jazeera’s hidden camera-equipped reporter. Perhaps this is why the state of Florida has advanced a bill to criminalize “anti-Semitism,” now broadly redefined to include “alleging myths…that Jews control the media, economy, government, or other institutions.” The bill passed the House unanimously, the one holdout bullied into submission when she voiced concerns about its incompatibility with the First Amendment, yet to point out – as AIPAC does – that this bipartisan approval exists because the Israeli lobby has influence over both parties, or that this influence can make or break a candidate, is about to become illegal. When even a milquetoast like Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke has stuck his neck out to call Netanyahu a racist – and he receives more money from the Israeli lobby than most of his House colleagues – the Times should be ashamed of itself for pushing the fiction that criticism of Israel and its iron grip on the US government is equivalent to anti-Semitism.

The Times’ own article about its apology quotes an interview with the “guilty” party, Portuguese cartoonist Antonio Moreira Antunes, from the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack, when four cartoonists and the magazine’s editor were murdered, supposedly for printing an offensive cartoon. There is a definite parallel with the Zionist outrage mobs calling for Antunes’ head – figuratively, if not yet literally; many are unsatisfied with the Times’ apology and insist Antunes suffer for his insolence by losing his job, if not his life. Antunes, in the interview, called his job “a profession of risk,” but states “there is no other option but to defend freedom of expression.”

The New York Times, and everyone else who demanded they apologize for a truthful cartoon while ignoring their failure to oppose genuine bigotry in the Netanyahu regime and supporters of Zionism, clearly do not agree that freedom of expression is worth defending. A press that cannot even defend itself does not deserve to be called “free.”

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Helen Buyniski‘s work has been published at RT, Global Research, Progressive Radio Network, and Veterans Today, among other outlets. A journalist and photographer based in New York City, Helen has a BA in Journalism from New School University and also studied at Columbia University and New York University. Find more of her work at http://www.helenofdestroy.com and http://medium.com/@helen.buyniski, or follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

For nearly 10 years now, the British government has waged a war on Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks. It has used every hard and soft power tool in its arsenal: the judiciary, government, international treaties, the media, diplomatic power and even the deprivation of health care. For his role in exposing US  war crimes and corruption, an outraged US establishment has conspired to silence Assange, constructing charges against him and demanding his extradition.  Meanwhile, the British government has tactically used vast state resources to serve Washington, all the while following the agenda of extradition and persecution.  By doing this, the government, along with much of the political class, has shown its complicity in what is recognised as a war not just on Assange, but on journalists, publishers and whistle blowers, and even more crucially – a war on freedom of the press and free speech.

In the course of this war, the British  government has violated multiple human rights laws.

Comments regarding the use of law in Assange’s case have been provided to 21st Century Wire in correspondence by former UN rapporteur to Venezuela and Ecuador, Alfred De Zayas, who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2015.

Government lawyers destroying the law 

De Zayas describes the actions of the British and Swedish authorities towards Assange as:

“.. contrary  to the rule of law and contrary to the spirit of the law.”

From the outset De Zayas has warned that the use of the law against Assange has been politically driven:

“…it is more than evident that the charges in Sweden were trumped-up.  This in itself is an additional violation of domestic and international law.”

The investigation into sexual allegations made against Assange was initially quickly dropped.  It was then picked up again by lawyers who later applied the law in such a way that trapped Assange and secured a pocket of opportunity for his extradition to the US. The inaction of the Swedish prosecutors over several years gives further credence that the investigation has been used as a vehicle to achieve extradition.

The warrant for extradition was issued despite Assange receiving permission to travel to the UK from Sweden where the allegations were made, and where he had offered to meet with the prosecutors.   It is also well-known that Assange jumped bail to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 to avoid being extradited to Sweden, known for its compliance with US dictates.  If eventually extradited to the US, Assange feared persecution by an outraged government whose war crimes and corruption he exposed.

Former Stockholm chief district prosecutor, Sven-Erik Alhem, described the steps to extradite Assange as:

“… unreasonable and unprofessional, as well as unfair and disproportionate.”

He has stated the Swedish government had no legitimate reason to extradite Assange as he could simply have been questioned in the UK, which Assange offered repeatedly.

Emails acquired through freedom of information requests to the UK and Swedish authorities, collected by journalists,  show that the UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) wanted Assange extradited to Sweden and put off any investigation being carried out in the UK:

“My earlier advice remains, that in my view it would not be prudent for the Swedish authorities to try to interview the defendant in the UK.”

“Thus I suggest you interview him only on his surrender to Sweden and in accordance with Swedish law.”

– Paul Close, CPS lawyer

The pressure by the CPS on Swedish prosecutors not to question Assange in the embassy continued until 2016, during which time the investigation remained in preliminary stage:

“The reason that the requisite interview interrogation did not occur until late 2016 was, it transpires, on the advice of the CPS. Once the interview did occur, the proceedings were swiftly discontinued.”

– Gareth Peirce and Mark Summers, Assange Lawyers, Westminster Magistrates’ Court

These are investigators who knew who the accused was, where the accused was, and for years failed to knock on the door.  Instead, they chose the dead-end route to the investigation for all concerned, and left Assange with the threat of extradition to the US hanging over him, and with it the risk of persecution at the hands of the US.  This looks like a strategic and politically-driven use of the law by the UK and Sweden.  De Zayas has condemned the weaponizing of the law against Assange:

“Both violated article 2 of the Lisbon Treaty and should be denounced for allowing the administration of justice to be politicized and used as weapons against a journalist — thereby violating article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights…”

“I think that the collusion of government lawyers in what must be termed an Orwellian persecution of a journalist is shocking.”

Baltasar Garzon, the judge who indicted Pinochet and has defended Assange, has described the motive behind the persecution – Assange is a scapegoat. Watch:

Sexual allegations: a smokescreen for politicised use of the law

The stalling tactic also meant Assange would be attached to a sexual misconduct allegation over a long period of time, a platform for vilification which the British government exploited after the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found Assange to be arbitrarily detained in 2015.  ‘Human Rights’ Minister at the time, Dominic Raab clearly shows how the ‘fugitive from justice’ narrative has been used as a smokescreen to perpetuate state-sponsored persecution:

The ruling is factually upside down. It lacks moral clarity for the UN to suggest what they have about Mr Assange’s position given that he holed himself up in the  Ecuadorian embassy, and he is facing a serious allegation of rape. Sweden is not some tin pot banana republic. It’s a country with a well-respected justice system. He can forget about compensation, and frankly many people here will think this kind of nonsense undermines the credibility of the UN, which is not what we want.

Because Assange could not clear his name without risking persecution, the British government used this to deflect from its violation of international law and falsely accused Assange of obstructing justice.  However, it was not Assange obstructing justice but those applying the law:  obstructing the investigation that might end the sexual allegations,  obstructing any route for Assange to leave the embassy without threat to his life through extradition, an erosion of the law.  All the while the government squandering many millions in public funds on surveillance outside of the Ecuadorian embassy in Belgravia.

The possibility of extradition to the US was kept going for years, while the British and Swedish governments stalled the investigation and kept a European arrest warrant live, waiting for an opportunity to extradite Assange.  After the Swedish investigation was dropped in 2017 the British government continued squandering taxes on covert surveillance sitting in wait to ‘catch’ Assange.  And now that he has been betrayed by the government of Ecuador which has provided such opportunity, the British government continues to drive the false narrative that Assange is a fugitive and must face justice:

“… it is absolutely right that Assange will face justice in the proper way in the UK.” – Alan Duncan

Note: Julian Assange was never charged with any sexual offense by Swedish authorities, rather he was only ever sought for questioning in an ongoing investigation by Swedish prosecutor’s office. To suggest that he was a ‘fugitive’ from justice would be patently false.

What justice is Duncan referring to? The only prosecutable crime under British law applicable to Assange on 11th April 2019 was skipping bail seven years ago, a charge De Zayas does not credit:

“The skipping bail charge is frivolous and does not deserve any respect by UK courts.”

Duncan is not referring to British justice but deferring to US government for which the UK authorities have been operating since 2010, resulting in the erosion of law and a betrayal of British sovereignty.

Contrary to receiving justice,  Assange is now facing continued violation of his human rights. The UK is failing to meet the conditions set by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention under  Articles 7, 9, 10 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, summarised in a UN OHCHR statement as:

“The Working Group maintains that the arbitrary detention of Mr. Assange should be brought to an end, that his physical integrity and freedom of movement be respected, and that he should be entitled to an enforceable right to compensation.”

De Zayas explains that further more:

“… according to the principle “ubi ius, ibi remedium” –where there is law, there is a remedy — any violation of law requires reparation and rehabilitation.  Thus both UK and Sweden are still obliged to make reparation which could easily be by releasing him immediately.  Reparation need not be only monetary.  His rights were violated by the UK and the UK has the power to release him.” 

Comments like Duncan’s are meant to suggest ‘good governance’; the rule of law is implemented to keep us safe so we can trust the government.  But the world is watching Britain’s politicised use of its legal system, and pressure will now be put upon the British government to reject the US extradition request that would likely end in persecution for Assange.

The role of British diplomacy in the war on Assange

Alan Duncan, Minister for Europe and Americas, apparently spent months working out a deal with the US and Ecuador over Assange.

On 11th April Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, stripped Assange of his Ecuadorian citizenship and asylum status, in violation of Ecuadorian constitutional law – Assange was granted citizenship in 2017.   As pretexts for Assange’s ‘exit’ Moreno used propaganda narratives and smear campaigns.  He then invited UK police into the embassy to arrest him. Assange was denied due process by the Ecuadorian government that was obligated under its own law to protect him.  It is believed that Moreno was motivated by 2 essential events: hand over Assange or have a $4 billion plus IMF loan vetoed by Washington, and revenge for the circulation by Wikileaks of  information implicating him in a corruption scandal with offshore company INA.

Very welcome news to see that Assange is out of the Ecuador Embassy. My thanks to President @Lenin Moreno and his government for their cooperation and tireless diplomacy in making this happen.

— Sir Alan Duncan MP (@AlanDuncanMP) April 11, 2019

The role played by Alan Duncan in enabling Moreno to deliver Assange up for US extradition could be described as that of a ‘middle man’ in a sleazy deal, and yet, this is how British soft power seems to work.  Duncan’s use of diplomatic power has undermined international human rights.  This is not new to Duncan, whose diplomatic office, like much of the British government, acts subservient to US political agenda.  In 2011, he was involved with a ‘White Hall’ cell engineering passage of oil to jihadists in Libya when Britain joined the US and France in overthrowing Gaddafi.  Moreover, he is on record as supporting the attempted coup by the far right Washington-backed ‘interim president’,  Juan Guaido, against the democratically elected Maduro government of Venezuela.  He also recently rejected a decision by the International Court of Justice that the UK must end its administration of Chagos Arhipelago so that it can be decolonized.

Based on these and other examples, it could be said that UK diplomacy, in the hands of people such as Duncan, is leading to chaos and the erosion of law, and most likely eventual diplomatic isolation for the UK in much the same way the current US administration has isolated itself.  Duncan’s plotting with unprincipled and corrupt leaders to subvert human rights mechanisms should be condemned:

As a political prisoner detained without charge for 8 years, in violation of 2 UN rulings, I suppose I must be "miserable"; yet nothing wrong with being a "little" person although I'm rather tall; and better a "worm", a healthy creature that invigorates the soil, than a snake.

— Defend Assange Campaign (@DefendAssange) March 27, 2018

Watch the following statement made on the floor of the House of Commons:

Any comments made by Duncan regarding ‘no death penalty’ assurances on extradition to the US are more likely for PR purposes.  Assange is protected under international law as de Zayas explains:

“Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the United States, because such an extradition would violate a jus cogens principle of international law – the rule of non-refoulement. Assange has the right to protection under the Geneva Refugee Convention and cannot be sent to any country where he would be subject to persecution, which is clearly what the US is doing.”

Duncan’s assurances are designed to appear as good governance, or the face of civilisation.  This should not fool us:  extraditing Assange with a guarantee of no death sentence still violates international law as the risk of persecution is very high, a principle also made clear by the UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer:

“In my assessment, if Mr. Assange were to be expelled from the Embassy of Ecuador, he is likely to be arrested by British authorities and extradited to the United States…Such a response could expose him to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Duncan’s humanitarian concerns about the death sentence designed to gain public trust should not distract us from what is clearly a further attempt at politicising the law, this time through the UK-US extradition treaty The exploitation of such a mechanism by the British government is a further erosion of the law.

We must see that our courts are not subservient to the US, that our judges can respect decisions made by the United Nations regarding human rights, and that they can condemn politicised use of law by government.  To date, the rulings against Assange by the British courts clearly indicate that extraterritoriality of US ‘justice’ is now here, or how else do we explain why British judges have enabled the government’s war on Assange for nearly ten years.  It appears this war is not just about press freedom, but integrity of our institutions which are supposed to promote democracy and civilisation. De Zayas warns:

“It is most regrettable when countries ostensibly committed to democracy, the rule of law, and human rights betray all of these values.  It is shocking that the mainstream press allows it to happen.  Unconscionable when civil society becomes complicit through its silence.  The US, UK, Sweden and Ecuador have been on a rampage against the rule of law — and this also harms the credibility of international law.

We are witnessing a revolt against international standards by multiple countries — US, UK, Sweden, Ecuador.”

Assange’s body – a tool for persecution

Parallels could be drawn between the British government’s policy towards Assange’s health and the US economic violence towards Venezuela – imposing devastating restrictions while offering token aid – the carrot and the stick designed to wear down the target while at the same time securing public opinion by gesturing humanitarianism.  But the ultimate goal is submission, while the strategy is blackmail.

If Assange had left the embassy to receive medical care he would not have made it to a doctor or hospital; he would have been arrested immediately. The situation was described in a 2015 psycho-social medical report detailing Assange’s living conditions, the effects of the massive police surveillance on him (he was in effect ‘under siege,‘), incidents that occurred leaving him in a state of anxiety, and the long-term effects of arbitrary detention.

The  weaponising of his deteriorating health is also described by Dr Sondra Crosby, a specialist in refugee health care, who assessed Assange in February this year.  Crosby condemned the way physical and mental suffering has been inflicted by the British government that promised to arrest him should he leave the embassy for treatment urgently needed.  She believed this amounted to a violation of articles 1 and 16 of the 1984 Convention Against Torture and asked Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to intervene.

De Zayas believes Bachelet’s intervention is now essential:

“The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, should speak out.  But the silence is deafening. She should demand compliance with the 2016 judgement of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the rehabilitation of Assange and immediate protection of his life and health.”

The Dehumanisation of Assange through the British Media 

Much has now been written on the treatment of Assange by British mainstream media.  It has approached reporting on Assange the same way it has any of the British invasions and wars it has supported, circulating propaganda designed to inspire hatred and prejudice, manufacturing consent for violence and oppression.

We should loathe Assange for his pride , his ingratitude and meddling, his treachery, his spying, his skateboarding, how he treated his cat.  Following his arrest the BBC provided Moreno a platform to claim Assange ‘smeared feces on the embassy walls.’  The ultimate dehumanization of Assange reduced to an animal or a lunatic.  The purpose of this defamation campaign was to win our apathy so he can be quietly disposed of, as we we will agree to the erosion of the law and the criminalisation of journalism and whistle blowers, and the politicising of the courts in subservience to US ‘justice’.

But we cannot agree to that.  This war on Assange by the British government is really a war on us all.  It is an abuse of institutions, of both the spirit and the letter of the law, and of centuries civil rights achievements.  The British government is behaving in a violent and authoritarian manner behind a mask of ‘civilised rule of law’ which must be exposed and rejected.

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This article was originally published on 21st Century Wire.

Author Nina Cross is an independent writer and researcher, and contributor to 21WIRE. To see more of her work, visit her Nina’s archive.

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The Following text is Section 7 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. After demolishing the Libyan state, the US/NATO operation to demolish the Syrian state began in the same year. One reason was the fact that in July 2011 Syria, Iran and Iraq signed an agreement for a gas pipeline that would link the Iranian oilfield of South Pars, the largest in the world, to Syria and then to the Mediterranean. Syria, where another large field was discovered near Homs, could thus become a hub of alternative energy corridors to those  controlled by US and European companies that run through Turkey and other routes.

2. The covert war began with a series of terrorist attacks, carried out above all in Damascus and Aleppo. Catastrophic were the images of the buildings devastated with powerful explosives: not the work of simple rebels, but of infiltrated war professionals. Hundreds of British elite SAS and SBS special forces – reported the Daily Star – operate in Syria, along with US and French units.

3. The rebel forces have been made up of an armed gathering of Islamic groups (until recently branded by Washington as terrorists) coming from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Libya and other countries. In the group of Abu Omar al-Chechen – reported the reporter for   The Guardian in Aleppo – orders were given in Arabic, but have to be translated into Chechen, Tajik, Turkish, a Saudi dialect, Urdu, French and other languages. Equipped with fake passports (CIA specialties), the fighters flowed into the Turkish provinces of Adana and Hatai, bordering Syria, where the CIA opened military training centers. The weapons have arrived mainly via Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which, like in Libya, also has provided special forces.

4. The command of operations has been on board NATO ships in the port of Alessandretta. A propaganda center was opened in Istanbul where Syrian dissidents, trained and financed by the US State Department, have fabricated the news and videos that are broadcast via satellite networks.

5. From special operational centers, CIA agents provide for the purchase of weapons with large loans granted by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf monarchies. They organize the transport of weapons to Turkey and Jordan through an air bridge that finally make it across the border to groups in Syria who are already trained in special areas set up in Turkish and Jordanian territories.

6. The strategy of Western forces was disclosed in documents released in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. In an email of 2012 (declassified as “case number F-2014-20439, Doc No. C05794498”), Clinton wrote that, given the “strategic relationship” of Iran and Syria, “the overthrow of Assad would constitute an immense benefit for Israel, and it would also diminish the understandable Israeli fear of losing their nuclear monopoly”.

7. An official Pentagon document, dated 12 August 2012 (declassified 18 May 2015 on the initiative of Judicial Watch), states that “Western countries, the Gulf States and Turkey support the opposition forces in Syria, which attempt to control the eastern areas adjacent to the western Iraqi provinces, helping them “to create safe havens under international protection”. There is “the possibility of establishing a Salafist principality in eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the powers that support the opposition want to do: isolate the Syrian regime, the strategic rear of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.

8. It is in this context that ISIS (or DAESH) was formed in 2013, which calls itself “The State of the Islamic Caliphate”. In May 2013, a month after founding ISIS, Ibrahim al-Badri – the “caliph” known on the battlefield as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – met US Senator John McCain, leader of the Republican Party who was commissioned by the President Obama (Democrat) to carry out secret operations in Syria on behalf of the government. The meeting was photographically documented.

9. ISIS has received funding, weapons and transit routes from the closest allies of the United States: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey and Jordan, based on a plan certainly coordinated by the CIA. After having conquered a great part of the Syrian territory with its militias, ISIS launched an offensive in Iraq, not surprisingly at a time when the government, headed by the Shiite Nouri al-Maliki, was distancing itself from Washington, getting closer and closer to China and Russia. The offensive, which set Iraq on fire, was fueled by the Sunni-Shiite rivalry. ISIS militias occupied Ramadi, Iraq’s second largest city, and immediately afterwards, Palmyra, in central Syria, killing thousands of civilians and forcing tens of thousands to flee.

10. ISIS actually has played a functional role in the US/NATO strategy of state demolitions. This does not mean that the mass of its militants, coming from different countries, is aware of it. It is very complex: there are Islamic fighters, formed in the drama of war, who are ex-soldiers from Saddam Hussein’s military who fought against invaders, and many others whose stories are always linked to the tragic social situations caused by the first Gulf War and the successive ones over more than twenty years. It also includes foreign fighters from Europe and the United States, behind whose masks there are certainly secret agents specially trained for these operations.

11. Very suspicious is also the unlimited access that ISIS has, in its period of maximum development, to the world media networks that are dominated by US and European corporate giants, through which it spreads its videos of beheadings that create horror and manipulate public opinion in favor of the intervention in Iraq and Syria.

12. The military campaign “Inherent Resolve”, formally directed against ISIS, was launched in Iraq and Syria in August 2014 by the USA and their allies: France, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and others. If the United States, France and Great Britain used their fighter-bombers as they had against Libya in 2011, the forces of ISIS, moving in open spaces, would be easy targets. They can instead advance undisturbed with columns of armored cars loaded with men and explosives. If ISIS advances in Syria and Iraq, it is because Washington wants just that. The strategic goal of Washington is the demolition of Syria and the reoccupation of Iraq.

13. The Russian military intervention in Syria in 2015, in support of government forces, reversed the fate of the conflict. Russian fighter-bombers destroyed ISIS strongholds one after the other, paving the way for Damascus forces. The United States, displaced, played the card of the fragmentation of Syria, supporting Kurdish insurgents and others. After trying to demolish the Syrian state for five years, breaking it up with armed terrorist groups infiltrated from outside and causing over 250,000 deaths, when the operation started failing due to Russian military intervention in support of Syrian government forces, the political and media apparatuses of the entire West launched a colossal psyop (psychological operation) to make the government and all those Syrians who resisted aggression appear as aggressors. The spearhead of the psyop was the demonization of President Assad (as they had already done with Milosevic and Gaddafi), presented as a sadistic dictator who enjoyed bombing hospitals and exterminating children with the help of his friend Putin, painted as a neo-tsar of the reborn Russian empire. When the last strongholds of ISIS fell, the same political and media apparatuses spread the fake news that ISIS was defeated by the United States and the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (a militia of Kurds and Arabs armed and supported by the Pentagon).

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Sections 8-16 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 Democratic frontrunner characterizes effort to overthrow the elected government of President Nicolas Maduro at gunpoint, as just another benign effort to “restore democracy” in Latin America.

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Despite progressive critics and anti-war voices speaking forcefully against the Trump administration’s overt backing of the attempted coup d’état by rightwing opposition forces in Venezuela on Tuesday, 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden aligned himself with the White House by throwing his support behind the overthrow effort.

“The violence in Venezuela today against peaceful protesters is criminal,” Biden tweeted on Tuesday. “Maduro’s regime is responsible for incredible suffering. The U.S. must stand with the National Assembly & Guaidó in their efforts to restore democracy through legitimate, internationally monitored elections.”

But what Biden embraced as an effort to “restore democracy,” many foreign policy experts—ones not willing to give the benefit of the doubt to people like national security advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and President Donald Trump—called something else entirely: a violent effort by Venezuela’s rightwing elites, led by Juan Guaidó, to overthrow the elected government of President Nicolas Maduro.

To people of conscience:

Mike Pence, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Marco Rubio, Elliott Abrams, & Donald Trump are actively engineering a coup to overthrow a democratically-elected Latin American government. Speak out against US imperialism TODAY! #HandsOffVenezuela https://t.co/SGyOL1XaZM

— CODEPINK (@codepink) April 30, 2019

In subsequent comments during a campaign stop, Biden called for “calm” in Venezuela but also repeated the White House position that Maduro is not—despite his win in last year’s contested elections which the opposition largely boycotted—the legitimate leader of Venezuela:

Joe Biden on Venezuela: "What I think is ultimately required is for the international community to demand that there be free elections." pic.twitter.com/2PVBdSDNwM

— The Hill (@thehill) April 30, 2019

Biden wasn’t alone among top Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others also expressed support for the military uprising launched by Guaidó.

For critics, however, one of the salient dynamics about Biden’s announced support for the U.S.-backed coup in Venezuela in 2019 is what it suggests the former vice president has learned—or rather has not learned—about U.S. intervention (aka “meddling”) in the affairs of foreign nations since his support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Democratic presidential "favorite" @JoeBiden who enthusiastically cheerled Iraq War now backing @realDonaldTrump's coup in Venezuela https://t.co/zyFIGazeuw

— venezuelanalysis.com (@venanalysis) April 30, 2019

Interviewed by Democracy Now! early on Wednesday, economist and foreign policy expert Jeffrey Sachs, who directs the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and Professor Miguel Tinker Salas of Pomona College discussed what they both agree is the dangerous and counterproductive agenda that leaders like Trump, Bolten, Biden, and Pelosi are now pushing in Venezuela.

“What’s so stupid about these American policies, these neocon policies,” said Sachs, “is they do create disaster, but they don’t achieve even the political goals of these nasty people like Bolton. It’s not as if they’re effective and nasty; they’re completely ineffective and totally nasty at the same time.”

While acknowledging that Maduro has certainly made mistakes and legitimate criticisms of his government exist, Tinker Salas said the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America—not to mention elsewhere in the world— shows overthrowing governments in this manner “doesn’t produce the change that most people want. And what it does is it aggravates conditions for the majority of the population.”

Sachs—who last week released a detailed study along with economist Mark Weisbrot on the devastating impact that U.S.-imposed sanctions have had on the Venezuelan economy—added that people backing Guaidó and the coup effort are really just embracing “normal U.S. right-wing foreign policy, nothing different.”

“This is the same foreign policy that we saw throughout Latin America in the 20th century,” Sachs added. “It’s the same foreign policy that we saw catastrophically in the Middle East. This is Mr. Bolton. This is Mr. Bolton’s idea of diplomacy. This is Trump’s idea of diplomacy. You punch someone in the face. You crush your opponent. You try whatever way you can to get your way. It’s very simpleminded. It’s very crude.”

“And,” and concluded, “it never works. It just leads to catastrophe.”

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It’s Groundhog Day again in Venezuela, as the local conservative opposition has launched another attempt to oust President Nicolás Maduro from power. Surrounded by a few hardcore supporters, Washington-backed self-appointed president Juan Guaidó on April 30 called on the military to rise up and overthrow the democratically elected Maduro. Guaidó, a man who has never even stood for president, attempted the same thing in January, and the opposition has attempted to remove Maduro, and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, on many occasions, including in 2017, 2014, 2013, 2002 and 2001.

Despite bearing the clear hallmarks of a coup—defined as “the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group”—US media have overwhelmingly supported it, as they have past attempts (FAIR.org, 1/25/19, 5/16/18, 4/18/02). CNN (4/30/19) told the United States that it must “root for the people” of Venezuela, before explicitly stating, “Rooting for the Venezuelan people means hoping that Maduro will step down”—thus underlining the phenomenon noted by FAIR (1/31/19) that to corporate media, “the people” of Venezuela are whoever agrees with the US government. CNN (4/30/19) also used images of Guaidó’s paramilitaries (identifiable by their blue armbands) to illustrate a report claiming the forces of “socialist dictator” Maduro were “mowing down citizens in the streets.”

The CNN column (4/30/19) helpfully clarifies: “Rooting for the Venezuelan people means hoping that Maduro will step down peacefully.”

Not a Coup, but a…

Framing how readers see an issue is an incredibly powerful tool of persuasion. It’s not carpet bombing, it’s surgical strikes. And people are more likely to accept advanced interrogation techniques than they are torture.

In their efforts to refrain from using the negative—but accurate—term “coup” to describe events they support, the media have sometimes had to go to bizarre, roundabout and garbled lengths to dance around it. The Washington Post (4/30/19) used the clunky phrase “opposition-led military-backed challenge.”  The Post (4/30/19) also published an article in support of Guaidó headlined “Is What’s Happening in Venezuela an Attempted Coup? First, Define ‘Coup,” arguing that there were such things as “noble” and “democratic coups.”

And the award for Most Awkward Euphemism goes to…the Washington Post (4/30/19)!

Other outlets also refused to use the most logical word to describe events. CBS (4/30/19), Reuters (5/1/19) and CNN (5/1/19) chose the word “uprising,” NPR (4/30/19) and the New York Times (4/30/19) “protest,” and Yahoo! News went with the phrase “high-risk gamble” (5/1/19). Meanwhile, the Miami Herald (4/30/19) insisted that the “military rebellion” in Venezuela “can be called many things. But don’t call it a ‘coup attempt.’”

Even international organizations like the BBC (5/1/19), the Guardian (5/1/19) and Al-Jazeera (5/1/19) only used the word “coup” in quotations, characterizing it as an accusation attributed to government officials media have been demonizing for years (Extra!, 11–12/05; FAIR.org, 5/28/18, 4/11/19). This despite the fact that Al-Jazeera (4/30/19) reported on the day of the coup that Erik Prince, CEO of the private military contractor Blackwater, tried to persuade Donald Trump to let him send 5,000 mercenaries to Venezuela to “remove” Maduro.

Stenographers for Power

The reasons for the reluctance of the media to use the word “coup” can be found in official announcements from the government. With all the credibility of an armed man in a mask repeatedly shouting “this is not technically a bank robbery,” national security advisor John Bolton told reporters on April 30, “This is clearly not a coup,” but an effort by ”the Venezuelan people” to “regain their freedom,” which the US “fully supports.” Likewise, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that what we are seeing in Venezuela “is the will of the people to peacefully change the course of their country from one of despair to one of freedom and democracy.”

Soon after Bolton’s comments, Bloomberg published a series of articles (4/30/19; 4/30/19; 4/30/19), all by different writers, on why the events did not constitute a coup attempt. This, despite Bloomberg’s reporter Andrew Rosati revealing that coup leader Leopoldo Lopez told him and the rest the international media core that he wants the US to formally govern Venezuela once Maduro falls.

Pompeo made waves in April after publicly admitting at an event at Texas A&M University that he was a serial liar, cheat and thief. As CIA director, he declared, “We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses [on it]!” Nevertheless, the media credulously repeated his astonishing claims, made in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (5/1/19), that Maduro, who has survived multiple coup attempts and assassinations, had been on the airport tarmac on his way to Cuba, “ready to leave” Venezuela for good, only for Russia to tell him to stay. This dubious, unverified and officially contested assertion made headlines around the world (Daily Beast, 4/30/19; Newsweek, 4/30/19; Times of London, 5/1/19; Deutsche Welle, 4/30/19), with few questioning its credibility.

“We lied, we cheated, we stole,” Pompeo declared—but trust him, Maduro only stayed in power because Putin told him to (CNN, 5/1/19)!

This is not the first time the media have lined up behind the government on a Venezuelan coup. As detailed in my book, Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting, the US media also endorsed the April 2002 coup against Chavez, using euphemisms such as “popular uprising” (Miami Herald, 4/18/02), “unrest” (New York Times, 5/23/02) or “Chavez’s temporary downfall” (New York Times, 4/29/02) to frame events more positively. Only after an official White House spokesperson used the word “coup” on April 15, 2002, was the word frequently used in the media, suggesting a close synergy between government officials and those supposedly employed to hold them to account.

After barely 12 hours, the most recent coup attempt appeared to have failed under the weight of its own unpopularity. According to the New York Times (4/30/19), Guaidó failed to attract meaningful support from the military, his co-conspirator Leopoldo Lopez had sought refuge first in the Chilean then in the Spanish embassy, and 25 of his paramilitaries had done the same in the Brazilian one. Guaidó did not win over the Venezuelan majority, who had previously chased his motorcade out of a working class district when he tried to enter. Ordinary Venezuelans continued their lives, or even rushed to the defense of the government. As USA Today (5/1/19) summed up:

Guaidó called it the moment for Venezuelans to reclaim their democracy once and for all. But as the hours dragged on, he stood alone on a highway overpass with the same small cadre of soldiers with whom he launched a bold effort to spark a military uprising.

It appears that the main base of support for the coup was the US government…and the media. The press’s extraordinary complicity, lining up with the State Department’s version of the world in the face of empirical evidence, highlights the worrying closeness between media and government. When it comes to foreign policy, there is often no difference between deep state and fourth estate.

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Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group. His latest book, Bad News From Venezuela: 20 Years of Fake News and Misreporting, was published by Routledge in April.

Featured image is from Club Orlov

During the media frenzy, diplomatic flurry and widespread speculations around a hitherto marginal Saudi journalist’s apparently grizzly demise in Istanbul’s Saudi consulate last October, my thoughts stayed with the deathly silence that had fallen around Wikileaks’ founder and director.

Information about Julian Assange had become increasingly sparse and obscured. After six years under virtual house arrest in Ecuador’s London embassy, his fate was more precarious every day.  Seeking temporary asylum with Ecuador was apparently a serious miscalculation by Assange and his lawyers.

By 2017, Assange’s astute observations on a range of policy issues were becoming few and far between, his opinion on international matters sought or quoted www.Wikileaks.org turned less tantalizing too. (The most recent post is dated January, 2019.)

Did international media and free press advocates who once celebrated Assange and who utilized his revelations and heaped awards on Wikileaks collectively agreed to abandon their erstwhile hero? And why the turnaround? (Not easy to explain although one suggestion is former associates conspired to depose him)

Increased silence from within Assange’s refuge presaged his recent ‘capture’. Then, when he suddenly appeared, subdued by several guards, international media shamelessly rushed to applaud his arrest. Many repeated scant, salacious details of his condition at the time of his forced removal from the embassy. Reprehensible. Dismaying. Will those gloating journalists care what his captors do to Assange in detention?

This for the man whose political analyses and Wikileaks revelations had been daily headlines not long ago. This for a journalist and publisher who introduced a profound strategy to expose a government’s sinister diplomatic schemes, excesses and crimes documented by their own internal reports. This for an organization gathering evidence of government wrongdoing at a critical time, starting in 2006 when U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were being reevaluated by a sobering public. Rumors of military crimes, cover-ups, torture, black-site prisons, etc. had gradually, although belatedly, gained credibility and, following Abu Graib Prison revelations, Wikileaks provided irrefutable evidence of how U.S.A. and its allies conduct their wars. (How useless normal checks are was demonstrated by Chelsea Manning’s thwarted attempts to report questionable practices within the U.S.military structure.)

Also Assange launched Wikileaks.org soon after we recognized the potential of new digital technology. Here was a tool with the capacity to store and transfer massive quantities of data; hard copy was redundant and security systems for digital data including those of intelligence agencies were untested.

Julian Assange was no ordinary, lone, computer geek hacking commercial operators. He had a clear political agenda. He emerged as the unmatched pioneer sleuth for our new digital age, building Wikileaks as a free public platform for distributing huge quantities of data, material supposedly only accessible to authorized personnel. In its audacity Wikileaks even published a CIA manual on its (own) hacking methods! The undeniable content of the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and diplomatic files know as Cable Gate clearly demonstrates how the U.S. spies on governments, including allies.

Wikileaks set a new standard for investigative journalism.

It took an exceptional mind to create the Wikileaks platform but also to assess and manage massive amounts of data gathered and uploaded to it. (I myself never searched through those files, but my perusal of the 2015 book, The Wikileaks Files,with an introduction by Assange offers a hint of the treasure the original files represent.) They will doubtless be drawn on by historians and policy analysts for decades.

Assange’s technical handling of the files he assembled was matched by his articulate public statements. He understood their implications better than many others and he demonstrated a critical grasp of international issues and policy implications. He could condense and explain the data to laypeople better than seasoned political journalists and professors could. So lucid were Assange’s commentaries that he was certain to be viewed by authorities as threatening as the Wikileaks postings.

With this brief sketch of Assange’s short career and his contributions to journalism, let’s recall the hardly known internationally celebrated personage in whose name an international award was created– an undistinguished fellow whose death, we were told, threatened one of Washington’s sacred alliances:—that with Saudi Arabia.

Certainly, this gadfly media celebrity should not have been murdered and “disappeared” in what sounds like an ugly, bungled inside job. One doesn’t want to see anyone losing his or her life in our noble profession, (although many do). Tell me frankly though: what was the real contribution of Jamal Khashoggi to journalism? Not much. Yes, he held positions at reputable Arab news agencies and he was doubtless highly competent.

He’d become an insider of the Saudi court. Although a clearly privileged position, that may have become an arrangement he sought to end.

In January 2018, Khashoggi was appointed as one of three new Global Opinions contributors at the prestigious Washington Post. It’s an expedient and not uncommon practice for news agencies to take on ‘native’ journalists like him. These visitors become highly valued ‘silent’ sources for their host while gaining legitimacy by writing occasional columns– a hell of a sweet deal.

Yet however insightful your occasional WaPo commentaries, they hardly matter. If you advise staff writers with reliable insider information about your country’s personalities and policies, you enjoy an elite professional badge, one you expect will protect you as well.

In Khashoggi’s case that security arrangement didn’t work out so well. Although the Washington Post managed to redeem itself by portraying their new columnist as an invaluable veteran employee who was horribly assassinated. Khashoggi became an instant American martyr, his murder a blow to the entire profession, an act that might unravel the unshakable U.S.-Saudi bond. Khashoggi’s spectacularly imagined death dominated headlines for weeks, disrupting a web of diplomatic relations. (Although talk of ending just one dimension of the American-Saudi alliance, the Yemen war, came to naught.) As for the Saudi crown prince: he may maintain a lower public profile today, but there’s little evidence his real power is diminished. Meanwhile, can you recall any citations of the Saudi journalist’s writings?

With the drama of Khashoggi’s death largely forgotten and the U.S.-Saudi status-quo restored, is there any way to compare his contribution to the imprisoned and vilified Wikileaks’ director?

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Barbara Nimri Aziz is a New York based anthropologist and journalist. She is the author of “Tibetan Frontier Families” and numerous articles on Tibet and Nepal, has been working in Nepal in recent weeks. Find her work at www.RadioTahrir.org. She was a longtime producer at Pacifica-WBAI Radio in NY.

The following is an edited and abridged version of an open letter recently sent by Dr Rosemary Mason to Michael Gove, the British Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The full version containing relevant citations and additional data and information may be accessed here.  

You can also find on the site linked to all of Rosemary Mason’s previous work outlining the devastating impact of glyphosate and modern farming practices which remain in place due to the well-documented subversion of science and the corruption of governments and regulatory bodies by industry interests. 

It seems likely that a post-Brexit trade deal with the US could mean more of the same and lead to the introduction of GM crops in the UK alongside the lowering of standards for the use of biocides in agriculture. Sainsbury Laboratory already has plans for a new open air field trial of GM potatoes on farms in Suffolk and Cambridge.

Colin Todhunter

Below, Dr Mason lays out her concerns to Mr Gove.

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Dear Michael Gove,

I am surprised to learn that from the huge number of scientists employed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Rothamsted Research (research institute involved in developing and testing GM crops) that not one of them has read the new book by Caius Rommens, former team leader at Monsanto. He helped create GM potatoes and has retracted his research as he explains in the book ‘Pandora’s Potatoes: The Worst GMOs’.

Professor Jonathan Jones, group leader for the Sainsbury Laboratory has worked for Monsanto in the past, so he has massive conflicts of interest.

It all shows an ignorance beyond belief!

In an interview with Sustainable Pulse, Caius Rommens has revealed the hidden dangers of the GMO potatoes he created:

“During my 26 years as a genetic engineer, I created hundreds of thousands of different GM potatoes at a direct cost of about $50 million. I started my work at universities in Amsterdam and Berkeley, continued at Monsanto, and then worked for many years at J. R. Simplot Company, which is one of the largest potato processors in the world. I had my potatoes tested in greenhouses or the field, but I rarely left the laboratory to visit the farms or experimental stations. Indeed, I believed that my theoretical knowledge about potatoes was sufficient to improve potatoes. This was one of my biggest mistakes.”

When asked why he decided to reveal information about the failings of GM potatoes after spending many years creating them, he responded that looking back he believes he and his colleagues were all brainwashed:

“We all brainwashed ourselves. We believed that the essence of life was a dead molecule, DNA, and that we could improve life by changing this molecule in the lab. We also assumed that theoretical knowledge was all we needed to succeed, and that a single genetic change would always have one intentional effect only.”

Rommens states that he and the other scientists he knew were supposed to understand DNA and to make valuable modifications, but the fact of the matter was that they knew as little about DNA as the average American knows about the Sanskrit version of the Bhagavad Gita:

“We just knew enough to be dangerous, especially when combined with our bias and narrowmindedness. We focused on short-term benefits (in the laboratory) without considering the long-term deficits (in the field). It was the same kind of thinking that produced DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange, recombinant bovine growth hormone, and so on. I believe that it is important for people to understand how little genetic engineers know, how biased they are, and how wrong they can be.”

He adds that it is amazing that the USDA and FDA approved the GM potatoes by only evaluating the company’s own data. He asks: how can the regulatory agencies assume there is no bias?

“I was biased and all genetic engineers are biased. It is not just an emotional bias. We need the GM crops to be approved. There is a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed, to justify our existence by developing modifications that create hundreds of millions of dollars in value. We test our GM crops to confirm their safety, not to question their safety. The regulatory petitions for deregulation are full with meaningless data but hardly include any attempts to reveal the unintended effects. For instance, the petitions describe the insertion site of the transgene, but they don’t mention the numerous random mutations that occurred during the tissue culture manipulations. And the petitions provide data on compounds that are safe and don’t matter, such as the regular amino acids and sugars, but hardly give any measurements on the levels of potential toxins or allergens.”

Caius Rommens concludes that the main problem about the current process for deregulation of GMO crops is that it is based on an evaluation of data provided by the developers of GMO crops.

Future of British agriculture

Defra is quoted as saying that after Brexit:

“The most promising crops suitable for introducing to England would be Roundup Ready GA21 glyphosate tolerant crops, which synergises well with herbicides already widely used in the UK…”

Campaigner Georgina Downs has written about the long-awaited Agriculture Bill that has been introduced before Parliament. She says that this is the UK Government’s plan on what UK farming will look like post Brexit:

“There is no reference to the protection of human health or public health in the Agriculture Bill as regards to farmers, the main users of pesticides… The widespread use of pesticides and other toxic chemicals in our existing farming system appears to be the Government’s ‘elephant in the room’ because of DEFRA’s reluctance to mention it – let alone focus on it. Therefore, there is no recognition or even any specific reference in the Agriculture Bill – or Mr Gove’s statements – to the continued risks associated with the continued use of pesticides and other agrochemicals on crop fields across the UK.”

Mr Gove, your predecessor George Eustice was interviewed by Arthur Neslen on 30/05/2016 about Brexit and stated:

“The birds and habitats directives would go. But the directives’ framework is so rigid that it is spirit-crushing.”

On pesticides, he said

“The EU’s precautionary principle needed to be reformed in favour of a US-style risk-based approach, allowing faster authorisation.”

More than 1,700 tonnes of glyphosate were sprayed on crops last year, up a third on 2012, according to Defra. The total area sprayed with the weedkiller grew by almost 500,000 hectares to 2.1 million hectares, an area the size of Wales.

The Soil Association, has called on supermarkets to take bread containing glyphosate residue off shelves. It said the maximum residue level for glyphosate in wheat of 10 mg per kg had been set well before the finding that the herbicide was probably carcinogenic. 

In a recent court case, evidence was laid out showing that Monsanto worked closely with the Environmental Protection Agency to block a toxicity review of glyphosate by a separate government agency. A current trial and two previous trials have all included evidence that Monsanto engaged in ghostwriting certain scientific papers that concluded glyphosate products were safe; and that Monsanto spent millions of dollars on projects aimed at countering the conclusions of the international cancer scientists who classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen. 

Monsanto (now Bayer) faces cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, and inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts. Strong evidence now links glyphosate to various other conditions too.

Researchers peg glyphosate as a potent endocrine disruptor, which interferes with sexual development in children. The chemical compound is certainly a chelator that removes important minerals from the body, including iron, magnesium, zinc, selenium and molybdenum. Roundup disrupts the microbiome destroying beneficial bacteria in the human gut and triggering brain inflammation and other ill effects.

The UN expert on toxins Baskut Tuncak wrote in the Guardian on 06/11/2017 that it’s time to put children’s health before pesticides. He said that children are growing up exposed to a toxic cocktail of weedkillers, insecticides, and fungicides. It’s on their food and in their water, and it’s even doused over their parks and playgrounds: 

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

“The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most ratified international human rights treaty in the world (only the US is not a party), makes it clear that states have an explicit obligation to protect children from exposure to toxic chemicals, from contaminated food and polluted water, and to ensure that every child can realise their right to the highest attainable standard of health. These and many other rights of the child are abused by the current pesticide regime. These chemicals are everywhere and they are invisible.”

Tuncak argues that the only way to protect citizens, especially those disproportionately at risk from exposure, is for governments to regulate them effectively, in large part by adhering to the highest standards of scientific integrity. He states:

“Paediatricians have referred to childhood exposure to pesticides as creating a “silent pandemic” of disease and disability. Exposure in pregnancy and childhood is linked to birth defects, diabetes, and cancer. Because a child’s developing body is more sensitive to exposure than adults and takes in more of everything – relative to their size, children eat, breathe, and drink much more than adults – they are particularly vulnerable to these toxic chemicals.”

According to Tuncak, increasing evidence shows that even at “low” doses of childhood exposure, irreversible health impacts can result. But most victims cannot prove the cause of their disability or disease, limiting our ability to hold those responsible to account. He concludes:

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

Finally, based on a three-year UN-backed study from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, there are grim implications for the future of humanity. The authors conclude that the rapid decline of the natural world is a crisis even bigger than climate change.

Industrial farming is to blame for much of the destruction and extinction of nature.

We need agriculture systems that regenerate ecosystems not degenerate them.

Rosemary Mason

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The US hybrid war on Venezuela has now entered a hot phase.

On April 30, Juan Guaido, US-declared ‘Interim President’ of the country appeared in a video calling for a military uprising. Guaido, accompanied by heavily armed men, claimed that he had backing from the  military and  that the video was filmed at the Generalissimo Francisco de Miranda Air Base in the capital, Caracas.

Opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez, who had been held under house arrest after “inciting violence” during the anti-government riots, appeared alongside Guaido. He claimed that he had been “released by the military”.

The US immediately declared its public support for the coup attempt at the highest level and once again threatened the country’s legitimate government with military action. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the actions of Guaido and his armed supporters a “quest for freedom and democracy”.

The US-backed coup attempt was branded “Operación Libertad” and received at least vocal support from leaders and officials of US Latin American allies. But something went wrong.

Despite the initial claims, Guaido supporters failed to establish control of the Francisco de Miranda Air Base. In the first half of the day, the main clashes between the rebels and the country’s National Guard took place on the highway alongside the military facility and in the Altamira area. Both sides used tear gas and in some cases even opened live fire.

There was at least one incident when an armored vehicle supposedly belonging to the National Guard loyal to the government rammed into a crowd injuring at least one. The incident took place after a group of rioters attacked a National Guard detachment.

Meanwhile, the country’s President Nicolas Maduro called on his supporters to mobilize. Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez reaffirmed that the Armed Forces reject the US-proclaimed president. Samuel Moncada, the ambassador to the UN, described the situation as an “attempt by foreign powers to spark a civil war.” The government characterised armed service members supporting Guaido as “a small group of traitors”, reinforced security measures across the capital and warned that the army would resort to force if necessary.

Measures were undertaken to take off air or limit access to local and international media outlets endorsing the coup.

By the evening, rioters and defectors had been expelled from the airbase’s gates, but clashes with the sporadic use of fire arms continued across the capital. Rioters, including armed ones, marched towards the Palacio de Miraflores, the official workplace of the real president, but lacked resources to storm it. Low-scale riots also took place in various provinces.

All this came amid speculations by US officials that “democracy” was about to achieve victory and Maduro was ready to flee the country to Russia. This did not happen. This round of the coup attempt failed because of the lack of support from the local population.

According to reports, the number of soldiers and security officers who defected to Guaido is around 80. Up to 100 people were injured as a result of the April 30 clashes in Caracas. Around 70 people were detained by the authorities.

Guaido announced a new round of protests to overthrow Maduro on May 1. It appears that Guaido and his supporters will be not able to seize power without direct foreign support. Such support may come in the form of an open or a silent US-led invasion under some formal pretext. Just recently, data leaked to the media that Erik Prince had pitched an idea to deploy some 5,000 mercenaries to support the coup against the Venezuelan government.

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Featured image: Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognized as the country’s rightful interim ruler, and fellow opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez address a crowd of supporters in Caracas, Venezuela on April 30, 2019. (REUTERS/Manaure Quintero)

In the early morning hours of 30 April, 2019, the self-declare “Interim President”, Juan Guaidó, launched what at first sight appeared to be a military coup – Guaidó calls it “Operation Freedom” (sounds very much like a Washington-invented title) – against the democratically elected, legitimate government of Nicolas Maduro.

With two dozen of defected armed military from the Carlota “military base” [formerly a private airport] east of Caracas (not hundreds, or even thousands, as reported by the mainstream media), Guaidó went to free Leopoldo Lopez, the opposition leader, who was under house arrest, after his 13-year prison sentence for his role in the deadly 2014 anti-government protests, was commuted. They first called for a full military insurrection – which failed bitterly, as the vast majority of the armed forces are backing President Maduro and his government.

As reported straight from Caracas by geopolitical analyst, Dario Azzelli, Guaidó and López rallied from the Plaza Altamira, for the people of Venezuela to rise up and take to the streets to oust President Maduro. According to them, this was the ‘last phase’ of a peaceful coup to bring freedom and democracy back to Venezuela. The nefarious pair issued a video of their “battle cry” which they broadcast over the social media.

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, recognized by many countries including the United States as the country’s rightful interim ruler, stands on top of a car surrounded by soldiers and civilians at Plaza Altamira in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 30. RAFAEL HERNANDEZ/PICTURE ALLIANCE/GETTY IMAGES

They mobilized a few hundred – again not thousands as pers SMS – right-wing middle to upper class protestors and marched towards the Presidential Palace. On the way, they were confronted by the Venezuelan Civil Guard with tear gas – not even the military had to intervene – and only few protestors reached the Palacio Miraflores which was protectively surrounded by thousands of Chavistas. And that was basically the end of yet another failed coup.

Leopoldo López was seeking asylum in the Chilean Embassy which rejected him, and now, it looks like he found his refuge in the Spanish Embassy. This is a huge embarrassment and outright shame for Spain, especially after the Socialist Party, PSOE, just won the elections with 29%, though not enough to form a government by its own, but largely sufficient to call the shots as to whom should be granted asylum on their territory. Looks like fascism is still alive in Spain, if Pedro Sanchez is not able to reject a right-wing fascist opposition and illegal coup leader of Venezuela to gain refuge on Spain’s territory.

As to Guaidó, rumors have it that he found refuge in the Brazilian Embassy, though some reports say he is being protected by his Colombian friends. Both is possible, Bolsonaro and Duque are of same fascist kind, certainly ready to grant criminals – what Guaidó is – asylum.

What is important to know, though, is that throughout the day of the attempted coup, 30 April, the US State Department, in the person of the pompous Pompeo, accompanied by the National Security Advisor, John Bolton, kept threatening President Maduro in a press round. Pompeo directly menaced President Maduro, saying –

“If they ask me if the US is prepared to consider military action [in Venezuela], if this is what is necessary to restore democracy in Venezuela, the President [Donald Trump] has been coherent and clear: The military option is available, if this is what we have to do.”– These threats are repeated throughout May 1 – day after the Venezuelan attempted coup defeat by both Pompeo and warrior Bolton.

Pompeo’s audacity didn’t stop there. He went as far as suggesting to President Maduro to flee to Cuba and leave his country to those that will bring back (sic) freedom and democracy.

Let’s be clear. Although this has been said before – it cannot be repeated enough for the world to understand. These outright war criminals in Washington are in flagrant violation of the UN Charter to which the US is – for good or for bad – a signatory.

UN Charter – Chapter I, Article 2 (4), says:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

We know that the White House, Pentagon and State Department have zero respect for the UN, and, in fact, use the international body for their purposes, manipulating and blackmailing its members into doing the bidding for the US. That is all known and has been documented. What is perhaps newer is that this is now happening, especially in the cases of Venezuela and Iran, openly, in unveiled flagrant disrespect of any international law, against bodies and sovereign countries that do not bend to the whims and will of the United States.

As a result of this open violation of the UN Charter by the world’s only rogue state, some 60 UN member nations, including Russia and China, have formed a solid shield against Washington’s aggressions. The group was created especially in defense of Venezuela, but is also there for Iran and other countries being aggressed and threatened by the US. Hence, the blatant blackmailing and manipulation of weaker UN member countries becomes more difficult.

To be sure, the Russian Foreign Ministry has immediately condemned the coup as illegal and warned the US of any military intervention. This is of course not the first time, but just to be sure – Russia is there, standing by her partner and friend, Venezuela.

This Guaidó–Lopez attempted coup was most certainly following instructions from Washington. Super-puppet Guaidó, US-groomed and trained, then self-declared “presidente interino”, would not dare doing anything on his own initiative which might raise the wrath of his masters. But would the US – with all her secret services capacity – seriously launch a coup so ill-prepared that it is defeated in just a few hours with minimal intervention of Venezuelan forces? – I doubt it.

What is it then, other than a planned failure? – A new propaganda instrument, for the corporate MSM to run amok and tell all kinds of lies, convincing its complacent western public of the atrocities produced by the Maduro regime, the misery Venezuelan people must live, famine, disease without medication, oppression by dictatorship, torture, murder – whatever they can come up with. You meet any mainstream-groomed people in Europe and elsewhere, even well-educated people, people who call themselves ‘socialists’ and are leading figures in European socialist parties, they would tell you these same lies about misery caused by the Maduro regime.

How could that be – if the Maduro Government doesn’t even arrest Juan Guaidó for his multiple crimes committed since January, when he self-proclaimed being the ‘interim president’ of Venezuela. Arresting him, for the coup attempts he initiated or was party to since his auto coronation to president. That’s what a dictator would do. That’s what the United States of America, would have done a long time ago. Washington and its internal security apparatus would certainly not tolerate such illegal acts – and to top it off – foreign manipulated political illegality.

Why for example, would the media not point out the real crimes of the US vassals of South America, like Colombia, where over 6 million people are internal and external refugees, where at least 240,000 peasants and  human rights activists were massacred and many were burned by US-funded paramilitary groups, atrocities that are ongoing as of this day, despite the November 2016 signed  “Peace Agreement” between the then Santos Government and the FARC – for which President Manuel Santos received the Nobel Peace Prize. – Can you imagine!

What world are we living in? A world of everyday deceit and lies and highly paid lie-propaganda, paid with fake money – fake as in indiscriminately printed US-dollars – of which every new dollar is debt that will never be paid back (as openly admitted by former FEDs Chairman, Alan Greenspan); dollars that can be indiscriminately spent to produce the deadliest weapons, as well as for corporate media-propaganda lies – also a deadly weapon – to indoctrinate people around the globe into believing that evil is good, and that war is peace.

I have lost many friends by telling them off, by telling them the truth, the truth about Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria – mostly to no avail. It’s actually no loss; it’s merely a repeated confirmation of how far the western society has been veered off the path of conscience into a comfort zone, where believing the propaganda lies of reputed media like The Guardian, NYT, WashPost, BBC, FAZ, Spiegel, Le Monde, Figaro, el País, ABC — and so on, is edifying. They are so convincing. They are so well-reputed and well-known. How could they lie? – No loss, indeed.

Let’s stay on track, comrades. Venceremos!

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

Sunday, May 5th, 2019 from 7:00-9:00pm

Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House—800 E Broadway, Vancouver

Hosted by Vancouver Peace Council

Please join us for this incredible opportunity to hear independent journalist Eva Bartlett speak about her reporting, politics, mainstream media disinformation, and imperialism. She has reported on the ground from Palestine and Syria, where she has also lived, and most recently from Venezuela. She has received numerous awards for her journalism and has received international recognition. Eva’s activism and reporting on imperialism in the Middle East has served as invaluable evidence against some of the most egregious mainstream propaganda in our modern time.

After her speech, there will be a Q&A for further engagement.

Read more of her work here: https://ingaza.wordpress.com/ and https://twitter.com/EvaKBartlett

If you would like to donate to support this event, run purely on volunteer time, please contact us. Thank you!

Eva Bartlett’s articles on Global Research

Online independent analysis of US-led wars, rampant corruption, corporate greed, civil rights and fraudulent monetary transactions is invariably relegated to the bottom rung of search engine results.

As a result we presently do not cover our monthly running costs which could eventually jeopardize our activities.

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Venezuelan Military Putsch Defeated as Leopoldo Lopez Takes Refuge in Spanish Embassy

By Ricardo Vaz, May 01, 2019

The thwarted uprising started in the early morning hours when renegade military and intelligence officers reportedly released Lopez from house arrest. Lopez then joined Guaido and a handful of soldiers on the Altamira overpass in east Caracas, outside the Francisco de Miranda airbase, known as La Carlota.

NATO Demolishes the Libyan State

By Comitato No Nato, May 01, 2019

Multiple factors make Libya important in the eyes of the United States and the European powers. It has the largest oil reserves in Africa, precious for its high quality and low cost of extraction, and large reserves of natural gas.

The Spontaneous “Military Coup” in Caracas was Meant to Fail?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 01, 2019

This spontaneous so-called military putsch was meant to fail. Visibly, it was not a carefully planned operation. And Washington was fully aware from the outset that it would fail.

Sri Lanka: Candidate for a New NATO Base?

By Peter Koenig, May 01, 2019

There was a lot of confusion, and still is, all through Sri Lanka. Nobody claimed credit for the massacres. There were rumors that Sri Lanka’s President received warnings ahead of the attacks from foreign intelligence, but ignored them. The President denies these allegations. And the explosions continue.

Video: “Clinton Foundation and IS Funded from the Same Sources”: Julian Assange interview with John Pilger

By Julian Assange and John Pilger, May 01, 2019

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated that Hillary Clinton’s Clinton Foundation and the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIL/ISIS) are funded from the same sources.

Predator Cops, Guilty of Sex Crimes Against Women and Children, Are a Menace to Society

By John W. Whitehead, May 01, 2019

Where are the police when these children—some as young as 9 years old—are being raped repeatedly?

For that matter, what is the Trump Administration doing about the fact that adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in suburbs, cities and towns across this nation?

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Towards a Just World?

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, May 01, 2019

Essentially an infrastructure development endeavor it seeks to initiate and support the construction of roads, railways, ports and bridges in at least 65 other countries spanning four continents. With a commitment of over 900 billion US dollars, OBOR is the biggest infrastructure development project ever undertaken in the history of our planet.

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“Interim President” Juan Guaido and right-wing opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez spearheaded an unsuccessful coup attempt in Caracas on Tuesday.

The thwarted uprising started in the early morning hours when renegade military and intelligence officers reportedly released Lopez from house arrest. Lopez then joined Guaido and a handful of soldiers on the Altamira overpass in east Caracas, outside the Francisco de Miranda airbase, known as La Carlota.

Lopez and Guaido released videos on social media, calling on the armed forces to back their efforts and urging supporters to take to the streets, in what they termed as the “final phase” of the so-called “Operation Freedom.” Large crowds of anti-government protesters, as well as opposition lawmakers, made their way to the Altamira overpass.

The scene then saw armed confrontations between the soldiers that backed Juan Guaido and those inside La Carlota airbase. According to witnesses in La Carlota, the Venezuelan armed forces fired tear gas towards the Altamira overpass, where civilian protesters began to gather, whereas Guaido’s soldiers returned live fire. Riot police also appeared on the scene to try and disperse the crowds. There are reports of protesters wounded and arrested that are unconfirmed at the time of writing.

At the same time, many of the originally deployed soldiers withdrew from the scene, later revealing that they had been “deceived” by their superiors. Simultaneously, Chavista leaders took to state and social media to denounce what they termed a coup in progress, and large crowds gathered to defend Miraflores Presidential Palace.

Guaido later attempted to lead a march, including some armed soldiers, into western Caracas but was stopped by Venezuelan National Guard forces in Chacaito, some 10 kilometers away from Miraflores.

Leopoldo Lopez was later reported to have joined his family in the Chilean Embassy. However, the Chilean ambassador subsequently explained on Twitter that Lopez and his family had instead moved to the Spanish Embassy, in what he termed a “personal choice.” Lopez was serving a 13 year sentence for his role in the deadly 2014 anti-government protests, which was later commuted to house arrest.

Brazilian authorities also confirmed at the time that 25 soldiers who had taken part in the failed insurrection had taken refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Caracas.

Opposition protesters burned a public bus in Altamira, east Caracas. (Katrina Kozarek)

For his part, Guaido was absent for several hours before releasing a video on social media in the evening, calling on his supporters to take to the streets on Wednesday to continue the “final phase” of “Operation Freedom.”

The opposition leader went on claim President Maduro “does not have the support of the armed forces,” and vowed that his efforts to oust the Venezuelan government continue “as strong as ever.”

The day saw several localised outbreaks of violence in Caracas and several other cities, with protesters setting up burning barricades and authorities responding with rubber bullets and tear gas. Violent protests were particularly focused in traditional opposition strongholds of eastern Caracas, including outside La Carlota airbase. At the time of writing there are still reports of blocked roads and detonations.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro addressed the country in a televised speech on Tuesday evening, accusing those responsible for the military uprising of trying to provoke a “massacre” and lauding the armed forces for their restraint in avoiding direct confrontations.

“Who benefits from these [confrontations]? Who finances them? Undoubtedly the leadership of the terrorist ultra-right party Popular Will,” Maduro declared, referring to the party of Lopez and Guaido.

He added that today’s actions would not go “unpunished,” explaining that eight military officers and policemen were wounded in the armed confrontations, before going on to blast US leaders for their role in endorsing the coup attempt. Maduro also showed his appreciation for the tens of thousands who mobilized to defend the presidential palace beginning in the early hours of Tuesday.

The Venezuelan president, who was accompanied by high-ranking political and military leaders, ended his speech by calling for a “massive mobilization” on May 1st to celebrate workers’ day and “defend peace.”

Crowds gathered outside Miraflores Palace on Tuesday morning. (@OrlenysOV)

US officials also weighed in during the day, with National Security Advisor John Bolton warning Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino and Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno that this was their “last chance” to support Guaido. President Donald Trump likewise tweeted that the US “stands with the People of Venezuela and their Freedom!”

The coup attempt was also condemned by world leaders, with Bolivian President Evo Morales “vigorously condemning” the putschand Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel rejecting “an attempt to fill the country with violence.”

The European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini issued a statement in the afternoon, rejecting “any form of violence” and urging “restraint,” in contrast with European Parliament President Antonio Tajani, who tweeted his support for the unfolding coup. For his part, UN Secretary General also called for “maximum restraint” and for “immediate steps” to be taken to restore calm.

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Featured image: The military coup attempt led by Juan Guaido and Leopoldo Lopez was unsuccessful. (@leopoldolopez)

The Following text is Section 6 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. Multiple factors make Libya important in the eyes of the United States and the European powers. It has the largest oil reserves in Africa, precious for its high quality and low cost of extraction, and large reserves of natural gas. On these, the Libyan state maintains strong control, leaving limited profit margins to US and European companies. In addition to black gold, Libya has white gold: the immense reserve of fossil water from the Nubian aquifer, which extends under Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Chad. Relevant are the sovereign funds, the capital that the Libyan state has invested abroad, in particular to provide Africa with its own financial bodies and its own currency.

2. On the eve of the 2011 war, the United States and the European powers “froze”, or seized, the Libyan sovereign funds, delivering a mortal blow to the entire project. The emails of Hillary Clinton (Secretary of State of the Obama administration in 2011), which came to light later, confirmed the real purpose of the war: to block Gaddafi’s plan to use Libyan sovereign funds to create autonomous financial bodies of the African Union and an African currency as an alternative to the dollar and the CFA franc (the currency that 14 African countries, ex-French colonies are forced to use). It was Clinton – the New York Times would later document – who had President Obama sign “a document authorizing a covert operation in Libya and the supply of weapons to the rebels”.

3. Tribal sectors hostile to the government of Tripoli and Islamic groups that had until a few months before been defined as terrorists were financed and armed. At the same time special forces infiltrated Libya, including thousands of easily disguised Qatari commandos. The entire operation was led by the United States, first through the African Command, then through NATO under US command.

4. On 19 March 2011, Libya’s air-sea bombing began. In seven months, US/NATO air forces carried out 30,000 missions, of which 10,000 were attacks involving the use of over 40,000 bombs and missiles. Italy participated in this war using its military bases and forces and tearing up the Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between the two countries. For the war on Libya, Italy made seven air bases (Trapani, Gioia del Colle, Sigonella, Decimomannu, Aviano, Amendola and Pantelleria) available to the US/NATO forces, providing technical assistance and supplies. The Italian Air Force participated in the war by carrying out over a thousand missions, and the Italian Navy engaged on several fronts.

5. With the US/NATO war of 2011, the Libyan state was demolished and Gaddafi himself assassinated. That State was demolished which, on the southern shore of the Mediterranean facing Italy, maintained “high levels of economic growth” (as the World Bank itself documented in 2010), recording “high indicators of human development” including universal access to primary and secondary education with 46% of the population at university level. Despite the disparities, the standard of living of the Libyan population was considerably higher than that of other African countries. This was evidenced by the fact that over two million immigrants, mostly Africans, found work in Libya.

6. Sub-Saharan African immigrants were also affected by the war, who, persecuted on charges of collaborating with Gaddafi, were imprisoned or forced to flee. Many, driven by desperation, attempted the crossing of the Mediterranean towards Europe. Those who lost their lives were also victims of the war in which NATO demolished the Libyan state.

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Sections 7-16 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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Was it really a military coup? 

Anybody who has lived in Caracas, knows that you cannot wage a spontaneous military coup starting up in Chacaito, an upper middle class residential area, with a view to eventually marching towards the Miraflores presidential palace located in the historical centre of Caracas, without getting caught in dense traffic.  

There are important historical precedents of failed coups caught up in traffic.

Guaido presents the operation as the “Final phase” of “Operation Freedom.” ???

An attempted coup or violent street riots?

Lopez and Guaido released videos on social media, calling on the armed forces to back their efforts and urging supporters to take to the streets, in what they termed as the “final phase” of the so-called “Operation Freedom.” Large crowds of anti-government protesters, as well as opposition lawmakers, made their way to the Altamira overpass. (Venezuela Analysis, May 1, 2019)

The government responded by sending in the riot police, with the Armed Forces using tear gas against the protesters.

This spontaneous so-called military putsch was meant to fail.

Visibly, it was not a carefully planned operation. And Washington was fully aware from the outset that it would fail.  In fact it was carefully staged “not to succeed”:

The scene then saw armed confrontations between the soldiers that backed Juan Guaido and those inside La Carlota airbase.

[Carlota is not a full-fledged military base, it is a former private airport, largely defunct. It is now under the jurisdiction of the State of Miranda, used for both military and civilian emergencies]

According to witnesses in La Carlota [air base], the Venezuelan armed forces fired tear gas towards the Altamira overpass, where civilian protesters began to gather, whereas Guaido’s soldiers returned live fire. Riot police also appeared on the scene to try and disperse the crowds. There are reports of protesters wounded and arrested that are unconfirmed at the time of writing.

At the same time, many of the originally deployed soldiers withdrew from the scene, later revealing that they had been “deceived” by their superiors. Simultaneously, Chavista leaders took to state and social media to denounce what they termed a coup in progress, and large crowds gathered to defend Miraflores Presidential Palace.

Guaido later attempted to lead a march, including some armed soldiers, into western Caracas but was stopped by Venezuelan National Guard forces in Chacaito, some 10 kilometers away from Miraflores.(Venezuela Analysis, May 1, 2019)

From Washington’s standpoint, the ‘putsch” nonetheless served a “useful” purpose. It created a “narrative”, which serves as propaganda and media disinformation.  In turn, the Western media goes into high gear.

The “coup” becomes a talking point for the Bolton -Pompeo national security team. It becomes a pretext and a justification for US military intervention in the name of Democracy at some future date. See Pompeo below

 

National security Advisor John Bolton calls upon Venezuela’s military to intervene, with US support.

Mild thunder before the storm? It sets the stage? What is the intended timeline?

A failed putsch which may be followed by a “real” US sponsored military coup at some later date? That option is already on the drawing-board of the Pentagon.

The failed coup, a sloppy intelligence operation? Unlikely. US intelligence was fully informed.

Was this event planned to fail from the very outset?

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An Important Historical Precedent, Santiago de Chile. The Failed June 29, 1973 Coup

In Chile in 1973, the September 11 coup d’Etat which led to the assassination of Allende and the installation of a military government was a carefully prepared military-intelligence operation supported by the US. with Henry Kissinger playing a key role.

Of historical significance: The September 11, 1973 coup was preceded by a failed coup on June 29, 1973 , which, in retrospect, was intended to fail.

In 1973, I was visiting professor at the Catholic University of Chile. The following text is an excerpt from an article I wrote in Santiago de Chile in the immediate wake of September 11, 1973 military coup against the democratically elected government of president Salvador Allende.

Bear in mind: The circumstances of  Chile in 1973 as well as the command structure of the (Chilean) Armed Forces were very different to those of Venezuela in 2019.

In the course of the months of July-August 1973, following the June 29, 1973 failed coup, important shifts occurred within Chile’s Armed Forces.In turn, the Christian Democrats were pressuring Allende to bring the military into the government.

Chile: The June 29, 1973 Failed Coup

On June 29, 1973, Coronal Roberto Souper led his tank division in an isolated attack on La Moneda, the Presidential Palace, in the hope that other units of the armed forces would join in. The June coup had initially been planned for the morning of September 27 by Patria y Libertad as well as by several high ranking military officers. The plans were found out by Military Intelligence and the coup was called off at 6pm on the 26th. A warrant for the arrest of Coronal Souper had been issued. Confronted with knowledge of his impending arrest, Colonel Souper in consultation with the officers under his command, decided to act in a most improvised fashion. At 9 am, amidst morning rush hour traffic, Tank Division Number Two drove down Bernardo O’Higgins, Santiago’s main down-town avenue towards the Presidential Palace.

While the aborted June Coup had the appearance of an insolated and uncoordinated initiative, there was evidence of considerable support in various sectors of the Navy as well as from Air Force General Gustovo Leigh, now [September 1973] member of the military junta [on 11 September General Leigh integrated the military Junta headed by General Pinochet]. According to well-informed sources, several high ranking officers in the aero-naval base of Quintero near Valparaiso had proposed the bombing of State enterprises controlled by militant left wing groups, as well as the setting up of an air corridor to transport navy troops. The latter were slated to join up with the forces of Colonel Souper in Santiago.

The June trial coup was «useful» indicating to the seditious elements within the Chilean Armed Forces that an isolated and uncoordinated effort would fail. After June 29, the right-wing elements in the Navy and the Air Force were involved in a process of consolidation aimed at gaining political support among officers and sub-officers. The Army, however, was still under the control of Commander in Chief General Carols Prats, who had previously integrated Allende’s cabinet and who was a firm supporter of constitutional government.

Meanwhile in the political arena, the Christian Democrats were pressuring Allende to bring in members of the Military into the Cabinet as well as significantly revise the programme and platform of the Unidad Popular. Party leaders of the government coalition considered this alternative [proposed by the Christian democrats] as a « legalized military coup» (golpe legal) and advised Allende to turn it down. Carlos Altamirano, leader of the Socialist Party had demanded that an endorsement of the programme of the Popular Unity coalition by the military be a sina qua non condition for their entry into the Cabinet. Upon the impossibility of bringing in the Military into the Cabinet on acceptable terms, Allende envisaged the formation of a so-called “Cabinet of Consolidation” composed of well known personalities. Fernando Castillo, rector of the Catholic University and a member of the Christian Democratic Party, Felipe Herrera, President of the Inter-|American Development Bank and other prominent personalities were approached but declined. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Ingredients of a Military Coup, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, September 1973)

Minor edits to this text on May 1-2, 2019

The Russian leader’s wholehearted defense of China’s Belt & Road Initiative at last week’s yearly forum on this global series of megaprojects stands in stark contrast to the position of India’s Prime Minister, thus reinforcing the notion that Putin and Modi are at serious odds with one another when it comes to BRI irrespective of their Great Powers’ mutually beneficial and highly lucrative transactional relationship with one another.

Indian Intransigence

President Putin’s press conference at last week’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) Forum in Beijing was a well articulated masterclass in defense of this global series of megaprojects that has come under increasingly sharp criticism from China’s geopolitical rivals. One of the most outspoken countries vehemently opposed to BRI is India because of its maximalist approach to the Kashmir Conflict by which it claims the entirety of the global pivot state of Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region through which the Silk Road’s flagship investment of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) traverses. India is also tacitly opposed to BRI in principle because it understands that this is the vehicle for the Chinese-driven Multipolar World Order to spread across the planet, a scenario that decision makers in New Delhi deeply fear because they’re afraid that it’ll relegate their country to becoming “junior partner” of the People’s Republic. This in turn has made them all the more receptive to the US’ manipulatively tantalizing promises that a military-strategic partnership with America is the best way to promote India’s 21st-century interests, an emerging development which is actually destabilizing Eurasia to Washington’s divide-and-rule gain.

Russian Reservations

That explains why Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister called out the US for using India to “contain” China at the end of last year and also why Foreign Minister Lavrov said that his country regards the “Indo-Pacific Region” nomenclature that New Delhi is so fond of as an “artificially imposed” pro-American concept. Furthermore, awareness of these two interconnected policy positions by Russia allows one to better understand the “balancing” modalities of Moscow’s “Return to South Asia“, which is the diversification of this Great Power’s previous regional strategic dependence on India and its recent embrace of Pakistan as described in detail by Valdai Club programme director Oleg Barabanov in his visionary piece earlier this year about “Russia and the Search for Balance Between India and Pakistan“. Despite the dynamics of Russia and India gradually moving closer to one another’s geopolitical adversaries of the US and China & Pakistan respectively, the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership is still mutually beneficial and highly lucrative for both even if it’s become mostly transactional in recent years as a result of these developments.

BRI Might Break The Russian-Indian Bond

Still, both Great Powers’ polar opposite approaches to BRI are a serious cause for concern since they hold with it the possibility that this growing strategic divergence will inevitably lead to the worsening of their relations in the future, especially in the event that India decides to politicize what might by then be Russia’s de-facto participation in its South Asian component through N-CPEC+. After all, President Putin declared during his keynote speech at last week’s event that Russia will merge its Eurasian Economic Union integration platform with China’s much larger BRI one, with the unstated implication being that Moscow will ultimately cooperate in some capacity or another with BRI’s flagship investment of CPEC, thus leading to a “strategic security dilemma” with its decades-long Indian partner that is obsessively opposed to that project. It might only a matter of time before this fault line provokes problems in the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership, especially after President Putin’s wholehearted defense of BRI last week put him at serious odds with Modi.

Putin Is A True Believer In BRI

To accentuate that point, the analysis will close with a republication of President Putin’s enthusiastically supportive remarks on BRI that he made in response to a loaded question doubting its benefits for Russia, proving that the Russian President is a true believer in everything that BRI stands for and that he’s therefore bound to clash with the Indian Prime Minister whose views on this issue are the complete opposite of his own even if the two keep their heated disagreements behind closed doors in order to continue milking their countries’ mutually beneficial and highly lucrative transactional relationship with one another:

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(boldened text is the author’s own and done to draw attention to important passages)

“Question: Good afternoon. The Belt and Road is a very ambitious project – to the extent that it raises concerns in some. China is not a country that makes plans only for years ahead – it makes plans for decades proceeding not from billions but from trillions of dollars. This leads to the question, is this China’s project or is it beneficial for other participants? Is it beneficial for Russia?

Vladimir Putin: China is a vast country. I have mentioned that according to open sources and IMF data, China is the world’s top economy as regards purchasing power parity. It is considerably lower per capita than, say, in the United States, but the volume is higher. Therefore, of course, China has plans for its development, and they are immense and ambitious; when China implements anything it uses a highly pragmatic approach to achieve its tasks.

China is our strategic partner; this is obvious from all indicators and parameters. China is Russia’s top trading partner. Our aim in 2018 was to reach the volume of $100 billion, and we exceed that, at $108 billion. And we have good prospects for development.

When the country’s leadership and President Xi Jinping formulate these plans and set development tasks for themselves and for the country – this is a very pragmatic approach. Just like us or any other country, they are governed by their national interests. This is normal.

China implements this in a civilised and delicate way, making sure proposals for common development meet the interests of the vast majority of international participants, if not all. Generally speaking, China has offered nothing new; what it is doing is actually making attempts to reaffirm the principles set out by the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund, and many of our colleagues are mentioning this backstage like they did at the last meeting. What is China’s goal? Stability.

What is the reason for this? China’s economy is immense, and the domestic market is growing. But today, what China produces is basically oriented towards foreign markets.

Of course, domestic consumption will gradually increase with the overall growth of people’s incomes. Today China is interested in pushing its products to foreign markets, which is a natural aspiration for any country. For example, the Swedish economy is almost entirely focused on exports, and the same applies to the German economy. China simply has more products to offer. So how should China respond when it faces certain restrictions and attempts by some countries to stop its development? What should China do? It must strengthen the fundamental tenets of global economic relations, and create conditions for promoting its products. How can this be done? By developing transport infrastructure, port facilities, air, rail and motor transport, and building roads. This is exactly what China is doing. This was how it all started, but later it became obvious both in terms of China’s growth and for us as well, that this would not be enough. We needed to strengthen the fundamental tenets of international economic relations.

Is Russia interested in this? Of course, it is. Considering the high volume of trade and the fact that it is growing, we are certainly interested in benefiting from the transit potential of the Trans-Siberian Railway and Baikal-Amur Mainline, and we intend to invest heavily in them, as well as in motor transport and roads. We have earmarked trillions of rubles for infrastructure development. Why are we doing this? In order to make effective use of our country’s transit potential and to be able to engage in mutual import and export operations.

China acts in a highly civilised manner. For many years, we have been raising the issue of the need to increase the share of engineering goods in our trade. This is now beginning to materialise, which is attributable among other things to the position adopted by China’s leadership. I am very grateful to President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang for their consistent efforts to improve China’s trade patterns with Russia.

Does this meet our interests? Absolutely. I think that this initiative has a very bright future ahead of it, since almost all of us are interested in this, as I have already said.No one wants to face any restrictions, no one wants any trade wars, maybe with the exception of those who are behind these processes. In any case, an overwhelming majority, nearly 100 percent strongly believe that these restrictions and wars undermine the global economy and its development. As strange as it may sound, the global economy as a whole needs the liberal values that China currently champions.

It is for this reason that I believe that this initiative will develop further, which can also be explained by Chinese philosophy: they advance with extreme caution and not only seek to take into consideration the interests of their partners, but actually do so in their political and practical activities. The world has a very positive view of these developments.”

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from Oriental Review

Sri Lanka, Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019: More than half a dozen bomb blasts shook the country killing from 250 to more than 350 people. Depending on who counts, the death toll varies. The devastation took place in in several catholic churches and luxury hotels. Other explosions, including from – what they say – are suicide bombers, have since killed another several dozens of people. Many are children, women – christen worshippers. Why the luxury hotels? Western (Christian) tourists?

Yesterday, another explosion ripped through a suspicious building, killing 18, including children and women. Again, they, the ‘authorities’, say suicide bombers, who didn’t want their ‘cache’ to be discovered. Conveniently they are all dead – the “suicide bombers”. Nobody can ask them any questions.

There was a lot of confusion, and still is, all through Sri Lanka. Nobody claimed credit for the massacres. There were rumors that Sri Lanka’s President received warnings ahead of the attacks from foreign intelligence, but ignored them. The President denies these allegations. And the explosions continue.

Finally, the verdict is in. The culprits are an Islamic terrorist group, associated with ISIS. What else is new.

Sri Lanka’s population is composed of about 70% Buddhists, 13% Hindus, almost 10% Muslims, mainly Sunni, the Salafi version, and about 7% Christians. The New York times reports that the accused mastermind of the terror attacks was strongly influenced by Wahhabism, the same extreme hardliners that control most of Saudi Arabia.

Hatred between religions seems on the rise. In New Zealand a few weeks ago a white supremacist assaulted a mosque, killing 50. This past weekend, a shooting in a Synagogue near San Diego, California, killed a woman. The murderer said he was inspired by the New Zealand massacre. Are these spontaneous, interreligious mini-wars part of a foreign directed ‘divide to conquer’ effort, a strategy that has been used by empires for centuries, but seems to be alive and well with the current Washington based empire?

MintPress News reports that

“Sri Lanka Easter attacks are the handiwork of terrorists returning from fighting in Syria, practicing the Saudi-backed Wahhabi Salafist ideology,”adding, “though not confirmed yet, they, [the attacks], are in keeping with the modus operandi of Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi terrorism worldwide. [The] Saudi sponsorship of Salafi Wahhabi dogma [is found] across the globe. From Boko Haram to ISIS, and from the Taliban to Al Qaeda, a common ideological thread runs through these terror groups. This is the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi Salafi ideology whose South Asian counterpart is Deobandi.  For abbreviation purposes, it is becoming increasingly common to term this interconnected ideology as WSD (Wahhabi Salafi Deobandi).”

May we expect a wave of Saudi-sponsored WSD terrorism in the east too? – Is the horror Saudi government protected by the US, because it does its bidding? And this bidding leads to making gradually Islam extremism the justification for NATO bases around the globe? – Perhaps in Sri Lanka, tomorrow? So far Sri Lanka is clean from NATO. Sri Lanka has not even an association agreement with NATO.

Just look at the world-geostrategic location of Sri Lanka, linking the Arabian Sea with the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka may also have a direct, open-sea connection with the small British island of Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Archipelago, north-east of Madagascar. Diego Garcia hosts the US’s largest Navy base outside the American Continent. Many of the drone killings in Yemen, Syria and other places in the Middle East originate from Diego Garcia. The “civil war” in Syria was (and still is) largely directed from Diego Garcia, as well as from Djibouti.

Wouldn’t it be logical for NATO to set up base in Sri Lanka to control South East Asia? Saudi guided WSD attacks would create the necessary chaos justifying Western secret services – plus NATO – to descend on Colombo, to create further protests and anarchy – a never-ending internal strife, giving the war industry a new never-ending flow of profit, hence, further justifying the never-ending war on terror – and, thereby, moving yet an inch closer to Full Spectrum Dominance over Mother Earth and her hapless spectators, what western humanity has become – a bunch of complacent consumers, drenched in turbo-capitalist market ideology, too comfortable to go on the barricades.

The key and engine to all of this is NATO, whose modus operandi is killing for a living, for dominance and for profit. If there is ever to be Peace – and that’s what the vast majority of the inhabitants of this globe wants – I’m not exaggerating pretending that 99.99% of world population wants to live in peace – then NATO must go, NATO must be dismantled.

So, Europe which has the largest membership in NATO (27 out of 29 nations) has to put the money where her mouth is: Europe calls for Peace, Europe claims to be Peace-loving – really? Then put your money into creating Peace – pulling out of NATO, refusing at once to fund this killing machine under the pretext of “protecting Europe”. Protecting Europe from what? From whom? – Not from Russia – despite all the highly propagandized and highly corporate-funded Russiagate / Russiaphobia, exacerbated by a new artificially implanted fear – China. These countries have no history of expansion, like the west.

They only seek friendly relations of trade, of transport, cultural and research interconnectivity within the supercontinent, Eurasia, and ultimately, they promote a multi-polar world. The best example is the Chinese President Xi’s ingenuity – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that just finished its highly successful forum in Beijing – where more than 120 nations signed memoranda of understanding (MOU) and cooperation agreements with China for tens of billions of dollars equivalent. – What a way of cooperating, instead of sowing western-style belligerence.

Europe and the rest of the world is not in danger, except in danger of itself for being a vassal of the US and for hosting 30-plus NATO bases which would be first in the line of fire, if the east is forced to defend itself from that permanent Pentagon-NATO driven aggression.

Europe withhold your funding for NATO, get out of NATO, dismantle NATO, – NOW, before NATO sets up yet another base in Asia, before NATO spreads more death around the globe.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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

This interview was conducted and published in November 2016.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated that Hillary Clinton’s Clinton Foundation and the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIL/ISIS) are funded from the same sources.

He was speaking about the organisation’s latest release of Clinton emails, during an interview on the John Pilger Special show that is to be exclusively broadcast by RT, courtesy of Dartmouth Films.

The interview took place in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where Assange has been residing since August 2012. The footage was released in November 2016

Mandatory Credit: Dartmouth Films

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