Pity the Nation: War Spending Is Bankrupting America

March 13th, 2019 by John W. Whitehead

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep

And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars

Whose sages are silenced

And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice

Except to praise conquerors

And acclaim the bully as hero

And aims to rule the world

By force and by torture…

Pity the nation oh pity the people

who allow their rights to erode

and their freedoms to be washed away…”

—Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet

War spending is bankrupting America.

Our nation is being preyed upon by a military industrial complex that is propped up by war profiteers, corrupt politicians and foreign governments.

America has so much to offer—creativity, ingenuity, vast natural resources, a rich heritage, a beautifully diverse populace, a freedom foundation unrivaled anywhere in the world, and opportunities galore—and yet our birthright is being sold out from under us so that power-hungry politicians, greedy military contractors, and bloodthirsty war hawks can make a hefty profit at our expense.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your hard-earned tax dollars are being used for national security and urgent military needs.

It’s all a ruse.

You know what happens to tax dollars that are left over at the end of the government’s fiscal year? Government agencies—including the Department of Defense—go on a “use it or lose it” spending spree so they can justify asking for money in the next fiscal year.

We’re not talking chump change, either.

We’re talking $97 billion worth of wasteful spending.

According to an investigative report by Open the Government, among the items purchased during the last month of the fiscal year when government agencies go all out to get rid of these “use it or lose it” funds: Wexford Leather club chair ($9,241), china tableware ($53,004), alcohol ($308,994), golf carts ($673,471), musical equipment including pianos, tubas, and trombones ($1.7 million), lobster tail and crab ($4.6 million), iPhones and iPads ($7.7 million), and workout and recreation equipment ($9.8 million).

So much for draining the swamp.

Anyone who suggests that the military needs more money is either criminally clueless or equally corrupt, because the military isn’t suffering from lack of funding—it’s suffering from lack of proper oversight.

Where President Trump fits into that scenario, you decide.

Trump may turn out to be, as policy analyst Stan Collender warned, “the biggest deficit- and debt-increasing president of all time.”

Rest assured, however, that if Trump gets his way—to the tune of a $4.7 trillion budget that digs the nation deeper in debt to foreign creditors, adds $750 billion for the military budget, and doubles the debt growth that Trump once promised to erase—the war profiteers (and foreign banks who “own” our debt) will be raking in a fortune while America goes belly up.

This is basic math, and the numbers just don’t add up.

As it now stands, the U.S. government is operating in the negative on every front: it’s spending far more than what it makes (and takes from the American taxpayers) and it is borrowing heavily (from foreign governments and Social Security) to keep the government operating and keep funding its endless wars abroad.

Certainly, nothing about the way the government budgets its funds puts America’s needs first.

The nation’s educational system is pathetic (young people are learning nothing about their freedoms or their government). The infrastructure is antiquated and growing more outdated by the day. The health system is overpriced and inaccessible to those who need it most. The supposedly robust economy is belied by the daily reports of businesses shuttering storefronts and declaring bankruptcy. And our so-called representative government is a sham.

If this is a formula for making America great again, it’s not working.

The White House wants taxpayers to accept that the only way to reduce the nation’s ballooning deficit is by cutting “entitlement” programs such as Social Security and Medicare, yet the glaring economic truth is that at the end of the day, it’s the military industrial complex—and not the sick, the elderly or the poor—that is pushing America towards bankruptcy.

We have become a debtor nation, and the government is sinking us deeper into debt with every passing day that it allows the military industrial complex to call the shots.

Simply put, the government cannot afford to maintain its over-extended military empire.

Money is the new 800-pound gorilla,” remarked a senior administration official involved in Afghanistan. “It shifts the debate from ‘Is the strategy working?’ to ‘Can we afford this?’ And when you view it that way, the scope of the mission that we have now is far, far less defensible.” Or as one commentator noted, “Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it.”

To be clear, the U.S government’s defense spending is about one thing and one thing only: establishing and maintaining a global military empire.

Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.

In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $4.7 trillion waging its endless wars.

Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.

In fact, the U.S. government has spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.

Then there’s the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the world and policing the globe with 1.3 million U.S. troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide).

Future wars and military exercises waged around the globe are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

The U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.

As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors.

As The Nation reports:

For decades, the DoD’s leaders and accountants have been perpetrating a gigantic, unconstitutional accounting fraud, deliberately cooking the books to mislead the Congress and drive the DoD’s budgets ever higher, regardless of military necessity. DoD has literally been making up numbers in its annual financial reports to Congress—representing trillions of dollars’ worth of seemingly nonexistent transactions—knowing that Congress would rely on those misleading reports when deciding how much money to give the DoD the following year.

For example, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”

Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.

A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:

$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.

That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.

Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.

The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.

The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.

Those who call the shots in the government—those who push the military industrial complex’s agenda—those who make a killing by embroiling the U.S. in foreign wars—have not heeded Johnson’s warning.

The U.S. government is not making American citizens any safer. The repercussions of America’s military empire have been deadly, not only for those innocent men, women and children killed by drone strikes abroad but also those here in the United States.

The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.

The transformation of America into a battlefield is blowback.

All of this carnage is being carried out with the full support of the American people, or at least with the proxy that is our taxpayer dollars.

The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized, under a military empire, war and its profiteering will always take precedence over the people’s basic human needs.

Similarly, President Dwight Eisenhower warned us not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?”

We failed to heed Eisenhower’s warning.

The illicit merger of the armaments industry and the government that Eisenhower warned against has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation today.

It’s not sustainable, of course.

Eventually, inevitably, military empires fall and fail by spreading themselves too thin and spending themselves to death.

It happened in Rome. It’s happening again.

The America empire is already breaking down.

We’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front, and the government is ready.

For years now, the government has worked with the military to prepare for widespread civil unrest brought about by “economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

For years now, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

We’re approaching critical mass.

As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to wage its costly, meaningless, endless wars abroad, the American homeland will continue to suffer: our roads will crumble, our bridges will fail, our schools will fall into disrepair, our drinking water will become undrinkable, our communities will destabilize, our economy will tank, crime will rise, and our freedoms will suffer.

So who will save us?

As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’d better start saving ourselves: one by one, neighbor to neighbor, through grassroots endeavors, by pushing back against the police state where it most counts—in our communities first and foremost, and by holding fast to what binds us together and not allowing politics and other manufactured nonrealities to tear us apart.

Start today. Start now. Do your part.

Literally and figuratively, the buck starts and stops with “we the people.”

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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Featured image is from Jared Rodriguez / Truthout

Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) presented a bill on Tuesday before the US Congress in which they seek to prohibit the official recognition and rights of Cuban trademarks in the United States.

The bipartisan and bicameral legislation, named “No Stolen Trademarks Honored in America Act”, would affect trademarks supposedly linked with nationalized properties after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959. A companion bill was presented in the House of Representatives by the congressmen Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) and John Rutherford (R-FL).

Its purpose is to prohibit US courts from “recognizing, enforcing or validating” any assertion of rights by an individual of a trademark that was used in connection with a business or assets that were nationalized by Cuba, unless “the original owner of the brand has expressly consented.”

To illustrate the case, Rubio mentioned, in a press release, the legal battle between the Bacardi against Cuba for the rights of the Havana Club trademark. In 1993, Pernod Ricard S. A. and Cuba Ron S. A. launched a joint venture in charge of the production, marketing and commercialization of the Havana Club brand throughout the world.

As a response, Bacardi filed for the right to use Havana Club in the U.S., which was registered since 1974, through the commercialization of a rum produced in Puerto Rico. However, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ignored this claim and in 2016 designated the state company Cubaexport as the legitimate international representative of the renowned rum, dismissing Bacardi.

The proposed bill would prohibit the joint venture Pernod Ricard / Cuba Ron from using the rights related to Havana Club, as part of a series of measures to increase the economic assault against the island.

Rubio and Menendez’ bill appears 23 years after the approval of the “Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act”, commonly known as Helms-Burton. The law was signed on March 12, 1996, in Bill Clinton’s Administration, with the objective of affecting foreign investment to the island and accentuating the economic effects of the embargo.

On the infamous anniversary, the President of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, pointed out that the law is absurd and illegal, adding that “you can not legislate against the world, or ignore the sovereignty of each country. Cuba is an independent and sovereign nation that respects and demands respect. Imperialists learn at once: dignity is invincible #WeareCuba.”

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Featured image is from EFE

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Groups behind BattleForTheNet.com pledge to call, text, and email constituents of lawmakers who fail to cosponsor net neutrality bill before leaving DC for recess.

Today, activists behind BattleForTheNet.com launched an updated Congressional “scoreboard” showing where every member of Congress stands on the Save The Internet Act to overturn the FCC’s repeal of basic open Internet protections. The announcement comes as Communications and Technology subcommittee members convene on Capitol Hill to discuss net neutrality legislation. The activists have given lawmakers until COB March 15th–right before they leave for the March in-district recess–to cosponsor the bill, otherwise groups promise to unleash a flood of calls, emails, and tweets from their district.

The updated scoreboard shows which members of Congress truly support net neutrality by cosponsoring the Save the Internet Act, and reveals how much they’ve taken in campaign contributions from telecom companies. The scoreboard is a project of BattleForTheNet.com, a net neutrality action site maintained by Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, and Free Press Action Fund.

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Today’s announcement also comes on the heels of a new crowdfunding campaign launched by Fight for the Future late last night to put up a billboard in Phoenix targeting Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the only Democratic member of the Senate who has not cosponsored the bill.

“Enough is enough. There are absolutely no excuses for not supporting this bill,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future (pronouns: she/her). “Voters from across the political spectrum are pissed off and have made it very clear that they want strong net neutrality rules back in place as soon as possible. At this point, members of Congress can consider themselves on notice: if you choose to put the telecom giants ahead of your constituents, we will make sure that every single one of your constituents knows you sold them out for cable money. You have until close of business on Friday, March 15th.”

“It is unreal that there is any member of Congress who is still on the wrong side of this issue,” said Free Press Action Fund Campaign Director Candace Clement.“The Save The Internet Act is exactly the right way to safeguard Net Neutrality. It draws on the overwhelming bipartisan support for real Net Neutrality, including support among vast majorities of Republican, Democratic and independent voters. And it fixes the Trump FCC’s massive mistake when it repealed the Open Internet Order in 2017. People, by the millions, protested that FCC decision, and they’ve rejected the empty rhetoric and lies of phone- and cable-industry lobbyists. It’s time every member of Congress did the same and joined us in support of the Save The Internet Act.”

“For lawmakers who claim to stand for their constituents and against special interests in Washington, supporting this bill should be one of the easiest things they do this year,” said Mark Stanley, director of communications for Demand Progress. “The Save the Internet Act restores strong net neutrality protections that benefit every person who depends on the open internet to access information, communicate, or run a small business. The tired attacks hurled at this bill and similar measures have proven to be based on industry-backed lies, time and again. Simply put, there’s no excuse — every lawmaker should get behind the Save the Internet Act to restore crucial and commonsense protections for their constituents.”

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All images in this article are from Fight for the Future

Major bilateral differences are over structural issues, the US trade deficit with China a minor one by comparison.

Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference vice chairman Zhang Qingli said

“China never wants a trade war with anybody…but we also do not fear such a war,” adding:

“The US side has disregarded a consensus with China after multiple rounds of consultations, insisting on waging a trade war against China, (threatening) to escalate it” if its demands aren’t met.

Multiple rounds of talks failed to resolve all major issues. According to economists and political analysts, bilateral trade differences are harming investment in both countries.

A Rhodium Group/Mercator Institute for China Studies report said investments by Chinese firms in EU countries declined by 40% last year.

Acquisition of US tech companies by Chinese firms declined by two-thirds in 2018, according to financial data company Refinitiv. US acquisitions of Chinese firms also declined sharply.

For these and overall economic reasons, ruling authorities of both countries want resolution of bilateral differences.

China’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan said

“(t)he work team is still continuing to negotiate because we still have a lot to do.”

Xi and Trump won’t meet in late March or April unless able to formally sign off on a deal. Representatives of both countries may hold further talks in Beijing in the coming days, likely after China’s National People’s Congress ends on March 15.

A key area of dispute involves enforcement, along with the Trump regime insisting on its right to raise tariffs on Chinese imports if it claims Beijing violated agreed on terms – without retaliation by Xi, what his government considers an infringement of its sovereign rights.

How US tariffs will be rescinded if a deal is reached remains unresolved. China wants no delay in their lifting. The Trump regime wants it done gradually, both sides so far at an impasse over this issue and others – mainly structural ones.

Beijing wants no foreign restraints imposed on its ability and goal to develop economically, industrially and technologically. The Trump regime’s aim is polar opposite – the greatest obstacle to bilateral relations whatever may be agreed on ahead.

No meeting between Xi and Trump is scheduled so far. Without one, no deal is likely. China’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan said

“(d)uring the last 90 days, the sides held three rounds of talks at the high level,” adding:

“Chinese Vice Premier Liu He has recently visited the United States for the talks as the head of a Chinese delegation. The process of consultations was extremely difficult and time-consuming.”

“Due to the difference in state systems, culture and the stages of development, the two countries are very different.”

Key issues remain unresolved.

On Sunday, China’s Global Times (GT) said bilateral trade talks are “poised on a knife-edge…(Trump) stressed that he wants either a good deal or no deal.”

No preparations are underway for a summit between both leaders. A key difference between both sides involves the Trump regime saying it’ll “impose punitive tariffs on Chinese products any time it feels that China does not fully implement the agreement while China should not retaliate. China believes this is an intrusion on (its) sovereignty and has rejected the proposition.”

Both sides resolved various differences. “But given the different opinions within the US and the capriciousness of US government as a whole, a highly sensitive period is expected before a final agreement is signed.”

Both sides know each other’s bottom lines, no major changes in their positions likely ahead. If talks fail, “the US will suffer more pain, and at a greater cost, than it is currently already suffering,” said GT, adding:

“Particularly when the economic perspective for the US in 2019 is not as optimistic as that for last year and the new election season is drawing near, the US is not any better than China at enduring the political pressure of a continuing trade war.”

A final deal must be fair to both sides. Neither country benefits by pushing the other too far. Will things be resolved in the weeks ahead?

It’s in the interest of both nations to forge an agreement – compromise and fairness the only way to achieve it.

Given Washington’s record of breaching deals agreed on, whatever Sino/US accommodation is reached will be tenuous at best.

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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.

Extorquir dinheiro a troco de protecção não é apanágio só da mafia. – Trump advertiu, ameaçadoramente, num discurso no Pentágono – “Os países ricos que estamos a proteger estão todos avisados: deverão pagar pela nossa protecção.”

O Presidente Trump – revela a Bloomberg – está prestes a apresentar o plano “Cost Plus 50” que estabelece o seguinte critério: os países aliados que hospedam  forças americanas no seu território terão de cobrir integralmente as despesas e pagar 50% de custos adicionais aos EUA, em troca do “privilégio” de albergá-los e, assim, serem “protegidos” por eles.

O plano prevê que os países anfitriões também paguem os salários dos militares USA e os custos da gestão dos aviões e navios de guerra que os Estados Unidos têm nesses países. A Itália deveria, portanto, pagar não só os salários de cerca de 12.000 soldados americanos estacionados aqui, como também os custos da gestão dos caças F-16 e de outros aviões instalados pelos EUA, em Aviano e Sigonella, e os custos da Sexta Frota, fundeada em Gaeta.

De acordo com o mesmo critério, também devemos pagar pela gestão de Camp Darby, o maior arsenal USA fora da mãe pátria, e pela manutenção das bombas nucleares USA, localizadas em Aviano e Ghedi. Não se sabe quanto os Estados Unidos pretendem pedir à Itália e aos outros países europeus que hospedam as suas forças militares, pois que nem se sabe quanto esses países pagam actualmente. Os documentos estão cobertos pelo segredo militar.

Segundo um estudo da Rand Corporation, os países europeus da NATO suportam, em média, 34% dos custos das forças e das bases USA presentes nos seus territórios. Não se sabe, no entanto, qual o montante anual que pagam aos EUA: a única estimativa – 2,5 biliões de dólares – remonta há 17 anos. Portanto, o valor pago pela Itália  também é secreto. Apenas se conhecem algumas referências: por exemplo, dezenas de milhões de euros para adaptar os aeroportos de Aviano e Ghedi ao caça F-35 dos EUA e às novas bombas nucleares B61-12 que os EUA começarão a instalar em Itália, em 2020, e cerca de 100 milhões para os trabalhos na Base Aérea americana, em Sigonella, também a cargo da Itália.

Em Sigonella, é financiada pelos EUA, só a NAS I, a área administrativa e recreativa, enquanto a NAS II, a dos departamentos operacionais e, portanto, a mais cara, é financiada pela NATO, ou seja, também pela Itália. No entanto, é certo – prevê um investigador da Rand Corp – que, com o plano “Cost Plus 50”, os custos para os aliados “disparem até às estrelas”. Fala-se de um aumento de 600%. Serão adicionados às despesas militares que, em Itália, atingem cerca de 70 milhões de euros por dia, destinados a subir para cerca de 100 milhões, de acordo com os compromissos assumidos pelos governos italianos na sede da NATO.

Trata-se de dinheiro público, que sai dos nossos bolsos, subtraído a investimentos produtivos e a despesas sociais. É possível, no entanto, que a Itália possa pagar menos pelas forças e bases norte-americanas instaladas no seu território. De facto, o plano “Cost Plus 50” prevê um “desconto por bom comportamento” a favor dos “aliados que se alinham de perto com os Estados Unidos, fazendo o que eles exigem”.

É certo que a Itália terá um grande desconto, pois que, de governo em governo, foi sempre mantida na peugada dos Estados Unidos.

Ultimamente, enviando tropas e aviões de guerra para a Europa de Leste, com a motivação de enfrentar a “ameaça russa” e favorecendo o plano dos EUA de abandonar o Tratado INF a fim de instalar na Europa, incluindo Itália, mísseis nucleares apontados para a Rússia. Sendo alvo de uma possível retaliação, precisaremos como “protecção”, de outras forças e bases USA. Teremos de pagá-las, mas sempre com desconto.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Sale alle stelle il prezzo della «protezione» UsaBy Manlio Dinucci, March 12, 2019

il manifesto, 12 de Março de 2019

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

 

VIDEO (PandoraTV) :

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“Gimme Some Truth”. John Lennon’s Message Resonates

March 12th, 2019 by Philip A Farruggio

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Gimme Some Truth

John Lennon, The Plastic Ono Band

I’m sick and tired of hearing things from
Uptight short sided narrow minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth, just give me some truth
I’ve had enough of reading things
By neurotic psychotic pigheaded politicians
All I want is the truth, just give me some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied
Son of tricky dicky’s
Gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocket full of hopes
Money for dope, money for rope
 

John Lennon wrote that song in 1971, and its value as message resonates even better today. His lyrics refer to some as ‘uptight, short sided (he meant ‘sighted’?) narrow minded hypo critics (he may have even meant those in the media who ‘critique’ the news) ‘. How sad that almost 50 years have passed and our A) Mainstream Media B) Politicians  and C) The Corporate Consumer machine are still at it.

They are equal opportunity bullshit artists, undertaking the task of distorting the truth about what is affecting our society. Of course, behind the OZ curtain stand the wizards who control how we working stiffs should think, vote and shop. There was a cogent scene from Robert DeNiro’s  2006 film The Good Sheperd. In the film Matt Damon plays a CIA official who visits a Mafia leader (played by Joe Pesci), asking for some covert help. At the end of their visit, Pesci says (I am paraphrasing) ‘Let me ask you a question. Every group has something that they are known for. You know, the Niggers have their music, we Italians have the family… what do your people have?’ Damon looks at him and answers’ We have America, and you’re all just visitors.’

The brainwashing has been going on for so long that it’s tough for minds to be deprogrammed through basic human discourse. Case in point: This writer has written consistently about my idea for a 50% Flat Surtax on any income over and above $1,000,000 a year. The first one million would be taxed at the regular rate of around 37% (before deductions) and would have no bearing on the surtax. When I discuss the plan with many working stiffs out there, the overwhelming majority of them  tell me ‘Oh that’s too much! Why not start at $ 5 million?’ There you have it. The American Dream is alive and well in the psyche of our fellows. A good analogy to remember regarding the mainstream news outlets, electronic and print, is this:  You will know when you hear of a good, viable idea when the mainstream news rarely or hardly ever covers it. Ditto for our sacred elected officials. As far as our great Military Industrial Empire, stop believing the lies that are filtered out by both the Pentagon and of course the corporate world. Commercials as to our brave military that keeps us ‘ FREE’ , or commercials about how the ‘for profit’ health care industry cares about your wellbeing…. mute that boob tube! Folks, there is no ‘truth in advertising’!

March 19th will be the 16th anniversary of one of the most heinous acts by our government… right up there, most assuredly, with 9/11. In both cases, elements within the inner circles of the Bush/Cheney Cabal must have skewed all that they could to arrive at what transpired. The sacrifice of tens of thousands (in NYC and environs, what with the after effects of the towers being destroyed) and perhaps millions of Iraqi civilians, along with the destruction of one of the most modern countries in the Middle East, should give any decent person the desire, NO the drive, for truth. Those two actions by covert actors is why there is such a refugee crisis in Europe. It is also why there even is an ISIL or whatever our government calls those religious fanatics. If not for US imperialist (a word not used enough nowadays) actions in the Middle East, there would be maybe a few thousand fanatics in all those nations.

John Lennon was spot on in 1971. Without the mass of working stiffs demanding just that, TRUTH, our nation will continue to go down that rabbit hole.

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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his work posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].

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Information Commissioner rules that Brexit department must release names of European Research Group MPs, following openDemocracy Freedom of Information appeal

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There are few more powerful forces in British politics at present than the pro-Brexit European Research Group. The influential group of Tory MPs, led by Jacob-Rees Mogg, has pledged to torpedo Theresa May’s Brexit deal when it returns to the Commons on Tuesday. But just who the ERG are has long been shrouded in secrecy.

The ERG’s various spokespeople have long refused to name its members, or even confirm how many supporters it has – despite the group being funded by taxpayer money. In a ‘car crash’ interview with Channel 4 News in 2017, Tory MP Suella Fernandes said that a list of ERG members was “available if necessary”. No such list has ever been published.

Now that secrecy is set to end, after the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ruled that the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) must release a list of ERG members. The move comes after openDemocracy appealed to the information watchdog when DExEU redacted the names of ERG members named in a 2017 email exchange with then Brexit minister Steve Baker.

Baker, a former ERG chair, became a minister in June 2017. Just weeks later, he offered a private briefing for the ERG on the so-called Great Repeal Bill, the parliamentary act for provides for leaving the European Union. One email noted how there is a “larger group” and “a smaller more senior one” within the ERG.

Following a Freedom of Information request, openDemocracy revealed the existence of Baker’s offer last year. But DExEU redacted the email correspondence so that the ERG members could not be identified.

However, the information commissioner has now rejected DExEU’s claim that releasing the names of ERG members included in Baker’s email would breach data protection laws.

“The names and parliament email addresses of the MPs, MEPs and Lords redacted from the emails disclosed should be provided,” the ICO ruled. The ICO added that ERG members’ names are “constantly placed in the public domain” and “they frequently use publicly accessible Twitter accounts to provide their views”.

The ERG, which has been described by Tory sources as ‘a party within a party’, has used hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money to fund its operations, but has repeatedly refused to make public the names of its members.

The ERG’s ranks have included a number of prominent cabinet ministers such as Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom and Chris Grayling. Steve Baker has emerged as among the most vocal critic of the prime minister’s Brexit deal since resigning from the government last year over May’s Chequers proposals.

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‘Resisting transparency’

The ICO ordering DExEU to release the names of those redacted in the communications could shed further light on who exactly is attached the hardline pro-Brexit group.

Transparency International hailed the Information Regulator’s ruling as “very timely given the current political debate” and urged DExEU “to comply as a matter of urgency”.

“The gravity of decisions under ministerial consideration are almost incomparable in living memory. It is therefore of utmost importance that the public are not kept in the dark about how these are made and whose interests are in play. Resisting such transparency only raises the suspicion that there is something to hide,” said Steve Goodrich, senior research officer at Transparency International.

DExEU has around a month to release the list of ERG members. Responding to questions from openDemocracy, the department said:

“We are considering the ICO’s decision and will issue our response in due course.”

Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake accused DExEU of a “shameless attempt” “to shroud in secrecy its meetings with the ERG” and of “a desperate ploy to conceal how a cabal of MPs are puppeteering spineless Minister.”

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said that it was “completely unacceptable that we have to rely on the Information Commissioner” to discover the identity of the ERG’s core membership.

“These are the people who are currently holding our country to ransom and working to take us crashing over the Brexit cliff edge in two weeks’ time, yet they refuse to operate transparently and honour the accepted rules of democratic and political behaviour,” Bradshaw said.

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‘Secretive yet influential’

The ERG is a secretive yet influential group composed of backbench Conservative MPs, many of whom have pushed for a no-deal Brexit. The group also has strong connections to pro-Brexit think tanks such as the Institute for Economic Affairs.

openDemocracy has previously revealed how the ERG operates a secret second bank account, despite taking at least a quarter of a million pounds of taxpayers’ money.

The ERG has also accepted a donation from the Constitutional Research Council – a secretive organisation that channelled a controversial £435,000 donation to the DUP’s Brexit campaign. The organisation is headed by Richard Cook, a former Conservative general election candidate implicated in illegal international waste shipments.

The ERG is classed as a parliamentary research service provider which produces materials for its members. This research is not made public. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) reviews the output produced by parliamentary research service providers, including the ERG.

Using Freedom of Information legislation, openDemocracy has requested that the parliamentary watchdog disclose research materials produced by the ERG that it holds. IPSA has so far refused, but openDemocracy will be arguing for the release of the materials at the Information Tribunal. The hearing scheduled to take place on May 2.

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Trump’s dead on arrival budget proposal to Congress is all about funding greater militarism and belligerence, along with serving corporate interests and high-net worth households – while gutting vital social programs.

It’s a proposal only Wall Street, the military, industrial, security complex, Big Oil, and monied interests could love.

Totaling $4.75 trillion, Trump wants an increase of $34 billion in war spending, euphemistically called “defense” – at a time sharp cuts are needed.

Washington’s only enemies are invented ones. No real ones exist. He wants $8.6 billion more for wall construction along the southern border with Mexico.

His priorities include slashing Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, student loans, and other essential social programs – along with big cuts in environmental protection programs.

He wants about $1.5 trillion cut from Medicaid spending in the next decade, $845 million less for Medicare over the same period, $25 billion from Social Security and disability spending, a 9% reduction in non-defense spending across the board – funds shifted to “defense” priorities, corporate handouts, and other initiatives benefitting high-net worth households.

Other proposed cuts over the next decade include $220 billion less for food stamps, $21 billion from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), $207 billion less for student loans, along with billions more cut from housing assistance and other social programs.

Note: In February 2017 during his first address to a joint congressional session, Trump pledged “no changes” to Social Security and Medicare.

He said

“America must put its own citizens first…Above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people…Our obligation is to serve, protect, and defend the citizens of the United States.”

He broke virtually every positive promise made to ordinary Americans, serving monied interests exclusively. His FY 2020 budget proposal calls for more of the same, disdainful of the general welfare he doesn’t give a hoot about.

He wants funding for renewable energy initiatives slashed by 70% – from around $2.3 billion to $700 million. He favors eliminating the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy altogether, wanting energy innovation left entirely to the private sector at its discretion.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,

“(e)ach of the past two Trump budgets has targeted benefits and services for individuals and families of modest means for deep cuts, even as it has supported tax cuts conferring large new benefits on those at the top of the income scale,” adding:

“If (his proposed FY 2020 budget is) enacted, these cuts would have increased poverty and hardship, leaving more people struggling to afford basics like food and rent.”

The type society Trump and hardline ideologues in his regime favor is all about serving privileged interests exclusively, wanting ordinary Americans left on their own sink or swim – social safety net spending abolished in their ideal world.

One way he aims to increase military spending for warmaking is by increasing a so-called overseas operations (slush) fund from $69 billion this year to $165 billion in 2020.

The budget includes $33 billion in greater “defense” spending to counter the “malign influence” of Russia China, Iran, North Korea, and other sovereign independent states. It calls for development of new land-based, sea, and aerial weapons, along with around $10 billion for cybersecurity.

Trump wants increased funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), along with more for Customs and Border Protection.

Article I, section 9, clause 7 of the Constitution states: “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law…”

Spending bills originate in the House and Senate Appropriations  Committees. They need majority House and super-majority (60-vote) Senate approval to pass.

Presidents have veto power over appropriations bills, not so-called line-item authority – so congressional-adopted budgets must be signed into law entirely or vetoed. A two-thirds majority in each house is needed to override it.

Congress and the president have until September 30 (the fiscal year’s end) to agree on a budget for the following FY. Often used continuing resolutions keep government funded for a specified time period when agreements aren’t reached.

Otherwise, government shutdowns are triggered until bipartisan differences are resolved.

Trump’s request for $8.6 billion more for border wall construction alone assures another spending fight if he’s unbending on this issue.

According to a senior regime official, his budget proposes “more reductions in spending than any (previous US) president in history” – taking pride in what demands shame.

House Appropriations Committee chairwoman Nita Lowey slammed Trump’s proposal, saying the following:

He “managed to produce a budget request even more untethered from reality than his past two. With such misguided priorities, (his) budget has no chance of garnering the necessary bipartisan support to become law.”

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

The Commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM) told the House Armed Services Committee just how “concerned” he is about China projecting its Silk Road influence from Gwadar to Africa through S-CPEC+ and consequently establishing a permanent naval presence in the western end of the Afro-Asian Ocean.

CPEC is increasingly being appreciated as the game-changing geostrategic megaproject that it is after the Commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM) told the House Armed Services Committee just how “concerned” he is about its terminal port of Gwadar being used as China’s launching pad for expanding its Silk Road influence into Africa and consequently establishing a permanent naval presence along the routes connecting several Sea Lines Of Communication (SLOC) between them. This outlook isn’t a unique one and was most recently elaborated upon by the author last week in his piece about how “Pakistan’s Indian Sub Interception Proves The Importance Of The Country’s Navy”, but it appears to be the first time that a high-level American military official publicly confirmed the likelihood of this scenario unfolding and expressed “concern” about it. According to reports, Joseph Votel told the Committee that:

“As they develop that land route what they are attempting to do and then we expect then be looking for ports they can connect that to ports in southern Pakistan leading to ports in AFRICOM (US Africa Command), and for us it’s going to lead to a permanent presence of Chinese maritime military maritime activity in the region that we will need to be concerned with.” (author’s note: reproduced exactly as reported by The Times Of India, grammatical errors and all)

This brief statement is loaded with a lot of strategic significance. Firstly, it implies that the joint Indian-American Hybrid War on CPEC has failed and that the Chinese-built megaproject is proceeding apace in turning Pakistan into the global pivot state for facilitating transcontinental multipolar integration.

Secondly, it draws attention to the southern branch of CPEC’s logical expansion that the author earlier coined S-CPEC+. Thirdly, Votel is convinced that this will also take on military dimensions as China is compelled to defend its SLOCs all along this route, possibly through the clinching of LEMOA-like deals with Pakistan and coastal African countries. And finally, the fourth main point that can be drawn from the CENTCOM Commander’ s statement is that China’s CPEC-assisted expansion of influence into the western Afro-Asian Ocean poses a multidimensional cross-theater challenge to American hegemony in the Eastern Hemisphere.

What’s less clear, however, is how the US intends to counter this after the failure of the Indian-American Hybrid War on CPEC. Resorting to similar measures against the Horn of Africa and East African states might backfire for several reasons, not least of which is that the interests of the US’ partners overlap with China’s own in this space and would therefore be adversely affected by regional destabilization. It’s possible that the US might weaponize comparatively low-level chaos dynamics such as those embodied by al Shabaab but this could inadvertently create opportunities for Russia to export its “Democratic Security” model from the Central African Republic to the African coastland and actually safeguard the long-term strategic viability of S-CPEC+,  hence why non-kinetic methods will probably be relied upon at this point in time.

It’s very likely that the US will intensify its infowar against China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), with specific focus being given to the narrative that Beijing is more interested in extracting resources through so-called “debt trap diplomacy” than in sincerely developing its partners’ economies. There might also be more underhanded efforts to incite mob violence against Chinese citizens in order to bait the People’s Republic into costly “mission creep” that it’s both militarily unprepared for and which could exacerbate some of the angry locals’ negative perceptions about it. In addition, the US could use economic pressure to dissuade African governments from signing LEMOA-like deals with China and entice them into embracing “Trumpism” instead of Silk Road-led Globalism. Fearmongering about China’s speculative military motives, the US might use this as the pretext for launching Indian-led multilateral “freedom of navigation” patrols.

The most likely outcome that the US hopes to achieve is to encourage “friendly competition” between BRI and the nascent Indo-Japanese “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” while manipulatively working behind the scenes to influence the “rules of the game” in such a way as to favor its proxies and their French and Emirati partners prior to using their multilateral economic platform as the basis for the creation of a new African-centric security bloc for more comprehensively “containing” China. Accordingly, it would be to the benefit of the emerging Multipolar World Order if China partnered with Pakistan, Turkey, and Russia to preemptively thwart this scenario, with the first protecting S-CPEC+’s SLOCS, the second sharing its widespread soft power in sub-Saharan Africa, and the last using its “Democratic Security” model to safeguard everything in the most ideal win-win arrangement between them all.

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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.

For 60 years the Cuban Revolution has been in opposition to the most powerful nation of all time. America is a landmass almost 100 times larger in size than Cuba, is infinitely wealthier, stronger and boasts the largest and most advanced military on earth. There has hardly been a more unequal battle in world history than that of America against Cuba, yet the latter has taken the blows and is still standing.

Consecutive United States governments – dating to the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration of the late 1950s – were left increasingly perplexed and enraged by their country’s inability to either assassinate Fidel Castro or upend the Revolution.

Image on the right: Orlando Bosch (left) with Luis Posada Carriles in Miami. (Source: Havana Times)

Image result for Luis Posada Carriles + Orlando Bosch

US governments have implemented a range of attacks against Cuba in the form of a six-decade old embargo, an illegal invasion, artillery and gun assaults, chemical and biological warfare, employment of Cuban exile mercenaries and infamous figures like Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Little of this receives even passing mention in common discourse on American-Cuban relations.

Posada and Bosch gained a sprinkling of notoriety as architects of the October 1976 destruction of a Cuban airliner, killing all 73 people aboard, including many teenagers. The CIA “had concrete advance intelligence” months prior to the attack but did nothing to prevent it. Perhaps this is not surprising, as Posada enjoyed extensive work as a CIA agent, while Bosch was also utilized as an American intelligence operative and had contact with the CIA dating to the early 1960s.

The Cuban airplane atrocity is merely the iceberg’s tip, so to speak; Posada and Bosch were responsible for countless other murderous acts across the Western Hemisphere, executed with the use of assault rifles, machine guns, revolvers, bombs, grenade launchers, a bazooka, etc.

Indeed, Posada and Bosch were two of the biggest international terrorists of the post-1945 age. During their long reign of terror they were protected by powerful American politicians, such as the Bush family. In the late 1980s, future presidential candidate Jeb Bush intervened directly on Bosch’s behalf, so as to allow this mass murderer to remain unhindered on American soil.

Bosch was thereafter granted US residency, and in July 1990 he was pardoned of all charges by US president George H. W. Bush, partly due to lobbying by his son Jeb. In April 2011, Bosch would die unmolested in Miami aged 84, surrounded by the Cuban-American mafia who call the area home.

Last May, the 90-year-old Posada also died a free man in Miami, and was never charged for his vast array of criminality. It is likely that many of Miami’s residents, along with visiting holidaymakers, have been entirely unaware of these terrorists walking uninhibited on the city’s fair streets.

Posada, who in the mid-1960s received training at the US Army post Fort Benning, had furthermore been shielded by George W. Bush’s administration earlier this century. Posada was granted sanctuary from America’s highest office while, in Guantanamo Bay, prisoners were held and tortured on far lesser charges, and others on mere suspicion. Previously, for a time in the mid-1970s, Bosch himself received additional guardianship in Chile under the US-instituted Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, and “lived quietly as an artist” in the South American country.

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When Cuban leader Fidel Castro was questioned about these grotesque affairs over a decade ago, he replied,

“Posada Carriles and his accomplice Orlando Bosch are the most bloodthirsty exponents of imperialist terrorism against our nation. They have carried out dozens of horrific actions in numerous countries within the hemisphere, including even the territory of the United States. Thousands of Cubans and some citizens of other countries have lost their lives and been mutilated, as a consequence of those cowardly and abominable acts by governments of the United States”.

Castro also notes that Posada and Bosch have “always acted under the orders of American administrations and their special services, and have been illegally exonerated of all charges and possible punishment… Posada Carriles’ terrorist acts, including the bombings of tourist hotels in Havana and the assassination plans, have been financed by the United States through the unfortunately famous Cuban-American National Foundation, since its creation by Reagan and Bush in 1981. All of the money came from the United States. No one has ever acted with more deceit and hypocrisy”.

Elsewhere, those criticizing Cuba for “human rights violations” fail to put into context unprecedented threats the island nation has faced for decades, and continues to endure.

Should small counter-revolutionary cells present on Cuban territory (often covertly supported by the US) enact methods that undercut the socialist project, then the issue must surely be dealt with. The Revolution would simply never have lasted unless actions are taken to counter the subversive cliques.

In the majority of cases, Castro’s government handed out moderate prison sentences to the accused – which are then sometimes commuted – with the detainees upon release allowed to leave the country, many of course departing to America. In addition systematic acts of torture, widespread elsewhere, have not been committed within post-1959 Cuba.

For the meantime, should those few anti-socialist groups in Cuba begin their activities without government measures in response, the individuals would then become emboldened. In such a scenario, Washington inevitably senses blood while disingenuously announcing their concern for “democracy and human rights”, with the press leaping aboard the bandwagon.

Such cases have been witnessed elsewhere, in Iran last year and Venezuela recently, when protest marches were pounced upon by the White House and mass media. The fact that in Venezuela its president, Nicolás Maduro, has three times the number of people marching in support of him, by comparison to Washington stooge Juan Guaidó, receives smaller notice.

Unless swift action is initiated by Cuba’s government in response to the counter-revolutionary plans, America may gain a bridge hold in the country – as the superpower has succeeded in doing so with regard Venezuela and various other sovereign states, repeatedly violating the UN Charter. In Indonesia during the mid-1960s, direct US involvement enabled the Western-backed General Suharto and his forces to kill around a million people, rivalling Stalin’s purges.

In reports concerning Cuba conducted by often well regarded NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW), they have consistently failed to take into account the extraordinary extent of hostility towards the Caribbean island. Amnesty and HRW have undertaken some good work in other regions, but one must remember that the former is headquartered in London and the latter in New York. For this case, much of the Western NGOs’ coverage bears the hallmarks of having been skewed by years of blanket propaganda against Cuba, engineered by American and British institutions.

Moreover, Amnesty and HRW have betrayed an unfortunate tendency to focus on “pro-democracy activists” within Cuba, the most prominent of those this century being the so-called “Ladies in White”. The Ladies in White are in actual fact a US-funded proxy group. In August 2011 Wikileaks cables – which are invariably accurate – revealed that the Ladies in White have links to US government organizations. Despite such realities, Amnesty and HRW have continued to champion their motives in the name of “human rights”.

In 2018, HRW described the Ladies in White as “founded by the wives, mothers and daughters of political prisoners” – while Amnesty in their 2017/2018 analysis on Cuba outlined them as “a group of female relatives of prisoners detained on politically motivated grounds”. In these accounts, not a word has been written relating to the Ladies in White and their ties to American governments, or indeed the Wikileaks documents.

When claims of human rights breaches were put to Castro in an interview earlier this century, he responded that,

“The life expectancy of Cuban citizens is now almost 18 years longer than in 1959, when the Revolution came to power. We have made universal literacy possible, made it possible for every child to go to school, made it possible for every citizen to get an education. In the fields of education and health, there’s no country in the Third World, or even in the developed capitalist world, that’s done what we’ve done in those areas, for the good of the people”.

In relation to societal problems seen around the world, including in wealthy consumer nations, Castro highlighted that in Cuba,

“Begging and unemployment have been eradicated. Drug use and gambling have also disappeared. You won’t find children begging in the streets; we don’t have homeless beggars here… And I won’t go on too long about the aid we’ve given to dozens of countries in the Third World. There are Cuban doctors in over 40 countries, and they’ve saved thousands of human lives”.

Following the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in northern Ukraine, Castro further outlined that,

“We’ve given free treatment to thousands of children from Chernobyl that no other country took in. I don’t think any place in the world has equalled the generosity to human beings that’s been shown by Cuba. And this is the country that people want to condemn for violations of human rights? Only through lies and calumnies can such profoundly dishonest accusations be made”.

Over elapsing years from the Chernobyl catastrophe, Cuba has now treated over 26,000 victims, more than 80% of whom are children.

Meanwhile, in August 2005, immediately after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to wide sections of America’s south-east, Cuba was among the first to offer medical assistance to the US – in the form of over 1,500 doctors along with dozens of tons of supplies. This act of generosity was forthcoming despite decades of the above-mentioned attacks. Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela was also quick in offering aid to America during the hurricane’s aftermath.

Both lifelines were rejected in silence by the Bush administration, who were loath to accept humanitarian relief from socialist governments they were seeking to undermine and overthrow. Had Cuban and Venezuelan support been welcomed by president Bush – sluggish himself in responding to the crisis and whose country was notably short of doctors – many lives like those lost in New Orleans would likely have been saved.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook.

Trudeau’s Cabinet Tempest

March 12th, 2019 by Jim Miles

On a global scale, the current events within Canada’s Justin Trudeau cabinet are not much more than the proverbial tempest in a teapot. While receiving saturation coverage on Canada’s CBC and some national newspapers, it is not totally noteworthy with global significance, other than some slipping and tarnishing of Trudeau’s halo with foreign media.

Having said that the problem’s within the Trudeau government do demonstrate a few political truths common to many governments and government parties. Concurrently it also reveals some problems deep – but not too deep – within Canada’s governance. Superficially it is a squabble internally within the Trudeau cabinet but it has threads and connections that incorporate much of what is wrong with Canadian governance.

It started innocently enough, at least on the surface, with the resignation of a cabinet minister for straightforward reasons. Positions were reassigned and shortly thereafter another resignation occurred, setting the current problems into motion – which is another way of saying the problems surfaced into the public sphere, old problems and new problems.

Canada’s Minister of Justice and the Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould was reassigned to a new position as Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, an assignment many considered was a demotion. MS Wilson-Raybould appeared to accept the change with equanimity. However, shortly thereafter, she resigned from that position, keeping her position guarded behind the inability to speak as per the legalities of client confidentiality and cabinet confidentiality.

It quickly became understood that the problem concerned her decision to allow the prosecution of a Canadian multinational corporation, SNC Lavalin, to proceed. Trudeau attempted to appease the situation but considering the strong character of Ms Wilson-Raybould and his own shifting explanations the media ran with the story, creating a significant impact across the country.

I watched Ms Wilson-Raybould’s presentation to the House of Commons Justice Committee, followed by presentations from Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s best friend and right hand man in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and from Michael Wernick, Clerk of the Privy Council, one of the more powerful positions in the bureaucracy. Butts testimony seemed vague, more because he was not in attendance at many of the conversations discussed. Wernick was abrasive and abrupt, arrogant, and quite comfortable being so. He struck me as being someone who would be a partisan supporter of either the Liberals or the Conservatives, whoever was in power, as long as they followed the neoliberal agenda.

What I took away from all this so far are ramifications that spread throughout the Canadian political and business community, and indeed into the international community.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

The original problem stemmed from charges against SNC Lavalin for bribery of foreign officials that the Prosecutor’s Office were proceeding with. It quickly became mixed up with a hastily thought up and recently passed bill creating the possibility within the judicial system of a “deferred prosecution agreement” (DPA). Trudeau and the PMO argued publicly that a DPA would save many jobs, directly, and indirectly through service providers to SNC Lavalin. Ms Wilson-Raybould stood fast in Committee to her position that the prosecution should proceed.

There was no argument about the innocence of SNC Lavalin. The argument presented by the government concerned the usual political mantra used by all parties – “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Wernick argued that it was in the “public interest” while the overall testimony seemed to indicate it was purely political interest carrying the argument.

From my perspective it is not at all about jobs, and many good arguments were made in Committee indicating that employment and the economy were not the issue, at least not in the usual usage of the language. What struck me was that the PDA is another means by which corporations, their managers, and their shareholders, can escape responsibility for actions undertaken by the legality known as the “corporation.”

It is what corporations are designed for: to escape personal responsibility for errors, mistakes, illegal actions et al, and to maximize profits. The PDA, while excused as being something other countries have (which does not necessarily make it a good thing), is simply another layer to protect the managers and shareholders of SNC Lavalin from prosecution and responsibility for damages. With the PDA, a slap on the wrist, some form of promises and conditionalities to meet and then business will proceed as usual.

For true justice, corporate citizenship should be annulled and the managers and shareholders be held responsible for criminal actions and other damages created by the company. Certainly that creates problems on the shareholder side as many citizens are shareholders simply through the practice of pension and other investment pools being involved with the markets. I won’t sort that out here. SNC Lavalin’s directors, whichever one offered the bribe, should be held criminally responsible.

Neocolonialism and Canada’s Indian Act

Ms Wilson-Raybould has an undergraduate degree in political science and history, and a graduate law degree. She has served as B.C. Crown Prosecutor, a Treaty Commissioner, and a Regional Chief for the B.C. Assembly of First Nations. She speaks with the authority of a person well versed in European based law and well versed in First Nations traditions and governance. That introduces another broad thread to the story.

As a First Nation leader, Ms. Wilson-Raybould has consistently spoken against Canada’s Indian Act (1876), still in force with amendments. When the cabinet shuffle occurred, Trudeau offered her the position of Minister of Indigenous Affairs, a position she declined for obvious reasons of not wanting to be the ‘enforcer’ of an act she abhorred. In short, the Indian Act is one of the larger means to continue with Canada’s unstated political acts of maintaining the First Nations as subjugated people, a unilaterally imposed set of rules theoretically dealing with the various treaties made as European ‘civilization’ spread across the continent. Ms Wilson-Raybould does come from British Columbia, a province where the vast majority of the land has never been ceded by treaty.

Underneath Trudeau’s attempts at reconciliation for all the colonial depredations imposed on the indigenous people of Canada – land theft, imposition of reservations, many legal limitations, ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide – Canada remains a racist state. It is not overt and obvious to many, but it rests beneath the surface of Canadian civility. The Indian Act needs to be repealed and the federal government needs to negotiate with the First Nations in order to honour the treaties across Canada, and not impose unilateral regulations. Reconciliation should proceed to reparations – financial and territorial.

Resolution

How this affair resolves itself is an unknown. Beside the legal affairs of SNC Lavalin and the reconciliatory pretences of the Trudeau government, there is also the factor of Trudeau’s avowed feminism. After MS Wilson-Raybould’s departure, another high level and highly respected cabinet minister, Jane Philpott, resigned over the handling of the SNC Lavalin affair.

So far, both women are staying in caucus and are indicating they will run again in the approaching general election, October 21, 2019. Polls indicate Trudeau’s ratings have dropped considerably, while the Liberal party itself has already rebounded somewhat from an initial drop. With a weak opposition – a divided Conservative camp, and a wandering NDP, there may yet be time to straighten the halo, albeit with some tarnish.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The Media’s 6 Biggest Lies About North Korea

March 12th, 2019 by Mike Whitney

Here are six of the media’s biggest lies about North Korea:

1–Did North Korea end the negotiations in Hanoi because Trump refused to lift sanctions?

No. That’s not what happened at all. Kim Jong un made a serious offer to permanently halt all long-range rocket and nuclear tests and to “completely dismantle all the nuclear production facilities” at Yongbyon (the DPRK’s primary nuclear enrichment facility) in exchange for the partial lifting of sanctions that targeted North Korean civilians. Kim did not present his offer as an ironclad demand from which he was unwilling to budge, but as a starting point for discussions just as one would expect during negotiations. But the Trump team never seriously considered Kim’s offer, instead–at the advice of neocon warlord, John Bolton — the Trump delegation surprised Kim with a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum that included the “elimination of the DPRK’s “chemical and biological weapons, “their ballistic missile program” along with complete denuclearization. Bolton said that no sanctions would be lifted until this comprehensive disarmament plan was implemented and verified by Washington’s weapons inspectors. These unrelated demands were not part of previous discussions nor were they contained in the earlier agreements in Singapore. They were concocted with the clear intention of sabotaging the summit and ensuring that no agreement between the sides would be reached.

2–Has the Trump administration honored the agreement it made at the Singapore Summit?

No. On June 12, 2018 President Trump signed a joint declaration agreeing to the following:

  • The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
  • The United States and DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
  • Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
  • The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, walk together to their one-on-one bilateral meeting, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, at the Capella Hotel in Singapore. (Official White House Photo by Stephanie Chasez)

While Kim has taken a number of steps to normalize US-DPRK relations (including the cessation of all ballistic missile and nuclear weapon tests, the destruction of one former nuclear testing site, returning the remains of 55 US servicemen who were killed during the Korean War back to US custody, removing mines from the DMZ, and actively engaging in cultural and economic projects with leaders in the South) the Trump administration has done absolutely nothing aside from terminating the provocative large-scale joint military exercises that are used as a rehearsal for invading the North and toppling the government in Pyongyang. Trump has made no effort to normalize relations or to create a “stable peace regime” on the peninsula.

Also, last Thursday, the US violated the Singapore agreement by launching another round of joint-military drills called “Dong Maeng” (which means “alliance” in Korean). While the maneuvers have been ignored by the western media, they were excoriated by North Korea’s state-run news agency KCNA which blasted the drills as a “threat… to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”

3–Did Kim Jong un agree to decommission his nuclear arsenal and end his ballistic missile program BEFORE the Trump administration eased sanctions?

Not a chance. On September 18, 2018: Kim met South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang where the the two leaders agreed to expand the “cessation of military hostilities”, advance economic, humanitarian and cultural cooperation and exchanges, pursue complete denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea committed to dismantle the Dongchang-ri missile engine test site (which it has done) and promised to take additional steps, like the dismantling of the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, if the United States “takes corresponding measures in accordance with the spirit of the June 12 US-DPRK Joint Statement.”

The promise of denuclearization was never a commitment to unilaterally disarm while the US did nothing. The North expected both sides to make reciprocal gestures in order to build confidence. Instead, the Trump administration tightened sanctions which increased Pyongyang’s distrust.

In any event, the original agreement implied a gradual disarmament after there was (a) an improvement in relations and (b) the building of “a lasting and stable peace regime.”

4–Did the Trump administration agree to a “phased” or gradual disarmament similar to what was hashed out in Singapore?

Yes. On January 31, 2019, Special envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun said the administration was prepared to move step-by-step towards complete denuclearization in parallel with working towards peace in Korea and that it is willing to defer a complete declaration of North Korea’s nuclear assets. Here’s an excerpt of Biegun’s comments at Stanford University:

“We have communicated to our North Korean counterparts that we are prepared to pursue simultaneously and in parallel all of the commitments our two leaders made in their joint statement at Singapore last summer.

Biegun’s statement was made in January, 2019. But two months later– on March 7th, 2019 –the US State Department issued a statement which completely rejected Biegun’s policy. The statement read:

“Nobody in the administration advocates a step-by-step approach. In all cases, the expectation is a complete denuclearization of North Korea as a condition for all the other steps being — all the other steps being taken.” (State Department)

So, what does this mean? Did Trump deliberately mislead Kim about the administration’s demands or has Trump’s position simply hardened over time? Typically, negotiations are not a one-way street: “You give me everything I want, and maybe I’ll lift sanctions.” That’s not the way negotiations work. What Trump and his hardline advisors want is capitulation, the complete and unconditional surrender of Pyongyang to its American overlords. That’s a strategy that’s bound to fail.

5–Did the Trump administration lie about canceling joint military drills with South Korea?

Yes, but a spokesman for the US tried to minimize the offense by stating that the exercises were greatly “scaled-back” from the drills that had been scheduled. (Why would that matter?) Naturally, the North Korean state media responded angrily saying:

“It is a violent violation of the joint declarations and statements that North Korea reached with the U.S. and South Korea. This also represents a frontal challenge to the aim and desires of all [Korean] people and the international community for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”

6–Is Kim Jong un planning to break the commitments he made at Singapore by rebuilding his missile testing facilities so he can launch another ballistic missile?

No. The stories that have recently popped up in the media, suggesting that Kim is cheating on his prior agreements, are part of an elaborate and well-funded psychological operation (psy-ops) aimed at convincing the American people that Kim cannot be trusted. Some of these articles even invoke the specter of nuclear holocaust hoping to deter the administration from even considering future negotiations. The propaganda blitz has been hugely successful as a majority of Americans are only-too-eager to believe that Kim is the “brutal dictator” he is portrayed to be in the media (rather than another blameless target of Washington’s insatiable belligerence.) The Disobedient Media website has done some first-rate research and analysis on this latest fake news story (Kim’s “missile testing facilities”) Here are a few excerpts from one of the posts aptly titled: “The Media Is Lying About Construction At Sohae Launch Facility”, Disobedient Media:

“A March 8, 2019 report from National Public Radio (NPR) follows another by NBC News with sensational and misleading claims that satellite imagery released by private corporations with contractual ties to government defense and intelligence agencies show imminent preparations by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to engage in missile testing or the launch of a satellite from their facilities in Sanumdong, North Korea. An examination of the photos provided shows absolutely no indication of such activity……

(Repeat) there is absolutely no indication that several low resolution photos of a facility in North Korea have any activity in them outside of a few rusting vehicles that have sat without moving for some time….

NPR’s Sources Of Satellite Imagery Are Contractors For The CIA And Pentagon

The pervasive involvement of intelligence agencies and defense contractors in attempts to undermine negotiations with North Korea does not create confidence in the already shaky claims made by NPR regarding alleged preparations by the DPRK to participate in a missile launch. These contentions are not supported in substance by any tangible facts…..

Satellite Footage Of Sanumdong Facility Shows No Sign Of Imminent Launch…

NPR’s claims that the imagery shows “vehicle activity” occurring around the facility. Yet close inspection shows that the “activity” consists of a few inert vehicles, which appear to be a white pickup and white dump truck or flatbed parked in a permanent position next to piles of metal. The scene does not appear to be different from any number of sleepy yards of businesses that can be examined by members of the public on Google Maps….

NBC News Has Destroyed It’s Journalistic Integrity On North Korean Issues

The decision by NBC News to include a plethora of biased sources of analysis which appear to have intentionally been misrepresenting the nature of satellite footage of the DPRK’s Sohae Satellite Launching Station seriously calls their journalistic integrity into question. Their decision to represent satellite footage obtained from intelligence contractors and defense industry sources as “commercial” totally removes any remaining doubts that the recent reports of alleged North Korean activity after the breakdown of the Hanoi Summit are solely distributed with the intention of propagandizing not only the public but also President Trump himself. It is a pathetic effort to undermine the potential for peace and economic opportunity for the purpose of continued tensions that only benefit select special interests.”

“The Media Is Lying About Construction At Sohae Launch Facility”, Disobedient Media

These are excellent reports that should be read in full, but for our purposes, we’ll stop here.

Bottom line: The Trump administration deliberately sabotaged the Hanoi Summit, failed to honor its commitments under the terms of the Singapore Summit, lied about the termination of joint-military drills, did a complete 180 on its Special Envoy’s pledge for “phased disarmament”, and made no attempt to normalize US-DPRK relations or “build a lasting and stable peace regime.” On top of that, the media has launched another gigantic disinformation campaign aimed at garnering public support for tighter sanctions, more provocations, and war without end.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Zoom in Korea

March 11, 2019 is the 8th anniversary of the Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Meltdown, the first of a type of techo-natural disaster predicted in the 1990s by seismologist Ishibashi Katsuhiko. He coined the Japanese term genpatsu shinsai (原発震災, literally a nuclear power-earthquake disaster) to highlight the way a horrific natural disaster would be worsened by the co-occurrence of nuclear reactors melting down because of the earthquake.

I wasn’t physically or materially affected by the genpatsu shinsai, but it happened close enough to my home in Japan that it deeply affected me, and I was able to observe the way Japanese society reacted to it. Even at the time there was a wide range of reactions in society. Some people never thought twice about it. Others were devastated and angry, and they demanded that the national energy policy abandon nuclear energy. But this anger never transformed into a broader and more radical shift in politics. No one was connecting the issue to Japan’s attachment to the US military-economic alliance and the traditional export-driven capitalist model that requires infinite growth in a finite world.

I’ve always had a lot of sympathy for the people dislocated by the nuclear disaster, but I’ve also sensed something narrow and naïve about the way the problem is viewed. The victims should have expected a nuclear disaster, but they never should have expected anything different than the treatment they got. There are hundreds of disasters throughout the world that they could have looked to as examples of victims being abandoned. Few victims ever receive any kind of justice or a return to the life they once had. A nuclear accident is a rare and unique cause of an internal refugee crisis, but the plight of the refugees is not much different than that of others throughout the world who are uprooted because of natural disasters and war. Right after the genpatsu shinsai, large numbers of refugees began to enter Europe because of the destruction of the Libyan state and the war against Syria. Unfortunately, there was never a popular solidarity movement connecting Japan’s internal refugee crisis to the larger international crisis. In fact, during the aftermath of the genpatsu shinsai, the US government and the Japanese establishment were finishing off a soft coup against the elected Japanese government that had tried to challenge the status quo of the US-Japan alliance and the nature of the Japanese economy. No one was in the mood to keep fighting that battle.

I read and wrote about such things for five years after the disaster until I felt written out, or perhaps written into a corner. I felt trapped by the success of my self-education. If I wasn’t preaching to the converted, I was encountering people who disagreed and had a level of confidence in their opinions that was inversely proportional to their knowledge of the topic. They wanted to “debate” me for five minutes at a noisy social gathering, but they didn’t want to read a book on the topic (my reading list is at the end of this blog post) and talk to me about it afterwards. The same thing happened after I read several books on the history of the cold war and post-cold war era. Now instead of the pointless debates, people just shut me down. I have had to listen to people saying, “No, I don’t want to talk to you about Russia.” Who needs to have their views challenged when you can learn all you need to know from covers of the Economist?

I had once hoped that the genpatsu shinsai would change everything and make energy and environmental issues the top priority in politics. That’s why I made the effort to learn about it and talk about it, but the toxic legacy of the nuclear age remained on the margin of the margin of public consciousness as every nuclear state prepared to rebuild and upgrade its nuclear arsenal and nuclear energy facilities. Fukushima? You would think it never even happened.

Other blogs and news sites will be running stories about the 8th anniversary today, so I tried to think of something to discuss that wouldn’t be covered elsewhere. What follows is a short excerpt from a book of poems by a Japanese author, Kojima Chikara, who joined the anti-nuclear movement decades ago and wrote about it before and after the genpatsu shinsai. Many of his poems describe the era of nuclear expansion during which there were minor unreported accidents and radiation exposures of the invisible sub-contracted laborers. Their health problems were never tracked by regulators or the curious branch of science called “health physics.” These poems make it clear that the disaster really began when the reactors were first switched on.

This short sample has been reproduced here for the purpose of review (fair use claimed) and to help the author get some exposure for his work which is not well-known outside of Japan.

***

A Selection of Poetry Works: My Tears Flow Endlessly

Forced out of House and Home by the Fukushima Nuclear Power Accident

by Kojima Chikara, translated by Noda Setsuko

Tokyo, Nishidashoten Publishing, ©2017

123 pages. Excerpt from pages 42-46.

The book was published with the original Japanese poems alongside the English translation.

Kojima and Noda are surnames, listed first here as in Japanese publishing style.

1.5 µSv around the entrance of my house

Where daisy fleabanes bloom.

1.7 µSv under the trees

Covered with overgrown vines in my garden

2.45 µSv on the surface of the ground

In my backyard where wet leaves pile up.

0.6 µSv around the heated table sunken into the floor

Which is no longer in use

Except during our short visits.

0.9 µSv in the sunroom

Looking out through the pane of class

0.8 µSv in the second floor bedroom

where nobody has slept since the accident.

We cleaned our house after an absence of a year and four months.

Wiping away the rat droppings on the tatami mats

And clearing all the dust in our house that day

We didn’t manage to return to our 0.05 µSv temporary house in Tokyo.

Near the sunken heated table

We placed floor cushions, each 0.7 µSv

And took blankets of 0.6 µSv out of the closet,

Which is now difficult to open and close.

We slept somewhere between 0.6 µSv and 0.7 µSv.

We slept shuddering in fear

Of being exposed to the radiation all night.

We slept with the knowledge

That we might not live in our house and homeland again.

Worrying about our future in the dark of night,

We slept.

Kashi, kashi, kashi     Kashi, kashi, kashi  

From the very darkness at midnight

I can hear a faint sound.

It reverberates across the whole room.

Kashi, kashi, kashi     Kashi, kashi, kashi 

The sound has continued non-stop

for about an hour since I was woken up.

Kashi, kashi, kashi     Kashi, kashi, kashi  

As soon as I awoke I turned on the light

And identified the origin of the sound.

Kashi, kashi, kashi     Kashi, kashi, kashi  

It’s a little young rat, not even as big as an egg.

I came home for a short visit after two months absence

And was enraged to see droppings all over the tatami mats.

I set a trap and it worked.

The rat scratched the edge of the cardboard with its rear claws

Because it was trapped with its belly glued to duct tape.

Rat, rat,

You are not hurt at all.

Besides, “There are no immediate effects on your health.”

I don’t want to help you,

Let alone pay you compensation, or give you donations.

I only listen to you struggling, not sleeping at all.

Kashi, kashi, kashi     Kashi, kashi, kashi   

I must live in a temporary shack.

Somebody might really make a fool of me if I pity you

Snickering at me beyond the darkness.

Kashi, kashi, kashi     Kashi, kashi, kashi  

Kashi, kashi, kashi     Kashi, kashi, kashi 

Half dead, Half dead    Half dead, Half dead  

Half dead, Half dead    Half dead, Half dead

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A Nuclear Age Reading List, 2011-2019.

Until now I have been too unassuming to stress all the reading and work I’ve put into learning about the nuclear age and the history of the 20th century. However, today I look back on several experiences when I had to tolerate people shutting me down or giving me their thinly supported opinions—people who were utterly uninterested in reading books on these subjects or listening to someone who does. I’ve also seen historians having similar experiences when they are interviewed on television, so I thought for once I would mention the fact that since the nuclear disaster, I’ve read the seventy books listed below cover to cover. I’m employed as an educator, so I have an advantage by having some extra time to do this research, but still I want to stress that anyone can start reading and learning again. When I was young no one thought I was special. I was a B student who struggled to get the occasional A. I kept reading because I turned off the TV and left my country. You may not be able to do both of these things, but you can at least do the former.

A.V. Yablokov, V.B. Nesterenko & A.V. Nesterenko, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment

Ace Hoffman, The Code Killers

Alla Yaroshinskaya, Chernobyl: Crime without Punishment

Andrew Nikiforuk, The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude

Bruno Barrillot, Les irradiés de la République : Les victimes des essais nucléaires français prennent la parole

Buddy Levy, Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs

Charles Forsdick & Christian Høgsbjerg, Toussaint Louverture: A Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolutions

Charles C. Mann

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus,

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Chris Hedges, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

Christopher Boyce, Cait Boyce, Vince Font, The Untold Story of the Falcon and the Snowman

David Graeber

The Utopia of Rules

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, The CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government

Douglas Valentine, Hotel Tacloban

Edward Herman & David Peterson, Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later

Eileen Welsome, The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War

Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

Gabrielle Hecht, Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade

Gar Smith, Nuclear Roulette: The Truth about the Most Dangerous Energy Source on Earth

Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands

Gavan McCormack & Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States

Gayle Greene, The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation

Gerard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe

Grover Furr, Blood Lies: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands Is False

Greg Poulgrain, Incubus of Intervention: Conflicting Indonesia Strategies of John F. Kennedy and Allen Dulles

James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters

Jared Diamond

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Jim Albertini, Nelson Foster, Wally Inglis, Gill Roeder, The Dark Side of Paradise: Hawaii in a Nuclear World

Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins

Jim Harding, Canada’s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System

John Reid, Ten Days that Shook the World

Joseph Mangano, Mad Science: The Nuclear Power Experiment

Joseph Masco, The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico

Judi Rever, In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

Kate Brown

A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland

Dispatches from Dystopia: Histories of Places Not Yet Forgotten

Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters

Kristen Iversen, Full Body Burden: Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats

Leon Siu, Ke Aupuni O Hawaii, The Basis for Restoration of the Hawaiian Kingdom

Matashichi Oishi, The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the Lucky Dragon, and I

Noelani Goodyear-Ka’opua et al, A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land and Sovereignty

NHK TV, Tokaimura Criticality Accident Crew, A Slow Death: 85 Days of Radiation Sickness

Nicolas Lambert, Avenir Radieux

Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times

Oliver Stone & Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States

Penny Sanger, Blind Faith: The Nuclear Industry in One Small Town

Peter van Wyck, The Highway of the Atom

R.T. Howard, Power and Glory: France’s Secret Wars with Anglo-America

Richard Cottrell, Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis

Richard Rhodes

The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons

Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race

Robert J. Johnson, Romancing the Atom: Nuclear Infatuation from the Radium Girls to Fukushima

Robert Jacobs, The Dragon’s Tail: American’s Face the Atomic Age

Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenney, Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Roger Stone, The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ

Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power and War in Rwanda

Sheldon M. Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths versus Reality

Stephanie Cook, In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age

Stephen F. Cohen, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War

Stephen Kinzer, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain and the Birth of American Empire

Susan Southard, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War

Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Takahashi Hirose, Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster

Tom Zoellner, Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock that Shaped the World

William T. Vollman, Into the Forbidden Zone: A Trip Through Hell and High Water in Post-Earthquake Japan

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All images in this article are from Lit by IMAGINATION

On Monday, Pompeo hinted at the Trump regime upping the stakes in Venezuela, saying “(t)he United States is drawing a clear line between those who aid (the Bolivarian Republic) and those” supporting US aims in the country.

He falsely blamed Maduro for US sabotage to Venezuela’s electrical grid, causing continuing widespread blackout conditions, a problem much more serious than initially believed, likely requiring considerable time, effort, and expertise to correct entirely.

He lied claiming patients are dying in hospitals, telecommunications “entirely collapsing.”

Maduro had backup generators installed in all Venezuelan hospitals to maintain operations in case of power outages.

When the electrical grid was sabotaged last Thursday, backup generators were automatically activated, Venezuelan Communication Minister Jorge Rodriguez explained.

Pompeo slammed Cuba and Russia for what he called “undermining the democratic dreams (sic) of the Venezuelan people and their welfare (sic).”

He turned reality on its head claiming

“Cuba is the true imperialist power in Venezuela (sic), train(ing) Venezuelans’ secret police and torture tactics (sic), domestic spying techniques (sic), and mechanisms of repression the Cuban authorities have wielded against their own people for decades (sic),” adding:

“Cuban security forces have displaced Venezuelan security forces (sic) in a clear violation of Venezuelan sovereignty.”

Cuba and Maduro “disdain private property rights (sic), the rule of law (sic), and free and fair elections (sic). (They) routinely violate the basic human rights of their peoples (sic).”

Pompeo’s remarks about the Bolivarian republic and Cuba were bald-faced Big Lies.

Fact: Cuba’s leading exports to Venezuela and other countries are goodwill, doctors, and teachers. Washington’s leading exports are mass slaughter, destruction, and human misery.

Trump hardliners target both countries for regime change, along with Nicaragua regionally, what Bolton last November called a “troika of tyranny” – for their sovereign independence he, Pompeo, Abrams and DLT want eliminated, these countries transformed into US vassal states.

Pompeo slammed Russia for supporting Maduro, adding the Kremlin is “pressuring countries to disregard the democratic legitimacy (sic) of the interim president Guaido (sic).”

He’s an illegitimate US-designated puppet/usurper in waiting,  betraying his nation and the Venezuelan people.

Interviewed on Fox News business, the Rupert Murdoch-owned channel gave Guaido a platform to lie – his public remarks scripted by Trump regime hardliners.

He lied claiming authority to invoke constitutional authority for the National Assembly to call for foreign intervention in the country, saying:

He’s “empower(ed) (sic), as the person in charge (sic), to employ whatever measures are necessary to enact this cooperation (with other nations for) assistance (to) Venezuela (sic).”

Did he set the stage for greater US intervention than already by whatever tactics Trump regime hardliners intend to employ?

He lied claiming blackout conditions in much of the country “generate(d) over 25 deaths (in) hospitals.”

The head nurse in one of Caracas’ leading hospitals reported none. He lied claiming

“(t)he world has seen how Maduro’s government has burned medicines and foodstuffs. The world saw how they blocked trucks to enter medicine into the country.”

So-called aid included out-of-date, unsafe to use food and medicines, along with barbed wire and other implements for barricades, part of the Trump regime’s aim to cause internal turmoil.

Last Sunday, the NYT admitted that video footage released by the Colombian government showed so-called disruptive anti-Bolivarian guarimberos torched two so-called aid trucks with Molotov cocktails.

Neither Maduro or Venezuela’s military had anything to do with the incidents. In February, the Times and other establishment media claimed otherwise, the self-styled newspaper of record surprisingly setting the record straight belatedly.

On Monday, the opposition-controlled National Assembly (AN) declared a state of “national alarm” over “general calamity” conditions caused by US sabotage to the nation’s electrical grid it failed to explain.

Note: For illegally swearing in three contested legislators in January 2016, Venezuela’s Supreme Court held the opposition-controlled AN in contempt, its decisions null and void – the judiciary to act in its place because of its “contempt” and “incapacitation” to carry out its constitutional duties.

Separately on Monday, Guaido illegally declared a “national emergency.” He called for further public demonstrations on Tuesday, again urging Venezuelan military commanders and soldiers to defect.

Things remain in flux. On Monday, Maduro explained that blackout was caused by cyber-attacking Venezuela’s electrical power grid.

After around 70% of power was restored last Friday, further cyberattacks on the grid occurred, probably more to come until things are resolved.

It’s likely to take weeks or months if malware used resembles the powerful Stuxnet virus used against Iranian nuclear power plants in 2010 – a joint US/Israeli cyberattack. Perhaps they partnered again against Venezuela.

Maduro called the sabotage “a great violation of human rights in our country by the right wing, who celebrate national suffering.”

A Final Comment

Pompeo said remaining Trump regime personnel will be withdrawn from Venezuela this week. Most staff left in January after Maduro ordered them out.

Is recalling remaining numbers to Washington prelude to greater Trump regime toughness – involving escalated violence, bloodshed and chaos?

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from The Santiago Times

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The racism inherent in Western media’s reportage of African tragedy, such as the Ethiopian Airline disaster, once again shows how important it is for Africans to support their own media.

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Tragedy is a human experience that no one can escape from. Yet the manner in which Western media report on death involving Africans remains infused with racism. Reporting on the Ethiopian Airline flight ET302 crash has proven to be no exception. The doomed flight had 32 Kenyans on board – the largest group from one country to perish in the crash. But reporting by the Western media displays all the tropes of “Africa, the dark continent”, with media outlets such as Associated Press listing the countries of the victims in order of nationality, deliberately excluding Kenya and other African countries.

The reportage by The New York Times on the Dusit bomb attack in Kenya was equally layered in racist tropes. In addition, a newscast by TRT World tried to pin the crash on Ethiopian Airlines having a poor safety record, a claim that aviation analyst Alex Macheras was quick to dispute and correct. Macheras said,

“Ethiopian Airlines is an incredibly safe and trusted airline. This is not an airline with a poor safety record, as the presenter said.”

Incidents like these once again emphasise how important it is for Africans to support their own media and to tell their own stories accurately and effectively. They also shows the need to strengthen Africa’s media in a continent where press freedom is still a big issue.

The names of the 32 Kenyans involved in the crash were released by Kenyan authorities. The names of other nationals in the crash were sent to their various embassies. A total of 19 staff members of United Nations affiliated organisations were on board. For now, Ethiopia (and other countries) has grounded all its Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft. Our deep condolences go to the loved ones of those lost in the crash.

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Featured image: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft. (Source: This Is Africa)

“Distance matters because time matters. And time matters because the faster commodities can be produced and exchanged, the greater the profits for individual firms. The answer? Mega infrastructure corridors.” – Nicholas Hildyard[1]

One of the world’s biggest e-commerce companies, Beijing-based JD.com, says it will soon be able to deliver fruit from anywhere in the world to the doorsteps of Chinese consumers within 48 hours. It takes highly integrated global infrastructure—connecting farms to warehouses to transportation to consumers—to achieve a goal like this. China’s new mega-infrastructure plan, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), will help make JD.com’s vision a reality. It will also increase the concentration of global food production and distribution, potentially pushing small-scale farmers, fisherfolk, forest peoples and rural communities further to the margins. There are also serious concerns that BRI could worsen land grabs, human rights abuses, indebtedness, and environmental and health impacts in target countries.

Also known as One Belt One Road (OBOR), BRI was launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. The largest infrastructure project ever embarked upon in world history, BRI focuses on promoting manufacturing, trade and investment, as well as the physical and digital integration of international markets. BRI provides a framework for Chinese investment to enhance existing infrastructure as well as build new production sites and trade routes to better connect China with the rest of the world.

BRI envisions a land-based “belt” connecting China with Europe and a sea-based “road” crossing the Indian Ocean to Africa up through the Mediterranean and reaching over the Pacific as far as Oceania and Latin America (see map). The initiative currently involves some 90 countries and is expected to cost more than US$1 trillion. Much of the funding comes from Chinese sources such as the China Development Bank and involves a combination of loans, bonds and equity investments. China also set up a special Silk Road Fund to finance BRI projects. International finance institutions such as the World Bank and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, as well as private banks like HSBC, have also expressed support or established their own BRI focused funds.

Map of the BRI global infrastructure network. Source: Mercator Institute for China Studies, May 2018

Because of its vast geographic scale and massive investment, BRI could reconfigure large parts of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the seas in between, into production and distribution areas with warehouses, logistics terminals and export-import zones. BRI-associated projects have already undermined thousands of people and hundreds of millions more are likely to be adversely affected to make way for BRI’s planned roads, railways, seaports, dry ports and airports.

Many of BRI’s projects are promoted as win-win ventures that will bring much needed jobs, capital and technology to local economies. In reality, they are likely to further concentrate power in the global food system and undermine national food security, local food producers and rural communities.

How BRI impacts agriculture

Food security has always been a major concern for the Chinese government. Until recently, this meant trying to achieve and maintain national self-sufficiency, with the task falling almost entirely to China’s small-scale farmers. Now the government is shifting its approach, replacing peasant farms with large commercial agribusiness operations, investing in farm production abroad and opening up to more imports.[2]

China’s foreign agricultural investment is increasingly led by the private sector.[3] Over the past ten years, Chinese companies have invested US$43 billion in agricultural production outside China.[4] They have also gone on massive shopping sprees, buying up operations in global production chains like pork in the US and soybeans in Brazil, and gaining greater control over the global seed industry by taking on majority ownership of the Swiss-based seed giant Syngenta.

China is also a huge importer of soybeans, dairy, oilseeds, sugar and cereals. Its meat and dairy imports are surging, propelled in part by trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand. Given its reliance on the US for about 20% of its food imports, the new “trade war” launched by President Donald Trump against China has put pressure on Beijing to find new sources of food and livestock feed.

BRI is expected to boost China’s outward investments in agribusiness as well as baseline infrastructure spending to facilitate greater agricultural trade. The annex table of agricultural projects under BRI gives a sense of what is unfolding in various countries.

Read the Selected list of BRI-related agricultural projects here.

CPEC in Pakistan

Total agricultural trade between China and Pakistan reached US$652 million in 2013.[5] The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), signed in April 2015 and worth US$46 billion, aims to increase this. The project’s goal is to connect southwest China to the port of Gwadar in Balochistan province through roads, railways and other infrastructure. Along the way it will open up new mines, mills and communication systems—not to mention military capabilities. Agriculture is central to the agenda.

The long-term plan is to replace traditional Pakistani farming with high-tech farming and marketing systems and a large-scale agroindustrial complex. Towards this end, CPEC outlines ten key areas for collaboration and nine special economic zones.[6] Projects include the construction of a fertiliser plant with an annual output of 800,000 tons; large-scale vegetable and grain processing plants in Asadabad, Islamabad, Lahore and Gwadar; and a meat processing plant in Sukkur. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland will be needed for these projects, with many farmers likely displaced.

CPEC is also facilitating the expansion of hybrid wheat, replacing farmers’ traditional wheat varieties to the benefit of Chinese agricultural input companies like Sinochem Group. The company has successfully grown Chinese hybrid wheat on a pilot area of 2,000 hectares in Pakistan and now plans to introduce it to other BRI countries like Uzbekistan and Bangladesh.[7]With wheat being one of Pakistan’s main staples, local communities fear these developments will negatively impact small farmers and lead to Chinese control over the country’s food supply, according to Roots for Equity.[8] CPEC is also bringing Chinese investment to the Pakistani dairy and seafood sectors for export to China, with cotton and rice also on the radar.[9]

BRI in Africa

East Africa is the first link in BRI’s connection to Africa. China is building ports and sea infrastructure to upgrade the route from South Asia to Kenya and Tanzania and then up to the Mediterranean via Djibouti. Inland railways are also being built. East African food and farming are bound to be undermined. For instance, China pledged to combine BRI with the longstanding Forum on China-Africa Cooperation to boost African agricultural productivity and increase its agricultural imports from Africa.[10] China already has agro-industrial parks in Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia and other countries, and is now expanding its agro-industrial investments under the banner of the BRI.

As for West Africa, President Xi Jinping visited the region for the first time in July 2018 with the intention of connecting the region to BRI. The Diamniadio International Industrial Platform, a new Chinese-funded special economic zone outside of Dakar, has established Senegal as a springboard for Chinese industry throughout West Africa. Since Senegal is a member of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, China can manufacture and export goods from the special economic zone to the US market using Senegal’s quota and duty-free privileges. The same holds for the EU market, where Senegalese goods can enter through the Everything But Arms trade arrangement.

Kazakhstan: Ground zero in Central Asia

Kazakhstan has been described as “ground zero” for China’s agricultural ambitions in Central Asia. A massive dry port, 49% owned by Chinese companies, has been built in the town of Korghos on the border between China and Kazakhstan to facilitate food trade. A railroad and a highway are being constructed across the country to connect China with Europe. And a trade corridor has been constructed which links Kazakhstan to Southeast Asia through the Chinese port of Lianyungang in Jiangsu province. BRI’s Silk Road fund alone has earmarked US$2 billion for Kazakhstan, much of it connected to agriculture.

Chinese interests are eyeing Kazakhstan as a new source of wheat, sugar, meat and vegetable oil. Authorities and foreign investors in Kazakhstan view China as a lucrative market for farm exports, especially beef, wheat and dairy. Kazakhstan is already on its way to tripling wheat exports to China by 2020. The country has also just broken into China’s soybean market and is building a new meat processing plant near the Chinese border focused on producing beef and lamb for the Chinese market.

In May 2016, the government of Kazakhstan announced that Chinese companies were proposing 19 new agroindustrial projects valued at US$1.9 billion under the banner of BRI. One year later, seven agreements worth US$160 million were signed at the Kazakh-Chinese Agriculture Investment Forum in Astana. With the exception of large-scale poultry and cattle farms, the projects focus more on processing than on primary production.

COFCO, China’s biggest food trader, is one of the Chinese players moving into Kazakhstan. COFCO has partnered with a Kazakhstani company to produce tomato paste for China and is starting to import beef from Kazakhstan through a freight train service opened in 2017. Another Chinese company, CITIC Construction, is investing in livestock production to generate beef for export to China. Meanwhile, Aiju Grain and Oil has started producing and exporting vegetable oil using farms that Aiju “either owns or invests in” in Kazakhstan. The list goes on, with Chinese companies partnering with Kazakhstani firms to venture into fruit and vegetable production, sugar processing, meat packing, oil processing, and flour and noodle manufacturing.

In 2016, protests erupted throughout Kazakhstan after the government announced it had revised a 2003 land law to extend the farmland lease period for foreigners from 10 to 25 years. As a result of the protests, the government postponed implementation of this measure until December 2021. Still, protests related to large-scale Chinese investments continue to rage, especially around labour issues.

Conflicts and controversies

There are a number of issues beginning to emerge from Chinese foreign investment in general, and BRI projects in particular. These revolve around debt and threats to national sovereignty, land grabbing, displacement, human rights abuses in conflict zones, environmental impacts, public health concerns and labour violations.

Poster for a Chinese high-speed train at the construction site for a bridge over the Mekong River near Luang Prabang, Laos. Photo: Adam Dean for The New York Times

Many BRI projects are financed by loans to recipient governments which can’t pay them back. The government of Sri Lanka, for instance, agreed to allow China to build a new port on its southern shore, but when Colombo couldn’t pay back the loan, the Chinese took over the port. Other BRI projects have led to similar concerns about debt repayment. In August 2018, Malaysia withdrew from a US$22 billion BRI project fearing it would be unable to pay for it. Indonesia’s President Jokowi is holding off on committing to BRI due to similar concerns.

Land is another controversial issue since BRI projects require large swaths of land on which to develop infrastructure and industrial zones. In Laos, for instance, a railway project (initiated before BRI but then placed under it) is grabbing the land of over 4,400 farming families, who are being displaced without compensation.[11] Many of the families have been waiting for compensation for more than two years and some have been forced to migrate to neighbouring countries to find work after losing their farms. A 2015 GRAIN report identified 61 land deals involving Chinese companies covering 3.3 million hectares in 31 countries.[12] It is unclear exactly how many of these deals are directly tied to BRI-associated projects, but BRI is certainly helping to increase China’s control over the world’s farmland.

BRI projects are also passing through conflict areas in several countries. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, for example, cuts through the disputed territory of Gilgit Baltistan, which is likely to exacerbate religious, geopolitical, military and land tensions between India and Pakistan. In Southeast Asia, planned trading networks between China and India include areas of longstanding conflict such as the historical persecution and displacement of the Rohingyas and other ethnic minorities in Rakhine State, Myanmar.[13] Both China and India have proposed to set up a special economic zone in Rakhine State to link trade between South and Southeast Asia under the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor. In addition, according to Community Care and Emergency Response and Rehabilitation Myanmar, numerous indigenous landholders who lived from agriculture were evicted when the persecution and expulsion of the Rohingya intensified in the area.

Another conflict area in Myanmar, Kachin State, has been targeted as a growing expansion area for banana plantations for export to China. Villagers in Myanmar report thousands of trucks coming in and out of the region transporting bananas. As a result, there have been growing protests against Chinese investments in Myanmar over the past year.

Finally, there are serious concerns about the public health, labour and environmental impacts of BRI projects. Chinese foreign agricultural investments in Southeast Asia have led to the increased use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers, causing health problems in communities.

This is especially well documented in the case of Chinese banana and rubber plantations in Laos and Myanmar. Water supplies are affected as water is polluted or diverted from communities to irrigate Chinese plantations. There are also reports of declining soil quality on Chinese plantations caused by input-heavy farming practices. Additionally, there are reports of forced labour being used on some Chinese plantations. [14]

Conclusion

More work is urgently needed to map out the reach and impacts of BRI-affiliated projects that are taking over farmland and resources with the aim of boosting agricultural production and trade with China. Not only are these projects having a negative impact on the livelihoods of small farmers and rural communities in target countries, they will also ultimately undermine peasant farmers in China by replacing them with industrial production and food imports. Instead of the large-scale industrial farming and expanded global trade that BRI envisions, we need to support the small farmers and resources involved in ecological food production for local markets.

Box 1. BRI accelerating climate disaster

BRI’s model of infrastructure-driven economic growth is based on grabbing large areas of land and territory to convert to economic corridors. This necessarily involves the loss of forests, ecosystems, traditional livelihoods and biodiversity. What’s more, all of BRI’s projects are high carbon-emitting initiatives: from building new roads, railway lines and ports in the Pacific and Indian Oceans to creating oil and gas pipelines to Russia, Kazakhstan and Myanmar to setting up plantations, large-scale farms and processing zones across Asia and possibly Africa.

While it pledges to cut coal use at home, China is opening new mines and building several large-scale coal power plants abroad: in Pakistan alone, Chinese coal investments reach more than US$10 billion.[15]  According to The Financial Times, BRI energy projects focus “disproportionately” on fossil fuels: “If new energy infrastructure investments in BRI countries follow patterns similar to the average emissions intensity observed in these countries in the past, roughly three quarters of the global energy-related carbon budget compatible with the Paris Agreement will be consumed by 2040.”[16]

An environmental assessment of BRI projects in Myanmar shows that forest degradation is another major risk from projects like the oil and gas pipeline from the Rakhine coastline up to China’s Yunnan province, the US$10 billion Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone, and associated roads and railways.[17] Widespread deforestation in Myanmar due to these projects could impact 24 million people, with farmers most affected. Deforestation has also been cited as a cause of the landslides and floods that occurred in Myanmar in 2015, which led to the salinisation of valuable rice paddy land.

Lastly, most of the agriculture projects being developed under BRI are industrial and export-oriented. The industrial food system is already responsible for up to half of global greenhouse gas emissions. [18] The World Bank says that emissions from agriculture and food could account for as much as 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions the world can emit while still having a likely chance of limiting dangerous global temperature rise. Given its focus on expanding industrial agriculture and food trade, BRI could potentially accelerate the world into climate disaster even faster than experts predict.

Box. 2 BRI and trade deals

Trade agreements are expected to play an important role in lending legal strength to BRI projects. This is particularly the case with agreements setting out legal protections for investors, common food safety standards, intellectual property rules and market access arrangements. China already has trade deals with a number of countries involved in BRI projects including Pakistan, Maldives, Georgia, the Southeast Asian ASEAN bloc and the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. It is also currently negotiating a massive regional trade deal (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP) that includes India, as well as smaller bilateral pacts with key BRI partners like Sri Lanka and the Gulf States.

The agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union is significant because it directly links China with both Russia and Kazakhstan, major territories for BRI. It is, for the moment, a “light” agreement that open the door to formal cooperation without locking the countries into strong new commitments. But those openings could lead to stronger agreements about markets and investment down the line. RCEP could similarly upgrade China’s trade and investment opportunities in India and Southeast Asia, but it’s not clear whether and when consensus could be reached. In the coming years, we can expect China to push new trade deals with Pakistan and Bangladesh, among others.

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Notes

[1] Nicholas Hildyard, “Extreme infrastructure: Infrastructure corridors in context”, Presentation at Eurodad International Conference, June 2017, http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/sites/thecornerhouse.org.uk/files/Extreme%20Infrastructure_0.pdf

[2] China Government Network, “Li Keqiang: Developing modern agriculture in an industrial way” (in Chinese), Central Government Portal, 2015, http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2015-07/25/content_2902475.htm.

[3] Several large state-owned enterprises like Chongqing, COFCO and China National Agriculture Development Group Corporation, as well as provincial authorities, invest in farming abroad. A survey estimated that 47 Chinese companies rented or purchased a total of 983,000 hectares of land abroad. These included large state-owned companies like COFCO and China Agricultural Development Group, companies affiliated with provincial authorities like Chongqing Grain Group and Jilin Province Overseas Agriculture Investment Co., and 38 companies affiliated with provincial state farm systems. See: Gooch and Gale, USDA, “China’s Foreign Agriculture Investments”, Economic Information Bulletin No. 192, April 2018, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324984953_China’s_Foreign_Agriculture_Investments

[4] American Enterprise Institute, “China global investment tracker”, 2015, https://www.aei.org/china-global-investment-tracker/

[5] Qiao Jinliang, “Broad prospects for agriculture co-op under “Belt and Road” initiative”, China Economy Net, 2016, https://farmlandgrab.org/25916

[6] CPEC Special economic zones, http://cpec.gov.pk/special-economic-zones-projects

[7] Liu Zhihua, “Chinese hybrid wheat brings hope for farmers in Pakistan”, Sinochem, 2018, http://www.sinochem.com/english/s/1569-4966-121571.html; China Seed, “China Seed Signs Hybrid Wheat Industrialization Cooperation Agreement with Pakistani Enterprise”, Sinochem, 2018, http://www.sinochem.com/english/s/1569-5518-18020.html

[8] Askari Abbas, “Patenting agriculture: case of Chinese hybrid wheat seeds introduce under CPEC, Roots for Equity, 18 December 2018, https://rootsforequity.noblogs.org/patenting-agriculture-case-of-chinese-hybrid-wheat-seeds-introduced-under-cpec/

[9] Khurram Husain, “CPEC moves into agriculture”, Dawn, 18 October 2018, https://www.dawn.com/news/1441188

[10] Ehizuelen Michael Mitchell Omoruyi, “FOCAC, BRI reshaping Sino-African cooperation”, China Africa Daily, 14 Sep 2018, http://africa.chinadaily.com.cn/weekly/2018-09/14/content_36913139.htm  

[11] Radio Free Asia, “Chinese railway project in Laos leaves farmers in the lurch”, 10 January 2019, https://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/lao-farmer-railway-01102019160842.html

[12] GRAIN, “Corporations replace peasants as the ‘vanguard’ of China’s new food security agenda”, November 2015, https://www.grain.org/e/5330

[13] Ashrafuzzaman Khan, “The strategic importance of Rakhine State”, Straits Times, 3 September 2018, https://farmlandgrab.org/28403

[14] See the excellent report by Mark Grimsditch, “Chinese agriculture in Southeast Asia: Investment, aid and trade in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar”, Heinrich Böll Foundation, June 2017:  https://th.boell.org/en/2017/06/22/chinese-agriculture-southeast-asia-investment-aid-and-trade-cambodia-laos-and-myanmar

[15] CPEC energy priority projects, http://cpec.gov.pk/energy

[16] Mattia Romani, “China’s Belt and Road Initiative puts Paris climate commitments at risk”, The Financial Times, 14 December 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/e925f9fa-ff99   

[17] Naw Betty Han, “Belt and Road road corridors put half of Myanmar’s population at risk”, Myanmar TImes, 22 February 2018, http://bilaterals.org/?belt-and-road-road-corridors-put

[18] GRAIN, “Food sovereignty: five steps to cool the planet and feed its people”, December 2014, https://www.grain.org/e/5102

Featured image: Farmers pack tomatoes in Guandao village, southwest China, during the 2014 spring harvest. Photo: Xinhua/Lu Boan

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The transnational company Bayer said Wednesday that farmers in France and Germany were digging up thousands of hectares of rapeseed fields after traces of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which are banned for cultivation, were found in seeds sold by the company.

In Europe, few varieties of GMO are authorized for growing, mostly due to environmental concerns. However, during a routine check, French authorities found out GMO seeds in three rapeseed seeds batches sold by Dekalb, a brand previously owned by Monsanto before the company was taken over by Bayer in 2018.

GMO crops are not authorized in Europe, although GMO could be imported for food and animal feed, Catherine Lamboley, Bayer’s chief operating officer for France, said and explained that the source of the contamination of rapeseed seeds, which were produced in Argentine GMO-free area, is not known yet.

Bayer issued a product recall but some of the seeds had already been sown, representing about 8,000 hectares in France and 2,500-3,000 hectares in Germany, which are in the process of being dug up.

“We decided to immediately stop all rapeseed seed production in Argentina,” Lamboley said.

The overall cost of this GMO contamination is not known. However, Bayer offers US$2,278 per hectare as compensation to affected farmers, which suggest a US$23 million payout for both countries.

According to the transnational company, the amount will be enough to compensate for the economic losses caused to farmers in this season and the next, since they will not be able to cultivate crops as a precaution to avoid the GMO strain’s reappearance.

The order to destroy some crops is another blow for European rapeseed growers who had already cut sowings sharply due to dry weather.

Besides, the currently affected area is small compared to the total French winter rapeseed area, which the farm ministry, in December, forecast at 1.23 million hectares. The German crop area is believed to be close to 1 million hectares.

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It didn’t take long for Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s comments that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had “gone full gangster” to make the news rounds all the way from the U.S. to the Middle East, across the globe and back again. The Republican senator made his controversial comments during Retired Gen. John Abizaid‘s nomination hearing Wednesday in Washington to be the Trump administration’s first ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Despite increasing tensions between the two long-time allies, the U.S. has not had an ambassador to Saudi Arabia since Trump became president in January 2017. Abizaid is a retired four-star Army general who led U.S. Central Command during the Iraq war under the Bush and Obama administrations.

During the hearing, both Republican and Democrats pressed Abizaid over what they said were Saudi domestic repression, including lashings, electrocutions, beatings, whippings, sexual abuse, raids, the alleged detention and torture of activists and royal family members, the likely killing of Saudi dissident journalist, and U.S. resident, Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey last October, as well as the recent alleged torture of a U.S. citizen.

Ruthless and reckless

Republican Sen. Jim Risch, the committee chairman, joined in, stating that “Saudi Arabia has engaged in acts that are simply not acceptable.” Another Republican, Sen. Ron Johnson reiterated Rubio’s “full gangster” remarks. Rubio added that

“He [bin Salman] is reckless, he’s ruthless, he has a penchant for escalation, for taking high risks, confrontational in his foreign policy approach and I think increasingly willing to test the limits of what he can get away with the United States.”

Senators also condemned Saudi Arabia’s conduct in the ongoing war in Yemen, which the Crown Prince has been instrumental in. Abizaid, for his part, paid his part skillfully, which should help ease concerns among senators whether he is fit or not for the high-profile diplomatic post. Though defending the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia as strategically important, he also called for accountability for the murder of Khashoggi, and support for human rights.

“In the long run, we need a strong and mature partnership with Saudi Arabia,” Abizaid told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “It is in our interests to make sure that the relationship is sound.”

Part of the unbridled criticism over recent alleged Saudi misbehavior comes from frustrated American lawmakers that want to see the Trump administration take a harder line over Saudi Arabia, while both the House and Senate have passed resolutions to that would end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. However, Trump has resisted such resolutions. Abizaid said that continued U.S. support “bolsters the self-defense capabilities of our partners and reduces the risk of harm to civilians.”

Significant take-aways

At the end of the day, several issues have to be examined. First, though lawmakers have the right to make such assertions at the hearing, the actions of Saudi Arabia are still the actions of a sovereign power beyond the scope of U.S. control. A comparison could even be made over human rights abuse claims, torture and other disconcerting claims in China, particularly in Tibet, where hundreds of thousands of citizens, mostly men, are detained for extended periods of time and endure what Beijing calls re-education. Yet, the U.S. relationship with China operates under different imperatives that the U.S.-Saudi relationship, so pressure over these alleged abuses isn’t being promulgated on the same scale.

The second take away from remarks made at Wednesday’s hearing centers on what can be called reality-geopolitics. The more than 70-year alliance between Washington and Riyadh that has survived World War II, being on the same side against Soviet expansion during the Cold War, surviving the fallout from both the 1967 and 1973 Arab oil embargo, managing Saudi angst at continued U.S. support of Israel, as well as now working together trying to reign in Iranian regional hegemony and support of terrorism – this fragile alliance has to be viewed through a different lens than other alliances.

Economic necessity

The U.S.-Saudi alliance is one born of necessity, mostly economic (global oil markets) as well as one of wrestling with middle eastern security. The two nations don’t share common values, like the U.S. does with the U.K. or with much of Western Europe, doesn’t share a similar history, whose values are derived from extremely a different religious history and perspective. The U.S. is the largest democracy in the world, while Saudi Arabia is a top-down authoritarian monarchy influenced in large part by its strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam.

Just the fact that two radically different nations can exist as allies for so long has to appreciate. Nonetheless, Senator Bob Menendez, the committee’s ranking Democrat, acknowledged the strategic importance of Saudi ties, amid threats from Iran. “But we cannot let these interests blind us to our values or to our long-term interests in stability,” he added.

However, another point to consider is growing U.S. energy independence, particularly as the country recent recently passed the 12 million barrels per day oil production mark, with that production amount projected to increase going forward to next year and beyond. Though U.S. crude is mostly light, sweet as opposed to heavier, sour crude mostly produced and imported from Saudi Arabia by U.S. refineries, growing U.S. global market share, reduced Saudi oil imports, could indeed lead to fracturing on the U.S.-Saudi alliance. It’s oil first and middle eastern security second, which often goes hand in hand, that is the glue that keeps this fragile alliance from falling apart.

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Tim Daiss is an oil markets analyst, journalist and author that has been working out of the Asia-Pacific region for 12 years.

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

During the past few days, Venezuela was suffering a major blackout that left the country in darkness. The crisis started on March 7 with a failure at the Guri hydroelectric power plant, which produces 80% of the country’s power. Additionally, an explosion was reported at Sidor Substation in Bolivar state.

Since then, the government has been struggling to solve the crisis with varying success.

President Nicolas Maduro says that the blackout is the reason of “the electric war announced and directed by American imperialism.” According to Maduro, electrical systems were targeted by cyberattacks and “infiltrators”. He added that authorities managed to restore power to “many parts” of the country on March 8, but the restored systems were knocked down after the country’s grid was once again attacked. He noted that “one of the sources of generation that was working perfectly” had been sabotaged and accused “infiltrators of attacking the electric company from the inside.”

Communication and information minister Jorge Rodriguez described the situation as “the most brutal attack on the Venezuelan people in 200 years”. He also described the situation as the “deliberate sabotage” on behalf of the US-backed opposition.

In own turn, the US continues to reject claims accusing it of attempts to destabilize the situation in the country. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo even claimed that Washington and its allies would not hurt the “ordinary Venezuelans.” According to him, what’s hurting the people is the “Maduro regime’s incompetence.”

“No food. No medicine. Now, no power. Next, no Maduro,” Pompeo wrote in Twitter, adding that “Maduro’s policies bring nothing but darkness.”

Unfortunately, the top diplomat did not explain how wide-scale economic sanctions imposed to wreck the country’s economic should help the “ordinary Venezuelans”.

The State Department attitude was expectedly supported by US-proclaimed Venezuelan Interim President Juan Guaido, who recently returned to country after an attempt to get more foreign support for US-backed regime change efforts. Guaido accused the “Maduro Regime” of turning the blackout during the night in a “horror movie” with his “gangs” terrorizing people.

Another narrative, which recently set the mainstream media on fire, is the alleged Cuban meddling in the crisis. According to this very version of the event, “forces of democracy” were not able to overthrow the Venezuelan government because its political elite is controlled by Cuban intelligence services. President Donald Trump even said Maduro is nothing more than a “Cuban puppet.”

Taking account already existing allegations about the presence of Hezbollah and Russian mercenaries in Venezuela and an expected second attempt to stage US aid delivery provocation on the Colombian-Venezuelan border, it becomes clear that chances of US direct action to bring into power own political puppet are once again growing.

The February attempt to stage a provocation failed and make a final step toward a regime change by force failed after it was publicly revealed that the US-backed opposition was intentionally burning “aid trucks” to blame the Maduro government. Furthermore, the military backed Maduro, and the scale and intensity of protests across the country were not enough to paralyze the government.

The blackout in Venezuela was likely meant to bring the country into disorder and draw off army and security forces. Therefore, an attempt to stage a new provocation to justify a foreign intervention to overthrow the Venezuelan government could be expected anytime soon.

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A report by a London based think tank that focuses on capital markets has published the most comprehensive analysis yet of the impact of Brexit on the banking and finance industry in London. It has determined that more than 250 firms in banking and finance have moved or are moving business, staff, assets or legal entities away from the UK to the EU – and these numbers are likely to increase significantly in the near future. In total, close to £1 trillion of assets have already been relocated – with much more expected.

With little more than two weeks to go until a potential ‘no deal’ Brexit, more bad news arrives, this time for the Financial Services industry.

The New Financial think tank has a membership made up of some of the biggest names in the financial services business, including the City of London Corporation, JP Morgan, Barclays, Lombard and the London Stock Exchange to name just a few. It has identified in its report that 275 firms in the UK have moved or are moving some of their business, staff, assets or legal entities from the UK to the EU to prepare for Brexit. Around 250 firms have chosen specific post-Brexit hubs for their EU business, and more than 200 firms have set up or are setting up new entities in the EU to manage their business.

“These moves are the inevitable consequence of Brexit. The political uncertainty since the referendum and failure to reach a deal has forced firms to prepare for the worst and put their contingency plans into action. Much of the damage has already been done and for many firms, Brexit happened sometime last year. This shift will chip away at London’s position as the dominant financial centres in Europe; increase cost, complexeity and risk in European financial services; reduce the UK’s influence in the banking and finance industry at a European and global level; and hit tax receipts and exports in financial services.”

The report found that:

Dublin is by far the biggest beneficiary with 100 relocations, well ahead of Luxembourg (60), Paris (41), Frankfurt (40) and Amsterdam (32).

The post-Brexit landscape is much more ‘multipolar’ than before: more than 40 firms are moving staff or business to more than one financial centre in the EU.

There is a wide range in how different sectors have responded: for example, nearly half of asset managers, hedge funds and private equity firms in our sample have chosen Dublin, while nearly 90% of firms moving to Frankfurt are banks or investment banks.

“The shift in underlying business is more significant than headlines about the number of staff: our conservative estimates shows that banks and investment banks are moving around £800bn in assets; asset managers have so far transferred more than £65bn in funds; and insurance companies have so far moved £35bn in assets.”

New Financial found that the impact of Brexit is bigger than expected and that they think the report actually understates the full picture. Many firms will have quietly moved parts of their staff or business below the radar, others will have held off making a formal move. They also think plenty of other firms aren’t yet ready and not yet moved.

The think tank report also clearly states an expectation that the headline numbers will increase significantly in the next few years as local regulators across the EU require firms to increase the substance of their local operations. Worse still, the report says that hundreds of firms will have to move something somewhere to retain access to EU markets but which haven’t yet done so.

“The scale of the shift is not to be underestimated either. Only a small number of firms have said what they are moving and already the numbers are very large: £800bn in bank assets is nearly 10% of the entire UK banking system. The final tally is likely to be much higher, which will reduce the UK’s tax base, supervisory influence and ultimately have an impact on jobs.”

This report adds weight to the mounting evidence that Brexit is and will be extremely damaging to the United Kingdom in the short, medium and long-term prospects of the country.

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Even as the Venezuelan government blamed the recent power outage on U.S.-led “sabotage,” the U.S. has long had a plan on the books for targeting the civilian power grid of adversarial nations.

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For nearly four days, much of Venezuela has been without power, bringing the country’s embattled economy to a near standstill. Though power is now returning, the outage saw U.S. officials and politicians blame the Venezuelan government for the crisis while officials in Caracas accused the U.S. of conducting “sabotage” and launching cyberattacks that targeted its civilian power grid as well as of employing saboteurs within Venezuela.

Although many mainstream media outlets have echoed the official U.S. government response, some journalists have strayed from the pack. One notable example is Kalev Leetaru, who wrote at Forbes that “the United States remotely interfering with its [Venezuela’s] power grid is actually quite realistic.”

Leetaru also noted that “timing such an outage to occur at a moment of societal upheaval in a way that delegitimizes the current government, exactly as a government-in-waiting has presented itself as a ready alternative, is actually one of the tactics” he had previously explored in a 2015 article detailing U.S. government hybrid warfare tactics “to weaken an adversary prior to conventional invasion or to forcibly and deniably effect a transition in a foreign government.”

In addition to Leetaru’s claims, others have asserted U.S. government involvement after U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is deeply involved in Trump’s Venezuela policy, appeared to have prior knowledge that the blackouts would occur when he tweeted about them only three minutes after they had begun.

While several journalists have pointed out that the probability that the Trump administration was responsible for the blackout is highly likely, few — if any — pointed out that the U.S. has long had highly developed plans involving the use of cyberattacks to attack critical power-grid infrastructure in countries targeted for regime change by Washington.

Indeed, the most well-known plan of this type, known by its codename “Nitro Zeus,” was originally created under the George W. Bush administration and was aimed at Iran. With so many former Bush officials now calling the shots in the Trump administration, particularly its Venezuela policy, the potential return of a “Nitro Zeus” virus, this time tailored to Venezuela, seems increasingly likely.

A little hammer to use when big hammers have been nixed

The “Nitro Zeus” plan first came to light in a November 2016 exposé published in the New York Times, which described it as an “elaborate plan” that was created for use against Iran were negotiations over its nuclear program to fail. That program targeted “Iran’s air defenses, communications systems and crucial parts of its power grid. At its height it “involved thousands of American military and intelligence personnel” and is believed to have cost tens of millions of dollars. The program intimately involved both the National Security Agency’s Tailored Access Operations unit and the U.S. Cyber Command.

Screengrab from The New York Times

The program was shelved when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was established, though the Trump administration’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the deal has led some to ask whether the Trump administration has been considering reviving the program. While they may not have revived it for use against Iran, they instead may have done so in Venezuela, if Venezuelan government assertions that a U.S. cyberattack is to blame for much of the country’s recent power outage are to be believed.

Indeed, Leetaru noted in his recent Forbes article that “given the U.S. government’s longstanding concern with Venezuela’s government, it is likely that the U.S. already maintains a deep presence within the country’s national infrastructure grid,” much as it did with Iran in connection with the Nitro Zeus program prior to its public revelation three years ago.

The Nitro Zeus program is not nearly as well known as its relative, the Stuxnet virus, which was co-developed by the U.S. and Israel and used to attack Iranian software controlling uranium enrichment centers. Yet Nitro Zeus, despite its relative lack of infamy, is notable for several reasons. First, it “took it [U.S. cyberwarfare] to a new level,” according to a former official involved in the project cited by the Times. This was because, prior to Nitro Zeus, “the U.S. had never assembled a combined cyber and kinetic attack plan on this scale,” and also because executing the program would have “significant effects on civilians, particularly if the United States had to cut vast swaths of the country’s electrical grid and communications networks.”

Another reason Nitro Zeus is notable, particularly in light of U.S. efforts to meddle in Venezuela, is the motive for its creation. Indeed, although Nitro Zeus became the “enormous, and enormously complex” program detailed by the Times during the Obama administration, work on the program had actually begun during the George W. Bush administration. According to a report in the Daily Beast, Bush had considered Nitro Zeus “a necessary tactical alternative after the Iraq War sabotaged his chances of starting another Middle East invasion.” In other words, after the Iraq War debacle made it more difficult for the U.S. to launch unilateral military interventions, the Bush administration opted to develop “non-kinetic” military tools that would avoid angering the U.S. public and U.S. allies abroad.

Furthermore, as Tyler Rogoway wrote at Foxtrot Alpha:

[Programs like Nitro Zeus] can be paired for synergistic effect, leaving its target country’s military blind and deaf and its population suffering. And all this can be had without ever dropping a bomb and even under the veil of plausible deniability.”

This, according to Rogoway, has led such programs to become “more and more a viable alternative to traditional forms of attack,” given that the U.S. can deny its involvement, avoiding potential diplomatic blowback, and because it can wreak havoc not just on a country’s military but its civilian population.

The logic behind the likelihood of U.S. cyber sabotage

While “Nitro Zeus” was never unleashed upon Iran, it’s likely that the program spawned similar attack plans on the power grids of other adversarial nations given the precedent it set. As the Times pointed out in its Nitro Zeus exposé:

The United States military develops contingency plans for all kinds of possible conflicts, such as a North Korean attack on the South, loose nuclear weapons in South Asia or uprisings in Africa or Latin America. Most sit on the shelf, and are updated every few years.”

This point was expanded upon by Rogoway, who noted:

Nitro Zeus is most likely one of a whole slew of plans to attack potential enemies via cyber weaponry. Plans surely exist for all of America’s potential adversaries, and some are likely to be far more elaborate and deadly than anything that has been disclosed to date.”

There are more than a few indications that many of the more aggressive “contingency plans” have moved to the top of the toolbox under the Trump administration. For instance, key former Bush officials that are now in the Trump administration, particularly John Bolton and Elliot Abrams, are known for their aggressive stances and willingness to promote extreme policies targeting adversaries, even those policies that harm or kill scores of innocent civilians. Thus, voices like those in the Obama State Department and National Security Council, who had warned of the potential adverse effects on civilians that a Nitro Zeus blackout could cause, are unlikely to influence the likes of Bolton and Abrams — who have an outsized role in creating the administration’s Venezuela policy.

Furthermore, such a plan would be considered valuable by Bolton and Abrams in the same way that Bush valued Nitro Zeus after his “hands were tied” following the Iraq War disaster. In regard to Venezuela, Bolton and Abrams similarly have their hands tied when it comes to military action, given that military intervention of any type has been resoundingly rejected by the U.S.’ allies in Latin America and elsewhere. Not only that but Abrams’ favored tactic of providing arms disguised as “humanitarian aid” to insurgents has also failed, limiting the aggressive actions that can be taken by the administration.

Unable to launch a military intervention — either overt or covert — a Nitro Zeus cyberattack would likely have been a top contender for a next step following the failed “humanitarian aid” stunt and the rejection of any type of military intervention by the U.S.’ Latin American allies.

In addition, many of those responsible for the creation of the Nitro Zeus program share connections with neoconservatives who are influential in the Trump administration. For instance, Keith Alexander — who was NSA director at the time the Nitro Zeus program began and for much of its development — is now the CEO of his new cybersecurity consultancy, IronNet Cybersecurity. Sitting on IronNet’s board of directors alongside Alexander is Jack Keane, a zealously pro-war retired general whom Trump valued enough to offer the position of Secretary of Defense, an offer Keane declined. Keane is a close associate of the neoconservative Kagan family and is currently chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, founded by Kimberly Kagan and financed by top U.S. weapons companies.

With Bush-era warmongers now dominating Trump’s Venezuela policy, it seems increasingly likely that efforts to revive the Bush/Obama-era Nitro Zeus program have taken place. Indeed, with such an enormous and complex program already on the books and the likely existence of spin-off programs that have developed over the past decade, it was likely the easiest route for another “aggressive” U.S.-backed measure targeting the Venezuelan government.

However, if the U.S. did conduct a cyber attack on Venezuela’s power grid, it would not be powerful neoconservatives in the administration who would ultimately be to blame, as only the U.S. president can authorize an offensive cyberattack. Thus, if any part of Venezuela’s current blackout was indeed U.S.-directed sabotage, it was President Donald Trump who gave the order to attack Venezuela’s civilian power infrastructure, a strange thing to do for someone who professes to care so much for the Venezuelan people.

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Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

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Giants: The Global Power Elite

March 12th, 2019 by Peter Phillips

My new book, Giants: The Global Power Elite, follows in the tradition of C. Wright Mills’ work the Power Elite, which was published in 1956.  Like Mills, I am seeking to bring a consciousness of power networks affecting our lives and the state of society to the broader public. Mills described how the power elite were those “who decide whatever is decided” of major consequence. Sixty-two years later, power elites have globalized and built institutions for preserving and protecting capital investments everywhere in the world.

Central to the idea of a globalized power elite is the concept of a transnational capitalist class theorized in academic literature for some 20 years. Giants reviews the transition from nation state power elites, as described by Mills, to a transnational power elite centralized on the control of global capital around the world. The global power elite function as a non-governmental network of similarly educated, wealthy people with common interests of managing, and protecting concentrated global wealth and insuring its continued growth. Global power elites influence and use international institutions controlled by governmental authorities like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), World Trade Association (WTO), G-7, G-20, and others. These world governmental institutions receive instructions, and recommendations for policy actions from networks of non-governmental global power elite organizations and associations.

The global 1% comprise over 36 million millionaires, and 2,400 billionaires who employ their excess capital with investment management firms like BlackRock and J.P Morgan Chase. The top 17 of these trillion-dollar investment management firms—which I call the Giants— controlled $41.1 trillion dollars in 2017. These firms are all directly invested in each other and managed by only 199 people who are the decision makers on how and where global capital will be invested. Their biggest problem is they have more capital than there are safe investment opportunities, which leads to risky speculative investments, increased war spending, and the privatization of the public commons.

Prof. Peter Phillips (right)

My research effort was to identify the most important networks of the global power elite and the individuals therein. I name and provide biographies for over 300 people, who are the core members of power networks that manage, facilitate, and protect global capital. The global power elites are the activist core of the transnational capitalist class—1% of the world’s wealthy people. They serve the uniting function of providing ideological justifications for their shared interests through the corporate media and they establish the parameters of needed actions for implementation by transnational governmental organizations and capitalist nation-states.

The global power elites, who direct the world’s corporate giants, overlap with the leadership of organizations such as the Council of Thirty, the Trilateral Commission, and the Atlantic Council. These privately-funded non-governmental organizations provide direct instruction and policy recommendation to governments, international institutions, the G-7 and their intelligence agencies, and other top capitalist countries. The US/NATO military empire operates in nearly every country of the world to protect global capital and the wealthy 1%.

The global power elite are self-aware of their existence as a numerical minority in the vast sea of impoverished humanity. Roughly 80% of the world’s population lives on less than ten dollars a day and half live on less than three dollars a day.

This concentration of protected wealth leads to a crisis of humanity, whereby poverty, war, starvation, mass alienation, media propaganda, and environmental devastation are reaching levels that threaten our species’  future. Organizing resistance and challenging the global power elite should be foremost on the agendas of democracy movements everywhere, now and in the near future. Addressing top-down economic controls, monopolistic power, and the specifics of the global power elites’ activities will require challenging mobilizations and social movements worldwide.

The act of identifying the global power elite by name may persuade some of them to recognize their own humanity and take corrective action to save the world. Global power elites are probably the only ones capable of correcting this crisis without major civil unrest, war, and chaos. Giants is an effort to bring a consciousness of the importance of systemic change and redistribution of wealth to the 99%, and to global power elites themselves, in the hope that we all can collectively begin the process of saving humanity. In that effort, I highly recommend using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a moral base to offer a united thread of consciousness for all seeking human betterment. Humankind deserves nothing less. 

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Peter Phillips is a professor of political sociology at Sonoma State University, where he has taught since 1994. He teaches courses in Political Sociology, Sociology of Power, Sociology of Media, Sociology of Conspiracies and Investigative Sociology. He served as director of Project Censored from 1996 to 2010 and as president of Media Freedom Foundation from 2003 to 2017.  Giants: The Global Power Elite is his 18th book from Seven Stories Press—it was released in August 2018. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

In 1981 when Israel officially annexed Syria’s Golan Heights after occupying it following the Six Day War, the United States under President Ronald Reagan voted unanimously with the UN Security Council to condemn the Israeli theft of around 1,800 square kilometers.

On December 15 1981, The New York Times reported:

The Reagan Administration said the annexation of the Golan Heights was inconsistent with the Camp David accords. A White House spokesman said the United States had been given no prior warning of the move.

Since that time, the situation has changed dramatically in Israel’s favor. 

Last November, the US voted with Israel against a UN resolution calling for an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan. The resolution was passed by a 181-2 margin with only the US and Israel voting against. The US had abstained on previous resolutions calling for Israel to leave the Golan Heights. 

The record shows and the late IDF boss Moshe Dayan admitted Israel had engineered numerous provocations in a demilitarized zone on the Golan border of Syria prior to the war. 

This led to retaliatory strikes on Israeli kibbutzim and moshavim near the border which in turn prompted a response by Israel. In addition to its strategic significance, the Golan Heights has a bounty of fresh water. During the invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon, the Israelis planned to steal water from the Litani River and divert it to Israel. 

The Golan figures into the plan for a Greater Israel envisioned by David Ben-Gurion and other leading Zionists. According to Ben-Gurion, the frontiers of a future Israel would reach 

to the north, the Litani river, to the northeast, the Wadi ‘Owja, twenty miles south of Damascus; the southern border will be mobile and pushed into Sinai at least up to Wadi al-‘Arish; and to the east, the Syrian Desert, including the furthest edge of Transjordan. (Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians).

There is, however, a more practical and less ideological reason for annexing the Golan Heights—oil.

In early 2013, Israel granted the American corporation Genie Oil and Gas a permit to explore for oil and gas on a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights. Genie Energy is advised by Dick Cheney and its shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch. 

Bestselling author and strategic risk consultant F. William Engdahl writes in Golan Heights, Israel, Oil and Trump:

As I noted in a piece published on NEO [New Eastern Outlook] in 2015, Genie Energy is no “penny stock” run-of-the-mill oil company. Its board of Advisors includes Dick Cheney. It includes former CIA head and chairman of the above-mentioned Foundation for Defense of Democracies, James Woolsey. It includes Jacob Lord Rothschild of the London banking dynasty and a former business partner of convicted Russian oil oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Before his arrest Khodorkovsky secretly transferred his shares in Yukos Oil to Rothschild.

In 2015 it was announced a large oil deposit was discovered in the Golan. It is estimated the reserve contains billions of barrels, enough to satisfy Israel’s energy needs for decades. That same year drilling began north of Nahal El Al near Moshav Natur, a former kibbutz on the southern Golan Heights.

Earlier this month several Senate Republicans, led by failed presidential candidate Ted Cruz and the notorious neocon Tom Cotton, introduced resolutions calling for the US to officially recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan, although the presence of vast oil reserves is not mentioned, not by Congress or a stenographic corporate propaganda media. There is a strong consensus on both sides of the aisle. Democrat House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer supports recognizing Israel’s “right” to keep the Golan and its reserve of oil. 

On March 7, World Israeli News reported Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad warned Kristin Lund, head of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, that “Syria will attack Israel if it does not leave the Golan Heights.”

According to World Israeli News,

[M]ultiple Israeli political leaders have responded to Syria’s historic claim to the Israeli-occupied Golan and willingness to go to war over it. While speaking on a visit to the Golan Heights, Blue and White party politicians Gabi Ashkenazi, Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz [who may replace Bibi Netanyahu] and Moshe Ya’alon vowed, ‘It is ours and it will stay ours’—certainly a dominant sentiment that cuts across Israeli party lines.

Resolutions introduced by staunchly pro-Israel advocates in the US Senate follow a pattern. Venezuela, with the largest reserves of oil in the world, and Iran, with oil reserves coming in third behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, are now suffering under US-imposed economic sanctions.

The Trump administration argues Venezuela is a brutal socialist dictatorship and Iran is secretly building nuclear weapons and testing missiles that will be used against Israel.

All of this is window dressing for the real objective: neoliberal control of significant oil reserves and other strategic resources. Iran and Syria understand this and are determined to protect their national sovereignty and natural resources from the violent, resource-gobbling machinations of the United States and its apartheid client in the Middle East. 

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Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

What is Israel’s stake in east Syria? Has Israel influenced Washington’s decision to maintain a long-term military presence in Syria? How does Israel benefit from the splintering of Syria into smaller statelets and from undermining the power of the central government in Damascus? Did Israel’s regional ambitions factor into Trump’s decision to shrug off Turkey’s national security concerns and create an independent Kurdish state on Syrian sovereign territory? What is the connection between the Kurdish independence movement and the state of Israel?

The Pentagon does everything in its power to conceal the number and location of US military bases in a war zone. That rule applies to east Syria as well, which means we cannot confirm with absolute certainty how many bases really exist. Even so, in 2017, a Turkish news agency, “Anadolu Agency published an infographic on Tuesday showing 10 locations in which US troops were stationed. Two airbases, eight military points in PKK/PYD-controlled areas.”

According to a report in Orient.Net:

“The 8 military sites, according to the agency, host military personnel involved in coordinating the aerial and artillery bombardments of US forces, training Kurdish military personnel, planning special operations and participating in intensive combat operations.” (“AA’s map of US bases in Syria infuriates Pentagon”, orient.net)

The location of these bases is unimportant, what is important is that there has been no indication that Washington has any plan to close these bases down or to withdraw American troops. In fact, as the New York Times reported just weeks ago, the number of US troops has actually increased by roughly 1,000 since Trump made his withdrawal announcement in mid-December.

We think that is especially significant in view of Trump’s surprising comments last week, that he now agrees “100%” with maintaining a military presence in Syria. His sudden reversal shows that the opponents of the “withdrawal plan” have prevailed and the US is not going to leave Syria after all. It’s also worth noting that Trump administration has made no effort to implement the “Manbij Roadmap” which requires the US to coordinate its withdrawal with the Turkish military in order to maintain security and avoid a vacuum that could be filled by hostile elements. Ankara and Washington agreed to this arrangement long ago in order to expel Kurdish militants (who Turkey identifies as “terrorists”) from the area along the border. It appears now that Trump will not honor that deal, mainly because Trump intends to be in Syria for the long-haul.

But, why? Why would Trump risk a confrontation with a critical NATO ally (Turkey) merely to hold a 20 mile-deep stretch of land that has no strategic value to the United States? It doesn’t make sense, does it?

Now in earlier articles we have argued that influential think tanks, like the Brookings Institute, have played a critical role in shaping Washington’s Syria policy, and that indeed is true. Just take a look at this short excerpt from a piece by Brookings Michael E. O’Hanlon titled “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war”. Here’s an excerpt:

“…the only realistic path forward may be a plan that in effect deconstructs Syria….the international community should work to create pockets with more viable security and governance within Syria over time… The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able….Creation of these sanctuaries would produce autonomous zones that would never again have to face the prospect of rule by either Assad or ISIL….

The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones… The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force… to help provide relief for populations within them, and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.” (“Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war”, Michael E. O’Hanlon, Brookings Institute)

Strategic planners and think-tank pundits have long sought to break up Syria, that’s old news. What’s new is the emergence of powerful neocons operating in the White House and State Department (John Bolton, Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo) who, we suspect, are using their influence to shape policy in a way that is sympathetic to Israel’s regional ambitions. It’s worth noting, that Zionist plans to dismember surrounding Arab states to ensure Israeli superiority, date back more than 30 years.

The so called Yinon plan was a fairly straightforward strategy to balkanize the Middle East’s geopolitical environment to enhance Israeli regional hegemony while “A Clean Break” was a more recent adaptation which emphasized “weakening, containing or even rolling back Syria” and “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” In any event, many right-wing Israelis seem to think that chopping up sovereign Arab states into smaller bite-sized pieces, governed by tribal leaders or Washington’s puppets, will unavoidably boost Tel Aviv’s power across the Middle East.

But how does the US military occupation of east Syria fit in with all this?

Well, the US occupation effectively creates an independent Kurdish state in the heart of the Arab world which helps to weaken Israel’s rivals. That’s why some have referred to emerging Kurdistan as a “second Israel”. Here’s how Seth Frantzman, a research associate at the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs in Herzliya, explains it:

“Israel would welcome another state in the region that shares its concerns about the rising power of Iran, including the threat of Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq,” says Frantzman. “Reports have also indicated that oil from Kurdistan is purchased by Israel.” (“Why Israel supports an independent Iraqi Kurdistan”, CNN)

While its true that Kurdish oil may provide an added incentive for long-term occupation, the real goal is to block a “land corridor” from opening (that would connect Beirut, to Damascus, to Baghdad to Tehran) and to further undermine Iran’s growing influence in the region. Those are the real objectives. In fact, US military operations in Syria are actually part of a broader campaign directed at Iran, a campaign that undoubtedly has the full support of neocons Pompeo and Bolton.

Check out this lengthy quote from a piece by Rauf Baker at The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies which helps to put the whole Israel-Kurdistan issue into perspective:

“Since declaring “Rojava” in northern and northeastern Syria in 2013, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military arm, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), both of which are linked to the PKK, have built a uniquely viable entity amid the surrounding bedlam. (Note: The PKK, is on the State Departments list of terrorist organizations and has been conducting a war on Turkey for more than 3 decades.)

The ancient proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” could be useful to Israel in this grim scenario. The Syrian regime continues to uphold its traditional anti-Israel stance, and is in any case largely dependent on Iran, Hezbollah, and the other Shiite militias, all of which want Israel destroyed….

The Syrian Kurdish parties opposing PYD are openly linked to Ankara, which is ruled by a president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is obsessed with power and whose ideology considers the entire State of Israel to be illegitimately occupied by Jews. Moreover, he has recently established a rapprochement with Tehran – a worrying development…

Iran is now closer than ever to securing a land corridor that will connect it to the Mediterranean through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. This corridor will expand its sphere of influence from the Strait of Hormuz in the east to the Mediterranean in the west, and will ensure that Israel is surrounded by land and sea

Should Israel strengthen its relationship with the Syrian Kurds, its gains would extend beyond strategic, political, and security benefits. Rojava’s natural resources, especially its oil, can contribute to Israel’s energy supply and be invested in projects such as an oil pipeline through Jordan to Israel. US troops are stationed at several military bases in Rojava, which could offer an alternative to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey...

It appears abundantly clear that the Kurds are the most qualified, if not the only, candidate in Syria on which Israel can count for support… Israel should act swiftly to support the emerging Kurdish region in Syria...

It is very much in Israel’s interest to have a reliable and trustworthy friend in the new Syria. If Jerusalem hopes, together with its ally in Washington, to prevent Tehran from establishing its long-sought land corridor, it will need to strengthen its influence in the Syrian Kurdish region to serve as a wall blocking Iran’s ambitions.” (“The Syrian Kurds: Israel’s Forgotten Ally”, Rauf Baker, BESA Center)

So, the question is: Whose interests are really served by the US occupation of east Syria: America’s or Israel’s?

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Once the all-encompassing chittering and chattering about tariffs on Chinese imports by the western corporate media subsided, Trump, egocentric businessman rather than the President of the Empire, “out of the blue”, one could almost say, under the pretext of ‘unfair’ Chinese trading, launches a new ferocious and as usual totally illegal campaign of aggression against China’s fast-growing economy.

It’s an illicit campaign against Chinese competition, against Chinese unstoppable growth. It’s a tacit recognition of China’s emerging supremacy which the United States can only confront with fraud, deceit and illegal activities. And this only as long as Washington controls the western monetary system. This won’t be for much longer.

It’s an aggression against leading Chinese businesses and against China’s embracing a policy of a multi-polar world – through connection of entire continents, countries, cultures, joint research, education and agricultural, as well as industrial development – through transport lines, equal trade, respect for each other and recognition of people’s and countries’ comparative advantages by technical knowhow and bestowed by nature. It’s based on fair and equal interchanges. It’s the multi-trillion-yuan Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also called the New Silk Road; an initiative launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping during an official visit to Indonesia and Kazakhstan.

BRI consists by now of 6 land and sea routes, currently comprising some 152 countries and international organizations in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

This new Chinese economic behemoth is tentatively projected through the 2040’s. The BRI is all-inclusive and, thus, so strong, it was recently incorporated in China’s Constitution. However, it was largely ignored by the west, and especially by the western presstitute media – with the western “Vogel Strauss”politics of halfwits, ignore it and it will go away. Now the west realizes, it won’t go away – and it is tough competition for the falsely propagated west’s trade and economic superiority. Too late my friends. As I often said, by endless greed and thirst for power with impunity, of short-term rent seeking, of relentlessly provoked wars and conflicts, killing layers and layers of human societies throughout the world to bring opponents of this small diabolical elite to their knees, the west is committing slowly but surely suicide. This is nature. Nature will not only survive, but overcome and subordinate this luciferian approach to world domination. The future is in the east. Most definitely. There is no way back.

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Among the first steps of the US’s new generation of aggression against China is Washington’s ordering its northern vassal, Canada, to arrest Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Meng Wanzhou, in transit, at Vancouver airport on 1 December 2018.

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. is a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Shenzhen. Huawei is the world’s 7thlargest telecommunication corporation and was founded by Ren Zhengfei, a former military engineer in the People’s Liberation Army, in 1987. Ms. Meng Wanzohou is the founder’s daughter and deputy CEO. Ms. Wanzhou is now accused of breaking the totally illegal sanctions against Iran by doing business with Iran. Washington, unabashedly puts one illegal action of their own – sanctions – over another one – taking hostage a lead person of a strong Chinese competitor, to coerce Huawei to abide by an illegally US-imposed rule – sanctions. It is an unbelievable catch-22 story. But even more unbelievable is that the dictate of the abusive Washington policies is still followed and even worse, that there are hardly any protests.

This is only possible without most of the western world saying “beep”, because they all still recognize – for now – the US as the self-imposed exceptional nation – the nation that makes and breaks laws as it goes along. – But how much longer?

Ms. Wanzhou, still in Canadian custody, at risk of being extradited to US “justice” (sic), may face 30 years in prison, for absolutely no illegal infraction – only by acting against what the US made up as a law – sanctions – that everybody has to adhere to, or else, they will themselves be subject to sanction. Can you see how sick our western system has become?

It is now a war without bombs. It’s become a war of economics, recognizing that a war with bombs and missiles the US could not win any longer – not that they ever did! – since Russia and China have developed technically far superior military equipment. Hence, the United States’ last trump (no pun intended) – is working their fraudulent monetary system to the last ditch.

Venezuela, one of the west’s only true and last democracies, has been aggressed for the last 20 years, peaking now, because she refuses to bend to the rules of Washington, abandoning her socialist ideology, handing over her natural resources – the world’s largest oil and gas reserves, to the empire’s usurping corporations, the same that have been usurping and enslaving the Venezuelan people for hundred years before President Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999 – and started changing the rules for the people, dismissing the usurpers and nationalizing the country’s resources for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.

Today the empire is waging a war on Venezuela, a war without bombs, a financial and economic war, where – thanks to the fraudulent monetary system that western societies embrace and have been willy-nilly accepting, and even today they don’t dare to openly object to it, the empire is applying the international illegality of all illegalities, “sanctions”, interference in another country’s internal affairs, blocking trade, monetary transfers, confiscating – i.e. stealing – billions worth of Venezuelan assets abroad.

Washington is coercing and blackmailing so-called US allies into doing the same, commitingt lowly ‘highway robbery’. By now some US$ 40 to 50 billion equivalent throughout the world were blocked and essentially stolen, including 1.2 billion dollars of gold withheld in the London City of Money. By seizing Venezuela’s foreign assets and boycotting Venezuela’s hydrocarbon sales – Venezuela is in dire straits – but not in despair, not dying from famine as the western media would like you to believe. No – Venezuela manages with calm and pride – and solid solidarity.

A similar situation prevails in Syria, where the Syrian national army with the help of Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, has pretty much defeated the terror network of ISIS, Al Nusra et al. In other words, the US, NATO, western and Gulf states, vassal allies which have been – and still are – financing these terror organizations as proxies, have lost their war of bombs, their fight for ‘regime change’ – at least for now. We know, the empire won’t simply let go, only when it reaches its last breath. And that moment will come, sooner or later.

So, the bombs are replaced by economic shackles – blocking Syria from using the international monetary transfer system, from accessing international credit, from importing vital goods, medicine and medical equipment, food, industrial equipment and spare parts – all that a society needs to function, to rebuild their western-demolished infrastructure, all these vital goods and services are being embargoed by the west – while Syria has never done any harm to a western country – all to the contrary. Syria is the bedrock of western history, providing the west with brilliant intellects, scientists, university professors and offering a rich culture – the cradle of western civilization.

Syria is strategically placed – with access to five seas. President Assad’s “Five Seas Vision”, connecting strategically located Syria with the Mediterranean, Caspian, Black Sea, Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, “making Syria the unavoidable intersection of the world in Investments, transport and more”– this vision, plus the fact that President Assad is running Syria with a socialist philosophy and is as popular as always (70% – 80% of a highly educated Syrian population support their President), make Syria a perfect target for ‘regime change’. – Again, the continuation of a war without bombs, but killing all the same with a weaponized western economic system.

The most exasperating fact is – again – that the western allies, predominantly Europe, that is, their corrupt leaders (sic), participate in this atrocity in Syria, as well as in Venezuela – and throughout many other rebellious, non-submissive nations. This, largely against the will of the people. Though indoctrinated day in and day out by fake news, people start seeing the light.

Frankly – what else would you expect from Europe? – Europeans for hundreds of years have been exploiting, raping, abusing Asia, Africa and Latin America, killing hundreds of millions of people, while stealing their resources – which now can be seen transformed into European “culture”, religious monuments – castles of kings and queens and their dictators, who still walk this earth as parasitically as in ancient times.

When the European empires successively collapsed, they simply regrouped and transplanted their reign from the Old Continent across the Atlantic to build a new AngloZionist kingdom, but not before, again, massacring the original inhabitants of that once great land, called America. At that time the noble forefathers of this newly nascent empire felt secure between two shiny seas. But, hélas, times have changed. Attempting to emulate the grandeur of the Roman Empire, at one time calling their plan to Full Spectrum Dominance, “Pax Americana”, the association with “Pax Romana” became evident. Pax Romana were the three to four hundred bloodiest years of the Roman Empire, eventually collapsing under its own weight.

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The big danger for the US-driven western criminal monetary and debt-driven pyramid system, is China, because China’s economy is based on hard economic output, construction, manufacturing, intellectual and scientific development, as compared to the US-driven western neoliberal profit-maximizing dogma with inflated services, one that outsources hard production to low-wage countries, foregoes long-term economic gains and institutional memory, for a GDP of hot air, McDonalds-type jobs, consumption of cheap and useless imports; and, of course,  – a destructive war and killing industry.

That’s why Washington is hastily trying to elevate their lie and deceit campaign onto another level. Kidnapping Huawei’s Ms. Wanzhou, lambasting Europe to ban Huawei’s equipment form their markets, because it contains spyware, is just one example of a ruthless illicit approach to eliminating competition. On the other hand, Washington’s fading empire dares slandering President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative and, in a last desperate effort, blackmailing Europe, as well as African BRI-contenders, with more illegal sanctions – not to sign up to China’s New Silk Road. No matter that most of them have already done so. Italy clearly said they will soon sign an agreement with China to use Italian ports for BRI’s maritime routes. As to banning Huawei from Europe, Germany, for one, has already said they will not ban Huawei. Let’s hope others will follow Germany’s lead.

The Belt and Road Initiative is an unstoppable train – that left the station some five years ago and is on a projected route for the next 30-some years initiating peaceful socioeconomic development throughout the world. As a Chinese representative at the recent Cuban Conference for The Equilibrium of the World said – We are building bridges to connect people of all continents, while the west is building walls.

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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 21stCentury; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of 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.

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No to NATO — Yes to Peace Festival

March 12th, 2019 by World Beyond War

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is coming to Washington, D.C., on April 4. We’re organizing a peace festival to unwelcome them.

Wednesday, April 3 at St. Stephen’s Church, 1525 Newton St NW, Washington, D.C. 20010:
12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.: Screenprinting for Justice Workshop with The Sanctuaries DC, and Nonviolent Action Prep with Nadine Bloch of Beautiful Trouble (munch on vegan snacks, make art, and plan for the April 4 protest). If you’re a nonviolent activism trainer and want to help, please fill out this form.
5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.: Keynote Speeches + Biting Comedic Entertainment with Lee Camp(Full list of speakers)
8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.: Spoken word by Eleanor Goldfield and live music by Eric Colville& Ryan Harvey & Megaciph.
5:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.: Screenprinting, Art Exhibits & Activity Booths + Vegan Food & Drink

REGISTER TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT.

Thursday, April 4
Plans include a procession from the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial to a rally at Freedom Plaza, and nonviolent demonstrations outside the NATO meeting. Plans are subject to change when we learn when and where NATO is meeting. Tentatively, we plan to meet at the MLK Memorial at 11 a.m. and hear speakers until noon. At noon we will set off to Independence Ave, then up 17th Street to a right on Constitution Ave., up 15th Street to a right on Pennsylvania Ave, then two blocks to Freedom Plaza.  We will be there until 3 p.m. for a rally with speakers and music. (Full list of speakers)

Other No to NATO events in Washington DC:
Saturday, March 30 @ 1:00 p.m. Rally at Lafayette Park
Saturday, March 30 @ 7:30 p.m. Songs of Struggle
Sunday, March 31 Concert for Peace and to End War
Sunday, March 31
Anti-NATO Conference
Monday, April 1
Meeting of the International Network “No to War – No to NATO” at the AFSC Office 1822 R St. NW 10:00 to 3:00
Tuesday, April 2 No to NATO – Yes to Peace and Disarmament Counter-Summit
Thursday, April 4 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Black Alliance for Peace program at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ, 5301 N Capitol St., NE, Washington D.C. “No Compromise, No Retreat in the Fight to End Militarism and War”

Lodging for the nights of 2nd and 3rd is available.

Other No to NATO events elsewhere:
March 21-27
: Solidarity trip to Belgrade
March 30: Conference and Rally in Saskatchewan
April 4: No to NATO action, Parliament Hill, Ottawa (details to be announced)
April 4: No to NATO events in Oslo, Norway
April 7: Conference in Florence, Italy
Monthly: NATO protests in Toronto

Why? NATO is coming to DC to mark 70 years since its creation on April 4, 1949. NATO is the largest military alliance in the world with the largest military spending (roughly three-quarters of the world total) and nuclear stockpiles. While claiming to “preserve peace,” NATO has violated international law and bombed Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. NATO has exacerbated tensions with Russia and increased the risk of nuclear apocalypse. The notion that supporting NATO is a way to cooperate with the world ignores superior non-deadly ways to cooperate with the world.

Our Message: War is a leading contributor to the growing global refugee and climate crises, the basis for the militarization of the police, a top cause of the erosion of civil liberties, and a catalyst for racism and bigotry. We’re calling for the abolition of NATO, the promotion of peace, the redirection of resources to human and environmental needs, and the demilitarization of our cultures. Instead of celebrating NATO’s 70th anniversary, we’re celebrating peace on April 4, in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech against war on April 4, 1967, as well as his assassination on April 4, 1968.

The Case Against NATO:

While Donald Trump once blurted out the obvious: that NATO is obsolete, he subsequently professed his commitment to NATO and began pressuring NATO members to buy more weapons. So, the notion that somehow NATO is anti-Trump and therefore good would not only be silly and practically amoral on its own terms, it is also at odds with the facts of Trump’s behavior. We are planning an anti-NATO / pro-peace action at which opposition to the militarism of NATO’s dominant member is welcome and necessary. Here are the Top 10 Reasons Not to Love NATO no matter what Trump does.

NATO has pushed the weaponry and the hostility and the massive so-called war games right up to the border of Russia. NATO has waged aggressive wars far from the North Atlantic. NATO has added a partnership with Colombia, abandoning all pretense of its purpose being in the North Atlantic. NATO is used to free the U.S. Congress from the responsibility and the right to oversee the atrocities of U.S. wars. NATO is used as cover by NATO member governments to join U.S. wars under the pretense that they are somehow more legal or acceptable. NATO is used as cover to illegally and recklessly share nuclear weapons with supposedly non-nuclear nations. NATO is used to assign nations the responsibility to go to war if other nations go to war, and therefore to be prepared for war. NATO’s militarism threatens the earth’s environment. NATO’s wars fuel racism and bigotry and erode our civil liberties while draining our wealth.

NATO Expansion Over the Years:

We must say: No to NATO, Yes to peace, Yes to prosperity, Yes to a sustainable environment, Yes to civil liberties, Yes to education, Yes to a culture of nonviolence and kindness and decency, Yes to remembering April 4th as a day associated with the work for peace of Martin Luther King Jr.

“As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, ‘What about Vietnam?’ They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.” —MLK Jr.

“You can’t help people being right for the wrong reasons. This fear of finding oneself in bad company is not an expression of political purity. It is an expression of a lack of self confidence.”—Arthur Koestler

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Sale alle stelle il prezzo della «protezione» Usa

March 12th, 2019 by Manlio Dinucci

A pretendere il pizzo in cambio di «protezione» non è solo la mafia. «I paesi ricchi che stiamo proteggendo – ha avvertito minacciosamente Trump in un discorso al Pentagono  – sono tutti avvisati: dovranno pagare la nostra protezione».

Il presidente Trump  – rivela Bloomberg – sta per presentare il piano «Cost Plus 50» che stabilisce il seguente criterio: i paesi alleati che ospitano forze Usa sul proprio territorio ne dovranno coprire interamente il costo e pagare agli Usa un ulteriore 50% in cambio del  «privilegio» di ospitarle ed essere così da loro «protetti».

Il piano prevede che i paesi ospitanti paghino anche gli stipendi dei militari Usa e i costi di gestione degli aerei e delle navi da guerra che gli Stati uniti tengono in questi paesi.

L’Italia dovrebbe quindi pagare non solo gli stipendi di circa 12.000 militari Usa qui di stanza, ma anche i costi di gestione dei caccia F-16 e degli altri aerei schierati dagli Usa ad Aviano e Sigonella e i costi della Sesta Flotta basata a Gaeta.

Secondo lo stesso criterio dovremmo pagare anche la gestione di Camp Darby, il più grande arsenale Usa fuori dalla madrepatria, e la manutenzione delle bombe nucleari Usa dislocate ad Aviano e Ghedi.

Non si sa quanto gli Stati uniti intendono chiedere all’Italia e agli altri paesi europei che ospitano loro forze militari, poiché non si sa neppure quanto questi paesi paghino attualmente. I dati sono coperti da segreto militare.

Secondo uno studio della Rand Corporation, i paesi europei della Nato si addossano in media il 34%  dei costi delle forze e basi Usa presenti sui loro territori. Non si sa però quale sia l’importo annuo che essi pagano agli Usa: l’unica stima – 2,5 miliardi di dollari – risale a 17 anni fa.

È dunque segreta anche la cifra pagata dall’Italia. Se ne conoscono solo alcune voci: ad esempio decine di milioni di euro per adeguare gli aeroporti di Aviano e Ghedi ai caccia statunitensi F-35 e alle nuove bombe nucleari B61-12 che gli Usa cominceranno a schierare in Italia nel 2020, e circa 100 milioni per lavori alla stazione aeronavale statunitense di Sigonella, a carico anche dell’Italia.

A Sigonella viene finanziata esclusivamente dagli Usa solo la Nas I, l’area amministrativa e ricreativa, mentre la Nas II, quella dei reparti operativi e quindi la più costosa, è finanziata dalla Nato, ossia anche dall’Italia.

È comunque certo – prevede un ricercatore della Rand Corp. – che con il piano «Cost Plus 50» i costi per gli alleati «schizzeranno alle stelle». Si parla di un aumento del 600%.

Essi si aggiungeranno alla spesa militare, che in Italia ammonta a circa 70 milioni di euro al giorno, destinati a salire a circa 100 secondo gli impegni assunti dai governi italiani in sede Nato. Si tratta di denaro pubblico, che esce dalle nostre tasche, sottratto a investimenti produttivi e spese sociali.

È possibile però che l’Italia possa pagare meno per le forze e basi Usa dislocate sul suo territorio. Il piano «Cost Plus 50»  prevede infatti uno «sconto per buon comportamento» a favore degli «alleati che si allineano strettamente con gli Stati uniti, facendo ciò che essi chiedono».

È sicuro che l’Italia godrà di un forte sconto poiché, di governo in governo, si è sempre mantenuta nella scia degli Stati uniti. Ultimamente, inviando truppe e aerei da guerra nell’Est Europa con la motivazione di fronteggiare la «minaccia russa» e favorendo il piano statunitense di affossare il Trattato Inf per schierare in Europa, Italia compresa, postazioni di missili nucleari puntati sulla Russia.

Essendo queste bersaglio di una possibile ritorsione, avremo bisogno come «protezione» di altre forze e basi Usa. Le dovremo pagare noi, ma sempre con lo sconto.

Manlio Dinucci

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One of the lessons from our recent visit to Iran as a Peace Delegation is that Iran is a mature country. It is 2,500 years old, ten times as old as the United States and one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations with settlements dating back to 7,000 BC. It was an empire that controlled almost half the Earth for over 1,000 years. It is hard not to see the US-Iran relationship as one between an adolescent bully and a mature nation.

The root cause of the problems between the United States and Iran is not because Iran has oil, an Islamic government, nuclear weapons or Iran’s role in the Middle East — it is because in 1979, Iran ended 26 years of US domination. Foreign Minister Zarif explained to our Peace Delegation:

“…the U.S. difficulty with Iran is not because of the region, not because of human rights, not because of weapons, not because of the nuclear issue – it’s just because we decided to be independent – that’s it – that’s our biggest crime.”

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US Peace Delegation to Iran February 2019 outside of Iran’s Foreign Ministry. From CODE PINK.

Since the 1979 Revolution, the US has sought to dominate Iran using sanctions and threats of military aggression. Iran has responded by seeking negotiation with the US. The Iran Nuclear Agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA), which took over ten years to finalize, was viewed by Dr. Zarif as a first step toward more agreements.

Although Iran fulfilled its side of the nuclear agreement, the US did not relieve the sanctions, as promised, and under the Trump administration, increased the sanctions and left the agreement. On our trip, we learned first hand about the impacts of these actions.

Facing The Ugly Realities Of US History With Iran

Correcting the relationship between the US and Iran begins with an honest review of US policy since 1953. It is a record for which the US should be ashamed and shows the need for a new approach.

Iran Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq.

The 1953 Coup

The August 19, 1953 coup was one the US denied for decades but has now been proven by documents released by the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. The British government also released documents showing its involvement. Information has been made public over the decades, but even after 65 years, many documents about ‘Operation Ajax’ remain classified.

The coup was led by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Teddy Roosevelt and cousin of President Franklin Roosevelt. The coup not only impacted Iran but the Middle East and was a model for US coups around the world, which continue to this day. As we write, we are on our way to Venezuela where a US-led coup just failed.

The 1953 coup was preceded by economic sanctions to destabilize the Mossadegh government and a Guaido-like fake Prime Minister. The coup initially failed on August 16 when the Shah fled to Baghdad and then to Rome. Before fleeing, he appointed former Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi as Prime Minister to replace the elected Prime Minister Mossadegh. Zahedi continued the coup with the military arresting Mossadegh at his home on April 19. When Operation Ajax succeeded, Zahedi became Prime Minister and the Shah returned to rule as a brutal dictator until 1979. Mossadegh was imprisoned until his death in 1967.

US Den of Espionage by Barbara Briggs-Letson

Installation Of The Brutal Shah

The Shah became the enforcer for the United States in the Middle East. His rule coincided with the US war in Vietnam when the US focused its military in Southeast Asia. When President Nixon came to office in 1969, Iran was the single-largest arms purchaser from the US. Nixon encouraged a spending spree and by 1972, the Shah purchased over $3 billion of US arms, a twenty fold increase over 1971’s record.

US weapons buying continued throughout the decade dwarfing all US allies including Israel. The weapons being sold required thousands of US military support troops in Iran. In 1977, President Carter sold more arms to Iran than any previous years. Carter toasted the Shah as “a rock of stability” during a visit to Tehran at the end of 1977.

The stability was not as rock solid as Carter imagined. Domestically, a conglomerate of western oil companies ran the oil industry taking fifty percent of the profits but not allowing Iran to audit the accounts or have members on the board of directors. The Shah recognized Israel and put in place modernization policies that alienated religious groups. In 1963, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was arrested for making a speech against the Shah after several days of protests. The Shah’s brutal secret police, the SAVAK, made mass arrests and tortured and killed political prisoners. The Islamic clergy, still headed by Khomeini living in exile since 1964, became more vociferous in its criticisms.

Mass protests and strikes struck Iran in 1978. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the US Embassy and held fifty-two hostages for 444 days until January 1981. Khomeini returned from exile in February 1979. In December, a new Constitution creating the Islamic Republic was approved by referendum and Khomeini became the Supreme Leader.

Graves of martyr’s from the Iraq-Iran War at the central cemetery of Iran’s capital Tehran by Philipp Breu.

US Supports Iraq’s War Against Iran

The Iraq war would not have been possible without US encouragement and support in the form of money, naval assistance and weapons. The US also provided Iraq with the ingredients for the chemical weapons as well as intelligence on where to use them. More than one million people were killed and more than 80,000 injured by chemical weapons in the Iraq war.

The US Shoots Down A Civilian Airliner

The US also killed 289 Iranians when a US missile shot down a commercial Iranian airliner in July 1988. The US has never apologized for this mass killing of civilians. When we were in Iran, we visited the Tehran Peace Museum and our delegation did what our country should do, apologized.

Forty Years Of US Economic Sanctions

The US has imposed economic sanctions since the Islamic Revolution began. In 1980, the US broke diplomatic relations with Iran and Carter put in place sanctions including freezing $12 billion in Iranian assets and banning imports of Iranian oil. Every president since Carter has escalated sanctions against Iran. In response, Iran has developed a “resistance economy” where it has become more self-sufficient and built relationships with other countries.

Announcement of the Iran Nuclear Agreement between six world powers and Iran in the Swiss town of Lausanne. Photo from CBS News.

US Withdrawal From Nuclear Agreement And Increased Sanctions

The most recent atrocity is the failure to live up to the carefully negotiated nuclear agreement. Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif painstakingly negotiated the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal between China, France, Russia, the UK, Germany, the US, and the European Union for more than a decade. Iran complied with all the requirements of the agreement, but the US did not lift sanctions, as promised, and exited the deal under President Trump, leading to protests against the US throughout Iran.

The people of Iran were joyous when the JCPOA was finalized as it promised relief, i.e., the release of $29 billion in Iranian funds held abroad, allowing US exports of Iranian oil, allowing foreign firms to invest in Iran and allowing trade with the rest of the world through the global banking system.

Instead of abiding by the agreement, the US escalated sanctions against Iran. Trump’s escalation has been harsh as the US seeks “to isolate Iran politically and economically, by blocking its oil sales, access to hard currencies and foreign investments, along with more harsh sanctions and overall financial hardships on the country.” Sanctions include secondary sanctions on non-US corporations and nations doing business with Iran, which the International Criminal Court found to be illegal.

These sanctions are having a significant human impact. They are causing a rapid devaluation of Iranian currency resulting in increasing costs of basic goods, including a tripling of the cost of imported goods such as cars. When we were in Iran, we heard firsthand about the impact sanctions have on people’s lives, e.g. the inability to get life-saving medicines, make financial transactions, use apps or translate books from the US into Farsi. In a restaurant, the menu warned prices may not be as listed because of rapid inflation. We interviewed Dr. Foad Izadi of the University of Tehran on Clearing the FOG about the impact of the sanctions and how US policies are alienating youth.

We spent time at the University of Tehran with students and faculty in the American Studies department. They were excited to speak with people from the United States, as few people from the US are able to get visas, and they lamented not being allowed to travel to the US. We found that we have much in common and believe we would benefit from more exchanges with Iranians.

Ongoing US Destabilization Iran And Threats Of War

Sanctions are designed to destabilize the government but are instead uniting people against the United States. If anything, US actions will put in place a more anti-US government in upcoming elections. The US has a flawed understanding of Iranian politics and global politics around US unilateral sanctions. The Iran sanctions are likely to speed up the de-dollarization of the global economy and end US dollar hegemony and are illegal.

The US is also fomenting rebellion. The Trump administration has been seeking regime change through various actions including violence. It created a Mission Center in the CIA focused on regime change in Iran and spends millions of dollars to encourage opposition in Iran, working to manipulate protests to support a US agenda. The threat of war continues and becomes ever more likely in an administration dominated by Iran hawks, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.

US military bases around Iran.

Creating A Peaceful, Positive Relationship Between The US And Iran

The history of US behavior toward Iran cannot be ethically defended. The US needs to appraise this history and recognize it has a lot for which to apologize, then it must correct its policies.

A group of prominent Iranian-Americans recently sent an open letter to Secretary Pompeo, writing:

“If you truly wish to help the people of Iran, lift the travel ban [although no Iranian has ever been involved in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Iran is included in Trump’s Muslim ban], adhere to the Iran nuclear deal and provide the people of Iran the economic relief they were promised and have eagerly awaited for three years.”

Until the US is ready to accept responsibility for its abhorrent actions, Iran will continue to build a resistance economy and relations with other countries. There is talk of US-sanctioned countries joining together as a countervailing force. Such countries include Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Somalia, Belarus, Iraq, a number of African countries and more, as well as China with US trade tariffs. Building relationships through civil society, academia, professional societies, and government are needed to create a unified opposition to challenge US sanctions.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from FAIR

Rwanda: Truth, Freedom and Peace Will Prevail

March 11th, 2019 by Robin Philpot

Robin Philpot‘s acceptance speech of the Victoire Ungabire Umuhoza award in Brussels, translated from French

I would first like to thank the International Women’s Network for Democracy and Peace honouring me with this Award that bears the name of a great patriot and fighter for freedom, peace and democracy, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. But I would also like to congratulate the Network for its extraordinary work. Like Victoire, you and your work inspire us to keep the faith in this struggle. You are contagious and I thank very much for being so.

In less than a month we will be commemorating the 25th anniversary of what was the worst terrorist attack of the 1990s, and what has become the biggest political and media scandal of the last quarter of a century. It is a scandal that gets worse every day that goes by.

You know what I’m talking about: the shooting down on April 6, 1994 of the plane carrying two African heads of State and their entourage. If that plane had not been shot down, we would not be here; Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza would never have been jailed; and very likely Rwanda could have hoped to live in peace over the past 25 years, Rwanda and its neighbours, and particularly the Congo and Burundi.

Video: Robin Philpot’s Acceptance Speech (French)

The crime committed was threefold.

1) the shooting down of the plane;

2) the cover-up and the lies about that crime; and

3) the unspeakably devastating consequences.

When they killed Presidents Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994, the assassins killed all hopes of peace and a democratic resolution of the conflict that had paralysed the country since it was invaded on October 1, 1990. Peace that had been negotiated and signed supposedly with the guidance and goodwill for big powers. Peace that could have prevented so many deaths, so much suffering, peace that could have enabled a sharing of power in Rwanda.

In law, hiding a crime is also a crime. Covering up the truth, lying about that first crime is as devastating as the crime itself, because it allows the criminals to continue with their murderous scheme. Those guilty of the crime of covering up the truth include many individuals, institutions, countries and media.

Immediately after the presidential plane was shot down, the New York Times,the so-called “journal of record,” established the line. Allow me to quote it:

“the credible suspicion is that they were killed by Hutu hard-liners in Rwanda who oppose reconciliation with the Tutsi people.”

Believe it or not, 25 years on, we continue to wade through the same muddy lies about the shooting down of the plane on April 6. Yet all the necessary evidence is there to prove that it was the Rwandan Patriotic Front led by Paul Kagame that shot down the presidential plane. Suffice it to mention the evidence gathered by “National Team” under Michael Hourigan for the International Tribunal for Rwanda; the Bruguière investigation; documents revealed by Judy Rever; Carla Del Ponte’s declarations and removal; even the ICTR abandoned that theory shortly after it received its mandate—it simply had no evidence to bring to bear.

The evidence in fact leaves no doubt that the current president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, and his army shot the plane down. Their goal and that of their sponsors was, whatever the cost, to put an end to the Arusha Peace Accord, to eliminate any power sharing plan, and to establish a military powerhouse capable of dominating the entire region. Not for the well-being of the Rwandans, Burundians or Congolese, but of the well-being – or should I say wealth – of their sponsors and their agents in Rwanda. And who are those sponsors? The best indication came directly from the former Secretary General of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali who told me in an interview: “The Rwandan genocide is 100 percent American responsibility,” adding that it was with the help of the United Kingdom.

The third crime is the consequences, but the time does not allow me even to summarize them properly. In short, the consequences include all the deaths in Rwanda; the exodus of millions of Rwandans, mainly towards the Democratic Republic of Congo; the killings by the current Rwandan regime in the Congo, including selective extraterritorial executions elsewhere; the regime’s unending and inhuman hunt and harassment of Rwandans who dare to doubt or challenge the regime’s version of the Rwandan tragedy. The regime in Kigali does this domestically in Rwanda but also throughout the world, and particularly in Belgium, France, Sweden, Canada and the United States (to mention only these countries), and they do it with the help of the legal systems in each of these countries. Their pretext is always the same: fighting impunity.

IMPUNTY: That is a word that has been in all the media and on everybody’s lips since the shooting down of the plane. Peace and reconciliation is impossible, they say, unless those responsible for the tragedy are punished.

To my knowledge never has a word been turned upside and emptied of its meaning like this one.

How have the political authorities in Rwanda their big power sponsors reacted to this triple crime? In short, total impunity has been granted to the real criminals and the wrong people have been criminalized.

  • They have criminalized and imprisoned in penal colonies those who after the shooting down of the presidential plane tried to pick up the pieces and restore peace so as to end the killings and anarchy that prevailed after April 6.
  • They have criminalized the women and men who, like the great leader whose name is on this award, wish to mourn all of the people killed in the wake of the shooting down of the plane.
  • They have criminalized ICTR defense investigators and witnesses
  • They have criminalized women who, like Victoire Ingabire Umuhoze or Diane Rwigara, decided courageously and in the name of democracy to run in presidential elections against the Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame.
  • They are trying to criminalize and they harass the men and women who investigate and search for the truth about the shooting down of the plane and its consequences and who speak out about it. Our friend Judi Rever is a perfect example.
  • They even try to criminalize the very basic act of saying: “Just a minute, that is not what happened in Kigali (Ça ne s’est pas passé comme ça à Kigali).

Now speaking about ‘impunity.’  On the Twitter account of the International Criminal Court, the ICC, for Feb. 18, 2019, this is what you can read: “Productive meeting between ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and His Excellency Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda in the margins of Munich Security Conference.” Under the text is an all-smiles photo of the dictator Kagame shaking hands with Fatou Bensouda, the very person appointed to put an end to impunity.

But the world is changing rapidly; there are grounds for hope. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza was freed. Diane Rwigara was freed. Elsewhere in Africa and in other parts of the world, the signs are positive. The times that allowed criminals like Kagame and his masters in Washington to call the shots in Africa and elsewhere are coming to an end.

There is a proverb that says: “He or she who combats the truth will be defeated.” The opposite is just as true. “He or she who defends the truth will be victorious.” Despite powerful forces, more and more people are searching for the truth, finding it and revealing it.

Armed with this truth, and with the courage, confidence and determination of people like Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, we will be capable of victory. And that victory will mean freedom, peace, and democracy for Rwanda and its neighbours.

Thank you.

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Video: Syrian Army Hunts Down ISIS Cells in Desert

March 11th, 2019 by South Front

Three US service members were killed in an ISIS suicide bomber attack on a joint convoy of the US-led coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near Manbij in northern Syria on March 9, the ISIS-linked news agency Amaq claimed.

A suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device reportedly exploded near the convoy on a road in the outskirt of the town.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) also reported that the suicide bomber targeted two vehicles of US and SDF forces, but said that only two SDF fighters were injured in the attack.

Less than two months ago, an ISIS suicide bomber blew himself inside a restaurant in Manbij town center killing four US personnel. This was the biggest casualty of the coalition since the beginning of its operation in Syria.

The US-led coalition and the SDF have not commented on the March 9 incident yet. Both sides avoid reporting such attacks, unless US personnel are injured or killed.

On the same day, a US air assault force carried out raids against ISIS cells near al-Azbah in northern Deir Ezzor and Tabqah in western Raqqah. According to local sources, the US unit supported by several helicopters arrested a group of local ISIS commanders and explosive experts.

Such developments confirm earlier assessments that despite formal statements by the US-led coalition and the SDF about a defeat of ISIS in northeastern Syria, this area is in fact full of ISIS cells and their supporters. The flow of ISIS-linked persons from the Euphrates Valley as well as the discriminatory policies of the Kurdish-dominated SDF towards the local Arab population are among the factors contributing to the growth of such security problems.

In the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert, ISIS cells attacked positions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) near the town of al-Sukhnah. The terrorists injured one SAA soldier and captured 3 others. Following the ISIS attack, Russian and Syrian warplanes delivered strikes on detected ISIS positions in the Homs desert. Clashes were also reported near al-Dubiyat.

The captives were reportedly moved towards ISIS hideouts on the edge of the US-controlled area of al-Tanf. The US-led coalition prevents SAA operations there by striking any pro-government units, which attempt to enter the area. This situation does not allow the SAA to conduct a comprehensive security operation in the desert area, which would allow putting an end to ISIS presence there.

During the weekend, the Russian Aerospace Forces hit weapon depots and fortified positions belonging to militants in Idlib, including Mintar, Frikeh, Tell Khatab, Saraqib and Khab al-Subul. The strikes were delivered in response to the continued violations of the ceasefire regime by militants in southern Idlib and northern Hama. On March 8, Turkish forces started conducting patrols in the Idlib demilitarized zone, which a declared goal to prevent ceasefire violations. However, it seems that this convinced militants that they should not fear a military operation by the Damascus government and they continued their attacks.

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Selected Articles: Venezuela. Hands Off!

March 11th, 2019 by Global Research News

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Trump Regime Electricity War in Venezuela More Serious than First Believed

By Stephen Lendman, March 11, 2019

On Thursday, Venezuela’s Guri dam hydroelectric power plant was cyberattacked at 5:00 PM during the late afternoon rush hour to cause maximum disruption.

We Are Being Lied into War Again

By Lee Camp, March 11, 2019

The mainstream media and nearly the entirety of the U.S. government tell us Juan Guaido is the “interim president,” even though he was never elected to that position and the current president is still leading the Venezuelan government and military.

NYT Denies that Venezuela Burned Aid Convoy

By Prensa Latina, March 11, 2019

An exclusive video quoted by The New York Times contradicts the US statement that the Venezuelan government set fire to an aid convoy last month on the border with Colombia.

US Is Pushing Venezuela to the Brink by Attacking Its Power Grid

By Andrew Korybko, March 11, 2019

The Hybrid War on Venezuela just took a dark turn – literally – after the US used cyber weapons and insider sabotage to attack the country’s power grid last week, cutting off most of its electricity and creating a chain reaction of negative consequences all throughout the Bolivarian Republic.

Venezuela: Public Disbelief that the US Is “Spreading Democracy”. Weaponizing “Fake News”

By Helen Buyniski, March 10, 2019

Lazy propaganda is largely to blame for the lapse in narrative superiority. The same tawdry psy-ops are recycled again and again, as we see now in Venezuela, where Iran-Contra felon and smirking genocide enthusiast Elliott Abrams has been wheeled out of cold storage to work his death-squad magic on a population we’ve already tried and failed to hypnotize with the promises of neoliberalism.

Venezuela’s Civilian-Military Union and the White Supremacist American 17th Century Pilgrims

By Arnold August, March 10, 2019

The nemesis which the US is facing started – in the current period – on February 23rd on the Venezuelan border with Colombia. The US attempt to promote a mutiny among the military and a revolt within the people against Maduro in favour of the US hand -picked and self-proclaimed “president” failed miserably.

Corporate Media “Presstitutes” Turn Blind Eye to UN Report on Venezuela

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, March 09, 2019

Don’t you think it is a bit much for Washington to steal $21 billion of Venezuela’s money, impose sanctions in an effort to destabilize the country and to drive the Venezuelan government to its knees, blame Venezuelan socialism (essentially nationalization of the oil company) for bringing “starvation to the people,” and offer a measly $21 million in “humanitarian aid.”

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  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: Venezuela. Hands Off!

On Thursday, Venezuela’s Guri dam hydroelectric power plant was cyberattacked at 5:00 PM during the late afternoon rush hour to cause maximum disruption.

Up to 80% of the country was affected, damage done more severe than initially thought. Weeks or months of planning likely preceded what happened – US behind it? considerable expertise needed to pull it off.

On Friday, another cyberattack occurred, followed by a third one on Saturday, affecting parts of the country where power was restored, further complicating resolution of the problem, Maduro saying:

After power was restored to about 70% of the country, “we received another attack, of a cybernetic nature, at midday…that disturbed the reconnection process and knocked out everything that had been achieved until noon,” adding:

“(O)ne of the sources of generation that was working perfectly” was sabotaged again…infiltrators…attacking the electric company from the inside.”

Power is being restored “manually,” efforts continuing to learn precisely why computerized systems failed – things further complicated after a Bolivar state substation transformer exploded and burned, suggesting more sabotage.

What’s happening in Venezuela is similar to infecting Iran’s Bushehr and Natanz nuclear power facilities with a Stuxnet malware computer virus in 2010, a likely joint US/Israeli intelligence operation. Edward Snowden blamed them for what happened.

At the time, operations were halted indefinitely. Iran called the incident a hostile act. General Gholam-Reza Jalali said if the affected facilities went online infected, Iran’s entire electrical power grid could have been shut down.

It took months to fully resolve the problem. Following the summer 2010 attack, the malware continued to infect the facilities’ centrifuges, requiring their replacement.

An Institute for Science and International Security analysis said

“(a)ssuming Iran exercises caution, Stuxnet is unlikely to destroy more centrifuges at the (affected plants).”

“Iran likely cleaned the malware from its control systems. To prevent re-infection, Iran will have to exercise special caution since so many computers in Iran contain Stuxnet,” adding:

“Although Stuxnet appears to be designed to destroy centrifuges at (Iranian nuclear facilities), destruction was by no means total.”

“Stuxnet did not lower the production of low-enriched uranium (LEU) during 2010. LEU quantities could have certainly been greater, and Stuxnet could be an important part of the reason why they did not increase significantly.”

“(T)here remain important questions about why Stuxnet destroyed only 1,000 centrifuges. One observation is that it may be harder to destroy centrifuges by use of cyber attacks than often believed.”

Head of Bushehr’s nuclear power plant said only personal computers of staff were infected by the Stuxnet virus. Then-Iranian Telecommunications Minister Reza Taghipour said government systems experienced no serious damage.

Iran’s Information Technology Council director Mahmud Liaii said

“(a)n electronic war has been launched against Iran… This computer worm is designed to transfer data about production lines from our industrial plants to locations outside Iran.”

Deputy head of Iran’s government Information Technology Company Hamid Alipour said

“(t)he attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading,” adding:

“We had anticipated that we could root out the virus within one to two months, but the virus is not stable, and since we started the cleanup process three new versions of it have been spreading.”

If malware similar to Stuxnet was used against Venezuela’s power grid, the problem could linger for months, parts of the country continued to be affected by outages for some time.

Maduro’s government will need to marshal considerable technical expertise to fully resolve things – the type cybersecurity/anti-virus/security software skills Russia-based multinational firm Kaspersky Lab can provide.

It can also identify the attack’s source and lay blame where it belongs – the US most likely responsible. It clearly has motive, opportunity and expertise – waging war on Venezuela by other means to topple its government and gain another imperial trophy.

If the malware infection is widespread, continued outages may happen until the problem is fully resolved.

Resolution may take months, disruption in the country persisting, clearly the motive behind the attack.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Novinite.com

Michael Oliver (3 February 1945 to 2 March 2019) was a British academic, author, and disability rights activist. He was Emeritus Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Greenwich. His research focused on the social model of disability, and his activism centred on overcoming the systemic barriers disabled people confront in their daily lives. We present below a memoir of his contribution to building Disability Studies and a movement demanding inclusion and equality for disabled people.

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Mike Oliver, Emeritus Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Greenwich in England, has died at the age of 74 after a short illness. A long time wheelchair user since the age of seventeen, a sociologist by training and author of many books including his landmark texts, Social Work with Disabled People (1983) and the Politics of Disablement (1990), and (with Colin Barnes), The New Politics of Disablement (2012). Oliver played a pioneering role in developing, with others such as Vic Finkelstein, what has come to be known as the social model of disability. The model builds from the proposition that it is structural barriers, such as a lack of wheelchair ramps or a failure to provide sign language interpreters, which impede disabled people rather than the impairments themselves. In other words, systemic barriers constitute an ableist society that disables disabled people and keeps them largely unemployed and in poverty. In every advanced capitalist country, disabled people face tremendous barriers in housing, transportation and employment. These barriers are so widespread and comprehensive that most individuals do not give them a second thought.

The Social Model of Disablement

By establishing and popularizing what has become known as the impairment-disability distinction, Oliver convinced disabled people to view the discrimination that they face daily as a matter of rights rather than a personal tragedy or medical problem. In other words, the fact that Jill has broken her leg means that she has an impairment, but she cannot get to class because the school does not have a functioning elevator. The inaccessible school is a disabling barrier that has to be remedied. It is difficult to convey how revolutionary the social model of disability was in crystallizing the consciousness of disabled people. Individuals who had spent years regarding their daily difficulties as a matter of personal failure and were socialized by an array of physiotherapists, occupational therapists and physicians to focus on rehabilitation were suddenly politicized as they came to realize that disability was indeed a political issue. Sometimes this has been misinterpreted as an attack on the medical profession. However, Oliver is very clear that the social model is not anti-medicine where medical intervention is required. Rather he is against ‘medical imperialism’, a mode of thought that regards disabled people as irremediably broken.

Activists chose to prioritize different strategies. Many disabled people, more influenced by postmodern theories of language and the body, have tended to focus on cultural studies and the representation of disabled people in cinema, dance, and sports. Others have chosen to engage in law reform strategies such as advocacy for human rights legislation and test case litigation, with all its promise and perils, to seek social transformation. Still others have focused more directly on grassroots mobilization to challenge the austerity agenda of neoliberal governments – an anti-capitalist route. Certainly all have merits and, indeed, some have chosen to combine them but it is the last road that most closely corresponds to Oliver’s prescient vision of transforming the lives of disabled people for a better future.

Class Politics and Institutionalization

Oliver was deeply influenced by class politics and laid the basis for the still unfinished product of a materialist theory of disablement. He very much believed that the rise of capitalism and the factory system created disability. The requirements of wage labour as the dominant mode of production entailed the segregation and exclusion of disabled workers who could not maintain efficient production standards in an industrial society. As many scholars have noted, the very notion of time functioned differently in agrarian rural societies. Those who failed to conform and work at a pace set by Fordist factories were consigned to “workhouses, asylums, impairment-specific colonies and special schools and out of the mainstream of economic and social life” (Oliver and Barnes, p.55). Social Darwinism and eugenics provided an ideological justification for the exclusion of those individuals who could not conform to the requirements of industrial capitalism.

As many scholars of ‘Mad Studies’ have noted, the actual impairments were often irrelevant. People incarcerated in psychiatric institutions notoriously did not necessarily have a formal diagnosis. As Geoffrey Reaume has shown in his book, Remembrance of Patients Past (2000), some were simply housewives who refused to conform to gender norms or even individuals who were misdiagnosed because they had acted in an unusual manner and spoke foreign languages that authorities could not understand. By associating ability with productivity, the workhouses and asylums served as a warning to the able-bodied population and stigmatized those who fall outside the boundaries of normality. Theories of eugenics of course entailed both stigmatization of disability with racial classifications that sought to exclude immigrants who were a danger to society. At its nadir, this culminated in the eugenics policies of Nazi Germany where hundreds of thousands of disabled people were exterminated in accordance with instructions from Hitler in 1939 but it is often forgotten that early twentieth century social democratic politicians around the world were enthusiasts of eugenics measures.

In the twentieth century, Oliver showed how the state engaged in a neoliberal ‘de-carceration strategy’ that saw the closure of many institutional settings in Western countries. However, this was done in the context of inadequate services that did not allow disabled people to flourish. What remains to this day are massive and inflexible bureaucratic requirements for eligibility for social assistance. It is not uncommon for individuals to entail significant difficulty and repeated rejection in navigating a process that is designed to exclude as many people as possible.

The Role of Professionals

Oliver also played an important role in identifying the role of professionals who work with disabled people and build a career providing services that do little to empower them. He was particularly pointed in criticizing middle class professionals whom he felt exploited disabled people, created a culture of dependency, and systematically ignored their life experience. Hence the slogan of the disability rights movement: ‘nothing about us without us’. He also developed interesting insights on the need for disabled people to acquire a consciousness around disability politics. Unusually for an academic, he combined grassroots activism with his scholarly work and was influenced by the work of militant disability organizations such as the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS), which was founded in 1974. Their 1976 manifesto, Fundamental Principles of Disability, articulated many of the distinctions between impairment and disability that Oliver would go on to develop. He fittingly became the first professor of disability studies in Britain.

Disability Rights Activism and the Left

His powerful ideas have influenced an entire generation of disabled people, particularly in the Commonwealth countries, despite the fact that the socialist Left has all too frequently ignored disability rights activism. I was privileged to hear him speak around 1994 at Carleton University in Ottawa in which he spoke about disability rights and referenced Gramsci. This is hardly surprising as Oliver has written eloquently on the ideological construct of individualism. In the disability context, this is manifested through medicalization, the requirements of normality and eugenics (Oliver and Barnes, p.79). While many have since questioned whether the social model adequately integrated identities such as race and gender and whether it adequately encapsulates the experience of those with chronic conditions that involve significant physical pain, the debates still relate back to Oliver’s pioneering work. There is no doubt that there were elements of pessimism in his later work. Oliver thought that the transformation of capitalism was not on the immediate agenda in the face of widespread neoliberal cuts.

That understandable pessimism does not diminish the immense value of his transformative model and his legacy. All the writing I have done since then, including my anthology in honour of the late American disability rights advocate Marta Russell, Disability Politics in a Global Economy (2016), and other topics, is predicated on the epistemic foundation established by Oliver. Marta Russell’s landmark book, Beyond Ramps (1998), has undoubtedly been better received in Britain and other countries than in Canada and the United States in part because Oliver’s materialist conception of disablement has wider currency. At the same time few scholars have developed a full-fledged historical materialist theory of disablement as postmodernism dominates current disability studies departments, despite significant contributions by Marta Russell, Sunny Taylor, Jim Charlton, and others.

Today disability rights advocates continue to play an important role in challenging austerity including vigorous protests in the American Congress against Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act. As the Canadian Parliament continues to contemplate the passage of the – very limited and largely toothless – Accessible Canada Act (see the critique of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities), some thirty years after the passage of the more robust Americans with Disabilities Act in the United States. Disability rights advocates around the world owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Mike Oliver.

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Ravi Malhotra is a professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, and a disability rights advocate. You can follow him on twitter at @RaviMalh.

All images in this article are from The Bullet

Snap-Shots along the Road of Life

March 11th, 2019 by Edward Curtin

“You road I travel and look around!  I believe you are not all that is here!  I believe that something unseen is also here.”– Walt Whitman, Poem of the Road

Tragic

Jimmy C., age 9, died on the evening of Dec 28, 19** from a gunshot bullet to the heart.  He was shot by his seven-year-old brother Dennis, while, as The New York Times reported, “the two were playing with a rifle in a neighbor’s apartment in the northeast Bronx.”  The boys were visiting with their mother and found the rifle under a bed.  It was loaded and accidently fired, hitting Jimmy in the chest.

Another boy, age ten, was sitting on a closed toilet seat two miles away.  The bathroom was warm and steamy and the boy was talking to his father, for whom he was named. His father was shaving.  An only son with seven sisters, the boy adored his father, and, enclosed in this intimate setting, he felt embraced by his father’s love and protection.  For a young boy to watch his father shave and to converse with him alone about sports was pure heaven.

His father switched on a small transistor radio so they could hear basketball scores.  A report came over the radio that a young boy had been accidently shot and killed by his brother in the Bronx.  Then the names came. They were his brother’s sons. Heaven turned to hell.  His father, half-shaved, toweled his face and ran from the room.  The boy sat there stunned.  When he emerged from the bathroom, his father had already left to comfort and assist his brother, the father of the dead boy.

The ten year old could remember nothing of what followed. It all went blank and was never discussed, as if it never happened.  He was haunted by this void.

Bizarre

A professor was sitting with his secret lover in a college cafeteria.  It was winter and their table was deep into the room by tall windows.  There was snow on the ground.  They were talking about a mutual friend named John because he had been looking at them oddly in recent days and they suspected he might have realized that they were lovers.  Suddenly, John entered the dining hall at the far door.  He saw them and started walking toward their table.  As he approached, the professor said, “Well, look who’s here, if it isn’t the devil himself.  We were just talking about you, John.”

The bespectacled John laughed, said hello to the woman, and sat down next to the professor.  He was so close that when the professor turned to talk to him, he was looking into his right eye, as can happen at a close distance.

Suddenly, what sounded like a gunshot rang out and everyone all around turned toward the tall windows.  The professor quickly turned back to John and said, “I’m sorry, John, I didn’t mean to break your glasses.” The right lens in John’s glasses was shattered.  There was no gunshot, only the power of a look.  The three were stunned.  In the days that followed, John went about seeking answers from physicists and opticians. None could explain it.

Years later, the woman remembered the incident differently, perhaps because she was the odd one out, but the two men were certain that the professor had shattered John’s glasses. Both are still astounded.

John said he was at least glad that the look didn’t kill him.

Spectral

A few years later, a man was wandering around the diamond district in New York City.  It was a Sunday morning and the streets were deserted.  He had come to buy some books at the Gotham Book Mart on West 47th St., whose slogan was “Wise Men Fish Here.”  Many a famous author had frequented the shop over the years – Eugene O’Neill, J. D Salinger, Dylan Thomas, et al.  It was a cultural treasure whose contents are now archived at the University of Pennsylvania.

The man had arrived too early and the store hadn’t opened, so he aimlessly wandered up and down the empty street, finally stopping to gaze into the window of a large, glass-enclosed jewelry store on the corner.  He walked into the entranceway and looked through the window when he spied a ghost-like figure staring at him through the glass windows from the street.  He tried to avoid looking at this spectral figure, but when he looked up the face was stock-still and staring at him through pale spectacles.  His hair was white and his face its equal.  It gave him a creepy feeling and so he walked out toward the street to confront this pale phantom.  When he got to the street, the strange man met him and, raising a tiny camera, shot him.

The victim of this photographic assault said, “Did I give you permission to take my picture?”

The ghost replied, “Well, you have an interesting face, and I shoot a lot of people.”

“Well, you also have an interesting face, but I didn’t give you permission.  What do you do, go around hunting for interesting people to shoot?”

Andy Warhol shrugged, turned, and faded wraithlike down the vacant street.

The man never saw the photo.  Perhaps it remained a negative.

So much of the past recedes as afterimages, while the road into the future opens out before us shrouded in mystery.

The old question stills applies. Quo vadis?

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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Natural England and Natural Resources Wales have mysteriously given the go-ahead for protected species such as robins, starlings, blackbirds and bullfinches to be shot: Licences granted to kill multiple Red-listed species

I say mysteriously, because the reasons given are very strange.

When asked why these licences have been granted, Natural England simply claim the birds are a “threat to public health and air safety” and the slaughter is to “prevent serious damage to livestock”.

It’s somewhat hard to imagine how starlings and robins could ever be a danger to the public or herds of cows.

Of course, the fact that these protected nesting birds are one of the biggest problems facing property developers (*see information below) when they attempt to develop brownfield sites for residential housing is nothing at all to do with the decision.

As, I’m sure, is the fact that the Chair of Natural England, Andrew Sells, also happens to be one of the founders of Linden Homes, a property development business specialising in the development of brownfield sites for residential housing.

Tory government ministers chose Andrew Sells –  a venture capitalist with no experience of ecological or environmental matters – as the Chair of Natural England a few years ago.

A surprise decision which I’m sure was not at all influenced by the fact that Andrew Sells is a major Tory party donor and the fact that property developers in general are some of the Tories’ biggest donors.

No conflicts of interest at all then.

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Note

*All wild birds, their nests and young are protected throughout England and Wales by the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 (as amended). It is illegal to kill, injure or take any wild bird, or damage or destroy the nest or eggs of breeding birds.

If nests, whether completed or in the process of being built, are found on site, any works with the potential to damage or destroy the nest, eggs or young birds, must stop until the birds have completed breeding.

Birds may nest on machinery or scaffolding and other temporary site structures. If this happens the equipment cannot be used until the birds have finished nesting and such areas may need to be sealed off to prevent disturbance.

Breaking the law can lead to fines of up to £5000 per offence and potential prison sentences of up to six months. Vehicles implicated in an offence can be compounded and both the company, and/or the individual(s) concerned, can be held liable.

Featured image is from Pride’s Purge

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Grand Jury Efforts: Jailing Chelsea Manning

March 11th, 2019 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

“I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury.”  So explained Chelsea Manning in justifying her refusal to answer questions and comply with a grand jury subpoena compelling her to testify on her knowledge of WikiLeaks. 

“Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly stated ethical obligations to the grand jury system.” 

Manning, whose 35-year sentence was commuted by the Obama administration in an act of seeming leniency, is indivisibly linked to the WikiLeaks legacy of disclosure.  She was the source, and the bridge, indispensable for giving Julian Assange and his publishing outfit the gold dust that made names and despoiled others. 

The sense of dredging and re-dredging in efforts to ensnare Manning is palpable.  She insists that she had shared all that she knew at her court-martial, a point made clear by the extensive if convoluted nature of the prosecution’s effort to build a case. 

“The grand jury’s questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I tesified [sic] for almost a full day about these events.  I stand by my previous testimony.” 

Before Friday’s hearing, she also reiterated that she had invoked the First, Fourth and Sixth Amendment protections.

Grand juries have gone musty.  Conceived in 12th century England as a feudalistic guardian against unfair prosecution, they became bodies of self-regulating and policing freemen (often barons with a gripe) charged with investigating alleged wrongdoing.  Doing so provided a preliminary step in recommending whether the accused needed to go court. The US Constitution retains this element with the Fifth Amendment: that no “person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.”  

The independence of that body of peers has been clipped, modified and fundamentally influenced by the prosecutor’s guiding hand.  The federal grand jury has essentially become a body easily wooed by the prosecutor in closed settings where grooming and convincing are easy matters. The prosecutor can also be comforted by that level of procedural secrecy that keeps the process beyond prying eyes; Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) makes the point that the jurors and government attorneys “must not disclose a matter occurring before the grand jury.”  Sealed and confined, the participants accordingly forge a narrative that tends to encourage, rather than dissuade a finding, of guilt. 

That influence is hard to deny, leading to reluctance on the part of any empaneled grand jury to reject the plausibility of a prosecutor’s claims.  The US Bureau of Statistics, looking at 2010 figures on the prosecution of 162,000 federal cases, found that grand juries only failed to return an indictment in 11 cases.  As Gordon Griller of the National Centre for State Courts reasoned,

“The problem with the grand jury system is the jury.  The prosecutor has complete control over what is presented to the grand jury and expects the grand jurors to just rubber stamp every case brought before it.”

Manning’s other relevant point is that the grand jury process has, invariably, been given the weaponry to target dissenters and corner contrarians. 

“I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.”

Manning explained to US District Judge Claude Hilton that she would (think Socrates, hemlock, the like) “accept whatever you bring upon me”.  When her defence team insisted that she be confined to home, given specific needs of gender-affirming healthcare, the judge was unconvinced.  US marshals were more than up to the task (how is never stated), though certain “details about Ms Manning’s confinement,” claim Alexandria Sheriff Dana Lawhorne, “will not be made public due to security and privacy concerns.”   

She will be confined till the conclusion of the investigation, or till she feels ready to comply with the subpoena.  Manning’s defence counsel Moira Meltzer-Cohen is convinced that the very act of jailing Manning is one of state-sanctioned cruelty.

There is a distinct note of the sinister in this resumption of hounding a whistleblower; yet again, Manning must show that the virtues of a cause and the merits of an open system demand a level of cruel sacrifice.  “This ain’t my first rodeo,” she told her lawyer with some reflection. 

This rodeo is one dogged by problems.  Manning’s original conviction was a shot across the bow, the prelude to something fundamental.  Journalists long protected for using leaked material under the First Amendment were going to become future targets of prosecution.  Such instincts have seeped into the US governing class like stubborn damp rot; consider, for instance, the remarks of Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2012 on the issue of leaks discussed in The New York Times.  Having published details of the Obama administration’s “Kill List” and US-orchestrated cyber-attacks against Iran, the paper had “caused serious harm to US national security and… should be prosecuted accordingly.”  While The Grey Lady might prefer to distance itself from WikiLeaks in journalistic company, prosecuting authorities see little difference.

This latest rotten business also demonstrates the unequivocal determination of US authorities to fetter, if not totally neutralise, the reach of WikiLeaks in the modern information wars.  Having been either tongue-tired or reticent, US officials, notably those in the Alexandria office, have revealed what WikiLeaks regarded as obvious some years ago: that a grand jury is keen to soften the road to prosecution.    

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

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

US Negotiations: Masters of Defeats

March 11th, 2019 by Prof. James Petras

Introduction

The US is currently engaged in negotiations with at least a dozen countries; which involve fundamental political, military and economic issues.

The US has adopted diplomatic strategies in the face of its ‘inability’ to secure military victories. The purpose of adopting a diplomatic approach is to secure through negotiations, in part or fully, goals and advantages unattainable through military means.

While diplomacy is less subject to military and economic losses it does require making concessions. Negotiations are only successful if there are reciprocal benefits to both parties.

Those regimes which demand maximum advantages and minimum concessions, usually fail or succeed because they are based on very unequal power relations.

We will proceed to evaluate Washington’s success or failure in recent negotiations and analyze the reasons and consequences for the outcome.

US – North Korea Negotiations

President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un have been engaged in negotiations, for nearly a year. The White House has prioritized the ‘de-nuclearization’ of the peninsula which includes dismantling nuclear weapons, missiles, test sets and other strategic military objectives.

North Korea seeks the end of economic sanctions, the signing of a US-Korean peace treaty and diplomatic recognition. A decisive meeting between the two took place Feb. 26-27, 2019 in Hanoi.

The negotiations were a total failure. Washington failed to secure any gains, nor did they advance the peace process; and there are no future prospects.

President Donald J. Trump and Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea meet for a social dinner Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019, at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi, for their second summit meeting. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

North Korea offered three significant concessions which were not reciprocated. President Kim Jong-Un proposed to (1) dismantle nuclear testing sites (2) announce a moratorium on nuclear tests and inter-continental range ballistic missiles tests (3) agreed to partially dismantle missile engine test sites.

Washington offered nothing in return – instead it demanded total disarmament; no lifting of sanctions; no signing of the end of the US-Korea war.

Washington’s asymmetrical ‘negotiations’ were pre-determined to fail. The US underestimated the capacity of the North Koreans to insist on reciprocity; they believed that future verbal promises would entice the North Koreans to disarm. The Koreans were fully aware of the recent US record of reneging on signed agreements with Iran, China and its partners in the Belt and Road agreement.

Moreover, North Korea had powerful allies in China and Russia and nuclear weapons to resist added US pressure.

US – Iran Negotiations

US and Iran negotiated an agreement to terminate economic sanctions in exchange for ending nuclear weapons development. It temporarily succeeded but was quickly reversed by the Trump regime. The White House demanded Iran dismantle its missile defense program and threatened a military attack. Washington did not bargain, it sought to impose a one-sided ‘solution’. The UK,France,Germany Russia and China, co- signers of the agreement, rejected the Trump dictate, but a number of major EU multi- national corporations capitulated to the White House demand to tighten sanctions.

As a consequence, the US deliberate sabotage of negotiations pushed Iran closer to Russia, China and alternative markets while the US remained wedded to Saudi Arabia and Israel. The former engaged in a losing war with Yemen, the latter remained an international pariah receiving billions of US handouts.

US – China Negotiations

The US has engaged in negotiations with China to downgrade its economy and retain US global supremacy. Beijing has agreed to increase its imports from Washington and tighten controls over Chinese use of US technology, but the US has not offered any concessions. Instead Washington has demanded that China end the state’s role in financing its cutting- edge technology, artificial intelligence and communication innovations.

In other words, China is expected to surrender its structural advantages in order to avoid harsh White House tariffs which would reduce Chinese exports.

There is no reciprocity. The Trump regime operates by threats to China which, however, will have negative effects on US farmers dependent on Chinese markets; on US importers, especially the retail sector which imports Chinese products; consumers who will suffer higher prices for goods purchased from China.

In addition, China will deepen its links with alternative markets in Asia, Africa, Russia, Latin America and elsewhere.

As of the most recent year (2018) China’s positive trade balance with the US rose to $419 billion dollars while the US was forced to increase its subsidies to US agro- exporters to compensate for loss of sales to China.

After several months of negotiations US representatives have secured trade concessions but failed to impose a breakdown of China’s economic model.

By the middle of 2019, while negotiations continue, the likelihood of a ‘grand bargain’ is dismal. In large part this is because Washington fails to recognize that its weakened global position requires that the US engage in ‘structural changes’, which means that the Treasury invests in technology; labor upgrades and education. The US should practice reciprocal relations with dynamic trading partners;to do so, Washington needs to invest billions to upgrade its domestic infrastructure; and reallocate federal spending from military spending and wars to domestic priorities and productive overseas agreements. US diplomatic relations with China based on threats and tariffs are failing and economic negotiations are deteriorating.

US – Venezuela: Non-Negotiations a Formula for Defeat

Over the past half- decade (2015 – 2019) Washington has succeeded in restoring client regimes in Latin America, by military coups, political intervention and economic pressure. As a consequence, the White House has successfully ‘negotiated’ one-sided political, economic, social and diplomatic outcomes in the region … with the exception of Cuba and Venezuela.

President Trump has broken negotiated agreements with Cuba to no advantage; US threats have led to Cuba securing greater ties with Europe, China, Russia and elsewhere without affecting Cuba’s tourist business.

The Trump regime has escalated its political and economic propaganda and social war against Venezuela. Multiple overt coup efforts have backfired beginning in April 2002 to February 2019.

While the US succeeded in the rest of Latin America in consolidating hemispheric hegemony, in the case of Venezuela, Washington has suffered diplomatic defeats and the growth of greater popular resistance.

US interventionist and sanctions policies have sharply reduced the presence of its middle and lower middle class supporters who have fled abroad. US propaganda has failed to secure the support of the Venezuelan military which has become more ‘nationalist’ with very few desertions.

The White House appointment of the convicted felon Elliott Abrams, known as the ‘butcher of Central America’, has certainly undermined any prospect of a favorable diplomatic settlement.

US sanctions of political and military leaders precludes efforts to co-opt and recruit leaders. The US appointed as its ‘interim ruler’ one Juan Guido who has little domestic support – widely seen domestically as an imperial stooge.

The US non-negotiated successes in Latin America have blinded Washington to the different conditions in Venezuela; where structural socio-economic reforms and nationalist military training consolidated political support.

In the case of Venezuela, the US refusal to enter into negotiations has led to greater polarization and multiple defeats, including the failed coup of February 23/24 2019.

US – Russia: Colluding with Failed Diplomacy

Washington succesfully‘negotiated’ the surrendered and break-up of the Soviet Union and the subsequent pillage of Russia. It was the US’ most successful ‘negotiations’ of the century. The US ‘negotiations’ allowed it to expand NATO to the Russian frontier, incorporated most of East Europeans into the EU and NATO and led the US to boast of creating a ‘unipolar world’.

Excess hubris led the US to launch prolonged (and losing) wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and elsewhere.

With the election of President Putin, Russia made a comeback, which led to the Kremlin reconstituting its military, economic and geopolitical power.

The White House reacted by attempting to ‘negotiate’ Russia’s military encirclement and to undermine Moscow’s economic growth.

When Russia refused to submit to US dictates, Washington resorted to economic sanctions and power grabs in the Ukraine, Central Asia and the Middle East (Iraq and Syria).

Washington rejected a diplomatic approach in favor of economic intimidation, especially as some US backed oligarchs were arrested or fled with their wealth to the UK and Israel.

The US refused to recognize the opportunities which still existed in Russia – a neo-liberal economic elite, a mainly mineral export economy and Moscow’s conciliatory approach toward US military engagement in Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Iran.

US ‘negotiations’ were non-starters. The White House defined Russia as an enemy to be undermined. Sanctions became the weapon to deal with Russia’s attempt to regain its world standing. Washington’s aggressive posture included its refusal to recognize that the world had become multi-polar; that Russia had allies in China, partners in Germany, military bases in Syria; and has a loyal and advanced scientific elite.

The US ,operating from a past image of Russia from the Yeltsin era. failed to adapt to the new realities – a resurgent Russia willing to bargain and secure reciprocal advantages.

The US failed to recognize potential allies and economic advantages in open negotiations with Russia. Many Russian economists close to the Kremlin were neo- liberals, ready and willing to open the economy to US penetration. Russia was willing to concede the US a major role in the Middle East and offered to negotiate their oil export policies.

Instead the US refused to negotiate power sharing .US sanctions forced Russia to embrace China; Washington’s drive for global dominance encouraged Russia to build ties with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria and other independent nations.

Washington’s unipolar policies turned a potentially lucrative and long-term strategic relation into costly confrontations and failed diplomacy.

US and the European Union: Dead End Deals

Bullying Europe has been a successful endeavor, which the US has put on display on innumerable occasions in recent times. Washington negotiates agreements with the French, English and German to end economic sanction on Iran and then reneges and turns around to apply sanctions on European firms which comply with the US and disobey their own government.

The US negotiates with Europe on trade policies and then abruptly threatens to impose sanctions on its crucial auto exports.

Europe negotiates with Washington on NATO security issues and then the White House threatens them in order to raise their military spending.

The US claims that the EU is a strategic ally but treats it as a junior partner.

Negotiations between the two has been a one-sided partnership: the US sells arms and names adversaries ,while Europe argues, dissents and submits, sending troops to fight US wars in Syria. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere.

The US dictates sanctions against Russia, increasing the price of EU imports of gas and oil . Germany debates, discusses, hems and haws and avoids an outright rejection.

The US has steadily encroached on EU prerogatives to the point where it claims if the EU fails to comply with the White House’s “America First” agenda, it would cause the US to withdraw from NATO.

Despite a longstanding alliance, the White House no longer negotiates policies – it threatens and expects compliance. Despite a history of EU submission and pro forma debates, as Washington has hardened its opposition to Russia, China and Iran it no longer considers EU trade relations a point of negotiations. While Europe might consider the US as an ally, it will not be allowed to be treated as such, because it is viewed as a trade adversary.

Conclusion

Washington has succeeded in securing non-reciprocal agreements with weak countries. This was the case in post war Europe, post Gorbachev Russia and among Latin America’s current colonized regimes.

In contrast Washington’s rejection of reciprocal agreements with Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela has been a failure. US trade wars with China have led to the loss of markets and allowed China to pursue global agreements through its
massive ,billion dollar Belt and Road infrastructure projects.

US one-sided hostile policies toward Russia has increased ties between the Kremlin and Beijing.

Washington has lost opportunities to work with neo-liberal oligarchs in Russia in order to undermine President Putin. Washington has failed to negotiate reciprocal ties with North Korea which would ‘de-nuclearize’ the peninsula in exchange for lifting economic sanctions and opening the door for a capitalist restoration.

Demanding unilateral concession and submission has led to uniform failures; whereas negotiated compromises could have led to greater market opportunities and long-term political advances.

President Trump and his top policy makers and negotiators have failed to secure any agreements.

The Democratic Congress has been as ineffective and even more bellicose – demanding greater military threats to Russia, expanded trade wars with China and less negotiations with North Korea, Iran and Venezuela.

In a word, failed negotiations and non-reciprocal diplomacy has become the hallmark of US foreign policy.

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

Featured image is from TruePublica

The United Nations postponed last week for the third time the publication of a blacklist of Israeli and international firms that profit directly from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied territories.

The international body had come under enormous pressure to keep the database under wraps after lobbying behind the scenes from Israel, the United States and many of the 200-plus companies that were about to be named.

UN officials have suggested they may go public with the list in a few months.

But with no progress since the UN’s Human Rights Council requested the database back in early 2016, Palestinian leaders are increasingly fearful that it has been permanently shelved.

Image result for danny danon israel

That was exactly what Israel hoped for. When efforts were first made to publish the list in 2017, Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, warned:

“We will do everything we can to ensure that this list does not see the light of day.”

He added that penalising the settlements was “an expression of modern antisemitism”.

Both Israel and the US pulled out of the Human Rights Council last year, claiming that Israel was being singled out.

Israel has good reason to fear greater transparency. Bad publicity would most likely drive many of these firms, a few of them household names, out of the settlements under threat of a consumer backlash and a withdrawal of investments by religious organisations and pension funds.

The UN has reportedly already warned Coca-Cola, Teva Pharmaceuticals, the defence electronics company Elbit Systems and Africa Israel Investments of their likely inclusion. Israeli telecoms and utility companies are particularly exposed because grids serving the settlements are integrated with those in Israel.

There is an added danger that the firms might be vulnerable to prosecutions, should the International Crimimal Court at The Hague eventually open an investigation into whether the settlements constitute a war crime, as the Palestinian leadership has demanded.

The exodus of these firms from the West Bank would, in turn, make it much harder for Israel to sustain its colonies on stolen Palestinian land. As a result, efforts to advance a Palestinian state would be strengthened.

Many of the settlements – contrary to widely held impressions of them – have grown into large towns. Their inhabitants expect all the comforts of modern life, from local bank branches to fast-food restaurants and high-street clothing chains.

Nowadays, a significant proportion of Israel’s 750,000 settlers barely understand that their communities violate international law.

The settlements are also gradually being integrated into the global economy, as was highlighted by a row late last year when Airbnb, an accommodation-bookings website, announced a plan to de-list properties in West Bank settlements.

The company was possibly seeking to avoid inclusion on the database, but instead it faced a severe backlash from Israel’s supporters.

This month the US state of Texas approved a ban on all contracts with Airbnb, arguing that the online company’s action was “antisemitic”.

As both sides understand, a lot hangs on the blacklist being made public.

If Israel and the US succeed, and western corporations are left free to ignore the Palestinians’ dispossession and suffering, the settlements will sink their roots even deeper into the West Bank. Israel’s occupation will become ever more irreversible, and the prospect of a Palestinian state ever more distant.

A 2013 report on the ties between big business and the settlements noted the impact on the rights of Palestinians was “pervasive and devastating”.

Sadly, the UN leadership’s cowardice on what should be a straightforward matter – the settlements violate international law, and firms should not assist in such criminal enterprises – is part of a pattern.

Repeatedly, Israel has exerted great pressure on the UN to keep its army off a “shame list” of serious violators of children’s rights. Israel even avoided a listing in 2015 following its 50-day attack on Gaza the previous year, which left more than 500 Palestinian children dead. Dozens of armies and militias are named each year.

The Hague court has also been dragging its feet for years over whether to open a proper war crimes investigation into Israel’s actions in Gaza, as well as the settlements.

The battle to hold Israel to account is likely to rage again this year, after the publication last month of a damning report by UN legal experts into the killing of Palestinian protesters at Gaza’s perimeter fence by Israeli snipers.

Conditions for Gaza’s two million Palestinians have grown dire since Israel imposed a blockade, preventing movement of goods and people, more than a decade ago.

The UN report found that nearly all of those killed by the snipers – 154 out of 183 – were unarmed. Some 35 Palestinian children were among the dead, and of the 6,000 wounded more than 900 were minors. Other casualties included journalists, medical personnel and people with disabilities.

The legal experts concluded that there was evidence of war crimes. Any identifiable commanders and snipers, it added, should face arrest if they visited UN member states.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, dismissed the report as “lies” born out of “an obsessive hatred of Israel”.

Certainly, it has caused few ripples in western capitals. Britain’s opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn was a lone voice in calling for an arms embargo on Israel in response.

It is this Israeli exceptionalism that is so striking. The more violent Israel becomes towards the Palestinians and the more intransigent in rejecting peace, the less pressure is exerted upon it.

Not only does Israel continue to enjoy generous financial, military and diplomatic support from the US and Europe, both are working ever harder to silence criticisms of its actions by their own citizens.

As the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement grows larger, western capitals have casually thrown aside commitments to free speech in a bid to crush it.

France has already criminalised support for a boycott of Israel, and its president Emmanuel Macron recently proposed making it illegal to criticise Zionism, the ideology that underpins Israel’s rule over Palestinians.

More than two dozen US states have passed anti-BDS legislation, denying companies and individual contractors dealing with the government of that particular state the right to boycott Israel. In every case, Israel is the only country protected by these laws. Last month, the US Senate passed a bill that adds federal weight to this state-level campaign of intimidation.

The hypocrisy of these states – urging peace in the region while doing their best to subvert it – is clear. Now the danger is that UN leaders will join them.

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A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

A recent article by Andrew Sullivan in the New York magazine considers how one might discuss the issue of Israel and its powerful domestic lobby without being accused of anti-Semitism. Sullivan is a keen observer of the dynamics of American political power and the article pretty clearly lays out why the relationship with Israel is poison for the United States, but he cautions that words matter and one has to be careful about the packaging surrounding any critique of the Israel Lobby and its American Jewish supporters.

Sullivan begins with:

“Let’s get this out of the way first: Using the phrases ‘all about the Benjamins’ and ‘allegiance to a foreign country’ when referring to the Israel lobby in D.C., as freshman Democratic representative Ilhan Omar recently did, is anti-Semitic. It should be possible to criticize Washington’s relationship with Israel without deploying crude and freighted language like this.”

And that is precisely where some critics of the Israel-America relationship might have a problem with observers like Sullivan as what for him passes as “crude and freighted” is for others frankness. Okay, “all about the Benjamins” is slang and the implication is that Jewish money is what has corrupted American politics and the media to stifle any honest discussion on Israel-Palestine and to skew U.S. government activity in the Middle East so that it favors what Israel perceives to be its own interests. This process operates right out in the open with Israel-firster Jewish billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban respectively serving as principal donors for the Republican and Democratic parties.

Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson b6f0f

From left to right: Haim Saban, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. Credit: Milsteinff.org

This flood of  pro-Israeli money into foreign policy generation has done incalculable damage to the actual interests of the United States as Sullivan, to his credit, makes clear in his article. The point is that politics in America is all about money and Ilhan Omar was quite right to make that connection. Most congress-critters do not love Israel because they honestly like the hordes of lobbyists that it is able to send their way. In fact, many of them privately complain about the pressure, but they do love the campaign donations and the lucrative sinecure jobs in the financial services industry that come with their retirements. And they also know that if they cross Israeli interests while in office they will soon be unemployed.

And as for the “allegiance to a foreign country,” how else does one describe doing everything possible to favor a foreign state at the expense of the nation where one lives? Sullivan himself provides ample evidence in his article that the one-way relationship with Israel inflicts major damage on the United States and that the enabling of that process comes from a disciplined and well-funded lobbying effort that operates at all levels of government and also through the media. Is that not allegiance to a foreign country?

After expressing the “thou shalt nots” regarding Israel, Andrew Sullivan pulls no punches in his article, which should be read in extenso. He writes “The basic facts are not really in dispute. A very powerful lobby deploys the money and passions of its members to ensure that a foreign country gets very, very special treatment from the U.S.” and then goes on to detail exactly how Israel is a major liability to America. He discusses the $3.8 billion it receives annually in spite of the fact that is a wealthy country, its failure to support U.S. foreign policy objectives, its unwillingness to curtail a brutal occupation of the West Bank, its humiliation of President Obama because he entered into an agreement with Iran, and its nearly complete subjugation of Congress, congressional leaders and the White House.

Sullivan fails to mention how Israel also spies on the United States, steals U.S. developed technology and benefits hugely from beneficial trade agreements that kill American jobs. And there are also the “suspected but not proven” issues like Israel’s role in 9/11, its apparent manipulation of Jewish American officials in the Pentagon to start the disastrous 2003 war with Iraq, and its current clandestine agitation for Washington to attack Iran. Jewish billionaires also are the prime sources of “charitable” contributions that feed the illegal settlement outposts on the West Bank populated largely by fundamentalist Jews whose prime mission is to make the lives of their Palestinian neighbors so miserable that they will emigrate. That is sometimes referred to as ethnic cleansing. Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and David Friedman, the key components of the Trump Administration Middle East “peace” team, are all passionate about Israel and have all supported the illegal settlements. Friedman, in particular, has sought to eliminate the word “occupation” from official U.S. government descriptions of the Israeli activity in Palestinian areas.

Image on the right: Andrew Sullivan. Image credit: Geoff Livingston/ flickr

Andrew Sullivan 1c6fc

And then there is the Israeli predilection to use unarmed Palestinian demonstrators for target practice and to bomb schools and vital infrastructure in Gaza, which once upon a time most Americans would have considered war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Sullivan does mention how Congress is willing to pass legislation to restrict freedom of speech if such speech involves criticism of Israel, noting that the very first bill to come up in the Senate after the recent shutdown was supporting the punishment of those who advocate nonviolent boycotting of Israel. He might have added how Israel’s friends at state and local levels are pushing to rewrite world history texts to eliminate any references to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. And holocaust study is becoming mandatory in many U.S. school systems without any suggestion that the standard narrative might be in large part bogus. And then there are the holocaust museums springing up like mushrooms at the taxpayers’ expense. Is it all driven by money and enabled by the power that money buys to propagandize for Israel? And is it maybe just a bit of allegiance to a foreign country? Yes indeed, thank you, Ilhan Omar, for saying so.

All of this warm and fuzzy feeling about Israel did not happen by magic. By one estimate there are 600 Christian and Jewish organizations in the United States that have at least part of their agendas the promotion of the relationship with Israel. Christian Zionists are formidable in numbers but the money, as well as the political and media access that drive the so-called Israel Lobby process, is Jewish. The directors and presidents of those organizations meet regularly and discuss what they can do to help Israel. How does one describe such collusion? Some might prefer to call it a conspiracy.

So how should one view the dystopic nature of the relationship with Israel? No one has ever described it better than America’s first president George Washington. In his Farewell Address he wrote:

“The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest…So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.”

Andrew Sullivan concludes with some optimism and also a warning, which should be heeded: “Can our current controversy lead to a less inhibited debate? I sure hope so. Will that actually happen? All I can say is that AIPAC will wield all the power it can muster to prevent it.” It is, to be sure, AIPAC versus all decent Americans and one has to hope that this time the voice of the people will be heard in defense of the actual interests of the United States of America rather than those of Israel.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Carlos Latuff/ Twitter/ Mintpressnews.com

It’s the second, but no less ludicrous, attempt in one week to sway the opinion of the public and President Donald Trump against the concept of denuclearization and peaceful dialogue with North Korea.

A March 8, 2019 report from National Public Radio (NPR) follows another by NBC News with sensational and misleading claims that satellite imagery released by private corporations with contractual ties to government defense and intelligence agencies show imminent preparations by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to engage in missile testing or the launch of a satellite from their facilities in Sanumdong, North Korea. An examination of the photos provided shows absolutely no indication of such activity.

I. Satellite Footage Of Sanumdong Facility Shows No Sign Of Imminent Launch

Images provided to NPR by private contractor DigitalGlobe consist of two low resolution images, one of a building in the Sanumdong complex and the other of a train sitting along a rail line. In neither photo is there any discernible amount of unusual activity.

Credit: Image ©2019 DigitalGlobe, Inc. Graphic: Alyson Hurt/NPR

The first image of a “production hall” bears a striking resemblance to a similar photo run by the Washington Post in July 2018 where unnamed intelligence officials claimed that North Korea was building one or possibly two liquid fueled ICBMs which appear to have never materialized or been used in any launch. The claims came one month after President Trump met with Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore for a historic summit between the United States and the DPRK.

NPR’s claims that the imagery shows “vehicle activity” occurring around the facility. Yet close inspection shows that the “activity” consists of a few inert vehicles, which appear to be a white pickup and white dump truck or flatbed parked in a permanent position next to piles of metal. The scene does not appear to be different from any number of sleepy yards of businesses that can be examined by members of the public on Google Maps.

Credit: Image ©2019 DigitalGlobe, Inc. Graphic: Koko Nakajima/NPR

The second image, according to NPR, shows rail cars sitting “in a nearby rail yard, where two cranes are also erected.” The photo simply shows a train car sitting inert with empty flatbed cars and hopper cars that are either filled with coal or empty. A second rail line similarly holds a number of hoppers and flatbed cars. Hopper cars in particular are totally unsuitable for the transportation of military technology such as missiles.

The tracks in the lower left corner are covered in snow, meaning that the train sat for many months through the winter or was backed into its position. Considering that US and international sanctions have caused an extreme scarcity of fuel in the DPRK it is likely that the trains have not moved for quite some time, unless their diesel engines were converted to burn coal or wood.

In short, there is absolutely no indication that several low resolution photos of a facility in North Korea have any activity in them outside of a few rusting vehicles that have sat without moving for some time.

II. NPR’s Sources Of Satellite Imagery Are Contractors For The CIA And Pentagon

The report by NPR lists two sources of satellite imagery – DigitalGlobe, Inc. and Planet Labs, Inc. As Disobedient Media has previously reported, DigitalGlobe is an American vendor of satellite imagery founded by a scientist who worked on the US military’s Star Wars ICBM defense program under President Ronald Reagan. DigitalGlobe began its existence in Oakland, CA and was seeded with money from Silicon Valley sources and corporations in North America, Europe and Japan. Headquartered in Westminster CO, DigitalGlobe works extensively with defense and intelligence programs. In 2016, it was revealed that DigitalGlobe was working with CIA chipmaker NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services to create an AI-run satellite surveillance network known as Spacenet.

Planet Labs is a private satellite imaging corporation based in San Francisco, Ca. that allows customers with the money to pay an opportunity to gain access to next generation surveillance capabilities. In February 2016, Federal technology news source Nextgov noted a statement from former CIA Information Operations Center director and senior cyber adviser Sue Gordon that Planet Labs, DigitalGlobe and Google subsidiary Skybox Imaging were all working with the Pentagon’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to provide location intelligence. Planet Labs’ own website also lists press releases detailing past contracts for subscription access to high resolution imagery with the NGA.

The pervasive involvement of intelligence agencies and defense contractors in attempts to undermine negotiations with North Korea does not create confidence in the already shaky claims made by NPR regarding alleged preparations by the DPRK to participate in a missile launch. These contentions are not supported in substance by any tangible facts. As claims and pressure continue to build on President Donald Trump to abandon the peace process, there are multiple factions of the United States government who are running a real risk of behaving in manners which could be interpreted as open sedition or refusal to carry out the stated goals and policies of the President.

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Though way too early to judge her after barely over two months in Congress, her forthright outspokenness is encouraging. She supported what demanded rejection – HR 676, the NATO Support Act, banning use of federal funds for withdrawal, requiring the US to remain a member in good standing, prohibiting withdrawal from the alliance, a killing machine used by Washington to rape and destroy nations.

She backed HJ Res. 30, opposing executive actions with regard to (illegal) sanctions on Russia. The Security Council alone may legally impose them on nations, not individual states against others.

Along with other House members, she condemned Trump regime efforts to undermine Puerto Rico’s recovery from devastation caused by Hurricane Maria, striking the island in September 2017.

She supported HR 790 – the  Federal Civilian Workforce Pay Raise Fairness Act of 2019, calling for a 2.6% increase for federal employees.

She co-sponsored HJ Res. 37, calling for removal of US (special) forces from Yemen within 30 days of enactment of the legislation.

She co-sponsored HJ Res. 46 – opposing Trump’s Feb.15, 2019-declared national emergency along the US/Mexico border when none exists. The measure calls for terminating it.

In a letter to Mike Pompeo, she and other signatories “express(ed) deep concern about credible reports that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have transferred US-origin military equipment and weapons to al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups in Yemen in direct violation of existing arms agreements with the US” – backed by Trump regime hardliners.

She supported HR 183, condemning anti-Semitism, bigotry, and anti-Muslim discrimination – a watered-down measure accomplishing nothing.

Her website bio explained she’s a Somalia national. Her family fled the country (targeted by the US for decades) when she was age-eight.

They lived in a Kenya refugee camp for four years before emigrating to the US, settling in a Minneapolis suburb.

Omar’s interest in politics began at age-14. In high school, she was an “organizer” and “coalition builder,” at the University of Minnesota, a “community educator” involved in “progressive activis(m).”

She supports issues relating to “support for working families, educational access, environmental protection, and racial equity.”

She’s one of two Muslim women in the House (along with Rashida Tlaib), the first two ever, the first Somali/American congresswoman.

In 2016, Omar was the first female Muslim legislator in the US, serving as a Minnesota state representative.

Her website bio calls her “an accomplished legislator, policy analyst, community organizer, non-profit leader, public speaker, board member, youth mentor, and an award-winning human rights advocate.”

As a Minnesota state legislator, she served on committees relating to civil law, higher education, as well as state policy and finance.

She chaired the state’s Young Women’s Initiative, along with serving as Policy, Women Organizing Women director, Child  Nutrition Outreach Coordinator, and Community Nutrition Educator at the University of Minnesota.

She’s a former Minnesota Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) advisory board member, a former Minnesota NAACP vice president, a Human Rights & Women’s Advocate member, a Legal Rights Center board member, along with other community activities.

She opposes Trump’s ban on Muslims from the wrong countries. A recipient of numerous awards for public service, she supports world peace, equity and justice.

What’s more important than that. Her website endorses “peace & prosperity,” saying:

“We must end the state of continuous war, as these wars have made us less safe…(W)e are currently in the midst of an extreme global migration crisis.”

“Meanwhile at home, there have been increasingly cuts to spending on healthcare, infrastructure, education, and housing.”

“We must scale back US military activities, and reinvest our expansive military budget back into our communities…(in) healthcare, education, housing, jobs, clean energy, and infrastructure.”

“We are currently engaged in a number of wars that have no end in sight—Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia.”

She omitted US involvement in Israeli wars on Palestinians and neighboring countries, along with intermittent Ukraine war on Donbass.

US “wars have destabilized regions, created massive humanitarian crises, and continue to hurt our image across the world. We must end these wars.”

She called for “repeal(ing) harmful sanctions…oppos(ing) all US intervention(s) into” other countries. She tweeted the following on Venezuela:

“A US backed coup in (the country) is not a solution to the dire issues they face. Trump’s efforts to install a far right opposition will only incite violence and further destabilize the region. We must support (efforts) to facilitate a peaceful dialogue.”

She opposes jobs-destroying, anti-consumer, anti-environmental trade deals, supporting programs for workers displaced by NAFTA and similar deals.

She outspokenly backs Palestinian rights, criticizing Israeli apartheid viciousness, falsely called anti-Semitic for being on the right side of this issue.

“I will use my voice in Congress and work with communities on the ground to center the ultimate goal of (Palestinian) self-determination and peace,” she said.

She supports Palestinians “demanding an end to the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and end the siege of Gaza…oppos(ing) the killing of civilians in Gaza and the expansion of settlements into the West Bank” and East Jerusalem.

Omar and scant few others are voices in the wilderness among House and Senate members.

The vast majority support dirty business as usual, opposing what she backs and promotes.

The power of AIPAC and other big money already targeted her for elimination, sure to challenge her in 2020 and future elections if she retains her seat next November. That’s how the dirty system works.

Note: Omar was quoted accusing Obama of “murder,” adding he hid behind a “pretty face and the smile.” He stood for the status quo, not real “hope and change.”

“We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”

She then backtracked, claiming her remarks were distorted, saying “I’m an Obama fan.”

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from MPR News

The Death of Milosevic and NATO Responsibility

March 11th, 2019 by Christopher Black

This article first appeared in Izvestia in March of 2015.

On March 11, 2006, President Slobodan Milosevic died in a NATO prison. No one has been held accountable for his death. In the 10 years since the end of his lonely struggle to defend himself and his country against the false charges invented by the NATO powers, the only country to demand a public inquiry into the circumstances of his death came from Russia when Foreign Minister, Serge Lavrov, stated that Russia did not accept the Hague tribunal’s denial of responsibility and demanded that an impartial and international investigation be conducted. Instead, The NATO tribunal made its own investigation, known as the Parker Report, and as expected, exonerated itself from all blame.

But his death cannot lie unexamined, the many questions unanswered, those responsible unpunished. The world cannot continue to accept the substitution of war and brutality for peace and diplomacy. It cannot continue to tolerate governments that have contempt for peace, for humanity, the sovereignty of nations, the self-determination of peoples, and the rule of law.

The death of Slobodan Milosevic was clearly the only way out of the dilemma the NATO powers had put themselves in by charging him before the Hague tribunal. The propaganda against him was of an unprecedented scale. The trial was played in the press as one of the world’s great dramas, as world theatre in which an evil man would be made to answer for his crimes. But of course, there had been no crimes, except those of the NATO alliance, and the attempt to fabricate a case against him collapsed into farce.

The trial was necessary from NATO’s point of view in order to justify the aggression against Yugoslavia and the putsch by the DOS forces in Belgrade supported by NATO, by which democracy in Yugoslavia was finally destroyed and Serbia reduced to a NATO protectorate under a Quisling regime. His illegal arrest, by NATO forces in Belgrade, his illegal detention in Belgrade Central Prison, his illegal rendition to the former Gestapo prison at Scheveningen, near The Hague, and the show trial that followed, were all part of the drama played out for the world public, and it could only have one of two endings, the conviction, or the death, of President Milosevic.

Since the conviction of President Milosevic was clearly not possible after all the evidence was heard, his death became the only way out for the NATO powers. His acquittal would have brought down the entire structure of the propaganda framework of the NATO war machine and the western interests that use it as their armed fist.

NATO clearly did not expect President Milosevic to defend himself, nor with such courage and determination. The media coverage of the beginning of the trial was constant and front page. It was promised that it would be the trial of the century. Yet soon after it began the media coverage stopped and the trial was buried in the back pages. Things had gone terribly wrong for Nato right at the start. The key to the problem is the following statement of President Milosevic made to the judges of the Tribunal during the trial:

“This is a political trial. What is at issue here is not at all whether I committed a crime. What is at issue is that certain intentions are ascribed to me from which consequences are later derived that are beyond the expertise of any conceivable lawyer. The point here is that the truth about the events in the former Yugoslavia has to be told here. It is that which is at issue, not the procedural questions, because I’m not sitting here because I was accused of a specific crime. I’m sitting here because I am accused of conducting a policy against the interests of this or another party.”

The prosecution, that is the United States and its allies, had not expected a real defence of any kind. This is clear from the inept indictments, confused charges, and the complete failure to bring any evidence that could withstand even basic scrutiny. The prosecution case fell apart as soon as it began. But once started, it had to continue. Nato was locked into a box of its own making. If they dropped the charges, or if he was acquitted, the political and geostrategic ramifications were enormous. Nato would have to explain the real reasons for the aggression against Yugoslavia. Its leaders themselves would face war crimes charges. The loss of prestige cannot be calculated. President Milosevic would once again be a popular political figure in the Balkans. The only way out for NATO was to end the trial but without releasing Milosevic or admitting the truth about the war. This logic required his death in prison and the abandonment of the trial.

The Parker Report contains facts indicating that, at a minimum, the Nato Tribunal engaged in conduct that was criminal regarding his treatment and that conduct resulted in his death. The Tribunal was told time and again that he was gravely ill with heart problems that needed proper investigation, treatment and complete rest before engaging in a trial. However, the Tribunal continually ignored the advice of the doctors and pushed him to keep going with the trial, knowing full well that the stress of the trial would certainly kill him.

The Tribunal refused prescribed medical treatment in Russia seemingly for political reasons and once again put the Tribunal’s interests, whatever they are, ahead of Milosevic’s health. In other words they deliberately withheld necessary medical treatment that could have lead to his death. This is a form of homicide and is manslaughter in the common law jurisdictions.

However, there are several unexplained facts contained in the Parker Report that need further investigation before ruling out poison or drugs designed to harm his health: the presence of the drugs rifampicin and droperidol in his system being the two key ones. No proper investigation was conducted as to how these drugs could have been introduced into his body. No consideration was given to their effect. Their presence combined with the unexplained long delay in getting his body to a medical facility for tests raises serious questions that need to be answered but which until today remain unanswered.

The Parker Report, despite its illogical conclusions, exonerating the Nato tribunal from blame, provides the basis for a call for a public inquiry into the death of President Milosevic. This is reinforced by the fact that the Commandant of the UN prison where President Milosevic was held, a Mr. McFadden, was, according to documents exposed by Wikileaks, supplying information to the US authorities about Milosevic throughout his detention and trial, and is further reinforced by the fact that Milosevic wrote a letter to the Russian Embassy a few days before his death stating that he believed he was being poisoned. Unfortunately he died before the letter could be delivered in time for a response.

All these facts taken together demand that a public international inquiry be held into the entirety of the circumstances of the death of President Milosevic, not only for his sake and the sake of his widow Mira Markovic and his son, but for the sake of all of us who face the constant aggressive actions and propaganda of the NATO powers. Justice requires it. International peace and security demand it.

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Breaking Our Biggest Taboo

March 11th, 2019 by Eric Margolis

“Tell me who you cannot criticize and I will tell you who is your master”. Attributed to Voltaire.

Saying anything negative about Israel has long been the third rail of US politics and media.  Israel is our nation’s most sacred cow.  Any questioning of its behavior brings furious charges of anti-Semitism and professional oblivion.

I keep in my bookcase a cautionary book, ‘They Dared Speak Out’ written by US senators and congressmen who all lost their positions after rebuking Israel for its mistreatment of Palestinians or daring to suggest that Israel had far too much influence in the US.

Journalists learn this first commandment very early.  Criticize, or even question, Israel at your own peril.   Until recently, we journalists were not even allowed to write there was an ‘Israel lobby.’  It was widely considered Washington’s most powerful lobby group but, until lately, mentioning its name was seriously verboten.

Now, young Democratic stars Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a feisty congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, have suddenly broken the taboo and said what dared not be said: there is too much rightwing Israeli influence and there must be justice for Palestine.

Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have come to the defense of Ilhan Omar against the usual charges that she is anti-Semitic.  So have black groups and smaller liberal Jewish groups.  The Democratic Party, that once received half its financial support from Jewish sources, is badly split over the Palestine crisis.  Its old guard is retreating and does not know what to do beyond issuing fiery denunciations of the heretical Miss Omar.  The Democrat Party split comes just at a time when it is trying to bring down President Donald Trump.

Many people seem unaware that Islam is now America’s third largest religion and may soon surpass the number of Jews.  In Canada, Muslims are already the second religion.

Ilhan is not anti-Semitic.  I grew up in New York and New England where vicious anti-Semitism abounded.  I know real anti-Semitism when I see it.  But she is quite right in charging that vast amounts of pro-Israel money have bought Congress and the media.

Sheldon Adelson, the pro-Israel casino tycoon, has given well over $100 million to the Republican Party and its leaders.  This money comes from legal gambling, a sickness that preys on addicts and the unfortunate.

In the 1700’s, Dr. Samuel Johnson well defined lotteries and gambling as ‘a tax on fools.’  Such is the source of Adelson’s billions and his influence over the US political process.  He is also the primary financier of Israel’s prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, who now faces serious charges of corruption.

Interestingly, Britain faces a similar political storm.  Its left-leaning Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, has called for justice for the Palestinians and a viable state for them.  Britain’s pro-Israel groups and media have launched furious counterattacks on Corbyn and his allies, barraging them with false accusations of being anti-Semitic.  This is utter nonsense.  To find real anti-Semitism in Britain you need look into the recesses of the Conservative Party.  I’ve seen its ugly face.

Israel’s brutal repression of Palestinians has sparked bitter anti-Israel sentiments across Europe.  Not so much in America, where media leans far over to Israel’s side and evangelical Christians have been bamboozled into believing that a Greater Israel is somehow necessary for the Second Coming.

But young Americans, and even more so Europeans, are increasingly hearing the call of justice for Palestine.  They want no truck with Israel’s right-wingers, whom many leftist Israelis, including the late great writer, Uri Avnery, brand ‘fascists.’

The prescient and courageous Pat Buchanan said it years ago: the US Congress was ‘Israeli occupied territory.’  His political career was ruined.

So was my mother’s career. She was one of the first American female journalists to cover the Mideast in the early 1950’s.  After extensively reporting the unknown fact that there were nearly one million Palestinian refugees driven from the new state of Israel, she was silenced by advertisers pulling ads from the papers she wrote for and, finally, threats to throw acid in my face.  Her career was ruined.

So I say to Ms. Omar and the other brave ladies, full speed ahead.  Damn the torpedoes.  Do what is good for the world and your country.  Break the hold of big money over our republic.

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Eric S. Margolis is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.

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We Are Being Lied into War Again

March 11th, 2019 by Lee Camp

This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results

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I was 23 when we invaded Iraq, and I wasn’t sure it was based on lies, but something deep down in me—just behind the spleen—told me it was based on lies. Kinda like if your blind date shows up and you notice he has a 2004 flip phone. It seems vaguely worrisome, and no explanation he can haltingly supply will put you at ease. Plus, anyone else who acts like it’s normal also becomes suspect.

The invasion of Iraq just felt like it was a lie to me. And it turned out that I was right, that it was a lie, and that the entirety of the mainstream media and our government were either wrong or lying and, most of the time, both.

Now our government and our media are trying their damnedest to lie us into another war, this one with Venezuela. They tell us the Venezuelan people are desperate for necessities like toothpaste, while independent journalists show piles of affordable toothpaste in Caracas.

And even if they didn’t have toothpaste, that hardly seems like a good reason for America to begin dropping our long-range bad decisions on the heads of innocent people. Turning a town into an impact crater for the sake of a battle to stop gingivitis seems a bit extreme.

The mainstream media and nearly the entirety of the U.S. government tell us Juan Guaido is the “interim president,” even though he was never elected to that position and the current president is still leading the Venezuelan government and military. So I guess this “interim” is the time between Guaido being a nobody and the time when he goes back to being nobody but now gets to tell women at parties, “You know, I used to be interim president.”

The mainstream media also inform us that the Venezuelan military set U.S. aid trucks on fire, when video shows opposition forces doing it. Furthermore, the idea of Venezuela taking “aid” from the country whose sanctions are crushing them would be like the Standing Rock Sioux accepting gift packages from the construction crews swiss-cheesing their land to lay down the Dakota Access pipeline. Unless the boxes are filled with industrial paper towels to help clean up oil spills, I fail to see how it would be beneficial. Sometimes you do indeed have to look a gift horse in the mouth (or should I say “gift dog”).

This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results. So I thought this would be a prime moment to go through the top four greatest hits.

Number 4: The Spanish-American War

This is widely considered to be the birth of modern media propaganda, because it was the first war actually started by the media. Newspapers fabricated atrocities in the never-ending quest for more readers.

And as The New York Times noted,

“[T]he sensationalistic reporting of the sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898 … and all the other egregious reporting leading up to the Spanish-American War might have been considered merely cartoonish if it hadn’t led to a major international conflict.”

I think maybe The New York Times got that quote confused with its mission statement: “Cartoonishly dragging America into major international conflict since 1851!”

Number 3: The Vietnam War

Sure, most everyone knows the catastrophic Vietnam War was precipitated by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which U.S. naval vessels were fired upon by villainous North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Following that skirmish, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommended that President Johnson retaliate, and the full-force Vietnam War had begun. But most Americans still don’t know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident—unless you count U.S. naval ships literally firing their weapons at weather events they saw on the radar. The 2003 documentary “The Fog of War” finally revealed the truth. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara confessed that the Gulf of Tonkin attack did not actually happen.

That’s right. It never happened. Much like leprechauns or dragons or Simon Cowell’s talent, it was a figment of our national imagination.

The lies of our government, followed by the fawning, credulous reporting from our media, led to the death of 58,000 U.S. service members and as many as 3.8 million Vietnamese.

The United States government has one of the most powerful Departments of Fabrication and Falsification ever assembled. It’s a modern marvel on par with the Great Pyramid of Giza and Rafael Nadal’s down-the-line running forehand.

Number 2: The Iraq War

Of course, there’s the most obvious lie about Iraq, i.e., that Saddam Hussein had so many weapons of mass destruction that he would often use one to scrub hard-to-reach places while in the tub. But that wasn’t the only falsehood manifested to bring about our complete annihilation of the sovereign nation Saddam ruled over. There were others, such as the idea that Saddam was connected to al-Qaida and perhaps played a role in the 9/11 attacks. William Safire at The New York Times, in May 2002, wrote, “Mohamed Atta, destined to be the leading Sept. 11 suicide hijacker, was reported last fall by Czech intelligence to have met at least once with Saddam Hussein’s espionage chief in the Iraqi Embassy.”

Yes, Safire was able to polish a load of bullshit so thoroughly it would sparkle like a sapphire. And that column is still up on the Times’ website, without a correction or retraction. I would say the Times is only useful for covering the bottom of a birdcage, but I’d fear the paper would lie your pet cockatoo into an ill-advised invasion, killing millions.

But the propaganda didn’t even stop there. There was also the anthrax attacks following 9/11. Anthrax was mailed to press outlets and the offices of politicians. To this day, many people still believe it had something to do with Iraq or al-Qaida because of award-winning national embarrassments like Brian Ross.

“Brian Ross at ABC News wrote ‘the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite’ and ‘bentonite is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.’ ” As Salon so clearly put it, “All of those factual claims … were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. … Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports.”

And, as you would expect, following that blatantly false reporting, Brian Ross did not lose his job. In fact, he wasn’t put out to pasture from ABC News until last year, when he “reported that fired national security adviser Michael Flynn was ready to testify that Trump told him to contact the Russians during the campaign.”

That report—much like the rumors of Brian Ross’s journalistic integrity—turned out to be absolutely false.

(In my professional opinion, anyone who had anything to do with the selling, perpetrating or planning of the Iraq War should never again hold a position higher than assistant trainee to the guy who picks up the shit of a dog that does not belong to anyone of any particular importance. If that position does not exist, we as a nation should create it just for this moment. Yet, despite my objections, Robert Mueller (head of the FBI at the time of the invasion and a big supporter of it) is leading the biggest investigation in the country. John Bolton, who advocated for the Iraq invasion as far back as the 1990s, is now national security adviser. Bill Kristol, who pushed for the war and said it would last two months, is now a regular panelist on MSNBC. And the list goes on.)

Unlike Defense Secretary McNamara, who admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened, we don’t have a smoking gun showing that the Bush administration created these lies to get us into Iraq. … Oh, wait! Turns out the paper shredder at the Bush Oval Office was on strike for a higher minimum wage in 2002, and in fact, we do have a memo written by Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, a year before U.S. forces unleashed a reign of terror on the Iraqi people. His memo about war with Iraq stated, “How start? US discovers Saddam connection to Sept 11 or to anthrax attacks? Or maybe a dispute over WMD inspections?”

I’m not sure what’s more striking—that this memo exists, or that it sounds like the Bush boys planned a massive international battle the same way a broke 35-year-old maps out his bad novel that he’s sure is the ticket out of his mom’s basement.

“How start horrible bloody war? Maybe Saddam found to moonlight as porn star?”

Point is, multiple completely false stories laid the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq that left well over 1 million people dead.

Number 1: The Bombing of Syria

President Bashar Assad gassed his own people, thereby guaranteeing more American involvement—and he did it just days after Donald Trump had told the Pentagon to begin withdrawing troops from Syria. At least, that’s the story the corporate media repeated on-loop for at least a month, only pausing every 10 minutes to try desperately to get us all to buy more things with “baconator” in the name or to seek out a harder penis.

So we are expected to believe Assad did the one thing that would ensure more U.S. involvement just as he was about to win his war? It’s kinda like how, when I’m about to win a fistfight, I often poke myself repeatedly in the eye. You know—just to keep it exciting.

Famed journalists Seymour Hersh and Robert Fisk have done great work showing that the chemical attacks never happened, but there’s a new update. Just two weeks ago, a BBC producer came forward and said the Douma, Syria, chemical attack footage was staged.

His tweet said that after six months of investigations, he can prove that no fatalities occurred in the hospital. Yet our breathlessly inept mainstream American media, with little to no evidence, ran around saying, “There was a chemical attack! Those poor people! And they don’t have toothpaste, either! We must bomb them to help them!”

The overarching point here is that we’ve replaced our media with stenographers to the ruling elite long ago. The ruling class comes up with a lie to manufacture American consent for its all-American war crimes, and that lie is then sprayed like laminate all over average American citizens. This goes on until such time as any average citizens who question said lie is looked at like they have two heads, and one of them is covered in rat shit.

For the “journalists” who hose the lies across the country the best, awards and private jets and rooftop drinks with midlevel celebrities like Chuck Norris await them. Now we’re getting to the point where the actual rulers—the Trump administration, etc.—are not even hiding their corruption. John Bolton stated on Fox News that the ultimate goal is to steal Venezuela’s oil. But our media continue to tout the propaganda line. Even after Bolton said that, you won’t see Anderson Cooper or one of Fox News’ grand wizards saying, “Venezuela is undergoing a U.S.-backed coup because we’d like to steal their oil.” It’s truly dizzying that the corporate media preserve the propaganda even after the “leaders” have revealed their true sinister intentions.

On the inside of Wolf Blitzer’s eyelids, the phrase, “Must Defend the Matrix” blinks in red.

The propaganda line for Venezuela right now is, “We want to help the poor Venezuelans.” Well, if you want to help them, then keep America out of their face. Don’t force them to have anything to do with the country that came up with drive-through fried food served in a bucket and opioid nasal sprays. At no point does anyone look at the Donald Trump presidency and think, “Wow, that country really has things figured out. I hope they bring some of their great decision-making to our doorstep.”

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Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show “Redacted Tonight With Lee Camp” on RT America. He is a former comedy writer for the Onion and the Huffington Post and has been a touring stand-up comic for 20 years.

NYT Denies that Venezuela Burned Aid Convoy

March 11th, 2019 by Prensa Latina

An exclusive video quoted by The New York Times contradicts the US statement that the Venezuelan government set fire to an aid convoy last month on the border with Colombia.

An article signed by journalists of the newspaper in Colombia and New York states that the video ‘casts doubt’ on the culpability imputed to Venezuelans.

Senior US officials said Nicolás Maduro‘s regime burned an aid convoy last month. Our exclusive video contradicts that claim and shows how this unverified information was spread through Twitter and television, the Times says.

Vice President Mike Pence wrote that ‘the tyrant in Caracas danced’ while his henchmen ‘burned food and medicine’, says the New York newspaper.

The State Department published a video that said Maduro ordered the trucks burned. And Venezuela’s opposition has halted images of burning aid, reproduced on dozens of news sites and television screens throughout Latin America, as evidence of the alleged cruelty of the Venezuelan leader, the newspaper said.

‘But there is a problem’, he clarifies, ‘the opposition itself, not Maduro’s men, seems to have set the load on fire accidentally.’

The unpublished images obtained by The New York Times and the previously published films, including the images shown by the Colombian government, which blamed Maduro for the fire, allowed a reconstruction of the incident.

He suggests that a Molotov cocktail thrown by an anti-government protester was the most likely trigger for the fire, he stresses.

Describes the publication that at a given moment, a homemade bomb made of a bottle was thrown at the police blocking a bridge that connects Colombia and Venezuela to prevent the aid trucks from arriving.

But, the rag used to light the Molotov cocktail is separated from the bottle by flying towards the help truck. Half a minute later, that truck is on fire, he details.

The same protester can be seen 20 minutes earlier, in a different video, hitting another truck with a Molotov cocktail, without setting it on fire, he adds.

The burning of the aid last month, reason for a broad condemnation to the Venezuelan government, arguments that today arouse doubts and that the video attributes to people linked to actions that the White House promoted to justify an aggression against Venezuela.

The Times article questions the validity of several of the arguments used to attack Maduro’s government, including actions to prevent the entry of drugs.

The Times notes that the United States Agency for International Development, the main provider of aid on the bridge, did not include medicines among its donations.

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I looked down at the food on my plate, and wished I hadn’t just heard PBS’s News anchor Judy Woodruff report that the war in Yemen had already caused 85,000 children to starve to death. She read the one liner with emphasis on the number, but almost without taking a breath, went on to a local news item, as if the 85,000 dead kids had nothing to do with her American audience. Problem for me is I had already known for years that a murderous, even genocidal bombing by a Saudi Arabian coalition is USA backed, that U.S. military jets refuel those coalition bombers and fighter jets, and US military personnel are involved in running the high tech targeting systems using US missiles and guided bombs sold to the Saudis, who have agreed to buy ever more billions of dollars worth.

I put my fork down, and stared at a framed photo of my four year old great granddaughter on the wall. I thought, most every one of those 85,000 were an adorable child, and had siblings, moms and dads and other family members and friends who loved them.

I remembered reading that cholera had come with the US backed Saudi bombing, and that cholera is a virulent infection which can kill within a few hours time. I recall reading that Saudi aerial bombardment of the national electrical grid had left the Sana’a wastewater plant without power causing untreated wastewater to leak out into irrigation canals and drinking water supplies. In 2017, I had read of a million cases of cholera reported.

But a month ago, that ghastly report of a year and half ago was updated to 85,000 precious Yemeni children dead of starvation or malnutrition. That’s when I first heard it, and when I finally picked up my fork and shoveled in a mouthful of some still warm mashed potatoes, I held it in my mouth before swallowing as I pictured a Yemeni child, the bones of its rib cage sticking out from a taut sunken in belly. I got up from the table. Took a break. Looked out the window at the moon between the clouds.

Then I went to the computer and brought up the article I had written six months earlier as below and read the introduction.

3rd World must demand justice for her kids! Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s, cry “God bless America? No, no, God damn America for her crimes against humanity!” And American film maker Michael Moore’s “sick and twisted violent people that we’ve been for hundreds of years, it’s something that’s just in our craw, just in our DNA. Americans kill people, because that’s what we do. We invade countries. We send drones in to kill civilians.” OpEdNews, August 31, 2018 Minority Perspective, Birmingham, UK, Counter Currents, Kerala, India

It didn’t make me feel any better. I felt I had failed to make any difference.

I ate my now cold dinner while thinking of writing this tract that poses the title’s question: ‘How does one enjoy one’s dinner knowing that fellow Americans are still causing thousands more beautiful Yemeni children to die, blown apart or starved from lack of food and clean water because of the bombing?’

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Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Minority Perspective, UK and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which Dissident Voice supports with link at the end of each issue of its newsletter.

Featured image is from YemenPress

Lies and Crimes, Peace and Democracy

March 11th, 2019 by Mark Taliano

We can not have Peace and Democracy if we accept the Lies and Crimes which deny us Peace and Democracy.

Some of the Lies are foundational to the “War on Terror”, which itself is a lie. Al Qaeda, for example, is not responsible for the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center buildings.  To believe so would be to believe in miracles, fairy tales. It is a fabricated “belief” instilled in us by those who are criminally misgoverning us, those who seek to create evidence-free “truths” to serve their nefarious, anti-democratic agendas.

Al Qaeda is a scapegoat being used to protect the real culprits who in fact use al Qaeda as “strategic tools/proxies” to destroy non-belligerent countries such as Syria, all in the name of going after ISIS, which are also “strategic tools/proxies”[1].

Enemies of the people need to divert attention away from themselves. All fascist and imperialist ideologies demand this. They also demand racism and they fabricate supremacist ideologies. “We” are better than the “other”, hence, we can destroy the other for our perceived needs, all in the name of additional fabricated lies: “humanitarianism”, “freedom” and “democracy”.[2]

The notion that Venezuela is in Canada’s “global backyard”[3]is a classic supremacist, imperialist, fascist idea, as expressed by the Canadian government, which seeks to fabricate “truths” about Venezuela so that we can continue to wage criminal economic warfare against Venezuela and its peoples and so that we can continue to destroy this country, led by democratically-elected president Maduro.

The real enemies facing Canadians are not the democratically-elected governments of President Assad and President Maduro. The real enemy is concealed from view because it is toxic. The enemy is the dictatorship of predatory bailed out monopoly capitalism that tells us that building war ships[4]is more important than building alternate energy infrastructure. The real enemies are the publicly bailed-out monopolies, Big Media, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. that are driving the fake toxic messaging, aided and abetted by the fake progressive politicians and fake universities that deny the truth and fire those who tell the truth.  We in the West are the enemy for not thinking critically, for not being intellectually curious, and for accepting the supremacist, fascist, misgovernance that is reducing us collectively to being cogs in a diabolical machine.

As Simon says in Lord of the Flies, “Maybe there is a beast… Maybe it’s only us.”[5]

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

Notes

[1] Garikai Chengu, “America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group.” Global Research, 08March, 2019

 19 September 2014. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881) Accessed 10 March, 2019.

[2] Mark Taliano, “Who are the ‘Brutal Dictators’?” Global Research, 28 February, 2019. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/who-are-the-brutal-dictators/5669959?fbclid=IwAR1DQjGioRbURC_QAOv5FYjRpN0sDRKXGubdU1byOg2uRQPLUCLoIOW0_Nc) Accessed 10 March, 2019.

[3] Mike Blanchfield, “Canada to host Venezuela summit: Freeland.” Canadian Press. 28 January, 2019. (https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/canada-to-host-venezuela-summit-freeland/ar-BBSROfT?fbclid=IwAR1lJPbdQi3kPqWiYVzVmYE0044_4Dhm04yEUzi3DlzWgKbuz9WZBREzBVU) Accessed 10 March, 2019.

[4] Nino Pagliccia, “The Canadian Troika of Calamity.” 8 March, 2019. (https://www.facebook.com/notes/nino-pagliccia/the-canadian-troika-of-calamity/10156451661712832/) Accessed 10 March, 2019.

[5] William Golding, Lord of the Flies. Chapter Five.


Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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The Hybrid War on Venezuela just took a dark turn – literally – after the US used cyber weapons and insider sabotage to attack the country’s power grid last week, cutting off most of its electricity and creating a chain reaction of negative consequences all throughout the Bolivarian Republic. According to unverified reports cited in one of RT’s recent articles on the topic, the Guri hydroelectric power plant – which provides 80% of the country’s power – failed (possibly due to a cyberattack), which was followed by an explosion at the Sidor Substation that was sustaining most of the country’s power in the aftermath of the aforementioned.

The nationwide blackout undoubtedly led to a worsening of living standards for Venezuela’s over 31 million people, affecting everything from the availability of food supplies to hospital services and creating an insecure environment that’s proved irresistible for looters, though it’s unclear at this moment whether the majority of its citizens believe the American narrative that their own government’s incompetence and corruption is to blame.

Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American Senator from Florida, has quickly emerged as one of the most high-profile public faces of the US’ Hybrid War on Venezuela after he attributed the suffering of the South American nation’s people to Maduro in a provocative post that he made on Twitter, which follows other controversial ones in recent weeks such as implying that Chavez’s successor will meet a similar fate as former Libyan leader Gaddafi or former Panamanian one Noriega.

These messages are part of the US’ so-called “strategic communications” strategy for carrying out psychological and information warfare against the Bolivarian Republic, but they’re supposed to come off as “authentic” because Rubio is Hispanic, with the innuendo being that the” brains” behind this campaign think that the target audience will believe what’s being said just because it’s being conveyed by someone with a similar ethno-cultural identity as them. It’s not known whether this simplistic pandering will appeal to Venezuelans in the future, but it has thus far failed to be successful.

Despite the years of on-and-off Color Revolution unrest and the highly publicized “humanitarian aid” provocation that recently took place at the Venezuelan-Colombian border, the US hasn’t managed to unseat Maduro from office despite its non-stop attempts to do so. It was also recently revealed by none other than Trump’s Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams himself in a call with Russian pranksters that the US isn’t seriously considering an invasion of the South American state but is only trying to put maximum pressure on its military so that they either defect from their ranks or stage a coup at Washington’s behest. If he was being sincere, then this implies that the US wants to cut the costs of this rolling regime change operation by keeping its involvement to a minimum and only indirectly intervening at strategic moments in order to add momentum to the anti-government movement, which would explain the latest sanctions and the coordinated cyber-sabotage attack against the country’s power grid.

The weaponization of chaos theory is the central tenet of Hybrid Warfare, and it’s especially applicable for analyzing the reason why the US wanted to shut down Venezuela’s electricity at this specific point in time. Taking advantage of the fact that the country is overly dependent on a single power station (the Guri hydroelectric plant), it was comparatively easy for the US to pull off this covert operation aimed at triggering a domino effect of destabilization all throughout the Bolivarian Republic, one which is intended to heighten anti-government sentiment and increase the odds that a final wave of Color Revolution unrest can be unleashed for overthrowing Maduro.

To assist with this, it’s also possible that American special forces might exploit the electricity cutoff in order to more easily infiltrate across the border and transfer more arms to their anti-government allies on a scale that they wouldn’t be able to do if Venezuela’s border defenses were properly up and running.

Bearing the abovementioned insight in mind, it can be said that the cyberattack and sabotage against Venezuela’s power grid is a Hybrid War provocation with several interconnected objectives. The first is to reinforce the psychological preconditioning operation against the targeted Venezuelan audience by making them think that Maduro’s ouster is imminent, which could in turn inspire some civilians to take to the streets to launch a final Color Revolution push against him concurrent with members of the military defecting to join their side, both of whom might be more motivated by their deteriorating living conditions caused by the blackout than ideological factors.

It should also be assumed that the US is taking advantage of the situation to infiltrate large amounts of arms and other material to its anti-government allies in an attempt to actualize Rubio’s public plans for sparking “widespread unrest” in the country. None of this implies that the regime change operation will finally succeed, but just that the danger that this latest phase poses shouldn’t be underestimated.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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

Featured image is from InfoRos

Marco Polo Is Back in China – Again

March 11th, 2019 by Pepe Escobar

President Xi Jinping is due to arrive in Italy for an official visit on March 22. The top theme of discussion will be the New Silk Road, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

A day earlier, in Brussels, the EU is to debate a common strategy related to Chinese investments in Europe.

A substantial part of the EU is already linked de facto with BRI. That includes Greece, Portugal, 11 EU nations belonging to the 16+1 group of China plus Central and Eastern Europe and, for all practical purposes, Italy.

And yet it takes an undersecretary in the Italian economic development ministry, Michele Geraci, to tell the Financial Times that a memorandum of understanding supporting BRI will be signed during Xi’s visit, for all (White House) hell to break loose.

The FT is not shy of editorializing, calling BRI a “contentious infrastructure program.” BRI is a vast, far-reaching, long-term Eurasia integration project, and the only quasi-global development program in the market, any market. It’s especially “contentious” to Washington – because the US government, as I detailed elsewhere, decided to antagonize it instead of profiting from it.

A White House National Security Council spokesperson deriding BRI as a “made by China, for China” project does not make it so. Otherwise, no less than 152 – and counting – nations and international organizations would not have formally endorsed BRI.

China’s semi-official response to the White House, eschewing the usual diplomatic remarks by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, came via a scathing, unsigned editorial in the Global Times which accuses Europe of being subjected to Washington’s foreign policy and a transatlantic alliance that is not coherent with its 21st century needs.

Geraci states the obvious; the BRI link will allow more of Made in Italy to be exported to China. As someone who lives between Europe and Asia, and always discusses BRI while in Italy, I see that all the time. The appeal of Made in Italy for the Chinese consumer – food, fashion, art, interior design, not to mention all those Ferraris and Lamborghinis – is unrivaled, even by France. Chinese tourists just can’t get enough of Venice, Florence, Rome – and shopping in Milan.

Washington can build no case lecturing Italians that a BRI link undermines the US side in the trade war – considering that some sort of Xi-Trump deal may be imminent anyway. Brussels for its part is already deeply divided, especially because of France.

German business knows that China is the present and future market of choice; besides, one of the top terminals of the New Silk Road is Duisburg, in the Ruhr valley.

We’re talking about the 11,000 km-long Yuxinou container cargo train connection, active since 2014; Chongqing, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, all the way to Duisburg. Yuxinou (short for Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe), one of the key corridors of the New Silk Roads, is bound to be upgraded to high-speed rail status in the next decade.

Nearly a year ago I explained in some detail on Asia Times how Italy was already linked to BRI.

Essentially, it’s all about Italy – the number three European nation on naval trade – configured as the top southern European terminal for BRI; the entry door for connectivity routes from east and south while also serving, in a cost-effective manner, scores of destinations west and north.

Absolutely key in the project is the current revamping of the port of Venice – channeling supply lines from China via the Mediterranean towards Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia and Hungary. Venice is being configured as an alternative superport to Rotterdam and Hamburg – which are also BRI-linked. I called it the Battle of the Superports.

Whatever Washington, the City of London and even Brussels may think about it, this is something that Rome – and Milan – identifies as a matter of Italian national interest. And considering the undying Chinese love affair with all manifestations of Made in Italy, win-win, once again, wins.

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist. He is frequent contributor to Global Research. 

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Thursday March 7th 2018 Tel Aviv- Jews for Return, hung pictures of six of the children who were shot dead by Israeli soldiers while participating in the return demonstrations that began on the 30th of March 2018 on the streets of Tel Aviv.

Israeli security forces killed 266 participants in the Great March of Return since Refugees for Gaza began protesting last march. This staggering number includes 42 children. Israeli forces killed seven children who participated in the protests since the beginning of 2018.

Santiago Canton, the Chairman of the international investigation that was launched by the United Nations determined last week that there are: “established facts that indicate that the Israeli security forces, committed serious violations of human rights and International Humanitarian Law.”

Sarah Hussein, a member of the special committee, declared that, “the shooting was deliberately aimed at children, people with disabilities, and journalists. Most of the demonstrators were not involved in any form of violence.”

An Israeli sniper killed 15 Year old Saif Adin Zaid from Gaza on Wednesday the 6th of March after the conclusions of the committee were made public.

Posters were hung of: Ahmad Abu ‘Abed, 4, from Gaza; Shot in his father’s arms. Abdel Raouf Salha, age 14, a refugee from Majdal; Hassan Shalabi, age 14, a refugee from Isdod Yosef Aldia, 14, a refugee from Yafa; Hassan Nofal 17 years old a refugee from Yafa; Hamza Ishtawi, 17, from a refugee from Aljia The six children were shot in the past three months without endangering anyone.

The Jewish Israeli, Anti Zionist, activists responded to a call from Gazan organisations who, hoped that the faces of the children killed would awaken the Israeli conscience. The reactions of the passersby were mixed, some expressed shock at the deaths of innocent children, and some slashed the children’s pictures erasing most of their faces and the text describing who they are.

“We are bringing the posters of the faces of the children killed by Israeli soldiers to the streets of Tel aviv to show Israelis the crimes committed in their name in Gaza. The fact that some of the pedestrians erased the children faces is a reflection of the ongoing attempt by Zionist society to erase the existence of Palestinians since 1948.” stated a spokesperson for Jews for Return.

Pictures of Gazan children killed by Israeli soldiers were pasted below the home of Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv.

Pictures of Gazan children killed by Israeli soldiers pasted around the Military base “Hakirya” and the Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv

An hour after the posters of the Gazan children killed by Israeli soldiers were hung by activists under the home of Ehud Barak they were slashed by pedestrians who tried to erase the children’s faces and identities.

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All images in this article are from the author

The myth of American exceptionalism has been busted. An era of global hegemony, fueled by rapacious growth and backed by military muscle, built the world’s largest echo chamber, reassuring Americans of their greatness even as their country crumbled into a shadow of its former self.

The ruling class became complacent, relying upon an increasingly threadbare series of clichés, magic words and images without substance (democracy! humanitarian intervention! tolerance!). These talismans worked to keep us alienated and powerless: too scared to speak up when we did.

Then came 2016. Too late, the ruling class realized that the powers they had harnessed after 9/11 to shred the Constitution and impose police-state totalitarianism could not be taken for granted and might even have escaped their control, particularly with the rise of social media facilitating the dissemination of alternate narratives even as it enabled the unprecedented growth of the surveillance state.

In an effort to stop reality from poisoning the narrative, President Barack Obama authorized the establishment of a Ministry of Truth (the Center for Information Analysis and Response) as he walked out the door in December 2016, his parting gift to a government in the throes of utter existential panic – but it was too little, too late.

Narrative supremacy has become such a crutch for our foreign and domestic policies that the country is no longer capable of functioning if when we say jump! the rest of the world does not obediently shout how high?

Thus, what was supposed to be a morale-boosting quickie regime-change operation to cheer up the rank and file on the road to Tehran – the overthrow of Nicolas Maduro’s sanctions-starved socialist state in Venezuela, the oil-rich fly in the ointment of “our own backyard” – has become just another entry on a long list of ignominious failures.

Even the truest of true believers can no longer pretend that the US is in the business of spreading democracy – not when all the evidence and information available points the other way. The only remedy left for the “sole superpower” is to cut off the flow of information entirely and build an informational Iron Dome, an epistemological missile shield capable of withstanding all truth.

Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

Lazy propaganda is largely to blame for the lapse in narrative superiority. The same tawdry psy-ops are recycled again and again, as we see now in Venezuela, where Iran-Contra felon and smirking genocide enthusiast Elliott Abrams has been wheeled out of cold storage to work his death-squad magic on a population we’ve already tried and failed to hypnotize with the promises of neoliberalism.

Just as the one-two punch of fake Iranian revolutions made the fatal error of running the same script twice in most “protesters’” lifetimes, the attempt to overthrow Maduro comes less than two decades after the US-backed effort to overthrow Chavez – also led by Abrams – and it’s not fooling anyone.

It doesn’t help that the total nobody they picked to lead the charge was a stranger to 80% of all Venezuelans, or that John Bolton couldn’t even keep from blurting out the truth – that this entire pantomime of humanitarian intervention is being conducted to pillageVenezuela’s sweet, sweet oil, which has the gall to sit beneath one of the last socialist holdouts in the western hemisphere.

The Kissinger Chicago School-style, “make the economy scream” model that worked so well in Chile and Argentina fell flat in Venezuela in 2002 – the people did not trust an opposition movement willing to tank the economy in order to take over, and refused to vote for the barbarians at the gate, no matter how slickly produced their “revolution.” With even Washington’s subservient allies in the Lima Group refusing to back military action, elections would be Trump’s only way to climb out of this hole gracefully, short of Libya-style indiscriminate slaughter – and that option is far too tempting for a country whose very existence is an affront to neoliberalism, as evidenced by the chillingly sociopathic tweets of Marco Rubio.

With Abrams at the helm, we know what’s next. There will be no graceful extrication.

Trump has said over and over that there’s no going back, and the loss of face after such a public coup attempt would make him a laughingstock among his neocon pals, if not his dwindling base.

Abrams’ Central American genocides of the 1980s are not forgotten, and the same old script is playing out – Venezuelan authorities have already caught a CIA-linked airline unloading crates of weapons bound for the opposition in Valencia.

Buying elections is not an option – Venezuela’s electoral system is markedly less corrupt than the American model, and the slickly-produced Juan Guaido – who might as well have been grown in a vat at Langley – would never prevail in an electoral contest.

The Lima Group – a body created with the sole purpose of de-legitimizing Maduro’s government! – will not green-light the military invasion the US is so desperately itching to conduct as its regime-change operation melts down. Even Brazil – whose leader, Jair Bolsonaro, served under the last crop of military dictatorships imposed on the country and prefers such a model to democracy – has categorically refused to allow US forces to use its borderlands as a staging ground for invasion.

A UN resolution calling for Maduro to step down was blocked last week. Absent a spectacular false flag – not really Abrams’ specialty – only a sustained, high-level propaganda campaign can win the hearts and minds of the “broad coalition” Bolton now says the administration wants.

One must give the establishment media credit for working with the few scraps of plausibility they’re thrown – CNN has featured entire segments on Venezuelan military defectors who are neither Venezuelan, nor in the military. We are told again and again they are eating dogs, they are eating zoo animals, they are eating rats (the “babies flung out of incubators” Wag the Dog myth of the 21st century).

Wikipedia, Facebook and Instagram all stamped their seal of approval on Guaido the moment he became the Emperor Norton of the southern hemisphere – sometimes before. Richard Branson was pressed into service, bringing his (uneaten) dog-and-pony show to town as soundtrack to the Standoff On The Bridge that was supposed to be Maduro’s Waterloo. The myth unraveled quickly as the opposition was caught on film fire-bombing a USAID truck, then trying to blame the conflagration on Maduro’s forces.

Maduro staged his own musical intervention to drown out Branson’s sparsely-attended PR stunt. Colombian hirelings and provocateurs threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the looming squadron of US aid delivery vehicles (cluelessly labeled USAID – as if everyone in South America isn’t aware of what it means when USAID shows up in your country) while Guaido’s “human avalanche” evaporated into a trickle when the Boy Wonder himself vanished at the height of the action. The Abrams brigade was caught disguising themselves as Red Cross workers, lest a distinct brand lead to White Helmets-style infamy if one were to be caught mid-atrocity.

Venezuelan foreign minister Jorge Arreaza accused the US of staging the bombing of the aid convoy and exposed the “humanitarian” fraud for what it is – a pastiche of photo-ops, “crumbs” of spoiled food, expired medicine, barricade-construction materials, and weapons for the opposition framed as manna from heaven; the Venezuelan regime depicted as selfish and self-sabotaging, valuing their pride over the full bellies of their people. Meanwhile, millions of dollars in aid continues to pour in from Russia, Turkey, China, and other countries that aren’t interested in installing a pliable puppet to plunder petroleum. The Potemkin aid supply operation – complete with fake crowd numbers for Branson’s concert, fake atrocities to protest against, even fake terrorist collaborators (watch Rapture Mike Pompeo bloviate about Hezbollah) – would have been laughable if it were not so deadly serious.

The UN human rights rapporteur Alfred De Zayas has exposed the fraud that is the Venezuelan “humanitarian crisis,” demanding the US answer for its own violations of international law in creating the situation.

“I see human rights more and more being instrumentalized to destroy human rights,” he told Abby Martin – not the UN, which isn’t interested in hearing his recommendation to haul the US before the International Criminal Court for the sanctions he calls a “crime against humanity” as well as its violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty.

This is to say nothing of Venezuela’s stolen gold, a crime which bodes ill for every other country that has ever stored its bullion with the Bank of England. Even Australia, one of the Five Eyes, has never been permitted to fully audit its gold reserves there, raising the question: does the City of London no longer care, with the dollar due to collapse at any minute, whether its customers find it trustworthy? Or has the gold long since been sold or traded to points east?

“Progressive” stooges are deployed at home to sell this war to Americans, and the 2020 hopefuls (except Tulsi Gabbard) have all scored media points shilling for regime change. Bernie Sanders, whose last act as a 2016 candidate was to sell his supporters out to his erstwhile enemy Hillary Clinton, has dragged his feet jumping on the regime-change bandwagon, but at the same time refuses to support Maduro – despite ostensibly sharing his socialist values. Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressives’ Great Brown Hope, has been less than forthcoming in her support for Maduro and the poor Venezuelans whose interests he represents.

But then, she’s more Guaido’s hue anyway. Not even the most virulently anti-Trump US lawmakers are willing to publicly question the idea that putting a loaded gun to a country’s head and demanding they swear fealty to a total stranger is “democracy.” Twitter, ever the helpful servant of the ruling class, deleted thousands of pro-Maduro accounts in January in an effort to manufacture consent while permitting doxxing and hacking attacks on pro-regime entities and even the Venezuelan currency itself by a dodgy group of Venezuelan expats called DolarToday – the very “coordinated inauthentic behavior” Maduro’s supporters are blamed for. Facebook and Instagram signed off on Guaido’s legitimacy with blue check-marks they withheld from Maduro – and Wikipedia declared Guaido President before Guaido had a chance to do it himself. The propaganda operation is running at full capacity, 24/7 – so why isn’t it working?

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

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Helen of desTroy.

Helen Buyniski is a journalist and photographer based in New York City. Her work has appeared on RT, Progressive Radio Network, and Veterans Today. 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. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from Helen of desTroy

Eight Years Ago: The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in Perspective

March 10th, 2019 by Dr. Helen Caldicott

Dr. Helen Caldicott’s March 18th, 2011 press conference in Montreal, sponsored by the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Our thanks to Felton Davis for the transcription from the GRTV Video recording and for the annotations.

“One of the most deadly [nuclear byproducts] is plutonium, named after Pluto, god of the underworld. One millionth of a gram, if you inhale it, would give you cancer. Hypothetically, one pound of plutonium if evenly distributed could give everyone on earth cancer. Each reactor has 250 kilograms of plutonium in it. You only need 2.5 kilograms to make an atomic bomb, because plutonium is what they make bombs with. (Helen Caldicott, March 18, 2011)

This press conference organized by Global Research was held in the context of Helen Caldicott’s public lecture to Montreal on March 18, 2011.


Transcript
First I want to present this report, produced by the New York Academy of Sciences, a report on Chernobyl.  It can be downloaded.(2)  They translated 5,000 articles from Russian for the first time into English.  It seems that nearly a million people have already died as a result of Chernobyl, despite what the WH0(3) says and the IAEA.(4)  This is one of the most monstrous cover-ups in the history of medicine.  Because everybody should know about this.

Then we extrapolate through to Japan.  Japan is by orders of magnitude many times worse than Chernobyl.  Never in my life did I think that six nuclear reactors would be at risk.(5)  I knew that three GE engineers who helped design these Mark I GE reactors, resigned because they knew they were dangerous.(6)

So Japan built them on an earthquake fault.  The reactors partially withstood the earthquake, but the external electricity supply was cut off, and the electricity supplies the cooling water, a million gallons a minute, to each of those six reactors.  Without the cooling water, the water [level] falls, and the rods are so hot they melt, like at Three Mile Island, and at Chernobyl.

So the emergency diesel generators, which are as large as a house, got destroyed by the tsunami, so there is no way to keep the water circulating in the reactors.(7)  Also, on the roofs of the reactors, not within the containment vessel, are cooling pools.  Every year they remove about thirty tons of the most radioactive rods that you can possibly imagine.(8)  Each one is twelve feet long and half an inch thick.  It gives out so much radiation, that if you stand next to it for a couple of minutes, you’ll die.  Not drop dead.  Remember Litvinenko, the Russian, who got poisoned by polonium?(9)  You’ll die like that, with your hair falling out, and bleeding with massive infection, like AIDS patients die.

And [the spent fuel rods] are thermally hot, so they have to be put in a big pool, and continually cooled.  The pool has really no roof.

There have been three hydrogen explosions, blowing off the roof of the building, not the containment vessel of the core, but the roof.  And exposing the cooling pool.(10)  Two of the cooling pools are dry.  They have no water in them.  Meaning that the nuclear fuel rods are covered with a material called zirconium.  When zirconium is exposed to air, it burns, it ignites.  Two of the cooling pools at this moment are burning.  In the cooling pools are many times, like 10 to 20 times more radiation than in each reactor core.  In each reactor core is as much long-lived radiation as would be produced by a thousand Hiroshima-sized bombs.  We are dealing with diabolical energy.

E=MC2 is the energy that blows up nuclear bombs.  Einstein said nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water.(11)  Because that is all nuclear power is used for, to boil water through the massive heat, turn it into steam, and turn a turbine which generates electricity.

Now when you fission uranium, 200 new elements are formed, all of which are much more poisonous to the body than the original uranium.(12)  Although uranium is pretty poisonous.  America used it in Fallujah, and in Baghdad.  And in Fallujah, 80 per cent of the babies being born are grossly deformed.(13)  They’re being born without brains, single eyes, no arms…  The doctors have told the women to stop having babies.  The incidence of childhood cancer has gone up about twelve times.  This is genocide — it’s a nuclear war being conducted in Iraq.  The uranium that they’re using lasts more than 4.5 billion years.  So we’re contaminating the cradle of civilization.  “The coalition of the willing!”

In the nuclear power plants, however, there is a huge amount of radiation: two hundred elements.  Some last seconds, some last millions of years.  Radioactive iodine lasts six weeks, causes thyroid cancer.  That’s why people are saying, “Better take potassium iodide,” because that blocks the thyroid uptake of radioactive iodine, which later can cause thyroid cancer.

In Chernobyl, over 20,000 people have developed thyroid cancer.(14)  They have their thyroids out, and they will die unless they take thyroid replacement every day, like a diabetic has to take insulin.
Strontium-90 will get out, it lasts for 600 years.  It goes to the bone, where it causes bone cancer or leukemia.  Cesium lasts for 600 years — it’s all over Europe.  40 per cent of Europe is still radioactive.  Turkish food is extremely radioactive.  Do not buy Turkish dried apricots, or Turkish hazelnuts.  The Turks were so cross with the Russians, they sent all their radioactive tea over to Russia after Chernobyl.(15)

Forty per cent of Europe is still radioactive.  Farms in Britain, their lambs are so full of cesium they can’t sell them.  Don’t eat European food.

But that’s nothing compared to what’s happening now.  One of the most deadly [nuclear byproducts] is plutonium, named after Pluto, god of the underworld.  One millionth of a gram, if you inhale it, would give you cancer.  Hypothetically, one pound of plutonium if evenly distributed could give everyone on earth cancer.  Each reactor has 250 kilograms of plutonium in it.  You only need 2.5 kilograms to make an atomic bomb, because plutonium is what they make bombs with.

So any country that has a reactor, works with your uranium.  You [Canada] are the biggest exporter of uranium in the world.(16)  Canada sells two things: it sells wheat for life, and uranium for death.  Plutonium is going to get out and spread all over the northern hemisphere.  It’s already heading towards North America now.

Radioactive iodine, plus strontium, plus cesium, plus tritium, and I could go on and* on and on.  When it rains, downs come fallout, and it concentrates in food.  If it gets into the sea, the algae concentrate it, hundreds of times.  And the crustaceans concentrate it, hundreds of times.  And then the little fish, then the big fish, then us.(17)

Because we stand on the apex of the food chain.  You can’t taste these radioactive food elements, you can’t see them, you can’t smell them.  They’re silent.  When you get them inside your body, you don’t suddenly drop dead of cancer, it takes five to sixty years to get your cancer, and when you feel a lump in your breast, it doesn’t say, “I was made by some strontium-90 in a piece of fish you ate twenty years ago.”

All radiation is damaging.  It’s cumulative — each dose you get adds to your risk of getting cancer.  The americium is more dangerous than plutonium — I could go on and on.  Depends if it rains if you’re going to get it or not.  If it rains and the radiation comes down, don’t grow food, and don’t eat the food, and I mean don’t eat it for 600 years.

Radioactive waste from nuclear power is going to be buried, I hear, next to Lake Ontario.  It’s going to leak, last for millions of years, it’s going to get into the water, and into the food chains.  Radioactive waste will induce epidemics of cancer, leukemia, and genetic disease for the rest of time.  This is the greatest public health hazard the world has ever witnessed, apart from the threat every day of nuclear war.

Einstein said “the splitting of the atom changed everything, save man’s mode of thinking” — very profound — “and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”  We are arrogant, we have a lot of hubris, and I think the reptilian mid-brain of some men’s brains is pathological.(18)

We are in a situation where we have harnessed the energy of the sun.  It is totally out of control.  And there’s simply nothing we can do about it.

NOTES

[These notes are not part of Dr. Caldicott’s presentation. They were added by Felton Davis]

1) Helen Caldicott is the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and is the author of “The New Nuclear Danger” (The New Press, 2002).

2) “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe For the People and the Environment,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1

3) “Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident,” World Health Organization. http://www-ns.iaea.org/appraisals/chernobyl.asp

4) “Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident,” International Atomic Energy Agency. http://www-ns.iaea.org/appraisals/chernobyl.asp

5) For a general description of the complex, including cross-sections of the six reactors, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents

6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three
Excerpt: On February 2, 1976, Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh “blew the whistle” on safety problems at nuclear power plants. The three engineers gained the attention of journalists and their disclosures about the threats of nuclear power had a significant impact. They timed their statements to coincide with their resignations from responsible positions in General Electric’s nuclear energy division, and later established themselves as consultants on the nuclear power industry for state governments, federal agencies, and overseas governments.

7) “Japanese Scramble to Avert Meltdowns as Nuclear Crisis Deepens After Quake,” New York Times, March 12, 2011, By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW L. WALD

8) The design manual for General Electric boiling water reactors was posted as a PDF document on the “What Really Happened” website, and can be downloaded at: http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/ge-manual-bwr6-reactor-design-and-operation

9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko
Excerpt: Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, FSB and KGB, who escaped prosecution in Russia and received political asylum in the United Kingdom. He wrote two books, “Blowing up Russia: Terror from within” and “Lubyanka Criminal Group”, where he accused the Russian secret services of staging Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts to bring Vladimir Putin to power.  On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later, becoming the first confirmed victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome. According to doctors, “Litvinenko’s murder represents an ominous landmark: the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism”. Litvinenko’s allegations about the misdeeds of the FSB and his public deathbed accusations that Russian president Vladimir Putin were behind his unusual malady resulted in worldwide media coverage.

10) “Greater Danger Lies in Spent Fuel Than in Reactors,” Keith Bradsher & Hiroko Tabuchi, NY Times, March 17, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18spent.html

“Radiation Spread Seen; Frantic Repairs Go On,” David Sanger & William J. Broad, NY Times, March 17, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18intel.html

“U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant,” James Glanz & William J. Broad, NY Times, April 6, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html

“Focus on preventing explosions at Japan nuke plant,” Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press, April 6, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110406/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake_654

11) http://wisequotes.org/nuclear-power-is-one-hell-of-a-way-to-boil-water

12) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_product

13) “US Accused of Using Poison Gases in Fallujah,” Democracy Now, Monday, November 29th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/29/u_s_accused_of_using_poison

“Evidence of Extensive War Crimes, Unprecedented in the annals of legal history,” Niloufer Bhagwat, Global Research, December 11, 2004
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BHA412A.html

“Depleted Uranium Weapons: Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke,” by Dave Lindorff, Global Research, October 20, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15744

“The consequences of a US war crime: Cancer rate in Fallujah worse than Hiroshima,” Tom Eley, World Socialist, July 23, 2010
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/fall-j23.shtml

“Research Links Rise in Fallujah Birth Defects and Cancers to US Assault,” Martin Chulov, The Guardian/UK, December 31, 2010
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/31

14) “Chernobyl’s Continuing Thyroid Impact,”By Mary Shomon, December 15, 2003
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/nuclearexposure/a/chernob.htm

15) “Authorities lied on impact of Chernobyl in Turkey,”Greenpeace Report
http://www.blackraiser.com/cherno.htm

16) WISE Report on the Worldwide Uranium Market http://www.wise-uranium.org/umkt.html

“Why is Uranium Important to Canada?” Canadian Nuclear Association,
http://www.cna.ca/english/pdf/nuclearfacts/04-NuclearFacts-uranium.pdf

17) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation

18) http://www.crystalinks.com/reptilianbrain.html

On March 8, 2019, during a Special Briefing in the State Department, Washington, DC, Elliott Abrams, U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela said in response to a question from a Bloomberg journalist:

QUESTION [Bloomberg journalist]: Mr. Abrams, in the weeks since Juan Guaidó was recognized as the interim president, the Secretary of State and you have sort of intimated that there would be – that the military would flip in – imminently, that something might happen next week or the next week. Have you been disappointed – I mean, you remarked a little bit about the timeline, but have you been disappointed that the military continues to seemingly side with Mr. Maduro?

MR ABRAMS: Wouldn’t say that – I wouldn’t use the word “disappointed.” I would say we continue to call on the Venezuelan military to follow their own constitution. We call on them to restore – it’s better in Spanish – institucionalidad. We don’t really have a word in English – institutionality – but to restore their own proper role in any country. One of the definitions of having a state is having monopoly on force and violence for the security forces of the state. That’s not happening in Venezuela, where the government is using, the regime is using armed gangs, colectivos. One would think that the police and military in any country would find that unacceptable.

So we continue to hope that people in the Venezuelan security forces understand that the future of their country is going to be in much better hands if the Maduro regime comes to an end and the transition to democracy begins. And again, I would say it do until the day that it begins to happen.

Is the US stymied by the union of millions of Venezuelans with the military, including its armed militia, as outlined in a previous Global Research article on this  civilian-military union?

The nemesis which the US is facing started – in the current period – on February 23rd on the Venezuelan border with Colombia. The US attempt to promote a mutiny among the military and a revolt within the people against Maduro in favour of the US hand -picked and self-proclaimed “president” failed miserably.

The day after this debacle, Mike Pompeo US Secretary of State said on CNN State of the Union (SOTU) with Jack Tapper, February 24, 2019:

“TAPPER: But it seems as though Maduro is not going anywhere near this [US] plan, that he’s holding onto power, and the military seems to be staying with him, at least the military leaders.

POMPEO: It always seems that way, until the day it doesn’t.

I remember, when I was a young soldier patrolling the then East German border. No one predicted on that day in 1989 that that wall would come crumbling down. Predictions are difficult. Picking exact days are difficult. 

While these words say a lot, one had to see the body language – the sheepish look – on the face of the Secretary of State representing the most powerful military force on earth. He did not seem convinced that the “Berlin Wall moment” would come to Venezuela. That was on February 24, yet as we see above on March 8, Abrams had the same problem.

Why is this? The U.S.-centric mindset has been steeped in the white supremacist notion of the “chosen people” from the time of the 17th century Pilgrims. It consists, among other features, of the racist outlook that peoples in the “Third World,” such as Latin America, cannot take their destiny in their own hands.

However, the opposite has been – and is – presently taking place. As a result of U.S. policies, democracy in Venezuela has been crossing the Rubicon from participatory democracy to a protagonist one. While the two are similar, especially in comparison with the experience of the Diktat in the capitalist North, there is a qualitative difference. Is it possible that as a result of the US policy toward Venezuela  – which one should recall this March 9 as the anniversary of the Obama 2015 Decree declaring Venezuela to be a threat to the US security – the Bolivarian Revolution’s democracy is becoming “above all” – as Chávez predicted and desired – “protagonist and not only participatory”?

Not only has the Pilgrim “chosen people” guideline for US foreign policy blinded Washington as to its capacity to conquer a country such as Venezuela, the arrogance of the 17the century bible-thumping “City upon a Hill You are the Light of the World” has further inspired the majority of Venezuelans. They are increasingly resisting the US and their allies. The Chavista movement is increasingly becoming the author of its own Bolivarian Revolution, not only participating in it.

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Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 ElectionsCuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and the recently released  Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. As a journalist he collaborates with many web sites in Latin America, Europe and North America including Global ResearchTwitter,  Facebook, His website: www.arnoldaugust.com

All images in this article are from the author

A Fancy Hypocrisy: China, Australia and Coal Mania

March 10th, 2019 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Fear them for their technology; fear them for their ideology and their authoritarianism. But embrace interference and involvement in the economy if it involves coal.  This is the fancy hypocrisy of Australian politics, one driven to lunacy and inconsistency by that dark and dirty love. 

The contrast between a fear of Huawei, on the one hand, and an eager opening for a Chinese state-owned enterprise barging its way into the Australian market suggests that those in Canberra have finally twisted themselves into knots.  The latter is particularly striking – the China Energy Engineering Corporation (CEEC), the designated monster behind what promises to be 2000 megawatt of coal generation in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney.  Two plants billed as users of efficient coal-fired technology will supposedly take root in the “failed industrial zone” and give it life.  The cost would be in the order of $8 billion and generate over $17 billion worth of carbon liabilities.

Australia’s dinosaur political class is delighted at the latest foray into environmental spoliation.

“This is exactly what the market needs,” chuffed Coalition backbencher Craig Kelly.

Furthermore, to show that the conservative wing of politics is happy to forfeit any laissez faire credentials regarding the economy when needed, Kelly is keen for generous taxpayers’ support. 

“If the Government needs to underwrite it, if it needs a little help, then that’s what we should be doing.” 

Gone from the conversational babble was China’s February announcement through the Dalian Port authorities restricting Australian coal imports. 

“The goals are to better safeguard the legal rights and interests of Chinese importers and to protect the environment,” explained Geng Shuang of the Chinese foreign ministry. 

The point is worth reiterating, since similar bans were not applied to the coal from other states.  The indefinite ban was the bitter icing on that particular issue, confirming prolonged clearing times for Australian coal since the start of February.

The announcement of the mining venture had its predictable reaction in the environmental movement in Australia.  The Greens federal member for Melbourne was aghast and, as is his wont, got into the realms of hyperbole.  Protests would ensue; mass disaffection would take to the streets.  These latest coal plans, according to Adam Bandt, “will make the Franklin Dam campaign look like a Sunday picnic.”  What of, he said, any acknowledgment of the recent climate shocks gripping the continent? 

“We just had our hottest summer on record. If Labor and Liberal [parties] give this project the tick of approval then you will see civil disobedience in Australia on a scale never seen before.”

Interference by China in Australian matters is enchanting printing presses and stalking the corridors of power in Canberra.  Like other obsessions, it is clear that this one is inconsistent and variable, manifesting in various forms like an inconsistent fever.  James Laurenceson’s Do the Claims Stack Up, Australia Talks China, concludes that

“in each case, the evidence base [on interference] is shown to be divorced from the claims found in headlines, news reports and opinion pieces, revealing just how widespread has become the discourse of the China Threat, China Angst and China Panic”. 

When it comes to coal, the threat transforms; China Blessing, or China Grovelling come to the fore.  (The Yellow Peril becomes the Yellow Salvation.)   

The divorce in terms of reality is also evident in the finance side of things; the mining projects being proposed have yet to find the necessary capital, a point that is proving increasingly difficult for any such concerns.  Kaisun Holdings, the other company involved in the enterprise and also noted for being a “Belt and Road” company, is still on the hunt for “potential investors”.  As with the Indian mining giant Adani, such companies will have to convince those who finance them that coal is good in an increasingly hostile environment.  No money, no project; the equation is uncomplicated.  On paper, Kaisun has a market capitalisation of $33 million.  The Australian joint-venture partner, has a mere $25,000 on paper. 

The Australian Financial Review has also pointed out that the scheme, inspired by Parramatta’s Frank Cavasinni, is being “driven by a small businessman from Western Sydney with no experience in the energy industry.” Ignorance can be golden, but not in certain areas of economic planning.  Such a plant has already received reproach from EnergyAustralia’s executive Mark Collette, who claims that the plant will not provide the flexible capacity in the grid required as users move to the use of low-cost wind and solar power. “Coal as an investment works best as baseload but the market signal is calling for something different, which is flexible capacity.”

Australian politicians, when it comes to mining, prove fickle.  Their views are changeable, climactically variable and their principles are always up for purchase.  They are in office to be bought by the commodities industry, but the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, is firm: there are no plans in the pipeline to approve any coal-fired power stations.

“We are the most resilient state when it comes to our own energy needs.” 

But given that the Australian federal government lacks a coherent, sustainable energy policy, coal lovers feel they are still in with a chance.

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

Featured image is from Asianews

Make the War Pigs “Great Again”

March 10th, 2019 by Kurt Nimmo

The Make America Great Again (MAGA) president has a budget plan. Cut domestic spending and shift more tax money over to the war pigs at the Pentagon. 

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According to The Washington Post:

President Trump on Monday will propose major spending cuts across a range of domestic government programs while seeking a large increase for the Pentagon, a budget plan that’s already encountering withering opposition from Democrats who control the House, as well as some Republicans.

Reading this, you might think Democrats and a few “moderate” Republicans are responding to the demands of the people, nearly half of them on the dole in one form or another, not because they are shiftless deadbeats, but because the Federal Reserve and the bankster elite have destroyed the economy and corporations have shipped decent paying jobs overseas and robotized many at home. This has resulted in about a third of the US population falling or remaining in poverty while most of the rest live paycheck to paycheck. Only the “one precent” benefit from the windfall of a rigged economy. 

In 2015, candidate Trump promised to reinvigorate the economy and bring the troops home from long stays (occupations) in foreign lands and wind-down the outrageously expensive wars. Trump at the time was taking money and advice from Israel-firsters, most notoriously the Zionist casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and the professional Islamophobe Frank Gaffney. 

In addition, he was taking foreign policy advice from Joseph E. Schmitz, a former Inspector General of the Department of Defense and a former executive with Blackwater Worldwide. Schmitz fled the Pentagon after he was accused of protecting top Bush officials accused of wrongdoing. 

Add the presence of Walid Phares, who is associated with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neocon central organization that teamed up with the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute to propagandize the American people  into supporting the illegal invasion of Iraq and supporting a fallacious war on terror. Prior the 2016 election, I wrote about this process of neoconization in a small ebook, Donald Trump and the War on Islam. 

In other words, Trump was a neocon simpatico well before he was elected. However, it took seasoned establishment neocons such as John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, and Mike Pompeo to make the conversion complete. The Donald has his moments—publicly stating he will remove troops from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan—but on that point he is betrayed time after time by his handlers. 

MAGA is now shorthand for neocon. The MAGA theology is dedicated to war abroad—predicated on long-standing lies and falsifications—and austerity at home with an attendant police state apparatus to frighten and control the mob. Social programs are to be looted, the money handed over to the Pentagon so it might continue building a “new generation” of nuclear weapons, taunting nuke-armed Russia and China, engaging with myriad intelligence agencies (in collusion with the State Department and its subversive NGOs) to undermine elections and kickstart wars, and feeding an already obese Pentagon and its associated industries. 

The richest man in the world’s newspaper didn’t mention the real reason Democrats are upset with Trump. If social programs are slashed and billions of dollars diverted to the war pigs, bedrock Democrat voters will demand socialism, socialist candidates, and a centrally planned economy with plenty of debt dollars to feed and house the plebs. 

Democrats are also war pigs. They are just better at PR and presentation than chest-thumping neocons who cut to the chase. At the end of the day, the path both follow leads to the same destination: endless war in the name of an unsustainable and bankrupt empire.

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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.

Featured image is from Salon.com

The Secretary-General has received the following written statement which is circulated in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31 [8 February 2019]

Pushback on human rights in France: “The Republic on the move”- but in the reverse gear(1)

1. For some months now, France has been the scene of turbulent upheaval. Fierce social conflict has long been a defining feature of the country’s political life. It has been a historical given in a nation constructed, for the most part, post-1789 on the basis of a revolution of universal scope that, along with the social advances won in 1936, 1945 and 1968, still exerts a strong hold on the collective memory and the country’s institutions, despite attempts to eradicate all traces of it.

Yet for nearly 40 years, France, like all the other countries of the North without exception, has found itself encased in the deadly straitjacket of devastating neoliberal policies, policies that can only be seen as an extraordinary act of social violence, an assault on labour. Their destructive effects – on individuals, society and even the environment – are propagated by a State that works hand-in-glove with whoever currently wields the most power. They are further aggravated by the constraints of the anti-social content of European Union treaties that the French rejected in the 2005 referendum but which were imposed on them in a denial of democratic process – an additional assault on an entire people. It is this particular perspective, as well as the general context of a systemic crisis of global capitalism, that explains the waves of popular uprisings of increasing intensity that have taken place in recent decades – strike in 1995, riots in the suburbs in 2005-2007, demonstrations in 2000 and 2010. There is now widespread discontent and a general feeling of malaise. The so-called “yellow vests” movement that began in October 2018 is one expression of this, but it is coming up against the worst resurgence of police violence since the Algerian war. In the face of the various protests, all demanding greater social justice, the authorities have chosen to respond with greater repression, to the extent that human rights are regressing at an alarming rate.

 State of emergency: origins of the crackdown

2. The starting point for the ramping up of repression can be clearly identified as the state of emergency proclaimed in metropolitan France on 14 November 2015 in the wake of the previous day’s terrorist attacks, and in the overseas departments on 18 November. Without in any way seeking to minimize the threats posed by the terrorist activities of extreme political Islam, from Al-Qaeda to Daesh, it nevertheless needs stating that the security policy in place since 2015 has also provided an opportunity to force the French people to accept a drastic curtailment of their civil and political rights, beyond what is required to deal with terrorist threats alone. It is true that, after five successive renewals, the state of emergency was lifted on 1 November 2017, but most of the special measures it had provided for had by then acquired the force of law: preventive search and arrest, security perimeters, individual house arrest, border controls, etc., are now authorized under the Act of 30 October 2017 on reinforcement of national security and combating terrorism. Since then there has been a perturbing abuse of this extensive legal arsenal of emergency measures that has had the effect of pushing back public freedoms, notably the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly or demonstration, as well as trade union rights and even the right to physical integrity, all of which are now in serious jeopardy.

3. Those who have recently taken part in demonstrations in France will certainly have witnessed what French and international human rights organizations have been decrying for the last few months: many of the actions of law enforcement agencies are deemed disproportionate and excessively violent; they even resort at times to weapons of war. There is now systematic use of tear gas and water cannons on peaceful protesters and very frequent use of baton rounds (from riot guns, fired at head height, and other so-called “less lethal” weapons), stun grenades and dispersal grenades, the practice of “kettling” to prevent groups from joining up with other demonstrators, random and arbitrary arrest, verbal intimidation, gratuitous provocation and even physical assault. The streets of Paris have seen the deployment of armoured vehicles, mounted police and dog units. On numerous occasions degrading treatment has been inflicted on protesters, including minors. In many cases, people who have committed no crime whatsoever have been clubbed or locked up. Medical supplies have been confiscated from “street doctors” – the volunteer medics who follow the marches and treat the injured. All of these events have shocked the French, which is precisely the effect desired, with a view to halting the uprising. Such police violence is absolutely unacceptable and violates international human rights standards.

Phase 1: suppression of social movements and unions

4. Since the election as President of Emmanuel Macron – formerly managing partner of the Rothschild investment bank, then Minister of Finance under President François Hollande and responsible for several laws aimed at making the labour market more flexible – the trade unions have re-mobilized. Demonstrations and strikes have spread, especially in sectors such as public transport (SNCF, Air France), energy (gas and electricity), automobiles (Peugeot, Renault), telecommunications (Orange), mass distribution (Carrefour), health services (public hospitals, retirement homes, social security), education (high schools, universities), culture (museums), justice (lawyers, judges), garbage collection, and even financial and company auditing. These diverse social movements, which attracted a large following, lasted throughout the spring of 2018. The response of the authorities was to step up the repression, with a particularly dramatic impact on students (evacuation of campuses), environmental activists occupying “defence zones” (ZAD) and, before that, those protesting against the labour-market flexibilization laws.

5. This was clearly part of the same spiral of repression already in use against the unions for several years, in violation of labour law. The obstacles in the way of trade union activities had multiplied: pay discrimination against trade unionists, unfair dismissal of strikers, pressure in the form of threats or disciplinary sanctions, curtailment of trade union rights and the right to strike, and even criminalization of trade union action (as at Goodyear, Continental and Air France). In addition, recent government reforms to the Labour Code have further penalized social movements: shorter time limits for appealing to industrial tribunals and caps on those tribunals’ compensation awards in cases of unfair dismissal; restrictions on the role of staff representative bodies and the legal remedies available to them; mechanisms for breaking collective agreements without regard for plans for saving jobs or favouring departures by older staff; reversal of the status of norms so that company agreements prevail over sectoral agreements and the law; establishment of national scope for dismissal for economic reasons, to facilitate the laying off of employees in French subsidiaries (while the parent company makes profits on a global scale).

Phase 2: suppression of the “yellow vests”

6. President Macron has decided “not to change course”. With no regard for the sufferings and expectations of working men and women, his Government is tightening up its neoliberal policies and, to that end, going ever further down the route of social violence and police repression. The record is horrific, unworthy of a country that claims to be democratic and tolerant. Since the start of the yellow vest movement, there have been 11 accidental deaths. More than 2,000 people have been injured, at least a hundred of them very seriously, with doctors reporting injuries they describe as “war wounds” (hands torn off, eyes put out, disfigurement, multiple fractures and maiming), mainly resulting from baton rounds or shrapnel from grenades, in many cases fired at peaceful protesters. Several people are still in a coma. And what of the psychological shock to teenagers treated as terrorists by the police, forced onto their knees with their hands behind their head, or bundled into vans or cells?

7. Where is this power heading, trampling as it does on its own people and unleashing such violence? On 1 December, for example, 7,940 tear gas grenades were fired, along with 800 dispersal grenades, 339 GLI-F4-type grenades (explosive ordnance), 776 baton rounds and 140,000 litres of water. Between 17 November 2018 and 7 January 2019 alone – according to preliminary and probably not exhaustive figures – 6,475 arrests were made and 5,339 people taken into police custody. Nationwide more than 1,000 convictions have been handed down by the courts. Although most of the sentences are subject to adjustment (such as community service), many are prison terms: 153 committal orders (involving incarceration) have been issued, for example, while 519 summonses have been put out by the criminal investigation police and 372 by the criminal courts. In Paris, 249 persons have been sent for immediate trial, 58 have been given prison sentences and 63 suspended prison sentences. In the French department of La Réunion, the average prison term ordered for local yellow vests is 8 months. As of 10 January 2019 there were still some 200 people associated with these events in prison in France. 

Legitimacy of popular demands

8. In many respects the demands of the yellow vests intersect with those of labour. They demand immediate and tangible improvements to living standards, restoration of purchasing power (wages, pensions, social benefits), strengthening of public services and citizens’ participation in decisions concerning their collective future. In other words, the effective implementation of economic, social and cultural rights in particular, and peoples’ right to self-determination. Insofar as they call for greater social justice, increased respect for human rights and more economic and political democracy, these claims are thoroughly legitimate and attract broad support among the population.

9. The mother of all violence, the violence that has to be halted first of all and as a matter of urgency, the violence from which people are forced to defend themselves – as suggested by the Declaration of Human and Citizens’ Rights in the preamble to the French Constitution – is that generated by the imposition of unjust, merciless, antisocial and undemocratic neoliberal measures; the violence that, in the silence surrounding the price movements of capitalist markets, causes homeless people to die of cold, pushes indebted farmers to suicide and destroys individuals and families by depriving them of jobs, cutting off their electricity and evicting them from their homes; the violence that forces pensioners to turn off the heating because they can’t afford it, or children to skip a meal; the violence that breaks down all solidarity, closes schools, maternity wards and psychiatric hospitals, plunges small tradesmen and craftsmen into despair as they buckle under their overheads, wears out wage workers but does not let them make ends meet. The real violence is there, in this extraordinarily unjust and fundamentally untenable system. In that light, the smashing of bank or supermarket windows by a few isolated or confused individuals, while certainly reprehensible, is no justification for police violence

10. On that basis, CETIM urges the French Government to call an immediate halt to the crackdown on demonstrators and to honour its international obligations in terms of human rights and labour rights, notably by:

– Repealing legislation that nullifies freedoms and curbs labour rights, in accordance with the two international covenants on human rights (civil, political, economic, social and cultural) and with ILO conventions, as ratified by France;

– Ceasing to criminalize social movements in general and the yellow vest movement in particular;

– Permitting an independent investigation into the abuses committed by lawenforcement agencies during the yellow vest demonstrations and prosecuting the perpetrators.

11. CETIM also requests the Human Rights Council to activate its mechanisms as appropriate, in order to conduct an enquiry in France into the violations of the rights of peaceful protesters.

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Our thanks to Defend Democracy Press. for having brought this article to our attention.

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*Statement was drafted with the collaboration of Dr. Rémy Herrera, researcher at CNRS, Paris.

Selected Articles: Who Won the Vietnam War?

March 10th, 2019 by Global Research News

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A Peek into the Horrific Findings of the UN Report on Israel’s Massacre of Gaza Protesters

By Robert Inlakesh, March 10, 2019

The commission found serious human rights violations that may constitute crimes against humanity and called on Israel to “Lift the blockade on Gaza with immediate effect.

Can We Divest from Weapons Dealers?

By Kathy Kelly, March 10, 2019

Consider this: The 2018 U.S. Census Report tallies U.S. exports of bullets to other countries. Topping the list is $123 million-worth of bullets to Afghanistan—an eight-fold rise over the number of bullets sold in 2017 and far more than the number of bullets sold to any other country.

Neoliberalism and “The Vietnam Model”. Who Won the Vietnam War?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 09, 2019

Fifty four years ago, March 8, 1965 marks the commencement of the Vietnam war.

April 1975 marks the official end of the Vietnam War.

Yet today, almost 44 year later Vietnam is an impoverished country.  The Hanoi government is a US proxy regime. Vietnam has become a new cheap labor frontier of the global economy. Neoliberalism prevails.

The Pentagon’s Missing Trillions. What You Need to Know

By James Corbett and Mark Skidmore, March 09, 2019

Dr. Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University joins us to discuss his research with Catherine Austin Fitts into the $21 trillion in unaccounted transactions on the books of the US Department of Defence and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Has Trump Gone Full Neocon??

By Mike Whitney, March 09, 2019

The details of what took place at the Hanoi Summit strongly suggests that President Donald Trump has joined the neocons in their quest to strangle the North Korean economy and bring about regime change.

Senator Rubio

The Psychosis of the Neocons: Senator Marco Rubio “Makes Fun” of the Suffering of the Venezuelan People

By Kurt Nimmo, March 09, 2019

Marco Rubio, the neocon senator from Florida, considers a suspicious power outage across Venezuela to be funny. He would no doubt feel different if his mother was on a ventilator in a Caracas hospital—then again. 

Assad’s Tehran Visit Signals Iran’s Victory in Syria

By Tony Cartalucci, March 09, 2019

The significance of the trip cannot be understated – it was a message sent to those who orchestrated the proxy war against Syria that Damascus has prevailed and instead of driving a wedge between it and its allies in Moscow and Tehran – it has only drawn these regional powers closer together.

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