Global Research

A French court on Thursday upheld a guilty verdict against chemicals giant Monsanto over the poisoning of a farmer who suffered neurological damage after using one of its weedkillers, the latest legal setback for the company over its controversial pesticides.

Cereal farmer Paul Francois has been fighting Monsanto, a formerly US company which was bought by Germany’s Bayer last year, for the past 12 years.

In the first ruling of its kind against Monsanto anywhere in the world, a French court in 2012 found it guilty of poisoning Francois.

He said he began experiencing symptoms including blackouts, headaches and loss of balance and memory after inhaling fumes while using the now-banned weedkiller Lasso.

Monsanto appealed and lost in 2015 but decided to go a third round.

“I won, and I’m happy, but at what cost?” Francois told reporters after the verdict.

He denounced what he called years of “legal harassment” by Monsanto, which can still appeal Thursday’s ruling by the Cour de Cassation, a top French appeals court.

The ruling, he said, was “a message to the government,” which he urged to ban other toxic pesticides that contain glyphosate, used in Monsanto’s top-selling Roundup.

“History will judge them for not acting,” he said, referring to a campaign pledge by President Emmanuel Macron to phase out glyphosate in France, which he backed down on last year.

Monsanto is facing thousands of US lawsuits over glyphosate exposure, and last month was ordered by a San Francisco court to pay around $80 million to a retiree suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

‘Not a chemist’

Francois said he fell ill in 2004 after accidently inhaling fumes from a vat containing Lasso, a monochlorobenzene-based weedkiller that was legal in France until 2007 but which had already been banned in 1985 in Canada and in 1992 in Belgium and Britain.

He argued that Monsanto was aware of Lasso’s dangers long before it was withdrawn from the French market, and sought damages of more than one million euros ($1.13 million) for chronic neurological damage that required long hospital stays.

The court in Lyon, southeastern France, rejected the company’s appeal but did not rule on how much Monsanto might have to pay, which will be determined in a separate ruling.

It did order the company to pay 50,000 euros immediately for Francois’s legal fees.

In its ruling, the court found that Monsanto should have clearly indicated on Lasso’s labelling and instructions for use “a notice on the specific dangers of using the product in vats and reservoirs”.

“The plaintiff’s assumed technical knowledge does not excuse the lack of information on the product and its harmful effects—a farmer is not a chemist,” it added.

Speaking after the verdict, a lawyer for Monsanto France, Jean-Daniel Bretzner, said it would probably appeal, since the ruling applied to Lasso’s producer—in this case, Monsanto Europe.

Parent company Bayer confirmed it was weighing an appeal.

“Supposing that Paul Francois was accidently exposed to Lasso, by definition such exposure is rare,” it said in a statement.

Wave of lawsuits

It was the latest conviction against Monsanto involving its weedkillers and pesticides, which have been widely used around the world for years.

Last month, a San Francisco court ordered the $80 million pay-out to a retiree who blames its popular Roundup weedkiller, which contains glyphosate, for causing his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The company said it would appeal as it faces thousands of similar lawsuits in the United States.

It had already been ordered last year to pay $78.5 million to a California groundskeeper who attributed his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma to using Roundup as well as Monsanto’s Ranger Pro.

Monsanto denies that Roundup causes cancer and has challenged findings by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), which classified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” in 2015.

But Bayer, which paid $63 billion for Monsanto last year, has seen its stock plunge some 40 percent since the takeover was completed last June, largely reflecting fears of Monsanto’s exposure to lawsuits.

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Featured image: French farmer Paul Francois, left, and his lawyer Francois Lafforgue at a press conference in Lyon, southeast France, after an appeals court upheld his lawsuit against Monsanto over its Lasso weedkiller

The US First Amendment affirms fundamental speech and media rights without which all others are threatened. No society is free without them. Eliminating them assures totalitarian rule.

In her 1951 book, titled “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Hannah Arendt said it’s “never content to rule by external means (alone)…(T)otalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.”

She called it dictatorship based on:

“(1) an elaborate ideology (militarism and predatory capitalism in the US and UK);

(2) a single mass party (in the US and UK, its war party);

(3) (state) terror;

(4) a technologically conditioned monopoly of communication (in the US and UK, establishment media serving as press agents for wealth, power and privilege, reporting the official narrative, suppressing truth-telling on vital issues);

(5) a monopoly of weapons (in the US – how it used to be; today Russian super-weapons exceed the best in the West); (and)

(6) a centrally controlled economy (socialism for the rich in the US and UK by accommodative legislation and government handouts to monied interests, law of the jungle free market capitalism for their exploited people).”

Democracy in both countries is pure fantasy. Elections when held are farcical. Dirty business as usual wins every time. Ordinary people have no say over how they’re governed.

US exceptionalism, the indispensable state, and moral superiority don’t exist. Police state America is increasingly a totalitarian plutocracy, oligarchy and kleptocracy – unfit and unsafe to live in for its ordinary people. The same goes for the UK and other Western countries.

They honor their worst, persecute some of their best, notably courageous truth-tellers exposing dirty secrets of the imperial state and its partners want suppressed.

The mistreatment of Chelsea Manning, other heroic whistleblowers, and now journalist Julian Assange for doing the right thing constitutes a major body blow to already fast eroding freedoms in the US and UK – heading toward eliminating them altogether.

Right wing  Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno acted in cahoots with the UK and US, illegally rescinding Assange’s citizenship and asylum status in the country’s London embassy – a dark day for the rule of law and fundamental human and civil rights.

Assange’s forcible Thursday arrest had nothing to do with earlier dropped phony rape and sexual abuse charges in Sweden, nothing to do with Assange skipping bail in London – everything to do with his virtually certain extradition to the US.

DOJ spokeswoman Nicole Oxman explained it, saying

“I can confirm that Julian Assange was arrested in relation to a provisional extradition request from the United States of America.”

The sole fabricated charge against him of “Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusion” was used to smooth the extradition process.

Once in US custody, a further indictment is highly likely, maybe certain to follow on espionage charges under the long ago outdated 1917 Espionage Act, a WW I relic, solely pertaining to the war.

It’s what Chelsea Manning was unlawfully charged under ahead of her guilt by accusation trial and 35-year prison sentence, commuted by Obama after nearly seven years served.

She’s been detained again since March 8 for invoking her constitutional rights not to give grand jury testimony – a secretive, manipulative process designed for prosecutors to get indictments, targeted individuals guilty of no crimes vulnerable, why the system should be abolished.

Assange faces a similar fate as Manning during her earlier kangaroo court trial.

It’s why preserving and protecting Net Neutrality is vital – digital democracy, the last front frontier of media freedom.

Note: The US House passed Save the Internet Act (HR 1644) – written to prevent corporate ISPs from acting as online gatekeepers, able to decide how and what people may access digitally.

The GOP-dominated Senate and Trump veto power remain major hurdles to overcome.

By email, Law Professor Francis Boyle explained that

“contrary to (media and other) reports, the US government can add charges after Assange is extradit(ed).”

According to Law Professor Jonathan Turley,

indictment of Assange “under the Espionage Act would be quite challenging for the government, absent some new evidence establishing a nexus and intent,” adding:

“I have handled First Amendment and national security cases, and I would call the Assange arrest the most anticipated case of my generation in defining the outside boundaries of those areas…This could prove one of the most important cases in (US) history.”

On Friday, the Russian embassy in the UK press secretary issued the following statement on Assange’s arrest, saying:

“UK media (reports) called the WikiLeaks founder a ‘puppet of the Kremlin.’ We are not surprised at such statements. The UK media often try to find Russian involvement in all possible issues.”

“Such insinuations around the case of Assange had already taken place earlier” – no evidence ever cited. Without it, allegations and accusations are baseless.

“I would like to point out that WikiLeaks was initially promoted by The Guardian newspaper. One can hardly accuse it of having links to Russia,” the statement added.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called Assange’s forcible arrest “squeezing the throat of freedom.”

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed the same view, call his unacceptable arrest “a blow to media freedom,” adding:

Assange “is being persecuted…(T)his does not correspond to the ideals of freedom of the press, freedom of the media, and their inviolability” – just the opposite, how totalitarian regimes operate.

A Final Comment

Assange is being unlawfully detained at London’s Belmarsh prison – classified as Adult Male/Category A, a high-security facility. Known as Britain’s GITMO, it’s described as follows:

It’s for “those whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public or national security.

Offenses that may result in consideration for Category A or Restricted Status include:

“Murder, manslaughter, wounding with intent, rape, kidnapping, indecent assault, robbery or conspiracy to rob (with firearms), firearms offenses, importing or supplying Class A controlled drugs, possessing or supplying explosives, offenses connected with terrorism and offenses under the Official Secrets Act.”

So-called most dangerous inmates are held in Belmarsh’s secretive high security unit, described as a prison within a prison – likely where Assange is jailed.

Mark Hughes was the first UK reporter ever allowed in the unit, saying its living conditions are “cramped.”

To gain entry, he “negotiated 15 gated doors and had (his) fingerprints scanned.” Inside, he saw “a windowless” facility “(s)urrounded by CCTV cameras in a small carpeted reception area – the only carpet in the block…”

He had to remove his “shoes and belt and put all (his) belongings through an X-ray machine. (He) walked through a metal detector and a was given a body search – the lining of (his) jeans, the soles of (his) feet and inside (his) mouth were all checked.”

Guards go through the same procedure every time they enter the unit.

“At the end of the reception area is a red iron gate. Passing through this door involves at least a four-minute wait, as it can only be unlocked by staff in the control room who check people’s identity using remote cameras which zoom in to study their faces.”

“Once through you are faced with four more doors, each leading to a different part of the unit. No two doors in the unit can be opened at the same time.”

“The (unit) is on two floors and is split into four ‘spurs.’ Each one has 12 single-occupancy cells.”

The unit “was originally used almost exclusively to house IRA prisoners. But since then it has held KGB agents (sic), al-Qa’ida terrorists (the US and UK support), and even Charles Bronson – Britain’s most violent prisoner – who had a whole spur to himself.”

Some Belmarsh prisoners are isolated in solitary confinement for 22 hours daily, likely how Assange is being mistreated.

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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.

There was no hearing, no semblance of trial.  But there was swift summary judgment: Israel Folau, a star member of the Australian Rugby Union team, had been banished from the national team.  There was only one problem: he was avoiding taking any calls from Rugby Australia to inform him of that fact.

“For an organisation not recently known for quick and decisive action,” suggested Brett McKay, “Rugby Australia’s handling of a delicate matter has been as swift as it has been sensible.” 

It was a familiar episode of institutional clumsiness, coupled with a lack of competence.  Rugby Australia had evidently hardened to the man.  Folau was being accused of another round of excessive zealotry.  First came an Instagram post addressed to “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters”.  While they were on route to hell, the dedicated evangelical was intent on saving them. 

More was to come.  Last Thursday, the Daily Telegraph revealed footage of a sermon given by Folau before churchgoers last month. 

“Christmas and Easter, that’s man-made,” he asserts.  “For many years we were caught up in the world and thinking that celebrating Christmas was biblical, but when you read this passage you can see what God says about it.” 

And so he does, going through Jeremiah 10:1-5, excoriating the path of the heathen “and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the brethren are dismayed at them.” 

The lack of consistency in approaching Folau’s very publicly held beliefs on homosexuality and all who deviate from the path of the righteous had previously caught the officials off guard. Now, not wishing to look weak, they decided to strike savagely.  The question here is whether a code of conduct hearing will feature.  According to the Rugby Union Players’ Association,

“it is imperative that the proper process is followed under the code of conduct.”

And given that the player’s options seem to also be closing towards other international leagues, this is probably going to happen.   

This point is a simmering one, and RA must, to some extent, shoulder the blame.  Rather than being removed from the boiler, the issue remained after comments made by Folau last year on Instagram that a special spot in hell was reserved for gay people.  He proceeded to explain that “it was never my intention to hurt anyone with the Instagram comment”.  It is also worth noting that Folau was not alone, garnering some support within the team.    

Rugby Australia, then, preferred containment rather than any overtly aggressive measure.  Rugby AU CEO Raelene Castle described having a “calm open and honest” meeting with Folau over his use of social media.  A strong warning issued.  Folau could continue playing.  In fact, he was given a new contract. 

The inconsistent approaches of Rugby Australia have not gone unnoticed.

“During the past five years (probably longer),” comments Paul Cully for the Sydney Morning Herald, “Rugby Australia has consistently rewarded those whose past behaviour was a red flag, which they have ignored.” 

The broader problem here is what Folau is being punished for.  Bad boys face a confused regime of sporting administrators keen to use the sporting assets at their disposal while also seeking some exalted moral high ground.      

It is clear that a behavioural norm is emerging in the workplace: you are to be removed, silenced or made to disappear for holding unsavoury opinions.  This is particularly problematic when it comes to a clash of rights; in this case, Folau is a fire-and-brimstone type who is unlikely to change his creed and believes, wholeheartedly, in his cause.  His performance as a sportsman is not as relevant as the permitted moral code that attaches to that workplace. The result is often one of shabby treatment for the detractors from the managerial perspective.

The attempt at discarding Folau is being waged on a few fronts.  Rugby Australia is citing behavioural issues with a renewed sense of purpose; elite coaching director Rod Kafer has decided to hit the player with the suggestion that he has weaknesses in the Australian squad and can be easily left out.  “If we just take the Wallabies view, we’ve struggled to find actually Israel’s best position for the Wallabies.”  True, he brought “some real unique characteristics” but these did not translate into being “an outstanding player” in international rugby. 

While there is nothing to celebrate in the extreme views of Folau, his treatment is becoming part of a pattern that characterises modern work and how public views are aired.  If only, some bureaucrats in RA are no doubt sighing, he could remain a quiet fundamentalist.  And this problem might well have been approached differently.  Instead of the inherent messiness of loading the weapon with a four-year-deal last year, Rugby Australia might have simply not renewed it.  But then again, this would jar with another part of the RA credo: winning above all else.

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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]

Just finished viewing, for the umpteenth time, one of my favorite films, Chinatown (1973), directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson. At the end of the film, when the bad guy, played by John Huston, gets away with his criminal shenanigans, it made me ponder a bit. I thought back to another of Polanski’s classics, Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Sure as hell, at the end of that film the bad guys, the Satan worshippers (and of course the devil himself) get away with their evil deeds. Then I continued to ponder another of his films, Ghost Writer (2010) and the evil ones get away with their deeds as well. Now in all of these films there were diligent heroes who took the time to investigate whatever hunches they had, all to no end. So, the old adage of ‘Evil triumphs when good men do nothing’ just did not fit, because too many ‘good men’ just couldn’t give a shit!

Why would Polanski choose to take on three such storylines? Well, I wish I could interview him for my radio show, but for creative license allow me to extrapolate a bit. In all three scenarios it seems that the ‘forces of evil’ were so powerful (in one case the devil himself) and had so many minions serving their interests, that truth alone was held hostage.

The ‘bad guys’ always get away with it! Sad but true. Yet, and this is key to my whole theory, if the ‘bad guys’ did not have so many minions working for their interests, then perhaps the ‘good guys’ would triumph. In Rosemary’s Baby it was ‘cut and dry’ that not enough of the public at large was awake to such a diabolical threat. After all, how many of our fellows out there would even contemplate the existence of the devil?  Remember the old saying ‘The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.’? Nuff said on that. However, in the case of Polanski’s next film on this subject, Chinatown, the uber rich guy, Noah Cross, had so many connections, and so many minions in his employ, that his evil deed went unpunished. At the end of the film, when JJ Gettes, played by Nicholson, is shouting to the cops about what Noah Cross has been conniving as to the city’s precious water supply, they turn a deaf ear. His partner says to him ‘Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown!’ Finally, in Polanski’s powerful third film in this trilogy about evil, Ghost Writer, the hired ghost writer to a former British PM does his homework and discovers the evil of our Military Industrial Empire. He connects the USA’s Deep State in manipulating the Brits in our quest to control the Middle East with our illegal invasion of Iraq etc. The film ends with him, as he is about to publicize this whole can of worms, being run over and killed in the street.

Was Polanski just cynical to a tee, or maybe too honest? I choose both possibilities. To this writer, the real gist of it all is not so much the presence of evil doers. No, the real skinny of this is the legion of devil’s disciples who serve them so well. Remember, that in the late 1930s, when many here in the US knew of the horrific treatment of the Jews in Germany, only 9% of people polled thought that we should let the refugees into our country. Or better yet, watch this administration and Congress in action.

The minions are working so well to serve this evil empire. How many in both the Congress and the mainstream media stood in line like good lemmings and supported our pre-emptive (and illegal and immoral) attack and occupation of Iraq? Fact is always being skewed into half truths and fabrications for the suckers… sorry, the public, to ingest. As with the public in all three of Polanski’s films, the cloud of obliviousness seeps down. Reminds one of the old Twilight Zone episode ‘To Serve Man’, when the myriad of good folks are on line to get into the spaceship with their new alien friends. This guy runs up to the main character and says ‘ I finally was able to figure out the real meaning of their book ‘To Serve Man’… It’s a cookbook!’

Dinner anyone?

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

Trump is poaching BRICS countries one by one, first extending an offer to Brazil to become a “Major Non-NATO Ally” and now a bipartisan group of American lawmakers wants him to do the same with India, a proposal that by its very nature proves that New Delhi was lying all along about wanting to “multi-align” between Great Powers while it was really just repeating the platitudes that the Russian “deep state” desperately needed to hear in order to be naively deceived while this game-changing pivot was taking place before their very eyes.

No sooner had Indian “thought leaders” just left Moscow after participating in a landmark “trust-building” conference hosted by the prestigious Valdai Club did the news emerge that a bipartisan group of American lawmakers proposed that the US designate India as a “Major Non-NATO Ally” (MNNA), contradicting whatever “reassurances” those “experts” gave their Russian hosts that India was wholly committed to its “neutral” policy of “multi-alignment” between Great Powers. If successfully promulgated into law, then India would be the second BRICS country invited to enter into an official strategic partnership with NATO after Brazil was offered the opportunity to become a MNNA during Bolsonaro’s visit to DC last month. The hyperlinked piece in the last sentence connects to an article that I wrote at that time that also debunks the myth of BRICS, which the Alt-Media Community imagines to be some sort of legendary superstructure for dismantling the so-called “New World Order” even though the reality is a lot less “sexy”.

One by one, Trump is poaching the BRICS countries and reducing the five-member bloc to its three-member RIC precursor prior to stripping it down to its RC core. The writing was on the wall for years that this was in the process of happening and I initially drew attention to it in a piece from May 2016 asking “Is India Now A US Ally?” in the run-up to the conclusion of the LEMOA deal that allows the US to use all of India’s military facilities on a case-by-case “logistical” basis. The Indophile lobby all across the world and especially in Russia vehemently insisted that nothing of the sort was happening, being either cringingly naive or deliberately deceptive but with the end result being that many of Moscow’s decision makers were misled into trusting India despite New Delhi obviously preparing for a game-changing pivot before their very eyes. Proverbially speaking, “the cat’s out of the bag” with the new US legislative proposal and it’s clear to see what India was up to this entire time.

The timing of this initiative couldn’t have been better for Prime Minister Modi since it might boost his reelection prospects during the ongoing month-long electoral process and serve as a “good cop” counterpart to the US’ recent “bad cop” one of calling his government out for lying about supposedly downing a Pakistani F-16 during the famous February dogfight. From the American perspective, clinching this accord could lock India into its military-industrial complex ecosystem and accelerate the country’s redirection away from Russia and towards the West in this respect, powerfully undermining the “credibility” of its claims to “multi-alignment” and revealing them to have been nothing more than “wishful thinking” rhetoric purposely designed to deceive their intended Russian audience. The belated but inevitable realization of this fact will widen Russia’s “deep state” fault lines and speed up the pace with which the influence of Kabulov’s “Progressives” replaces that of the Indophile “Traditonalists” while also more quickly catalyzing a comprehensive breakthrough in the country’s bilateral relations with the global pivot state of Pakistan.

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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.

After living under a grant of asylum in London’s Ecuadorian embassy for nearly seven years, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange was forcibly ejected and arrested by British police on April 11. Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, accused Assange of “repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols.” After an anonymous source revealed the “INA Papers,” a dossier that implicated Moreno in money laundering and contained personal photos of his family, WikiLeaks tweeted about it but denied any connection to the hacking.

Rafael Correa, who was president of Ecuador until 2017, had granted Assange asylum in 2012 to protect him from extradition to the United States to answer for WikiLeaks’s publication of evidence of U.S. war crimes. Ecuador’s foreign minister at the time, Ricardo Patino, said that without this protection, Assange could suffer “political persecution” or extradition to the U.S. where he might face the death penalty.

In 2010, WikiLeaks published classified documentation of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning had provided. It included the “Collateral Murder Video” that showed U.S. soldiers in an Army helicopter gunship kill 12 unarmed civilians walking down a street in Baghdad.

Sweden investigated Assange in fall 2010 for allegations of sexual assault. Assange was living in Britain at the time. Sweden issued an extradition warrant so Assange could face questioning about the investigation in Sweden. Assange fought extradition but lost in Britain’s Supreme Court in June 2012. He sought and received refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

In spite of pressure from the British government, in August 2012, Correa granted asylum to Assange, who has remained in the Ecuadorian embassy ever since. Sweden dropped its investigation of Assange in 2017.

The Trump Administration Indicts Assange

Assange’s arrest comes thanks to the Trump administration’s decision to pursue WikiLeaks. The Obama administration refrained from indicting Assange for fear of establishing “a precedent that could chill investigative reporting about national security matters by treating it as a crime,” according to Charlie Savage of The NewYork Times. Obama’s government had difficulty distinguishing between what WikiLeaks did and what traditional news media organizations like the Times “do in soliciting and publishing information they obtain that the government wants to keep secret,” Savage wrote. News organizations, including the Times, published articles that drew on documents WikiLeaks had published in 2010, including “logs of significant combat events in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

But the Trump administration decided to come after Assange. In 2017, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo said,

“WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service.”

An indictment filed on March 6, 2018, in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia charges Assange under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It alleges he was part of a conspiracy to access a computer without authorization in order to obtain classified information that “could be used to the injury of the United States.” Assange faces five years in prison if convicted.

Assange’s April 11 arrest was based on two grounds: failure to appear on a British warrant in 2012, and a warrant of extradition to face indictment in the United States. After his arrest, Assange was taken before a British judge and pleaded not guilty to failing to surrender to the court in 2012. District Judge Michael Snow convicted Assange, who now faces 12 months in prison in the U.K. for that offense. This is unrelated to the charges Assange would face in the United States.The indictment says Manning provided WikiLeaks with 90,000 “war-related significant activity reports” about Afghanistan, 400,000 about Iraq, 800 Guantánamo detainee “assessment briefs” and 250,000 U.S. State Department cables. WikiLeaks published the vast majority in 2010 and 2011. The indictment alleges Assange helped Manning attempt to crack a password to make it harder to identify Manning as the source of the classified information.

U.K. Should Deny Extradition of Assange to the U.S.

Meanwhile, Assange vows to fight extradition to the United States. Under the 2003 extradition treaty between the U.S. and the U.K., the U.K. can deny extradition if the offense sought is punishable by death. The U.S. Justice Department is apparently planning to file new charges against Assange, in addition to those listed in the 2018 indictment. But under the 2003 treaty, the United States cannot charge Assange with violation of the Espionage Act, because it carries the death penalty.

Moreover, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment forbids extradition to a country where there are substantial grounds to believe the person would be in danger of being tortured.

The danger of torture in the U.S. is real. During the first 11 months of Manning’s incarceration in 2010, she was held in solitary confinement and subjected to humiliating forced nudity during daily inspection. The former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture called Manning’s treatment cruel, inhuman and degrading, possibly rising to the level of torture.

There is thus good reason to believe Assange might be subjected to such illegal treatment if he were extradited to the United States.

A few days before Assange’s removal from the embassy and arrest, Nils Metzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, warned that extradition to the U.S. “could expose him to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Assange’s Indictment Will Chill Freedom of the Press

Assange’s prosecution is unprecedented.

“The Justice Department has never charged journalists with violating the law for doing their jobs,” Savage wrote.

“Reporting on leaked materials, including reporting on classified information, is an essential role of American journalism,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a statement.

The ACLU’s Ben Wizner cautioned that prosecuting Assange “would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public’s interest.” He added that “while there is no First Amendment right to crack a government password, this indictment characterizes as ‘part of’ a criminal conspiracy the routine and protected activities journalists often engage in as part of their daily jobs, such as encouraging a source to provide more information.”

Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, responded to Assange’s indictment, saying,

“This is journalism. It’s called ‘conspiracy.’ It’s conspiracy to commit journalism.”

Reporters Without Borders, an organization that protects freedom of the press, called on the U.K. to oppose extradition of Assange. It would “set a dangerous precedent for journalists, whistleblowers, and other journalistic sources that the U.S. may wish to pursue in the future.”

The 2003 treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. prohibits extradition if the request is “politically motivated.” That limitation is certainly at play here: Trump administration has made a political decision to single out WikiLeaks and make it an example. The administration wishes to send a message to other press organizations that they publish material critical of U.S. policy at their peril.

The U.K. must deny the extradition of Assange to the United States.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

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

The date – April 11, 2019 – will live in infamy in the annals of Western “values” and “freedom of expression.” The image is stark. A handcuffed journalist and publisher dragged out by force from the inside of an embassy, clutching a Gore Vidal book on the History of the U.S. National Security State.

The mechanism is brutal. WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange was arrested because the United States demanded this from the Tory British government, which for its part meekly claimed it did not pressure Ecuador to revoke Assange’s asylum.

The U.S. magically erases Ecuador’s financial troubles, ordering the IMF to release a providential $4.2-billion loan. Immediately after, Ecuadorian diplomats “invite” the London Metropolitan Police to come inside their embassy to arrest their long-term guest.

Let’s cut to the chase. Julian Assange is not a U.S. citizen, he’s an Australian. WikiLeaks is not a U.S.-based media organization. If the US government gets Assange extradited, prosecuted and incarcerated, it will legitimize its right to go after anyone, anyhow, anywhere, anytime.

Call it The Killing of Journalism.

Get Me That Password?

The case by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) against Assange is flimsy at best. Everything has to do essentially with the release of classified info in 2010 – 90,000 military files on Afghanistan, 400,000 files on Iraq and 250,000 diplomatic cables spanning most of the planet.

Assange is allegedly guilty of helping Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. Army intel analyst, to get these documents. But it gets trickier. He’s also allegedly guilty of “encouraging” Manning to collect more information.

There’s no other way to interpret that. This amounts, no holds barred, to all-out criminalization of journalistic practice.

For the moment, Assange is charged with “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.” The indictment argues that Assange helped Manning to crack a password stored on Pentagon computers linked to the Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRNet). [Though a closer look at the indictment shows the alleged help was to obscure Manning’s identity and not intrude into a DOD computer.]

In March 2010 chat logs obtained by the U.S. government, Manning talks to someone alternatively named “Ox” and “press association.” The DoJ is convinced this interlocutor is Assange. But they must conclusively prove it.

Manning and this person, allegedly Assange, engaged in “discussions.” “During an exchange, Manning told Assange that ‘after this upload, that’s all I really have got left.’ To which Assange replied: ‘Curious eyes never run dry in my experience.’”

None of this holds up. U.S. corporate media routinely publishes illegal leaks of classified information. Manning offered the documents he had already downloaded to both The New York Times and The Washington Post– and he was rejected. Only then did he approach WikiLeaks.

The allegation that Assange tried to help crack a computer password has been doing the rounds since 2010. The DoJ under Obama refused to go for it, aware of what it would mean in terms of potentially outlawing investigative journalism.

No wonder U.S. corporate media, deprived of a major scoop, subsequently started to dismiss WikiLeaks as a Russian agent.

The Nuclear Option

The great Daniel “Pentagon Papers” Ellsberg had already warned back in 2017:

“Obama having opened the legal campaign against the press by going after the roots of investigative reporting on national security – the sources – Trump is going to go after the gatherers/gardeners themselves (and their bosses, publishers). To switch the metaphor, an indictment of Assange is a ‘first use’ of ‘the nuclear option’ against the First Amendment protection of a free press.”

The current DoJ charges – basically stealing a computer password – are just the tip of the avalanche. At least for now, publishing is not a crime. Yet if extradited, Assange may be additionally charged with extra conspiracies and even violation of the 1917 Espionage Act.

Even if they must still seek consent from London to bring further charges, there’s no shortage of DoJ lawyers able to apply sophistry to conjure a crime out of thin air.

Jennifer Robinson, Assange’s very able lawyer, has correctly stressed his arrest is “a free speech issue” because it “is all about the ways in which journalists can communicate with their sources.” The invaluable Ray McGovern, who knows one or two things about the U.S. intel community, has evoked a requiem of the fourth estate.

The full context of Assange’s arrest comes to light when examined as sequential to Chelsea Manning spending a month in solitary confinement in a Virginia jail for refusing to denounce Assange in front of a grand jury. There’s no doubt the DoJ tactic is to break Manning by any means available.

Here’s Manning’s legal team:

“The indictment against Julian Assange unsealed today was obtained a year to the day before Chelsea appeared before the grand jury and refused to give testimony. The fact that this indictment has existed for over a year underscores what Chelsea’s legal team and Chelsea herself have been saying since she was first issued a subpoena to appear in front of a Federal Grand Jury in the Eastern District of Virginia – that compelling Chelsea to testify would have been duplicative of evidence already in the possession of the grand jury, and was not needed in order for U.S. Attorneys to obtain an indictment of Mr Assange.”

The Deep State Attacks 

A trade deal with America may be really important from an economic point of view but it is also going to be a bad thing for the health of British people. If you have not experienced the American way of doing business first hand you would not understand it. It is not pleasant in so many ways.

This is just one example of the way business is conducted in America. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists conducted an investigation into breast implants, which then led onto other reports being made public. This is the first few paragraphs of their latest report on medical implants, which you can read in full HERE.

“Records of millions of cases of patient harm and product malfunctions previously kept hidden from the public could soon be released following a major policy change by the key United States regulator.

In a major advance for medical device transparency, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration has pledged to disclose information kept buried for nearly two decades under a program known as “alternative summary reporting.”

The program allowed manufacturers of about 100 devices to submit quarterly reports summarizing large numbers of incidents to the FDA without the data being revealed to the public.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced the policy change on Twitter two days after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that hundreds of thousands of incidents related to breast implants had been kept out of public sight under the summary reporting program.”

Subsequent to that a March 7 report by Kaiser Health News revealed that more than 1.1 million incidents since 2016 had been kept from public view because of ‘alternative summary reporting’.

We have no idea of the health implications or damage it may have caused overall. However, when it came to breast implants alone, thousands of women across the USA suffered debilitating illnesses, including a rare form of cancer, after receiving them. Medical professionals and surgeons simply had no idea just how dangerous some of these devices could be to their patients because there was no data made available to them in the first place.

‘Summary Reporting’ is a tool devised to mislead the public about the scope and severity of harm to people caused by the medical industry. This is not to say that all medical devices are harmful, only that data existed of those that did cause harm and it was withheld – courtesy of the US government. The health of their own citizens clearly meant nothing.

ICIJ reported last November that thousands of breast implant patients worldwide were experiencing serious ailments and injuries as part of its global Implant Files investigation and a scandal then emerged forcing the data out into the open.

This one example only goes to show just how deceitful the American government and American corporations can be in pursuit of profit.

Other examples are food additives that are scientifically proven beyond any doubt to cause cancer still being used by food manufacturers in America due to a deliberately designed loophole in the law. These same additives are banned in the EU and subsequently in the UK – for now. This list of additives does not include growth hormones and GMO products, which is another matter completely.

Another example is that of cosmetics. The EU has banned 1328 chemicals from cosmetics because they are known carcinogens but the US has banned only 30 of them. HERE is the official journal of the EU and the list of chemicals that are banned. It’s lengthy document says – “Given the hazardous properties of substances classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic, category 1A, 1B and 2, pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on classification, labelling and packaging of substances and mixtures their use in cosmetic products should be prohibited.”

As a US/UK trade deal gets closer to being announced, all British citizens will soon be in a position of having to ask questions about the products they buy for the sake of their health.

I have had a number of years exposure to American style legislation when it comes to public protective measures and by and large it is dire. There are many examples I could give such as American fruit being packaged in a French style with French wording and images giving the impression of their products have not been exposed to GMO production techniques or covered in banned pesticides. Not that they need say so even if they were. Another is Greek yoghurt or specialist European cheese manufactured by American corporations in the USA and then packaged to give the impression of European goods.

In fact, even in American organic food today, there are dozens and dozens of synthetic ingredients that can be included in organic products, for no other reason than there is no organic equivalent to the chemical synthetic replacement being used. In other words – they would not qualify for organic food in the EU or in Britain currently.

The consequence is that everything you buy has to be scrutinised if you worry about what you are consuming. In my case, there was a simple rule, don’t buy it if it’s an American product, which can be restricting in product ranges where they have market dominance.

It should not be forgotten, that Britain has one of the safest food chain systems in the world – America is listed as the 7th worst in the world.

Still not convinced? Read – BREXIT: Appalling US food standards will add £1billion to NHS to combat serious food poisoning

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With Russiagate, the Democrats created some powerful karma to answer for; especially for the likes of Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, (D-Calif.), both of whom persist in the mindless search for the Holy Grail.   After cheating Bernie out of the nomination in 2016, the Dems had not yet learned their “karmic lesson” when they lost to the Donald in the Presidential election. The Mueller Report is but the latest of that karmic reckoning.

There is no pride in being one of those who “got it right” that there was no evidence, not a scintilla of material fact to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and the dastardly Russians.  As the country has been torn asunder by a two year politically tainted investigation  begun with no evidentiary standard and no probable cause, there is little satisfaction to be gained.

That being said, we must acknowledge that all the players who supported this unprecedented farce as an attack on the country’s rule of law.  How could the autocratic digital giants, the intel community (which missed 911), the already discredited MSM and the pathetically trivial Democratic party think they could get away with lie after lie?  Because they counted on the Democratic rank n file and other hypnotized Americans to believe anything they are told – repeat a lie often enough and the masses will own it.

The determination of no new indictments and no collusion is little cause for celebration in that the country should not have had to endure the extended anguish of an insistent, irrational, near-hysterical drumbeat generated by the MSM and Democrats as co-conspirators.   It is fair to say that all participants were consciously aware that they were repeatedly lying to the American public just as it is highly probable that Special Counsel Robert Mueller who was appointed in May, 2017 knew well before the 2018 mid-term elections that allegations of collusion and obstruction were unsubstantiated.

Now that the Report into the Investigation on Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election has been delivered, all can rest assured that the American system of government works, that the checks and balances did their job and that American democracy survived another close call.

As a result of the hyperventilating hubris, the word ‘collusion’ has now become an empowered part of the lexicon.  There is now an implicit warning for any candidate, or indeed any citizen, to be wary with whom they speak, be wary of their associations, to not fraternize with just anyone and to be ultra sensitized to meeting with any potential adversary, even in the legitimate interests of diplomacy.

In addition, without the political will to do so, there will be little initiative for PTB (powers that be) to undo the new generation of intense political repression and censorship initiated by Russiagate that can be traced directly to Clinton’s loss in 2016.  Two weeks after that election, the Washington Post, long believed to be a CIA asset, combined allegations that Russia exploited American online platforms “critical of the US government” with the now discredited creation of ‘fake news’ that 200 American websites were “peddlers of Russian propaganda.”

As Attorney General William Barr quotes from the Mueller Report

“The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors had successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations and publicly disseminated those materials throughout  various intermediaries including Wikileaks.”

This statement is in direct contradiction with Bill Binney, former NSA Technical Director for Analysis and co-founder of NSA’s Signal Intel Center who conducted independent forensic research.  Binney concluded that the data was ‘leaked by a person with physical access to the DNC computer” and that the “DNC data was downloaded to a storage device and transported to Wikileaks, like on a thumb drive or cd rom.”  While neither Mueller, any Congressional committee nor the FBI ever contacted Binney regarding his findings, the DNC refused to turn over their computer to the FBI for forensic testing.   After the full Mueller report is publicly available,  Binney’s feedback promises to be enlightening.

As some Democrats and MSM continue to spin the illusion of a pending obstruction of justice charge,  Barr’s letter relying on the Mueller Report is clear – the “Report identifies no actions that constitute obstructive conduct” and that  ‘evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime,” therefore, there is no proof ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that obstruction occurred.  Legalese 101 says that obstruction cannot be alleged if no crime was committed but when did proof or evidence ever make a difference to the co-conspirators. Review of the Mueller Report itself will provide further details.

It was the unverified Steele dossier that provided the FBI with the basis for its submission to the FISA Court that Russian collusion had occurred and in order to obtain the necessary warrants (four of them) to spy on the Trump campaign; specifically US Naval Academy graduate, the hapless Carter Page.  Prior to its FISA Court submission, the FBI knew that the Dossier was a bogus document.  We know that the HRC campaign and the DNC funded Fusion GPS firm to get the dirt on Trump.  Fusion then brought in Christopher Steele who put together a salacious piece of garbage that the FBI took and ran with.

The dossier was then circulated by Obama CIA Director John Brennan and publicly released by BuzzFeed and CNN in January, 2017.  Former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper provided ‘inconsistent information’ to the House Intelligence Committee that he “flatly denied” any media discussions regarding the dossier and then “subsequently acknowledged discussing the dossier with CNN’s Jake Tapper” and perhaps others.

CNN (Tapper, Carl Bernstein, Evan Perez and Jim Sciutto) went on to win White House Correspondents Association’s 2018 Merriman Smith Award for outstanding reporting with the Judges noting that the “depth of reporting demonstrated in these remarkable and important pieces, and the constant updates as new information continued to be uncovered showed breaking news reporting at its best.” The WHCA gathers annually to “celebrate the First Amendment and the crucial role of journalism in informing and protecting the public.” BuzzFeed, which broke the original story, did not share in the $2500 award.

In reality, the award apparently struck other WHCA members as unusual, considering the entire story took little actual reporting and instead relied on leaks from Brennan and Clapper.

There should be enough shame to go around but there appears to be no evidence of a conscience or the need to pay a karmic debt among any of the perpetrators.

In the aftermath of Mueller, Judicial Watch has filed an FOIA suit to obtain the records of communication between Brennen, Clapper and CNN including all documents related to the dossier.

In a September, 2016 text message from FBI attorney Lisa Page to Peter Strock, she relates the  preparation of talking points to brief  FBI Director Jim Comey on the efforts to bring down Trump.   In that same message, Page adds that  “POTUS wants to know everything we are doing.”

The question arises whether the usual mealy-mouth Republican establishment and a previously compromised FISA Court will step up and better protect the Constitution than they have in the past?   

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

Except during WW II, the neoliberal 90s when Boris Yeltsin was Kremlin leader, and end of the Reagan era, Russia bashing has been intense since its 1917 revolution – notably throughout Vladimir Putin’s tenure, especially since Trump triumphed over media darling Hillary.

US history is pockmarked with hostile actions against its own people and other nations threatening no one. At home, persecuted Black Americans went from chattel to wage slavery, from Jim Crow to its modern-day version, and from freedom to mass incarceration.

The great “Red Scare” and Palmer raids after Russia’s 1917 revolution targeted left wing groups and individuals for their ideological beliefs, not wrongdoing.

Red-baiting launched J. Edgar Hoover’s career as DOJ Bureau of Investigation’s General Intelligence Division head, the FBI’s precursor he led for over 35 years after its establishment.

His infamous COINTELPRO tactics were and remain all about infiltrating, disrupting, sabotaging, and eliminating activist groups for ethnic justice, racial emancipation, as well as economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines.

Anti-war, human and civil rights groups, the American Indian Movement, Black Panther Party, and similar activist groups were targeted for neutralizing.

Clandestine tactics today include Big Brother surveillance, roving and other wiretaps, warrantless searches, delayed notice warrants, so-called “sneak and peak” searches, national security letters, Internet and cell phone tracking, and other flagrant constitutional violations.

Beginning in 1938, House Un-American Activities Committee witch-hunt hearings into alleged disloyalty and subversive activities became headline news.

In the late 1960s, more of the same followed by the renamed House Committee on Internal Security.

Notorious McCarthyism in the 1950s was a demagogic smear campaign against prominent figures – slandering them, ruining careers, even accusing WW II hero General George Marshall of being “soft on communism.”

Notable Hollywood figures were blacklisted. McCarthyism was baseless slander, unscrupulous fear-mongering, and political lynchings.

Modern day Russophobia launched Cold War 2.0. It’s far more threatening to world peace than its earlier version.

Russia under Vladimir Putin is falsely accused of malign activities because of the country’s sovereign independence, opposition to Washington’s imperial agenda, its aim for multi-world polarity, and status as the world’s dominant military power, its super-weapons exceeding the Pentagon’s best, developed at a small fraction of the cost.

Russiagate witch hunt House, Senate and Mueller probes were a colossal hoax, discovering no US election meddling nor improper or illegal Trump/Russia connection – because there was nothing to find.

Yet Russia bashing remains unrelenting, nearly everyone in Washington involved, major media in lockstep with Russophobic hysteria over nothing.

Years earlier, right wing commentator George Will turned truth on its head, calling governance under Putin “a toxic brew of nationalism (sic) directed against neighboring nations (sic)…”

Early during Putin’s tenure as president, the Russophobic London Guardian turned truth on its head, comparing him to Stalin, saying:

“Authoritarianism is growing harsher, society is being militarized…calling on the West to reexamine its (relationship with) the Kremlin,” citing nonexistent “barbaric actions, dismantlement of democracy and suppression of human rights.”

The above characterizations apply to the US, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, and their imperial partners, not Russia.

Early in Trump’s tenure, Politico attacked Russia, turning truth on its head, saying

“Europe’s political stability, social cohesion, economic prosperity and security are more threatened today than at any point since the Cold War (sic) (because) Russia is destabilizing the continent on every front (sic)” – a bald-faced Big Lie.

Virtually all establishment media falsely accused Russia of meddling in the US 2016 presidential election to help Trump defeat Hillary – despite no evidence suggesting it because none exists.

The NYT has been in the vanguard of proliferating the Big Lie, repeating it time and again for emphasis, adding to its resume of shameful misreporting.

Last September, it falsely accused Russia of “the most effective foreign interference in an American election in history” – despite nothing of the kind occurring, not in November 2016, earlier, or thereafter.

Electoral interference is a US specialty at home and abroad, its dirty hands wanting puppets in power worldwide it controls. One-party rule with two extremist right wings runs America – the War Party, waging it on humanity.

According to Time magazine disinformation,

“Putin built a ragtag empire of tyrants and failing states…from major conflict zones such as Venezuela, Libya and Syria to the more obscure corners of Africa,” adding:

“What comes through is a newfound Russian willingness, even an eagerness, to involve itself in wars and cultivate regimes anywhere Moscow sees a chance to assert itself.”

Fact: Russia is the world leader among major powers in seeking diplomatic resolution to ongoing political and hot conflicts – the US the main instigator.

Fact: Russia seeks cooperative relations with other countries. The US wants dominion over them, their resources, and populations.

Fact: The Russian Federation never attacked or threatened another nation – what the US does repeatedly, waging permanent wars of aggression and other hostile actions on humanity.

The evil empire is headquartered in Washington – with branch offices in London, Paris, Berlin, other NATO capitals, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Seoul, Riyadh, Cairo, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, and numerous other cities worldwide.

It’s allied with an array of tinpot despots and fantasy democracies worldwide – notably extremist regimes in NATO countries, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Africa, Asia, Latin and Central America.

Russia gains allies through mutual cooperation. The US pressures, bullies, bribes, and threatens other nations, demanding they submit to its will, resisters targeted by aggression, color revolutions, and old-fashioned coups.

Russia’s influence worldwide is growing, America’s waning. All empires in world history met the same fate, no exceptions.

Arrogance, hubris, and overreach brought them down, what awaits the US unless nuclear war, environmental destruction, or both dooms us all, an ominous possibility.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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This article which reveals the historical background of the Wikileaks affair was first published by Global Research on October 24, 2010

On October 22nd [2010], the whistleblowing web site WikiLeaks released nearly 400,000 classified Iraq war documents, the largest leak of secret information in U.S. history.

Explosive revelations contained in the Iraq War Logs provided further evidence of the Pentagon’s role in the systematic torture of Iraqi citizens by the U.S.-installed post-Saddam regime.

Indeed, multiple files document how U.S. officials failed to investigate thousands of cases of abuse, torture, rape and murder. Even innocent victims who were targets of kidnapping gangs, tortured for ransom by Iraqi police and soldiers operating out of the Interior Ministry, were “investigated” in a perfunctory manner that was little more than a cover-up.

Never mind that the Pentagon was fully cognizant of the nightmare playing out in Iraqi jails and prisons. Never mind the beatings with rifle butts and steel cables, the electrocutions, the flesh sliced with razors, the limbs hacked-off with chainsaws, the acid and chemical burns on battered corpses found along the roads, the eyes gouged out or the bones lacerated by the killers’ tool of choice: the power drill.

Never mind that the death squads stood-up by American forces when the imperial adventure went wildly off the rails, were modeled on counterinsurgency methods pioneered in Vietnam (Operation Phoenix) and in South- and Central American during the 1970s and 1980s (Operation Condor) and that a “Salvador Option” was in play.

Never mind that the former commander of the U.S. Military Advisory Group in El Salvador, Col. James Steele, was the U.S. Embassy’s point-man for setting up the Wolf Brigade or the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s Special Police Commandos, notorious death squads that spread havoc and fear across Iraq’s cities, towns and villages.

The killings and atrocities carried out by American and British clients were not simply random acts of mayhem initiated by sectarian gangs. On the contrary, though sectarianism and inter-ethnic hatred played a role in the slaughter, from a strategic and tactical point of view these were carefully calibrated acts designed to instill terror in a population utterly devastated by the U.S. invasion. As researcher Max Fuller reported five years ago:

In Iraq the war comes in two phases. The first phase is complete: the destruction of the existing state, which did not comply with the interests of British and American capital. The second phase consists of building a new state tied to those interests and smashing every dissenting sector of society. Openly, this involves applying the same sort of economic shock therapy that has done so much damage in swathes of the Third World and Eastern Europe. Covertly, it means intimidating, kidnapping and murdering opposition voices. (“For Iraq, ‘The Salvador Option’ Becomes Reality,” Global Research, June 2, 2005)

Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell denounced the leaks Friday evening, claiming the document dump was a “gift to terrorist organizations” that “put at risk the lives of our troops.”

Playing down the significance the files lend to our understanding of the U.S. occupation, Morrell characterized them as “mundane.” To the degree that they chronicle the nonchalance, indeed casual indifference towards Iraqi life displayed by U.S. forces, Morrell is correct: they are numbingly mundane and therein lies their horror.

The logs paint a grim picture of life after the “liberation” of the oil-rich nation. As with the organization’s publication of some 75,000 files from their Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010, Friday’s release provides stark evidence of U.S. complicity–and worse–in the systematic abuse of prisoners.

According to the War Logs, in 2006 an unnamed U.S. Special Operations Task Force was accused of blinding a prisoner in their custody; we read the following:

ALLEGED DETAINEE ABUSE BY TF ___ IN ___ 2006-02-02 17:50:00

AT 2350C, IN ___, WHILE CONDUCTING OUT-PROCESSING, DETAINEE # ___ REPORTED THAT HE WAS ABUSED DURING HIS CAPTURE. DETAINEE IS MISSING HIS RIGHT EYE, AND HAS SCAR___ ON HIS RIGHT FOREARM. DETAINEE STATES THAT HIS INJURIES ARE A RESULT OF THE ABUSE THAT HE RECEIVED UPON CAPTURE. DIMS INDICATE THAT THE DETAINEE WAS CAPTURED ON ___ IN ___, AND THE CAPTURING UNIT WAS TASK FORCE ___. THE DETAINEES CAPTURE TAG NUMBER IS ___. IN PROCESSING PERSONNEL STATE THAT THE DETAINEE___ CAPTURE PHOTO DEPICTS A BANDAGE OVER HIS RIGHT EYE, AND INJURY TO HIS RIGHT FOREARM. THE DETAINEE HAS COMPLETED THE DETAINEE ABUSE COMPLAINT FORM, AND WE ARE SEEKING A SWORN STATEMENT FROM THE DETAINEE. PER ORDER OF Task force ___, THE DETAINEE ___ TRANSFERRED AS SCHEDULED, AND CONTINUE CID INVESTIGATION UPON ARRIVAL AT ___ GHRAIB.

File after gruesome file reveals that even when confronted by serious evidence of abuse, the outcome was as sickening as it was inevitable: “No further investigation.”

Called “Frago 242” reports for “fragmentary orders,” the military files summarized thousands of events. When alleged abuse was committed by an Iraqi on another Iraqi, “only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ.” Those directives never arrived.

In fact, in a hypermilitarized society such as ours’ where the “chain of command” is valued above basic human decency, never mind the rule of law, orders to be “discrete” always come from the top. Investigative journalist Robert Fisk recounted how during a November 2005 Pentagon press conference:

Peter Pace, the uninspiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is briefing journalists on how soldiers should react to the cruel treatment of prisoners, pointing out proudly that an American soldier’s duty is to intervene if he sees evidence of torture. Then the camera moves to the far more sinister figure of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who suddenly interrupts–almost in a mutter, and to Pace’s consternation–“I don’t think you mean they (American soldiers) have an obligation to physically stop it. It’s to report it.” (“The Shaming of America,” The Independent on Sunday, October 24, 2010)

In essence, Frago 242 were the political means used by the U.S. administration to absolve themselves of command responsibility for the slaughter they had initiated with the March 2003 invasion. “We reported these horrors. What more do you want?”

Eager to pass security management onto their Iraqi puppets and cut their losses, the Pentagon and their political masters in Washington bypassed their obligations as the occupying power to ensure that human rights and the rule of law were respected by the clients whom they had installed to rule over the oil-rich nation. One file from 2006 tells us:

ALLEGED DETAINEE ABUSE BY IA AT THE DIYALA JAIL IN BAQUBAH

2006-05-25 07:30:00

AT 1330D, ___ REPORTS ALLEGED DETAINEE ABUSE IN THE DIYALA PROVINCE, IN BA’___ AT THE DIYALA JAIL, vicinity. ___. 1X DETAINEE CLAIMS THAT HE WAS SEIZED FROM HIS HOUSE BY IA IN THE KHALIS AREA OF THE DIYALA PROVINCE. HE WAS THEN HELD UNDERGROUND IN BUNKERS FOR APPROXIMATELY ___ MONTHS AROUND ___ SUBJECTED TO TORTURE BY MEMBERS OF THE /___ IA. THIS ALLEGED TORTURE INCLUDED, AMONG OTHER THINGS, THE ___ STRESS POSITION, WHEREBY HIS HANDS WERE BOUND/___ AND HE WAS SUSPENDED FROM THE CEILING; THE USE OF BLUNT OBJECTS (.___. PIPES) TO BEAT HIM ON THE BACK AND LEGS; AND THE USE OF ELECTRIC DRILLS TO BORE HOLES IN HIS LEGS. FOLLOW UP CARE HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THE DETAINEE BY US ___. THE DETAINEE IS UNDER US CONTROL AT THIS TIME. ALL PAPERWORK HAS BEEN SENT UP THROUGH THE NECESSARY ___ AND PMO CHANNELS. CLOSED: 260341MAY2006. Significant activity MEETS MNC- ___

Two days later, additional torture victims were found in the Diyala Jail, and U.S. military personnel report:

ALLEGED DETAINEE ABUSE BY IP IVO BA’: ___ DETAINEES INJ, ___ CF INJ/DAMAGE

2006-05-27 11:00:00

AT 1700D, ___ REPORTS ALLEGED DETAINEE ABUSE IN THE DIYALA PROVINCE, IN BA’___ AT THE DIYALA JAIL, vicinity. ___. 7X DETAINEES CLAIMS THEY WERE SEIZED BY IA IN THE KHALIS AREA OF THE DIYALA PROVINCE. THEY WERE DETAINED AROUND – ___ AND SUBJECTED TO TORTURE BY MEMBERS OF THE IA AND IP. THIS ALLEGED TORTURE INCLUDED, AMONG OTHER THINGS, STRESS POSITIONS, BOUND/___ AND SUSPENDED FROM THE CEILING; THE USE OF VARIOUS BLUNT OBJECTS (.___. PIPES AND ANTENNAS) TO BEAT THEM, AND FORCED CONFESSIONS. ALL DETAINEES WERE DETAINED FOR ALLEGED INVOLVEMENT IN AN ATTACK ON A IA Check Point IN KHALIS. FOLLOW UP CARE HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THE DETAINEES BY US ___. THE DETAINEES ARE UNDER US CONTROL AT THIS TIME. ALL PAPERWORK HAS BEEN SENT UP THROUGH THE NECESSARY ___ AND PMO CHANNELS. Serious Incident Report TO FOLLOW. CLOSED: 280442MAY2006. MEETS ___

Case closed.

WikiLeaks release prompted the UN’s chief investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, to demand that the Obama administration “order a full investigation of US forces’ involvement in human rights abuses in Iraq,” The Guardian reported.

Nowak said that if the files demonstrate clear violations of the UN Convention Against Torture then “the Obama administration had an obligation to investigate them.”

A failure to investigate these serious charges “would be a failure of the Obama government to recognise its obligations under international law.” There’s little chance of that happening under our “forward looking” president.

On the contrary, as The Washington Post reported Sunday, that former CIA general counsel Jeffrey H. Smith, a current adviser to America’s top spook Leon Panetta, wants to hang the messenger.

Smith said, “‘without question’ he thought that [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for possessing and sharing without authorization classified military information.”

The Post informed us that Obama’s Justice Department “is assisting the Defense Department in its investigation into the leaks to WikiLeaks. Though Smith said he did not know whether efforts were underway to gain custody [of Assange], he said, ‘My supposition is that the Justice Department and Department of Defense are working very hard to see if they can get jurisdiction over him’.”

As I discussed in late 2009, perhaps the Pentagon is working feverishly to do just that, deploying a Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) “Manhunting team” to run Assange and his organization to ground.

In Manhunting: Counter-Network Organization for Irregular Warfare, retired Lt. Col. George A. Crawford wrote in a 2009 monograph published by Joint Special Operations University, that “Manhunting–the deliberate concentration of national power to find, influence, capture, or when necessary kill an individual to disrupt a human network–has emerged as a key component of operations to counter irregular warfare adversaries in lieu of traditional state-on-state conflict measures.”

And with an administration that asserts the right to kill anyone on the planet, including American citizens deemed “terrorists,” it isn’t a stretch to imagine the Pentagon resorting to a little “wet work” to silence Assange, thereby disrupting “a human network” viewed as deleterious impediment to Washington’s imperial project.

After all, in Crawford’s view, “Why drop a bomb when effects operations or a knife might do?”

Be that as it may, there was already sufficient evidence before Friday’s release that American military personnel and outsourced “private security contractors” (armed mercenaries) had committed war crimes that warranted criminal investigations.

Even after 2004 revelations by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker sparked the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, the files show that the systematic abuse and execution of prisoners, along with other serious war crimes, were standard operating procedure by the United States and their Iraqi “coalition” partners.

When Hersh’s investigation first landed on the doorstep of the Bush White House, we were told that detainee abuse was the work of a “few bad apples” on the “night shift” at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

While enlisted personnel were charged, tried, convicted and imprisoned for their crimes, senior Pentagon officials including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and their top aides were exonerated by the White House and their accomplices in the corporate media.

“The truth is” Robert Fisk writes, “U.S. generals … are furious not because secrecy has been breached, or because blood may be spilt, but because they have been caught out telling the lies we always knew they told.”

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.

“Kagame is an example of an American supported leader whose crimes go unpunished because he is useful to them and because they are party to his crimes.

The Prosecutors of the ICTR have wasted 17 years protecting Kagame from his responsibility for the crimes he and his forces committed in Rwanda in 1994.” – Christopher Black, international criminal lawyer, counsel to complainants to the ICC Prosecutor regarding alleged crimes by Paul Kagame. [1]

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On April 6 1994, the Presidents of Burundi and Rwanda were slain in a rocket attack on their plane. This incident triggered the 100 day killing spree now referred to as the Rwandan genocide. [2]

Twenty five years later, on Sunday April 7th , President Paul Kagame, in the presence of dignitaries from around the world, laid a wreath at the Gisozi genocide memorial site in Kigali at which over a quarter of a million victims of the massacre were buried. [3]

In his speech to the crowd, Kagame vowed his country would never repeat the mistakes of the past that led to the genocide:

“This history will not repeat. That is our firm commitment.” [4]

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, present at the same ceremony, expressed similar sentiments:

“It is our generational duty to never forget what humankind is capable of. It is only by remembering that we can build a brighter future together.”[5]

In light of the violence that has ensued in Africa and around the world since those horrible months a quarter of a century ago, these pledges come across as no more binding and sincere than those taken by Al Pacino’s character Michael Corleone during the infamous Baptism scene from the 1972 movie The Godfather.

Significantly, a body of analysis and eyewitness testimony suggests that the standard account of the Rwandan genocide, painting the Hutu majority as the principal villains and the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) as the saviours who ended the genocide, is a distortion of the truth. While not absolving the Hutu extremists of their crimes, an alternative interpretation holds that the RPF forces are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands themselves, including the two African presidents killed on April 6th. This is apart from the millions the RPF has had a role in killing in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the time since the genocide.

As this year’s Rwandan Week of Mourning comes to an official close, we take a look at some of the facts contradicting the official Rwanda narrative, and why it matters 25 years later.

Our first guest, Phil Taylor, worked as an investigator for the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda. In a 20 minute conversation, Taylor talks about why he believes the UN instituted body failed to prosecute Kagame and the RPF forces he led as credibly accused war criminals.

In our second half hour, Canadian journalist Judi Rever elaborates on the theme of her 2018 book, which encapsulates 20 years of dogged research. In an exclusive 30 minute interview, Rever outlines the crimes of the Tutsi-dominated rebel force, replies to critics like Gerald Kaplan who have challenged her claims, explains the resiliency of the established Rwanda narrative, and talks about the threats to the lives of Kagame critics, herself included, who attempt to expose the truth. She also points to some of the powerful interests abroad whose complicity in these two decade old horrors goes far beyond merely ‘standing idly by.’

Phil Taylor is host of the Taylor Report airing on CIUT 89.5 FM every Monday at 5pm Eastern Time. A long time social activist and journalist, Taylor formerly worked as an investigator for defence lawyers involved in the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda.

Judi Rever is a Montreal based freelance print and broadcast journalist. Her reporting on Rwanda has been featured in seven front-page stories in the Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s leading national newspapers. Her 2018 book In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, published by Random House Canada, was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-Fiction.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 256)

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

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/kagames-mass-atrocities-in-rwanda-and-the-congo/5346739
2. Clement Uwiringiyimana (April 7, 2019), ‘Rwanda honors those killed in genocide 25 years ago’, Reuters; https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rwanda-genocide/rwanda-honors-those-killed-in-genocide-25-years-ago-idUSKCN1RJ04Y
3. ibid
4. https://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/kwibuka25-president-paul-kagames-full-address
5. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-19-2028_en.htm

Tonight both Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange are in jail, both over offences related to the publication of materials specifying US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and both charged with nothing else at all. No matter what bullshit political and MSM liars try to feed you, that is the simple truth. Manning and Assange are true heroes of our time, and are suffering for it.

If a Russian opposition politician were dragged out by armed police, and within three hours had been convicted on a political charge by a patently biased judge with no jury, with a lengthy jail sentence to follow, can you imagine the Western media reaction to that kind of kangaroo court? Yet that is exactly what just happened in London.

District Judge Michael Snow is a disgrace to the bench who deserves to be infamous well beyond his death. He displayed the most plain and open prejudice against Assange in the 15 minutes it took for him to hear the case and declare Assange guilty, in a fashion which makes the dictators’ courts I had witnessed, in Babangida’s Nigeria or Karimov’s Uzbekistan, look fair and reasonable, in comparison to the gross charade of justice conducted by Michael Snow.

One key fact gave away Snow’s enormous prejudice. Julian Assange said nothing during the whole brief proceedings, other than to say “Not guilty” twice, and to ask a one sentence question about why the charges were changed midway through this sham “trial”. Yet Judge Michael Snow condemned Assange as “narcissistic”. There was nothing that happened in Snow’s brief court hearing that could conceivably have given rise to that opinion. It was plainly something he brought with him into the courtroom, and had read or heard in the mainstream media or picked up in his club. It was in short the very definition of prejudice, and “Judge” Michael Snow and his summary judgement is a total disgrace.

We wrapped up the final Wikileaks and legal team meeting at 21.45 tonight and thereafter Kristian Hrafnsson and I had dinner together. The whole team, including Julian, is energised rather than downhearted. At last there is no more hiding for the pretend liberals behind ludicrous Swedish allegations or bail jumping allegations, and the true motive – revenge for the Chelsea Manning revelations – is now completely in the open.

To support the persecution of Assange in these circumstances is to support absolute state censorship of the internet. It is to support the claim that any journalist who receives and publishes official material which indicates US government wrongdoing, can be punished for its publication. Furthermore this US claim involves an astonishing boost to universal jurisdiction. Assange was nowhere near the USA when he published the documents, but nonetheless US courts are willing to claim jurisdiction. This is a threat to press and internet freedom everywhere.

These are scary times. But those may also be the most inspiring of times.

UPDATE

We are reassembling Wikileaks/Julian legal and media team from 10am Friday in Doughty Street Chambers. I and others will be available for further media interviews from then. I can be reached on 07979 691085.

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

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Chelsea and Julian Are in Jail. History Trembles.

By Craig Murray, April 12, 2019

Tonight both Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange are in jail, both over offences related to the publication of materials specifying US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and both charged with nothing else at all.

Video: Assange’s Lawyer Says Wikileaks Founder’s Life in Danger if Extradited to the U.S.

By Defend Democracy Press, April 12, 2019

Assange’s lawyer, Carlos Poveda, told journalists that his client, who has lived in Ecuador’s London embassy for almost seven years, was not given a chance to defend himself before his asylum there was terminated in reprisal for corruption allegations against Ecuador’s president.

British Government Arrests WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange on Behalf of the American Empire

By Dr. Leon Tressell, April 12, 2019

Assange now faces extradition to the U.S. where the Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicted Assange today with a federal  charge of conspiracy with Chelsea Manning to gain access to classified government records i.e. the Iraq and Afghanistan War logs. The DOJ’s press release states that Assange faces a maximum of 5 years in prison if convicted of, “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.”

Julian Assange Should be Lauded and Protected, Not Persecuted and Destroyed

By Mark Taliano, April 12, 2019

Julian Assange is a hero. He defied the globalizing apparatus of fascist repression to expose the war criminals in our midst. Now, the same war criminals and their agencies who commit supreme international war crimes as policy have apprehended him.

The Assange Arrest Is a Warning from History

By John Pilger, April 12, 2019

The shocking arrest of Assange carries a warning for all who, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “sew the seeds of discontent [without which] there would be no advance towards civilisation”. The warning is explicit towards journalists.

Julian Assange: The Age of Injustice

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, April 12, 2019

Washington’s man in Quito said he revoked Assange’s political asylum and Ecuadoran citizenship because Assange engaged in free speech.

USA v. Julian Assange: DOJ Indictment on Phony Charge Revealed

By Stephen Lendman, April 12, 2019

Britain complied, unjustly arresting Assange with intent to hand him over to US authorities – to be detained and prosecuted on one fabricated count, calling for imprisonment for up to five years if convicted.

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In a major confession revealed on Friday April 5th, Kosovo’s Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said his government’s policies serve US interests against Serbia and Russia, and he is only following Washington’s orders.

“The Albanian people in all our lands are part of what America is leading. Throughout the global plan, we are together,” Haradinaj told the Albanian-language Gazeta Blic last Friday.

“I am a soldier of America on the ground. I only carry out the orders,” the premier said.

Haradinaj was a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) terrorist organization during the 1998-1999 conflict, struggling to separate the Serbian province to make it an independent Albanian state.

In June 1999, after a 78-day NATO air war, Serbia allowed for UN peacekeeping forces to enter – which in practice meant NATO took Kosovo and handed it over to the KLA.

“He’s telling the truth,” said Paris-based political analyst Nikola Mirkovic, adding that Haradinaj is openly saying what he has been over the past 20 years since the US and NATO trained, armed and funded the KLA.

“Kosovo is clearly an American protectorate today, and Haradinaj is just telling the truth, he’s just an American soldier,” the analyst told RT.

Mirkovic argued that Kosovo’s independence – declared in February 2008 but recognized only by the US and its allies – was an illusion. In disputes among ethnic Albanians,

“it is always the American ambassador at the end of the day who is receiving the final word and who is deciding what is happening,” he added.

Kosovo is not recognized by most of humanity, including Russia, China and India, as well as Serbia itself, noted Mirkovic. Washington’s policy since 2008, regardless of which party is in power, has pressed Belgrade to recognize Kosovo as an independent state.

“Why NATO bombed Yugoslavia 20 years ago? Because it wanted a position in the Balkans, it wanted a military base like Bondsteel,” Mirkovic explained, referring to the huge US base in southeastern Kosovo.

Haradinaj would have been unaware of the national prayer breakfast in Washington in February, supposedly on account of tariffs. There were even reports that he and another KLA commander – Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaci – were being denied visas to enter the United States and address the issue. However, Haradinaj was able to travel to the US last weekend by posting a photo of Detroit on his Twitter account.

His plans during this US visit seem to include only meetings with members of the Albanian diaspora, however, rather than any meeting with officials of the administration of US President Donald Trump.

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The government refuses to confirm or deny the presence of British special forces in Yemen.

Its missions are exempt from freedom of information and even Parliament’s defence committee.

This wall of secrecy cracked slightly after five SBS members were injured in Yemen, causing an insider to speak out anonymously last month.

The insider’s allegations were then raised in Parliament, just hours after Foreign Office Middle East minister Alistair Burt resigned over Brexit.

At the Court of Appeal — The government will defend its arms sales to Saudi Arabia at a secret court hearing in London tomorrow in a bid to obscure sensitive details about Britain’s covert role in the Yemen war.

The Court of Appeal went into closed session this afternoon with journalists, campaigners and some lawyers forced to leave court room 72 until later today.

Only security-vetted judges and special advocates remained to discuss “a large quantity” of evidence behind locked doors.

The government said the secrecy was required to “protect national security” and avoid divulging highly sensitive aspects of its relationship with Saudi Arabia and the ongoing war in Yemen.

It comes amid incendiary allegations in the press that British special forces are directing Saudi bombing raids in Yemen.

The Mail on Sunday has claimed that members of the Royal Navy’s elite Special Boat Service (SBS) have “forward air controllers” on the ground in Yemen. These are specially trained commandos who guide fighter jet pilots on bombing runs to ensure they hit targets.

Their presence in Yemen could explain the British government’s insistence that Saudi air strikes are not causing civilian casualties.

Sir James Eadie QC, a lawyer who represents the Department for International Trade, has repeatedly cast doubt on reports by Amnesty International, Medecins Sans Frontieres and even a UN panel of experts who say Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemeni schools, mosques and hospitals.

Mr Eadie said in open court yesterday that International Trade Secretary Liam Fox is privy to more information than charities and the UN about the Saudi military’s decision-making process.

He refused to explain how this was possible in public session and promised to reveal more in secret court.

He only hinted that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) “is able to base its analysis on a wide range of information including sensitive MoD-sourced imagery.”

Mr Eadie said this “secures a more comprehensive and immediate picture than that provided by third party commercial imagery” which is used by the UN.

Burt’s shoes were filled at short notice by Mark Field, who went off script and promised to hold an internal investigation – into an issue he could neither confirm nor deny existed.

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Featured image is from Morning Star

On April 11, the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate prevented a terrorist attack in the city of Homs. Local sources said that intelligence agents dismantled a remotely-controlled heavy improvised-explosive device, which was attached to a civilian vehicle near the Akramah al-Makhzomeh Elementary School. The attack perpetrators were reportedly apprehended in a special operation. No group has claimed responsibility for the failed attack. However, the IED’s remote control appears to be identical to those usually used by ISIS terrorists.

On October 1, 2014, a double-tap terrorist attack targeted this school area killing more than 45 civilians, mostly women and children. Since the start of the collapse of ISIS’ self-styled Caliphate two years ago, the terrorist group’s sleeper cells have made several attempts to carry out attacks within the government-held area. However, the Syrian military, security forces and intelligence have foiled most of them.

On April 10, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) uncovered several weapon caches in the towns of al-Dumayr and Arbin around the capital of Damascus. Yugoslav-made M79 Osa anti-tank weapons supplied to the Free Syrian Army by the US-led bloc in the early years of the war were among seized equipment.

A fresh round of reports speculating that the SAA is training for a possible military operation in the Idlib de-escalation zone has appeared online. According to them, SAA units are currently training on the usage of advanced anti-tank missiles, anti-drone systems, surveillance systems and engineering equipment supplied by Russia with this purpose. However, this training is likely just a part of the ongoing train in advice mission, which Russia kicked off to reshape and strengthen the SAA in 2015.

Units of the Russian Military Police reportedly withdrew from the town of Tell Rifaat, which is jointly controlled by the SAA and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Aleppo. At the same time, reports appeared that the Turkish Army and pro-Turkish militants expanded their presence in the nearby area. Some local sources already claimed that the SAA and Russian forces may allow Turkey to crack down on the YPG in the area if the Kurdish group undertakes hostile actions against the SAA in this region or in some other areas across northern Syria.

A humanitarian crisis continues to develop in refugee camps run by US-backed forces in eastern Syria. The US-backed administration even reached an agreement with the Iraqi government that will allow more than 31,000 Iraqi citizen, mostly women and children, to return to their country. While US-backed forces claim that this number does not include suspected ISIS fighters, there are little doubts that it includes ISIS-linked persons. Despite this, this development should east the humanitarian crisis in the refugee camps at least partly.

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The Great RussiaGate Deception all began with John Brennan. It was Brennan who reported “contacts… between Russian officials and persons in the Trump campaign”, just as it was Brennan who first referred the case to former FBI Director James Comey. It was also Brennan who “hand-picked” the analysts who stitched together the dodgy Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which said that “Putin and the Russian government aspired to help…Trump’s election chances.”) And it was Brennan who persuaded Harry Reid to petition Comey to open an investigation. At every turn, Brennan was there. He got the ball rolling, he pulled all the right strings, he whipped up a mood of public hysteria, and he excoriated the president at every opportunity. For those who want to know where Russiagate began, look no further than John Brennan.

Here’s a bit of what Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee during his testimony in 2017:

“We were uncovering information and intelligence about interactions and contacts between U.S. persons and the Russians. And as we came upon that, we would share it with the bureau.”

Brennan’s statement clarifies his role in the operation, he was providing the raw intelligence to Comey and Comey was reluctantly following up with surveillance, wiretaps, leaks to the media, and the placing of confidential informants in the Trump campaign. It was a tag-team combo, but Brennan was the primary instigator, there’s no doubt about that.

And let’s not forget that Comey didn’t really want to participate in Brennan’s hairbrain scheme to smear candidate Trump. At first he balked, which is why Brennan leaned on Senate Majority leader Harry Reid to twist Comey’s arm. Here’s a little background from Tom Fitton at artvoice.com:

“Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid reportedly believed then-Obama CIA Director Brennan was feeding him information about alleged links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in order to make public accusations:

According to ‘Russian Roulette,’ by Yahoo! News chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff and David Corn… Brennan contacted Reid on Aug. 25, 2016, to brief him on the state of Russia’s interference in the presidential campaign. Brennan briefed other members of the so-called Gang of Eight, but Reid is the only who took direct action.

Two days after the briefing, Reid wrote a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey asserting that ‘evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to mount.’ Reid called on Comey to investigate the links ‘thoroughly and in a timely fashion.’

Reid saw Brennan’s outreach as ‘a sign of urgency,’ Isikoff and Corn wrote in the book. ‘Reid also had the impression that Brennan had an ulterior motive. He concluded the CIA chief believed the public needed to know about the Russian operation, including the information about the possible links to the Trump campaign.’

According to the book, Brennan told Reid that the intelligence community had determined that the Russian government was behind the hack and leak of Democratic emails and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind it. Brennan also told Reid that there was evidence that Russian operatives were attempting to tamper with election results. Indeed, on August 27, 2016, Reid wrote a letter to Comey accusing President Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russian government.” (“The John Brennan-Harry Reid Collusion to ‘Get Trump’”, artvoice.com)

So Brennan fed Reid a load of malarkey and the credulous senator swallowed it hook, line and sinker. It may sound incredible now, given the results of the Mueller report, but that’s what happened. Here’s more of Brennan’s testimony to Congress:

“I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals and it raised questions in my mind, again, whether or not the Russians were able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”

Okay, so Brennan says he gathered “information and intelligence that revealed contacts between Russian officials and persons in the Trump campaign.”

What information? What intelligence? What officials? Brennan has never identified anyone and never produced a lick of evidence to back up any of his claims, and yet, his testimony was taken as gospel truth. Why? Why would anyone in their right mind trust anything Brennan has to say? Hasn’t Brennan lied to Congress in the past? Didn’t the CIA’s inspector general find that Brennan’s agents “improperly” spied on US Senate staffers”? Hasn’t Brennan defended the use of torture and promoted Obama’s homicidal drone program? Hasn’t Brennan revealed his personal animus and vitriolic hatred for Donald Trump many, many times before. So why would anyone trust what he has to say? It makes no sense. The man has a major credibility problem which is a polite way of saying he’s a serial liar. Here’s more from Brennan:

“I don’t know whether or not such collusion — and that’s your term, such collusion existed. I don’t know. But I know that there was a sufficient basis of information and intelligence that required further investigation by the bureau to determine whether or not U.S. persons were actively conspiring, colluding with Russian officials.”

Got that? So Brennan had zero hard evidence of anything, but he thought that a few scratchy phone intercepts were sufficient for the FBI to hector, harass and spy on the GOP nominee for president of the United States. Can you see how ridiculous this is? No one elected John Brennan to anything, and yet, he arbitrarily decided that he had the right to sex up the intelligence so Comey and Clapper would do his bidding and try to bring down Trump. This is the type of thing you’d expect to see in a police state not America.

We are told by the Guardian that: “GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016. One source called the British eavesdropping agency the “principal whistleblower”. (Guardian)

This might be true, but I seriously doubt it. I suspect the Guardian is just covering for Brennan because they know that his ridiculous claims of “contacts between Russian officials and persons in the Trump campaign” are complete, utter nonsense. There were no contacts between Russian officials and the Trump campaign because–as the Mueller report states– there was no coordination, no cooperation, and no collusion. In other words, Brennan just made it up to pursue his own personal vendetta against Trump which is what you’d expect from the most partisan CIA chief in history. Here’s more from the same article:

“The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump’s team and Moscow ahead of the US election. This was in part due to US law that prohibits US agencies from examining the private communications of American citizens without warrants. “They are trained not to do this,” the source stressed.” (Guardian)

“The extensive nature of contacts between Trump’s team and Moscow”???

There were no extensive contacts nor were there any illegal, unethical or improper contacts. If there were, AG Barr would have highlighted them in the 4-page Mueller report summary released last weekend. But he didn’t, because they don’t exist. The Democrats are now clinging to the feint hope that their flimsy obstruction case can be pulled from the ash-heap, but that’s not going to happen. It’s impossible to obstruct a case when you already know the case is is a fraud. Trump did not break the law. It’s that simple.

As for Brennan, well, he was providing classified briefings to ranking members of Congress (expressing his belief that Moscow was helping Trump win the election) as early as August 2016. The date seems particularly relevant given that Trump did not become the GOP’s official presidential nominee until July 21, 2016. Was that just a coincidence or did it suddenly dawn on Brennan that Trump must be a Kremlin mole shortly after he clinched the top spot on the ticket? Funny how that works, isn’t it? Trump nabs the nomination and all of a sudden Brennan shifts into high gear digging up all kinds of fictional intercepts from Estonia and god-knows where else. Is this the looniest story you’ve ever heard or what?

There’s really no part of Brennan’s implausible storyline that holds water. Even his flagship Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which was supposed to provide iron-clad proof of Trump’s culpability, fizzled out like a Roman candle in a summer downpour.

Brennan of course hit all the cable news stations shortly after the ICA was released touting its wishy-washy findings as rock-solid proof of wrongdoing but, strangely enough, the report undermined its own credibility by providing a sweeping disclaimer that cautions readers against drawing any rash conclusions from the analysts observations. Here’s the money-quote from the report:

“Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.”

Nice, eh? So, while Brennan continues to insist that the Kremlin meddled in our elections, his own analysts suggest that any such judgements should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Nothing is certain, information is “incomplete or fragmentary”, and the entire report is based on what-amounts-to ‘educated guesswork.’ It’s a wonder why anyone took the report seriously to begin with.

There’s no way to get around the fact that Brennan was glitzing up the intelligence to persuade Comey into hounding Trump. That’s the bottom line here. The unelected agents in the bureaucracy decided to use their considerable power to try to sabotage the election, prevent the normalisation of relations with Russia, and pave the way for impeachment proceedings. Only they got caught with their pants down, so someone’s going to have to take the fall.

Who is responsible for placing spies in the Trump campaign? That’s what we want to know. Who is Stefan Halper and who did he work for? Why did he cozy up to Trump campaign advisers Carter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos? Was it all part of an ‘entrapment’ scheme? How many other spies were assigned to the Trump campaign? What was their purpose and who did they work for? Who signed off on the FISA applications that were improperly obtained? How was the Steele dossier used to build the case against Trump? Who authorized or participated in the leaks to the media? Who approved the wiretapping of Trump advisors? Was Trump wiretapped too? What was Obama’s role in all of this? How much did he know and how much did he authorize? How has Brennan escaped blame for the political firestorm he started? (According to Mother Jones, it was not the FBI that initiated the “Trump-Russia connection”.. but ..”Former CIA Director John Brennan … was the one who got the ball rolling.”)

The only way the American people are going to find out what really happened is by interrogating the people who know. Putting John Brennan in the docket would be a good place to start.

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As it had threatened during last fall’s election campaign, the newly-elected Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government has introduced legislation to prohibit a wide range of persons “in authority,” including teachers, from wearing symbols of their religious beliefs while exercising their functions. Those affected include judges, prosecutors, police, and jail guards, but also teachers, childcare providers, public transit operators, health and social service workers, municipal and administrative tribunal and board officials, etc.

Bill 21, “An Act respecting the laicity of the State,” also provides that those delivering or receiving government services may lose their jobs or be denied services if they refuse to uncover their face for identity or “security” reasons. Similar provisions, adopted under the previous Liberal government but suspended pending a legal appeal, will now be implemented pursuant to the CAQ’s decision to shield its legislation from civil liberties challenges using the constitutional “notwithstanding” clause.

Prime targets of the legislation are obviously Muslim women wearing headscarves or other clothing they associate with their religious beliefs. A “grandfather” clause exempting employees in their current jobs would effectively bar them from promotions or other public employment.

Scapegoating Minorities

The government bill – with its racist connotations – comes in the wake of the murder of six worshippers in a Quebec City mosque in January 2017 and the recent massacre of 50 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand by right-wing racists, and is consistent with the pattern of reactionary scapegoating of minorities increasingly practiced by many government leaders in the major capitalist countries as they heighten austerity and restrict immigration.

Bill 21 is supported by the Parti Québécois (PQ), which had earlier, when in government, sponsored a widely-criticized “charter of values” with similar provisions that the PQ had hoped would win the support of Québécois apprehensive at the changing pluricultural face of Quebec society and fend off pressures to integrate ethnic minorities through more effective French language training and affirmative action in employment.

The bill is opposed by the opposition Liberals and by Québec solidaire (QS), now the second party of opposition in the National Assembly following the defection of a PQ member.

Québec solidaire has a mixed history on these issues. It is now almost 10 years since the party adopted its position on laicity (or, as it is more commonly known in English, secularism). It made a clear distinction between the need for state neutrality toward religious belief or lack of belief, and the freedom of individuals “to express their own convictions in a context that favours exchange and dialogue.” It would allow “state agents” (employees or officials) to wear religious insignia such as a crucifix or hijab.

However, the program would also remove this right from those whose clothing was deemed to promote religion or interfere with their duties or safety standards. And in subsequent years QS leaders, drawing on these hypothetical caveats in the party’s program, began adapting to other parties’ attempts to impose dress codes not only on state employees but on citizens from minority ethnic communities. In a previous article, I cited several such instances involving QS members of the National Assembly. The relevant account is excerpted in an appendix following this article.

These positions were endorsed in 2010 by the QS National Coordination Committee (CCN), the party’s top executive body. They drew support from a Quebec government inquiry, chaired by Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, that in 2008 had proposed a ban on the wearing of religious insignia by a limited number of state agents – prosecutors, cops, prison guards and the speaker and deputy speaker of the National Assembly – while exempting teachers and “other state agents.”¹

(Taylor has since renounced his signature on this report, declaring after the Quebec City mosque attack that legislation along such lines had provoked an increase in hate speech and assaults especially against Muslim women.²)

The party’s adaptations to state intolerance reflected as well a tendency of the same QS leaders to seek common ground with the Parti Québécois, also expressed in several attempts over the years to get the QS membership to agree to electoral alliances with the PQ – all of them rejected by party congresses.³

The CAQ bill has provoked a growing wave of public opposition from civil liberties groups, school boards, and some unions. Meanwhile, many Québec solidaire members had expressed unease with statements by newly elected QS members of the National Assembly indicating support for a “compromise” that would adopt the Bouchard-Taylor report’s position. The party opened a discussion on the issue, which was placed on the agenda of a National Council (NC) meeting held March 29-31.

QS Debates Issues

Three positions emerged from this debate. A relatively small “laicity collective” called for a complete ban on religious signs by public employees at all levels. Because this proposal conflicted with the party’s program, it was ineligible for debate at the CN meeting, which was confined to “interpreting” the program and had no authority to pre-empt a position adopted in a duly constituted membership congress.

A second position – endorsed by several internal QS commissions and ad hoc collectives – rejected the MNAs’ compromise and supported a position of “open laicity” that generally rejected any prohibition on display of religious beliefs by public employees.

The party executive then moved to put two options before the NC members, both of which began with the same “whereas” clause: “that in all cases restrictions on the wearing of religious signs are possible when these contravene one of the four criteria set out in article 7.5.2 of the Québec solidaire program (proselytism, duty of discretion, exercise of the occupation or safety standard).” Option A would ban such signs for persons in authority exercising “a coercive power,” as supported by the MNAs, while Option B stated that “Whereas the discretionary duty applies to the actions and decisions of persons and not to their appearance, no particular rule concerning religious signs should apply to certain professions instead of others, including those that exercise a coercive power.”

The National Council meeting voted overwhelmingly in favour of Option B.

However, this was followed by a second vote, also proposed by the party executive, which asked NC members to choose between two options: one that would bar those dispensing or receiving government services from wearing clothing that conformed to any of the four exceptions allowed by the party program; and another that would allow such services to persons wearing clothing that covers the face, “except for considerations of identification or safety.” The latter option was adopted. This position, which in practice would affect the tiny minority of Muslim women who wear a niqab or burqa, moves QS uncomfortably close to the discriminatory positions of the CAQ, Liberals and PQ on this aspect.

So in the end the party program on “open laicity” as it is often called, was reaffirmed, albeit with its explicit limitations, while the MNAs’ attempts to find some compromise with opposing positions were largely rebuffed. However, it remains for a party congress to amend the QS program to remove the caveats that have served as a pretext for the slippages of principle that have characterized the party’s public positions over the past decade.

In other decisions, the 330 NC members voted to continue making the party’s program on climate change its main campaign for the coming year. That program, which presents many progressive concepts but within the framework of a general “green capitalism” approach, should also be the subject of critical analysis along with the position on laicity as the party prepares for its next convention, to be held toward year-end, and where it plans to complete and review its program as a whole.

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Appendix

Excerpted from “Québec Solidaire Prepares to Confront a New Government of Austerity and Social and Ethnic Polarization,” October 23, 2018.

Quebec’s new premier, François Legault, threatens to implement as a priority the CAQ’s plans to prohibit the wearing of “religious signs” among state-employed persons in positions of “coercion” (cops, prosecutors, judges and jail guards) or “authority” (including elementary and secondary school teachers, and perhaps others).

Québec solidaire has waffled on this issue for many years. The party claims to adhere to the principle of separation of church and state. In 2009, the resolution adopted at the party’s first convention on program stated that the party distinguishes between the need for state neutrality toward religious belief or lack of belief, and the freedom of individuals “to express their own convictions in a context that favours exchange and dialogue.” As I reported at the time:

“Delegates voted in favour of allowing ‘state agents’ (employees and officials) to wear religious insignia (a crucifix, hijab, whatever), but added some caveats that leave much to subjective interpretation and enforcement by employers: ‘provided they are not used as instruments of proselytism’ and do not interfere with their droit de réserve (duty of discretion), or ‘impede the performance of the duties or contravene safety standards.’ Delegates rejected other resolutions that would impose no such restrictions or, alternatively, would impose secular dress codes on civil servants, and they rejected as well a proposal to refer the whole issue for further decision at a later convention.”

While these caveats were problematic, QS leaders in subsequent years went further and began adapting to other parties’ attempts to impose dress codes not only on state employees but on citizens from minority ethnic communities.

In 2011, the sole QS member of the National Assembly, Amir Khadir, voted with the other parties for a PQ motion to ban Sikhs from entering the legislature because their ceremonial kirpans were to be deemed “weapons.” Ironically, the motion was prompted by an incident a month earlier when four members of the World Sikh Organization were turned back by security guards when they came to testify to a parliamentary committee in favour of the right of Muslim women to wear face coverings when receiving government services – which a Liberal government bill then under debate would have denied.

In 2013, when the National Assembly was again debating the PQ government’s now-infamous Charter of Values, QS leader Françoise David tabled a bill that if adopted would have enacted a “charter of secularism” that banned “state agents” from wearing signs indicative of personal religious belief. David described this as an “historic compromise.”

Although in 2017 the three QS MNAs voted against the Liberal government’s Bill 62 prohibiting citizens from wearing face coverings when receiving or dispensing public services, they called instead for adoption of a “genuine” charter of secularism. QS leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said their position was a “compromise”that takes a harder line than the Liberals in that it would bar people who wear overt religious symbols such as turbans and hijabs from working as judges, jail guards and cops.

These positions, which clearly violate the QS program adopted by the membership, have prompted a number of protests from defenders of civil liberties, including a very strong “Open Letter” addressed to the party by a number of QS members including prominent human rights lawyers.

Unfortunately, during their swearing-in on October 17, the new QS MNAs told reporters that they intend to support the “compromise” that would ban religious signs for persons in authority. But at least one – Catherine Dorion, representing Québec-Taschereau – said later she was not really sure what her position would be.

These issues should be on the agenda of the QS National Committee meeting, now scheduled to take place December 7-9. The party’s reaction to Legault’s forthcoming legislation will be an early test of the adherence to basic democratic principles of its new parliamentary deputation. 

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Richard Fidler is a member of Solidarity Ottawa and a member of Québec solidaire. He blogs at Life on the Left.

1. The report is no longer available online. However, here is a summary of its key recommendations: “Fact file: 10 Bouchard-Taylor report recommendations.”
2. Quoted by André Frappier, “La laïcité au Québec, un débat de société en évolution.”
3. See, for example, “Quebec Solidaire Congress: United Front Against Austerity and For Independence.”

Featured image is from The Bullet

Leaving aside Britain’s past, most particularly that of empire, the country is not just continually moving towards authoritarianism it is beginning to demonstrate all the early signs of a rogue state. These are strong words but the actual definition of a rogue state is –  “a nation or state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations.” Examples such as the illegal invasion of Iraq, Syria and latterly Libya are very clear. Irrespective of the technicalities, they all broke the rules of International laws or norms. But other examples demonstrate how lawless Britain as a state really is.

Chagos

Here, an entire population were forcibly removed from their island homeland at British gunpoint to make way for a US Air Force nuclear base, the people were dumped destitute over a thousand miles away, their domestic animals gassed by the British army, their homes fired and then demolished. To achieve this, Britain maliciously threatened the Mauritian government into ceding the Chagos Islands as a condition of its Independence.

Recently, the International Court of Justice found that the British occupation of the Chagos Islands was unlawful by a majority of 13 to 1. Britain rejected this ruling.

Ex British ambassador Craig Murray wrote –

“this represents a serious escalation in the UK’s rejection of multilateralism and international law and a move towards joining the US model of exceptionalism, standing outside the rule of international law. As such, it is arguably the most significant foreign policy development for generations. In the Iraq war, while Britain launched war without UN Security Council authority, it did so on a tenuous argument that it had Security Council authority from earlier resolutions. The UK was therefore not outright rejecting the international system. On Chagos it is now simply denying the authority of the International Court of Justice; this is utterly unprecedented.”

Weapons and war crimes

Britain’s arms and munitions sales are now regularly in the news. Even The Lords international relations committee said that British weapons were “highly likely to be the cause of significant civilian casualties” in various countries where illegal wars, acts of genocide and war crimes are being committed. A quick online search lists numerous examples.

Israel

Then there is Britain’s relationship with Israel, which is taking a battering due to internal politics and finger-pointing over claims of racism. Fundamentally though, the issue is about war crimes being committed against the Palestinian people. British arms sales to Israel is at best questionable, especially the news that British made sniper rifles were used to kill and injure thousands of Palestinians recently. But Britain’s support in this genocidal war again goes against all international norms where the conflict is described by Amnesty International as an “abhorrent violation of international laws.” It added that – “This is another horrific example of the Israeli military using excessive force and live ammunition in a totally deplorable way. This is a violation of international standards, in some instances committing what appear to be wilful killings constituting war crimes.”

In addition, UK policy is allowing trade with ‘Israeli’ goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories. The British government has stated that it does not even keep a record of imports into the UK from these illegal Israeli settlements. Acquiescing in this illegal trade by an occupying power is a violation of international law. The December 2016 UN Security Council Resolution, to which the UK agreed:

‘reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law”

Libya

Mark Curtis, a British foreign policy expert and historian writes about Britain’s illegal attack of a soverign state – Libya: “British bombing in Libya, which began in March 2011, was a violation of UN Resolution 1973, which authorised member states to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and to use ‘all necessary measures’ to prevent attacks on civilians but did not authorise the use of ground troops or regime change promoted by the Cameron government. That these policies were illegal is confirmed by Cameron himself, who told Parliament on 21 March 2011 that the UN resolution ‘explicitly does not provide legal authority for action to bring about Gaddafi’s removal from power by military means.” Today, Libya is a failed state and overrun by militant factions.

Extrajudicial assassinations and even a kill list

Reprieve’s report entitled Britain’s Kill List accused the Conservative government of extreme deception of parliament. Officially, Britain has never had a so-called ‘kill list’ but David Cameron had to admit to an extrajudicial assassinations programme in the Middle East, which we at TruePublica reported. All such killings break the most fundamental of international laws and norms as detailed HERE.

The Reprieve introductory paragraph reads –

“On September 7th, 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron came to Parliament and announced a “new departure” for Britain, a policy of killing individuals the Security Services and the military do not like, people placed on a list of individuals who the UK (acting along with the US and others) have identified and systematically plan to kill. The mere admission that there is a Kill List certainly should, indeed, have been a “departure” for a country that prides itself on decency. Unfortunately, it was not a “new departure” at all, as we had been doing it secretly for more than a decade.”

Statelessness

Britain has once again broken international norms. The goals of UNHCR’s stateless campaign, a Global Action Plan to End Statelessness 2014 – 2024 introduced a guiding framework comprised of 10 Actions to be undertaken by states. In the case of high-profile ‘ISIS Bride’ runaway from Bethnal Green to Baghuz, Shamima Begum, the UK disregarded Actions 4 and 9:

Action 4: Prevent denial, loss or deprivation of nationality on discriminatory grounds.

Action 9: Accede to the UN Statelessness Conventions.

But Britain’s has its own laws. Section 40(2) of the 1981 British Nationality Act states the Home Secretary won’t make any individual rendered stateless as a result. Under this, the UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s decision to revoke Begum’s citizenship breaks UK law and international norms.

Political prisoner

Then, there is the persecution of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, which is now seven years old. Ecuador has protected Assange for the past half decade from being turned over to Washington until his arrest by British police yesterday. By definition, Assange is the only political prisoner in western Europe.  A United Nations legal panel ruled that Assange should be allowed to walk free and be compensated for his “deprivation of liberty” and that his detention was illegal.

Assange has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize every year since 2010. His really big crime was releasing film of an American helicopter gunship killing civilians and journalists in Iraq. Britain is more than just complicit of it attack of fundamental and important press freedoms in arresting him.

Assange’s lawyer criticised the British government for being poised to arrest and extradite Assange to the United States. “That a government would cooperate with another state to extradite a publisher for publishing truthful information outside its territory sets a dangerous precedent here in the UK and elsewhere,” she said. “No one can deny that risk. That is why he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy.”

Surveillance

The UK government’s record on bulk data handling for intelligence purposes saw the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling that state surveillance practices such as those practised in Britain violated human rights law. United National Special Rapporteur on Privacy Joe Cannataci said Britain was setting a bad example to the world and that Britain’s surveillance techniques on its own citizens was – “worse than Orwell’s 1984.” The highest courts in Britain have ruled against the government on mass surveillance.

In 2014, British spies were (illegally) granted the authority to secretly eavesdrop on legally privileged attorney-client communications, according to documents. The documents were made public as a result of a legal case brought against the British government by Libyan families who allege that they were subjected to extraordinary rendition and torture, where Britain was proven to be in violation of international laws, in a joint British-American operation that took place in 2004.

A lawyer, in this case, said – “It could mean, amazingly, that the government uses the information they have got from snooping on you, against you, in a case you have brought. This clearly violates an age-old principle of English law set down in the 16th century – that the correspondence between a person and their lawyer is confidential.”

In addition, just one of the many operations carried out by the British state was called Optic Nerve. It illegally went about capturing images from webcams of millions of completely innocent citizens accused of nothing. Between 3% and 11% of the images captured by the webcams were sexually explicit in nature and deemed “undesirable nudity.” The public has not been reassured that these files still exist or not that were taken to build an illegal facial recognition system the government had not declared.

Surveillance operations such as – Muscular, Socialist, Gemalto, Three Smurfs, XKeyScore, Upstream and Tempora are all examples of extreme surveillance systems being used in Britain that would be completely unknown if it had not been for Edward Snowden – another political prisoner. All such operations would be deemed illegal in court and of breaking international laws or norms in normal democratic countries.

Health and Safety

In 2015, the Government pushed through a law that exempted a large number of self-employed people from the protection of the Health and Safety at Work Act. The Government managed to get away with reducing the level of protection because the self-employed are not covered by the European “Framework Directive”, which is the regulation that sets minimum standards that countries have to comply with.

At the time the TUC pointed out to the Government that there were other international laws that the UK had signed up to in many other non European countries that did cover the self-employed including those of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Council of Europe.

Disability

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities examined the British government’s progress in fulfilling its commitments to the UN convention on disabled people’s rights, to which the UK has been a signatory since 2007.

Its report concludes that the UK has not done enough to ensure the convention, which enshrines the rights of disabled people to live independently, to work and to enjoy social protection without discrimination – is reflected in UK law and policy.

Although it praises some initiatives by the Scottish and Welsh governments to promote inclusion, it is scathing of the UK government’s inconsistent and patchy approach to protecting disability rights and its failure to audit the impact of its austerity policies on disabled people.

Trust

Breaking international laws and norms has a long-term effect, mainly that of detriment to national security, long-term interests and trust. There is an assumption, of course, that international law cannot be enforced but in today’s world, international sanctions can be as damaging as using force. Those sanctions could be economic or diplomatic in nature. And if Britain wants to be an international player, it very strongly needs to appreciate and adhere to international laws and norms.

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Featured image is from TP

According to a report by Reuters, on Thursday, Julian Assange’s lawyer said that the life of the Wikileaks founder would be in danger if he is extradited to the United States following his arrest in London. Assange’s lawyer, Carlos Poveda, told journalists that his client, who has lived in Ecuador’s London embassy for almost seven years, was not given a chance to defend himself before his asylum there was terminated in reprisal for corruption allegations against Ecuador’s president. While being forcibly removed by authorities from the embassy, Assange could be heard shouting, “You can resist. You must resist.”

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Following Assange’s Thursday  arrest by UK police in Ecuador’s London embassy after his asylum status was illegally rescinded by President Lenin Moreno, acting in cahoots with the US and Britain, the DOJ confirmed what’s widely known.

Its spokeswoman Nicole Oxman said

“I can confirm that Julian Assange was arrested in relation to a provisional extradition request from the United States of America.”

Britain complied, unjustly arresting Assange with intent to hand him over to US authorities – to be detained and prosecuted on one fabricated count, calling for imprisonment for up to five years if convicted.

Once in US custody, he could be indicted on more serious charges, similar to ones against Chelsea Manning. Unjustly prosecuted and convicted, Obama commuted her politicized 35-year sentence at the 11th hour before leaving office.

The fabricated charge against Assange is for “Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusion,” according to an unsealed indictment, dated March 6, 2018, stating the following Big Lies, not a shred of credible evidence supporting them:

Assange “publicly solicited submissions of classified, censored, and other restricted information (sic).”

He “was not authorized to receive classified information (sic) of the United States.”

Fact: Assange is an investigative journalist/whistleblower, publishing material supplied by sources believed to be credible, unidentified for their protection.

WikiLeaks is not an intelligence operation. Nor it it connected to Russia or any other country. Claims otherwise are fabricated.

Assange earlier explained that WikiLeaks has the right “to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the US Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true,” he explained.

Everyone in the US has the same right, what the First Amendment is all about, affirming speech and press freedoms – the most fundamental of all democratic rights bipartisan hardliners in Washington want compromised and eliminated.

Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers exposing US wrongdoing than all his predecessors combined. Trump likely aims to match or exceed him.

Whistleblowers revealing government wrongdoing deserve high praise, not police state prosecution. Manning revealed important information everyone has a right to know, including:

• the collateral murder video, exposing the killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians by a US Apache helicopter crew;
• the Afghan War Diary, revealing uninvestigated civilian casualties and private military contractor abuses;
• the Iraq War Logs, revealing civilian casualties and uninvestigated reports of torture; along with
• US diplomatic cables, explaining corporate interests and espionage in international diplomacy.

For heroism above and beyond the call of duty, she received numerous honors and awards, including three Nobel Peace Prize nominations.

Subjected to appalling affronts to her dignity and fundamental rights, she was tortured and imprisoned for nearly seven years for political reasons, her First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendment rights violated.

She’s again been detained since March 8 for refusing to give grand jury testimony, her constitutional right, unwilling to respond to unjust questioning, refusing to say anything detrimental to Assange’s fundamental rights and her own.

She, Assange, and countless others are victims of US judicial unfairness, denied their fundamental habeas, due process, and equal protection under law rights.

The US indictment against Assange includes other fabricated claims – nothing backed by credible evidence, nothing suggesting wrongdoing.

Prosecuting him, Manning and other whistleblowers is all about wanting US crimes of war, against humanity, and other wrongdoing suppressed – along with intimidating others with damning information to remain silent.

Assange’s indictment lied saying he “did knowingly and intentionally combine, conspire, confederate and agree with other co-conspirators known and unknown to the grand jury to commit an offense against the United States.”

He published information about US government wrongdoing everyone everywhere has a right to know – his action entirely lawful, warranting high praise, not prosecution.

No Assange/Manning “conspiracy” occurred, nothing unrelated to what journalism the way it’s supposed to be is all about – truth-telling on vital issues the highest journalistic obligation and distinction.

In Westminster magistrates court on Thursday, Assange pled “not guilty” to charges against him. He was pronounced guilty of breaching bail conditions, sentenced to a maximum 12 months in prison after failing to testify before the court.

According to the judge, the US must present documentation for extradition of Assange by June 12. Outside the magistrates court, his lawyer Jennifer Robinson said his arrest sets a “dangerous precedent  for all journalist and media organizations in Europe and around the world,” adding:

“This precedent means that any journalist can be extradited for prosecution in the United States for having published truthful information about the United States.”

“Since 2010, we’ve warned that Julian Assange would face prosecution and extradition to the United States for his publishing activities on WikiLeaks. Unfortunately today we’ve been proven right.”

According to Robinson and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, his defense team intends to contest the Trump regime’s extradition order in an international human rights court – likely referring to the European Court of Human Rights or European Court of Justice, the highest EU court.

If Assange is extradited to the US, he’ll be harshly mistreated and imprisoned, perhaps never again to be free, maybe eliminated behind bars by torture or other abusive treatment.

That’s what police state injustice is all about, how the US, UK, and other fantasy democracies operate – by their own rules exclusively, breaching fundamental international laws repeatedly.

Note: Video images of Assange when arrested and at magistrates court showed him looking frail, haggard, and likely in poor health – the ill effects of being a virtual prisoner inside the Ecuadorian embassy since August 2012.

RT UK said he was forcibly carried out of the embassy, reportedly shouting “RESIST.”

“The “UK has no civility,” and “the UK must resist” before being whisked into a police van and taken away.

Following a three-day October 2017 medical assessment by Drs. Sondra Crosby, Brock Chisholm and Sean Love, they wrote the following in a London Guardian article, saying:

“(O)ur assessment reveals that he has had no access to sunlight, appropriate ventilation or outside space for over five and a half years. This has taken a considerable physical as well as psychological toll.”

Given his frailty and poor health, his life will be seriously jeopardized if imprisoned longterm – what he surely faces if handed over to US authorities.

A Final Comment

Former UK ambassador, historian, human rights activist Craig Murray slammed the police state arrest of Julian Assange on Thursday, saying:

“District Judge Michael Snow is a disgrace to the bench who deserves to be infamous well beyond his death.”

“He displayed the most plain and open prejudice against Assange in the 15 minutes it took for him to hear the case and declare Assange guilty, in a fashion which makes the dictators’ courts I had witnessed, in Babangida’s Nigeria or Karimov’s Uzbekistan…a gross charade of” injustice.

“The whole team, including Julian, is energized rather than downhearted. At last there is no more hiding for the pretend liberals behind ludicrous Swedish allegations or bail jumping allegations, and the true motive – revenge for the Chelsea Manning revelations – is now completely in the open.”

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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 Massoud Nayeri

Eight years after the start of the U.S.-led military intervention to overthrow Moammar Gaddafi and promote “stability,” Libya is still wracked by civil war. Ironically, the violence over the next few days has forced the U.S. to evacuate its remaining forces—there for diplomatic security and counterterrorism—from the volatile country.

Ever since the collapse of the old regime and Gaddafi’s violent death in 2011, Libya has been split among rival militias, and since 2014 it has had two would-be national governments. The government based in Tripoli now enjoys international recognition and some Western support, while the government in the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk has benefited from the support of Egypt, the Saudis, and the United Arab Emirates.

The leader of the Tobruk government’s forces, Khalifa Haftar, is a former exile (at one point in the U.S., reportedly backed by, and maintaining ties to the CIA) who returned to Libya during the 2011 war and served as the head of the new army under the first post-Gaddafi government. Haftar broke with them in 2014, and he has been engaged in a fight to take control of eastern Libya and to oppose the government in Tripoli ever since. Over the last few months, his forces have seized the oil fields in the south of the country. Libya’s long-running civil war escalated sharply in the last week as Haftar launched a surprise offensive against Tripoli in an attempt to seize the national capital. His aggressive move has been met with widespread condemnation, from the U.N., the U.S., and the EU, and it has driven the rival western militias to band together in opposition to him.

Borzou Daragahi reported on the fighting earlier this week:

A military offensive by a Libyan warlord against the country’s capital has done what years of negotiations and talks have failed to do – unite the country’s powerful western militias in an all-out effort to defend Tripoli.

Already at least 41 people have been killed and dozens more injured in clashes inside and outside of the capital, as the UN and EU struggled to put an end to the conflict that has pitted the country’s two main armed alliances against each other for control of the city of 1.2 million.

A “national conference” had been scheduled to take place next week to try to negotiate a political settlement, but Haftar’s abrupt decision to assault the capital has put an end to that for the foreseeable future. Libya has been unstable and chaotic since the U.S.-led regime change effort collapsed the old government and left the country’s many militias vying for power, but conditions have lately grown even worse. Foreign powers have been treating Libya as their playground for the last eight years, and with Haftar’s offensive, we can see evidence of the increasingly baleful regional influence of his Egyptian, Saudi, and Emirati patrons. Haftar met with Saudi King Salman in Riyadh on March 27, and both the Saudi and Egyptian governments appear to have given him their blessing for this attack. As Tarek Megerisi put it in a recent article on Haftar and the civil war:

“Haftar’s ascension has been driven by foreign powers whose understanding of Libya is skewed and whose interests are at odds with that of the Libyan population and many states dependent on Libya’s stability.”

Security conditions in the country have deteriorated so quickly over the last few weeks that American forces based in western Libya were evacuated at the start of the week. The U.S. is currently fighting one of its many unauthorized wars in Libya, and it has cooperated with the Tripoli government against the local ISIS affiliate for the last several years. The U.S. has so far not joined the fighting against Haftar’s forces. The Trump administration has publicly criticized the new offensive and called on Haftar to halt the attack, but it is doubtful that the U.S. will do anything more than that.

Haftar’s offensive isn’t likely to be successful, and could end up costing him his recent gains:

By mobilizing and uniting most forces in western Libya against him, Haftar’s attack on Tripoli has totally transformed the balance of forces in Libya.

He wanted to grab it all; now he faces the real possibility that he might lose most (even all) of what he had before the attack.

— Wolfram Lacher (@W_Lacher) April 9, 2019

Whatever the outcome of the latest battle, the continuation of the war is certain to deepen the misery of Libya’s civilian population. Eight years later, Libya is still living with the instability and violence that resulted from U.S.-backed regime change made possible by Western intervention. Like many other such interventions, the Libyan war has left behind a legacy of upheaval and destruction. The civilians that supposedly benefited will be living with the consequences for years and probably decades to come.

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Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative.

Featured image: Fighters for Libya’s interim government rejoice after a tactical victory back in 2011. Creative Commons   

Today the UK government broke international law by arresting Julian Assange in the embassy of Ecuador at the behest of the United States. The British government has been ignoring for years demands from UN human rights experts to release Assange made back in December 2015 and December 2018.

Assange now faces extradition to the U.S. where the Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicted Assange today with a federal  charge of conspiracy with Chelsea Manning to gain access to classified government records i.e. the Iraq and Afghanistan War logs. The DOJ’s press release states that Assange faces a maximum of 5 years in prison if convicted of, “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.”

Ecuador’s president recently visited Washington and caved in to American demands to withdraw its asylum status from Assange. The former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa, who granted Assange asylum 6 years ago has castigated the current president of his country declaring on twitter: 

“The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange. Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget.’’

The Trump regime with its grave concern for the human rights of people in Venezuela has now decided to step up its war against democracy by attacking the freedom of the press which is protected by the first amendment of the U.S. constitution. 

The American Civil Liberties Union responded to news of Assange’s arrest with the following comment:

“Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for Wikileaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organisations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public’s interest.’’

We should not forget that President Obama, who had no problems with declaring that Chelsea Manning was guilty before her trial even started and whose government convened a grand jury to indict Assange back in 2010, backed off from prosecuting Assange in 2013. The DOJ concluded that if it prosecuted Assange then it would also have to prosecute the New York Times, The Washington Post and the Guardian for publishing classified material from Wikileaks.

Not surprisingly, the actions of Washington’s puppet ally in London have been greeted with a furious response. 

London based human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell accused Ecuador of failing to protect Assange: 

“The decision of the Ecuadorean government to hand over Assange to the UK police is a clear violation of his Ecuadorean citizenship and asylum rights.

“Assange’s arrest will put him at risk of extradition to the US, where he will very likely face charges that could see him jailed for 30 or more years. A secret grand jury has been convened to prepare an indictment against Assange and key Trump officials have said that prosecuting Assange is a priority.

“Assange did not leak anything. He published the leaks of Chelsea Manning, as did the Guardian and New York Times. Why is he being signalled out?

“Assange published evidence of American war crimes. He’s a hero, not a criminal.

“The British government should refuse to do the bidding of the Trump administration. It should give public assurances that Assange will not be handed over the US authorities. His extradition to the US is not in the public interest.”

The leader of Spain’s Podemos party, Pablo Iglesias, has called for Assange to be released. On twitter he lambasted the actions of the UK government:

“Exploitation, injustice and the privileges of the powerful are only possible because they are built on lies. That’s why if there’s something that power fears – in Spain and elsewhere in the world – it’s the truth. Free Julian Assange.” 

Time will tell if UK courts cave into American pressure and allow the extradition of Assange to the United States. In early February the High Court in London blocked the extradition of computer hacker Laurie Love to the United States on the grounds that conditions in American jails would have left him at a high risk of suicide. This case together with international pressure may yet save Assange from extradition to the U.S. 

Regardless, this case is all about American imperialism seeking revenge upon a journalist who had the temerity to expose its war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Pulitzer prize winner Glenn Greenwald, who exposed U.S. and UK global surveillance programmes based upon classified documents supplied by Edward Snowden, makes the same point in a comment directed at those elements lauding the illegal actions of the British government:

“If you’re cheering Assange’s arrest based on a US extradition request, your allies in your celebration are the most extremist elements of the Trump administration, whose primary and explicit goal is to criminalize reporting on classified docs & punish WL for exposing war crimes.’’

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Leon Tressell is a UK based historian whose research focuses upon geo-politics and economics.

President Putin and “Israeli” Prime Minister Netanyahu are brothers-in-arms after the former helped the latter win his historic reelection with a last-minute photo-op stunt that ultimately proved pivotal to his victory, and with Russia and “Israel” now proceeding along the path of “two states, one nation” after their close and comprehensive cooperation with one another since the onset of Moscow’s 2015 anti-terrorist intervention in Syria, the era of “Putinyahu’s Rusrael” has finally arrived.

A New Era For The “New Mideast”

Netanyahu’s historic reelection to a fifth term in office will make him “Israel’s” long-serving Prime Minister since its “founder” Ben-Gurion, and it wouldn’t have been possible for him to pull off such a victory in the neck-and-neck race without the pivotal last-minute assistance that President Putin provided through the photo-op stunt of returning 20 “IDF” remains that the Russian military dug up in Syria specifically at Tel Aviv’s request. The Russian and “Israeli” leaders are now brothers-in-arms at precisely the moment when their two governments are proceeding along the path of “two states, one nation” as a result of their close and comprehensive cooperation with one another since the onset of Moscow’s 2015 anti-terrorist intervention in Syria, thereby making 2019 the year in which the era of “Putinyahu’s Rusrael” has finally arrived as a force to be reckoned with on the world scene.

From “Balancing” To Allying

Most of the Alt-Media Community is likely in a state of cognitive dissonance at the moment after practically everything that their “trusted outlets” indoctrinated them for years to believe has been proven to be false, especially the “wishful thinking” narrative that President Putin has supposedly turned Russia into an “anti-Zionist crusader state allied with the Resistance”. Nothing could be further from the truth as the Russian leader is totally disinterested in taking sides on any dispute that isn’t of immediate relevance to his nation’s security and has therefore positioned his country to play the part of the Eastern Hemisphere’s supreme “balancing” force instead. In the case of Russian-“Israeli” relations, however, he’s moved beyond simply “balancing” and towards the extreme of outright allying as part of his risky gamble to “seize the moment” and attempt to replace America’s historic patronage over the self-professed “Jewish State”.

Right Under Everyone’s Nose

I’ve been extensively documenting the creation of “Putinyahu’s Rusrael” and strongly recommend that readers who aren’t already familiar with my work kindly review the following analyses in order to be brought up to speed and understand the strategic context in which this game-changing development is taking place:

• “Russia’s Grand Strategy In Afro-Eurasia (And What Could Go Wrong)”
• “President Putin On Israel: Quotes From The Kremlin Website”
• “It’s Official, ‘Israel’ Is Now A Joint Russian-American Protectorate”
• “Alt-Media Silent As ‘Israel’ Admits To 200+ Strikes In Syria”
• “Here’s How The Latakia Tragedy – Nay, Conspiracy! – Might Have Played Out”
• “Russia’s Reshaping Syria’s ‘Deep State’ In Its Own Image”
• “Russia’s Non-Denial About Brokering Iran’s Withdrawal From Syria Is A Big Deal”
• “I’m A Pro-Putin Anti-‘Putinist’ And It’s About Time That Alt-Media Acknowledges That We Exist”
• “So What If Trump ‘Recognizes’ ‘Israel’s’ Annexation Of The Golan?”
• “It’s Time To Talk About The S-300s, ‘Status Symbols’, And The ‘Savior Complex’”
• “Mideast Activists Need To Stop Their Double Standards Towards Russia!”

Undeniable Facts

Long story short, the indisputable facts are that President Putin has met with Netanyahu more times over the past four years (13) than with any other leader, thus forming a deep personal bond with him that’s since become fraternal and could explain why he had Russia do so many favors for “Israel” over the past couple of years. As acknowledged by Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov in September following the midair accident that President Putin famously chalked up to a so-called “chain of tragic circumstances“, these favors included ‘passively facilitating’ over 200 of “Israel’s” anti-Iranian and anti-Hezbollah strikes in Syria over the preceding 18 months alone, carving out a 140-kilometer anti-Iranian buffer zone from the occupied Golan Heights (where President Putin reportedly vacationed with his family in the 1990s), “preserving Jewish sacred places and graves in the city of Aleppo”, and risking the lives of Russian servicemen by having them dig up “IDF” remains in the middle of an SAA-ISIS firefight.

Furthermore, President Putin refused to blame “Israel” for last September’s incident, and not once did he order his military to suspend the so-called “deconfliction mechanism” that he agreed to create with Netanyahu three years prior just before the commencement of the anti-terrorist intervention. Russia’s highly-publicized dispatch of S-300s to Syria was nothing more than smoke and mirrors because the SAA still doesn’t have full and independent operational control of these systems, thus strategically neutralizing them and ensuring that they don’t pose a threat to “Israel” whenever the self-professed “Jewish State” coordinates with Moscow to bomb suspected Iranian and Hezbollah positions in the Arab Republic. Speaking of which, President Putin confirmed after his February meeting with Netanyahu that Russia and “Israel” are forming a so-called “working party” to accelerate the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Syria, implying that Iran’s will also have to leave too. And finally, last week’s “corpse diplomacy” was an unprecedented sign of solidarity between Russia to “Israel”.

The Yinon-Putin Plan

All of this begs the obvious question of what President Putin expects to receive in return for his unshakeable loyalty to Netanyahu, but the answer certainly isn’t what the misguided Alt-Media masses were brainwashed into believing. The Russian leader isn’t playing the much-mocked game of “5D chess” and “just waiting to backstab Bibi” at the “perfect moment”, but is hoping that “Israel” will allow his country to play an important role in what he has evidently concluded is the “inevitable” partial success of the Yinon Plan. In exchange for “passively facilitating” “Israel’s” plans in Syria (though importantly after having stopped their full success through the 2015 anti-terrorist intervention there), Russia expects to receive generous “Israeli” foreign direct investment once Tel Aviv formally joins the Eurasian Union that Moscow also amazingly convinced its sworn Iranian enemy to become a member of as well.

Should Russia succeed in getting Syria to agree to the “draft constitution” that Moscow wrote for it and Damascus ends up surrendering its legal claim to the Golan Heights like the document strongly implies (and by innuendo “recognizing” “Israel”), then Moscow could “legally” connect the country’s gas supplies under its control to Tel Aviv’s Eastern Mediterranean Gas Pipeline and therefore “co-opt” this megaproject that could otherwise compete with its energy exports to Europe. In addition, Russia and “Israel” could jointly use their influence over the region’s Kurds to more confidently assert themselves by proxy in the Mideast’s central pivot space in accordance with the Yinon Plan’s pertinent precepts for managing this strategically positioned transnational demographic. Given the game-changing geostrategic impact that the Russian-“Israeli” alliance is poised to have in the region, it’s therefore more accurate to describe the Yinon Plan as the Yinon-Putin Plan instead.

Russia: Rhetoric vs. Reality

The reality that was just described is at total odds with the rhetoric coming out of Russia, but that’s all by design because Moscow oftentimes says what the global public wants to hear but ends up doing whatever is best for its own interests irrespective of whether the international audience approves of it or not. For example, Russia used to occasionally condemn “Israel’s” anti-Iranian and anti-Hezbollah strikes in Syria despite it now being acknowledged by its own admission last September that it was coordinating them with Tel Aviv this entire time through the so-called “deconfliction mechanism”. Ditto Russia’s reaction to Trump’s “recognition” of “Israel’s” annexation of the Golan Heights, which was actually facilitated by the anti-Iranian buffer zone that Moscow carved out last summer after pushing the self-professed “Jewish State’s” enemies 140 kilometers away from the occupied region at Tel Aviv’s behest.

The established pattern is that Russia rhetorically says whatever is in line with international law in order to increase its appeal among the region’s majority-Arab population but always ends up accepting “Israel’s” unilateral actions out of pragmatic “realpolitik” considerations and a lack of political will to impose unacceptable costs on Tel Aviv to change its behavior. This modus operandi strongly suggests that Russia might actually not be as opposed to Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century” as it officially claims to be, especially when considering that Netanyahu is speculated to have informally functioned as a mediator between the American and Russian leaders. As such, it’s possible that Russia might even secretly encourage the “Deal of the Century” if it believes that it’s “inevitable” and not “incompatible” with the Yinon-Putin Plan, especially if it has “Israel’s” “trusted reassurances” of this.

Concluding Thoughts

As incredible as it might have initially sounded to readers who have been brainwashed for years by their Alt-Media mental overlords into believing that President Putin is an “anti-Zionist crusader”, the argument has strongly been put forth in this analysis that he’s actually the opposite of what many people thought he was. Far from being “anti-Israeli”, the Russian leader is probably one of the most pro-“Israeli” people on this planet after committing his country to ensuring the self-professed “Jewish State’s” security in the face of Iran and its ally Hezbollah’s threats to destroy it. His brotherly ties with Netanyahu have led to similarly fraternal relations developing between Russia and “Israel” as they proceed along the path of “two states, one nation” and gradually merge into a single strategic force, ergo the era of “Putinyahu’s Rusrael” that’s impossible at this point for anyone to credibly deny.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from LobeLog

In August 2012, Assange sought and was granted asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy (by then-President Correa) to avoid arrest, extradition to Sweden on phony rape and sexual assault charges. 

They were all about wanting him handed over to the US to be prosecuted for truth-telling investigative journalism the way it should be – Sweden conspiring with the US and UK for this purpose.

Subsequently, Swedish Public Prosecution director Marianne Ny dropped charges against Assange because they never were valid in the first place.

At the time, his lawyer prematurely declared

“total victory,” adding “(t)he preliminary investigation has been dropped and the detention order has been withdrawn, and from Sweden’s point of view this is now over.”

London’s Metropolitan Police said a warrant for his arrest remained in force for failing to surrender to authorities on June 29, 2012. Without asylum in Ecuador’s embassy, it was executed – extradition to the US sure to follow.

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno conspired with the US and UK to rescind Assange’s citizenship and asylum status based on Big Lies – selling his soul for whatever favors he was promised.

Former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions called arresting Assange “a priority…(W)e will seek to put some people in jail” for whistleblowing, he blustered.

As CIA director, Mike Pompeo said Assange deserves the death penalty. He turned truth on its head saying

“(i)t’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia” – a bald-faced Big Lie, adding:

“We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.”

Candidate Trump said “I love WikiLeaks.” Calling its site “amazing,” he added “I love reading those WikiLeaks.” Reportedly he mentioned WikiLeaks over 100 times in the final weeks of his campaign.

He later called Assange “disgraceful,” adding he deserves the “death penalty.” Following his Thursday arrest, he turned truth on its head, saying “I know nothing about Wikileaks. It’s not my thing.”

John Bolton once said Edward Snowden “should swing from a tall oak tree.” He urged waging cyberwar on WikiLeaks.

Make no mistake. The unprecedented arrest of Assange is what police state injustice is all about. Britain intends handing him over to US authorities to be prosecuted for the “crime” of truth-telling – putting all other independent journalists everywhere at risk.

In the US, First Amendment speech, media and academic freedoms are fast eroding, along with assembly and association rights. Ordinary people have virtually no right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Exposing government wrongdoing is one of the highest forms of patriotism. It involves risking personal harm and welfare for the greater good. It’s all about doing the right thing because it matters, because truth-telling on vital issues is its own reward.

When whistleblowers and journalists are criminalized for exposing government wrongdoing on the phony pretext of protecting national security or other fabricated reasons, fundamental freedoms no longer exist.

Orwell said

“(i)n a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Thomas Jefferson once said

“(w)hat country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance.” He also said free speech “cannot be limited without being lost.”

Harry Truman once said

“(w)hen even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.”

The ACLU earlier said protecting national security and classified information “cannot be at the expense of a free, open and informed society.”

Increasingly, the US national security state targets activists, political dissidents, anti-war protestors, Muslims from the wrong countries, unwanted aliens, human rights lawyers like Lynne Stewart involved in defending the “wrong clients,” whistleblowers, and investigative journalists.

Reporters Committee for Freedom executive director Lucy Dalglish said

“(t)he message (authorities) are sending to everyone is: ‘You leak to the media, we will get you.’ ”

Longtime reporter/author Helen Thomas accused Obama of “controlling the press. It’s shocking. It’s really shocking,” she added.

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets? They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are the public servants. We pay them.”

Waging war on truth-telling journalism the way it should be is more aggressive now than ever in the US and other Western countries, highlighted by Assange’s arrest and certain prosecution in the US – likely on espionage charges on top of his current indictment, what got Chelsea Manning sentenced to 35 years imprisonment.

They’re in esteemed company. Previous US targets included Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) founder Bill Haywood, social justice advocate Emma Goldman, journalist/author/socialist activist John Reed, political activist Max Eastman, civil rights leader Philip Randolph, Social Democratic Party of America and its successor Socialist Party of America co-founder Victor Berger, human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart, among others.

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark one said “(o)ur jails are filled with saints” – countless numbers of politically persecuted individuals languishing in America’s global gulag.

The US honors its worst, persecutes and abuses its best and most honorable – what tyranny is all about.

Today in the US, UK, and other Western societies, fundamental freedoms are fast eroding, replaced by police state rule, tyranny over governance the way it should be.

That’s what Assange’s arrest signifies. The only solution is mass resistance, people power challenging repressive authority.

When governments ill-serve their people, they forfeit their right to rule, civil disobedience an essential tool for change.

There’s no alternative to living free and safe. If repressive ruling authorities aren’t effectively challenged and replaced by governance serving everyone equitably, we’re all doomed.

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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.

In the late hours of April 10, the Libyan National Army (LNA) announced that it had shot down an IL-39 warplane of the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA). According to the LNA media office, the warplane was shot down by the 166th Brigade, when it was flying over the outskirts of the capital Tripoli.

The warplane reportedly took off from Misrata airbase, east of Tripoli. This airbase is the headquarters of the GNA’s air force, which reportedly operates nine IL-39 Albatros trainers / light attack warplanes among other aircraft. According to the available data, the IL-39 was downed with an anti-aircraft gun, such as the ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft twin-barreled autocannon, which is currently actively employed by both sides of the conflict.

Last week, when GNA jets started carrying out strikes on advancing LNA units, the LNA declared a no-fly zone over the western part of the country. Nonetheless, the April 10 incident became the first example of a real action against GNA air power undertaken by LNA forces. The LNA is known to be operating at least one Soviet-made 2K12 Kub medium-range air-defense system, as well as a variety of man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADs). This is far from being enough to impose a real no-fly zone across the region, but LNA units equipped with anti-aircraft gun and MANPADs would pose a significant threat to the small and largely outdated GNA air power.

At the same time, the LNA continued its advance on Tripoli. Its forces captured the bases of the 42nd Battalion and the 4th Brigade south of the city. The first base is located near the town of Ain Zara. The second is near the town of Aziziya. According to reports, the LNA destroyed several GNA vehicles and captured loads of weapons and ammunition on the scene. LNA units also re-entered the area of Tripoli International Airport where intense fighting is now ongoing. At least one GNA airstrike on LNA forces was reported in the town of Qasr bin Ghashir.

While the LNA has not achieved a rapid and decisive victory over pro-GNA forces in Tripoli, the developments of the last few days have demonstrated that a coalition of pro-GNA militias is incapable of pushing LNA forces back from the city along the entire frontline. In the medium term, this means that the LNA has every chance of isolating the capital from the rest of the pro-GNA areas. This development would be a significant blow to the defenders of Tripoli, would prepare the way for further offensive operations and would strengthen the negotiating position of the LNA leadership.

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Mr. President,

Your Deep State handlers have finally managed to have WikiLeaks publisher and editor Julian Assange dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrested. He faces extradition to the United States where more than a few people in high places have called for his execution.

If your administration follows through on a promise to prosecute Assange, it will look bad for you. After all, you praised Assange during the presidential campaign after he leaked the DNC trove. More than any fictional Russian attempt to spin the US election, the DNC leak turned people against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats and may have helped you win the election.

It really doesn’t matter if you support Assange or not. It is obvious you are not in control of your administration—the so-called Deep State and the neocon rabble are fully in control. It seems the only thing you really control is your smartphone and Twitter feed. 

I believe you will go along with Assange’s persecutors as part of a futile attempt to take down the “lying media,” but only because they lie about you, not because they lie to the American people. 

Mr. President, it is obvious, and has been since the campaign, that your presidency is about you and your overinflated ego. It has nothing to do with public service and the American people. 

All presidents since Truman—with the possible exception of Kennedy, assassinated for deviating from the establishment script—have served the interests of the financial elite and its national security state, its intelligence agencies (most prominently the CIA), and associated industries, notably the military-industrial complex, the latter which you served as salesman of the month for while on a whirlwind sales tour last year. 

It’s important to note that when British cops hauled Assange out of the embassy, he held a book in his hand: Gore Vidal’s History of The National Security State. It is precisely these people who are responsible for the persecution of Assange. They need to send a message: if you reveal “national security secrets”—the murder of journalists, for instance—you will be hunted down, renditioned, tortured, locked in solitary confinement, prosecuted, and possibly executed (as a number of our “representatives” and their script-reading talking heads have demanded). 

It is obvious you will not fight the Deep State or drain the swamp. You can’t even keep insider and neocon operatives from infiltrating your administration. On the other hand, you have warmly embraced the racist apartheid state of Israel and its corrupt leader, Bibi Netanyahu, thus making it obvious you support totalitarian violence against innocents. The bombing raids you ordered in Syria and Iraq have killed thousands of civilians. 

For you, Mr. President, Assange was merely another stepping stone in your ego-driven quest to become the most important person (at least in popular imagination) in the “free world.” Like your supporters who naively believed your flaccid commitment to bring the troops home and put an end to “nation-building,” Assange faces betrayal. He is no longer of use to you. 

Assange will be extradited and charged as a “hacker,” and when convicted (a certainty) the sentence will be five and a half years max. Your Justice (just-us) Department knows it can’t get him on espionage, so they’ll go for a lesser charge, but one that sends the same message—reveal the truth about the United States and its crimes and face prosecution. 

I sincerely doubt, Mr. President, you care about the First Amendment and the freedom of the press. I don’t believe you are concerned about a development concurrent to the persecution of Assange—the effort to shut down alternative media. 

I say this because, over the last few months, you have complained about and promised a response to leaks within your administration. Your endless complaints and often antagonistic responses (primarily on Twitter) to admittedly unfair media coverage demonstrates an animosity toward the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. 

I urge you to pardon Julian Assange after the Deep State wolves make an example of him. I seriously doubt you will do this. You are apparently more comfortable with the likes of the psychopaths John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and the host of neocons and CFR operatives embedded in your administration, and not the American people. They need to know the truth about what the government does in their name. I don’t see this happening. And I don’t see your faithful MAGA supporters calling for it. 

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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 the Activist Post

Julian Assange is a hero. He defied the globalizing apparatus of fascist repression to expose the war criminals in our midst. Now, the same war criminals and their agencies who commit supreme international war crimes as policy have apprehended him.

Ecuador has shamed itself and proven itself to be a servile vassal of Empire through its actions and inactions, specifically by violating opinion 54/2015 of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the United Nations, and by violating Opinion OC-25/2019 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and Resolution MC-54-19 of the IACHR of March 2019 which obliges Ecuador not to “deport, return, expel, extradite or otherwise remove Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy,”[1] where Assange was sheltered.

The public has a right to know that Empire is waging war against us all, and that Empire is perpetrating wars of aggression that impose the death sentence on millions.  Empire and its NATO appendage are forces for globalized mass murder, and the globalized displacement of peoples.  It is not a force for good. It creates wars, it does not prevent them. It is the embodiment of evil wrapped in shrouds of propaganda.

When governing agencies bury the truth with impunity, they are also burying millions of corpses.    Assange helped to expose Empire for the Life-destroying, Democracy-destroying, Freedom-destroying cancer that it is. He should be lauded and protected, not persecuted and destroyed.

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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.

Note

[1] teleSUR, “Assange Arrest ‘National Shame’ and ‘Historic Error,’ Ecuador’s Ex-Foreign Minister Says.” 11 April, 2019. (https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Assange-Arrest-National-Shame-and-Historical-Error-Ecuadors-Ex-Foreign-Minister-Says-20190411-0013.html?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork&fbclid=IwAR0QowYIu0GAsHEnYLqQ8TV4WwzZEpEDO3GktqzUsB0A7JkBwvTHe6HTfwU) Accessed 12 April, 2019.

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The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years.

That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for “democratic” societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its Working Party on Arbitrary Detention.

But to hell with that. Let the thugs go in. Directed by the quasi fascists in Trump’s Washington, in league with Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno, a Latin American Judas and liar seeking to disguise his rancid regime, the British elite abandoned its last imperial myth: that of fairness and justice. 

Imagine Tony Blair dragged from his multi-million pound Georgian home in Connaught Square, London, in handcuffs, for onward dispatch to the dock in The Hague. By the standard of Nuremberg, Blair’s “paramount crime” is the deaths of a million Iraqis. Assange’s crime is journalism: holding the rapacious to account, exposing their lies and empowering people all over the world with truth. 

The shocking arrest of Assange carries a warning for all who, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “sew the seeds of discontent [without which] there would be no advance towards civilisation”. The warning is explicit towards journalists. What happened to the founder and editor of WikiLeaks can happen to you on a newspaper, you in a TV studio, you on radio, you running a podcast.

Assange’s principal media tormentor, the Guardian, a collaborator with the secret state, displayed its nervousness this week with an editorial that scaled new weasel heights. The Guardian has exploited the work of Assange and WikiLeaks in what its previous editor called “the greatest scoop of the last 30 years”. The paper creamed off WikiLeaks’ revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with them.

With not a penny going to Julian Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, turned on their source, abused him and disclosed the secret password Assange had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing leaked US embassy cables.

With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding joined the police outside and gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”. The Guardian has since published a series of falsehoods about Assange, not least a discredited claim that a group of Russians and Trump’s man, Paul Manafort, had visited Assange in the embassy. The meetings never happened; it was fake.

But the tone has now changed. “The Assange case is a morally tangled web,” the paper opined. “He (Assange) believes in publishing things that should not be published …. But he has always shone a light on things that should never have been hidden.”

These “things” are the truth about the homicidal way America conducts its colonial wars, the lies of the British Foreign Office in its denial of rights to vulnerable people, such as the Chagos Islanders, the expose of Hillary Clinton as a backer and beneficiary of jihadism in the Middle East, the detailed description of American ambassadors of how the governments in Syria and Venezuela might be overthrown, and much more. It all available on the WikiLeaks site.

The Guardian is understandably nervous. Secret policemen have already visited the newspaper and demanded and got the ritual destruction of a hard drive.  On this, the paper has form. In 1983, a Foreign Office clerk, Sarah Tisdall, leaked British Government documents showing when American cruise nuclear weapons would arrive in Europe. The Guardian was showered with praise.

When a court order demanded to know the source, instead of the editor going to prison on a fundamental principle of protecting a source, Tisdall was betrayed, prosecuted and served six months.

If Assange is extradited to America for publishing what the Guardian calls truthful “things”, what is to stop the current editor, Katherine Viner, following him, or the previous editor, Alan Rusbridger, or the prolific propagandist Luke Harding?

What is to stop the editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post, who also published morsels of the truth that originated with WikiLeaks, and the editor of El Pais in Spain, and Der Spiegel in Germany and the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. The list is long.

David McCraw, lead lawyer of the New York Times, wrote:

“I think the prosecution [of Assange] would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers … from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and the law would have a very hard time distinguishing between the New York Times and WilLeaks.”

Even if journalists who published WikiLeaks’ leaks are not summoned by an American grand jury, the intimidation of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning will be enough. Real journalism is being criminalised by thugs in plain sight. Dissent has become an indulgence.

In Australia, the current America-besotted government is prosecuting two whistle-blowers who revealed that Canberra’s spooks bugged the cabinet meetings of the new government of East Timor for the express purpose of cheating the tiny, impoverished nation out of its proper share of the oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea. Their trial will be held in secret. The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, is infamous for his part in setting up concentration camps for refugees on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Manus, where children self harm and suicide. In 2014, Morrison proposed mass detention camps for 30,000 people.

Real journalism is the enemy of these disgraces. A decade ago, the Ministry of Defence in London produced a secret document which described the “principal threats” to public order as threefold: terrorists, Russian spies and investigative journalists. The latter was designated the major threat.

The document was duly leaked to WikiLeaks, which published it.

“We had no choice,” Assange told me. “It’s very simple. People have a right to know and a right to question and challenge power. That’s true democracy.”

What if Assange and Manning and others in their wake — if there are others — are silenced and “the right to know and question and challenge” is taken away? 

In the 1970s, I met Leni Reifenstahl, close friend of Adolf Hitler, whose films helped cast the Nazi spell over Germany.

She told me that the message in her films, the propaganda, was dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the public.

“Did this submissive void include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked her. 

“Of course,” she said, “especially the intelligentsia …. When people no longer ask serious questions, they are submissive and malleable. Anything can happen.”

And did. 

The rest, she might have added, is history.

*

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“EXIT NATO!”  – was the glaring title on a huge screen greeting the several hundred participants of the Anti-NATO Conference in Florence, Italy, on 7 April 2019. Officially it was called The International Conference on the 70^th Anniversary of NATO, sponsored by the Italian No War No NATO Committee, Global Research of Canada and the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW). I had the privilege to attend this important forum.

Following the EXIT NATO poster, was another huge slide decorating the conference wall – proclaiming that NATO, as a reward for all their work for Peace, should be rewarded with the Peace Nobel Prize. No doubt, nuclear armament and eventually nuclear wars – to be fought by NATO – by whom else – will make the world a safer place. Wars are actually good for Peace. They are also good for economics, but they are particularly good for Peace.

I’m not kidding you – these are declarations one can read – and has been able to read since practically 9/11, in such prominent “Truth News” papers like the Washington Post and the NYT.  – So, why not the Peace Prize to NATO? – It wouldn’t make much difference, considering the track record of the Nobel Prize Committee – it would fall right into place.

Other than that, the conference basically outlined the atrocities committed by NATO, its associate and crony terrorist armies, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra – and so on, changing names for revolving terrorists, recruited and trained by the CIA and funded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, and of course the US directly or through her many State Department funded and subsidiary NGOs, like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and many others. And of course, not to forget a prominent funder of terrorism, Turkey – who is now trying to make a smiling face to Russia and the east, even flirting with the idea of entering the club of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); on the one hand purchasing Russian military defense systems – the S-400 – and at the same time US fighter planes F35, dancing on as many weddings simultaneously as they can. – Who would trust Turkey under Erdogan? – Turkey also still hosts one of the most strategic and most dangerous nuclear-equipped NATO bases – literally between east and west.

The Conference recalled the Cold War. By now everybody knows – really? – well, for those who don’t – that the so-called Cold War was one of the best propagated and fakest news of the 20^th Century. It’s a brilliant idea that sprung out of the McCarthy Nazi-era – like NATO itself – to arm the US to the teeth – maximizing profits of the military industrial complex, under the pretext of halting the advancement of the Soviet Union into just liberated western Europe, just liberated from Hitler’s Nazi-Germany. Never mind that western Europe has been saved by the Soviet Union who lost 25-30 million people and basically their transport and production infrastructure.

Yes, it was not the so-called allies – US, UK and France – they came in last, when the bulk of the job was already done by what is today Russia. But of course, no western history book would tell you the truth. In fact, it must be said here too – the US funded Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union with money channeled from the FED, through Wall Street banks, and eventually through the Rothschild dominated Bank for International Settlement (BIS), located in Basel, Switzerland, right at the border to Germany, from where it was easy to pass the money on to the Reichsbank – Hitler’s Central Bank. Yes- that’s how the US was already then dancing on various fiestas at the same time; on the one hand bombing Germany and, on the other, financing Germany’s war against what the US already then perceived as an archenemy – The Red Scare – the Soviet Union. Well, these acts of treason then were the precursors of NATO today.

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky (Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization) at the conference in Italy

Anything socialist is evil for the US, still today. Trump himself and his minion clowns, Pompeo, Bolton and Pence – are lambasting Venezuela and Cuba for being evil and destructive socialist countries – and that socialism will not be tolerated nowhere by the falling empire – sorry, falling it is – of the United States of America.

The other purpose of the Cold War farce, was to make the Europeans believe that they were under a constant threat of a Soviet invasion, that they had to arm themselves also to the teeth – imagine war-recovering Europe having to spend their money on arms for no use! – and of course most of these weapons had to be bought – yes, you guessed it – from the US military industrial complex – more profit for the war oligarchs. The Anglo-media even created a virtual barrier between western “free” Europe and the bad-bad Red Scare, the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain. Yes, the Iron Curtain; children in school were indoctrinated to be aware that the enemy is luring behind the Iron Curtain, and that the enemy always comes from the East. Hilarious, when you think back. At that time (almost) everybody believed it.

And the third, or perhaps first objective of the Cold War, was to block the Soviet Union from developing a viable and autonomous economy with which they could thrive, as most socialist countries do, until they are boycotted, punished and financially “sanctioned” into suffocation – by the west. These illegal financial manipulations with and within sovereign countries’ economies, are, of course, illegal by any standards of international laws – laws that have become meaningless in the light of US / NATO power, scary nuclear power. These acts of financial and human rights high crimes are only possible, because of the all dominating, fraudulent US-imposed – and NATO-protected – western monetary system.

The NATO-driven Cold War, a constant nuclear threat towards the Soviet Union, was intended to force Russia also to arm for their defense, instead of being able to use their economy’s added value to rebuild their devastated country. The USSR was never a threat to Europe. There was never an intention of the Soviet Union to invade western Europe. The same today, we are being made believe that Russia wants to invade Europe – that’s why NATO needs to build all these military bases, at the door step to Russia. Russia is by far the largest country, territory-wise, in the world, they don’t need to add more land. Historically, neither Russia or China have a record of expansionism.

In the end, the NATO-led Cold War managed to dismantle the Soviet Union by ‘buying’ some corrupt Soviet leaders, so that the new Russia, whose socialist system just was made to collapse, unprepared with legislation for what was to come – privatization by fire-sale of their entire economy. Like vultures, the financial institutions, IMF, World Bank, agents of the FED, descended on Moscow to literally steel by indebting whatever had any value. This misery still has not entirely abetted, as the Russian Central Bank was restructured, following the image of the FED – today, under President Putin, much has changed and was reformed, however, the financial sector is still heavily invaded by the Atlantists – or what you may also call the Fifth Columnists. And of course, even those are protected by NATO – as NATO issues threats, nobody knows from where they come – but you know who executes them, in case of…

The Florence Anti-NATO Conference also recalled some of the most abject killing sprees of NATO in its 70 years of existence, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine – the Maidan massacre followed by the so-called Ukrainian civil war – and the crowning of sorts, the ten-year war on Yugoslavia – the total destruction of Yugoslavia, with the final blow 1999, the merciless bombing of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. – Why Yugoslavia? – Let’s dwell just a moment on this war of cruel destruction and killing – because it is so typical for Pentagon-driven wars of annihilation. Yugoslavia, a socialist country, in the 1970s and 80s under Maoist President Tito, had a prosperous economy, much more so than the rest of Europe. The US-dominated west cannot let a socialist economy flourish. Other countries, especially stagnating western Europe, could get ideas.

Remember, socialism is evil. So, with what is today called the “Balkanization” – cut into pieces – of Yugoslavia was the old-old tactic of divide to conquer, as well as by creating internal chaos, the western powers kept control of the people, and eventually NATO was able to advance closer and ever closer to the Russian border, by occupying former Yugoslav republics with NATO bases (Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and Kosovo is waiting in the wings), in addition to the further expansion east to Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, not to mention the former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

This expansion east – ever closer to Moscow, is a flagrant breach of a promise made by the allied forces. In 1991, then German Foreign Minister Genscher promised Russian President Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch further east than Germany. In fact, he assured Gorbachev that NATO would not move into what before the German unification was Eastern Germany. This promise was unfortunately never recorded in writing, and Gorbachev was miserably betrayed. As we know by now, a betrayal by the west is very normal. In the meantime,12 more NATO bases east of Germany, including in former East-Germany, were built.

In their 70 years of existence, US-NATO, allied and proxy forces, as well as mercenaries, have killed between 20 and 25 million people around the globe, in wars and conflicts – in the eternal war against “terror” – that was “justified” by self-inflicted 9/11, the start to the final phase of the PNAC – Plan for a New American Century – to reach Full Spectrum Dominance.

Wars have a cost – a financial, economic and a social cost. The US official military budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 is US$ 700 billion; for FY 2019 Trump proposes US$ 750. If approved it would be a 40% increase in the last 9 years. But that’s not all. This is just the officially published figure. The real cost for the war, defense and security apparatus to which also the opaque CIA and associated secret services count – is well over a trillion dollars, perhaps as much as US$1.5 trillion – per year.

Conference delegates

The US has currently about one million military personnel stationed in 175 countries around the globe. The Pentagon maintains about a thousand military bases in more than 100 countries. The war cost, in currently seven war theatres is prohibitive – medical costs for veterans, for social services to returning veterans – and we are not talking the cost of off-battle ground lives, i.e. by ever-mounting suicide rates. The Veteran Administration released a study that covered suicides from 1999 to 2010, showing that roughly 22 veterans were dying by suicide per day, or one every 65 minutes.

The reality is most likely a much higher figure – and the despair and human depression from anxieties related to the never-ending wars has increased exponentially in the last 9 years – more suicides, more desperation, more broken families – – entire generations of kids with fathers at war. This cost cannot be put in figures of dollars and cents – it’s a social cost that bears its toll in years, perhaps generations from now.

The US spends per capita ten times more than the rest of the world together on military / war expenses. President Trump requests European NATO countries to increase their military budget by contributing more to NATO, first up to 2% of GDP – threatening he may decide to withdraw NATO from Europe, if Europe does not comply with his request, still making believe that NATO is a defensive force – protecting Europe- from what, and from whom? – Good-bye NATO. This is the moment to call Trump’s bluff.

But NATO – the Trans-Atlantic Treaty Organization – has also gone overseas to Latin America. NATO has a Cooperation Agreement with Colombia, where the US has 5 military bases – which will automatically convert into NATO bases. NATO is also negotiating with Brazil’s new Nazi-leader, Bolsonaro, to enter Brazil, and, as such being a threat and a potential attack force to topple the Venezuelan democratically elected socialist government. Washington makes no secret – they want Venezuela’s hydrocarbon resources, the world’s largest reserves, gold and other minerals of which Venezuela is rich. NATO is perfect to do the dirty job.

But it gets worse, this Trump clown or the masters behind him had recently the audacity to ask for a European military budget increase to 4% of GDP – or else…. Yes. Let’s decide for else. Good riddance, NATO.

The overall NATO budget is well over a trillion dollars per year – yes, per year. And that is – people of Europe, people of the world! – that is to finance a killing machine that bulldozes countries into the ground with bombs and tanks, that kill indiscriminately civilians and other countries’ defensive military, countries that have never  done any harm to the United States, nor to Europe which follows the Washington mandate like a bunch of vassals, what Europe has become.

Imagine, what could be done, with more than a trillion dollars or euros per year – in terms of building up education, health services, public infrastructure, and other social services – and expand these services to developing countries, to those very countries that are now bombarded mercilessly by NATO! – This, dear People of Europe, is your tax money. Do you want it to be spent killing people around the world for Washington’s world hegemony? – NATO does not protect you. NATO has been designed as an aggressive force – you were just never told. But look out of the window, the window of your ‘safe space’, and you will see the squandering of your tax money.

NATO is invading the space of Russia and China, countries that are seeking friendly relations with the rest of the world, they are seeking a multi-polar world, but encounter instead a response of aggression. NATO is preventing the natural, namely friendly relation and trading as equals within the huge Continent Eurasia, of which Europe has been artificially separated as a continent. This tremendous landmass Eurasia, includes also the entire Middle East and connects to Africa. This enormous mass of land and people and resources – does not need the west, the west, called America.

Wouldn’t it be wise for countries and people of Eurasia, to just live sovereign lives, with friendly interactions, trading as equals not with a one-upmanship as is currently the norm for trading between the rich OECD nations dominating the World Trade Organization (WTO), with the rest of the world- which depends on trade but is always on the losing end?

One more point – that needs to be understood. Europe, the European Union as it was conceived and is limping along today – has never been the idea of Europeans, but was born during WWII in the heads of the CIA, then transplanted into some “willing” European heads and then ‘defended’ by NATO – the “unifying force”. Europe has no Constitution, only a number of non-binding accords, like Maastricht and Lisbon – but no Constitution that holds it together, that outlines a common vision in defense, in economic development, in monetary policy. The European Union results in a bunch of country, some even hostile to each other. They have a common currency, the Euro, without even having a common economic development objective. This currency, forged as the little brother of the US-dollar, equally nothing but fiat money, no backing whatsoever; this currency is not sustainable. So, the currency barely 20 years old, will eventually collapse or fade, and so will the European Union. It hasn’t happened yet, because NATO is holding it together, because Brussels is nothing but a puppet of the Pentagon. It is Washington through the Pentagon, and through NATO that is running Europe.

People of Europe – is it that what you want? Your tax money spent killing people and destroying countries around the globe, and having lost all independence, autonomy as a country, as well as monetary sovereignty – by being run by a military killing machine, called NATO?

It’s time to kill NATO, rather than being killed by NATO. Exit NATO now. It’s time for NEXIT.

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

“You have converted the OAS into an empty shell that has violated its own principles and you’re now proving that our decision to resign was the correct one. We are leaving the OAS and we will never come back. — Venezuela representative Asbina Marin

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In a bid to legitimize Washington’s flailing coup attempt in Venezuela, the Organization of American States (OAS) has recognized faux-President Juan Guaido’s lackey Gustave Tarre as the new representative from Venezuela.

Reporter Anya Parampil, who was at the meeting in Washington on Tuesday, noted that “Five of the 18 countries that voted for the U.S. measure were recently taken over by pro-IMF governments.” Meanwhile, the Haitian government — currently embroiled in a popular uprising over its mismanagement and embezzlement of funds from a generous deal with Venezuela on petroleum products, known as the PetroCaribe alliance — voted for the measure in order to appease the United States and secure Washington’s support in quashing the uprising.

Parampil notes that the Guaido representative, Gustave Tarre, is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), an ultra-hawkish D.C.-based think tank funded by defense contractors and the oil industry.

MintPress News has previously reported that Facebook’s head of cybersecurity, Nathaniel Gleicher, is a senior associate at the very same think tank. As the coup attempt was unfolding, Gleicher leveraged his power at Facebook to censor pro-government accounts. MintPress reported at the time:

764 accounts located in Venezuela, a country in which the United States has been backing a coup attempt in since last week, were banned; and another 1,196 accounts ‘which appear to be engaged in a state-backed influence campaign’ in Venezuela were also shuttered.”

Moreover, Tarre was accused by the Venezuelan government in 2014 of being a conspirator in a plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro.

Finding loopholes, breaking rules

The OAS Charter affirms the organization’s function, which is, ostensibly, “to promote [members’] solidarity, to strengthen their collaboration, and to defend their sovereignty, their territorial integrity, and their independence.” The OAS branch that voted to admit Tarre, known as the Permanent Council, is charged with “keep[ing] vigilance over the maintenance of friendly relations among the Member States.” Surely, its decision on Tuesday runs counter to its mission statement.

So too does its history: Bolivian President Evo Morales has repeatedly referred to the OAS as the “Ministry of Colonies.”

Parampil grilled U.S. Ambassador to the OAS Carlos Trujillo following the vote, pressing him to provide a legal justification for it. He was unable to do so, and the closest he came was saying that the decision would be revisited by the OAS General Assembly.

On Tuesday I observed the OAS brazenly violate its own rules in order to recognize Guaidó’s ambassador & appease the Trump admin.

I asked US Ambassador Trujillo to explain the vote’s legal basis.

He was unable to cite a single article in the OAS charter. pic.twitter.com/UWUQg99E67

— Anya Parampil (@anyaparampil) April 10, 2019

In exclusive comments to MintPress News, Parampil elaborated on what happened:

Diplomats are typically well versed in international law, or at the very least able to legally defend their own actions and initiatives, so it was strange to me that Ambassador Trujillo could not explain himself with the OAS charter. Does he believe in the integrity of the organization or merely see it as a vessel through which to achieve Trump administration foreign policy goals?

The meeting started an hour late, apparently because Trujillo was still whipping up votes down to the last minute just to secure the 18 needed to pass with a simple majority. Considering most OAS states still recognize the Maduro government, it is no wonder the U.S. opted to rush a hollow vote through the permanent council. It could never convince two-thirds of OAS foreign ministers to accept Guaido’s powerless representatives, which is what would be required in order to affirm this decision with the General Assembly.”

With the Permanent Council, a mere simple majority of 18 was required to pass the vote.

Setting a lawless precedent

Venezuela’s elected government representative Asbina Marin denounced the decision:

You have converted the OAS into an empty shell that has violated its own principles and you’re now proving that our decision to resign was the correct one. We are leaving the OAS and we will never come back.

This day means the end of a chain of violations and traps that, in order to turn the OAS into a weapon against Venezuela, has ended up destroying the entire structure of international law that sustains it. This house, the OAS, has become uninhabitable.”

Venezuela made the decision to leave the OAS in 2017, a process that was, even then, expected to culminate on April 27, 2019. It will be the only nation in the Western Hemisphere absent from the bloc. In Parampil’s estimation, the vote was a “last minute attempt to kick Venezuela’s elected government one last time before it heads out the door.”

Venezuela’s decision to leave OAS came hours after the bloc decided to convene in order to discuss the political situation in Caracas. President Nicolas Maduro had previously warned that he would leave should the meeting take place. Then-Foreign Minister and current Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said at the time:

In the future, Venezuela will not participate in any activity, any event, that promotes interventionism and interference … that only seeks to disrupt the stability and peace of our country … because now we know that this coalition of governments from the region has its sights on the sovereignty of our country.”

Venezuela’s representative was not the only one to protest the decision. Mexican Ambassador to the OAS Jorge Lomonaco warned of it setting a dangerous precedent wherein “a subsidiary body can question, with only 18 votes, sovereign decisions.”

Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador, gave a similar warning, adding that “it ignores the rules of the Permanent Council” and also the OAS charter.

Correction: A previous version of this article said that U.S. Ambassador to the OAS Carlos Trujillo would revisit the legal justification for the referenced OAS decision at the UN General Assembly, Trujillo was actually referencing the OAS General Assembly.  We regret this error.

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Alexander Rubinstein is a staff writer for MintPress News based in Washington, DC. He reports on police, prisons and protests in the United States and the United States’ policing of the world. He previously reported for RT and Sputnik News.

Featured image is from Flickr

On Monday, 8 April 2019, the UK’s Home Office and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, jointly released a white paper on what they describe as ‘online harms’.

The white paper will lead, they say, to the “first online safety laws of their kind”, legally requiring social media companies and “tech firms” to “protect their users and face tough penalties if they do not comply.”

A twelve week consultation period began in parallel with the launch of the white paper. We would encourage everyone to submit your views.

The release of the white paper was covered by Mike Robinson and Patrick Henningsen on UK Column News:

2014

24 September: David Cameron calls for regulation of the Internet at the UN General Assembly

David Cameron tells the United Nations General Assembly that something must be done to prevent extremism – not just violent extremism – from appearing online.

He makes it clear that he considers ‘extremism’ to include narratives on global events which are counter to his own.

2017 

31 March: Home Secretary Amber Rudd meets with Tech companies

Amber Rudd meets with representatives of Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook. Following the meeting she says:

My starting point is pretty straightforward. I don’t think that people who want to do us harm should be able to use the internet or social media to do so. I want to make sure we are doing everything we can to stop this.

It was a useful discussion and I’m glad to see that progress has been made.

We focused on the issue of access to terrorist propaganda online and the very real and evolving threat it poses.

I said I wanted to see this tackled head-on and I welcome the commitment from the key players to set up a cross-industry forum that will help to do this.

In taking forward this work I’d like to see the industry to go further and faster in not only removing online terrorist content but stopping it going up in the first place. I’d also like to see more support for smaller and emerging platforms to do this as well, so they can no longer be seen as an alternative shop floor by those who want to do us harm.

31 March: Tech companies publish an open letter to Amber Rudd following their meeting with her

The letter is signed by Hugh Milward, senior director, corporate, external and legal affairs, Microsoft UK; Nick Pickles, UK head of public policy and government, Twitter; Richard Allan, VP public policy EMEA, Facebook; and Nicklas Lundblad, VP public policy Europe, Middle East, Russia and Africa, Google.

It says:

Thank you for the constructive discussion today on the challenges that terrorism poses to us all.

We welcome the opportunity to share with you details of the progress already made in this area and to hear how the UK government is developing its approach in both the online and offline space. Our companies are committed to making our platforms a hostile space for those who seek to do harm and we have been working on this issue for several years. We share the government’s commitment to ensuring terrorists do not have a voice online.

We believe that companies, academics, civil society, and government all have an interest and responsibility to respond to the danger of terrorist propaganda online—and as an industry we are committed to doing more.

5 April: Germany approves bill curbing online ‘hate crime’, ‘fake news’

The German government approves a bill that punishes social networking sites if they fail to swiftly remove ‘illegal’ content such as ‘hate speech’ or defamatory ‘fake news’.

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas says that companies providing online platforms are responsible for removing hateful content. He said the new bill will not restrict freedom of speech. He says:

Just like on the streets, there is also no room for criminal incitement on social networks … The internet affects the culture of debate and the atmosphere in our society. Verbal radicalization is often a preliminary stage to physical violence.

10-11 April: Europol hosts conference on online terrorist propaganda

Europol’s European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) hosts its first high-level Conference on Online Terrorist Propaganda. Over 150 participants gather at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague to discuss a wide variety of related topics.

Participants include members of the ECTC Advisory Group on Terrorist Propaganda, representatives of the EU Commission and EU Council, academia and law enforcement practitioners from Europe and the US.

19 December: Home Affairs Select Committee hears evidence on Online Hate from tech companies

‘Experts’ from Google, Facebook and Twitter appear before Yvette Cooper’s Home Affairs Select Committee. The main concern of the inquiry seems to be online abuse of Members of Parliament.

In the course of giving evidence, all three platforms admit to having added staff to their censorship teams. Facebook, for example, admits to having added 3000 staff to its ‘community operations’ team in the previous six months, plus 20,000 staff to their ‘safety and security’ team. Twitter and Google have recruited similar numbers into their equivilent teams.

26 April: MP asks Facebook to tackle ‘fake news’ as election approaches

Damian Collins MP, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, asks Facebook to tackle fake news in the run up to the UK general election on 8 June.

8 May: Facebook broadens its campaign to raise awareness of ‘fake news’ by publishing adverts in the UK press

The ads are published in The Times, The Guardian and Daily Telegraph amongst others and list ten “things to look out for” when deciding if a story is genuine, including checking the article date and website address, as well as making sure it isn’t intended to be satire.

Facebook says it has already removed “tens of thousands” of fake accounts and that it has set up systems to monitor the repeated posting of the same content.

26 May: G7 demands internet giants crack down on extremist content

Theresa May leads calls at the G7 meeting in Sicily to set up an industry-led forum to deal with ‘extremist’ content online. The official statement following the meeting says:

The G7 calls for Communication Service Providers and social media companies to substantially increase their efforts to address terrorist content … We encourage industry to act urgently in developing and sharing new technology and tools to improve the automatic detection of content promoting incitement to violence, and we commit to supporting industry efforts in this vein including the proposed industry-led forum for combating online extremism.

14 June: UK and France announce joint campaign to tackle unacceptable online content

Theresa May travels to Paris to meet French President Emmanuel Macron. There she continues to press for an industry-led ‘forum’ to deal with ‘unacceptable’ content online. She says:

The counter-terrorism cooperation between British and French intelligence agencies is already strong, but President Macron and I agree that more should be done to tackle the terrorist threat online.

In the UK we are already working with social media companies to halt the spread of extremist material and poisonous propaganda that is warping young minds.

And today I can announce that the UK and France will work together to encourage corporations to do more and abide by their social responsibility to step up their efforts to remove harmful content from their networks, including exploring the possibility of creating a new legal liability for tech companies if they fail to remove unacceptable content.

We are united in our total condemnation of terrorism and our commitment to stamp out this evil.

26 June: Tech giants announce formation of the ‘Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft release a joint statement which says:

Today, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are announcing the formation of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which will help us continue to make our hosted consumer services hostile to terrorists and violent extremists.

… The new forum builds on initiatives including the EU Internet Forum and the Shared Industry Hash Database; discussions with the U.K. and other governments; and the conclusions of the recent G7 and European Council meetings.  It will formalize and structure existing and future areas of collaboration between our companies and foster cooperation with smaller tech companies, civil society groups and academics, governments and supra-national bodies such as the EU and the U.N.

The statement highlights cooperation with ‘partners’ such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anti-Defamation League and Global Network Initiative “to identify how best to counter extremism and online hate, while respecting freedom of expression and privacy.”

31 July: ‘Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’ holds its first meeting

The Global Internet Forum holds its first meeting in San Francisco, where “representatives from the tech industry, government and non-governmental organisations are coming together to share information and best practices about how to counter the threat of terrorism online.”

In her comments about the meeting, British Home Secretary once again reminds us that ‘terrorism’ includes ‘extremism’, echoing David Cameron’s words of three years previously:

2 August: Word Socialist Web Site publishes stats on the effect of Google algorithm change on organic search

The World Socialist Web Site reports that:

New data compiled by the World Socialist Web Site, with the assistance of other Internet-based news outlets and search technology experts, proves that a massive loss of readership observed by socialist, anti-war and progressive web sites over the past three months has been caused by a cumulative 45 percent decrease in traffic from Google searches.

The World Socialist Web Site has obtained statistical data from SEMrush estimating the decline of traffic generated by Google searches for 13 sites with substantial readerships. The results are as follows:

* wsws.org fell by 67 percent
* alternet.org fell by 63 percent
* globalresearch.ca fell by 62 percent
* consortiumnews.com fell by 47 percent
* socialistworker.org fell by 47 percent
* mediamatters.org fell by 42 percent
* commondreams.org fell by 37 percent
* internationalviewpoint.org fell by 36 percent
* democracynow.org fell by 36 percent
* wikileaks.org fell by 30 percent
* truth-out.org fell by 25 percent
* counterpunch.org fell by 21 percent
* theintercept.com fell by 19 percent

25 September: Reports increase of social media censorship

Reports of censorship by social media companies become a regular occurrence:

27 October: Google & George Soros-backed ‘fact-checkers’ join forces

Erica Anderson, Partnerships Manager at Google News Lab, announces that Google will partner with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute to “fact-check” news stories that appear in search results.

Anderson says:

With so much information available around the clock and across devices, being able to understand at a glance what’s true and what’s false online is increasingly important.

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is openly funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

27 October: Twitter bans advertising from RT and Sputnik

In a statement, Twitter says:

This decision was based on the retrospective work we’ve been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government. We did not come to this decision lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter.

18 November: Eric Schmidt announces that Google will de-rank RT and Sputnik

Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, says during a Q&A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada, that the company will “engineer” specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent in search results.

He says:

We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites – it’s basically RT and Sputnik … We are well of aware of it [Russian ‘propaganda’], and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [their content appearing high up in search results]. But we don’t want to ban the sites – that’s not how we operate.

Schmidt claims that he is “very strongly not in favour of censorship,” but says that he has faith in “ranking”.

30 November: Markkula Center for Applied Ethics establishes ‘The Trust Project’

The Trust Project describes itself as “a consortium of top news companies” including the dpa news agency, The Economist, The Globe and Mail, Hearst Television, the Independent Journal Review, Haymarket Media, Institute for Nonprofit News, Italy’s La Repubblica and La Stampa, Mic, Reach Plc and The Washington Post.

Search engines and social media companies are described as “external partners”.

They say they aim to produce “trust indicators”: standardised disclosures “that provide clarity on a news organization’s ethics and other standards for fairness and accuracy, a journalist’s background, and the work behind a news story”, and which can be fed into search engines so that “quality news” can be brought to the top of search results.

2018

25 January: Theresa May announces internet regulation in major speech at Davos

“Technologies like the internet were developed with a philosophy that connecting us together would improve people’s lives,” she says, “And in many ways they have. But so far, that hasn’t been completely true for everyone.”

She continues:

Just this week, a survey in the UK has found that 7 in 10 people believe social media companies do not do enough to stop illegal or unethical behaviour on their platforms, prevent the sharing of extremist content or do enough to prevent bullying.

The loss of trust is hugely damaging. And it is in all our interests to address it.

… And underpinning all of this is our determination to make the UK a world leader in innovation-friendly regulation.

Regulation that will make the UK the best place to start and grow a digital business – but also the safest place to be online.

1 March: Matt Hancock announces government intervention to support mainstream media

In a speech to the House of Commons, Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, announces government support for mainstream media. He says:

Today in a world of the Internet and clickbait, our press face critical challenges that threaten their livelihood and sustainability – with declining circulations and a changing media landscape.

… In 2015, for every 100 pounds newspapers lost in print revenue they gained only 3 pounds in digital revenue.

… Action is needed. Not based on what might have been needed years ago – but action now to address today’s problems.

… Our new Digital Charter sets out the overarching programme of work to agree norms and rules for the online world and put them into practice.

… And our review into the sustainability of high quality journalism will address concerns about the impact of the Internet on our news and media.

12 March: Matt Hancock launches government review into the maintream media at the Oxford Media Convention

Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, announces that Dame Francis Cairncross will lead the government review into the sustainability of the mainstream media.

Speaking at the Oxford Media Convention, Matt Hancock says:

There are a multitude of challenges facing our media today. Falling newspaper circulations, declining advertising revenues, changing consumption and wholesale disinformation.

Trusted, sustainable, high quality media is needed now more than ever.

Dame Frances Cairncross will bring her experience in journalism and academia to tackle these issues with a view to examine the press and protect the future of high quality journalism.

10 April: Theresa May establishes the ‘Rapid Response Unit’ inside the Cabinet Office

Also known as the ‘fake news unit’, the Rapid Response Unit is given an initial six months funding. It brings together a “team of analysts, data scientists and media and digital experts,” armed with cutting edge software to “work round the clock to monitor online breaking news stories and social media discussion.”

According to the RRU’s head, Alex Aiken:

The unit’s round the clock monitoring service has identified several stories of concern during the pilot, ranging from the chemical weapons attack in Syria to domestic stories relating to the NHS and crime.

For example, following the Syria airstrikes, the unit identified that a number of false narratives from alternative news sources were gaining traction online. These “alt-news” sources are biased and rely on sensationalism rather than facts to pique readers’ interest.

Due to the way that search engine algorithms work, when people searched for information on the strikes, these unreliable sources were appearing above official UK government information. In fact, no government information was appearing on the first 15 pages of Google results. We know that search is an excellent indicator of intention. It can reflect bias in information received from elsewhere.

The unit therefore ensured those using search terms that indicated bias – such as ‘false flag’ – were presented with factual information on the UK’s response. The RRU improved the ranking from below 200 to number 1 within a matter of hours.

9 May: Facebook deletes 32 accounts run by ‘leftists’

Facebook reports that it has taken down 32 ‘suspicious’ pages and accounts that appear to have been run by ‘leftists’ and ‘minority activists’.

Some within the US Administration claim the pages were probably run by ‘Russian agents’. Facebook says is does not know for sure.

14 May: Director General MI5 tells EU security conference ‘a great deal more’ needs to be done’

Andrew Parker says in his speech:

Age-old attempts at covert influence and propaganda have been supercharged in online disinformation, which can be churned out at massive scale and little cost. The aim is to sow doubt by flat denials of the truth, to dilute truth with falsehood, divert attention to fake stories, and do all they can to divide alliances.

Bare-faced lying seems to be the default mode, coupled with ridicule of critics.

The Russian state’s now well-practised doctrine of blending media manipulation, social media disinformation and distortion with new and old forms of espionage, high levels of cyber attacks, military force and criminal thuggery is what is meant these days by the label ‘‘hybrid threats’’.

… We are committed to working with them [social media companies] as they look to fulfil their ethical responsibility to prevent terrorist, hostile state and criminal exploitation of internet carried services: shining a light on terrorists and paedophiles; taking down bomb making instructions; warning the authorities about attempts to acquire explosives precursors.

This matters and there is much more to do.

17 May: Facebook announces partnership with Atlantic Council

Facebook announces that it was “partnering” with the Atlantic Council, “to combat election-related propaganda and misinformation from proliferating on its service.”

Facebook becomes a top donor to the Atlantic Council, alongside Western governments, NATO, various branches of the US military, and a number of major defense contractors and corporations.

9 June: Theresa May announces the ‘Rapid Response Mechanism’ at the G7 Summit in Quebec

Theresa May announces the establishment of “a new Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM)”, following Britain’s proposal for “a new, more formalised approach to tackling foreign interference across the G7” at the G7 Foreign Minister’s meeting the previous month.

This agreement sends “a strong message that interference by Russia and other foreign states would not be tolerated,” she says.

The Rapid Response Mechanism “will support preventative and protective cooperation between G7 countries, as well as post-incident responses”, including:

• co-ordinated attribution of hostile activity
• joint work to assert a common narrative and response

31 July: Facebook deletes 32 accounts ‘involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior’

In a press release, Facebook says:

Today we removed 32 Pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior. This kind of behavior is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing.

We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts — including who may be behind this.

14 August: Facebook removes Venezuela’s TeleSur page for a second time

Telesur English, a multi-state-funded Latin American news network, says that Facebook has removed its page for the second time this year “without any specific reason being provided.”

“This is an alarming development in light of the recent shutting down of pages that don’t fit a mainstream narrative,” they say.

31 October: UK Government announces Executive Board for the new UK Council for Internet Safety

The UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS) is the successor to the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS). It has an ‘expanded scope’ to improve online safety for everyone in the UK.

The Executive Board brings together expertise from a range of organisations in the tech industry, civil society and public sector, including:

• Apple
• BBC
• Childnet
• Children’s Commissioner
• Commission for Countering Extremism
• End Violence Against Women Coalition
• Facebook
• GCHQ
• Google
• ICO
• Independent Advisory Group on Hate Crime
• Internet Matters
• Internet Watch Foundation
• Internet Service Providers and Mobile Operators (rotating between BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Three, Virgin Media, Vodafone)
• Microsoft
• National Police Chiefs’ Council
• National Crime Agency – CEOP Command
• Northern Ireland Executive
• NSPCC
• Ofcom
• Parentzone
• Scottish Government
• TechUK
• Twitter
• UKCIS Evidence Group Chair
• UKIE
• Welsh Assembly

Government says UKCIS will contribute to the Government’s commitment to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online, and will help to inform the development of the forthcoming Online Harms White Paper.

UK Column News asks, Is this the embryonic regulator of the internet?

8 August: Alex Jones / Infowars Deplatformed

Facebook, Apple, Spotify, Youtube and Pinterest remove Alex Jones and Inforwars from their platforms. Twitter initially refuses to do so, but follows suits shortly afterwards, following campaigns by mainstream media.

 2019

11 January: Facebook hires Fullfact to provide fact checking in UK

“From January 2019,” they say, “Full Fact will begin reviewing images, videos and articles on Facebook, as the third-party factchecking initiative comes to the UK for the first time.”

Fullfact says it wants to tackle disinformation at its source and give people the tools to spot it for themselves.

They say they will being checking photos, video and give them a rating. Content with a lower rating will appeak lower in Facebook news feeds, thereby reaching fewer people.

21 January: WhatsApp announces global limit on sharing

WhatsApp announces it will limit all its members to forwarding any single message up to five times in an effort to tackle the spread of false information. The previous limits was twenty times.

They say they made their decision having “carefully” evaluated the results of a half-year-long pilot.

“The forward limit significantly reduced forwarded messages around the world.”

12 February: Dame France Cairncross publishes her review into the sustainability of the Mainstream Media

She proposes:

• New codes of conduct to rebalance the relationship between publishers and online platforms
• The Competition & Markets Authority to investigate the online advertising market to ensure fair competition
• Online platforms’ efforts to improve their users’ news experience should be placed under regulatory supervision
• Ofcom should explore the market impact of BBC News, and whether it inappropriately steps into areas better served by commercial news providers
• The BBC should do more to help local publishers and think further about how its news provision can act as a complement to commercial news
• A new independent Institute should be created to ensure the future provision of public interest news
• A new Innovation Fund should be launched, aiming to improve the supply of public interest news
• New forms of tax reliefs to encourage payments for online news content and support local and investigative journalism

22 February: UKGov confirms Theresa May’s ‘Rapid Response Unit’ has received permanent funding

The Rapid Response Unit, the Cabinet Office ‘fake news unit’ established in April 2018, is given permanent funding to continue its work monitoring social media and making sure the government narrative appears at the top of search rankings.

3 April: Zuckerberg: More government involvement does not remove our responsibility

On a visit to Dublin, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admits that there is a lot more the social network can do to regulate social media content.

He told RTE News:

I think these days a lot of people don’t want tech companies or any private companies to be making so many decisions about what speech is acceptable and what this harmful content that needs to be gets taken down.

So I think there is a role for a broader public debate here and I think some of these things would benefit from a more democratic process and a more active government role.

8 April: UK government publishes their ‘Online Harms White Paper’

A joint Home Office / DCMS initiative, the white paper proposals include:

• A new statutory ‘duty of care’ to make companies take “more responsibility” for the content or activity on their services. This will apply to all platforms of whatever size which permit user interaction such as forums or comments, and carries the potential for massive fines and imprisonment.
• Giving a regulator the power to force social media platforms and others to publish annual transparency reports on the amount of harmful content on their platforms and what they are doing to address this.
• Codes of practice, issued by the regulator, which could include measures such as requirements to minimise the spread of misleading and harmful disinformation with dedicated fact checkers, particularly during election periods.
• A media literacy strategy to equip people with the knowledge to recognise and deal with a range of deceptive and malicious behaviours online, including catfishing, grooming and extremism.

A twelve week consultation period begins from the date of publication.

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April 11, 2019, brought us a new word for Judas: Moreno—the puppet president of Ecuador who sold Julian Assange to Washington for his 30 pieces of silver.

This morning’s arrest of Assange inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London is the first stage in Washington’s attempt to criminalize the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Washington’s man in Quito said he revoked Assange’s political asylum and Ecuadoran citizenship because Assange engaged in free speech.

As race and gender diverse police dragged Assange out of the embassy this morning, I reflected on the utter corruption of three governments—the U.S., the U.K., and Ecuador—and their institutions.

The British police showed no shame as they carted Assange from his embassy prison of the last seven years to a British jail as a way station on the way to an American one. If the British police had any integrity, the entire force would have called in sick.

If the British parliament had any integrity, they would have blocked London’s contribution to Washington’s upcoming show trial.

If the British had a prime minister instead of a Washington agent, Assange would have been released a long time ago, not held in de facto imprisonment until Washington found Moreno’s price.

If the Ecuadoran ambassador in London had any integrity, he would have publicly resigned rather than call in the police to take Assange. Is the ambassador so soulless that he can live with himself as the man who helped Moreno dishonor the reputation of Ecuador?

If the Anglo-American journalists had any integrity, they would be up in arms over the criminalization of their profession.

President Trump has survived a three-year ordeal similar to Assange’s seven-year ordeal. Trump knows how corrupt US intelligence agencies and the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) are. If Trump had any integrity, he would bring the shameful and embarrassing persecution of Assange to an immediate end by issuing a pre-trial pardon. This would also end the illegal re-imprisonment of Manning.

But integrity is not something that thrives in Washington, or in London, or in Quito.

When the Justice (sic) Department does not have a crime with which to charge its intended victim, the department trots out “conspiracy.” Assange is accused of being in a conspiracy with Manning to obtain and publicize secret government data, such as the film, which was already known to a Washington Post reporter who failed his newspaper and his profession by remaining silent, of U.S. soldiers committing extraordinary war crimes without remorse. As a U.S. soldier, it was actually Manning’s duty to report the crimes and the failure of U.S. troops to disobey unlawful orders. Manning was supposed to report the crimes to his superiors, not to the public, but he knew the military had already covered up the massacre of journalists and civilians and did not want another My Lai-type event on its hands.

I don’t believe the charge against Assange. If Wikileaks cracked the code for Manning, Wikileaks did not need Manning.

The alleged Grand Jury that allegedly produced the indictment was conducted in secret over many years as Washington searched for something that might be pinned on Assange. If there actually was a grand jury, the jurors were devoid of integrity, but how do we know there was a grand jury? Why should we believe anything Washington says after “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people,” “Iranian nukes,” “Russian invasion of Ukraine,” “Russiagate,” and on and on ad infinitum. Why believe Washington is telling the truth this time?

As the grand jury was secret because of “national security,” will the trial also be secret and the evidence secret? Is what we have here a Star Chamber proceeding in which a person is indicted in secret and convicted in secret on secret evidence? This is the procedure used by tyrannical governments who have no case against the person they intend to destroy.

The governments in Washington, London, and Quito are so shameless that they do not mind demonstrating to the entire world their lawlessness and lack of integrity.

Perhaps the rest of the world is itself so shameless that there will be no adverse consequences for Washington, London, and Quito. On the other hand, perhaps the frameup of Assange, following the Russiagate hoax and the shameless attempt to overthrow democracy in Venezuela and install Washington’s agent as president of that country, will make it clear to all that “the free world” is led by a rogue and lawless government. Washington is speeding up the decline of its empire as Washington makes it clear that Washington is worthy of no respect.

No confidence that justice will be served can be placed in any American trial. In Assange’s trial justice is not possible. With Assange convicted by the media, even a jury convinced of his innocence will convict him rather than face denunciation for freeing a “Russian spy.”

Assange’s conviction will make it impossible for media to report leaked information that is unfavorable to the government. As the precedent expands, future prosecutors will claim the Assange case as a precedent for prosecuting critics of the government who will be charged with intended harm to the government. The age of justice and accountable government is being brought to an end.

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

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

The man seemed like a bearded emissary, a holy figure nabbed in his sleep. He looked similarly pale as to how he did in 2013, but he cut a more shocking figure.  Most prisoners would have had room to move in a compound.  The Ecuadorean embassy in London only offered modest space and access to sun light.  Hospitality of late was in short supply. 

Julian Assange had been ill.  His advocates had bravely insisted that he needed treatment. 

“As a journalist who has worked as media partner of @Wikileaks since 2009,” reflected a near grieving Stefania Maurizi, “it has been so painful to watch Julian Assange’s health completely declining in the last 9 years as a result of confinement with no end in sight, tremendous stress, threats.” 

Sir Alan Duncan of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was happy to offer it, provided Assange step out of the embassy.

But Assange’s time had finally come.  The embroiling of the Moreno administration in the INA Papers affair suggested that the president needed an out.  Images of Moreno’s family skirting around the internet in various fora during days of plenty, and the suggestion that he had been profiting from a Panama offshore account, put Assange back in the picture. Who better to blame than a man in confinement, whose communications had been restricted, whose health was failing?  WikiLeaks duly received a tipoff from a “high level source within the Ecuadorean state” that the offshore scandal would be used “as a pretext” to remove difficult tenant.   

The writ and run of asylum has been shredded, and the conduct of Ecuador’s president Lenín Moreno is worth noting. In his address explaining the abrupt termination of Assange’s stay, Moreno was a dissembling picture.  Assange, he had been assured by UK authorities, would come to no harm.  He would not be facing torture or the death penalty (a reassuring red herring, given that the death penalty is off the table in extradition matters dealing with the UK in any case).    

He had been “discourteous” and “aggressive”, WikiLeaks “hostile and threatening” to Ecuador.  Ecuador had been “generous” and “respectful of the principles of international law, and of the institutions of the right of asylum.”  Self-praise tends to increase in volume the more guilt is assumed, and Moreno made it clear that the law of asylum was a “sovereign right of the Ecuadorean state”.  It was Assange who was the violator of diplomatic protocols, refusing to abide by “the norm of not intervening in the internal affairs of other states.” 

Specific reference was made to the leaking of Vatican documents in January 2019; Assange was still “linked” to WikiLeaks. He blocked security cameras; he used “distorting” equipment. He even “confronted and mistreated guards”.  He communicated via a mobile phone “with the outside world.” And he dared taking his case through Ecuadorean legal channels. 

Moreno’s justification received much steam from UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who claimed that Assange was “no hero and no one is above the law.  He has hidden from the truth for years.”  (Psychological slip, perhaps?  Is it Assange allergic to the truth, or the security establishments he wishes to prize open?). Both Moreno and Ecuador were to be thanked for their cooperation with the Foreign Office “to ensure Assange faces justice.”

President Donald Trump has been even more brazen on the subject of Assange’s arrest, feigning an attack of amnesia.  “I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing.”  During the 2016 campaign, WikiLeaks had been very much Trump’s “thing”, praised some 140 times for revealing email correspondence from the Democratic National Committee.  “Oh, we love WikiLeaks,” he cheered at a North Carolina rally.  No longer. 

Critics of WikiLeaks and Assange have always presumed exaggeration.  The narcissist had nothing to fear accept model British justice, the same justice that has gone to extraordinary lengths over the years to affect various, high profile miscarriages.  Skipping bail was tantamount to a parking offence; face the music.  Instead, WikiLeaks was shown to be correct: Assange is facing the full force of an extensive investigation against a publisher by the self-touted leader of the free world. 

Ever since the publication of Cablegate, WikiLeaks has been the subject of a multi-organisational investigation by US prosecutors and defence personnel keen to sketch a legal basis for targeting the organisation.  Assange has figured prominently.  Despite the niggling problems associated with the Free speech amendment, legal personnel have been stretching the grounds on how to circumvent it. 

Some few hours after Assange was bundled out of the embassy and into a van by the London Metropolitan Police, a US extradition request was revealed.  He would not be prosecuted as a journalist, which would bring up press freedom issues, but as a hacker under the single charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.  “Assange, who did not possess a security clearance or need to know, was not authorized to receive classified material from the United States.”

The golden thread in the argument is Chelsea Manning, and four databases “from departments and agencies of the United States.” Both Manning and Assange had entered into an agreement to crack “a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network”.  The alleged conspiracy “was to facilitate Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information related to the national defense of the United States so that WikiLeaks could publicly disseminate the information on its website.”

Stripped bare, the issue for Assange is this.  Dislike him, loathe him, and feel your skin crawl before him.  Fantasise about what he might or might not have done in Sweden.  Sanctify and scribble hagiography about him.  Speculate about how he might have been as a tenant of asylum.  He remains a publisher and a journalist, unconventional, daring, a vigilante of sorts who sought to etch himself into history while giving the world a very cogent, thrilling idea: opening the darkened corridors of corrupting power and holding them accountable. 

As the Centre for Investigate Journalism states,

“Whatever your view of its philosophy of radical transparency, WikiLeaks is a publisher.  Any charges now brought in connection with that material, or any attempt to extradite Mr Assange to the United States for prosecution under the deeply flawed cudgel of the Espionage Act 1917 is an attack on all of us.” 

Edward Snowden added a concurring voice: Ecuador’s invitation for the UK secret police “to drag a publisher of – like it or not – award winning journalism out of the building are going to end up in the history books.  Assange’s critics may cheer, but this is a dark moment for press freedom.”

Even if he has never been fully accepted within the fraternity of the press, he has, in many ways, led its change. His forensic style of journalism, with its techniques of placing original documentation upon sites for readers to consult, has brought greater scrutiny of sources.  His embrace of secure systems for sending classified material, and his pioneering of international cross-border collaborative reporting, transformed the nature of modern journalism. But pioneers tend to find themselves in the colosseum facing the hungry lions of state. 

The pursuit of Assange, as British Labour’s Diane Abbott quite accurately assessed, was not done “to protect US national security” but “because he has exposed wrongdoing by US administrations and their military forces.”  Former Greek finance minister and rabble rousing economist Yanis Varoufakis saw the clouds lift on the sham.  “The game is up.  Years of lies exposed. It was never about Sweden, Putin, Trump or Hillary.  Assange was persecuted for exposing war crimes.”  Punish Assange, punish the press.  Punish Assange and condemn the Fourth Estate. 

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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]

In a shameful public lynching of Julian Assange after his arrest, ladies and gentlemen of the media in “civilized” America are carrying their torches high and calling him the “America’s number one enemy”.

The fact is that these media mercenaries like a mindless firing squad who have a wrong target and are shooting each other! Those “journalists” who fabricate Julian Assange story and his contributions; sooner or later will find themselves victims of the same repressive policies that they are cheering today. The wealthy elite hate to be exposed by independent journalists. They cannot tolerate those who speak up against them and expose their secretive and undemocratic policies and deeds. They have created different institutions such as the CIA, FBI, NSA and DHS so they can spy on all Americans – citizen or not — and punish those who dare to shed light on their criminal and unconstitutional killing, torturing, unlawful arrests and secret detention centers both here in the U.S. and abroad. That is the gist of their revenge against Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.

The New York Times, Washington Post newspapers or NPR, CNN, FOX News and MSNBC radio and TV channels already found Julian Assange guilty for “jumping bail!” These critics are the same people who actually are considering the story of cutting the body of a dissent journalist inside the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Ankara as old news. Now the same people are looking for revenge against Julian Assange who only did what an honorable independent journalist should have done, that is telling the truth. Julian Assange didn’t create or fabricate any story; he just simply published the unvarnished truth.

Source: author

So, what is next? Is this the “darkest” time in the U.S. history that puts end to independent journalism? Of course not! We should listen to the man himself while he was dragging out of one prison to another. Julian Assange’s message was simple and clear: “Resist!” American people remember the Sacco-Vanzetti case as two innocent men who had unfair trial. That is true with the case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. So this is not the first time. However, times have changed; today the debacle Democrats and Fascistic minded Republicans are accusing each other of treason! True peace activists and democratic minded people will see the arrest of Julian Assange as a new stage in struggle for peace and justice. The Democrats who are professional activists or just act like functionaries are unable to join the struggle for freedom of speech. Their hatred of Trump has blinded them for life.

The message of “Resist!” means that all independent journalists should unite and challenge the fake media personalities for debate! The message of “Resist!” means that activists in the U.K., U.S. and around the world should organize daily demonstrations in front of the British and American embassies and their media buildings. The message of “Resist!” means that progressive students should call for a day of strike for freedom of speech. The message of “Resist!” means that working people from Baghdad to Boston should stand up for transparency and fairness.

“No one is above the law” claimed the worn-out British Prime Minister Theresa May; our task is to prove exactly that.

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

Yesterday (April 10, 2019) a reader alerted me to the fact that I am being smeared on Wikipedia as a “vocal supporter of the current Russian government and its policies.” The reader also reports that an article in the Daily Beast calls me a “Putin worshiper.” The reader says that he tried to edit the Wikipedia entry without success, and he urged me to give it my attention.

I do not know whether the person who wrote my Wikipedia entry intended to smear me or is merely uninformed. However, dissenting voices do get smeared on Wikipedia. It is an ongoing problem for many of us. For years readers and people who know me would make corrections to my Wikipedia biography, but as soon as the corrections were made, they would be erased and the smears reinstalled.

The problem with Wikipedia is that it is an idealistic approach based on the belief that truth is more likely to emerge when everyone has a voice than when explanations are provided by a select group of experts or peers. This idealistic approach is not without merit. Moreover, it might work very well with subjects and people who do not have ideological opponents or are of no threat to those intent on controlling explanations.

The problem arises when a subject or a person is controversial and is especially the case if the person’s arguments disprove or dissent from official explanations. In The Matrix in which we live, truth-tellers are unwelcome to those who control the explanations in order to advance their agendas. Until truth-tellers can be silenced or completely censured, the practice is to discredit them with smears. Thus, I and many others have been described as “conspiracy theorists” for reporting factual information that contradicts the official and unproven explanation of 9/11, anti-semites for criticizing Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians and influence over U.S. foreign policy, and as “Russian agents” or “Putin stooges” for keeping the record straight about Ukraine, Syria, and Putin’s effort to avoid military conflict with the West.

In the pre-Internet age it was difficult to smear people. Newspaper editors would allow letters to the editor to correct factual mistakes or to provide a different interpretation of a collection of facts, but shied away from smears. This doesn’t mean that smears never happened, but not with the abandon of the Internet era.

Open works in process like Wikipedia, Internet comment sections and social media are ideally suited for smearing people and broadcasting the smears worldwide prior to any correction of them. Thus, the digital revolution has been a godsend to government agencies such as the CIA, State Department, Mossad, the Israel Lobby, corporations and other private interest groups, ideological movements such as neoconservatism and Identity Politics, and politicians, all of whom have agendas that are furthered by controlling the explanations.

As money is the highest value for many people, there is an unlimited supply of people who can be hired to smear those who challenge official explanations. A smear can start in a comment section, move to social media, and from there to a website and on to Wikipedia.

It is truth tellers who are smeared, people such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Manning, and whistleblowers whose messages are inconvenient for powerful private and government interests.

Smears are effective. There is no shortage of gullible and uninformed or misinformed people. They take a smear at face value and avoid the person or idea smeared. Despite the extreme clarity of Julian Assange’s orchestrated persecution, many see him as a “rapist escaping justice,” “Russian spy,” and “a blackmailer of governments and people.”

In short mud sticks better than facts. That is why I am not optimistic about the future of truth in the digital age. Many see the digital age as the era when truth will flourish. I understand their case. Their belief is not without merit. But the digital age is also an age in which lies can flourish because, unlike the print age, they can be so easily spread.

Consider, for example, the description of me as a “vocal supporter of the current Russian government and its policies” and a “Putin worshiper.” I am a well known critic of the Russian government’s neoliberal economic policies. Michael Hudson and I have jointly criticized the Russian government’s neoliberal economic policies and demonstrated that they are harmful to Russia’s economy. I am known also as a skeptic of Putin’s policy of turning the other check to Washington’s and Israel’s aggressions. I appreciate and admire Putin’s enormous self-control, but I have expressed concern that Putin’s unwillingness to put down a hard foot fails to turn away wrath and instead encourages more aggression that sooner or later will result in thermonuclear war.

The Russian government is aware of my position, as is the Russian media where I am often interviewed. My position is also clearly expressed on my website, which is read internationally. So why does the Daily Beast and Wikipedia misrepresent my position?

Wikipedia and comment sections can work only if commentators are responsible people who are carefully monitored by knowledgable and responsible monitors. But this takes us back to peer-reviewed explanations that Wikipedia was created to avoid.

Historically, messengers are killed, so truth tellers have to expect smears or worse–Julian Assange was arrested this morning inside the Ecuadoran embassy in London. Mankind is fallen. Governments do evil. The most evil is done to those who oppose evil. Truth cannot be told without cost to he who tells the truth.

When I speak of truth-tellers, I am speaking of people whose motive is to tell the truth. Truth is their agenda. I am not saying that truth tellers are infallible and always right. I am saying that they strive to be. They do not intentionally write falsehoods and mislead.

Truth is not opinion. It is pointless to tell a truth teller that you disagree with him. You can present a case that his facts are wrong. You can present a case that there is a better explanation of the facts.

In my experience when most people say they disagree, they mean that they prefer another explanation that is more congenial to their feelings and emotions. For example, many Americans believed the preposterous Russiagate fib because they dislike Trump, just as today conservative talk radio has adopted the official explanation of 9/11 because it can be used against the outspoken female Muslim member of Congress. The facts have nothing to do with either belief. In both cases, the facts are resisted because the truth is not as emotionally comforting or as useful for the agenda at hand as the lie.

I have no objection if readers undertake to monitor and correct the account presented of me in Wikipedia. It will be an ongoing process, and will require the commitment of many of you. Those behind the attacks on me have a lot of money and a lot of hirelings, and they can erase your work as soon as you finish.

The digital revolution and the control mechanisms it provides makes it far more likely that we will end up in a locked down dystopia than would ever have been possible in the print age. But the digital revolution represents perhaps an even greater threat to humanity. It is making humans redundant.

What are humans to do when everything is automated? If the tech nerds have their way, we soon won’t be allowed to drive cars.

What will humans do when there is no need for their labor? Boston Dynamics, a Waltham Massachusettes company, has come up with a robot that replaces warehouse workers. The prediction is that 40 million more Americans will be shoved out of the workforce by robots over the next ten years.

Has anyone thought about who is going to be employed and have the money to purchase the products of robots? No doubt we will be promised all kinds of new and better jobs like we were promised to take the place of the offshored manufacturing and professional service jobs. The promised jobs never showed up. And no, this is not a luddite argument. Everyone can’t be employed designing robots to replace humans.

Each warehouse will rush to increase its profits by laying off employees, and none will consider the aggregate effect on consumer demand for the products in the warehouses. Will the warehouses have to give back their gained profits in taxes to support the unemployed? Will the warehouses have any profits if people haven’t income from jobs with which to buy the products in the warehouses? Does the robot age mean profits have to be socialized in order to sustain human life?

An intelligent approach to technology would be to focus on technology that enhances human performance, not on technology that eliminates the need for humans.

At Stanford University technology has emerged, or is emerging, that permits real time changes in the movements of a person’s mouth as he speaks in order to broadcast a message different than the one the speaker is speaking. The mischief possible with this technology is unacceptable. Television could destroy any unwelcome politician or leader by showing him delivering a message designed to destroy him. If people catch on, it would mean the end of televised speeches as no one would believe any speech unless they were present in person.

People already find it challenging to comprehand reality. The emergence of technology capable of falsifying reality in real time presages a future in which fact and fiction become indistinguishable. The unintended consequence of this technology may well be the death of truth.

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

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

The Indo-American Strategic Partnership has rapidly progressed to such a point that the South Asian state is now copying some of the same conspiracy theories as its new patron, though instead of India being obsessed with suspected Russian interference in its elections like America was, its people can’t stop talking about its imaginary Pakistani variant.

Pakistangate

Pakistani Prime Minister Khan made global headlines earlier this week when he said that it might be easier for his country to clinch peace talks with India and resolve the Kashmir Conflict if Modi wins re-election after his country’s month-long electoral process concludes at the end of May. This took many Indians completely off guard who had hitherto been preconditioned by none other than the ruling BJP itself to think that Pakistan was “meddling” in their elections in order to support the opposition Congress party and their coalition allies. The Pakistani leader explained his initially surprising position by rationally noting how it would be less likely that right-wing forces would oppose any BJP-led peace talks unlike the spoiling effect they could have if left-leaning Congress attempted to initiate the same, which makes sense upon further contemplation and is actually a very wise observation.

From -Gate To -Gate

Instead of being interpreted as such, however, India’s “confirmation bias” on all sides caused it to continue cannibalizing itself over the entirely speculative issue of “who Pakistan really supports”, with practically all parties refusing to believe that their neighbor is just sitting on the sidelines watching in awe as the Indian political class tears itself apart over this issue and discredits their claim to being the self-professed “world’s largest democracy”. Interestingly, what’s unfolding in India at the moment with Pakistangate is very similar to what has been taking place in its military-strategic partner over the past couple of years with Russiagate. This suggests that the vassal state is copying some of the same conspiracy theories as its new patron, including the role that elements of its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) are playing in this process.

“Deep State” Meddling

Democratic-friendly elements of the American “deep state” essentially entrapped Carter Page, after which they consequently used this false flag as the pretext for “justifying” a far-reaching FISA surveillance operation against the entire Trump campaign which then sought to exploit its “six degrees of separation” from Russia to concoct a weaponized narrative that ultimately failed to prevent him from winning the election and then later getting him overthrown through a de-facto coup. Something along the same lines happened with the BJP-friendly elements of the Indian “deep state” that “passively facilitated” the Pulwama incident which was later blamed on Pakistan and used as the pretext for “justifying” a so-called “surgical strike” against it that also miserably failed in what it sought out to do, though it nevertheless succeeded in making Indians hysterical about anything to do with Pakistan.

Witch Hunts

The BJP has even gone as far as to imply that all dissidents who disagree with its official version of events are treasonous, which is reminiscent of how the then-ruling Democrats suggested that anyone supporting Trump was either under the influence of “Russian propaganda” or a “Russian bot” if they were expressing their views in cyberspace. Just as Russia became a convenient scapegoat for the pro-incumbent elements of the American “deep state” to centralize their power behind the scenes and meddle in their own country’s elections, so too has Pakistan been abused to serve the same purpose vis-a-vis the pro-incumbent elements of the Indian “deep state”, with both of their permanent bureaucracies presently in the process of merging their narratives into a geopolitically weaponized one ridiculously alleging that Russia and Pakistan are jointly waging “hybrid wars” across the world.

Concluding Thoughts

It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that India’s “deep state” is copying its American counterpart’s Russiagate conspiracy theory and remixing it with a national touch to produce Pakistangate in pursuit of the exact same purpose of remaining in power, though just like with its inspiration, this might ultimately end up backfiring against its practitioners since it’s impossible to control chaotic processes once Pandora’s Box has been opened. In any case and regardless of the eventual electoral outcome, the Indian and American “deep states” will continue to converge into a single unipolar shadow entity dedicated to the shared objective of stopping multipolarity, using the “bonding experience” of their respective manufactured -gate conspiracies to accelerate this ongoing process and ensure that the Indo-American Strategic Partnership is one of the Eastern Hemisphere’s most geopolitically disruptive developments this century.

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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.

Il rischio di una grande guerra che, con l’uso delle armi nucleari potrebbe segnare la fine dell’Umanità, è reale e sta aumentando, anche se non è percepito dall’opinione pubblica tenuta all’oscuro dell’incombente pericolo.

È di vitale importanza il massimo impegno per uscire dal sistema di guerra. Ciò pone la questione dell’appartenenza dell’Italia e di altri paesi europei alla NATO.

La NATO non è una Alleanza. È una organizzazione sotto comando del Pentagono, il cui scopo è il controllo militare dell’Europa Occidentale e Orientale.

Le basi USA nei paesi membri della NATO servono a occupare tali paesi, mantenendovi una presenza militare permanente che permette a Washington di influenzare e controllare la loro politica e impedire reali scelte democratiche.

Source: PandoraTV

La NATO è una macchina da guerra che opera per gli interessi degli Stati Uniti, con la complicità dei maggiori gruppi europei di potere, macchiandosi di crimini contro l’umanità.

La guerra di aggressione condotta dalla NATO nel 1999 contro la Jugoslavia ha aperto la via alla globalizzazione degli interventi militari, con le guerra contro l’Afghanistan, la Libia, la Siria e altri paesi, in completa violazione del diritto internazionale.

Tali guerre vengono finanziate dai paesi membri, i cui bilanci militari sono in continua crescita a scapito delle spese sociali, per sostenere colossali programmi miiitari come quello nucleare statunitense da 1.200 miliardi di dollari.

Gli USA, violando il Trattato di non-proliferazione, schierano armi nucleari in 5 Stati non-nucleari della NATO, con la falsa motivazione della «minaccia russa». Mettono in tal modo in gioco la sicurezza dell’Europa.

Per uscire dal sistema di guerra che ci danneggia sempre più e ci espone al pericolo imminente di una grande guerra, si deve uscire dalla NATO, affermando il diritto di essere Stati sovrani e neutrali.

È possibile in tal modo contribuire allo smantellamento della NATO e di ogni altra alleanza militare, alla riconfigurazione degii assetti dell’intera regione europea, alla formazione di un mondo multipolare in cui si realizzino le aspirazioni dei popoli alla libertà e alla giustizia sociale.

Proponiamo la creazione di un fronte internazionale NATO EXIT in tutti i paesi europei della NATO, costruendo una rete organizzativa a livello di base capace di sostenere la durissima lotta per conseguire tale obiettivo vitale per il nostro futuro.

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Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

All images are from the author

What’s going on is a developing story. Events are fast moving. Here’s what’s known so far.

Days earlier, WikiLeaks accused Ecuadorian embassy personnel in London of “extensive spying” on Assange, according to its editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, saying:

It’s been going on as part of Ecuador’s complicity with the US and UK to arrest, detain, and extradite him to US authorities – for the crime of truth telling, journalism the way it’s supposed to be.

“We know that there was a request to hand over visitor’s logs from the embassy and video recordings from within the security cameras in the embassy,” Hrafnsson explained, information to be handed over to Trump regime officials to be used against Assange, she believes.

At a Thursday news conference, former Ecuadorian consul to London Fidel Narvaez said his country “is not protecting Julian anymore,” his asylum status illegally rescinded.

Hours earlier, UK metropolitan police entered Ecuador’s London embassy, forcibly arresting Assange, a statement saying:

“He has been taken into custody at a central London police station where he will remain, before being presented before Westminster Magistrates’ Court as soon as is possible,” adding:

It “had a duty (sic) to execute (an outstanding warrant against him, pertaining to fabricated rape and sexual abuse charges in Sweden later rescinded) on behalf of Westminster Magistrates’ Court, and was invited into the embassy by the ambassador, following the Ecuadorian government’s withdrawal of asylum.”

UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid tweeted the following:

“(N)early seven years after entering the Ecuadorean Embassy, I can confirm Julian Assange is now in police custody and rightly facing justice in the UK (sic).”

“I would like to thank Ecuador for its cooperation (sic) and the metropolitan police for its professionalism (sic). No one is above the law (sic).”

Last Friday, Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry denied what it called “rumors” about its government’s intention to rescind Assange’s asylum, expelling him from its London embassy, permitting his arrest by UK authorities ahead of extraditing him to the US.

Days earlier, WikiLeaks said Quito and London agreed on expelling Assange from Ecuador’s London embassy in “hours to days.”

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno falsely accused him of “repeatedly violat(ing) the conditions of his asylum,” unjustifiably claiming he “hack(ed) private accounts (and) phones,” adding:

“In WikiLeaks we have seen evidence of spying, intervention in private conversations on phones, including photos of my bedroom, of what I eat, of how my wife and daughters and friends dance.”

The above accusations are groundless. Not a shred of evidence supports them. Assange is a political refugee – granted Ecuadorian citizenship and asylum in the country’s London embassy by former President Correa.

Under international law, refugees and asylum seekers are protected. In cahoots with the US and Britain, Moreno ordered Assange expelled in return for whatever favors he was promised.

Via Twitter, Moreno repeated false accusations against Assange as a phony pretext for rescinding his asylum protection – claiming UK authorities said extradition won’t be ordered to a country practicing capital punishment, a willful deception.

On Thursday, attorney representing Assange Jen Robinson said UK police arrested Assange for “extradition to the United States for (the crime of) publishing” information everyone has the right to know.

His arrest was “not just for breach of bail conditions (related to phony rape and sexual abuse charges) but also in relation to a US extradition request.”

US show trial prosecution on phony charges, along with gulag prison hell awaits him, likely including longterm isolation in solitary confinement, amounting to torture – a flagrant Eighth Amendment violation, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishments.

Under international law, torture and similar abuse are forbidden at all times, under all circumstances, with no allowed exceptions.

US viciousness ongoing again against Chelsea Manning and other heroic whistleblowers, for revealing government criminality and other wrongdoing, now awaits Assange once handed over to US authorities – the fate awaiting him.

It’s up to ordinary people everywhere valuing peace, equity and justice, wanting to live free from Washington’s repressive boot, to resist what’s going on against Assange along with other imperial high crimes.

The choice between freedom or fascism is simple – living free or under the yoke of tyrannical rule.

Assange’s unlawful arrest is one of many reasons for me to be ashamed to be an American – never beautiful, world’s apart from the country I grew up in long ago.

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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.

The next Elections for the European Parliament scheduled on 23-26 May 2019 have already started with fervor! A total of 751 seats (MEPs) are currently up for grabs by those fortunate enough to secure a seat in one of the most lucrative and privileged positions on offer.

EU salaries and the perks of MEPs are nothing to sneeze at either: €7957 monthly gross salary; €4342 per month office costs; all domestic and international travel expenses paid plus €306 per day travel allowance including other privileges.  With such incentives on the table, it makes the job of an MEP seem like manna from heaven and nobody wants to miss out on such an opportunity! The only qualification necessary is the “gift of the gab” or to be a member of a political party.

It is no wonder aspiring politicians and party faithful including journalists, media personalities and TV presenters add their names to the list of hopeful candidates in the hope they secure such a prestigious political career.

In the meantime, a fierce battle is in progress between all the political parties offering promises to lure the loyalty of voters but also appeal to prospective candidates that offer a lesser risk of winning a seat at the next European Parliament; a parliament that in fact has no legitimacy!

In smaller states these overrated parliamentary elections become the main topic of affairs and all the local political parties attempt to make deals and counter deals on selecting a mutually agreed candidate in the chance that they can win a seat for the party. Meanwhile, the mass media and the government add to the frenzy as if EU elections are god-sent and so important to people’s lives that they cannot be ignored.

This year however all the political parties share an underlying problem; they fear the rise of nationalist movements! Those sweeping candidates opposed to EU policies show strong signs of gaining critical votes right across Europe. Consequently, they pose a serious challenge and can tip the balance of power inside the chamber of the European Parliament and in so doing, change the entire EU parliamentary spectrum forever.

Swarmed by hundreds of politicians the “Parliament” was originally created with one specific purpose in mind; to use its democratic voting status as a means to rubberstamp the Council’s rulings and in so doing legitimize the EU institution as a democratic entity!

It is also a known fact that MEPs have no role to play in the EU decision-making process or actions agreed behind closed doors between the unelected Commission and Council. As the main body authorized to amend and adopt laws and coordinate policies for the entire European Union, only the “Mighty Commission” can make those decisions. Yet, elected parliamentarians are obliged to stamp their approval on policies presented to them by unelected bureaucrats!

It has come to pass that when an elected parliament has no legitimacy or the power to make decisions, adopt laws or introduce policies in the interest of the people, cannot be called a parliament but a lame institution and that’s where parliamentary democracy ends! The rest is a shambolic act based on misconception by a non-elected and undemocratic EU supranational organization in pursuit of supremacy.

There is a public illusion that MEPs are elected to represent the interests of the voters in their own country but that’s far, far from the truth! In fact it’s a total fallacy and a lie! Once elected, MEPs change hats and they are committed to make decisions in the interest of the entire European Union and not of their own country that has been reduced to a “province” of the EU.

BREXIT this year will certainly shake up the EU and probably become the catalyst to trigger a domino effect for other states to exit the European Union. It promises to be the most significant revolution ever and this nightmarish scenario sends shivers down the spine of the EU and Europhiles. Meanwhile, member-states are anxiously waiting to see the final outcome of this political nightmare, which has come to upset the cozy EU relationship amongst governments and banking institutions.

Without a doubt, there are clear signs of irreconcilable differences between the Commission and some member states are resisting the unsavory metamorphosis the EU is going through – from its original concept of a Common Market to a political European Union in pursuit of its own army and control over the lives of 512.6 million citizens!

Under the current political rift it is reasonable to assume that Article 50 for EU Exit would be repeated again some day soon! The obvious rancor between Emmanuel Macron and Matteo Salvini offers a clear picture of policy discord among EU leaders attempting to protect their own national interests; breakups seem inevitable!

The most serious problem facing member-states today has been the ever-increasing flow of thousands of illegal migrants and “asylum” seekers the Commission refuses to deal with. It has chosen to “wash its hands” by paying billions of compensation to others and deal with the problem. Obsessed by its “Open Borders” flagship, the EU refuses to accept responsibility for actually encouraging the torrent of human flow that now threatens social stability and also the demographic character of Europe!

Without question a new generation of citizens has discovered they have a voice and can no longer remain silent to injustices. They feel deceived by governments and they openly speak out by turning their back on the established order and political parties that have betrayed their aspirations. The Yellow Jackets uprising in France against a failed system it’s a fine example of peoples’ resistance to unfair treatment in a wealthy country.

The ugly scenes of angry mass demonstrations in the streets of France, Greece and other European countries speak a thousand words; they speak of a letdown by governments and EU policymakers that failed them miserably and take to the streets in demand of radical changes and no more shallow promises! Only the people of EU-Cyprus seem reluctant to protest for changes to the status quo and yet the island absorbs the highest ratio of refugees in comparison to its small population.

Citizens have come to recognize that national governments and the EU institution have both reneged on their promise to provide security and social stability in a land of plenty, democracy and equality! In contrast, they have managed to rekindle people’s reawakening of nationalism­­­­­­­–the stuff that revolutions are made of!

If at the upcoming elections, nationalist parties accumulate enough decisive votes in Parliament, things will never be the same again for the European Union. For better or worse, the EU would be forced to recognize its own failures and accept the truth that the “One Happy EU Family” does not exist – it never did!

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Andreas C Chrysafis is a UK published author of six books in circulation worldwide including over 400 press articles. He is an advocate of democracy, Transparency, Equality and Human Rights.

While the campaign for the European elections on 26 May 2019 draws very little interest, the initiative launched by ReCommonsEurope with its ‘Manifesto for a new popular internationalism in Europe’ is on to a promising start. The text was drafted over some twelve months by sixteen people from six different countries (Belgium, Bosnia, France, Greece, Spain and the UK), all active in different organizations and movements (trade unions, political parties, activist movements) and relying on various and complementary fields of expertise (economics, political sciences, philosophy, anthropology, law, ecology, trade unionism, feminism, North/South solidarity, etc.). They represent three generations. The Manifesto is supported by over 160 signatories from 21 different European countries, among whom a majority of women. Signatures are still being collected.

Highlights of the ReCommonsEurope initiative

ReCommonsEurope resulted from the wish to collaborate between two European networks, namely the CADTM and EReNSEP, and the main trade union in the Basque country, ELA (see this). The two European networks had been directly involved in the Greek experiment in 2015 and had drawn converging lessons from it. For over fifteen years ELA and the CADTM have been recurrently involved in various internationalist initiatives, from the World Social Forum launched in 2001 to the Altersummit, including the European Social Forum. ELA, CADTM and EReNSEP activists have also been directly involved in the struggles that are fought in their respective countries. Since 2015 they have taken an active part in meetings and debates about Plan B.

The text of the Manifesto was drafted over the three meetings held in 2018, and collectively finalized in 2019. It is a continuation of the call entitled Ten Proposals to Beat the European Union, a collective text introduced by over 70 signatories in February 2017.

The objective aimed at by ReCommonsEurope is both limited and ambitious: we want to prove that it is both possible and necessary for radical measures to be implemented in Europe.

The Manifesto results from this observation: a large majority of left-wing political organizations and social movements are afraid of coming forward with truly anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist and eco-socialist measures. Some are even openly, not to say cynically, social-liberal, which excludes them from any claim to being on the left.

Unlike left-wing parties that compromise themselves with the established order, ReCommonsEurope puts forward radical eco-socialist, feminist, anti-racist measures, i.e. measures clearly in favour of popular internationalism, and aimed at promoting social and political revolution.

The 2015 Greek experiment has often been used as a scarecrow. It is supposed to provide evidence that a radical programme cannot be implemented. Yet members of ReCommonsEurope read a different message in the Greek experiment – and fortunately they are not alone. For them the Tsipras government had given up from the start on achieving the radical commitments they had pledged to the Greek people, and this resulted in the disaster of the third Memorandum of Understanding.

ReCommonsEurope asserts the need to implement a radical programme and to rely on a strategy that consists of mobilization, civic disobedience and popular self-organization.

The people who wrote the Manifesto have diverging views on some issues: should we leave the Eurozone or not? Is it possible and useful to create a complementary currency? Should all the banking and insurance sector be expropriated to be turned into a public service or should we create a public pool in competition with capitalist private banks? ReCommonsEurope invites the confrontation of diverging view and debates on what measures ought to be taken. This Manifesto is not some absolute declaration of faith; rather it is an invitation to more debate.

Activists that contribute to ReCommonsEurope are well aware that putting a programme forward, however good it might be, is not enough. Clearly the decisive element will be the struggles to thoroughly change power relationships and make the implementation of a coherent set of economic, political, social and cultural measures possible. But those who meet in the context of ReCommonsEurope are convinced that for the struggles to result in major changes, it is essential to have a clear view of a set of measures to be taken by a popular government.

The climate crisis, violent austerity policies and the danger represented by a racist and xenophobic far right, only make it more urgent to define a strategy associating popular self-organization with social movements and political organizations, in order to make politics serve the interests of the majority.

For the last ten years many popular mobilizations have questioned the establishment. The Manifesto is part of those movements and highlights the struggle against exploitation and all forms of oppression.

As noted in the introduction to the Manifesto, struggles over the past ten years cannot be dissociated from social, environmental, democratic, feminist and solidarity emergencies. A social emergency because the living and working conditions of the popular classes have continuously deteriorated in the last thirty years, most notably since the crisis which affected the continent in 2008-2009. An ecological emergency because the exponential consumption of fossil fuels, and more generally the destruction of ecosystems, which are part and parcel of the capitalist system, have resulted in a global climate change that is ever closer to the point of no return and threatens the very existence of humanity. A democratic emergency because, faced with the challenges to the dominant classes over the last thirty years, the latter have not hesitated to adopt methods of domination which ignore democratic appearances to an ever greater degree, and are increasingly repressive. A feminist emergency because patriarchal oppression in all its forms is increasingly being massively and loudly rejected by millions of women and men. A solidarity emergency because the closing of borders and the building of walls as a response to the millions of migrants fleeing war, poverty, environmental disasters and authoritarian regimes world-wide constitute nothing less than a denial of humanity. Each of these emergencies leads, in turn, to mass civil disobedience, self-organization and the building of alternatives, which represent possible sources of democratic alternatives in Europe.

Not only is the European Union one of the world’s vanguards of neo-liberalism and imperialism, it is also a set of institutions serving big capital. Therefore a left committed to social transformation can no longer be credible and realistic without placing a complete break with the treaties and institutions of the European Union at the heart of its strategy.

By making these proposals for disobeying and breaking with the European institutions, there can be no question of looking towards a nationalist solution to the crisis and social revolt. Just as much as in the past, we need to adopt an internationalist strategy and advocate a European federation of peoples as opposed to pursuing the present course of integration which is completely dominated by the interests of big capital. It is also a question of constantly seeking to develop coordinated campaigns and actions at the continental level and beyond, in the fields of debt, ecology, the right to housing, treatment of migrants and refugees, health, education and other public services, the right to work, the fight to close nuclear power plants, the drastic reduction of the use of fossil fuels, the fight against tax dumping and tax havens, the fight to socialize the banks, insurance companies and the energy sector, the re-appropriation of the commons, action against the ever-increasing authoritarianism of governments and for democracy in every area of social life, the struggle to defend and extend the rights of women and LGBTI people, the promotion of public goods and services, the creation of constituent processes.

A collective work to be carried on

Members of ReCommonsEurope met in Brussels on 21 and 22 March 2019. Participants came from Belgium, Bosnia, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Spain and the UK. They discussed the current final version of the Manifesto and the initiatives to be taken to make it known throughout Europe. It is currently available in French, English, Spanish and Catalan. It is still open to signatures.

This latest meeting on 21 and 22 March 2019 was the fourth meeting of ReCommonsEurope members. The first two took place in Brussels, in February and June 2018 respectively. The third was held in London in September 2018. During these meetings, drafting groups were set up by theme and produced the Manifesto for a New Popular Internationalism in Europe between the end of 2018 and March 2019; the Manifesto was made public in three languages on 21 March 2019.

During the meeting on 21 and 22 March, ReCommonsEurope members agreed that the document could be improved upon, that the work had to be continued. We also noted the need for a shorter more accessible version. Two processes are thus currently taking place: work to improve the Manifesto, which is about 100 pages long, and the drafting of a condensed version that should not be more than 20 pages long.

It is crucial to notice that debates on a programme of measures to be taken have not yet been through enough. Several issues deserve more accurate definition: the possibility and the role of a complementary currency, how a number of countries could leave the euro, practical measures to be taken regarding banks, immediate measures required to contribute to fighting the environmental crisis, etc.

Why the work carried out by ReCommonsEurope is significant and useful

Events that followed the 2015 Greek disaster have shown that the popular Left must urgently discuss and carry out coherent proposals to provide a left-wing exit to the current crises. Brexit has been largely dominated by fighting between various factions of big capital in the UK, the popular classes have not been able to define their objectives and their own answer to the question about leaving the European Union. In the case of the Catalan people’s struggle for independence, the Catalan ‘independentist’ right largely ran the process. The Catalan internationalist and independentist left did not manage to step in with sufficient autonomy. As a consequence the fight for social rights and the contradiction between Capital and Labour were marginalized. In Italy too, the tune is called by the right-wing reactionary forces that are dominant in the current government. More generally, as the crisis within the EU deepens, it is essential that people on the popular side should be in a position to make themselves heard.

ReCommonsEurope has tried, however limited our forces, to convincingly show that we have to step out of the national context in which a large part of the popular side have remained confined. Obviously, stepping out of the national context does not mean that we should not be involved in local social and political struggles but that we should relate them to an international dimension, both in word and deed. We must also shake the large trade unions out of their passivity. The European Trade Union Confederation, which has tens of millions of members, has proved itself unable to stand up for social conquest against the attacks of big capital supported by EU institutions.

The current struggles waged by women (notably on 8 March) and by young people (with their various mobilizations for the climate) show us which way to go. In several European countries, those mobilizations manage to articulate forms of self-organization, self-coaching, public initiatives and a quest for concrete solutions on a global scale. While the present appeal is functionally directed at militants and activists of the European left, its spirit is undoubtedly universal. It is urgent that all anti-capitalist, eco-socialist, feminist, anti-racist activists should discuss these solutions and call upon social and political organizations saying: let’s meet current challenges together and develop a new popular internationalism in Europe and beyond.

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

Translated by Christine Pagnoulle and Vicki Briault

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

All images in this article are from CADTM

A Yemeni city the size of Cambridge had just hours to evacuate before it was pummelled by Saudi war planes, the Court of Appeal in London heard today.

A panel of judges is reviewing a decision made by Sajid Javid not to suspend British bomb sales for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

The Tory high-flier was business secretary when he allowed the arms exports to keep flowing, despite his head of export control warning that “my gut tells me we should suspend.”

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) challenged Mr Javid’s decision unsuccessfully at the High Court in 2017 but later lodged an appeal.

The group said an “enormous” quantity of British bombs is being dropped from Saudi jets onto Yemeni schools, mosques and hospitals as a result of Mr Javid giving a green light to the arms industry.

CAAT’s lawyer Martin Chamberlain QC said entire cities have been targeted by indiscriminate Saudi-led air strikes.

In the case of Sa’ada, a city with around 100,000 residents, Mr Chamberlain said:

“Leaflets were dropped one or two hours before the bombardment started, but a large proportion of that town were illiterate — they couldn’t read the leaflets.

“There was an announcement on radio some four or five hours before — but what were they to do?

“Many had no petrol — and they were being told the whole city was a target.”

More than 200 strikes on the city swiftly followed.

“To declare an entire city the size of Cambridge to be a military target is the most flagrant breach of international humanitarian law one can imagine,” he said.

“It’s like saying Cambridge is a military target — the whole of it.

“What are civilians to do?”

He also highlighted a missile strike on a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Yemen, which killed an aid worker, and the Great Hall incident in capital Sana’a which was a “double tap attack” with missiles “fired at first responders who went to the aid of those injured in the first attack.”

He then lambasted the government, asking:

“What did the Secretary of State think about that? We have no idea.”

The appellant claims that government ministers have not “bothered” to rationally assess the impact of Saudi air strikes on Yemen when considering whether there was a “clear risk” that British bombs could be used to commit war crimes — the threshold required to halt arms deals.

CAAT is bringing the challenge against the Department for International Trade, which now oversees arms export licences.

Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are among other parties intervening in the case, which is scheduled to run for three days.

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Featured image: Campaigners outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London ahead of a three-day legal challenge over the British government’s exports of arms to Saudi Arabia, today (April 9)

There are three main anthropogenic factors that pose a serious threat to European wildlife. These are causing the death of individuals by illegal poisoning, poaching, trapping or trading, reduced reproductive success due to habitat disturbance and habitat loss due to e.g. deforestation or wetland filling. Deliberate poisoning has been documented as one of the most severe factors threathening wildlife and biodiversity conservation in Europe. In Austria poisoning currently plays a major role in the loss of dozens of bird species and is the main cause of death for the White-tailed eagle.

The power of poison

The most common methods of poisoning wildlife can be grouped into two main categories: poisoning with chemicals and lead poisoning. Chemicals can be permitted, but pesticides such as non-selective insecticides and rodenticides are often misused. In this case poisoning aims to target e.g. rodents, however, after consuming poisoned prey it weakens the predator or may have lethal effects due to the accumulation of the poisoning agent.

The other group consists of the use of non-permitted, banned poisons, such as the EU-wide banned pesticide Carbofuran. This is one of the most toxic pesticides on the market. It has a high number of leaching into groundwater, a high mammalian and avian toxicity and a low potential for bioaccumulation. No wonder it is not approved for use in the EU. On the other hand, to this day it is a commonly used poison against wildlife and together with other toxic chemicals, their consequences on the environment and wildlife are severe.

Lead poisoning is another possible threathening factor mainly on birds of prey, which are scavenging the carcasses left in the field by hunters. Consumed lead accumulates in the bones and weakens the individual. Unfortunately this is not a one of a kind case.

Alarming cases of raptor poisoning in Austria

Apart from this species, in the last years many Red kites, Buzzards, ravens, as well as foxes and martens have become victims of the growing amount of poisoned baits layed out against predators in the country. Moreover, calculated with the individuals not found due to various reasons, any number published is just the tip of the iceberg, representing a small percentage of the total number of all illegal activities.

White-tailed eagle in Europe’s largest eagle. It was extinct in Austria with only a few wintering individuals in the 1970s. Starting with the first proven breeding documented in 2001, it had a triumphant return. During the last counting 35 breeding pairs were found in total, however, counting with only 70 individuals, losing each bird is a great loss, not to mention losing 8 in a matter of few months.

Bearded Vulture also threatened

Bearded Vulture eats only carcass, which is often poisoned with lead.

One of the most successful reintroduction programmes of the bearded vulture supported with significant funding in the National Park Hohe Tauern has also been paused after 32 years. Many vultures suffered from lead poisoning causing a significant drop in the reproduction rate threading the long term success of their long-term survival in the Alps. Amazing fact here also is, that the reintroduction is more successful in every other location than in Austria, where more vultures die of human influence than anywhere else. The authorities lost Vultures due to lead poisoning already back in 2012.

The need for action

Poisoned baits are, despite being banned by the Birds and Habitats Directive and the Bern Convention of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, actively used across Europe to kill predators. This pattern exists since years, and delays in addressing these cases is a serious concern.

White-tailed eagles poisoned in Serbia

In the last years, many national and cross-border initiatives emerged to bring together responsible sectors in tackling this issue. Some examples include the Balkan Anti-poisoning project and the LIFE project LIFE Against bird crimes.

Raising awareness and public involvement is a key element to tackle this threath. That’s why WWF Austria had set up the “Vorsicht – Gift” (Beware, poison) hotline in 2003. This is maintained in cooperation with the Lower Austrian Hunting Association. National initiatives like Spain’s Veneno project, running from 2010 to 2014 have built up a Network of Volunteers against Poisoning.

There is still much to learn about the sheer extent of these poisoning practices. However, the increasing frequency and widespread distribution of illegal poisoning must draw immediate attention among decision makers. Wilderness requires zero-tolerance towards illegal killing. Adopting this will need coordinated and integrated efforts. This means the engagement of stakeholders as well as relevant governmental authorities and enforcement agencies to improve law enforcement at EU as well as national level.

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All images in this article are from EWS

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ response to the horrific attack on two mosques in New Zealand highlights tensions between promoting the most aggressive ongoing European settler colonialism and Jewish Canadian concern over hate crimes.

Forty-eight hours after the killings in Christchurch the Toronto Star published letters by the heads of CIJA and Toronto’s Jewish Federation under the headline “Jewish Canadians stand with Muslims.” CIJA’s quick response to the mosque attack no doubt reflected genuine horror as well as an understanding that as a minority religious group disproportionately victimized by hate crimes Jews have an interest in building solidarity against such violence. But, it also represents a cynical ‘get out ahead of the story’ type of public relations from a group that regularly demonizes Muslims in defence of Israel’s subjugation of Palestinians. CIJA, which is the lobbying arm of Canada’s Jewish Federations, claims Israel is “fighting  against the Palestinian shackles of international Islamism that has been wreaking absolute havoc all over the world.”

CIJA regularly hypes “Islamic terror”. In response to a 2017 truck attack in Nice, France, CIJA declared “Canada is not immune to… Islamist terror” and in 2018 they highlighted  “those strains of Islam that pose a real and imminent threat to Jews around the world.” At the time CIJA also aligned with the xenophobic backlash  against the term “Islamophobia in bill M-103, which called for collecting data on hate crimes and studying the issue of “eliminating systemic  racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia.” In a BuzzFeed article titled “Zionist Groups  in Canada Are Jumping On The ‘Creeping Sharia’ Bandwagon” Steven Zhou detailed CIJA, B’nai Brith and other pro-Israel groups backlash to M-103 and “how Muslim Canadians define Islamophobia.”

In a bid to deter organizations from associating with the Palestinian cause or opposing Israeli belligerence in the Middle East, CIJA constantly targets Arab and Muslim community representatives, papers, organizations, etc. To prove that Muslim Canadians financed “Hamas terror”, CIJA pushed to proscribe Muslim charity IRFAN (International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy) as a terrorist entity because it supported orphans and a hospital in the Gaza Strip through official (Hamas controlled) channels. (The federal government considers Hamas a terrorist organization but Palestinians and most  of the world consider it a political/resistance organization.) The Jewish group’s press release about the first Canadian-based group ever designated a terrorist organization alludes to ‘foreign Muslims taking advantage of Canadians’. It noted, “Canadians will not tolerate the abuse of their generosity by those who seek to bankroll terrorists.” In 2017 CIJA demanded  Ottawa rescind the charitable status of the Islamic Society of British Columbia because the Vancouver-area mosque allegedly offered support for Hamas.

While quick to attack Arabs and Muslims’ support for “terror” or “anti-Semitism,” CIJA clams up when explicit Jewish Islamophobia is brought to their attention. In 2012, the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) asked for CIJA’s help with an aggressively anti-Muslim textbook used at Joe Dwek Ohr HaEmet Sephardic School in Toronto. It described Muslims as “rabid fanatics” with “savage beginnings,” but CIJA refused to respond.

Last summer lawyer Dimitri Lascaris repeatedly called on CIJA to disassociate from a number of individuals it aligned with at a protest who made anti-Muslim remarks and death threats against mostly Muslim and brown politicians in a video about the rally. CIJA responded by orchestrating an unprecedented  smear campaign against the prominent pro-Palestinian activist.

CIJA Québec failed to respond to my request for comment about the Jewish Public Library in Montréal, a constituent agency of the city’s Jewish Federation it officially represents, hosting  anti-Muslim activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali next month. Among a slew of extremist statements, Ali said “violence is inherent in Islam—it’s a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder.”

CIJA has stayed mum about the recent scandal over the head of the Toronto Hebrew School Teachers Federation, Aviva Polonsky, escorting a class from the Community Hebrew Academy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington. Polonsky posted photographs of her and students meeting with noted Islamophobe Sebastian Gorka and wearing “Make America Great Again” hats.

CIJA ignores Islamophobia by groups it defends or represents. It also stokes anti-Muslim sentiment as part of its bid to defend Israeli colonialism and violence. On the other hand, Canadian Jewry, which CIJA claims to represent, has a strong self-interest in building broad opposition to hate crimes.

Which side is this organization on? Is it always against perpetrators of hate-crimes, so-called “White nationalists” and governments that favour one religion or ethnicity over others? Or does it make exceptions for its supporters and Israel?

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Egypt has reportedly withdrawn from U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Arab NATO” initiative following President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi’s visit to Washington.

According to the Reuters News Agency, Egypt has made the decision to withdraw fro the U.S.-led “Middle East Security Alliance”, which has been dubbed “Arab NATO”.

This NATO-like group that has been formed by the U.S. administration is composed of a number of Arab states, including Jordan, the United Arab Emirtes, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar.

Furthermore, sources from Reuters said the Egyptian authorities were partially motivated by uncertainty over President Trump’s re-election and whether his successor would scrap the entire initiative — just like Trump himself scrapped the Iranian Nuclear Deal.

Cairo’s decision is believed to have inflicted a blow on Trump’s strategy of curbing Iranian influence in the region, Reuters report says.

It is worth noting that Egypt has been flirting with the idea of purchasing the Russian-made Su-35 stealth jets; this has prompted outrage from the Trump administration.

According to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,

“We have made clear that systems were to be purchased that… would require sanctions on the regime,” Pompeo told the Senate Committee on Appropriations. “We have received assurances from them, they understand that, and I am very hopeful they will decide not to move forward with that acquisition.”

Egypt is the most densely populated country in North Africa; it also possesses one of the strongest militaries in the Arab world.

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What just happened in Sudan was likely a military coup despite the “official” explanation being that President Bashir simply stepped down, and while this might appear on the surface to be a huge development, its immediate consequences will probably be quite limited even though certain “dark scenarios” still can’t be ruled out.

The news just broke that Sudanese President Bashir was deposed of in a military coup, though the “official” explanation is that he simply stepped down in response to increasingly violent protests against his thirty-year-long rule. This is an important distinction to make since the African Union and the US would be compelled to condemn the latest developments and possibly suspend their cooperation with the country if the armed forces admitted that they seized power, though it’s “conventional knowledge” that the long-serving leader probably didn’t resign out of his own free will. In any case, this latest non-electoral regime change proves that the decade-long “African Spring” is alive and well, having now succeeded in Sudan immediately after Algeria despite an earlier attempt having failed in Gabon, with three cases therefore being seen since the beginning of 2019 alone. This latest event will certainly have geopolitical consequences that deserve to be discussed, though before doing so, the reader should familiarize themselves with the author’s previous pieces on this issue for context’s sake:

• “Sudan Might Be The Next Geopolitical Victim Of The New Cold War”
• “Sudan’s State Of Emergency Might Herald A ‘Phased Leadership Transition’”
• “Sudan’s ‘Deep State’ Divisions Could Spell The End Of President Bashir’s Rule”

As a brief review, while it’s indeed possible that the incipient Color Revolution that broke out in the country in late-2018 could be exploited by outside forces for geopolitical ends such as catalyzing the diverse state’s further “Balkanization”, the unrest itself appeared to be a mostly spontaneous reaction by a desperate population already fed up with their deteriorating socio-economic conditions following a surprise increase in the price of bread and fuel, albeit one that domestic political activists probably prepared in advance to organize in response to a “trigger” event such as that one. This ended up putting enormous pressure on the government and led to President Bashir implementing a state of emergency that portended the beginning of a “phased leadership transition” by his permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”). That plan recently went awry, however, when divisions began to emerge in his “deep state” following the military’s active intervention earlier this week to prevent riot police from clearing out a camp of protesters outside the Ministry of Defense.

Looking forward, here are the most important takeaways from the coup and the most likely path that Sudan is headed in its aftermath:

• The “African Spring” of non-electoral regime changes might suddenly spread to other countries on the continent such as Cameroon and Uganda after surprisingly succeeding in two of its most security-prone and rigid states that many observers had previously thought would never respond to “grassroots”-initiated pressure.
• The “phased leadership transition” evidently failed in Sudan for reasons that can only be speculated upon at this time but probably has to do with behind-the-scenes politicking that ultimately divided its “deep state” and reached a climax when the military intervened to prevent the riot police from breaking up the protesters’ camp.
• Unlike in Algeria, the odds of a “second round” of protester-driven unrest agitating for the dismantlement of the entire “deep state” are low in Sudan for reasons pertaining to this Northeast African country’s specific domestic political and military situations.
• The military will steer the country towards forthcoming elections in which it will probably field its preferred candidate or attempt to co-opt one of the opposition‘s like Kabila recently did in the Congo with Tshisekedi, doing whatever is needed to keep its “deep state” in power with only minimal but necessary reforms.
• It’s unclear at this moment whether the military will politicize the issue of Russian private military companies (PMCs) in the country, which pro-Western factions could seek to do in order to curry favor with the West, while patriotic ones would probably prefer to keep quiet about this issue in order to retain Moscow’s support.
• Another Russia-related issue is whether Sudan will continue to closely cooperate with Moscow in stabilizing the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR) and facilitating Russia’s access to this land-locked war-torn state, though it should be assumed that there won’t be any changes in this respect for now.
• On the topic of continuity, Sudan will continue to occupy an ultra-strategic position in China’s Africa policy by acting as one of its Silk Road gateways to the continent, though this could change in the unlikely event that a pro-American military faction ascends to power behind the scenes.
• If anything, however, Sudan is more inclined to fall further under Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s influence, and even though these two essentially function as the US’ “Lead From Behind” partners, Khartoum will likely continue its “balancing” act between them, Turkey & Qatar, Russia & China, and the US.

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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.

Newsweek is reporting a story regarding how Iran “was responsible for the deaths of at least 608 American troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.” The account is sourced to a newly revised estimate prepared by analysts at the Pentagon that was discussed by Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook at a State Department press briefing on April 2nd. According to Hook, Tehran is now being blamed for 17 per cent of all US military deaths because it supplied weapons to the several Shiite militias that were opposing the US invasion, occupation and subsequent presence in the country.

Hook also stated that the American casualties are in addition to the “thousands” of Iraqi troops and civilians that were killed in attacks initiated by what he referred to as the Iranian proxy forces. Hook noted that the new number is higher than the 2015 confirmed death total of 500 that was reported by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford, who qualified his estimate by saying

“We were not always able to attribute the casualties that we had to Iranian activity, although many times we suspected it was Iranian activity, even though we did not necessarily have the forensics to support that.”

There is little doubt that Tehran provided weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq after the invasion of the country by American forces in April 2003 and the defeat and replacement of the Saddam Hussein regime. The US was occupying the country at the time and Shiites were a repressed majority of the population given the fact that Saddam ruled through his Sunni minority.

The most controversial and lethal weapons used by the Shiite and Sunni resistance to the United States were the Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs, subsequently also referred to as Explosively Formed Penetrators or EFPs which were capable of penetrating the armor on US military vehicles. They first appeared in Iraq in the summer of 2004, but they were initially mostly used by Sunni insurgents, not by the Shiites.

Now that the US occupation has ended, Iran and Iraq enjoy a close relationship that is based on their common Shiite religion. The former militiamen are now referred to as Popular Mobilization Forces, which were key to the eventual defeat of ISIS. The United States, which retains a major military base inside Iraq, continues to rail against Iran. During the briefing, Hook said

“We are imposing costs on the [Iranian] regime for behaving as an outlaw expansionist regime. The regime is weaker today than when we took office two years ago. Its proxies are also weaker. Unless the regime demonstrates a change in policy and behavior, the financial challenges facing Tehran will mount.”

There are several problems with the Hook analysis, if that is actually what it was. The United States government has been arguing since 2005 that Iran is “interfering” in neighboring Iraq, combined with allegations about “they are killing our soldiers” to make sure that Tehran continues to be everyone recognizable regional enemy. Specific claims by generals and US politicians were made between 2005 and 2007 regarding Iranian involvement in the production of the shaped charges, which were increasingly exacting a bloody toll of US and allied military personnel.

But the claims being made by the Bush Administration, by Congress, and by the media regarding Iranian support of militants in Iraq had a number of things in common: they were generic and lacking in specificity, they were based on possibly unwarranted assumptions about Iranian interactions with other players in the region, they played fast and loose with statistics, and they seldom provided actual verifiable evidence to back up the assertions being made. One might also point out that nearly all the reports were derivative in that they build on each other to develop credibility, much like the reports about Iraq in 2002.

It has also been noted that the arguments about Iranian involvement are logically inconsistent. The Iraqi insurgency in the period 2004-2006 was largely Sunni. That the Iranians would be supplying the Sunnis or that the Sunnis would even seek such assistance does not appear probable. In an April 2007 briefing Major General William Caldwell explained,

“We have, in fact, found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence services have provided to some Sunni insurgent groups some support.”

Three uses of “some” in one sentence suggest a degree of uncertainty. Even the relatively tame media at the briefing were skeptical, asking “Do the Iranians support all the militias in Iraq?”

The fact that the EFP is very simple to make also argues against a largely Iranian provenance. The EFP or variations thereof has been around for a long time. It was reportedly used under its old name “shaped charge” by the French resistance against the Germans and by the Irish Republican Army against British armored vehicles and it has been used extensively by both Hezbollah and Hamas against the Israelis.

The case against Iran basically relies on a basic argument that the EFP is actually a sophisticated weapon that has to have its copper disk machined in a weapons shop that is accustomed to milling metal to the finest tolerances. According to those who believe in an Iranian hand in EFP attacks, it is not possible that the weapons are being produced by Iraqis without Iranian assistance but the fact is that the Iraqis are more than capable of making the weapon. Iraq had a large and relatively sophisticated military prior to 2003. It had its own weapons shops and ordnance experts, many of whom were Sunnis and many of whom became unemployed in the spring of 2003 when the army was disbanded.

So Iran’s EFP weapon of choice that, according to the Pentagon, has killed 608 Americans turns out to be not that hard to make and not uniquely Iranian. But the real argument against Brian Hook’s numbers is the assumption made by the government analysts that supplying weapons, even if and when the end user can be demonstrated, makes one responsible for who gets killed as a result. Since the US is the world’s leading arms manufacturer, that argument leads down a slippery slope as “Made in USA.” weapons are likely featured in every conflict.

Also bear in mind that the United States in Iraq was an invading army in what became a guerrilla war in which that country’s civilians ultimately constituted most of the victims. By one estimate, 460,000 Iraqis died, many by US-made ordnance. To cite one other more recent example of what that measure of accountability might mean, the United States could be considered responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands civilians in Yemen, 5,000 in 2018 alone, as the Saudis are using US supplied weapons. And there are a lot of other instances of American made weapons winding up in all kinds of places, including the arsenals of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda in its war against the Russians in Afghanistan relied largely on American weaponry. Some of those weapons are still being used to kill American rather than Russian soldiers.

Since the United States government is selectively charging Iran with offenses that might well be exploited by neoconservatives named Bolton and Pompeo to initiate a war it should be more careful in how it attempts to frame its arguments. Iran did not kill those 4,424 American soldiers who died in Iraq. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the band of psychopaths at the Pentagon and National Security Council did that when they initiated a chain of events that began with attacking a country that they knew posed no threat against the United States. The bloody consequences of that action continue to this day.

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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 SCF

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

This article which is of particular relevance to the arrest of Julian Assange was originally written in June 2018.

This week marks six years since Julian Assange entered the Ecuadorean embassy in London and nearly three years since the UN declared that his situation amounts to an “arbitrary deprivation of liberty.”[1] Over this time, Assange’s health has deteriorated markedly, as colleagues and I reported last January after examining him.[2]

In March, the terms of his confinement became more severe, increasing the risks of what was already a dangerous health situation. Ecuador, which in 2012 granted political asylum to Assange, restricted his visitation and communications and announced an indefinite policy to prevent him from “speaking about politics.”[3] In response, the general counsel of Human Rights Watch, Dinah PoKempner, stated, “his refuge in the embassy looks more and more like solitary confinement.”[4]

Under these circumstances, it would appear that efforts at international diplomacy to preserve his health and protect his human rights have failed. Yet earlier this month, two senior officials of the Australian High Commission visited Assange at the embassy for the first time, representing a turning point that may lead to greater efforts to relieve or at least ameliorate the negative effects that his stay within the embassy has had on his health.

Over this past year, I’ve met with Assange several times at the embassy in London, and have been privy to his conditions and medical record. Assange suffers both physically and psychologically from his prolonged detention—as was found in another evaluation performed in 2015, the results of which were made available to the public.[5] Assange’s detention continues to cause a precipitous deterioration in his overall condition and amounts to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

Within the embassy, Assange is confined mostly to a single room and has had no meaningful access to the outdoors or to natural light in six years. As a result, he has developed myriad health sequelae and endured exacerbations of preexisting conditions. Because of his health issues, in 2015, Ecuadorean authorities requested that he be permitted humanitarian safe passage to a hospital in London; however, this was denied by the UK.[6]

Although physicians are able to visit Assange for evaluations, many are reluctant to do so given their concerns about appearing to associate with Assange by caring for him as a patient. To this day, Assange remains unable to access hospital based diagnostic testing and treatment—even for a medical emergency. In effect, he has gone without proper access to care for the duration of his six years in confinement. Meanwhile, data on the health effects of solitary confinement suggest that the restrictions on Assange since March increase his risks of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and suicide.[7]

In May, Ecuador denied Human Rights Watch permission to visit Assange, and human rights experts reported that “concern is growing over his access to medical care.”[8] On Monday 18 June, international legal experts presenting to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland testified,

“the UK shows a deliberate disregard for his medical needs by forcing [Assange] to choose between his human right to asylum and his human right to medical treatment.”[9]

As physicians, we have a collective responsibility to advocate for the basic human rights of all people, including that of the right to access care, even when we or society in general may disagree with an individual or group politically. In the case of Assange, at a minimum, Ecuador should respect his rights to visitation, unencumbered communication, and free speech. In addition, the UK must uphold its commitment to the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.[10] This includes permitting his safe passage to a hospital, unimpeded access to care, and at least one hour outdoors in the open air per day.

If Ecuador and the UK cannot guarantee these rights, then the Australian High Commission should seek Assange’s immediate repatriation to Australia. As the US withdraws from the UN Human Rights Council,[11] Australia has the opportunity to demonstrate moral leadership at a time when our global community needs it.

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Sean Love is a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a clinical fellow in surgery at Harvard Medical School, and the co-founder of a pro-bono clinic at Brown University that provides forensic medical and psychological evaluations for asylum seekers. He can be followed on Twitter @SeanLoveMD

Notes

[1] The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Deems the deprivation of liberty of Mr. Julian Assange as arbitrary. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 5 February 2016. Available online: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17012

[2] Crosby SS, Chisholm B, Love S. We examined Julian Assange, and he badly needs care – but he can’t get it. The Guardian, 24 January 2018. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/24/julian-assange-care-wikileaks-ecuadorian-embassy

[3] Collyns D. Ecuador’s president says Julian Assange can stay in embassy ‘with conditions.’ The Guardian, 31 May 2018. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/may/31/julian-assange-ecuador-president-lenin-moreno

[4] PoKempner D. 2 April 2018. Available online: https://twitter.com/dinahpokempner/status/980623189263966209

[5] Assange Medical and Psychological Records. 14 September 2016. Available online: https://wikileaks.org/Medical-Reports.html

[6] Quinn B. Britain unmoved by Ecuadorian request to give Julian Assange ‘safe passage’ for MRI scan. The Guardian, 12 October 2015. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/15/ecuador-asks-britain-to-allow-julian-assange-safe-passage-for-mri-scan

[7] Grassian S. Psychiatric effects of solitary confinement. Washington University Journal of Law and Policy. Vol 22. January 2006. Available online: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1362&context=law_journal_law_policy

[8] PoKempner D. UK should reject extraditing Julian Assange to US. Human Rights Watch, 19 June 2018. Available online: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/19/uk-should-reject-extraditing-julian-assange-us

[9] Collins K. Vigil for the health of Julian Assange to take place in London. CNET, 19 June 2018. Available online: https://www.cnet.com/news/vigil-for-the-health-of-julian-assange-to-take-place-in-london/

[10] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules). Accessed 20 June 2018. Available online: https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/GA-RESOLUTION/E_ebook.pdf

[11] Borger. US quits UN human rights council – ‘a cesspool of political bias’. The Guardian, 19 June 2018. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/19/us-quits-un-human-rights-council-cesspool-political-bias

Featured image is from 21st Century Wire

Julian Assange faces extradition to the US after he was arrested and forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London almost seven years after he sought refuge there.

Mr Assange was brought before Westminster Magistrates’ Court this afternoon.

He made a thumbs up gesture to the press gallery as he entered the court and could be seen carrying a book.

Police detained the WikiLeaks founder after the Ecuadorian government withdrew his asylum, blaming his “repeated violations” of “international conventions and daily-life protocols”.

Scotland Yard said in a statement that Assange was held for failing to appear in court in June 2012 and “further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10.53am after his arrival at a central London police station”.

In a statement, the British Home Office said:

“We can confirm that Julian Assange was arrested in relation to a provisional extradition request from the United States of America.

“He is accused in the United States of America computer related offences.”

In a tweet, Mr Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson also said he had been “arrested not just for breach of bail conditions but also in relation to a US extradition request”.

BREAKING: #Assange removed from embassy – video pic.twitter.com/qsHy7ZVPg5

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) April 11, 2019

To read the complete RTE article click here

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Much hot air is coming out from the public relations unit of Adani, and the language used is that of a hostage taker seeking to earn a rich and ill-deserved ransom.  With the date for the Australian federal election looming, the Indian mining giant received a boost in its flagging fortunes.  And flagging they had been: banks reluctant to supply credit; scientists concerned about environment credentials; activists worried that Australia was inviting the creation of a dinosaur.  But the Morrison government needed some distracting good news and announced with speedy excitement that the company had met various scientific requirements on the protection of local waterways.  There are seats to be retained in Queensland, and timing is everything. 

The speed of it has all the markings of electoral expediency. The environment minister, Melissa Price, continues to remain an invisible member of the Morrison government, but she briefly manifested in making the announcement.  Bullying and hectoring have also been part of the process, and Senator James McGrath was growling for her resignation if the seal of approval was refused.  Other members of the coalition, including National MPs Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan, have been breathing heavily down the minister’s neck favouring Adani’s cause.

The effect of such pressure does much to take away the appearance of volition on Price’s part.  Jo-Anne Bragg, CEO of the Environmental Defenders Office in Queensland, smells a legal case testing the nature of minister’s discretion.  “Such a political threat puts a cloud over Minister Price’s possible decisions on Adani.”

Scientists have different opinions and these have, in turn, been given an unduly rosy twist.   CSIRO and Geoscience Australia have been painted as satisfied assessors of Adani’s project, but they remain sceptical of Adani’s water management plant.  The media release from CSIRO notes that

“Adani’s responses should satisfy the recommendations to update the groundwater models, and to address the modelling-related issues and concerns raised in the CSIRO-GA advice.” 

But it also “noted that there are still components of the advice provided to the department that will need to be addressed through the approval of the research plan, which includes confirming the source aquifer of the Doongmabulla Springs.”

Ample doubt can be found in the scientific community towards Adani’s water plans.  For one thing, there is confusion over which of the two underground aquifers feeds into the ecosystem.  The Groundwater Dependent Ecosystem Management does little to address the source of the springs.  The risk of getting this wrong would result in draining the aquifer feeding the Doongmabulla Springs itself, thereby resulting in its complete loss.

Queensland Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch was alert enough to be concerned by the qualifications inherent in the CSIRO-GA assessment, which she received a mere 30 minutes before the announcement by the federal government.  Lingering “uncertainties” included “source aquifers of the Doongmabulla Springs Complex, which has always been a requirement for state approval.”  Further “stringent conditions of approval from the Commonwealth” as outlined by Price herself, needed to be met before coal production could commence.

The Morrison government’s encouragement of Adani has also submerged other environmental snags the company has faced.  The fate of the Black-Throated Finch, a critical feature of the approvals process, has somehow disappeared in the enthused announcements.  Adani claims to have a management plan for the finch stretching over two decades, one that will include a conservation area at Moray Downs West as part of the pastoral lease it owns.  The company boasts that, at more than 33,000 hectares in size, “the conservation area will be bigger than Moreton Island and one of the largest privately managed conservation areas in Queensland.”

Adani is also attempting to exert some pull over the Queensland government, which it only supplied with its latest version of the Groundwater Dependent Ecosystem Management Plan the same day Canberra had given its sketchy approval. 

“Queensland decisions,” Enoch assured, “will be made by the environmental regulator, free from political interference.” 

Adani can at least rest assured that it has a special water license from the Queensland government valid till 2077, giving the company unlimited access to the Great Artesian Basin, should the management plans be approved.

Despite all of this, Lucas Dow, Adani Mining Australia chief executive, proved impatient. 

“The Queensland government has continued to shift the goal posts when it comes to finalising the outstanding environmental management plans for the mine and is standing in the way of thousands of jobs for Queenslanders.” 

When faced with regulatory barriers, Dow’s formula is simple: conjure up rich fictions – that old imaginary notion of thousands of jobs – and threaten elected officials with old fashioned corporate thuggery for not giving in to a mining giant used to greasing palms, despoiling environments and corrupting officials. “It’s time the Queensland government gave us a fair go and stopped shifting the goal posts so we can get on with delivering these jobs.”  Spoken like a true stalwart of plunder.

The Adani chapter in Australian environmental and political history will prove to be one of the darkest, even if the approval process is not finalised in the company’s favour.  This sordid episode has revealed the country’s political classes to be divided, cowardly and impressionable.  They have become de facto hirelings of a foreign, often brutal foreign corporation indifferent to disclosure requirements in foreign jurisdictions, labour conditions and local ecology.  The affair has revealed a hostility to Australia’s environment, and sympathy for a short term, myopic vision that promises to conclude prematurely, given the move away from coal in the near future.  Far from being a beacon of environmental preservation and renewable energy, Australia promises to be the earth’s barren tip. 

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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]

The Islamic Republic of Iran is looking for new ways to link their capital, Tehran, with Syria´s Damascus and Iraq´s Baghdad.

One of the proposed actions they are taking to make this a reality is the construction of new highways and rail systems that would link Syria with Iran via Iraq.

Iran´s Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri underlined his country’s determination to build new roads and railways in order to link the Persian Gulf states to Syria and the Mediterranean region.

“Iran which understands the political and economic conditions and developments believes that the necessary capacities for cooperation in transferring power and electricity, building roads and etc. will be provided and we hope that obstacles will be removed through the presence of the private sector,” Jahangiri said, addressing the joint Iran-Iraq economic-trade forum in Tehran on Sunday.

He noted that building the Shalamcheh-Basra railway was one of the agreements made during the recent visit by the Iraqi delegation to Iran.

Jahangiri stressed the importance of developing a cross border highway between the two countries in order to boost trade and commerce, while also protecting their interests in the region.

“We will connect the Persian Gulf from Iraq to Syria and Mediterranean via railway and road,” Jahangiri said.

The Shalamcheh-Basra railway project is said to cost around 2.22 billion rials and once implemented, it will link the Iranian railway to Syria through Iraq.

Director General of the Railway and Technical Structures Department at the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways (RAI) Mohammad Moussavi said in December that Iran was to build a movable railway bridge over the Arvand River as part of the 35-kilometer Shalamcheh-Basra railway project for linking Iran-Iraq railway network.

In addition to their railway and highway projects, Iran is also rumored to be planning to build a naval base in Syria´s western coast.

While this is still rumored, the idea that Iran could have access to the Mediterranean could trigger more airstrikes from Israel.

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NATO is preparing a package of measures to counter Russia in the Black Sea region. This package includes the deployment of NATO warships to the Black Sea to guarantee ‘passage’ of Ukrainian ships via the Kerch Strait, U.S. ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison stressed during a press briefing on April 2.

Hutchison said that the prepared package “beefs up the surveillance, both air surveillance as well as more of the NATO country ships going into the Black Sea to assure that there is safe passage from Ukrainian vessels through the Kerch Straits, the Sea of Azov”.

Earlier the US State Department announced that the Black Sea package is a response to the challenges the US and NATO face in the region, “not merely because of the Kerch Strait incident,” but because “Russia is threatening the alliance all along the eastern flank, not just in the north.

The public announcement of a possible NATO operation in the Kerch Strait is itself a move undermining the shaky stability created after the incident of November 25, 2018, when Russian coastal guards detained 3 ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which were attempting to enter the Kerch Strait in a way which violated the established norms and rules. Then, Moscow’s actions gave rise to large-scale hysteria in mainstream and Ukrainian media outlets. However, the situation developed no further. Ukraine’s “partners” limited their response to formal declarations. It was clear that the Kiev government was the side that had provoked the conflict. Before and after the Kerch Strait incident Ukrainian ships were passing the strait after going through the formal procedures established in this area.

If NATO naval forces together with or in some form assisting Ukrainian forces were to make an attempt to break through the Kerch Strait by force violating the established rules of passage, this would be seen by Moscow as an aggressive military action, which would provoke an equivalent response. In other words, a military clash could be expected. In such an event, the situation might escalate further. The media and political importance of such developments could be compared with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which became the formal pretext for the start of the First World War or the annexation of the Sudetenland by Nazi Germany before the start of the Second World War.

At the beginning of 2019, it seemed that despite the unfriendly rhetoric between the United States and Russia, there were actually no valid reasons for organizing the next armed incident, at a minimum, or in the worst case, for starting a war. However, there are a number of factors which may nudge Washington towards pushing for an escalation in the Black Sea region.

1. On March 25, President Donald Trump officially signed a declaration recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel. This step met with a negative reaction from almost all important regional and international players. The Trump administration has now destroyed one of the last fragments of the post-World War 2 international security system. This action as well as previous blatant violations of international law will have negative consequences for the entire system of international security and international law. Following this, global players can be less and less concerned about even the formal justification of their actions from the point of view of international law and can increasingly rely on military power, sanctions and informational pressure, coups and other “hybrid” methods to achieve their goals. As we see, Washington is the forerunner in the employment of such approaches. Now, the White House is interested in diverting international attention from the current situation and from the expected consequences of Golan-style decisions.

2. The failure of the Venezuelan blitzkrieg forced Washington to reconsider the approaches employed to force regime change. The inability of the US to fully delegitimize and overthrow the Maduro government is based on several factors:

• the insufficient support from the local population for the US puppet;
• the decision of the military to support the legitimate government;
• the resolution of Maduro himself and his inner circle, who unlike the former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, were not prepared to sit by indifferently while power was seized by the henchmen of external forces.
• The strong stand of China and Russia in support of Venezuela and the surprising inability of the Trump administration to set up a strong anti-Venezuelan coalition even at the regional level. So far, most of the US regime change partners have limited their participation to formal declarations or, like Columbia, to a lack of opposition to the actions of US agents.

So, the US operation has entered a new phase. The economic and diplomatic pressure on the Maduro government has increased, and the country has experienced a series of large-scale “accidents” targeting critical objects of the energy infrastructure. The Maduro government openly blamed hostile actions by the US for the recent series of blackouts. There are signals that the US is preparing for a military operation in the region, on its own or within the framework of a formally created coalition to put an end to the resistance of Caracas. To ensure the success of this operation, Washington has to carry out actions on the periphery to distract attention from the Venezuelan issue.

3. The situation in Ukraine ahead of the second round of the presidential election is not stable. Experts and analysts have serious doubts that Poroshenko actually gained fairly the 16%, which allowed him to proceed to the second round. It is suggested that from 3 to 8% may have been obtained fraudulently. Even if the incumbent president really did get 16% of the vote, the entire structure of voting demonstrated that the Ukrainians are frustrated by the destructive policy of the ruling regime and the status as a Western colony obtained by Ukraine in 2014. The arbitrary development of this situation could create conditions in which the US and the associated European bureaucracy would lose their influence in Ukraine, and as a result, the money spent on bringing Kiev to vassalage. In the event of the escalation of the political struggle, a possible outcoume could even be that Ukraine would split further into two political antagonists along the west-east line. If the Washington establishment wants to keep the situation under control, it must create the conditions in which Poroshenko could achieve victory. Or should Vladimir Zelensky win, he must be limited in his ability to maneuver and de-escalate relations and even start a dialogue with Russia. He must also be prevented from starting a more or less independent dialogue, ie not that of a vassal, with the European Union.

A military provocation in the Kerch Strait with the support of NATO warships would be suitable for achieving all the goals just described. Moreover, the logic of NATO’s actions includes damage to the infrastructure of the Crimean Bridge or at least its significant damage during the incident. This would have a resounding informational effect and would create significant problems for the economy of Crimea.

Another interesting point is the declaration that Russia “is threatening the alliance all along the eastern flank, not just in the north”. The entire format of such rhetoric raises eyebrows. If, in the case of the northern front, such statements can be justified with the complex configuration around Kaliningrad and the specific historical experience of the Baltic countries and Poland with Russia, the statement about the Russian threat in the south is a rude propaganda cliché.

Hutchison stressed that Russia is threatening “Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine, as well as Georgia”. But there are some issues. Georgia is separated from Russia by mountains, is not a NATO country and does not experience territorial claims from Russia. Moreover, Russia still categorically refuses to consider the inclusion of South Ossetia and Abkhazia into its own territory. Almost 30 years have passed since the actual independence of these republics, and almost 11 years since the last aggressive war unleashed by Georgia with the support of NATO. Ukraine is also not a NATO country, and recent years have shown that Moscow has no desire to conduct full-scale military operations on its territory. Bulgaria and Romania do not have a land border with Russia and both states have working bilateral relations with Moscow. Even more strikingly, US statements do not even mention the second most significant military state of NATO, the country whose military potential exceeds the combined military potential of Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia and Greece – Turkey, which by the way, is located on the southern flank of the military bloc. This statement by a representative of the Washington establishment is another vulgar example of Psaki-style rhetoric that has little to do with democratic values, freedom, or a desire for justice. They themselves do not believe in it. They know only that a few others do believe in it. Thus they simply mock the masses, who they consider to be sheep.  Such statements demonstrate that Washington is seriously considering conducting aggressive actions in the near future in several directions at once.

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While the national debt of the United States was recorded at 22.03 trillion as of April 2019, Washington’s going ahead with its hawkish policies worldwide with recent NATO summit pushing for further unity against China, Russia and Iran. NATO’s annual overall military budget was US$ 957 billion in 2017 where the US’s share was US$ 686 billion, accounting for 72 percent of the total. This number is pressed by the US to rise in the years to come.

According to The Guardian, Trump takes more than $1tn in taxpayer money and allocates $750bn to the military. In other words, out of every taxpayer dollar, 62 cents go to the military and Department of Homeland Security and seven cents to Veterans affairs. It leaves just 31 cents for all the rest: education, job training, community economic development, housing, safe drinking water and clear air, health and science research and the prevention of war through diplomacy and humanitarian aid.

The Trump budget finds vast billions for militarization, while it cuts “smaller” poverty alleviation projects and other programs, claiming the goal is to save money.

Rutherford Institute’s founder and director John W. WhiteHead writes in his institute’s website that the American nation is being preyed upon by a military industrial complex that is propped up by war profiteers, corrupt politicians and foreign governments. He remarks:

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

He writes “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 are talking about $97 billion worth of wasteful spending”

He maintains that the nation’s educational system is pathetic, the infrastructure is antiquated and growing more outdated by the day and the health system is overpriced and inaccessible to those who need it most.

The tax cuts on super-rich, outflow of huge sums in interest payment for debt and more spending are plunging the US economy into a new crisis, according to many authors. The US economy faces a deficit which means the spending especially on military and defence is far exceeding the tax revenues.

In 2017, US spent US$ 685,957 billion with 3.6 of its GDP on military spending while the UK stood second at US$ 55,237 billion with 2.1 per cent of GDP.  France and Germany allocated US$ 45,927 billion and 45,472 billion respectively with 1.8 and 1.2 percent of their GDPs. The NATO member states are pressured for raising their defense spending to 2 percent and gradually up to 4 percent in five years.

According to a study regarding world powers’ overseas military bases

• China retains twelve military bases;
• France runs nine military bases including in Germany, Lebanon and UAE;
• Germany has two military bases in France and United States;
• India has seven bases including in Tajikistan and Maldives;
• Israel possesses one military base in Syria’s Golan Heights;
• Pakistan has a military center with 1,180 personnel in Saudi Arabia;
• Russia runs eight military facilities including in Armenia, Georgia, Syria and some Central Asian countries;
• UK controls ten military bases including in Bahrain, Canada, Germany, Singapore and Qatar;
• the US is leading nearly 800 military bases across the world that run in full swing with the highest budget.

In other words, the US possesses up to 95 per cent of the world’s military bases. The Department of Defense says that its locations include 164 countries. Put another way, it has a military presence of some sort in approximately 84 percent of the nations on this planet.

The annual cost of deploying US military personnel overseas, as well as maintaining and running those foreign bases, tops out at an estimated US$ 150 billion annually. The US bases abroad cost upwards of US$ 50 billion only for building and maintenance, which is enough to address pressing needs at home in education, health care, housing and infrastructure.

In 2017 and 2018, the world’s largest military spenders were the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and India. The UK took over France as sixth largest spender in 2018 while Japan and Germany stood at eighth and ninth positions.

In early 2018, Pentagon released a report saying that Afghan war costs US$ 45 billion to taxpayers in the preceding year. Of this amount, US$ 5 billion has been spent on Afghan forces, US$ 13 billion towards US forces in Afghanistan and the rest on economic aid.

But these costs are far lower than the time when the US military was highly engaged in Afghanistan. With nearly 100,000 soldiers in the country from 2010 to 2012, the price for American taxpayers surpassed US$ 100 billion each year. For now, there are around 16,000 US troops in Afghanistan. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars have gone into Afghanistan, the US admits it failed in war against militants in Afghanistan.

In November 2018, another study published by CNBC reported that America has spent US$ 5.9 trillion on wars in the Middle East and Asia since 2001 including in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The study also reveals that more than 500,000 people have been killed in the wars and nearly 10 million people have been displaced due to violence.

The US has reportedly spent US$ 1.07 trillion in Afghanistan since 2001 which include Overseas Contingency Operations funds dedicated to Afghanistan, costs on the base budget of the Department of Defense and increase to the budget of the Department of Veteran Affairs.

In Afghanistan, the US costs of war in 2001 commenced with US$ 37.3 billion that soared to US$ 57.3 billion in 2007 and US$ 100 billion in 2009. The year with record spending was 2010 with US$ 112.7 billion that slightly plummeted to US$ 110.4 billion in 2011 but took downwards trend in the later years.

Due to skyrocketing military costs on the US government, Trump Administration recently decided to pack up some of its military bases in Afghanistan and Middle East to diminish expenditures, though it doesn’t mean the wars would end at all.

According to Afghanistan Analysts Network, the US Congress has appropriated more than US$ 126 billion in aid for Afghanistan since financial year 2002, with almost 63 percent for security and 28 percent for development and the remainder for civilian operations, mostly budgetary assistance and humanitarian aid. Alongside the US aid, many world countries have pumped millions of dollars in development aids, but what is evident for insiders and outsiders is that a trickle of those funds has actually gone into Afghanistan’s reconstruction.

With eighteen years into Afghan war, the security is deteriorating; Afghan air force is ill-equipped; poppy cultivation is on the rise; roads and highways are dilapidated or unconstructed; no mediocre hospital and health care has been established; weekly conflict causalities hit 150-250; electricity is still imported from Central Asian countries; economy remains dependent upon imports; unemployment rate is at its peak; more than three quarters of population live under poverty line and many, many more miseries persist or aggravate.

The US boasts of being the largest multi-billion dollar donor for Afghanistan, but if one takes a deeper look at the living standards of majority and the overall conditions, it can be immediately grasped that less than half of that exaggerated fund has been consumed. The US-made government of Afghanistan has deliberately been left behind to rank as the first corrupt country in the world. Thanks to the same unaddressed pervasive corruption, a hefty amount of that fund has been either directed back to the US hands or embezzled by senior Afghan officials.

Afghanistan’s new Living Conditions Survey shows that poverty is more widespread today than it was immediately after the fall of Taliban regime, or in other words, in the early days of US invasion.

Next month, Kabul will host a Consultative Loya Jirga attended by around 2,000 representatives from Afghanistan which will cost the Afghan Ministry of Finance AF 369 million (equivalent to five million US$). Even as the past has proved that these events are only symbolic and further complicating the achievement of peace, a country with great majority under poverty line doesn’t deserve to organize such costly gatherings.

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Featured image is from Salon.com

The US’ strengthening of its energy and security partnerships with the emerging strategic axis of Greece, “Israel”, and Cyprus (GRISCY) through the proposed “Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act” will contribute to containing multipolarity in the region by working against the interests of Turkey, Russia, and even China.

The GRISCY Game-Changer

Adam Garrie’s observation last year about the emerging Greek-“Israeli“-Cypriot (GRISCY) axis has been validated after two Senators just proposed the “Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act” that will see the US strengthen its energy and strategic partnerships with this alliance. The popular Greek outlet Ekathimerini summarized the bill’s most important provisions as follows:

                “- Lift the prohibition on arms sales to the Republic of Cyprus;

• Authorize the establishment of a United States-Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center to facilitate energy cooperation between the US, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus;
• Authorize $3,000,000 in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) assistance for Greece;
• Authorize $2,000,000 for International Military Education and Training (IMET) assistance for Greece and $2,000,000 for Cyprus.
• Impede the transfer of F-35 aircraft to Turkey, as long as Turkey continues with plans to purchase the S-400 air defense system from the Russian Federation, a purchase that would be sanctionable under US law.
• Require the Administration to submit to Congress a strategy on enhanced security and energy cooperation with countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as reports on malign activities by Russia and other countries in the region.”

From the above, it’s clear to see that this is a blatantly anti-Turkish piece of legislation, albeit one that’s also equally contrary to Russian and Chinese interests as well. This means that the Act is actually intended to contain multipolarity in the region and is therefore poised to be a game-changing geopolitical development if it enters into law.

Greece & Cyprus

GRISCY brings together three anti-Turkish states along Ankara’s Western and Southern peripheries and gives them a sense of integrational purpose through the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Pipeline that they’re all involved in, which in turn serves as the physical basis for expanding their energy relations to the political, military, and ultimately strategic levels.

Greece fulfills an especially important role in this alliance because of Turkey’s transit dependence on it for connecting the Azerbaijani-originating TANAP gas pipeline to Southern Europe, which interestingly puts Ankara in the position of possibly being blackmailed by Athens (either on Greece’s own initiative of at the urging of one of its partners) just like Moscow was by Kiev in the early 2000s.

Another point of pertinence in relation to Greece is that it aspires to become a regional leader in the interconnected Balkan-Eastern Mediterranean space not only through its energy connectivity potential but also because of the role that it’s played in the Republic of Macedonia (now “recognized” as the so-called “Republic of North Macedonia”) and Cyprus.

While Macedonia isn’t of strategic relevance for Turkey, Cyprus certainly is due to the unresolved issue over the northern part of the island, which is why the resumption of American arms shipments to Nicosia could be very troubling for Ankara and must therefore be seen as “punishment” for its purchase of the S-400s and failure to cooperate with Washington in Syria to the extent that the Pentagon wants.

The “Clash Of Civilizations”

It goes without saying that Greece and Cyprus are also very economically destitute countries whose governments can easily be bought by the US and “Israel”, and with both of their populations being anti-Turkish to the bone, these countries’ alliances with those two aforementioned powers will probably be overlooked by many or even praised because of Washington and Tel Aviv’s antipathy to Ankara nowadays.

There’s even a credible chance that its many supporters at home and abroad will present GRISCY’s role as the US’ “Lead From Behind” proxy for managing Eastern Mediterranean affairs through the prism of the so-called “Clash of Civilizations” by portraying it as the West’s “frontline defense” for “protecting Judeo-Christian civilization” from Islam, which could wildly increase its appeal among many right-wing individuals.

Russia & China

Not only would GRISCY contain Turkey, however, but Ekathimerini’s last-mentioned detail about the proposed Act specifically indicates that it has an anti-Russian purpose as well, one that could very easily be expanded throughout the entire Eastern Mediterranean region as recently proven by Pompeo’s threat to sanction Egypt if it proceeds with its planned large-scale purchase of Russian warplanes.

More specifically to the alliance’s three members, the US could try to thwart TurkStream’s possible expansion to Greece en route to Italy, continue cracking down on oligarchic holdings in Cyprus, and try to weaken the Russian-“Israeli” Strategic Partnership, as well as potentially cut off Moscow’s “Levantine Line” trade route between Crimea, Syria, the Sinai, and Eritrea in the event of a crisis.

Concerning China, Beijing’s control over the Greek port of Piraeus provides the People’s Republic with a reliable entry point to the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative”and is the basis for its Balkan Silk Road, so it’s in the US’ interests to monitor all activity related to this important node in the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) and to also keep tabs on Chinese activity in the strategic “Israeli” port of Haifa, too.

Concluding Thoughts

As argued in this analysis, all of the above-mentioned points clearly prove that the US’ “Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act” is intended to contain multipolarity in the Eastern Mediterranean by strengthening America’s strategic ties with its “Lead From Behind” proxy of GRISCY in order to thwart Turkish, Russian, and even Chinese designs in the region.

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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.

During the last 3 days, intense clashes were ongoing between militias loyal to the  Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Libyan National Army  (LNA) south of the capital of Tripoli and in several  coastal areas. Pro-GNA factions concentrated most of their best forces and efforts in  the area of Tripoli International Airport. By April 10, they had recaptured  most of the airport and the town of Swani from the LNA and advanced  further to the south entering Al-Aziiziyah. This counter-attack was led  by the Tripoli Protection Forces and Misrata militias. According to pro-GNA sources, they have captured 34 LNA service members  with their vehicles and destroyed at least one LNA battle tank.

Some experts also expected the GNA forces to exploit  the overextended LNA supply lines from the area of Benghazi in  order to carry out raids in the rear of the advancing LNA force.  Al-Qaryat and al-Shwayrif were noted as obvious targets. However, no  military activity of this kind has taken place. Most likely, the reason is  a lack of coordination among the pro-GNA forces, which are more like independent  factions fighting for influence than a monolithic armed force.

In their own turn, the LNA exploited the GNA focus on the airport area by  advancing on other fronts. In particular, LNA units entered Ayn Zara  capturing several military facilities belonging to pro-GNA forces.  Controlling Qasir Ibn Gsher and advancing along the road towards  Tripoli, the LNA is in fact threatening to cut off the GNA force  deployed near al-Aziziyah. Another direction of the LNA advance is the  coastal area to the east of Tajura. The goal is to isolate Tripoli from  its allies in Misrata. However, no significant progress has been  achieved in this field.

At the same time, LNA units advanced near the  GNA-held town of Sirte attempting to cut off communications between it  and Misrata. The situation in the area remains unclear.

Both sides continue to use their existing air forces to deliver strikes on each other. The LNA Air Force recently bombed Tripoli’s Mitiga  airport while GNA warplanes attacked LNA forces near Sirte.

The recent developments show that the LNA has an advantage over its  pro-GNA rivals in terms of maneuverability and coordination, which it  successfully exploits. Despite this, pro-GNA militias are a  well-equipped force that has no shortage of supplies and even has  an advantage in manpower at some parts of the frontline. In some  scenarios, the LNA advance on Tripoli, which started like a kind of  blitzkrieg, may turn into a prolonged siege with shaky chances of taking control of Tripoli anytime soon.

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On Jair Bolsonaro’s 100^th day in office, an international coalition of NGOs – including a group representing more than 300 Brazilian indigenous groups – have called for the European Union (EU) to end its complicity in the assault on indigenous rights and the destruction of the Amazon.

Since President Bolsonaro became leader of the world’s “fourth largest democracy” on January 1, his government has dismantled environmental protections, incursions by armed invaders on Indigenous Peoples’ lands have surged, and deforestation rates in the Amazon have risen.

The EU provides a huge market for Brazilian soy and beef, which drive deforestation and human rights abuses in Brazil on a vast scale. The EU is also Brazil’s second largest trading partner, and together its Member States are Brazil’s largest source of foreign direct investment.

The coalition is calling for tough new EU laws guaranteeing that products sold in the EU do not cause deforestation and human rights abuses in Brazil.

“The EU already has laws to stop illegally logged wood, illegally sourced fish and conflict minerals entering its markets. The unfolding destruction in Brazil shows the glaring need for similar laws for agricultural goods,” said Nicole Polsterer, Forests and Consumption campaigner at Fern, the forests and rights NGO.

“The EU must clean up its [agricultural] supply chains, make them transparent, and use its enormous economic leverage to reduce the threat Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples face,” she added.

Sônia Guajajara, coordinator of Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (APIB ) which represents more than 300 Brazilian indigenous groups, reinforced this call for EU action.

“The first 100 days of Bolsonaro’s presidency are the latest chapter in a long war of attrition against Brazil’s Indigenous People. The crimes that are being committed today are happening in the name of agricultural production. The EU must not evade its responsibility for this,” Guajajara said.

“The EU must use its consumer power to ensure our rights are protected and our forests are preserved,” she added.

The international call for EU action coincides with the release of a new Fern briefing, 100 Days of Bolsonaro, Ending the EU’s role in the assault on the Amazon, which details the dizzying speed at which environmental laws have been eroded, and land grabs and attacks on indigenous communities have accelerated in the first three months of Bolsonaro’s presidency. In January 2019, deforestation in the Amazon reportedly rose by 54 per cent compared to  the same month in 2018.

As well as a new EU law preventing commodities being sold on the EU market which have caused deforestation or the violation of human rights, the briefing also calls the EU to use its economic leverage to protect Brazil’s forests and Indigenous Peoples, by:

• Suspending its talks for a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the Mercosur trading bloc – of which Brazil is the largest and most powerful member – until Brazil renews its commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement, and the deal’s Sustainability Impact Assessment is released publicly and its findings taken into account. The Mercosur deal should also include binding, enforceable provisions to end deforestation and respect customary tenure rights.
• The European External Action Service (EEAS) should strengthen the implementation of the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy and include more proactive consultation with Brazilian civil society organisations. The EU should also monitor and respond to human rights violations and strengthen human rights defenders’ protection mechanisms. For those most at risk, including Indigenous Peoples and environmental defenders, the EU should provide direct, urgent support where required, including through political representations.

Perrine Fournier, Fern’s Trade and Forests campaigner, said that signing the Mercosur trade deal as it stands, would exacerbate an already dangerous situation.

“The EU says it supports values based trade. Bolsonaro is the litmus test for this. Signing the Mercosur deal as it stands would mean renouncing the EU’s commitment to end deforestation by 2020, sacrificing indigenous rights and forests on the altar of trade,” she said.

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With over 97% of votes counted, Netanyahu and leading challenger Benny Gantz each won 35 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, according to the unofficial tally.

Apartheid right wing parties won a super-majority on Tuesday, results similar to recent past elections.

Israelis have themselves to blame, keeping Netanyahu in power as prime minister for the past decade, another four-year term likely as analysts believe a majority of Knesset members support him.

Likud under him represents extremist fascist rule – neoliberal harshness for most Jews, apartheid for Israeli Arabs and Occupied Palestinians.

Institutionalized racism is official Israeli policy under all its ruling coalitions. So is state terrorism, as well as undeclared war on Palestinians and Syria, slow-motion genocide against two million Gazans, suffocating under politicized blockade, attacked repeated by the IDF, the world community doing nothing to stop their suffering.

Israel is a fantasy democracy, not the real thing. Millions of Palestinians are disenfranchised. Their entire population in Israel and the Territories has no say over how they’re governed.

Nearly five million Palestinians in the Territories and Israel are victimized by occupation, colonization, and apartheid state terror, high crimes under international law by any standard.

No matter how Israeli elections turn out, their persecution continues, self-determination denied them by all Israeli regimes.

No-peace/peace talks when held represent the greatest hoax in modern times – along with the US war OF terror, not on it.

Unofficial results have Netanyahu’s Likud and Gantz’s Blue and White party tied with 35 seats (each with 26% of the vote), around 14,000 votes separating them with about 100,000 remaining to be counted as of 9AM local time.

Ultra-orthodox/religious fundamentalist Shas and United Torah Judaism parties each got eight seats, Union of Right-Wing Parties and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu both with five, and Kulanu four.

Labor and Arab party Hadash-Ta’al each got six seats, Meretz five, and United Arab List-Balad four.

Naftali Bennett, Ayelet (“little snakes”) Shaked, along with other hard-right figures failed to gain enough votes for Knesset seats. Turnout was 68%, down from 72% in 2015, largely because most Israeli Arabs opted out of the process, knowing no matter who wins, they lose.

The above results may change slightly once final results are official. Exit polls varied, at least one showing Gantz’s Blue and White part ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud by four seats, another showing the prime minister slightly ahead.

According to the left of center Meretz party, ballots were missing at one or more polling stations, adding their voters complained of “vandali(zed) Meretz ballots.”

Ones damaged or written on may be invalidated – reminiscent of “hanging chads” in the US 2000 presidential election – won by Al Gore, handed to Bush/Cheney by majority Supreme Court justices.

Benefitting from low Arab turnout, Netanyahu and coalition partners appear to have won 65 – 67 seats for majority control, the prime minister to retain power if official final results turn out this way.

Left-of-center Israelis, Palestinians, the Arab street, and supporters of peace, equity and justice everywhere are losers with the Netanyahu regime retaining power – even though his looming indictment for fraud, bribery and breach of trust may undo him.

For the moment, he appears triumphant, winning another four years in office. Indicting, prosecuting, convicting, sentencing, and imprisoning him will rain on his parade if things go this way.

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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.

Refusing to acknowledge Russia’s “balancing” acts with “Israel” and Saudi Arabia is a disservice to the Palestinian and Yemeni causes because it ignores the important role that Moscow plays in propping up Tel Aviv and Riyadh, resulting in the artificial creation of the overly simplistic and inaccurate narrative that it’s only the West that supports both of those aforementioned powers and that Russia is supposedly on the same side as the “Resistance” vis-a-vis all of this.

America “Bad”, Russia “Good”?

One of the defining characteristics of the Alt-Media Community is that many of its members are activists who strongly support the Palestinian and Yemeni causes, which regularly sees them condemning the West and especially the US for propping up “Israel” and Saudi Arabia. Those aforementioned powers are responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian and Yemeni people, and the overly simplistic narrative that’s artificially created by most of these activists solely attacking the West for its support of “Israel” and Saudi Arabia is that the problem could be easily resolved if only the US changed its foreign policy. This interpretation overlooks the important role that Russia’s “balancing” acts with “Israel” and Saudi Arabia also play in propping up each of them, leading to the inaccurate conclusion that Russia is supposedly on the same side as the “Resistance” vis-a-vis all of this.

“Balancing”

While there are indeed some overlapping interests between Russia, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, especially when it comes to fighting terrorists in the Arab Republic, President Putin is first and foremost dedicated to advancing and protecting his own nation’s interests even if this comes at the (perceived) expense of its anti-terrorist partners’ elsewhere, ergo Russia’s strategic partnerships with both “Israel” and Saudi Arabia. Whether one agrees with the overall strategic wisdom behind them in advancing multipolarity or thinks that this is a naive strategy that’s doomed to fail, it’s an objective fact that Russia is pursuing these two partnerships out of its desire to “balance” Eurasian affairs and potentially replace the US’ influence over both of those powers. Recognizing this reality isn’t endorsing it or expressing a moral opinion about it, but is simply an apolitical and amoral statement of the obvious.

Alt-Media Censorship

Nevertheless, many Alt-Media activists defensively behave as gatekeepers by feverishly suppressing any talk about how President Putin recently ordered the Russian special forces to dig up the remains of 20 “Israeli” “soldiers” in Syria or that the state nuclear energy company Rosatom is bidding to build 16 nuclear power plantsin Saudi Arabia, let alone how the much-celebrated shipment of S-300s was nothing more than a pro-“Israeli” infowar stunt and that Moscow also just confirmed that it’s shipping state-of-the-art rocket launchers to Saudi Arabia. The US is regularly attacked by these very same activists for supposedly “pandering” to “Israel” and contributing to the War on Yemen through its arms exports to Saudi Arabia, yet Russia apparently gets a pass for both for reasons that will now be speculated upon.

Disclaimer

Before proceeding any further, it’s not being argued that anyone should condemn Russia, but just that those who feel strongly enough to condemn the US and others for the same should either explain why they choose to apply different standards towards Russia (possibly by elaborating upon the bigger picture involved with its “balancing” acts) or criticize it with the same intensity out of “ideological consistency”. Ignoring what Russia’s doing, however, is an extreme disservice to the Palestinian and Yemeni causes because it unnaturally omits one of the most important actors from the strategic equation and also contributes (whether deliberately or inadvertently) to the creation of an Alt-Reality where Russia is wrongly implied to be on the same side as the “Resistance”, which it certainly isn’t in these cases.

Ignorance vs. Self-Interest

While only the pro-Palestinian and/or -Yemeni activists who don’t publicly comment on Russia’s “balancing” acts with “Israel” and Saudi Arabia can account for their own actions (or rather, lack thereof), it’s very possible that they’re either ignorant of these facts or are pursuing an agenda. Per the first-mentioned, while Russian international media occasionally reports on the various facets pertaining to these “balancing” acts, they aren’t “promoted” as much as other topics, leave alone the criticisms that they regularly publish about the US and other Western countries’ ties with “Israel” and Saudi Arabia. As for the second-mentioned possibility, some self-interested activists might not want to risk being overlooked for interviews on Russian international media if they criticize Moscow, “rationalizing” their approach as a “necessary sacrifice” for raising awareness about their cause.

Concluding Thoughts

Whatever the real reason may be, it’s actually counterproductive to these two causes to ignore Russia’s strategic relations with “Israel” and Saudi Arabia because it creates creates the false impression that Moscow is on the same side as the “Resistance”. It also overly simplifies the plight of the Palestinians and Yemenis by making it seem like their woes would be resolved if only the US changed its foreign policy, forgetting that Russia is also sustaining “Israel” & Saudi Arabia and ensuring their security through multiple means. At this point, no activist can continue to plead ignorance of the facts when Russia has made them as obvious as it did, meaning that many who continue to ignore this reality are likely doing so in order to promote an agenda.

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

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Battlefield Libya: Fruits of US-NATO Regime Change

By Tony Cartalucci, April 10, 2019

The confusing chaos that has continually engulfed Libya since 2011 should come as no surprise. It is the predictable outcome that follows any US-led political or military intervention. Other examples showcasing US-led regime change “success” include Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine.

The Nation’s Food: Hazardous US Chemical and Biological Products

By Stephen Lendman, April 10, 2019

Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is a former drug industry lobbyist and executive. He was president of Lilly USA LLC, Eli Lilly’s largest affiliate company, earlier serving as Bush/Cheney’s deputy HHS secretary.

Western Spies Among the Jihadis in Idlib: Planning A New Drama? A Chemical Attack?

By Steven Sahiounie, April 10, 2019

Recently, the Russian Defense Ministry warned that European intelligence agents were inside Idlib, and planning a chemical attack, which would be blamed on the Syrian and/or Russian military.

Terrorist Designations: Trump and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, April 10, 2019

The designation by the Trump administration of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organisation was meant to expand options for the US while shutting others out.  While Trump attempts to defrost matters with North Korea, Iran has played the convenient bug bear.  

The Fall of Baghdad 16 Years Ago

By Eresh Omar Jamal, April 10, 2019

Three weeks into the invasion of Iraq, coalition forces led by the US army entered Baghdad and formally occupied it on April 9, 2003. The city’s infrastructure was seriously damaged.

Elite and Media Support for NATO, Increasing Threat of War with Russia

By Shane Quinn, April 10, 2019

Following extensive skirmishes in summer 2008 along Russia’s southern frontier, on 7 August of that year Moscow-led forces launched an intervention into Georgian territory – a military incursion that experienced Russian expert Richard Sakwa, of the University of Kent, described as “a response to the threat of NATO enlargement” and also “in effect the first of the ‘wars to stop NATO enlargement’”.

The Boston Trial: Another African Convicted in Another Racist, Chauvinist Western Court

By Ann Garrison, April 10, 2019

In other words, yet another racist, chauvinist, Western court convicted yet another African of participating in mass violence that the US and its Western allies engineered in order to expand their imperial influence in East and Central Africa at the expense of France.

Greens Say ‘No to NATO’ While War Parties Give Standing Ovations to NATO

By Kevin Zeese, April 10, 2019

Last week was one of contrast over the issue of war and militarism as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came to Washington, DC. “No to NATO” protests began on March 30 and continued until the meeting of NATO foreign ministers on April 4.

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