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German lawmaker Alexander Neu lambasted NATO for conducting aggressive wars and raking up defense spending, suggesting Germany should quit its military command, and the bloc be dissolved altogether.

Following WikiLeaks’ warning yesterday that Julian Assange faced imminent eviction from Ecuador’s London embassy, widespread opposition has emerged to the illegal plans to terminate his political asylum.

Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, issued a statement calling upon the Ecuadorian government of President Lenín Moreno to “abstain from expelling Mr. Assange … or from otherwise ceasing or suspending his political asylum.”

Melzer warned that if Assange was removed from the embassy, he was “likely to be arrested by British authorities and extradited to the United States,” adding, “Such a response could expose him to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Senior Ecuadorian officials have sought to deflect any questions about WikiLeaks’ claims that a high-level source within the country’s state apparatus indicated that Assange’s expulsion from the embassy building would take place “within hours or days.”

Outside the Ecuadorian embassy Friday, the country’s ambassador to Britain, Jaime Marchan, told the press that there was “no change in the Señor Julian Assange situation” and that he was “offended” by reports to the contrary.

Marchan, who has played a central role in creating a hostile environment for Assange within the embassy, was then asked, “Is he going to be released in the next couple of hours?” He responded, “We are definitely not going to comment on that.”

The country’s foreign minister, Jose Valencia, declared on Twitter that WikiLeaks’ statements were “unfounded” and that his government would not be “giving a running commentary” on “rumours” that it found “insulting.”

Valencia then effectively confirmed WikiLeaks’ warning, stating, “Diplomatic asylum is a sovereign power of a state which has the right to grant or withdraw it unilaterally when it considers it justified.”

The suggestion that political asylum can be granted and withdrawn, based on political expediency and the immediate interests of national governments, makes a mockery of international law. Political asylum is either inviolable, or it does not exist at all. Assange’s status as a political refugee has been repeatedly confirmed by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and other international rights organisations.

Valencia pathetically added that any decisions taken by his government would be carried out in a “sovereign manner independent of other countries.”

The foreign minister’s claims notwithstanding, world public opinion already recognises that the Moreno regime is operating as a vassal of the US government. Within Ecuador, the government enjoys an approval rating of less than 20 percent and is seen by the bulk of the population as a corrupt lackey of American imperialism.

The pretext for the attempt to evict Assange from the embassy is universally viewed as a monumental fraud.

The Ecuadorian government has, over the past week, made entirely unsubstantiated claims that the leaking of Moreno’s iPhone and Gmail data to an opposition lawmaker last February was the product of a conspiracy hatched by Assange and WikiLeaks. They are well aware that the release of the material, and related documents, which implicate the regime in corruption, bribery and perjury, had nothing to do with Assange, whose internet access and communications were cut off by the Ecuadorian government in March, 2018.

The evasive and duplicitous comments of senior Ecuadorian officials result from the fact that they, along with their co-conspirators in the US and British governments, are engaged in a sordid task.

They are seeking to present their plans to illegally abrogate the political asylum of a journalist and publisher, whose only “crime” has been to expose the predatory wars, diplomatic intrigues and mass surveillance operations of the major powers, as a legitimate and proper exercise.

WikiLeaks has further exposed the backroom machinations aimed at forcing Assange from the embassy, publishing earlier today what it stated was the summary of a “press strategy” agreed upon by the Ecuadorian and British governments.

Under the secret deal, the British government would “take the lead” following Assange’s eviction. The Ecuadorian regime would state that Assange had broken the “asylum terms” contained in an illegal protocol it issued last October, banning him from making any political statements, including about his own plight.

The British government would then declare that it would not allow the Trump administration to “kill” Assange in the event of his extradition to the US and would posture as a defender of “due process.” Ecuador would present this as a “concession” and say that the initial granting of asylum to the WikiLeaks founder was only aimed at preventing him from facing the death penalty.

The agreement resembles nothing so much as a deal between criminal gangs, to carry out an extrajudicial kidnapping operation in violation of all national and international laws.

Any measures along these lines will be opposed by millions of workers and young people.

An attempt to extradite Assange to the US would rightly be viewed by the world’s population as illegal and illegitimate. It would be bitterly contested in the courts by WikiLeaks’ internationally-renowned legal team.

Last year, US prosecutors revealed, apparently by mistake, that they had already filed charges against Assange, likely over WikiLeaks’ 2010 publication of the US army’s Iraq and Afghan war logs and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, revealing war crimes and diplomatic intrigues on a global scale.

The Trump administration, however, has signalled that it does not have a case for Assange’s prosecution that could withstand judicial scrutiny under British, US or international law, setting the stage for a protracted legal and political battle over any extradition request.

For the past three weeks, the US government has held Chelsea Manning, who leaked the 2010 documents to WikiLeaks, to try and force her to give perjured testimony against Assange. The courageous whistleblower has refused to participate in this legal travesty.

The widespread support for Assange and Manning among workers, students and young people stands in stark contrast to the silence of all of the official political parties in the United States, Britain and Australia.

Jeremy Corbyn, who, prior to becoming leader of the British Labour Party, claimed to defend Assange, has said nothing about the stepped-up assault on the WikiLeaks founder.

In Australia, the Liberal-National government of Scott Morrison, the Labor Party opposition, the Greens and the trade unions have remained silent, in line with the protracted collaboration of the entire political establishment in the US-led vendetta against Assange, who is an Australian citizen.

This demonstrates that a movement to free Assange and Manning must come from the working class, not the capitalist parties that are engaged in online censorship, an accelerating drive to war and the evisceration of democratic rights.

Workers must be made aware that the mass social and political struggles they are entering, are inseparable from the defence of courageous journalists and whistleblowers, who are being persecuted in order to establish a precedent for the suppression of all opposition to militarism, austerity and dictatorship.

The WSWS and the Socialist Equality Parties (SEP) around the world are committed to playing a central role in this crucial fight.

The SEP in Britain has called for maximum participation in protests organised outside Ecuador’s London Embassy. The Australian SEP has today issued a statement, reiterating its demand that the Australian government fulfil its responsibilities to Assange and compel the British government to allow him to leave the country, and return to Australia, with a guarantee against extradition to the US.

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On 4th of April 2019 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) “celebrated” the 70^th Anniversary of its murderous existence. This horror organization was born sort of as a “Rosemary’s Baby”, signed into life in Washington DC, as the North Atlantic Treaty. Its creation was absolutely unethical but also absolutely “legal” – meaning what we, the west, have made the law, a man-made law for war, was applied by the Washington-Pentagon driven NATO. Estimates have it, that NATO and its ‘allies’, cronies, proxies and mercenaries killed more than 20 million people since NATO’s existence, basically since the end of WWII. Compare this with about 70 to 80 million killed in WWII. – The 70 years of NATO are considered “Peace Time” – were they really a period of Peace?

This is a call on all NATO members to exit NATO – to opt for Peace and to exit NATO! To stop fighting wars – to liberate yourselves from the shackles of NATO.

Was the artificially and under totally false pretenses, as we know today, Cold War, which started immediately after WWII and lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – a period of Peace? – Or was it rather a period of constant intimidation for war, a period of armament of the west, a period of maximizing profits for the mainly US military industrial complex – a period, to destroy any chance the Soviet Union may have had to economically advance, as the arms race made it impossible for the USSR, the country that won WII, to concentrate on economic development at home after having lost 25 million lives and her basic production infrastructure.

And yes, it was the Soviet Union – not the “allies” (US, UK, and France) that liberated the world at the time from the German Nazi dominance. And yes, western history books tell you a different story. Western history books are never to be trusted.

The entirely Pentagon-run NATO has today 29 member countries (see NATO member states), 26 of which are in Europe, and one, Turkey, in Eurasia. Plus, there are a number of “associated” or wannabe members, like Ukraine, Israel – and in recent months, would you believe! – Colombia in South America joined NATO through a so-called “Cooperation Agreement”, dating back to 2013 – and Brazil is perhaps the next candidate. The US want to control again their “backyard”, by applying again their Monroe Doctrine (no foreign power, other than the US, in Latin America) except, that the backyard has learned its lesson.

While Venezuela and her hydrocarbon and other mineral riches is the main target right now for NATO’s presence in Colombia and perhaps soon in Brazil, the most democratically elected government in the western world, is not just buckling under, as Washington is used to from the past. No. Venezuela has a solid strategic, economic – and MILITARY alliance with Russia and China. Despite all the infamous Trump-Pompeo-Bolton saber-rattling, its Russia and China who are drawing the red line. So much for the Monroe Doctrine. Times ar’a changing.

The US/NATO – all ruled by the Pentagon – have about 800 – and according to some estimates more than 1,000 military bases in about 100 countries. Not all are known to the public. The funds used to arm and maintain the bases are your tax-payer’s moneys. While producing weapons for the NATO killing bulldozer, these moneys are not available for much needed, education and health care, let alone basic infrastructure in poor countries, precisely those countries that are being colonized by the US / NATO military bases.

It has, of course, never been a priority for the western elite – those financial-military-petrol and lie-propaganda giants – that dark shady neofascist state that pretends to manipulates the rest of the world, to care for people’s health, and, of course even less so, for people’s education. Educated people are dangerous for these nefarious lecherous, greedy kingpins.

Take note! People around the world, your education is not wanted. Instead the money – YOUR MONEY – your government is supposed spend to give you a decent education so you can earn a decent living and understand the ropes of this ever more complex globe – these funds – YOUR FUNDS – are spent for arming to the teeth the NATO bases, to colonize you and your countries, to enslave you to a One World Order under a western dollar dominated financial hegemony.

They have already all the instruments in place, IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO); they are subordinates to NATO. Get out of them too. They are the “elite’s” (for lack of a better term) tool to suffocate you with debt – so you will be at their mercy and sell them your resources for a pittance. Create your own economy, outside of the realm of GLOBALIZATION, of globalized neoliberalism, bordering already today on neofascism. Get out of NATO – and the rest will follow.

Because that’s what Europe has become: A US-NATO-Pentagon colony. European Nations – you think since you are a member of NATO, you have a say in NATO decisions? – Better think again. You know, you have no say in NATO. It couldn’t be more obvious that the Pentagon is calling the shots. Trump and his minions, on behalf of the Pentagon and, of course, on behalf of the military industrial oligarchs, is threatening you – you European members, better pay up to NATO, or else… Whatever “else” means, it’s supposed to scare you. You know, you leaders (sic) of so-called EU members, you have been coopted to obey. Your non-elected European Commission (EC) that calls the shots on European legislation – yes, not the EU Parliament – has also been bought by Washington. The EU is nothing but a puppet of Washington and run by NATO.

But, then, what can you expect, the European Union was never an idea of Europeans. It was an idea born by the CIA already during WWII – then transplanted to some “willing” Europeans, with the promise of NATO protection from the evil Soviets. And, bingo, the red scaredid it. It was the US Senator Joseph McCarthyera. The Red Scare. And today, we live in the entire wester era Russia Scare, then the China Scare, scares no-end – they keep NATO in place – keep NATO in Europe and gradually moving around the world – South China Sea, Latin America; the scares keep NATO ravaging and killing millions around the globe.

All the while – there is a real danger of a nuclear war – People, wake up! The Masters of WAR, NATO, are just waiting for the moment to provoke that infamous Red Button. People of this Universe, don’t you realize – if that happens, we are all doomed; mankind is doomed. Mother Earth may recover, but humans self-destruct.

People! Before that happens, kill the killing machine; kill NATO in its roots. Exit NATO! Contribute no penny anymore to the NATO budget. Withdraw from NATO, get out of NATO. Kick NATO out of your sovereign countries. Regain your NATO-stolen sovereignty. – And you will see the feeling of Peace enhances your wellbeing, while the constant fear of war destroys your soul.

Getting out of NATO is actually easy, it’s also legally possible. As per Article 13 of the NATO charter, all of you members are eligible to exit NATO and to opt for PEACE:

There most likely may be multiple attempts to coopt (buy) your leaders again, under the false pretenses of security. Don’t fall for it. There is no danger from the “East”. In fact, neither Russia or China have an expansionist history. They have a different philosophy. They are seeking a multipolar world, by connecting to what is most logical – the so-called European Continent, which is geographically just the western most part of the huge contiguous Continent of Eurasia, even including the Middle East. Trading with friendly nations within this huge land mass is not only logical, it had been done in the past for thousands of years.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, six years ago, launched the so-called Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also called the New Silk Road, connecting the world with transport, industrial cultural, learning and research infrastructure; the largest and most brilliant all-inclusive economic development project of known human history. It aims at connecting people, not separating them. It aims at equality and justice, including those left behind, for a world of Peace. As a Chinese delegate to an international conference recently said – we are building bridges to connect people, while the west is building walls.

It’s time for a new era of Peace. Seventy years of NATO, of killing for dominance and greed – is passé. Stop NATO. Exit NATO. Abolish NATO.

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

On April 4, the Afrin Liberation Forces (ALF) announced that their units had carried out a series of attacks on Turkish-backed militants. According to the ALF, on April 2, Kurdish fighters destroyed a bulldozer of Turkish-backed militants with an anti-tank guided missile near the town of Mare. On April 3, ALF members attacked a base of the Turkish-backed 55th Brigade near the city of Azaz, east of Afrin. At least three militants were reportedly injured in the attack.

The ALF is a brand of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which has been created in an attempt to distance the group from constant attacks on Turkey-led forces in the region of Afrin. The YPG is a core of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and official YPG statements providing details into attacks on the Turkish Army and its proxies, which were observed in 2018, were fueling tensions between Ankara and Washington. Now, when the YPG rebranded its units attacking Turkish targets, the US has an opportunity to claim that its ‘local ally’ is not involved in these developments.

On April 3, Russian warplanes conducted a new series of raids against terrorist targets in the Idlib de-escalation zone. This time airstrikes hit Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham positions at the hill of Nabi Ayoub, which is located in the area of Jabal Zawiya.

The April 3 strike was the first aerial attack on Idlib terrorists since March 22. Back then, warplanes of the Russian Aerospace Forces conducted a series of airstrikes near the towns of al-Fu’ah and Kafriya in eastern Idlib.

A low intensity of this Russian activity demonstrates that the widely-speculated Syrian Army operation in the Idlib demilitarized zone is not expected anytime soon.

On April 4, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow for negotiations on the situation in Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Following the US recognition of the occupied Golan Heights as a part of Israel, Tel Aviv is aiming to consolidate its gains on the diplomatic front. Another goal of the Israeli leadership to undermine the Russian-Iranian cooperation in the region. However, so far, these efforts have been unsuccessful.

Israel’s ImageSat International released satellite images showing two buildings, which were hit in the March 27 Israeli airstrikes on the Shaykh Najjar Industrial Zone, northeast of the city of Aleppo. Both buildings are located in the northwestern part of the industrial zone, according to ImageSat’ photos. One of them appears to be a storage hangar.

Israeli media claimed that Iranian forces were using both buildings for military purposes. However, there has been no evidence to support this claim so far. Videos released from the ground shows that the targeted buildings were a kind of industrial facilities.

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Abstract

We had already been told that in the Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crash which killed all 157 people on board, the 4-month old 737 MAX 8’s anti-stall software reengaged itself four times in 6 minutes as the pilots struggled to straighten the plane post-takeoff. In the end, the anti-stall software won and pushed the plane nose-down towards the earth. Now, Ethiopia -finally?!- released its report in the March 10 crash:

Minister of Transport Dagmawit Moges said that the crew of the Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on 10 March “performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but were not able to control the aircraft.” As result, investigations have concluded that Boeing should be required to review the so-called manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system on its 737 Max aircraft before the jets are permitted to fly again, she said.

The results of the preliminary investigation led by Ethiopia’s Accident Investigation Bureau and supported by European investigators were presented by Ms Moges at a press conference in Addis Ababa on Thursday morning.

Ethiopia is being kind to Boeing. However, though the anti-stall software played a big role in what happened, Boeing’s assertion (hope?!) that a software fix is all that is needed to get the 737MAX’s back in the air around the globe rests on very shaky ground (no pun intended whatsoever).

The Seattle Times did an article on March 26 that explains a lot more than all other articles on the topic combined. The paper of course resides in Boeing’s backyard, but can that be the reason we haven’t seen the article quoted all over?

If the assertions in the article are correct, it would appear that a software fix is the least of Boeing’s problems. For one thing, it needs to address serious hardware, not software, issues with its planes. For another, the company better hire a thousand of the world’s best lawyers for all the lawsuits that will be filed against it.

Its cost-cutting endeavors may well be responsible for killing a combined 346 people in the October 29 Lion Air crash and the Ethiopian Airlines one. Get a class-action suit filed in the US and Boeing could be fighting for survival.

Here’s what the Seattle Times wrote 9 days ago:

Lack Of Redundancies On Boeing 737 MAX System Baffles Some Involved In Developing The Jet

Boeing has long embraced the power of redundancy to protect its jets and their passengers from a range of potential disruptions, from electrical faults to lightning strikes. The company typically uses two or even three separate components as fail-safes for crucial tasks to reduce the possibility of a disastrous failure. Its most advanced planes, for instance, have three flight computers that function independently, with each computer containing three different processors manufactured by different companies. So even some of the people who have worked on Boeing’s new 737 MAX airplane were baffled to learn that the company had designed an automated safety system that abandoned the principles of component redundancy, ultimately entrusting the automated decision-making to just one sensor — a type of sensor that was known to fail.

That one paragraph alone is so potentially damaging it’s hard to fathom why everyone’s still discussing a software glitch.

Boeing’s rival, Airbus, has typically depended on three such sensors. “A single point of failure is an absolute no-no,” said one former Boeing engineer who worked on the MAX, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the program in an interview with The Seattle Times. “That is just a huge system engineering oversight. To just have missed it, I can’t imagine how.” Boeing’s design made the flight crew the fail-safe backup to the safety system known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. The Times has interviewed eight people in recent days who were involved in developing the MAX, which remains grounded around the globe in the wake of two crashes that killed a total of 346 people.

The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was already a late addition that Boeing had not planned for initially. They wanted a plane that was so like older ones that no training would be needed, but did put a much heavier engine in it, which was why MCAS was needed. As I wrote earlier today, they cut corners until there was no corner left. On hardware, on software, on pilot training (simulator), everything was done to be cheaper than Airbus.

The angle-of-attack (AOA) sensor of the 737 MAX is the bottom piece of equipment below just below the cockpit windshield. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)

A faulty reading from an angle-of-attack sensor (AOA) — used to assess whether the plane is angled up so much that it is at risk of stalling — is now suspected in the October crash of a 737 MAX in Indonesia, with data suggesting that MCAS pushed the aircraft’s nose toward Earth to avoid a stall that wasn’t happening. Investigators have said another crash in Ethiopia this month has parallels to the first.

Boeing has been working to rejigger its MAX software in recent months, and that includes a plan to have MCAS consider input from both of the plane’s angle-of-attack sensors, according to officials familiar with the new design. “Our proposed software update incorporates additional limits and safeguards to the system and reduces crew workload,” Boeing said in a statement. But one problem with two-point redundancies is that if one sensor goes haywire, the plane may not be able to automatically determine which of the two readings is correct, so Boeing has indicated that the MCAS safety system will not function when the sensors record substantial disagreement.

The underlying idea is so basic and simple it hurts: safety come in groups of three: three flight computers that function independently, with each computer containing three different processors manufactured by different companies, and three sensors. The logic behind this is so overwhelming it’s hard to see how anyone but a sociopathic accountant can even ponder ditching it.

And then here come the clinchers:

Some observers, including the former Boeing engineer, think the safest option would be for Boeing to have a third sensor to help ferret out an erroneous reading, much like the three-sensor systems on the airplanes at rival Airbus. Adding that option, however, could require a physical retrofit of the MAX.

See? It’s not a software issue. It’s hardware, and in all likelihood not just computer hardware either.

Clincher no. 2:

Andrew Kornecki, a former professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who has studied redundancy systems in Airbus and Boeing planes, said operating the automated system with one or two sensors would be fine if all the pilots were sufficiently trained in how to assess and handle the plane in the event of a problem. But, he said, if he were designing the system from scratch, he would emphasize the training while also building the plane with three sensors.

The professor is not 100% honest, I would think. There is zero reason to opt for a two-sensor system, and 1001 reasons not to. It’s all just about cost being more important than people. That last bit explains why Boeing went there against better judgment:

[..] Boeing had been exploring the construction of an all-new airplane earlier this decade. But after American Airlines began discussing orders for a new plane from Airbus in 2011, Boeing abruptly changed course, settling on the faster alternative of modifying its popular 737 into a new MAX model. Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing engineer who worked on designing the interfaces on the MAX’s flight deck, said managers mandated that any differences from the previous 737 had to be small enough that they wouldn’t trigger the need for pilots to undergo new simulator training.

That left the team working on an old architecture and layers of different design philosophies that had piled on over the years, all to serve an international pilot community that was increasingly expecting automation. “It’s become such a kludge, that we started to speculate and wonder whether it was safe to do the MAX,” Ludtke said. Ludtke didn’t work directly on the MCAS, but he worked with those who did. He said that if the group had built the MCAS in a way that would depend on two sensors, and would shut the system off if one fails, he thinks the company would have needed to install an alert in the cockpit to make the pilots aware that the safety system was off.

There you go: A two-sensor system is fundamentally unsound, and it’s therefore bonkers to even discuss, let alone contemplate it.

And if that happens, Ludtke said, the pilots would potentially need training on the new alert and the underlying system. That could mean simulator time, which was off the table. “The decision path they made with MCAS is probably the wrong one,” Ludtke said. “It shows how the airplane is a bridge too far.”

Kudos to the Seattle Times for their research. And yeah, we get it, at over 5000 orders for the plane, which costs $121 million each, there’s big money involved. Here’s hoping that Boeing will find out in the courts just how much.

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Featured image: 737 MAX 8. The angle-of- attack (AOA) sensor is the lower device below the cockpit windshield on both sides of the fuselage. (Mike Siegel/The Seattle Times)

Every day people make decisions about what to eat, sometimes opting for colorful fruits and veggies, sometimes finding the smell of bacon irresistible.  At the end of the day people are controlling their own health.  What is remarkable though, is the possibility that something one swallows today could have a lasting effect on future offspring—children, grandchildren, great grandchildren.  New research is finding a generational impact of certain chemicals.  This time it’s not the bacon we’re worried about—but plastics and the toxins within them. 

Twenty years ago, researchers  at Washington State University discovered accidentally that the now-infamous bisphenol A (BPA) was leaching out of plastic cages, harming the mice within.  The contamination caused abnormalities in mice eggs and fertility.  Numerous subsequent studies found BPA exposure affects adult fertility and health across species, including monkeys, fish, and humans.  Known to decrease sperm count in rats and to cause breast cancer in women, BPA was banned in 2012 by the FDA from being used in baby bottles and sippy cups.  Yet BPA is still used in many products, including epoxy resins used to coat canned foods. A 2004 study of 2,517 people found that 93% had detectable quantities of BPA’s by-product in their urine.

Since the toxic effects of BPA came to light, several replacement bisphenols were quickly brought to market by chemical companies and are now in widespread use. Twenty years after the BPA toxicity discovery, by remarkable chance, the same Washington State University lab recently noticed again that something was amiss with their mice. This time the mice were housed in cages comprised of replacement bisphenols, largely believed to be safer than BPA. The researchers subsequently performed controlled studies with several of the replacement bisphenols including BPS, a widely used replacement.

Results demonstrated that the new bisphenols behaved similarly to BPA, causing health problems including detrimental effects on fertility in both males and females, reported in Cell Biology in September 2018.  Scientist Sarah Hunt explained, “This paper reports a strange déjà vu experience in our laboratory.”  What the lab discovered once with BPA, it was seeing again with the replacements.  Perhaps most troubling were the long-lasting effects of the toxins.  Even if all bisphenols could be magically eliminated today, the toxic effects would still last about three generations through the germline of people already exposed.  This means bisphenols ingested today could affect the fertility of one’s great grandchildren.

The bisphenol case demonstrates that FDA bans do not necessarily solve the root problem.  Chemical companies tend to roll out similar chemicals to those that have been banned, because this is the easiest way to bring something to market quickly.  But more testing is needed before chemicals are released into the environment.  Long term problems such as generational infertility and cancer risk often cannot easily be examined in clinical trials, and environmental effects are not rigorously analyzed prior to release.

The Washington State University study also proved that damaged and heated plastics are particularly deadly, as the damaged cages leached more toxins.  This should serve as a warning for those who microwave food in plastic containers for their families.  And it should remind us that discarded plastic bottles degrading in oceans and rivers are releasing toxins that cause irreversible infertility.

The current estimate of plastics in our oceans is approximately 150 million metric tons. By 2050, the amount is expected to ‘outweigh the fish,’ according to Jim Leape, co-director of the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions.  A recent study has determined microplastics (small plastic particles) are present in every river and lake in Britain.  And they have been found in tap water, everywhere from the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC to the Trump Grill in New York.  A study of 159 drinking water samples on five continents found that 83% of those samples were contaminated.  Plastics are everywhere, from the highest mountains to the deepest parts of the ocean and Arctic.  Nanoplastics less than 50 nanometers long have even been found in plankton, which is ingested by fish that humans eat.

Scientists are finding that plastics are disrupting marine mammals’ ability to reproduce.  Many forms of plastic including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and Bisphenol A are endocrine disruptors, meaning they affect the hormonal systems of animals.  An orca of adult age called Lulu, researchers recently found, was barren as if she was a juvenile.  Analysis revealed very high levels of PCBs in her lipid tissues.  One orca pod off the coast of Scotland has not produced a calf in 25 years.  Despite bans on PCBs 30 years ago,  toxins remain in orca mothers’ milk, and are passed from mother to baby.  A recent study published in the journal Science predicts that half the world’s population of orcas will be extinct in just a few decades due to PCB poisoning.  Researchers have also found that despite the PCB ban in Europe, levels of PCBs have not decreased, indicated that they may be leaching out of landfills.  Hormone disruptors have also been found to impair male frogs’ fertility, and to cause tadpoles to more frequently develop ovaries rather than testicles, thus skewing the proportion of males to females.  Similar problems have been found in fish.  Reproductive risks associated with endocrine disrupting chemicals span species.

Bisphenol A is known to decrease sperm count and to cause cancer in many species.  Its counterpart replacement plastics (BPS, BPF, BPAF, BPZ, BPP, BHPF… to name just a few), researchers have recently discovered, are no better.  Whether these pollutants have already affected humans is anyone’s guess, but it would be wise to view statistics during the time period since plastics became popular, starting in the 1960s, and to see if there is a significant trend over time.

It appears there is. Notably, a 2017 study found that sperm counts per milliliter declined by more than 50% from 1973 to 2011, with total sperm counts down almost 60%.  Two other recent studies have demonstrated that over the past few decades in the U.S. and Europe, both sperm count and motility have decreased.

The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) recently debated a proposed legally binding treaty to address plastic pollution.  One objective of the proposed treaty was to phase out single use plastics by 2025.  Norway also suggested a global agreement for handling ocean plastic pollution.  Sadly, the U.S. was the largest voice against the proposed treaty and the proposed global waste disposal plan.

Eventually a non-legally-binding agreement was reached in which the U.S. watered down the language to “significantly reduce” plastics by 2030, eleven years from now.  One UN delegate described the Trump representatives as “trying to remove all targets and timelines.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. has been exporting large quantities of plastics overseas for years, historically mostly to China.  In the previous year, 70% was exported to China and Hong Kong.  But in 2018, China banned imports of plastic waste.  Since the ban the U.S. has looked to poorer nations for its overseas garbage dump.  Unearthed, Greenpeace’s research group, has found that in the first six months of 2018, almost half of U.S. plastic wastewas sent to developing countries: Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. U.S. plastic waste exports to Thailand went up by nearly 2,000% this year.

Most developing nations do not have sufficient recycling infrastructure to properly handle plastic waste.  On Earth Day 2018, the top producers of mismanaged ocean plastic waste were ranked by tons of waste.  The top five after China were Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.  In some cases as in parts of the Philippines, recycling is done laboriously by hand, picking bottles out of large dumps.  As this is very difficult and time consuming, large quantities find their way into oceans and rivers.  Sadly and not surprisingly, the Pasig River in the Philippines transports approximately 72,000 tons of plastic downstream, and has been declared “biologically dead” since 1990.  Instead of helping these countries to develop recycling infrastructure, we are sending them more toxic waste.

We might think we are kicking the can down the road by sending plastics overseas but they will wash right back up on the Hawaiian and California coast.  Beachgoers might witness solid litter washing ashore, or unearthed from the stomachs of dead whales.  Or they might not notice the pollution  — instead unknowingly consuming microplastics in their next Ahi Tuna sandwich.  On the East Coast, one might encounter them in a glass of water at the Trump Grill in New York.  There is only one world sink after all.  Tossing poison to the other end of the tub only works for so long – it will inevitably, over time, mix and wash back to your side of the water.  And when one of us is diagnosed with cancer, do we really know the cause?

It is instructive to remember the orca Lulu, a mammal like us, who no longer produces eggs.  And to remember that if sperm counts continue to decline at the present rate, they will soon reach levels where it becomes difficult to have children.  By then, the world’s water supply may be irreversibly contaminated and an enforceable treaty will be too late.

Postponing a legally binding treaty may put us on the path of our fellow mammals the orcas, half of which already face inevitable extinction worldwide.  And we can not forget the tragedy of the orca Tahlequah, who last summer carried her dead calf for a record 17 days and 1,000 miles in mourning.

Eleven years may be too late.

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Meena Miriam Yust is an attorney based in Chicago, Illinois.  Educated at Vassar College and Case Western Reserve University School of Law, she published a draft Migratory Insect Treaty with commentary in the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law.

Three years ago – almost to the day – Saudi Arabia rattled its first sabre towards the United States, with an implicit threat to dump US Treasuries over Congress’ decision to allow the Saudis to be held responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

In a stunning report at the time by the NYTimes,  Saudi Arabia told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Then, six months ago, the Saudis once again threatened to weaponize their wealth as the biggest importer of arms from America in the world.

You will find more infographics at Statista

And now, Reuters reports, citing three unidentified people familiar with Saudi energy policy, Saudi Arabia is threatening to drop the dollar as its main currency in selling its oil if the U.S. passes a bill that exposes OPEC members to U.S. antitrust lawsuits.

While the death of the petrodollar has long been predicted (as the petroyuan gathers momentum), this is the most direct threat yet to the US Dollar’s exorbitant privilege…

“The Saudis know they have the dollar as the nuclear option,” one of the sources familiar with the matter said.

“The Saudis say: let the Americans pass NOPEC and it would be the U.S. economy that would fall apart,” another source said.

Riyadh reportedly communicated the threat to senior U.S. energy officials, one person briefed on Saudi oil policy told Reuters

As Reuters details, NOPEC, or the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act, was first introduced in 2000 and aims to remove sovereign immunity from U.S. antitrust law, paving the way for OPEC states to be sued for curbing output in a bid to raise oil prices.

While the bill has never made it into law despite numerous attempts, the legislation has gained momentum since U.S. President Donald Trump came to office. Trump said he backed NOPEC in a book published in 2011 before he was elected, though he not has not voiced support for NOPEC as president.

Trump has instead stressed the importance of U.S-Saudi relations, including sales of U.S. military equipment, even after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year.

A move by Saudi Arabia to ditch the dollar would resonate well with big non-OPEC oil producers such as Russia as well as major consumers China and the European Union, which have been calling for moves to diversify global trade away from the dollar to dilute U.S. influence over the world economy.

Russia, which is subject to U.S. sanctions, has tried to sell oil in euros and China’s yuan but the proportion of its sales in those currencies is not significant.

Venezuela and Iran, which are also under U.S. sanctions, sell most of their oil in other currencies but they have done little to challenge the dollar’s hegemony in the oil market.

However, if a long-standing U.S. ally such as Saudi Arabia joined the club of non-dollar oil sellers it would be a far more significant move likely to gain traction within the industry.

Perhaps this explains why Russia has been dumping dollars in favors of gold in recent months…

And why China suddenly admitted to increased gold reserves…

And why there has been a spike in yuan buying by reserve managers last year, as the IMF pointed out in a recent report.

So the next time you hear an analyst on CNBC categorically dismiss the notion that the loss of the dollar’s reserve currency status isn’t something that markets should take seriously (even as several credible voices have warned that it should be), you’d do well to remember this chart.

Nothing lasts forever.

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Chinese nuclear bombers. Chinese hypersonic missiles. Chinese carrier killer missiles. Chinese cyberattacks. Chinese anti-satellite weaponry. Chinese militarization of the South China Sea. Chinese Huawei spying.

So many Chinese “malign intentions”. And we’re not even talking about Russia.

Few people around the world are aware that the Pentagon for the moment is led by a mere “acting” Defense Secretary, Patrick Shanahan.

That did not prevent “acting” Secretary to shine in the red carpet when presenting the Trump administration’s 2020 Pentagon budget proposal – at $718 billion – to the Senate Armed Services Committee: the top US national security threat is, in his own (repeated) words, “China, China, China”.

“Acting” Shanahan has been in charge since Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis – the original butcher of Fallujah in 2004 – resigned last December. His former employer happened to be Boeing. The Pentagon’s inspector general is still investigating whether Shanahan was in fact acting as a no holds barred Boeing commercial asset whenever he met the Pentagon top brass.

That, of course, fits the classic Beltway “revolving door” pattern. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a Washington-based group, actually filed a complaint around the fact that “acting” Shanahan blasted Lockheed Martin, Boeing’s competitor, in every top-level Pentagon meeting.

Shanahan told the Senate,

“China is aggressively modernizing its military, systematically stealing science and technology, and seeking military advantage through a strategy of military-civil fusion.”

That includes Beijing’s development of a nuclear-capable long-range bomber that, according to Shanahan, will put it on the same level as the US and Russia as the only global powers controlling air-, sea- and land-based nuclear weapons.

It’s essential to remember that Mattis and Shanahan are the main authors of the National Defense Strategy adopted by the Trump administration which accuses China of striving for “Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global pre-eminence in the future.”

Now compare it with Col. Larry Wilkerson‘s view; the whole Pentagon show is all about offense while Russia and China are always emphasizing defense.

Fighting the Trojan Horse

Even more enlightening is to directly compare the Pentagon approach with the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces under its chief, Gen. Valeriy Gerasimov.

Gerasimov identified “the US and its allies” as engaged in permanent war of all types, including “preparation for ‘global strike’, ‘multi-domain battle’, [and the] use of the technology of ‘color revolutions’ and ‘soft power’. Their goal is the elimination of the statehood of undesirable countries, undermining their sovereignty, changing the legitimately elected public authorities. Thus it was in Iraq, in Libya and in Ukraine. Now similar actions are observed in Venezuela.”

So there it is, graphically explained: Venezuela, geostrategically, is as important to Moscow as Syria and Ukraine.

Gerasimov also detailed how, “the Pentagon has begun to develop a fundamentally new strategy of warfare, which has been dubbed the ‘Trojan Horse’. Its essence lies in the active use of the ‘protest potential of the fifth column’ in order to destabilize the situation with simultaneous strikes by precision-guided weapons on the most important targets.”

Then the clincher; “The Russian Federation is ready to oppose every one of these strategies. In recent years, military scientists, together with the General Staff, have developed conceptual approaches to neutralize the aggressive actions of potential opponents. The field of research of military strategy is armed struggle, its strategic level. With the emergence of new areas of confrontation in modern conflicts, methods of struggle are increasingly shifting towards the integrated application of political, economic, information and other non-military measures, implemented with the support of military force.”

Call it Russia’s response to Made in USA Hybrid War. With the major incentive of being a value for money operation; after all the Russian General Staff, unlike the Pentagon, is not in the business, for all practical purposes, of stealing trillions of dollars from taxpayers for several decades.

There’s no question the Chinese leadership, not exactly adept at state of the art Hybrid War techniques, is studying the Russian military strategies in excruciating detail.

Of course this is all intrinsically linked to Putin’s leadership. Last month, in Moscow, Rostislav Ishchenko, arguably the top Russian analyst of the Ukraine saga, explained it to me in detail:

“Putin does not ‘take over the elites’ or ‘guide the nation.’ His genius lies in an acute intuitive sense of the strategic needs of the nation (which creates a strong feedback and causes absolute trust of the absolute majority of the people), but most importantly, he is a master of political compromise, understanding the importance of maintaining peace between different social, economic, and political groups within the country, to ensure its stability, prosperity, and international authority. Given that foreign policy is always a continuation of domestic policy, we can clearly trace his desire for compromise in Russian international activity.”

“Putin, Ishchenko added, “does not try to suppress the opponents even in those cases when Russia is unconditionally stronger and the result of the confrontation will clearly be in her favor. Putin understands that both the loser and the winner lose in the confrontation. Therefore, he always offers a compromise for a long time, almost to the last opportunity, even to those who clearly do not deserve it, moving to other solutions only after the opponent has clearly crossed all possible red lines and can pose a threat to the vital interests of Russia. An agreement based on consideration of each other’s interests is always stronger than any short-term ‘victories’, which tomorrow will result in the need to reaffirm their status of the winner again and again. It seems to me that Putin understands this well. Hence the effectiveness of his actions. You can also take a look at his team. These are professionals who adhere to a variety of ideological views (or do not adhere to any). The main thing is that they perform their work qualitatively. The ability to manage such a team is another of its undoubted advantages. After all, these are all ambitious people who are aware of their professionalism and are able to defend their opinion, which is not always the same for everyone. Nevertheless, they work as a single mechanism and achieve really great results.”

Watch out for Yoda’s hordes

To expect the same from the US industrial-military-surveillance complex would be idle.

In fact, “acting” Shanahan’s deputy, Under Secretary David Trachtenberg, doubled down when addressing the Senate Armed Services Committee; he said that Washington will not relinquish its self-attributed right for a nuclear first strike.

In his own words; “A ‘no-first use’ policy would erode US allies’ belief that they are protected.” As if all US allies were begging in unison to be “defended” by US nuclear bombs. In true “war is peace” mode, this Orwellian state of affairs is justified under the Pentagonese notion of “constructive ambiguity”.

The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) exhibits a long list of causes that may detonate a US nuclear first strike – including a worryingly vague attack on “allied or partner civilian infrastructure”. Even a clumsy false flag, for instance in the South China Sea, could lead to such a stand off.

All of the above is in fact directly linked to the death of Yoda.

Yoda is of course RAND asset Andrew Marshall, who was the director of the nefarious Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon from 1973 to 2015.

Predictably, scores of Atlanticist think tanks are celebrating Yoda as the winner in devising the new rollback US “strategy” against China.

Yoda did groom scores of analysts across the whole spectrum of the industrial-military-surveilance complex – including think tanks, universities and mainstream media.

So in the end Yoda did body-slam Bismarckian Henry Kissinger – who remains alive, sort of (if Marshall was Yoda, would Kissinger be Darth Vader?) Kissinger always advised containment in relation to China, disguised as what he termed “co-evolution”.

Yoda finished off not only Kissinger but also the Obama administration’s wobbly and ill-defined “pivot to Asia”. Yoda preached hardcore confrontation with China. There’s no question that even beyond the grave, he’ll continue to rule over his warmongering Beltway hordes.

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist. 

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The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today for public records on the Trump administration’s decision to allow bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically engineered crops on national wildlife refuges.

Today’s lawsuit follows an August 2018 decision by the Trump administration to reverse a refuge-protection measure that prohibited the use of neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically engineered crops that trigger greater pesticide use.

“Pesticide-intensive farming has no place on America’s national wildlife refuges,” said Hannah Connor, a senior attorney at the Center. “The public has a right to know where and when these dangerous practices are being allowed to poison our refuges. These incredibly precious places were set up to protect wildlife, not industrial-scale commercial agriculture.”

Between September and November 2018, the Center submitted multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to the Fish and Wildlife Service seeking public records on its 2018 decision to allow neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically engineered crops on national wildlife refuges. Today’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, comes after the administration failed to respond to those public-record requests.

“First the Trump administration reversed a sensible ban on risky agricultural practices on wildlife refuges, and now it’s hiding key details about pesticide use in specific refuges,” said Connor. “The American public deserves to know how this administration is putting its toxic agenda above the interests of our public lands and imperiled wildlife.”

Under the Trump administration, the Service has been widely criticized and repeatedly sued for refusing to release records lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

Background

The United States’ 562 national wildlife refuges are the world’s largest collection of lands set aside specifically for the preservation of imperiled fish and wildlife. These forests, wetlands and waterways are vital to the survival of thousands of species, including more than 280 protected under the Endangered Species Act.

But industrial-scale farming of crops like corn and soybeans has become common on the refuges. According to a 2018 Center report, No Refuge, in 2016 alone an estimated 490,000 pounds of harmful pesticides were dumped on commodity crops grown throughout the refuge system. That pesticide use is expected to grow following the Trump administration’s 2018 decision to allow pesticide-intensive, genetically engineered crops and bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides on these lands.

The extensive use of pesticides by private, commercial farms on refuges threatens sensitive habitats and the very purpose of the refuge system. Neonicotinoid pesticides are a leading cause of large-scale pollinator declines. They are also highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates and pose a substantial threat to birds. The European Union has banned these pesticides for outdoor uses in agriculture.

The use of genetically engineered crops on wildlife refuges will spur an increased use of toxic pesticides like dicamba and glyphosate. That will ramp up harm to pollinators, as well as birds, aquatic animals, other wildlife and public health. Glyphosate use on genetically engineered crops has contributed to the significant decline of monarch butterflies over the past two decades because the pesticide kills milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s only food.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety launched a lawsuit challenging the Service’s 2018 reversal immediately after it was announced. That suit challenges the agency’s failure to consider the risks of increased pesticide use to imperiled species that rely on national wildlife refuges for food, habitat and protection.

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Featured image: Monarch butterfly photo by John Buse, Center for Biological Diversity. 

India plans to begin 5G trials by 2020, but experts and industry stand at odds over its impact on human health and environment. The fifth generation wireless network promises to be 50 times faster than its predecessor — 4G. Down To Earth talked to a series of experts on the issue

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Paul Heroux, professor of toxicology and health effects of electromagnetism at Department of Surgery, McGill University Health Centre, Canada, speaks with Down To Earth about adoption of 5G will be detrimental towards people’s health.

Akshit Sangomla: What are the primary health impacts of using 5G mobile network and is there enough scientific evidence to prove that these impacts will take place?

Paul Heroux: All artificial electromagnetic radiation is a problem because biological systems are not adapted to it. Since exposure has increased progressively and started at a time when disease detection was primitive, those impacts went largely unnoticed. The health evidence has been there, but ignored for decades. 5G will promote cell phone use and therefore human exposures to phones and base stations. The higher frequencies will concentrate the radiation in a smaller portion of the human body because of smaller penetration depth. These frequencies also need more intensity to allow penetration through obstacles. The exposures will be more concentrated over time because of the beam-forming (5-10°) that is specific to 5G. On the specific issue of cancer, all major animal studies, including Chou (1992), Repacholi (1997) and NTP-Ramzzini (2019) confirm carcinogenic action of electromagnetic radiation (EMR).

AS: Countries like UK, US and even India are pushing for faster adoption of 5G? Have the concerns around health impacts been resolved?

PH: Industry has performed no health studies on 5G. They do not need to as they have a stranglehold on legislation that allows them to arbitrarily place base stations where they went on streets close to homes and people have no recourse whatsoever. Dominique Bellepomme, an oncologist in Paris, calls this a “crime against humanity”. As usual, to push adoption of the next update, industry represents that 5G is a revolution, while in fact it is only an expansion of wireless. Most of the applications presented to promote it are “vapourware”, things that either already exist or will never see implementation. Self-driving cars can be designed without 5G. The internet of things is an invasion to privacy primarily optimised for spying and should be framed with restrictions that protect private information and the right not to be irradiated by EMR.

AS: In a completely 5G-connected world how severe could these impacts be?

PH: There would be impacts on cancer rates, on neurological diseases, including electrical hypersensitivity (EHS), fertility and diabetes. Children are particularly vulnerable.

AS: What is the current stand of the European Union and other global bodies about the health consequences of 5G?

PH: The International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, warned in 2002 and 2011 about the connection between EMR and cancer. Many other international and public bodies are under the direct influence of industries. Since this question involves interdisciplinary science, it has been possible for industry specialists to infiltrate many organisations, who also get generous donations from large tech corporations. The convenience of wireless has created a huge financial base and a wide public audience that has been driven to believe by publicity and simplistic science that there are no health implications to EMR.

AS: Can the health impacts be reduced without affecting implementation of 5G?

PH: It is perfectly possible to design the fastest telecommunication systems while minimising health impacts. First, give the highest priority to deployment of optical fibre networks to home and businesses, which can, ultimately, be two crore times faster than 5G. Second, capitalise on wired connections, which, like cable, can bring speeds of 10 gb/second to homes. Third, recognise cell phones for what they are: a radiating device. Redesign them to minimise user exposures, which can result in reduction by factors of 100. And, use them sparingly, rather than letting them become a substitute to workstations, and the home of eye candy.

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Final in a four-part series on the 70^th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The first two installments discussed how NATO was set up to blunt the European left and to enable global  dominance while the third focused on NATO’s role in spurring conflict and military spending. This article details the Left’s relationship with NATO.

The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the NDP’s predecessor, backed NATO. In early 1949 the National Council of the party announced, “the CCF  believes that Canada should support and join a North Atlantic security pact.” At its 1950 convention the party passed a resolution supporting NATO and, in coded reference to his aggressive response to its opponents, long time party secretary David Lewis writes, “the NATO  issue did not disappear. It had to be dealt with at every subsequent convention, and always produced one of the most heated debates.” Army Captain and party advisor Desmond Morton describes the battle over a compromise resolution on military alliances at the NDP’s founding convention in 1961. The motion to abandon NORAD, but stay in NATO, was “subjected  to a bitter, emotional attack from the floor. As they had done in so many CCF conventions, [MJ] Coldwell, [Tommy] Douglas and Lewis came to the microphones to hammer back the unilateralists.”

Party leaders did not only employ the power of persuasion. In addition to benefiting from the dominant ideological winds, the leadership employed the levers of power within the party. On one occasion, Coldwell threatened to resign as party leader if members did not support the North Atlantic treaty. When a group of Manitoba CCF members, including individuals elected to the provincial legislature, organized an anti-NATO group the provincial secretary blocked their access to the party’s mailing list. Federal MP and future party leader, Stanley Knowles also intervened to pressure the Manitoba CCF to punish prominent opponents of NATO and the provincial party expelled two former members of the Manitoba legislature for campaigning against the North Atlantic accord.

Two decades after its creation the NDP finally called on Ottawa to withdraw from NATO. But, its 1969 position was partially reversed in the mid-1980s, culminating in a 1987 “security” policy paper that equivocated on the subject. When members have submitted  resolutions critical of NATO at recent NDP conventions they have been buried. In a 2015 federal election debate party leader Tom Mulcair called the NDP “proud  members of NATO” and said his government would make the alliance a “cornerstone” of its foreign policy. There’s little indication that new leader Jagmeet Singh has changed  the party’s position.

On the eve of the 1980 referendum the Parti Québecois’ 1979 White Paper (Québec-Canada: A New Deal. The Québec Government Proposal for a New Partnership Between Equals: Sovereignty-Association) said an independent Québec would continue its membership in NATO. More recently, the PQ’s 2012 election platform pledged to remain in NATO. In its platform Québec’s other main sovereigntist party, Québec Solidaire, calls for “Canada’s  immediate withdrawal from NATO and NORAD.”

The Green Party has questioned “maintaining  membership in NATO” and called for “shifting our focus away from NATO war missions towards UN Peacekeeping contributions”, but they don’t appear to have explicitly asked to withdraw from the alliance. The Communist Party  and other smaller Left parties have called for withdrawing from NATO.

For decades the ‘house of labour’ backed NATO. The Canadian Labour Congress’ predecessors – the Canadian Congress of Labour and Trades and Labour Congress – supported the formation of NATO and the CLC’s inaugural convention called on the “Canadian  government not to falter or fail in its support of NATO”, which it described as a measure for “self-protection against aggression.” In 1957 the CLC “reiterated its support of NATO in the memorandum submitted to the government of Canada.” As part of an effort to promote the military alliance, the newly formed labour federation distributed 11,000 copies of a booklet titled “The Trade Unions and NATO”. The pamphlet explained, “unfortunately we still do have to spend large sums on defence, and the responsibility for the fact rests with international communism. Canadian labour firmly supports NATO.”

Through the 1960s the CLC continued to back NATO. It wasn’t until 1976 that the CLC “urged  the federal government to … deemphasize the military role of the North Atlantic organization.” In recent years the CLC and its affiliates have said little about NATO.

A number of peace organizations – Pugwash  Canada, Project Ploughshares, etc. – have taken ambiguous positions  towards NATO. The president of the antiwar Rideau Institute Peggy Mason attended  all NATO Council meetings when she was a lead adviser to Progressive Conservative MP and foreign minister Joe Clark from 1984 to 1989. During a 2012 National Defence Committee parliamentary meeting Mason noted, “I’m  talking as someone who has spent the better part of the last 10 years working with NATO.” The Rideau Institute president trained NATO commanders for peace and crisis stabilization operations and, according to Mason’s LinkedIn profile, continued in this role after taking over RI.

For their parts, the Canadian Peace Congress, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, Canadian Peace Alliance and others openly call for Canada to withdraw from NATO, which shouldn’t be a controversial position for progressive organizations.

Though it would elicit howls of outrage from the militarists, withdrawing from NATO would not be particularly radical. European countries such as Sweden and Finland aren’t part of the alliance, nor are former British dominions Australia and New Zealand, not to mention Canada’s NAFTA and G7 partners Mexico and Japan. Still, withdrawing from NATO would dampen pressure to spend on the military and to commit acts of aggression in service of the US-led world order. It’s long past time to do so.

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It is time to stop believing these infantile narratives the British political and media establishments have crafted for us. Like the one in which they tell us they care deeply about the state of political life, and that they lie awake at night worrying about the threat posed by populism to our democratic institutions.

How do they persuade us of the depth of their concern? They express their horror at at the murder of an MP, Jo Cox, and their outrage at the abuse of another, Anna Soubry – both victims of the frenzied passions unleashed by Brexit.

But the political and media elites don’t really care whether politicians are assaulted, vilified or threatened – at least, not if it is the kind of politician who threatens their power. They aren’t seriously worried about attacks on democracy, or about political violence, or about the rottenness at the core of state institutions. Their outrage is selective. It is rooted not in principle, but in self-interest.

Is that too cynical? Ponder this.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t faced just shouted insults from afar, like Soubry. He was recently physically assaulted, hit on the head by a man holding an egg in his fist. But unlike Soubry, our media expressed no real concern. In fact, they could barely hide their sniggers at his “egging”, an attack they presented as little more than a prank. They even hinted that Corbyn deserved it.

‘Kill vampire Jezza’

The media have been only happy too to vilify Corbyn as a Kremlin stooge and a former Soviet spy. Senior Tory Iain Duncan Smith this week called Corbyn “a Marxist whose sole purpose in life is to do real damage to the country” – a remark that, as ever went, entirely unchallenged by the BBC interviewer giving him a platform. Just imagine a Labour MP being allowed to accuse Theresa May of being a fascist whose only goal is to destroy the country.

But the BBC has never bothered to conceal its intense dislike of Corbyn. Its news shows have even photoshopped the Labour leader to make him look “Russian” – or “more Russian”, as the BBC and the rest of the media mischievously phrased it. Those who protested were told they were reading too much into it. They needed to lighten up and not take themselves so seriously.

Senior Conservatives, including the former defence secretary Michael Fallon, have regularly portrayed Corbyn as a threat to national security, especially over concerns about the Trident nuclear missile system. Many senior members of Corbyn’s own party have echoed such smears – all amplified, of course, by the media.

Those who suggested that the government and media needed to engage with Corbyn’s well-grounded doubts about the safety of nuclear weapons, or the economics and practicalities of the Trident programme, were derided – like Corbyn – as “pacifists” and “traitors”.

And the mood music to these political clashes was the quite literal demonisation of Corbyn by the red-top dailies. Most famously, the Daily Mail photoshopped him as Dracula, above the headline: “Labour must KILL vampire Jezza.”

Degraded political culture

Then Corbyn became the target of another sustained smear campaign. It was claimed that this lifelong, very public anti-racism activist – who over decades had forged strong ties to sections of the British Jewish community, despite being a steadfast critic of Israel – was a secret anti-semite, or at best providing succour to anti-semites as they overran the Labour party.

Was there any factual basis or evidence for these claims? No. But the British public was assured by rightwing Jews like the Board of Deputies and by “leftwing” Jewish supporters of Israel like Jonathan Freedland that evidence wasn’t necessary, that they had a sixth sense for these things.

Corbyn’s supporters were told that they should not question the wildly inflammatory and evidence-free denunciations of Corbyn and the wider Labour membership for a supposed “institutional anti-semitism” – and, with a satisfyingly circular logic, that to do so was itself proof of anti-semitism.

The weaponisation of anti-semitism through political spin by Corbyn’s political enemies, including the Blairite faction of the parliamentary Labour party, was and is a dangerous assault on public life, one that has very obviously degraded Britain’s political culture.

Too toxic to lead Labour

The smear was meant to override the membership’s wishes and make Corbyn too toxic to lead Labour.

It has also politicised the anti-semitism allegation, weakening it for a section of the population, and irresponsibly inflaming fears among other sections. It has deflected attention from the very real threat of a rising tide of rightwing racism, both Islamophobia and the kind of anti-semitism that relates to Jews, not Israel.

Then, there was the serving British general who was given a platform by the Sunday Times – anonymously, of course – to accuse Corbyn of being a threat to Britain’s security. The general warned that the army’s senior command would never allow Corbyn near Number 10. They would launch a coup first.

But no one in the corporate media or the political establishment thought the interview worthy of much attention, or demanded an investigation to find out which general had threatened to overturn the democratic will of the people. The story was quickly dropped down the memory hole. Those who sought to draw attention to it were told to move on, that there was nothing to see.

And now, this week, footage has emerged showing British soldiers – apparently taking their commanders’ expressed wishes more seriously than the media – using a poster of Corbyn as target practice out in Afghanistan.

Questioning ‘security credentials’

Do the media and politicians really care about any of this? Are they concerned, let alone as outraged as they were at Soubry’s earlier discomfort at the verbal abuse she faced? Do they understand the seriousness of this threat to British political life, to the safety of the leader of the opposition, they themselves have stoked?

The signs are still far from reassuring. Theresa May did not think it worth using prime minister’s questions to condemn the video, to send an unequivocal message that Britain’s political choices would never be decided by violence. No one else in the chamber apparently thought to raise the matter either.

Sky News even used the footage to question yet again Corbyn’s “security credentials”, as though the soldiers might thereby have grounds for treating him as a legitimate target.

The clues as to where all this is leading are not hard to fathom. The white nationalist who drove into a crowd outside Finsbury Park mosque in London in 2017, killing a worshipper, admitted at his trial that the real target had been Corbyn. An unexpected roadblock foiled his plans.

The fact is that no one in the political or media class cares much whether their constant trivialising of Corbyn’s political programme degrades British political life, or whether their smears could lead to political violence, or whether four years of their incitement might encourage someone to use more than an egg and a fist against Corbyn.

So let’s stop indulging the media and politicians as they cite Jo Cox’s murder and Anna Soubry’s intimidation as evidence of their democratic sensibilities and their commitment to political principle.

The truth is they are charlatans. They will use anything – from the murder of an MP to confections of anti-semitism and smears about treason – to incite against a democratic politician who threatens their domination of the political system.

It is their refusal to engage with a political argument they know they will lose, and to allow a democratic process to take place that they fear will produce the wrong result, that is setting the scene for greater polarisation and frustration. And ultimately for more violence.

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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told Wikileaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within ‘hours to days.’ — WikiLeaks on Twitter.

The Mueller investigation of an alleged collusion between Donald Trump and Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election has come to its drawn-out end — or not. US monopoly media reported incessantly on the affair, dubbed Russiagate, despite the paucity of evidence.

The monopoly media has apparently learned little from its misreporting of the possession of WMD by the Saddam Hussein government in Iraq. The wording “alleged” was absent from the reporting as were the WMD in Iraq. Nonetheless, such monopoly media reporting of alleged acts as though they were facts has continued over the use of poison gas by the Assad government in Syria and an assassination attempt on the Skripals in England, attributed to Russian agents. Having not learned, the New York Times and Washington Post seek to perpetuate the Mueller “Witch Hunt,” as Trump has ridiculed it.

In an age when educational institutions call for sharpening critical thinking skills, the corporate and state media scribes show a paucity of critical thinking. It should be apparent that when a journalist, anchor, reporter reports on a claim one has an immediate first duty to verify factuality by demanding evidence to back any claims. Do these media people purchase bridges in Brooklyn without checking the deed of ownership?

This media disinformation can have serious consequences, even criminal or genocidal consequences. The monopoly media was heavily complicit in bolstering the US government rush-to-war, basing its reporting on false stories and dubious sources. The war which claimed perhaps upwards of a million Iraqi lives [1] was argued to be a genocide by Abdul Haq al-Ani and Tarik al-Ani in their legal tour de force: Genocide in Iraq: The Case against the UN Security Council and Member States (Clarity Press). In their book, the authors make known the destruction of critical infrastructure (e.g., Iraqi power systems, roads, railroads, and domestic petroleum production) and the commission of war crimes (e.g., bombing civilian defense shelters) by the US and its collaborators. [2]

Wikileaks published evidence of the war crimes carried out in Iraq when it released the “Collateral Murder” video of US military in an US Apache helicopter shooting an unarmed group of adults and children.

Julian Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, and as such has been identified as an enemy of the governmental-media-military industrial complex. Sexual allegations were raised against Assange in Sweden, but he was never charged, and the case was closed by Sweden. Assange was on record as willing to go to Sweden and face the allegations, but he could not receive a guarantee that he would not be turned over to the United States. Britain keeps him confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy, what a United Nations panel calls “arbitrary detention,” with the threat of arrest and likely extradition.

I wrote an article last summer that cited reports that Ecuador’s president Lenín Moreno was about to renege on asylum that the government of previous Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa had granted Assange.

Now the specter of Assange being evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy is again at the forefront of news. The Associated Press wrote that Moreno complained that WikiLeaks was intercepting his communications and invading his privacy. Importantly, AP noted that Moreno provided no evidence for his claims.

Wikileaks issued a tweet:

“BREAKING: A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told @WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within “hours to days” using the #INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext–and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.”

BREAKING: A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told @WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within "hours to days" using the #INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext–and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.https://t.co/adnJph79wq

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 4, 2019

Assange’s “great crime” is revealing the crimes of US empire. War is peace. And revealing the crimes of Empire is deemed criminal by Empire.

Others, not beholden to Empire, but followers-of-conscience are indebted to Assange who as a publisher, performed a massive service to humanity by informing people about acts their governments are involved in, support, or are silent about. WikiLeaks respects “our” right to know. It allows us to know of corruption and criminality in our governments so that society can organize to denounce and put an end to such corruption and criminality.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire recognized such service when she wrote the Nobel Peace Committee to nominate Assange:

Julian Assange and his colleagues in Wikileaks have shown on numerous occasions that they are one of the last outlets of true democracy and their work for our freedom and speech. Their work for true peace by making public our governments’ actions at home and abroad has enlightened us to their atrocities carried out in the name of so-called democracy around the world. This included footage of inhumanity carried out by NATO/Military, the release of email correspondence revealing the plotting of regime change in Eastern Middle countries, and the parts our elected officials paid in deceiving the public. This is a huge step in our work for disarmament and nonviolence worldwide.

After criticism for awarding the prize to dubious types such as Barack Obama, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is being pressured from Nobel Peace Prize Watch to adhere to Alfred Nobel’s testament and his anti-militarism. Such an award may be the Nobel committee’s greatest opening to celebrate Alfred Nobel’s legacy and garner new luster for the Nobel Peace Prize’s tarnished reputation.

A Nobel Peace Prize should confer some kind of protection and immunity from further political persecution should Assange leave or be forced to vacate the Ecuadorian embassy — should it not? What kind of embassy would kick out a Nobel Peace Prize winner? And would Britain arrest a current Nobel Peace Prize winner? And would the Trump administration seek to persecute a Nobel Peace Prize winner given that Trump has been pining for his own Nobel, risible as that sounds.

Despite Assange’s sacrifice to humanity, he has ruffled the feathers of the power structure. Again, it is clear that Assange must be protected. The Nobel committee must come through for humanity and for peace.

People power needs to mobilize. If people care deeply about their right to be informed, to be apprised of their government partaking in war crimes, then millions must take to the streets and squares, especially in Norway and Britain.

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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimpetersen. 

Notes

1. John Hopkins University epidemiologists corroborated an initial study and in the second study reported “654,965 additional deaths in Iraq between March 2003 and July 2006.” 

2. See review.

And the neocon-ization of the Trump administration continues. While The Donald is packing away Big Macs and Diet Cokes, his neocon secretary of state is appointing likeminded warmongers. 

Morgan Ortagus is a deep insider with connections to both sides of the war party and its “creative destruction” directors on Wall Street and within prominent neocon “think tanks.”

.

Pleased to welcome Morgan Ortagus as our new @statedeptspox. Her experience as an intelligence analyst & public affairs officer in foreign policy & national security will benefit America. She'll lead our fight to communicate & defend US foreign policy. Welcome to our team Morgan. pic.twitter.com/kSqTdPFNzv

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) April 3, 2019

From  The Washington Post propaganda mill:

Ortagus has been a fixture of the GOP foreign policy establishment for more than a decade. She has served as a press officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a financial intelligence officer at the Treasury Department and an intelligence officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve. She has also worked with several political campaigns, as well as a political action committee, and has experience working on Wall Street and in foreign policy consulting.

In addition to working with spooks and a federal agency that undermines elections and foments coups in foreign lands, Ortagus “served on the boards” at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a coven of warmongers run by Kimberly Kagan, wife of notorious neocon Frederick Kagan. 

ISW is funded by the death merchants—Raytheon, General Dynamics, DynCorp, and others—and it pushes the concept of the indispensable nation engaged in forever war around the world, a conflict promoted in the name of “democracy,” which is code for mass murder campaigns waged by the financial elite in its quest for total domination and theft of everything valuable on planet Earth. 

Naturally, some folks over on the so-called “New Right” support the appointment of an ardent neocon—a former pretty face from Fox News—at the State Department, thus demonstrating they are little different than establishment Republicans, or for that matter Democrats. 

Congratuations to Morgan Ortagus our new @statedeptspox! pic.twitter.com/gJnbLPlEBq

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 3, 2019

Jack’s photo of Ortagus in the jump seat of a fighter jet is appropriate. She will be covering up war crimes and pushing neocon propaganda on Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Russia, China, and North Korea. 

Trump’s now largely forgotten promise to bring home the troops and get out of the “nation-building” (creative destruction) business was swept into the dustbin of history soon after the election. 

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

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) continue their bombing campaign in Syria. In the framework of this campaign, IDF aircraft strike what the Israeli leadership describes as Iranian infrastructure and weapon shipments to Hezbollah and pro-Iranian armed groups. Nonetheless, positions and equipment of the Syrian Armed Forces often appear to be target of Israeli strikes allegedly aimed solely against Iran. In rare cases, when Israel publicly admits strikes in Syria, it claims that the SAF is being targeted because of its “hostile actions” towards Israeli missiles and aircraft entering Syrian airspace.

The unofficial and illegal pattern of Israeli strikes, the double-faced public attitude of the Israeli leadership as well as the unwillingness of Syrian and Iranian forces to admit any damage and casualties caused by Israeli actions hinder efforts to get a real assessment of the effectiveness of the IDF military campaign. Taking into account that the IDF provided little details even into officially declared strikes, this breeds grounds for wild media speculations and rumors.

On the one hand, Syrian and Iranian media demonstrate a classic example of “there were no casualties” coverage. On the other hand, US and Israeli media, and sometimes even official Tel Aviv, time and time again destroy almost entire Iranian military infrastructure and even Syrian air defense system, which then mysteriously resurface by a next Israeli strike.

Despite this, the jets and weapons list employed by the IDF against targets in Syria are an open secret.

The core of the Israeli Air Force striking force is the F-16I Sufa. This warplane is a modified variant of the F-16D block 50 and 52 fighter and ground attack aircraft. The F-16I, which has a crew of two, differs from the original F-16 by modified avionics and weapons systems.

The F-16I is fitted with a pair of removable conformal fuel tanks provided holding 450gal of extra fuel on both sides of the upper fuselage. They increase the aircraft’s mission range and combat endurance. The fitting of conformal tanks makes the two wing inner store stations normally used for external tanks available for weapon carriage expanding the warplane’s air-to-ground weapons capacity. The F16I is fitted with a dorsal avionics compartment, which extends from the rear of the cockpit to the fin and houses additional avionics systems, chaff and flare dispensers and the aircraft’s in-flight refuelling receptacle. Among other equipment, the F-16I got the Elbit Dash IV display and sight helmet system, mission and presentation computers, and digital map display. The jet navigation system includes a combined ring laser gyro inertial navigation system, global positioning system (RLGINS/GPS) and a digital terrain system. The F-16I has the Northrop Grumman AN/APG-68(V)9 multi-mode radar, which reportedly has 5 times the processing speed and 10 times the memory capacity of the previous APG-68 radars on the F-16.

There were 102 F-16I Sufra in service with the Israeli Air Force until February 2018, when the Syrian military shot down one of these jets. It was the first occasion on which Israel lost a jet to an enemy combatant, since 1982.

At the same time, there still has not been a comprehensive evidence to confirm that any of F-35I of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has been employed in combat ever. Claims by Israeli officials that some F-35I was employed somewhere and somewhen cannot be considered as a reliable proof.

The prime striking weapon used by the IAF is the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB). Vestiges of these bombs are often being found on sites of the Israeli strikes. In particular, GBU-39 SDBs were employed on March 28 when the IAF targeted supposed Iranian targets in Aleppo city.

The GBU-39 SDB is precision-guided glide bomb developed to provide aircraft with the ability to carry a higher number of more accurate bombs. The GBU-39, which was first introduced by Boeing in 2006, has a standoff range of more than 110km due to its pop-out wings. The 250lb (113.6kg) bomb uses an inertial navigation system (INS) and GPS to hit static targets with high accuracy, although it has only 22.7kg of explosives.

Another GBU-39 advantage is its stealthy signature. The bomb has a length of 1.8m and a diameter of 0.19m, but its radar cross section of 0.015m2 only. This creates additional difficulties for enemy air defense systems in the event of a massive strike with the usage of GBU-39 bombs. In September 2008, Israel receives approval from the US Congress to purchase 1,000 bombs. Israel was the first country outside of the US to receive the weapon.

In the event of massive strikes on Syrian air defense systems and alleged Iranian targets, like ones in May and February 2018, and January 2019, the IDF employs a wider list of weapons. For example, the widely-covered destructions of Russia-supplied Pantsir systems of the Syrian military, airstrikes were supported by a massive usage of ground-launched IAI Harop loitering munitions.The IAI Harop is an anti-radiation drone that can autonomously home in on radio emissions. The munition can either operate fully autonomously, using its anti-radar homing system, or it can take a human-in-the-loop mode. If a target is not engaged, the drone will return and land itself back at base.

Thanks to a small radar cross-section, the IAI Harop is intended to target enemy air-defense systems in a first line of attack and can evade SAMs and radar detection systems, which are designed to target much larger aircraft or to intercept fixed-trajectory missiles. It has a flying time of 6 hours and a full range of 1000 km. The IAI Harop has a weight of 135kg, a length of 2.5m and a wingspan of 3m. Unlike other drones that carry explosive warheads, the Harop itself is the main munition with an onboard explosive of 23kg.

Taking into account a wide economic and military support from the US and its coalition, the Israeli military enjoys a relative freedom of operations and has almost an endless stock of offensive means to engage Syria and its Iranian allies in this kind of individual air attacks, which it is currently being employed. A military technical advantage over the Syrian Armed Forces allows Tel Aviv to employ its strike policy almost without suffering real consequence. However, incidents like one in February 2018 demonstrates that this advantage is not something fully irresistible. Over the past few years, Damascus has achieved a visible progress in training and strengthening of its air defense forces, first of all thanks to Russian support. A relatively low efficiently of Israeli strikes on Syria, especially in comparison with the picture provided by pro-Israeli sources, is a demonstration of this. At the same time, modern Syria has  no means and resources to repel a wide-scale Israeli aerial operation, if Tel Aviv make a fundamental decision to fully suppress Syrian air defense forces. The issue is that military and diplomatic cost of this “success” that Israel will have to pay for this may appear to be too big. Therefore, the current status quo will remain unchanged in the near future and the IDF will continue to make separate strikes on alleged Iranian targets, which will face limited responses by the Syrian Air Defense.

This puts Russia, which is a key Syrian ally in the sphere of the military technical cooperation, in a complicated situation. So far, Moscow has limited its response to Israeli actions to diplomatic steps, a widely promoted S-300 delivery and a declared modernization of the Syrian air defense network. This “limited” response was predetermined by a role of “neutral force” ready to work with all sides to de-escalate the conflict, which Russia seeks to play in the region. This attitude has weak sides. Currently, most of Syrians see the Russians as heroes and allies that had helped to reverse the course of the war. Nonetheless, the Russian inaction in response to Israeli actions, especially amid the low intensity of military actions on key frontlines, undermines this image. If the situation develops in this direction, in 2-3 years, Russia may lost the hard-won support from the Syrians. In this event, and especially in the event of a lack of success in other fields, Moscow may find itself operating in a very different environment on the ground.

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From time to time, celebrities recoil and, in anger, seek to march for a change to the status quo.  Much of is never intended to alter much, but they can count their names among the indignant luminaries and say they tried to do something.  

The recent imposition of Syariah law in the Kingdom of Brunei, a tiny speck of territory wedged between Sabah and Sarawak, was enough to enrage George Clooney, Sir Elton John, and a few others concerned that their moral credentials might be hurt by the move. 

In incensed words penned for Deadline, Clooney’s moral advisory noted that,

“Every single time we stay at or take meetings at or dine at any of these nine hotels we are putting money directly into the pockets of men who choose to stone and whip to death their own citizens for being gay or accused of adultery.” 

Clooney is also careful to pour some scorn on the sultanate. 

“Brunei isn’t a significant country.”  

He also notes previous boycotting efforts against the kingdom for its treatment of the gay community that supposedly worked.

“We cancelled a big fundraiser for the Motion Picture Retirement Home that we’d hosted at the Beverly Hills Hotel for years.”

Remarkable, indeed, but for the fact that the process of imposing Syariah laws remained unimpeded.

Such exasperated notes of anger ignore the fact that the Kingdom had been engaged in amending the penal code with these Hudood laws to better reflect religious doctrine for some six years or so: the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah had made it clear in 2013 that sharp and direct laws of that sort would be introduced in due course.  The country, in his words, would “have two criminal justice systems working hand in hand”. 

This would duly comply with his adopted direction as defender of the faith.  He had claimed that the inspiration to alter the legal system was divine, its mechanism designed to immunise the country against debauching foreign influences.

“It is because of our need that Allah the Almighty, in all his generosity, has created laws for us, so that we can utilise them to obtain justice.” 

Arguably, another force was at play too: desperation.  Oil production has fallen and reserves may run out by 2025.  Deficits are also ballooning. 

In May 2014, the so-called first phase of the Syariah Penal Code was implemented.  In an announcement by the Sultan,

“With faith and gratitude to Allah and the Almighty, I declare that tomorrow, Thursday, 1 May 2014, will see the enforcement of Syariah Law Phase One, to be followed by the other phases.”  

This initial stage involved fines and jail terms for indecent behaviour, a lack of attention to attending Friday prayers, and ex-nuptial pregnancies. 

The state, which remains in the anachronistic embrace of an absolute, oil rich monarchy, has been run by the Sultan for over five decades in a manner that can be considered part comic and cartoonish. (James Bartholomew, in his The Richest Man in the World (1989) offers a few treats on that score.)  Laws, which include such richly cruel provisions as stoning to death consenting males who have intercourse, instances of adultery, and amputation for theft, came into force on April 3.  These also include 40 cane strokes for those found consenting to lesbian sex and/or a maximum of 10 years in prison and fines or jail for those who “persuade, tell or encourage” Muslim children under 18 years “to accept the teachings of religions other than Islam”. 

The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, through its co-chair The Hon Michael Kirby, former High Court justice of Australia, has expressed his discomfort.

“It is a horror story that contemporary rulers are even considering the restoration of these shocking punishments in today’s world of the internet, science, the global response to disease and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.  It is an affront to universal human rights involving ‘cruel, unusual and degrading punishment’.” 

In such a view, the good judge has ignored the fundamental paradox of technological development and supposedly modern advances.  Each era must have its witches and superstitions.  The internet, far from doing away with them, has encouraged the imagination of a few more.  There are conspiracies, fantasies and a continued fear of harmful influences.  Indeed, the presence of sophisticated technology and innovation is no guarantee of a merciful disposition.  Ancient Rome was, at its zenith, a technological giant, yet appreciated gladiatorial combat and the feeding of pious Christians to hungry lions.

The latest iteration of the Brunei penal code is the brainchild of one of the world’s obscenely wealthy.  And it exists alongside such abysmal wealth that is measured in the hotel ownerships through the Dorchester Group Ltd, aircraft, gold plated Rolls-Royces, and an assortment of other very worldly possessions. 

And he remains fickle about them.  At one point, the Sultan had in his possession a custom-made Boeing 727, equipped with a Jacuzzi that would, at a moment’s notice, have water pumped from the sky in a matter of seven-and-a-half seconds.  As with a person who can have quite literally anything, he duly lost interest.

He also has his defenders, those who wish to see him as a cut above the rest.

“It is a matter of importance that the Government and people of Britain should not be,” intoned Lord Chalfont in the late 1980s, “misled into believing that the Sultan is a polygamous, profligate oriental potentate buying hotels as other people buy video cassettes and engaging with dubious associates in erratic financial transactions”.  

With any dogmatic, brutal code, inconsistencies are bound to arise. The rulers will never reflect the laws they pass.  The Sultan’s older brother, Prince Jefri Bolkiah, owner of a yacht by the name of Tits and two tenders by the names of Nipple 1 and Nipple 2, is a noted womaniser (and, it would seem, enslaver of women, with several claiming they were kept in that virtual state).  In terms of the filthy lucre, he is said to have embezzled some $15bn worth from a sovereign-wealth fund.  He has since agreed to make some restitution.  He is, in short, a leech, and derives pleasure from it.

With such creatures, the code seems at odds.  It is theatre, grand and distant, with regulations imposed from above, receiving the rubber stamp of consent from below.  Pure and sometimes sincere credulity, where it exists, is a powerful thing indeed. 

Besides, goes one particular sentiment, these latest impositions, at least the most savage ones, may never actually be enforced. The death penalty, despite being on the books, was last carried out in 1957 when the state was still a British protectorate.  The onus of proof for stoning is onerous – the need for four witnesses.  There are exemptions and exceptions.  But history shows that moral righteousness is rather easy to satisfy when it comes to finding fault.  Witness evidence can be mysteriously found; circumstances can be invented.  In times of desperation, cruel laws tend to be enforced.

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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]

“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity.” – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam.” Riverside Church, April 4, 1967

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Dear Chelsea,

Do not lose heart, for as a prisoner of conscience, your inspirational witness sustains so many of your less free brothers and sisters on the outside.  Our hearts and hands reach out to you with love and thanksgiving.  Your courage is contagious, or so I hope, for it resonates in the soul of every person who senses the meaning of the power of individual conscience to oppose state violence and the beauty of those who will not betray a comrade, who will not deliver the Judas kiss demanded by the killers, as you will not betray your brave brother, Julian Assange, also held under lock and key for the “crime” of revealing the truth.

You remind me of another young woman from long ago and far away whose bravery in the face of radical evil is celebrated today as a sign of hope in dark times.  She is Sophie Scholl, the young German college student who, like you, was arrested for releasing documents exposing state atrocities, who, like you, was prompted by a higher power, by her conscience, who, like you, was arrested for releasing documents exposing such crimes against humanity, in her case those of Hitler.

Little seems to change over the years, doesn’t it? The killers go on killing, from Golgotha in ancient Jerusalem to Hitler’s Germany to Vietnam and Iraq and on to Palestine and Syria today.  Why bother with the list.  History is a litany of bloodbaths.  Where does it all go, this blood?  Does the good earth soak it up?

But in all the darkness, certain lonely voices of resistance have kept the lighted chain of faith alive.  You stand in that line, a living embodiment of a faithful non-violent warrior.  So does Julian.

I am writing this epistle to you on 4 April, the day in 1967 that our brother Dr. Martin Luther King stood tall in the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City and followed his conscience by breaking with those who urged him to ignore the truth eating at his soul.  The truth that he must not remain silent about the U.S. obscene war against Vietnam.  “A time comes when silence is betrayal,” he said.  Then he added:

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world… This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions.

We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers…. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act.

One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring…. When I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another (Yes), for love is God. (Yes) And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

Chelsea, you have heeded Dr. King’s message and you have put to shame those of us who profess faith in “the living God” that informed Martin’s call for a non-violent revolution.

You, like Sophie and Julian, have released documents that tell the truth about the savage actions of our government.

You have suffered for us many times over.  You have stood strong and tall, like Jesus in front of Pilate, and you have shown the road we must all travel out of the darkness that threatens to consume us.

You have shown us by your actions “that silence is betrayal” when it comes to one’s government’s immoral and illegal actions.

And you have shown us by your sacred silence in Caesar’s court that is a U.S. grand jury, that your conscience will never allow you to betray another truth-teller.

You are, Chelsea, the embodiment of faith, hope, and courage.

You are America’s conscience.

While you are in prison, none of us is free.

We demand your freedom and that of brother Assange.

Here is a song of love to boost your spirits.  I hope you can hear it.  Maybe I send it to boost my own,  to help me carry on as you have done.  Maybe it will help us all.

You keep teaching us what it means to be free and walk in faith.

Blessings for carrying it on.

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

Featured image is from RadarOnline.com

Seemingly overnight, the Green New Deal has arrived. Given the sorry state of our environment, what possible objections could there be? In this case, plenty – and they all trace back to the Green New Deal’s deeply complex and surreptitious ties to UN Agenda 21. 

Those who claim that Agenda 21 amounts to little more than a right-wing rant or is somehow anti-Semitic are at best seriously misinformed.

Those who buy into the carefully crafted jargon of Sustainable Development, Smart Growth, Redevelopment and the Green New Deal are similarly misinformed and need to know that the environmental movement has in fact been highjacked by the Agenda 21 plan.

First, Some Background

Journalist Thomas L. Friedman is sometimes credited with being the original source for the term “Green New Deal” because in two 2007 articles, in the New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, Friedman connected FDR’s “New Deal” to a new “green” economy, suggesting that this might provide an economic stimulus program that could address economic inequality and climate change at the same time. Almost prophetically, Friedman also argued in earlier writings that an “iron fist inside a velvet glove” would be needed to maintain the coming new world order.

The same year the Friedman articles came out the Green New Deal Group was formed. By July of 2008 this group came out with its Green New Deal Report which was originally published by the New Economics Foundation. A few months later, in October of 2008, Adam Steiner, who was Executive Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNEP), unveiled the Global Green New Deal Initiative, the objective of which was to rescue the failing global economy by creating jobs in “green” industries, “funded” of course by the big banks.

Then, following the example set by the European Greens in 2006, the United States Green Party adopted a Green New Deal platform in 2010. To its everlasting credit, the U.S. Green Party has also placed monetary reform as one of its core planks, ending the banking system’s privilege of creating the nation’s money (as credit or debt) and returning the monetary privilege to the government where it belongs, without which reform no other reforms are possible. Other political parties would do well to adopt this most important objective, since this is the true heart of “populism” historically. However, the vast bulk of the Green Party’s Green New Deal platform bears a marked (and troubling) resemblance to the Green New Deal as set out through the United Nations Agenda 21 Sustainable Development program.

Most recently, a twenty-nine-year-old freshman Congresswoman from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has overnight managed to not only make national headlines but garner the full attention of Congress, a feat never before accomplished by one so young and so soon in office.  It was her promotion of the Green New Deal that seems to have garnered her such sudden fame. But the so-called legislation she has been promoting is in reality a “draft text” that calls for a proposed addendum for House Rules: it changes the rules and creates a new process for the allocation of power, all while echoing almost verbatim United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. As a recent article in Technocracy News says, with a complete version of AOC’s “bill” included: “Its scope and mandate for legislative authority amounts to a radical grant of power to Washington over Americans’ lives, homes, businesses, travel, banking, and more.” Dr. Naomi Wolf confirms by going over the document point by point.

The Green New Deal is in fact a part of a global sustainable development program that was officially rolled out at the “Earth Summit” held in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.  Out of that summit came Agenda 21 Earth Summit: The United Nations Program of Action from Rio, a 354-page document that can be purchased at online book retailers or downloaded in pdf format from the UN website.

Agenda 21 has been updated to include Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and its offshoot the Global Green New Deal which is a program that was commissioned by the United Nations Environment Program or UNEP for short, mentioned above. A map and outline of “partners” reveals just how deeply embedded in global thinking this program has become. Effectively, Agenda 21 provides the template while Agenda 2030 gives the goals for achieving “sustainable development”.

Inasmuch as Sustainable Goal 13 is about Climate Action, it is worth noting that in 2009 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) set up an unelected international climate regime with authority to dictate land use, relocate “human settlements” and directly intervene in the financial, economic, health care, education, tax and environmental affairs of all nations signing the treaty. One must wonder why upwards of $100 billion has been spent on promotion of the current global warming model yet next to no discussion is devoted to natural forcing agents such as solar and cosmic radiation, volcanoes, clouds, water vapor, and grand solar minimums – even though these have been well documented in the scientific literature to have significant impact on climate. Nor have funds been committed to disseminating information about military weather warfare or other long standing geoengineering projects and their effect on climate. Yet at least five geoengineering Solar Radiation advocates co-authored the section covering contrails in the 2007 IPCC report.

As uncovered by prominent activist Rosa Koire, Sustainable Development was originally created and defined by the United Nations in 1987. President George Herbert Walker Bush, along with leaders from 178 other nations, signed the “Action Plan” unveiled at Rio in 1992.

This plan is anchored by the political philosophy of Communitarianism which effectively establishes a new legal system used by regional and local governments affiliated with the emerging global government, circumventing national law via a program of “balancing.”  Implemented by a relatively small self-appointed group of decision-makers and influencers who achieve “consensus” among themselves rather than through the public voting process, this philosophy holds that the individual’s rights are a threat to the global community. In practice, the consistent rallying cry “for the greater good” is defined any way that suits those in power.

Within six months of his election in 1992, former President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order #12852 thus creating the President’s Council on Sustainable Development or PCSD. This Council ran for six years, 1993-1999. Its members included Cabinet Secretaries for Transportation, Agriculture, Education, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, Energy, Interior, and Defense. CEO’s of various businesses, such as Enron, Pacific Gas & Electric, BP Amoco, Dow Chemical and others also were included, as were environmental organizations, including the National Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, World Resources Institute, the Nature Conservancy, the Environmental Defense Fund among others.

To further facilitate the transition, Clinton awarded the American Planning Association a multi-million dollar grant to write a land use legislative blueprint for every municipality in the U.S. Completed in 2002, this blueprint is entitled Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook with Model Statutes for Planning and the Management of Change. As Koire tells us, this guidebook is being used in every university, college and government planning office in the nation. And as part of the Common Core program for the younger set, former Vice President Al Gore helped write Rescue Mission Planet Earth: A Children’s Edition of Agenda 21.

In 2012 “H Concurrent Resolution 353” was discussed by the U.S. Congress. A short, 8 minute video clip shows various members, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rising in support of H CON Res 353, which “expressed the sense of the Congress that the U.S. should take a strong leadership role in implementing the decisions made at the Rio Earth Summit by developing a national strategy to install Agenda 21 and other Earth Summit agreements through domestic and foreign policy.”

As Koire relates, the clear goal of these initiatives was, and is, to change public policy to bring it into alignment with the Agenda 21 plan.

Implementation and Implications

Agenda 21 is a global plan that is to be implemented locally via “soft law”. Despite the fact that this agenda would have far reaching material impact on each and every one of us, the U.S. citizenry has not been given the opportunity to study or vote on any of the various facets of Agenda 21. Moreover, the vast majority, out of deep concern for the planet, are effectively neutralized by the jargon, buzz words and slogans with purposely obscure definitions, all of which are dreamt up by the best PR firms money can buy. Perhaps even worse, as Rosa Koire, who has experienced negative ramifications in her Santa Rosa community, writes in Behind the Green Mask:

The irony is that UN Agenda 21 mandates ‘more’ citizen involvement but does it by creating so many boards, commissions, regional agencies, non-profits, meetings and programs that it is impossible to stay on top of what is happening. We’re too burned out to fight more than one issue at a time. So we become, necessarily, more fragmented, less of a neighborhood, exhausted and isolated because we can’t keep up. The so-called citizen involvement is dictated by phony neighborhood groups with paid lobbyists and facilitators running them. The boards and commissions are chosen based on ‘team players’ or shills selected to push through an end game by running over the few actual unconnected citizens. These groups are the ‘prescreening groups’ for candidates for public office. THEY are the ones who get donations at election time. It’s doubtful that anyone will get on the ballot who doesn’t play ball.

There were 17 official sustainable development goals (or SDGs) for the new 2030 Agenda that was universally adopted by nations around the world at the United Nations plenary meeting in New York on September 25, 2015. These SDGs do not replace Agenda 21. The 2030 Agenda clearly states, “We reaffirm all the principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, including, inter alia, the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.”

A short article titled Agenda 2030 Translator: How to Read the UN’s New Sustainable Development Goals unveils some of the actual consequences of the Agenda. To start you off, Goal 1 as stated: End Poverty in all its forms everywhere. Goal 1 as translated: Centralized banks, IMF, World Bank, Fed to control all finances. Goal 2 as stated: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. Goal 2 as translated: GMO. And so on.

Another article titled simply Agenda 21 shows how big “S” Sustainable Development will affect the farmer:

If you own livestock and they can drink from a creek, then they want you to permanently fence off your own land to prevent any upset of potential fish habitat. . . Agenda 21 focuses on the goal of eliminating meat consumption and using pastures to grow wheat, corn and soy for human consumption. To get us to comply, we’re told in endless propaganda campaigns that meat is dangerous and the vegan lifestyle is the only healthy alternative. . . “Grazing livestock” is listed as “unsustainable” in the UN’s Global Biodiversity Assessment Report. In the same document, agriculture and private property are listed as “unsustainable.” All the private property and water rights infringements we have been seeing come directly out of the Sustainable Development programs. They come in a wide variety of names to throw people off, such as Comprehensive Planning, Growth Management, Smart Growth, and so forth.

The local government implementation of Agenda 21 was prepared by ICLEI (which stands for International Council for Local Environment Initiatives) for the Earth Council’s Rio+5 Forum held April 13–19, 1997 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; for the 5th Session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development; and for the UN General Assembly’s “Earth Summit+5” Special Session. Out of this came The Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide put out by ICLEI and the United Nations.

Resilient Cities are part of ICLEI. According to its website the organization was founded in 2010 by ICLEI (now known as Local Governments for Sustainability), the affiliated World Mayors Council on Climate Change and the similarly affiliated City of Bonn, Germany. Resilient Cities is billed as the first forum on cities and adaptation to climate change. In 2012 Resilient Cities was renamed as Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation.

Smart Growth, Smart Cities and 5G

Smart Growth and Smart Cities are also part of the “sustainability” plan as evidenced by their lofty sounding goals which somehow fail to look at “new” energy or even non-industrial hemp as a soil-rebuilding, environment-friendly way to provide a sizable portion of the nation’s energy needs; which fail to understand the crucial importance of restoring carbon-rich humus to the soil via holistic livestock management and other forms of regenerative agriculture; which somehow rely on the big banks and a flotilla of “investors” rather than doing the obvious by reforming the nation’s monetary system; and which, as Koire and others correctly assert, can only lead to totalitarianism in the end.

The explosive, worldwide rollout of 5G networks “makes Smart Cities a reality” despite recognized and significant associated health risks. By September of 2018, thanks to an FCC ruling and carrier lobbying, twenty states, seemingly under cover of night, had already passed legislation to strip their cities of the power to regulate 5G rollouts. The FCC ruling in particular has sparked considerable push back, because not only will the FCC’s move force taxpayers to subsidize industry access to publicly owned infrastructure but, as chief information officer for New York City Samir Saini declared: “the FCC is threatening the public’s right to control public property, and dozens of cities, states, and towns from New York City to Lincoln, Nebraska to Anchorage, Alaska are ready to defend that right on behalf of our residents and taxpayers.”

On top of all this we now find that the “tsunami” of data collection enabled by 5G could consume one fifth of global electricity by 2025. As most know, wind and solar (both of which also have significant environmental and land use problems) just won’t cut it, and especially so with 5G. 

An Endless Web of Carefully Branded Commissions, Boards, Agencies and Programs

Other groups and organizations tied to Agenda 21 continue to proliferate. These organizations include those that formulate “Climate Action Plans” now being adopted by local communities worldwide. The Center for Climate Solutions is one such organization and the California based Institute for local Government is another. You can google your state, city or county plus “Climate Action Plan and Resilient Plan” to learn more about how this is taking place in your own community. You can bet that none of them include alternative forms of “new” energy (including soil building non-industrial hemp) or regenerative (carbon-sequestering) agriculture which can only be properly practiced by small producers.

An offshoot of the Regional Planning Association is America 2050 whose focus is on planning for the emergence of mega-regions, or high density urban areas, along with infrastructure development, with the aim of  “shaping the infrastructure investment plan” and “providing leadership on a broad range of transportation, sustainability, and economic-development issues impacting America’s growth in the 21st century.” FEMA feeds into the development of megaregions through its Hazard Mitigation Program through which it, as well as HUD, provide grants to assist, at taxpayer expense, state and local communities with the purchase of properties located in high fire risk, high flood risk, high erosion risk, high mudslide risk areas.

“Redevelopment” is another important and mis-leading buzzword, as it in truth represents an unknown government which among other things uses eminent domain for private gain, not the “greater good” despite claims to the contrary. As Koire writes in her book Behind the Green Mask:

A little 40 page book titled Redevelopment: The Unknown Government put out by the California Municipal Officials for Redevelopment Reform lays out the ugly truth with charts, cartoons and hard data . . . Supported by powerful lobbyist groups fronting bond brokers, lawyers, and debt consultants, the trend of designating more and more redevelopment areas is also supported by government agency staff members and private businesses that profit from redevelopment. Diverting property taxes to these bloodsuckers is big business: by 2006 redevelopment agencies statewide (in California) had amassed $81 billion in bonded indebtedness, a figure that is doubling every 10 years. And don’t think that this is only in California – it’s in nearly every city and county in the United States. Because the agencies can sell bonded debt without voter approval (unlike school boards) and the city’s general fund is responsible for any over-extended debt, these are cash cows for bond brokerage firms.

Other organizations tasked with promoting “sustainable development” and its corollary the “Green New Deal” include the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development or OECD, and the World Resources Institute.

Food Production and Food Choice

The World Resource Institute recently published Creating a Sustainable Food Future which was produced “in partnership with the World Bank, UN Environment (UNEP), UN Development Programme and the French agricultural research agencies CIRAD and INRA.” On its publication announcement page, it asks whether we will be able to produce enough food sustainably to feed the estimated 10 billion people that will exist on the planet by 2015.

As explained in fair detail in my book Climate Change, Land Use and Monetary Policy the answer is a resounding yes! Contrary to Agenda 21 fears, we will be able to sustainably feed, conservatively, 20 to 30 billion people worldwide if we change the way we do agriculture, which MUST include holistically managed livestock. In so doing we will dramatically reduce the amount of land now devoted to industrial agricultural systems and the amount of pollution generated by such systems – all while putting carbon back in the soil where it is needed to sustain life on this planet.

At first glance the above-mentioned World Resource report also seems to agree, as indicated by this 2018 headline in a San Francisco Chronicle article titled “New Report Urges Drastic Changes in Food Production and Consumption”. The article goes on to summarize the report’s version of “sustainability”:

The core recommendations of the 96-page report line up with many of the innovations that are already happening, sometimes at a small scale, at many Bay Area farms, food companies and tech startups. That includes the development of plant-based meat substitutes, companies and local governments that focus on reducing food waste, and farms that are making changes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. . . The report calls on governments to fund research and development and to provide “flexible regulations” for new technology such as plant-based meat substitutes and innovations in plant breeding like genetic editing. . . Individuals should make changes to their diets, too, the authors say, especially in wealthy countries like the United States where the majority of animal-based foods are eaten . . . A lot of the technological advances the report urges are happening in the Bay Area. The region has become a global hub for the creation of plant-based meat substitutions, including those made by Impossible Foods of Redwood City. . . A new batch of companies is developing lab-grown or “cultured” meat that will be made of chicken, beef or fish tissue from cells but won’t require raising or killing animals.

Green Grabbing, The Best Way to Save Nature Is to Sell It

The 1992 Rio Earth Summit spawned a series of world summits on sustainable development sponsored by the UN. In 2012 the 20th anniversary of the Rio summit was dubbed Rio + 20. Its focus was the Green Economy with the specific purpose of ushering in global economic growth by putting market values on environmental services and environmentally-friendly production and consumption.  This plan led to the term “green grabbing” which refers to the appropriation of land and resources – purportedly for environmental ends. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that, as this article in Bloomberg Online suggests, Wall Street Is More Than Willing to Fund the Green New Deal.

Some illustrative excerpts which were taken from a 2012 article titled Green Grabbing Our Future at Rio + 20, appeared in my book Climate Change, Land Use and Monetary Policy. The article was originally posted on the Food First website, and was written by Eric Holt-Gimenez, Executive Director of Food First. Some excerpts:

The Rio process itself has been steadily privatized under the weight of 20 years of neoliberal globalization. As the global contradictions between economy and environment have intensified, nature itself is becoming a source of profit. . . What was once a state-oriented, regulatory framework has morphed into a market-based, corporate initiative.

The corporate trend to privatize and commercialize ecosystem services and resources in the name of environmental protection is known as “green grabbing” as these schemes can result in local communities losing resource rights. . . It is the favored approach of the big conservation organizations like World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International (CI) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), who have thus guaranteed their place at the Rio+20 negotiating table alongside neoliberal governments and powerful multinational business interests.

The Green Economy concept that determines the content of all submissions [for the Zero draft report] was itself created by a group led by Pavan Sukhdev a former senior banker from Deutsche Bank and head of UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative. This is a reflection of a long trend in partnering between the CBD, big environmental organizations and corporate representatives i.e. the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, the International Chamber of Commerce, CI, WWF, IUCN etc.

The dubious justification for bringing nature to Wall Street—where credits and shares of ecosystem services, biodiversity derivatives, avoided emissions and even wildlife species banking can be chopped up, repackaged and resold along with debt, mortgages, hedge funds and the like—is that the best way to save nature is to sell it. In doing so, we are told, we will grow the economy and this in turn will benefit the poor, thus ending poverty and hunger.”

Summing It Up

In practical terms, Agenda 21 is a global plan implemented locally through ICLEI (and other bodies and organs) using “soft law”. The following excerpts from an article titled UN’s Agenda 21Targets Your Mayor provide a useful example of how local implementation occurs:

From June 1 through 5, 2005, the city of San Francisco was the site of an international conference called “World Environment Day.” But the agenda of this conference was much bigger than just another hippy dance in the park. This meeting of the global elite had a specific target and an agenda with teeth. The goal was the full implementation of the UN’s Agenda 21 policy called Sustainable Development, a ruling principle for top-down control of every aspect of our lives – from food, to health care, to community development, and beyond. This time, the target audience is our nation’s mayors. The UN’s new tactic, on full display at this conference, is to ignore federal and state governments and go straight to the roots of American society. Think globally – act locally.

Here’s a quick look at a few of the 21 agenda actions called for. Under the topic of energy, action item number one calls for mayors to implement a policy to increase the use of “renewable” energy by 10% within seven years. Renewable energy includes solar and wind power.

Not stated in the UN documents is the fact that in order to meet the goal, a community would have to reserve thousands of acres of land to set up expensive solar panels or even more land for wind mills. Consider that it takes a current 50-megawatt gas-fired generating plant about 2-5 acres of land to produce its power. Yet to create that same amount of power through the use of solar panels would require at least 1,000 acres. Using wind mills to generate 50 megawatts would require over 4,000 acres of land, while chopping up birds and creating a deafening roar. The cost of such “alternative” energy to the community would be vastly prohibitive. Yet, such unworkable ideas are the environmentally-correct orders of the day that the mayors are being urged to follow.”

Rosa Koire, mentioned earlier, sums up the end game on her website Democrats Against Agenda 21:

The problem that almost no one sees is that UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is the action plan to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all information, all energy, and all human beings in the world. Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is about Inventory and Control!

Beware Agenda 21 and its Green New Deal!

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Geraldine Perry is the co-author of The Two Faces of Money and author of Climate Change, Land Use and Monetary Policy: The New Trifecta. You can visit her websites: http://www.thetwofacesofmoney.com, http://thehealthadvantage.com/ and http://www.geraldineperry.com/ 

On 26 March, WikiLeaks’ Twitter account announced that President Moreno is being investigated by Ecuador’s Congress for corruption, sparked by the INA Papers leak. The same tweet referenced President Moreno’s attempt to surrender Assange in exchange for US debt relief, a fact that had been reported by The New York Times.

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Corruption investigation opened against Ecuador's president Moreno, after purported leaked contents of his iPhone (Whatsapp, Telegram) & Gmail were published. New York Times reported that Moreno tried to sell Assange to US for debt relief. https://t.co/0KFcBrnUfr

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 25, 2019

The following day, Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said that the WikiLeaks tweet was “an absurd lie to harm the dignity of our country… we will not tolerate… inventions and insults… I cannot anticipate when and when we will take action in relation to this, but we will take action for certain.”

On 28 March, Communications Minister Andrés Michelena told CNN Español that the INApapers were part of a plot of Julian Assange, Venezuelan President Maduro and former Ecuadorian President Correa to bring down Moreno’s government. He added,

“You have to understand how these people are connected, Mr. Assange is the Troll Center, the hacker for former President Correa, [Assange] handles the technological and social media side.”

That same day, the national assembly, in which Moreno’s party and other right parties command a majority, passed a resolution inviting the Foreign Ministry to take action against Assange’s asylum on the basis of the INApapers leak “in the national interest” if it considers it pertinent to do so.

In March 2019, Moreno’s approval ratings dropped to 17%. Statements by the government of Ecuador deliberately implicate WikiLeaks in the INApapers leak. For example, Ecuador’s Vice President Otto Sonnenholzner said in a local radio interview,

“What Wikileaks and other political actors have done, to publish private photos of the President of the Republic, of his family, is a despicable, repugnant, and odious act.”

The Foreign Minister said in a radio interview:

“It is absolutely outrageous, reproachable, it shows Assange for what he is… of course we will act. We will not allow his website to interfere in the private channels of communication of the Ecuadorian head of state…. he is biting the hand that feeds him.”

Foreign Minister José Valencia has stated:

“we are going to analyze whether Mr. Julian Assange’s aggressive publications against the Ecuadorian state merits a legal action by the Ecuadorian state.”

On 1 April, Ecuador submitted a request to the United Nations Rapporteur on Privacy to take urgent measures in response to the INApapers publication, listing WikiLeaks as the responsible party.

President Moreno, desperate to divert public attention away from the scandal, is using the claims as a pretext to oust Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. On 2 April, the President stated that Assange has “violated the ‘conditions’ of his asylum” and that he will “take a decision” “in the short term.” He said,

“In WikiLeaks there is proof of espionage, of hacking, of the fact that phones have been intercepted and private conversations, there are even pictures of my bedroom.”

Assange’s lawyer in Ecuador, Carlos Poveda, explained that Assange had nothing to do with the publication:

“Remember that WikiLeaks has an internal organization and Mr. Assange is no longer in the editor. We will now resort to other types of situations, especially the Inter-American Commission”. (Listen to audio here.)

Nevertheless, Ecuador’s Vice President, Otto Sonnenholzner, has suggested that Assange would be prosecuted over what he described as a WikiLeaks “hack,” alluding to the rigid protocol that Ecuador has imposed on Assange to maintain a constant threat of expulsion.

The INA Papers are a set of documents published in February 2019, allegedly uncovering the operations of INA Investment Corp, an offshore tax haven created by the brother of Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno. The trove of emails, phone communications and expense receipts are said to link the president and his family to a series of corrupt and criminal dealings, including money laundering and offshore accounts. The leak has sparked a congressional investigation into President Moreno for corruption. Moreno can’t be summoned for a criminal probe while he remains president. He is currently being investigated and risks impeachment.

Former Consul of Ecuador Fidel Navarez denounces the “resolution based on a lie” that blames Assange for the INA Papers:

The recent reaction of the Ecuadorian government to the INAPAPERS scandal could not be worse. Instead of clarifying and making the issue transparent, the government spokesmen, to divert attention from the still timorous official investigations, position a monumental lie, accusing WikiLeaks of having leaked communications and images of President Moreno’s family circle.

Not a single document referring to INAPAPERS, or the president’s family, has ever been leaked or published by WikiLeaks, let alone by Julian Assange, who for more than half a year has not been its editor and who has been isolated for one year under a regime quasi-prison by the government of Ecuador.

Despite being an outrageous accusation, the farce has reached the point that the Ecuadorian National Assembly has issued a resolution to investigate Julián and encourages the government to take measures to “safeguard national interests.” In short, the government seeks a false pretext to end the asylum and protection of Julian Assange.

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The Trump regime demands Turkey cancel its planned purchase of Russian S-400 air defense missiles.

Technologically superior to US long-range surface-to-air Patriot missiles, nothing in the West matches their effectiveness.

S-400s can destroy multiple hostile aircraft, ballistic missiles, and other aerial targets up to 250 miles away at high and low altitudes.

China was Russia’s first foreign buyer, its military saying it “saw that the S-400 system by its capabilities today is unparalleled in the world in its armament class.”

It’s able to overcome heavy enemy fire and electronic countermeasures. In 2017, Turkey contracted with Russia to buy S-400s.

Last month, President Erdogan affirmed the contract, saying deliveries of the air defense systems are formalized, adding purchase of Russian S-500s may follow when they’re available next year.

After meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov last Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Melvet Cavusoglu said the following:

“The contract with Russia on S-400s remains in force and these defensive systems will be delivered to Turkey.”

“(T)alks on this issue are underway. We are not going to sell S-400s to third countries. We do not need this as we are acquiring them for our own needs.”

In 2017, Turkey made an advance payment for the systems to Moscow, deliveries expected in July.

Last year, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell warned Turkey, saying

“(w)e made it clear that if (Erdogan) buys S-400s, there will be consequences.”

“We will introduce sanctions within the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). Delivering F-35 combat aircraft Ankara contracted for may be halted.”

On Monday, the US halted deliveries of F-35 parts and equipment to Turkey, an unnamed Trump regime official, saying:

“Pending an unequivocal Turkish decision to forgo the delivery of the S-400, deliveries and activities associated with the stand-up of Turkey’s F-35 operational capability have been suspended while our dialogue on this important matter continues with Turkey.”

Last week,  Dem Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Chris Van Hollen, along with Republicans James Lankford and Thom Tillis, introduced legislation to ban the sale of F-35 warplanes to Turkey unless it cancels purchases of Russian S-400s, Shaheen saying:

“The prospect of Russia having access to US aircraft and technology in a NATO country, Turkey, is a serious national and global security risk,” Lankford adding:

“Turkey is an important NATO ally and willing partner in addressing a number of US national security priorities. It’s concerning that Turkey would seek close defense cooperation with Russia, whose authoritarian ruler (sic) seeks to undermine NATO and US interests at every turn (sic).”

Parts of the F-35 aircraft’s fuselage, landing gear, and cockpit displays are made in Turkey. Its government showed interest in the Patriot system, not at the expense of abandoning purchase of Russian S-400s.

Russia’s most advanced 5th generation Su-57 aircraft matches or exceeds the capabilities of the Pentagon’s F-35 at a fraction of the cost per plane – about $40 to $45 compared to well over $100 million for the overpriced US aircraft.

Sukhoi United Aircraft Corporation’s head developer Mikhail Strelets said the US F-22 wasn’t designed to strike ground targets like the Su-57, calling the Russian aircraft more versatile to the F-22 and F-35.

According to Russia’s Rostec corporation, the Su-57 and other advanced Russian aircraft have innovative glass coatings, saying:

“It doubles radar wave absorption and reduces the aircraft cockpit’s radar signature by 30%. Currently, the coating is applied to the canopy of T-50 (Su-57 aircraft since August 2017), Su-30, Su-34, Su-35, MiG-29K and Tu-160 planes.”

The coating reduces visibility to hostile radar and protects pilots from ultraviolet, thermal and other potential harm.

The Su-57 is designed to destroy all types of long and short-range air, ground, and naval targets, overcoming air defense capabilities to successfully complete their missions.

Rostec’s Viktor Kladov said Putin may approve sales to foreign buyers of the Su-57E, a variant of the 5th generation Su-57. Turkey expressed interest in the aircraft if Washington halts deliveries of F-35s.

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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.

I met journalist and friend Rafiq Lutf and cameraman Abdul-Mun’aim Arnous in January 2018 and I was honoured when Rafiq asked me to work with him on his film project, The Veto.

As Dr Shaaban said to me in August 2016, “Western propaganda is paid for in Syrian blood”. This is true. The horrifying bloodshed and loss of life in Syria could never have happened without the colonial media manufacturing consent for another illegal war against a Sovereign nation.

The Veto tracks the evolution of the propaganda campaign waged by Western media against Syria. From Baba Amr in Homs 2011/2012 until the modern day “propaganda construct” – the NATO-member-state funded White Helmets. It honours Russia and China’s vetoes that have consistently defended Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the UN.

George Orwell said “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” Western media has been tasked with writing the history of the Syrian conflict to serve the aggressors in the US Coalition of terrorism.

As Dr Shaaban also told me:

“The US alliance and its media are focusing on our history, material history, cultural history, identity, our army. Any power that keeps you as an entire state, or any statesman that represents strength or unity will be demonized and destroyed.”

The Veto exposes the criminal intentions of Western media and it archives the progression of the propaganda war waged by the West against Syria. Syrians are writing the history of the Syrian conflict because Syria and her allies have courageously resisted the Imperialist machine.

As Rafiq has said so eloquently “ we are the Veto” and we must use it against the Industrial Media Complex in the West. Syria’s history belongs to the Syrians and Syria’s final victory must ensure that Western media is never again given the power to destroy a nation, divide its people and promote international terrorism both military and economic. Watch the film: 

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This article was originally published on 21st Century Wire.

Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer and associate editor at 21st Century Wire. Vanessa was a finalist for one of the most prestigious journalism awards – the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism – whose winners have included the likes of Robert Parry in 2017, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Nick Davies and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism team. Please support her work at her Patreon account. 

Featured image is from 21st CW

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Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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Western countries are up in arms over the conclusion of Brunei’s phased adaptation of Islamic law which will controversially see homosexuals and adulterers stoned, much to the consternation of human rights activists across the world. Hollywood celebrity George Clooney, known for his involvement in Darfur and Syria, is hopping on the bandwagon and trying to lead the charge among those who want to boycott Brunei-owned hotels, add some so-called “star power” to this issue  and therefore attracting hefty Mainstream Media attention to his new pet cause. For as off-putting as the Sultanate’s new sharia standards may be for many people, the “inconvenient fact” is that the country has the sovereign right to govern itself however it sees fit, so Clooney and others are technically trying to meddle in its domestic affairs just like they falsely accused Russia of doing in the US’ own.

It’s true that international protest movements can gain a certain degree of political moment in today’s globalized world, especially if the targeted state in question has business interests that could potentially be boycotted in Western countries where such movements are most popular, but there’s little chance that Brunei will backtrack on its sovereign decision to implement Islamic law. The oil-rich but ultra-tiny state strategically positioned off the northern coast of Borneo along the southern shores of the South China Sea probably won’t see any decrease in the number of countries trying to court it after this controversy, and it could always replace those that does with others who want access to its resources and location badly enough that they’ll ignore this issue. After all, most of its partners are Asian countries anyhow who ordinarily don’t get involved in these sorts of heavily politicized affairs.

It should be pointed out, however, that the UK maintains a base in Brunei that could become the focal point of protest activity back home or in the US, with activists possibly seeking to pressure London to pull out of the facility until Brunei reverses its stance on sharia. That campaign probably wouldn’t succeed, however, since these same human rights and democracy activists haven’t been able to get the UK to stop supporting Saudi Arabia in its much more brutal War on Yemen, so trying to get the country to pull out of this strategic outpost along the southern shores of the South China Sea is likely doomed to fail from the get-go. Even so, it’ll be interesting to watch how Brexit-mired Britain attempts to deflect any renewed criticism of its foreign policy in that respect and whether this further erodes its soft power.

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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.

We learned many lessons in fighting the Conservative governments in the past, and personally in our long battle to block the privatization of Ontario Hydro One. The government of Doug Ford in Ontario, and the policies that Andrew Scheer is putting forward as federal Conservative Party leader going into the coming election, is forcing us to learn some old battles and take up a new round of struggles in the Canadian labour movement. Beware of any party promising free tax cuts with more prosperity and saying things like ‘tax cuts pay for themselves’. There is no free money. Strip away the smoke-and-mirrors show, and you’ll see that the only thing that Conservatives do is transfer wealth to the private few.

Tax cuts are the central policy pillar of the Ontario Conservative Party, and the current government of Premier Doug Ford. The Conservatives inevitably promise that tax cuts will be good for everyone. Former Conservative Premier Mike Harris, with his so-called Common Sense Revolution, promised that ‘all boats would be lifted by the rising economy’. During the last provincial election, Doug Ford made the same promise; he said that his government’s policies would bring in many great paying jobs and “prosperity and progress the likes this province has never seen before.”

The reality of Tax cuts and trickledown economics. When the wealthiest 1% have crammed as many dollars as they can into their pockets the rest of us will get the odd $20 bill that falls out.

Tax Cuts

However, since Reagan’s and Thatcher’s time, trickledown economics has been completely discredited. It was a completely ridiculous theory, in the first place. It’s like believing that as the wealthy cram as many $100 bills as they can into their pockets, everyone else will get the odd $20 bill that falls out. Over the last 25 years, we’ve had so many tax cuts, mostly to the wealthy and their corporations, we should be awash in great well-paying jobs. Just ask any young person who is caught in the job churn from one low wage contract to the next. Trickledown is not working for them.

The other ridiculous claim made by the Conservative Party is that ‘tax cuts pay for themselves’. The Tories are practitioners of the big lie, telling the same lie over and over again for years until it becomes accepted as conventional wisdom.

Deficits

The Conservative Party constantly decries and criticizes deficits, when, in fact, tax cuts, including tax freezes, have added greatly to municipal, provincial and federal deficits. Great damage has also been done by funding reductions to healthcare, education, social services and infrastructure to pay for tax cuts. Reductions to funding for healthcare have also hurt many people, and I’m one of them. Cuts to healthcare almost killed me, and put my family and I through hell.

The former Conservative Party Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, once said, “I believe that all taxes are bad,” and this is exactly what the Conservative Party and its leaders believe, that all taxes must be reduced or removed. The current Conservative national leader, Andrew Scheer – a Harper clone, has already promised such tax relief; tax cuts are a core policy of his platform, while at the same time, he promises to reduce the deficit. Absolute baloney. There is no free money. They never say how they are going to pay for their tax cuts.

Deficit financed tax cuts should be completely illegal, as should tax cuts financed by reductions to healthcare, education, social services and infrastructure, or by turning public sector jobs into low-wage contract and part-time work with few or no benefits. Working people and the poor have to labour and struggle for years and years and still end up having less access to services and a reduced or eliminated social safety net, all to pay for tax cuts that only benefit the wealthiest 1%.

The net result of tax cuts is massive transfers of public wealth to the wealthy. When was the last year that you can remember when there weren’t any cuts? No one can answer because only the luxury liners are rising, and everyone else is sinking in their wake. There’s a reason why rich people use a healthcare system paid for by a progressive tax system: so healthcare would be good for everyone.

It’s long past time for an adult discussion on taxes. It would be a very interesting to see just how much of the total of all deficits are caused by tax cuts, including tax freezes. And where has all the money gone? It’s gone into the bank accounts of the wealthy, including many offshore accounts used to avoid taxes altogether. As Charles Dickens is reputed to have said in the 1830s: the rich will take the widow’s mite and the orphan’s crumb.

Deregulation

This is what the Conservatives call ‘cutting red tape’. In Ontario, developers and loggers are salivating at the prospect of getting their hands on Ontario Place, and on the Green Belt lands, as well as ridding the province of those pesky regulations on endangered species and restrictions on cutting down very valuable 300 and 400-year-old trees in, of all places, Algonquin Provincial Park. This is what Ford’s promise of cutting red tape really is. This is what Ford means when he says Ontario is open for business! Come on in and help yourselves. There won’t be any rules in your way, so you can maximize profits.

However, chopping down all the grandfather trees is just wrong, as is developing as much of ‘green spaces’ as they can just to make a buck and add to their already outrageous fortunes. It should be illegal for private companies to profit from public wealth! Kathleen Wynne just paid the ultimate price and was completely humiliated in the last provincial election for selling Hydro One, also part of our public wealth.

There’s a reason why regulations were made in sectors like finance, construction, mining, manufacture and the environment: to protect people from the excesses of business and markets. Our financial regulations largely protected us from the 2008 financial meltdown in the USA. While politicians promise that private-sector discipline will lead to ‘increased efficiencies’ and lower taxes, what really happens is that public wealth and profit-making opportunities get transferred to the private few.

In fact, the private sector has been very anxious to gain control of public assets for a long time. Since the crash of 2008, there has been a ‘flight to quality’ for investors, and now is their big chance to obtain public assets at fire-sale prices. Ford is promising $6-billion in ‘increased efficiencies’. Do we really want private sector discipline and increased efficiencies like Enron, Worldcom, Nortel, Lehman Brothers, Fannie May and Freddie Mac, whose financial frauds caused the crash of 2008, and the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s and 1990s.

The Holy Words

‘Competition’ and ‘market’ are the holiest words in Conservative policy, which promotes the idea that competitive markets can solve problems much more efficiently than any government. The Conservatives are very eager to introduce competitive bidding systems throughout the public sector, including healthcare. They use code words like ‘monetization’ and ‘modernization’ to justify their drive for smaller government and the privatization of public services. According to them, private owners in deregulated, competitive markets will result in ‘increased efficiencies’ and lower cost.

The Harris/Eves Conservatives endlessly promised that ‘increased efficiencies from a deregulated electricity market would result in lower rates’, but everyone knows what a deregulated competitive market has done to their hydro bill. Ask anyone who has paid a hydro bill in the last fifteen years. Ford’s promises to lower hydro rates are bogus. He will never reverse deregulation or close the electricity market, which is what would be required to lower rates. The Conservative Party of Ontario needs to be held accountable for that colossal mistake.

Watch for Ford and Scheer to tell us that they have to sell public assets to pay for infrastructure like transit instead of raising taxes. Privatization and deregulation of our public services and assets is presented as a painless way to solve the debt crisis. Meanwhile, there are no demonstrations or protests by Canadians demanding that their public institutions be deregulated or privatized.

Inaction and Denial of Climate Change

Both Scheer and Ford claim fighting climate change through a carbon tax is a job killer and makes us uncompetitive. There’s that holy word again. Everyone knows the global environment is in big trouble! Doing nothing is just not an option. There are no jobs on a dead planet! And no money or wealth either! Both Ford and Scheer promise to fight a carbon tax. That only acts in the interests of the wealthy and of corporate profits. We have less than ten years to collectively change our behavior, to aggressively fight and invest heavily against climate change. Will it cost money? Yes, but the cost of doing nothing has already been extreme and every climate scientist says it is going to get much worse. We can’t afford not to act, and do it right now!

Here’s a scientific fact that should make everyone concerned enough to act. If the permafrost melts and releases all that methane and stored carbon dioxide and the oceans warm to reach a tipping point, it could result in runaway global warming causing all the methane stored as methyl hydrates on the ocean floor to start to be released. If that happens, it’s curtains for the human race.

Conservatives Channeling Their Inner Trump

Ford has already called the media fake news and has promised to make Ontario great again. He and his cronies have no problem employing the politics of division, using greed, intolerance and fear as organizing tools. For example, Andrew Scheer is already fear-mongering about taxes and illegal border crossers, while social conservatives like the Christian right – which has far too much influence over the Conservative Party – are promoting intolerance against the LGBTQ+ community, and same-sex marriage, not to mention the elimination a woman’s right to choose, always high on their agenda.

Both Ford and Scheer need to be reminded that what made Canada a great country and a competitive place to do business was our public healthcare and education system, as well as our public hydro systems.

This is a Crisis!

The Conservative Party is always claiming there is a crisis, and creating one if there isn’t. John Snobelen, a cabinet minister with the Harris Tories, famously said, “Let’s create a crisis.” Ford has started down the road of creating a crisis in healthcare in Ontario with his cuts, and his claim that transformative change through competition and market-driven solutions will come to the rescue. Contracting out healthcare is just another form of privatization. Scheer is already claiming there’s a deficit crisis while still promising tax cuts.

Policies to Serve the 1%

Today we are busy slashing social services and letting our infrastructure crumble in order to pay for tax cuts. Families are working harder and longer hours, many working multiple jobs in part-time or contract work. Although our resources are demanded all over the world, all we hear about is that deficits are out of control and that we have to continuously tighten our belts. We’ve all been tightening our belts for so long now that the circulation is completely cut off to our legs and feet!

The wealthy and their corporations have held far too much sway over our governments. Conservative governments have been all too eager to deregulate labour laws and give corporations the flexibility they crave to maximize profits. What is the ultimate form of labour flexibility? It’s slavery!

Every step that governments take to improve labour legislation and regulate a ‘living’ minimum wage is a step away from slavery. However, successive Conservative governments have been eroding and repealing labour laws and have kept the minimum wage far too low. Look at Premier Ford’s recent repeal of labour laws and his axing of the minimum wage! Isn’t it great how in Ontario you can work at a reduced minimum wage for sixty hours a week with no overtime provisions, right into your eighties or until you drop dead?

People labouring at minimum wage and in part-time contract work are virtual slaves. Young people caught in the job churn of part-time and contract work are told to just get used to it. They generate a lot of wealth for a very wealthy country. Surely they deserve to share in a small part of that wealth for $15 an hour and permanent full-time jobs. Is this the prosperity the tax cut crowd has been promising for more than twenty-five years?

While everyone else’s wages have stagnated over the last thirty years, the top 1% have seen their pay and wealth increase dramatically but still don’t like paying all those extra taxes. Governments have been all too happy to accommodate them. Since 1980, the top federal tax rate has been cut by almost 50%. If the progressive tax system had not been changed, there would be no deficits, and we would have a national surplus.

Inequality is at an all-time high. A massive concentration of wealth is in the hands of the few. We don’t have a wealth-creation crisis; we have a severe distribution-of-wealth crisis. This concentration of wealth in the hands of the few is simply not sustainable. The wealthy would do well to remember that since the French revolution in 1789, and in every revolution, before every war and before every financial collapse since then, there was a huge concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. We’re there right now.

The fall 2019 federal election will soon be here. The logical conclusion of Conservative Party policies and beliefs is this: let’s cut taxes as close to zero, let’s eliminate all rules and regulations, let’s transform our whole society into a competitive, privatized market, including air and water as commodities, and that way we’ll have so many ‘increased efficiencies’ that we’ll have prosperity.

Where is the Leader and Party with the Following Promises?

Where is the promise that they will deal aggressively with the distribution-of-wealth crisis and narrow the huge gap between the haves and have nots? Where’s the promise to restore a progressive tax system where everyone pays their fair share of taxes? Where’s the promise to restore and rebuild our public sector and public infrastructure? Where’s the promise to bring in regulations so that everyone can share in Canada’s prosperity? That means regulations to end job churn and mandate that full-time work is full-time work that cannot to be cut up into pieces of part-time or contract work with few, if any benefits and no pension! Where’s the promise to deal with climate change realistically and effectively based on the facts, even if it means a tax on carbon pollution.

Reversing tax cuts is not raising taxes: it’s restoring funding to build a civil, more just and equitable society! If it was seen that everyone was paying their fair share, no one would mind paying taxes.

As voters, we must stop believing and voting for the Conservative tax-cut-and-red-tape lie. You will not like where that takes us. Tax cuts and deregulation have never delivered on their promise of prosperity for all – in fact, quite the opposite. You just can’t build a civil society and a country on tax cuts and deregulation. Never have, never will! Tax cuts and deregulation are making the majority of us poorer and the top 1% much richer and crippling government’s ability to govern. It is time to end this insanity.

Be aware that once upon a time we proudly invested in our schools and hospitals, our libraries, and our electricity, water, sanitation and transportation systems. We are long past due to get back to making those investments! What are we going to do, return to creating a huge underclass of people waiting at the company gate, desperate to compete for a few hours work so we can solve our cash crisis?

When you cut and carve out public services by privatization, all you get is hollowed out cities and a lot of poverty. Look south of the border, and at Britain, to see what happened when they went down this path. We all don’t like paying inequitable taxes. But I hate stepping over people in the street more. I hate gridlock and potholes more. I want my schools, hospitals, libraries, firefighters, police and paramedics to be there. I want my son and young people and their children to have a future. I’m willing to pay more for these things so we can truly have a more equitable, livable society in which prosperity is shared by all. But we also need to shift the tax burden and attack and limit corporate power. The labour movement in Canada needs to be again, as it once was, at the forefront of these battles today.

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Discoveries of natural flora, fauna and phenomena are not necessarily straightforward things.  The discoverer may wish to conceal the source.  The discoverer may also have various motivations.  In certain grave instances, the entire claim might be fabricated.  Piltdown Man, discovered in a gravel pit in England in 1912 by amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, was celebrated as an ancestral link to humans.  In 1954, with the application of dating methods, the discovery was designated a fraud.  A human skull had been cleverly paired with an orang-utan’s jaw.

The quest for the Australian Night Parrot remains one of the stranger tales of the naturalist meeting the professional researcher; the skilled amateur in battle with establishment practices; the vainglory efforts to seek a place in the birding pantheon.

An entry on the site Bush Heritage Australia gets the description of the bird to a flying and enthusiastic start.  “The Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) is one of the most elusive and mysterious birds in the world.  This nocturnal and mostly ground-dwelling parrot is endemic to Australia but for around 100 years it was feared to be extinct.  Incredibly, we now have a second chance to save it!” As has been remarked, this particular bird has been Australia’s Ivory-billed Woodpecker, driving ornithologists professional and amateur to the edges of sanity.

Then came the moment and the initial, gasping thrill.  In 2013, Queensland naturalist John Young rediscovered the Night Parrot, first found in 1845.  (There had been, prior to that, a road-killed specimen in 1990 in western Queensland, and a headless sample to the south-east in 2006, found on barbed wire.)  Young, however, was cautious. Locations were kept secret; exposing the sites might led to over enthusiastic twitchers finding their way to the area, disrupting the environment.  Evidence, caught on video and photos, would be shown to the anointed, an all invitation-only gathering.  He was keen to push the scale of the discovery: two pairs of Night Parrots, and a nest with three nestlings. 

Young, however, had a history, one weighed down by naturalist half-truths and a persona of perceived quackery.  Through the 1990s, he survived on funding from anaesthesiologist Tom Biggs and his wife.  This enabled him to pursue his roving adventures through Young Wildlife Enterprises, a company he established to produce films, run tours and identify rare bird species.  He spent time pursuing gigs for conservation, propelling, for instance, the move to establish TYTO Wetlands, thereby saving the Crimson Finch and Eastern Grass Owl.  

In November 2006, Young was confronted by accusations from bird enthusiast Greg Roberts that he had been big in the manipulation game regarding the discovery of a new species of what was termed the Blue-fronted Fig Parrot.  Young had boasted of the discovery, extolling his own knowledge and climbing skills.  But he was also secretive, deleting original photographs so that no forensic expert might corroborate the find.  According to Penny Olsen in Glimpses of Paradise (2007), this was true to form: claim of “a sensational find, shrouded in secrecy, which divided the birding community and ultimately came to nothing.” 

The 2013 discovery seemed like an atonement, and his show to the selected guests at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane was akin to a ritual cleansing.  Money followed, ironically enough from a mining company Fortescue Metals Group, to study the bird’s ecology and document its behaviour.  Young was picked, working alongside conservation ecologist Steven Murphy in a collaboration of some friction.  Murphy, for one, thought Young’s methods free of science, a wildlife buccaneer lacking method. 

Young was subsequently given free rein by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy to find and document rare bird species on the organisations properties, something akin to an environmental janitor.  Then, the millstone of history seemed to tug again. Hanging heavily, there seemed to be problems.  Old pictures were revisited.  Did Young actually place a mesh around The Night Parrot he photographed in 2013?  Were the pictures taken at a time the birds were not active?  Murphy was particularly riled by Young’s doctoring of one photo where damaged feathers, occasioned by the capture, were removed. 

Then came specific allegations regarding Young’s work for the AWC.  The material in question featured a Night Parrot feather, found at Kalamurina Wildlife Sanctuary, South Australia; a Night parrot call recording, downloaded at Kalamurina from an acoustic monitor; and Night Parrot nests and eggs supposedly found at Diamantina National Park, Queensland. 

Red-faced, officials of the AWC proceeded to cleanse the website of any reference to the bird.  “We have received questions about the veracity of some of the content and we are investigating these matters.”  Content connected to the night parrot “will not be republished until we receive the results of the independent investigation into the veracity of the work.” 

The independent panel’s findings were damning on all three items.  It transpired that the feather in question, whilst being that of a Night Parrot, said to be the same one sent by AWC to the South Australian Museum, was different and therefore not conclusive of its existence in Kalamurina.  Night Parrot calls published by the AWC from recordings made in September 2018 purportedly taken at Kalamurina were actually derived from publically available material from a Western Australian specimen, not a local one.  As for the discovery of eggs and nests, a majority of consulted experts (eleven individuals including nine ornithologists) concluded that the eggs in one nest could not have been natural. 

In February, the Year in Review summary of 2018 was conspicuously silent on Young and the Night Parrot, despite extolling “delivering measurable outcomes for Australia’s wildlife” by means of delivering “ecological return”.  The trumpet still sounded: “Almost 87 percent of AWC’s operational expenditure continues to be spent where it can make the greatest difference to Australia’s threatened wildlife – in the field.” 

Works such as David Goodstein’s On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science (2010) show scientists as fallible creatures prone to careerism and the posterity disease.  Discovery lust can muddle a scientist’s integrity, a point encouraged by what Goodstein calls the Reward System and the Authority Structure.  Rather than being high priests of fairness and objective research, they are as susceptible to manipulation and deceiving as any group.  

The difference here is they do not necessarily see it in that light.  In that cosmos, merit and manipulation can be seen to go hand in hand.  The injection of “falsehoods into the body of science is rarely, if ever, the purpose of those who perpetrate fraud.  They almost always believe that they are injecting a truth into the scientific method.”  Robert Millikan, for instance, manipulated his data, not so much to deceive as to reach the most accurate value for the charge of the electron.  Young, in addition to his attempt at redemption, can be said to have some something similar, with his compulsive touching up of images, and his denial that he had captured the birds in question. 

Nobel laureate physicist Richard P. Feynman, in his commencement address at the California Institute of Technology in 1974, offered a cardinal warning regarding scientific integrity: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool…. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.” 

Young’s greatest trickery was one played upon himself.  The others, for a time, fell into his orbit, and even then, with some scepticism.  He was never particularly good at maintaining a front for long.  But for all that, there was enough to front the claim that The Night Parrot had been found, tantamount, as the editor of Birdlife Australia suggested, to “finding Elvis flipping burgers in an Outback roadhouse”.  A salutary tale to any future discoverer of the remarkable and doggedly elusive, and the dangers that entails.

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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]

Seeking dominance over all other nations is imperialism’s defining feature – by brute force if other tactics fail.

With no end of it in prospect, they continue on the phony pretexts of humanitarian intervention, responsibility to protect, and democracy building – a notion US policymakers revile, tolerating it nowhere, especially not at home and in oil-rich Venezuela, Bolivarianism considered the threat of a good example.

On Wednesday, 15 bipartisan neocon Senators introduced the so-called Venezuela Emergency Relief, Democracy Assistance and Development (VERDAD) Act (sic) – supporting regime change in the hemisphere’s preeminent democracy they want eliminated.

The bipartisan gang of 15 includes John Barraso, Michael Bennett, Ben Cardin, Bill Cassidy, Chris Coons, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Tim Kaine, Marco Rubio, Jeanne Shaheen, and Todd Young.

The measure calls for providing another $200 million for regime change efforts, $200 million more to Colombia and Brazil, blood money for hardening their support for the scheme, on the phony pretext of providing support for Venezuelan “refugees” in their countries.

The measure has nothing to do with “restor(ing) democracy and prosperity” in Venezuela (sic), nothing to do with humanitarian aid (sic), everything to do with supporting the Trump regime’s diabolical coup plot.

Other provisions call for revoking visas for relatives of illegally sanctioned Venezuelans and removing sanctions from others willing to recognize designated puppet/usurper in waiting Guaido.

The legislation urges nations complicit with the coup plot to act against Maduro’s legitimate government the same way.

It requires support from international financial institutions to fully go along with the scheme. It calls for State, Treasury and Justice Departments to wage toughened financial war on Venezuela.

It doesn’t provide temporary protected status (TPS) for undocumented Venezuelans in the US – adhering to Trump’s hardline position against aliens of the wrong race, ethnicity, and/or religion in the country.

Passage of the measure in both houses overwhelmingly and signed into law by Trump is virtually certain. Menendez said the following about the legislation:

“(T)he United States Congress is coming together in a bipartisan manner to put teeth behind our support for the Venezuelan people (sic) as they seek to restore democracy (sic) and address a humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented proportions in our hemisphere (sic).”

Rubio has been waging near-daily Twitter war on Venezuela, conducting his own campaign for regime change, notably pushing for US military intervention. He turned truth on its head, saying:

“As Maduro and his gang of narco-terrorists thugs (sic) continue holding the Venezuelan people hostage (sic) under their failed socialist regime (sic), the United States Senate is sending a clear bi-partisan message by introducing the VERDAD Act…”

Other co-sponsors issued similar remarks. The measure is the latest US effort to increase pressure on Maduro.

Everything thrown at him so far failed, this measure likely to fare no better, as long as Russia is committed to preserving and protecting Bolivarian social democracy – key to defeating the Trump regime’s coup plot.

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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.

Over the past few days, the Syrian military has deployed a new batch of reinforcements to the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert following a recent series of ISIS attacks in the area.

ISIS cells operating in the desert in central Syria pose a serious security threat to the government-controlled area conducting attacks on checkpoints of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). The SAA has carried out several operations near Palmyra, Deir Ezzor and al-Mayadin in an attempt to get rid of the ISIS threat. However, so far with only limited success.

Pro-government sources circulate speculations that large numbers of ISIS members, who had fled from the eastern bank of the Euphrates, which is controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), are preparing for major attacks on SAA positions. The towns of al-Sukhnah and Palmyra are named among the possible targets. This scenario remains unlikely because any such attack would trigger a wide-scale military operation of the Syrian-Iranian-Russian coalition in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert.

A similar situation was observed in 2018 when an ISIS terrorist attack in eastern al-Suwayda resulted in the major SAA effort that eliminated ISIS cells in the southeastern Syrian desert.

At the same time, the SDF is developing its security operation against ISIS remnants in the area of al-Baghuz. This development comes amid increased activity of the ISIS cells along the entire SDF-held bank of the Euphrates. ISIS attacks have recently been reported in the areas of Al Tayanah and the Omar oil fields. Pro-ISIS sources report multiple SDF casualties. The SDF media wing remains silent.

Last week, the head of the Russian reconciliation center in Syria, Maj. Gen. Viktor Kupchishin warned that French and Belgian special services are preparing a chemical provocation in the Idlib de-escalation zone.

In order to organize the provocations, agents of French and Belgian special services have arrived in Idlib. They met with field commanders of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Hurras al-Din terrorist groups and representatives of the White Helmets pseudo-humanitarian organization,” he said adding that the goal of the effort is to create a fake video “demonstrating Russia and Syria’s use of chemical agents against the civilian population”.

The general warned that real chemical substances may be used against the civilian population in the area in order to gain more realistic footage.

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Where does Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo get his inspiration? From Jesus Christ.

Mike’s version of Jesus Christ may not be the same one millions of others know. The Pompeo version of Christ is a psychopath and a full-throated defender of endless war abroad and open-ended surveillance at home. 

The Christ followed by Pompeo believes the official enemies of America should be starved to death, go without electricity, have their industries sabotaged by sanctions and mEndless alware, and expect to have their leaders brutally assassinated. 

Pompeo is a non-Jewish neocon. His adoration for the apartheid state of Israel is boundless. 

Trump’s secretary of state would be more comfortable in the Old Testament where an eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth is advised in response to transgressions, both real and imagined. It’s difficult to believe Mike follows the Sermon on the Mount. Christ teaches that if slapped on your right cheek, turn the other cheek in response. For Mike, an adversary doesn’t need to slap a cheek before he is killed by a fusillade of cruise missiles and white phosphorus. 

'My Belief in Jesus Christ Makes a Real Difference': @SecPompeo Says His Christian Faith Puts Everything in Perspective https://t.co/iJ8KJZDCQG

— CBN News (@CBNNews) April 3, 2019

Mike doesn’t follow Christ. Jesus said love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. Christ’s advocation of peace and nonviolence spans four Gospel accounts. Is it possible Mike missed this instruction during Sunday school? 

Mike Pompeo is a self-professed Christian of the Zionist strain. The Christian Zionists believe Christ will return and establish the Kingdom of God, and this will only be possible after Israel declares a state on stolen land gained through violence and ethnic cleansing. 

Israel’s daily demonstrated racism and violence gets a free pass because the Christian Zionists in America believe any criticism of the Jewish state is criticism of God. Instead of citing Jesus, they turn back to the Old Testament and the blessing of Isaac in Genesis—“Those who curse you will be cursed, and those who bless you will be blessed.” 

The Palestinians are cursed for the sin of having lived on the land for centuries. Iran is cursed because it dares defend itself against US-Israeli sabotage, assassination, and terrorism. Lebanon is cursed because it is home to Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party that began as organized resistance to Israeli invasions. Syria is cursed because it defends its national sovereignty and decries the Israeli theft of its Golan Heights. 

For Christian Zionists like Mike Pompeo, the New Testament is something that either must be ignored—or selectively read and interpreted—and Christ’s promise of world peace must be shelved until the work of killing Palestinians, Syrians, and Iranians is complete. Mike isn’t a normal Christian, he’s a Judaic-Christian, a Christian neocon. 

“Christians are not political Zionists,” writes Tom Usher. “Real Christians can’t stand the political Zionism of Herzl and Jabotinsky and the various terrorists who brought this anti-Jacob state called Israel into being.”

Pompeo is preaching to the choir and rallying the troops to fight the next Israeli war, this time targeting Iran. The US has already assisted in the “Greater Israel” effort to undermine and destroy all those who oppose Jewish racism and nationalism. 

Iran is not targeted because it poses a threat to Israel. It is targeted because it dares to speak truth to Israeli crimes and has built defenses against the endless violence of the Zionist state. 

Mike Pompeo will work toward this end—the destruction of Iran. He will strive to accomplish the work of destroying Syria. This is the long-standing neocon agenda. Destroy the enemies of Zionism and Jewish supremacy. Ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank—the latter now in motion due to the efforts of the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) Party, an unabashedly racist offshoot of the Likud Party that will likely be included in next Israeli coalition government. 

Yes, as Pompeo declares in his tweet, his “belief in [a distorted and perverse] Jesus makes a real difference,” not for peace, but for endless war stretching from Iran and Syria to Venezuela and beyond. 

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Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

More than 40 organizations from around the United States are demanding their Congress put an end to U.S. intervention in Venezuela saying that, in particular, the illegal and “extensive economic sanctions, imposed unilaterally by the Trump government since August 2017, have caused great hardship and loss of life” in the South American country.

The organizations, including Codepink,  and dozens of other civil and religious society organizations, sent a letter to Congress Monday asking for them to encourage peaceful dialogue within Venezuela and to denounce the U.S. Republican administration’s dangerous economic sanctions and threats of military action in Venezuela.

“These threats are absolutely unacceptable, particularly towards a country that does not represent a threat to the United States,” said the authors of the letter that include Demand Progress, Peace Action, Sisters of Mercy Justice Team, American Friends Service Committee, Vote Vets, Common Defense, Alliance Americas, and CASA of Maryland, among others.

President Trump has gone so far as to say that Venezuela is the “country with which we should go to war, they have all that oil and they are right in our backyard.”

The letter was delivered to all Congressional elected officials Tuesday morning.

“The pressure from these grassroots organizations could not come at a more critical time for Venezuela,” said Alex Main, Director of International Policy for  Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

Main pointed out:

“The latest round of sanctions launched in January is worsening the current crisis and generating more suffering as it slows down imports, including food and medicines, and blocks the roads allowing economic recovery.”

So far, U.S. President Donald Trump and his hawkish advisors, including John Bolton and Elliot Abrams who have led the U.S. into drawn out and illegal wars under previous presidencies, have enacted over 20 sanctions against the Venezuelan government and individuals in the country in order to bring down the democratically-elected Nicolas Maduro presidency.

Hassan El-Tayyab, Co-Director of Just Foreign Policy, which organized the petition told CEPR:

“There is really no military solution to the crisis in Venezuela and more than 40 groups believe that our best chance to achieve peace is through dialogue, the lifting of sanctions and the total elimination of unauthorized war.”

Just Foreign Policy helped to pass legislation in December to end the U.S.’s congressionally unauthorized involvement in the war on impoverished Yemen.

The complete letter follows:

Dear (member of Congress),

We, the undersigned groups, wish to express our deep concern regarding the dangerous and destructive strategy of regime change directed at Venezuela by the Trump Government. The extensive economic sanctions imposed unilaterally by the US Government since August 2017 have caused great difficulties and loss of life for many Venezuelans.

The latest round of sanctions announced in January is expected to worsen the current crisis and cause even greater human suffering across the country. Although many onlookers have noted that civil war is an increasingly likely possibility, Trump government officials are strongly opposed to peaceful dialogue between the country’s political representatives, and have openly threatened military intervention.

We ask you to take a firm and public stand against these immoral, reckless and illegal policies, and to support efforts to promote a peaceful dialogue, before it is too late.

We urge you to:

• Oppose economic sanctions: Although the mismanagement of the Government and the fall in world oil prices are the causes of much of the deep crisis in Venezuela, the economic sanctions of the U.S. Government – both the financial sanctions of August 2017, like the sanctions of January 2019 to the Venezuelan oil industry – are generating additional losses of billions of dollars of foreign currency needed for essential imports, according to experts and even U.S. officials, as National Security Advisor, John Bolton. In the current context, these sanctions will inevitably lead to greater human suffering, including many deaths due to lack of medicines and other essential imports. Unilateral economic sanctions are illegal under the U.N. Charter and the Charter of the OAS; and research shows that they are generally ineffective in achieving the desired political results.
• Oppose threats of military intervention : President Trump has advocated military intervention in Venezuela since the beginning of 2017, while he and other government officials have declared repeatedly that “all options are on the table” with Venezuela.

These threats are absolutely unacceptable, particularly towards a country that does not represent a threat to the United States, and only the immense political polarization in Venezuela is increasing. Members of Congress must strongly denounce these threats and make the adoption of the “Law for the Prohibition of Unauthorized Military Action in Venezuela” one of the top priorities, and they must also commit to that, in case President Trump and his Government to involve the military in any action directed at Venezuela, will invoke the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and, consequently, will give rise to a debate and a vote in Congress to end any unauthorized use of force.

• Support for dialogue : Members of the US Executive have rejected the possibility of dialogue and, instead, have pressed for an immediate regime change in Venezuela, asking the Venezuelan Armed Forces to rebel against the Maduro Government. Experts have warned that this strategy could trigger a division within the Armed Forces of the country, with a potentially violent and catastrophic result. Members of Congress must oppose this dangerous zero-sum game led by the White House, and advocate for peaceful dialogue. The Vatican, the Secretary General of the U.N., Mexico and Uruguay have offered to help mediate in the dialogue and political negotiations to resolve the current crisis in a peaceful manner. Congress should support these efforts.

With the recent appointment as special envoy to Venezuela of the veteran American advisor and condemned by the Iran-Contra scandal, Elliott Abrams, and with the increasingly aggressive rhetoric of the White House, his support could not come at a more crucial moment. There is no moral, legal or political justification for this collective punishment against the Venezuelan population, based on economic sanctions. There is no solution that is military; Venezuela’s crisis must be resolved through dialogue and negotiations. Therefore, Congress must insist on eliminating destructive economic sanctions and removing any possibility of an unauthorized war from the board.

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The Syrian state will not be in a position to liberate the occupied Golan for decades to come.  US President Donald Trump made a gift of the territory to Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu last month. The move was Trump’s support for Netanyahu’s domestic election campaign; Netanyahu is facing severe accusations of bribery and corruption. No government in Damascus can regain the occupied Golan in the next decades due to the hefty price the Syrian government would pay for any war with Israel to recover the territory. The only hope for Syria would be to copy the Lebanese experience and delegate power to a Syrian resistance. However, the Lebanese experience is unique and would be difficult to imitate, unless Syria were to regain good ties with the west and with Arab countries allied to the US.

Yes, the Lebanese resistance managed to impose on Israel in the year 2000 a humiliated unconditional unilateral withdrawal of most occupied territories. Ehud Barak, then the Prime Minister, decided to end over two decades of occupation and abandon his allies in the “South Lebanese Army” (SLA), withdrawing from Lebanon following repetitive attacks of the resistance that left over 1000 Israeli officers and soldiers killed.

Moreover, in the second Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006 (the first war was the 1982 invasion), Israel refrained from destroying the capital Beirut, the Ministry of Defence and many official institutions and infrastructure (bombing some official targets and destroying many bridges). The reason Israel held back from using its destructive firepower from these and other targets – even if it failed to achieve its goal of limiting Hezbollah’s military capabilities – is also due to the split within the Lebanese government between friends and enemies of the hegemony and dominance of the US and its allies.

The presence of Lebanese friends of the US such as Prime Minister Fouad Siniora (image on the right), and many ministers and political leader’s hostile to Hezbollah, led the US to exert pressure on Israel and prevent it from destroying the country. The US believed its allies in Lebanon might achieve by political influence what Israel has failed to do in 33 days of war against the group.

The situation in Syria today is different: Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, Europe and the US all worked together to change the Syrian regime and create a failed state controlled by Takfiri jihadists. The Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said he would rather see ISIS on Israeli borders than the Syrian army. Many Israeli top military commanders shared this view.

Indeed, Israel tried to promote a “Syrian security zone”, like the one created in Lebanon in the ‘80s, to de facto permanently annex the Golan and to move a few kilometres further into the southern Syrian territories occupied by al-Qaeda and ISIS. In such a scenario, no country in the world would have contested Israel’s move.

To Israel’s consternation, the Syrian army and its allies managed to retake the momentum and turn the situation upside-down, recovering all southern territories from Israel’s friends in al-Qaeda and “Jaish Khaled Bin al-Waleed,” a group that professed loyalty to ISIS. This is what pushed Israel in 2019 – when all countries who had bet that Syria would fall into a chaos in a matter of months were obliged to recognize their mistaken judgment – to ask Trump to offer the Golan, the property neither of Israel nor of the US, as a gift to Netanyahu’s election chances.

The danger in such recognition is the fact that, notwithstanding the world’s rejection of Trump’s illegal move, the international position towards the Golan may change in the years and decades to come. This is exactly what happened to Palestine, now reduced to a small territory surrounded by Israel where no Palestinian can return to his abducted home. Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and many leaders followed. The US move, regardless of the words spoken by world leaders in defence of international law, will face no effective resistance nor any serious opposition from the supposed leader of the Islamic World, i.e. Saudi Arabia, nor from other Arab and Islamic countries (apart from Iran and its close allies).

Thus, Israel is playing a waiting game to gain further recognition of its occupation of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. However, what if Syria decides to recover the occupied territories?

The Israeli military is capable of bringing Syria back to the stone age. Its Air Force can destroy Syria’s electricity, dams, bridges, military and civilian infrastructures if Syria were to declare war on Israel in the name of recovering the Golan, as it did in the 1973 war.

Unlike Lebanon, Syria doesn’t have US allies within its government, legislative and military apparatus because power is in the hands of the President. Neither does Syria have ties with Arab states who could rebuild the country in case of severe damage or exert enough pressure to stop Israel from bombing Syria.

The late President Hafez Assad knew all this when he agreed to negotiate and went to Geneva after years of negotiation to sign a peace deal. Assad led a delegation of over 100 people, under the auspices of US president Bill Clinton, prepared to make peace with Israel on the basis of land for peace. It was Prime Minister Ehud Barak who withdrew from the deal because domestic pressure and public opinion did not allow him to withdraw entirely from Lebanon and the Golan. He wanted to keep some control over Tiberias and the water that flows into the lake from upper Jordan, Banyas Spring and other streams. Barak simply failed to honour Yitzhak Rabin’s commitment to Assad (and later Shimon Peres) that Israel would withdraw to the June 4 line. He wanted to keep a permanent Israeli presence on Mount Hermon and made security demands that could not be met by Assad. Barak thought he could twist Assad’s arms to the last minute and was unaware that the Syrian president was not bluffing and not ready to compromise on any inch of Syrian territory.

In 2010, ten years following the death of his father, President Bashar al-Assad was also willing to engage in peace talks with Israel in exchange for the Golan and return to the June 4 line, but Netanyahu, then Prime Minister, rejected the offer.

Israel is not looking to exchange land for peace. It holds tightly to David Ben Gurion’s strategy of exerting hegemony over the Middle East by military might. Only Syrian resistance groups who have gathered warfare experience in the last eight years of war could engage in guerrilla warfare to regain the Golan, similar to the Hezbollah experience in defeating Israel in the year 2000. Nevertheless, Syria can expect a violent Israeli response if this path to liberate the Golan is adopted.

Japan failed to regain the northern Kuril Islands occupied by Russia following the Second World War. The United Arab Emirates is unable to regain control of the two Islands of Tunb and Abu Mussa from Iran. China, to date, is not retaking Taiwan due to US protection of the Island. Ukraine will not recover Crimea from Russia and Septa and Melilla will not be given back to Morocco, remaining under Spanish control. There are territorial disputes between African countries, Pakistan, India, Australia, Cambodia, Korea and many other countries.

Even superpowers such as China and other powerful countries have not forced the recovery of their territories, because the price is not worth it. This is the situation of the Golan today. This is why Israel is likely to hold the land for decades to come.

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Since 2016 the United States has been in the Russiagate box, a hoax created by the US military/security complex to prevent President Trump from normalizing relations with Russia.  Normalized relations would devalue THE RUSSIAN THREAT, an orchestration that protects the $1,000 billion annual budget of the military/security complex.

The Democratic Party, which most certainly is not democratic, supported the hoax hoping to do Trump in for their own reasons and pulled the presstitute media into the conspiracy against Trump.

Now that all the assurances from the Establishment that Trump was a traitor to America who conspired with Russian President Putin to steal the election in order that America could serve Russian interests have been exposed as lies by the Mueller report, American attention is free to take up some other nonsensical campaign. The succession of these stupidities is destroying America’s reputation.

True, some of the most crazed of the Democrats and media cannot let go of Russiagate.  The presstitutes are saying that Trump would be impeached for his non-crime except the unworthy Democrats had rather go back to the business of spending other people’s money.  A crazed professor or two have declared that Mueller was part of the “Trump coverup” and that Mueller needs to be investigated.  But these claims simply underline that the United States wasted three years of its existence.

Meanwhile, other countries moved on.  The Russians, for example, discovered that Washington’s sanctions had a silver lining.  Russia became more self-sufficient economically and moved out of the box of being an exporter of raw materials to the West, a box into which the Americans and the American-brainwashed Russian economics profession had put the Russian government.

The fulminations and threats from Washington against Russia brought forth new Russian weapon systems for which the US has no match or defense, weapons that demote the US to a second-rate military power.

On an adjusted basis, China now has the world’s largest economy and increasingly ignores Washington’s blustering.  As does Iran.

Even Venezuela stands up to Washington.

The world is concluding that Washington is not the power it thinks it is.

Washington’s abuse of its reserve currency role and violations of international law have encouraged a movement away from the use of the dollar in international transactions. This is perhaps even a more serious threat to Washington’s power than Russia’s superior military capabilities.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was happy to see World War II because he understood that it would leave Britain bankrupt and without an empire.  Roosevelt understood that the gain would be America’s, because the US would take over the reserve currency role.  The reason this is important is that the reserve currency country can pay its bills by printing money.  Thus, the government has no budget constraints.

For a country as indebted as America, to lose this role would be a crushing blow.  It is this blow that Washington faces as a result of its idiotic policy of sanctions and disrespect of international law.

And there is another blow. Just as the Roman Empire fell to invaders who crossed the frontiers of the empire, so is Washington’s empire is falling.  Europe, the crown jewel of the empire, is now overrun with millions of unassimilable peoples to the extent that Europe is no longer European. The President of the US has so far been powerless to defend the borders of the United States.  Indeed, the Democratic Party and the presstitute media are totally opposed to any defence of American borders.  Why does a government unwilling to defend its borders spend $1,000 billion annually on defense?

The American Neoconservative Zionists, who have controlled US foreign policy in Israel’s interest since the Clinton regime, continue to operate as if we still live in an unipolar world.  For some reason the National Security Advisor to President Trump has poor sources of information.  He speaks as if he rules the world, but even Washington’s pathetic European vassals did not go along with Trump’s gift of the Syrian Golan Heights to Israel.

As for moral authority, after, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yeman, Ukraine, Honduras, and now Venezuela, all moral authority has vacated the West.

Washington is not only losing its economic and military power but also its soft power that rested in Washington’s propaganda about making the world safe for democracy.  Democracy is not even safe in the United States as Democrats and the presstitutes have done their best to overturn democracy and to drive the elected president from office, which is precisely what the Trump regime is trying to do to Venezuela.

All of the lies and propaganda that have portrayed the West as God’s gift to humanity have fallen away as the result of Washington’s irresponsible use of power, leaving the West morally naked.

The world no longer thinks that the West is something to look up to and to emulate.  Instead, the world sees a great evil, in the words of Matt Taibbi, “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

A great promise was betrayed by those trusted with the promise.  A government accountable to law and to the people requires a united people, not the disunity of multiculturalism and Identity Politics.  With the indigenous ethnic base of all of the Western countries under attack as “white supremicists,” the West can no longer defend its culture from the immigrants who do not share the culture.

The tension between an indigenous culture and imported cultures can be seen in the tensions between Hungary and the EU and Italy and the EU.  Hungary has refused to accept its quota of non-European immigrants and faces punishment by the EU.  In Italy the government is in the hands of a coalition of leftwing and rightwing parties that are united in their opposition to the EU and non-European immigration.  In Europe the situation is one in which the EU government, as well as the governments of member states such as France and Germany, have taken the side of immigrants against the indigenous people.  In other words, the governments of Europe are not committed to their own cultures.  This is the unmistakable sign of a dead culture.

In the United States there is so much disunity that to call the states united is a misuse of words.  Hillary voters hate Trump voters, and vice versa.  The presstitute media and universities are uniformly anti-white.

Countries without unity are not strong.  Consequently, the Western world is losing its leadership of the world.

Of course, the rest of the world also suffers from disunity.  The Sunni and the Shiites cannot unite, with the consequence that the Muslim world is weak.  The tribes in Africa cannot unite.  India and Pakistan stay at each other’s throats. Animosities exist among Asians.  Russia herself is a federation.  China has a Muslim province.  But the disunities are different from those in the West.  Japan and China have differences but the population of Japan is homogeneous and China largely is.  Arabs are Arabs whether Sunni or Shiite. The Russian Federation is the remains of an old empire, largely assimiliated, not the result of recent immigrations.

The consequence of disunity perhaps precludes any leadership.  But the collapse of the West into diversity and multiculturalism definitely means that Western leadership has been lost to the weakness of disunity.

Is it chaos that awaits?

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

The statement was made by Céline Fremault, the Minister of the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region, responsible for Housing, Quality of Life, Environment and Energy. From an interview last Friday, with L’Echo:

“I cannot welcome such technology if the radiation standards, which must protect the citizen, are not respected, 5G or not. The people of Brussels are not guinea pigs whose health I can sell at a profit. We cannot leave anything to doubt.”

– Céline Fremault, Minister of the Government (Brussels-Captial Region), responsible for Housing, Quality of Life, Environment and Energy

Ms. Fremault accurately identified that a 5G pilot project is not compatible with Belgian radiation safety standards (9 V/m, or 95 mW/m2 according to this online converter), and stated that she does not intend to make an exception. (In the Building Biology guidelines, the threshold for extreme concern is 1 mW/m2. However, many government agencies still only consider thermal effects, instead of the cumulative body of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies.)

Perhaps with Brussels heading up the European Union, and with one of the two major 5G appeals being addressed to the EU, officials there are better informed and motivated to protect themselves.

May support increase for Ms. Fremault and all officials who are hearing the call to sanity and prioritizing the people over the technocratic oligarchy.

2-MINUTE ACTION: To send a brief note of support to Ms. Fremault, go here; and to Brussels city councilors, go here. Encourage them of the importance to keep this ban permanent, despite industry’s forthcoming pressure.

The 5G Situation in Summary

There is almost no question that a 5G-world would place us all under an unprecedented level of surveillance and control; granting unheard-of powers to soulless corporate algorithms.

That should be enough to permanently delete the agenda right there, filed under “useful technology gone bad.”

Though perhaps an even bigger question for our time is: does 5G pose a major threat to all biological life? The independent evidence overwhelmingly indicates that it does.

That is, unless you ask wireless industry sources, who own the FCC and who recently put out this CNBC propaganda/commercial in a thinly-veiled attempt to quash pushback.

The talking heads of the wireless industry even brashly admit — when forced, in a US senate hearing — that they have not done any safety studies… and they don’t plan to.

The fact is, hundreds of scientists are trying everything to sound the alarm.

One such voice, Dr. Martin Pall, the WSU Professor Emeritus whose research actually lays out the mechanism of how wireless radiation causes harm in our cells, calls 5G “the stupidest idea in the history of the world.”

However, within the corporatized halls of government, there is a well-worn pattern of voices of reason being drowned out by the frothed frenzy of technocratic corporations, who envision 5G as an unprecedented economic opportunity for the full-on commercial exploitation of reality.

But 5G pushback is starting to get viral. The compilation of truth assembled in videos on 5G like this one provides a much-needed reality-check on the shocking state of greed and depravation among the agenda-pushers in our world.

While it may sound stark, after observing this for a long while, to me it honestly now appears that those pushing this agenda are stuck in a type of hive-mind syndrome, so frenzied with dollar-signs and “us-versus-them” progress-obsessions that they are in a mode incapable of self-corrective thought. Or at the very least, incapable of seeing where all of this is obviously heading — for them and their kids, too.

When the industry sheep are being presented with an avalanche of scientific evidence for a catastrophe-in-the-making, and yet they refuse to listen and instead continue to tow the profit-pushing line, what becomes visible is the shadow-expression of utter disdain for life. That may sound harsh, but I encourage you to consider this deeply.

Perhaps it’s the global, unconscious ‘death wish’ that is at the core of the 5G push. Perhaps this is also at the core of the desire to darkly exit the human condition via AI and transhumanism. Apparently this thought-form sees its escape and salvation through technology, instead of through humanity and/or our connection with divinity.

In any case, to any sane human with normal values, the situation is indeed bewildering. Though once we get over the distress, we are called into a kind of soul-led response. Perhaps it’s first a resolve to be sovereign in our thoughts, and to be steward of our mind. Then, inspiration and true Connectedness come when we become involved in manifesting the bigger solution — the choice of a positive future.

On this path, our root challenge is to remember: the power in our individual reality is truly within each of us, because who we are is not limited to the realms of duality and separation that we experience here.

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Featured image is from Collective Evolution

 

“Russia is an inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilization. Our citizens think of themselves as European. That’s why Russia proposes moving towards the creation of a common economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a community referred to by Russian experts as ‘the Union of Europe’ which will strengthen Russia’s potential in its economic pivot toward the ‘New Asia.’” Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, February 2012

The allegations of ‘Russian meddling’ only make sense if they’re put into a broader geopolitical context. Once we realize that Washington is implementing an aggressive “containment” strategy to militarily encircle Russia and China in order to spread its tentacles across Central Asian, then we begin to understand that Russia is not the perpetrator of the hostilities and propaganda, but the victim. The Russia hacking allegations are part of a larger asymmetrical-information war that has been joined by the entire Washington political establishment. The objective is to methodically weaken an emerging rival while reinforcing US global hegemony.

Try to imagine for a minute, that the hacking claims were not part of a sinister plan by Vladimir Putin “to sow discord and division” in the United States, but were conjured up to create an external threat that would justify an aggressive response from Washington. That’s what Russiagate is really all about.

US policymakers and their allies in the military and Intelligence agencies, know that relations with Russia are bound to get increasingly confrontational, mainly because Washington is determined to pursue its ambitious “pivot” to Asia plan. This new regional strategy focuses on “strengthening bilateral security alliances, expanding trade and investment, and forging a broad-based military presence.” In short, the US is determined to maintain its global supremacy by establishing military outposts across Eurasia, continuing to tighten the noose around Russia and China, and reinforcing its position as the dominant player in the most populous and prosperous region in the world. The plan was first presented in its skeletal form by the architect of Washington’s plan to rule the world, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Here’s how Jimmy Carter’s former national security advisor summed it up in his 1997 magnum opus, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives:

“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… (p.30)….. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. …. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (“The Grand Chessboard:American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives”, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, page 31, 1997)

14 years after those words were written, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took up the banner of imperial expansion and demanded a dramatic shift in US foreign policy that would focus primarily on increasing America’s military footprint in Asia. It was Clinton who first coined the term “pivot” in a speech she delivered in 2010 titled “America’s Pacific Century”. Here’s an excerpt from the speech:

“As the war in Iraq winds down and America begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, the United States stands at a pivot point. Over the last 10 years, we have allocated immense resources to those two theaters. In the next 10 years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests, and advance our values. One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment — diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise — in the Asia-Pacific region…

Open markets in Asia provide the United States with unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology…..American firms (need) to tap into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia…The region already generates more than half of global output and nearly half of global trade. As we strive to meet President Obama’s goal of doubling exports by 2015, we are looking for opportunities to do even more business in Asia…and our investment opportunities in Asia’s dynamic markets.”

(“America’s Pacific Century”, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton”, Foreign Policy Magazine, 2011)

The pivot strategy is not some trifling rehash of the 19th century “Great Game” promoted by think-tank fantasists and conspiracy theorists. It is Washington’s premier foreign policy doctrine, a ‘rebalancing’ theory that focuses on increasing US military and diplomatic presence across the Asian landmass. Naturally, NATO’s ominous troop movements on Russia’s western flank and Washington’s provocative naval operations in the South China Sea have sent up red flags in Moscow and Beijing. Former Chinese President Hu Jintao summed it up like this:

“The United States has strengthened its military deployments in the Asia-Pacific region, strengthened the US-Japan military alliance, strengthened strategic cooperation with India, improved relations with Vietnam, inveigled Pakistan, established a pro-American government in Afghanistan, increased arms sales to Taiwan, and so on. They have extended outposts and placed pressure points on us from the east, south, and west.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been equally critical of Washington’s erratic behavior. NATO’s eastward expansion has convinced Putin that the US will continue to be a disruptive force on the continent for the foreseeable future. Both leaders worry that Washington’s relentless provocations will lead to an unexpected clash that will end in war.

Even so, the political class has fully embraced the pivot strategy as a last-gasp attempt to roll back the clock to the post war era when the world’s industrial centers were in ruins and America was the only game in town. Now the center of gravity has shifted from west to east, leaving Washington with just two options: Allow the emerging giants in Asia to connect their high-speed rail and gas pipelines to Europe creating the world’s biggest free trade zone, or try to overturn the applecart by bullying allies and threatening rivals, by implementing sanctions that slow growth and send currencies plunging, and by arming jihadist proxies to fuel ethnic hatred and foment political unrest. Clearly, the choice has already been made. Uncle Sam has decided to fight til the bitter end.

Washington has many ways of dealing with its enemies, but none of these strategies have dampened the growth of its competitors in the east. China is poised to overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy sometime in the next 2 decades while Russia’s intervention in Syria has rolled back Washington’s plan to topple Bashar al Assad and consolidate its grip on the resource-rich Middle East. That plan has now collapsed forcing US policymakers to scrap the War on Terror altogether and switch to a “great power competition” which acknowledges that the US can no longer unilaterally impose its will wherever it goes. Challenges to America’s dominance are emerging everywhere particularly in the region where the US hopes to reign supreme, Asia.

This is why the entire national security state now stands foursquare behind the improbable pivot plan. It’s a desperate “Hail Mary” attempt to preserve the decaying unipolar world order.

What does that mean in practical terms?

It means that the White House (the National Security Strategy) the Pentagon (National Defense Strategy) and the Intelligence Community (The Worldwide Threat Assessment) have all drawn up their own respective analyses of the biggest threats the US currently faces. Naturally, Russia is at the very top of those lists. Russia has derailed Washington’s proxy war in Syria, frustrated US attempts to establish itself across Central Asia, and strengthened ties with the EU hoping to “create a harmonious community of economies from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” (Putin)

Keep in mind, the US does not feel threatened by the possibility of a Russian attack, but by Russia’s ability to thwart Washington’s grandiose imperial ambitions in Asia.

As we noted, the National Security Strategy (NSS) is a statutorily mandated document produced by the White House that explains how the President intends to implement his national security vision. Not surprisingly, the document’s main focus is Russia and China. Here’s an excerpt:

“China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.” (Neither Russia nor China are attempting to erode American security and prosperity.” They are merely growing their economies and expanding their markets. If US corporations reinvested their capital into factories, employee training and R and D instead of stock buybacks and executive compensation, then they would be better able to complete globally.)

Here’s more: “Through modernized forms of subversive tactics, Russia interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries around the world.” (This is a case of the ‘pot calling the kettle black.’)

“Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data.” (The western media behemoth is the biggest disinformation bullhorn the world has ever seen. RT and Sputnik don’t hold a candle to the ginormous MSM ‘Wurlitzer’ that controls the cable news stations, the newspapers and most of the print media. The Mueller Report proves beyond a doubt that the politically-motivated nonsense one reads in the media is neither reliably sourced nor trustworthy.)

The Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community is even more explicit in its attacks on Russia. Check it out:

“Threats to US national security will expand and diversify in the coming year, driven in part by China and Russia as they respectively compete more intensely with the United States and its traditional allies and partners…. We assess that Moscow will continue pursuing a range of objectives to expand its reach, including undermining the US-led liberal international order, dividing Western political and security institutions, demonstrating Russia’s ability to shape global issues, and bolstering Putin’s domestic legitimacy.

We assess that Moscow has heightened confidence, based on its success in helping restore the Asad regime’s territorial control in Syria,… Russia seeks to boost its military presence and political influence in the Mediterranean and Red Seas… mediate conflicts, including engaging in the Middle East Peace Process and Afghanistan reconciliation….

Russia will continue pressing Central Asia’s leaders to support Russian-led economic and security initiatives and reduce engagement with Washington. …Russia and China are likely to intensify efforts to build influence in Europe at the expense of US interests…” (“The Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community”, USG)

Notice how the Intelligence Community summary does not suggest that Russia poses an imminent military threat to the US, only that Russia has restored order in Syria, strengthened ties with China, emerged as an “honest broker” among countries in the Middle East, and used the free market system to improve relations with its trading partners and grow its economy. The IC appears to find fault with Russia because it is using the system the US created to better advantage than the US. This is entirely understandable given Putin’s determination to draw Europe and Asia closer together through a region-wide economic integration plan. Here’s Putin:

“We must consider more extensive cooperation in the energy sphere, up to and including the formation of a common European energy complex. The Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea and the South Stream pipeline under the Black Sea are important steps in that direction. These projects have the support of many governments and involve major European energy companies. Once the pipelines start operating at full capacity, Europe will have a reliable and flexible gas-supply system that does not depend on the political whims of any nation. This will strengthen the continent’s energy security not only in form but in substance. This is particularly relevant in the light of the decision of some European states to reduce or renounce nuclear energy.”

The gas pipelines and high-speed rail are the arteries that will bind the continents together and strengthen the new EU-Asia superstate. This is Washington’s greatest nightmare, a massive, thriving free trade zone beyond its reach and not subject to its rules. In 2012, Hillary Clinton acknowledged this new threat and promised to do everything in her power to destroy it. Check out this excerpt:

“U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described efforts to promote greater economic integration in Eurasia as “a move to re-Sovietize the region.”…. “We know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it,” she said at an international conference in Dublin on December 6, 2012, Radio Free Europe.”

“Slow down or prevent it”?

Why? Because EU-Asia growth and prosperity will put pressure on US debt markets, US corporate interests, US (ballooning) national debt, and the US Dollar? Is that why Hillary is so committed to sabotaging Putin’s economic integration plan?

Indeed, it is. Washington wants to block progress and prosperity in the east in order to extend the lifespan of a doddering and thoroughly-bankrupt state that is presently $22 trillion in the red but continues to write checks on an overdrawn account.

But Russia shouldn’t be blamed for Washington’s profligate behavior, that’s not Putin’s fault. Moscow is merely using the free market system more effectively that the US.

Now consider the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) which reiterates many of the same themes as the other two documents.

“Today, we are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding. We are facing increased global disorder, characterized by decline in the long-standing rules-based international order—creating a security environment more complex and volatile than any we have experienced in recent memory. Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.”

(Naturally, the “security environment” is going to be more challenging when ‘regime change’ is the cornerstone of one’s foreign policy. Of course, the NDS glosses over that sad fact. Here’s more:)

“Russia has violated the borders of nearby nations and pursues veto power over the economic, diplomatic, and security decisions of its neighbors…..(Baloney. Russia has been a force for stability in Syria and Ukraine. If Obama had his way, Syria would have wound up like Iraq, a hellish wastelands occupied by foreign mercenaries. Is that how the Pentagon measures success?) Here’s more:

“China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model…

“China and Russia are now undermining the international order from within the system…….

“China and Russia are the principal priorities for the Department… because of the magnitude of the threats they pose to U.S. security.” (National Defense Strategy of the United States of America)

Get the picture? China and Russia, China and Russia, China and Russia. Bad, bad, bad.

Why? Because they are successfully implementing their own development model which is NOT programed to favor US financial institutions and corporations. That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. The only reason Russia and China are a threat to the “rules-based system”, is because Washington insists on being the only one who makes the rules. That’s why foreign leaders are no longer falling in line, because it’s not a fair system.

These assessments represent the prevailing opinion of senior-level policymakers across the spectrum. (The White House, the Pentagon and the Intelligence Community) The USG is unanimous in its judgement that a harsher more combative approach is needed to deal with Russia and China. Foreign policy elites want to put the nation on the path to more confrontation, more conflict and more war. At the same time, none of these three documents suggest that Russia has any intention of launching an attack on the United States. The greatest concern is the effect that emerging competitors will have on Washington’s provocative plan for military and economic expansion, the threat that Russia and China pose to America’s tenuous grip on global power. It is that fear that drives US foreign policy.

And this is broader context into which we must fit the Russia investigation. The reason the Russia hacking furor has been allowed to flourish and spread despite the obvious lack of any supporting evidence, is because the vilifying of Russia segues perfectly with the geopolitical interests of elites in the government. The USG now works collaboratively with the media to influence public attitudes on issues that are important to the powerful foreign policy establishment. The ostensible goal of these psychological operations (PSYOP) is to selectively use information on “audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of… organizations, groups, and individuals.”

The USG now sees the minds of ordinary Americans as a legitimate target for their influence campaigns. They regard attitudes and perceptions as “the cognitive domain of the battlespace” which they must exploit in order to build public support for their vastly unpopular wars and interventions. The relentless Russiagate narrative (which was first referred to the FBI by the chief architect of the Syrian War, former-CIA Director John Brennan) represents the disinformation component of the broader campaign against Russia. Foreign policy elites are determined to persuade the American people that Russia constitutes a material threat to their security that must be countered by tighter sanctions, more sabre-rattling, and eventually war.

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Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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“If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank, safe and sound,
Soon that tuppence safely invested in the bank will compound,

“And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest as your affluence expands
In the hands of the directors who invest as propriety demands.”

— Mary Poppins, 1964

When Mary Poppins was made into a movie in 1964, Mr. Banks’ advice to his son was sound. Banks were then paying more than 5% interest on deposits, enough to double young Michael’s investment every 14 years.

Now, however, the average savings account pays only 0.10% annually – that’s 1/10^th of 1% – and many of the country’s biggest banks pay less than that. If you were to put $5,000 in a regular Bank of America savings account (paying 0.01%) today, in a year you would have collected only 50 cents in interest.

That’s true for most of us, but banks themselves are earning 2.4% on their deposits at the Federal Reserve. These deposits, called “excess reserves,” include the reserves the banks got from our deposits, on which they are paying almost nothing; and unlike with our deposits, there is no $250,000 cap on the sums banks can stash at the Fed amassing interest. A whopping $1.5 trillion in reserves are now sitting in Fed reserve accounts. The Fed rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, and interest paid to banks is one of those costs. That means we the taxpayers are paying $36 billion annually to private banks for the privilege of parking their excess reserves at one of the most secure banks in the world – parking their reserves rather than lending them out.

The banks are getting these outsized returns while taking absolutely no risk, since the Fed as “lender of last resort” cannot go bankrupt. This is not true for other depositors, including large institutions such as the pension funds that hold our retirement money. As Matt Levine notes in a March 8 article on Bloomberg:

[I]f you are a large institutional cash investor—a money-market fund, a foreign central bank, things like that—then in some sense you have no way to keep your money perfectly safe…. The closest that big non-banks normally get is “overnight general collateral repo”: You give your money to a bank, and the bank gives you back a Treasury security as collateral, and you can get your money back the next day.

This arrangement is reasonably safe for the institutional investor, which can withdraw its money on a day’s notice; and it gets interest that is close to 2.4%. But the bank is using the investor’s money to run its business, and the bank is leveraged. The money it gets from repoing Treasuries is used to buy other things and to trade in stocks, bonds, derivatives and the like. This makes the repo business highly risky for the market as a whole, as was seen when a run on the repo market triggered the credit crisis of 2008-09. As Jennifer Taub explained the problem in a 2014 article in The New York Timestitled “Time to Reduce Repo Run Risk”:

An overnight repo would be like you having a car loan that is due in full every morning and if the lender does not renew your loan that day, you need to find a new one, each and every day or they take your car away.

When trust is strong and cash plentiful, repos are rolled over. When trust reasonably erodes, or there is a panic, cash is demanded from the repo borrowers who might have to sell the collateral or relinquish it…. Indeed, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has repeatedly warned of the repo “fire sale” risk.

Taub cited FDIC officials Thomas Hoenig and Sheila Bair, who warned that the banks remain dangerously interconnected and vulnerable to sudden runs due to their dependence on short-term, often overnight borrowing through the multitrillion-dollar repo market.

For large institutional investors, one proposed alternative is something called “The Narrow Bank” (TNB). TNB would take large-depositor money and park it at the Fed, and that’s all the bank would do. The Fed would pay 2.4%, TNB would take a small cut, and the rest would be passed to the depositors. But the Fed has refused to open this sort of pass-through account, and in a recent notice of proposed rulemaking it explained why. As Matt Levine summarized its concerns:

[T]he Fed worries that having too safe a bank would be bad for financial stability: In times of stress, everyone will flee from the regular banks to the super-safe narrow banks, which will have the effect of bringing down the regular banks.

Besides impairing its ability to target interest rates, the Fed is worried that narrow banks will take funding away from regular banks, making it harder for those banks to trade stocks and bonds (a business largely funded by repo) as well as jeopardizing their lending business. All of which shows, says Levine, that the Fed is not a neutral arbiter. It is working for the banks:

The Fed just gets to decide who gets to compete in the banking business, and how that competition will work, and what their business models can be, by virtue of its control of access to reserve accounts…. There is no modern banking that is independent of the sovereign’s power to control money, and the question is just who the sovereign shares that power with.

The European Approach: Negative Interest Rates

While US banks are being paid an unprecedented 2.4% for leaving their reserves at the Fed, the European Central Bank is taking the opposite tack: it is charging banks a negative interest rate of 0.4% for holding their reserves. The goal is to get banks to move the reserves off their books by making new loans. If they lend money on to the real economy, and particularly to companies, this interest payment may be rebated to the banks under a facility called “targeted longer-term refinancing operations” or TLTROs. In 2016 and 2017, the ECB returned a total of 739 billion euros to banks through TLTROs, and it is expected to renew that program, in an effort to avoid an even greater economic downturn than Europe is suffering now.

Negative interest rates were supposed to be a temporary emergency measure, but in comments on March 27, ECB President Mario Draghi hinted that they could be around for a long time if not permanently. The “new normal” is evidently a chronically abnormal state of emergency in which central banks can experiment with the formerly unthinkable and get away with it.

A Public Option for the Rest of Us

Even if large depositors were allowed to participate in the perks of Fed accounts through TNB, small depositors and small businesses would still be left with a meager 1/10^th of 1% annually on their deposits. But some interesting proposals are on the table for opening the Fed’s deposit window to everyone, allowing us all to collect 2.4% on our deposits.

One such plan was presented in a June 2018 policy paper titled “Central Banking for All: A Public Option for Bank Accounts” by a trio of law professors and former Treasury advisors headed by Morgan Ricks. They suggested that for the physical infrastructure to handle so many accounts, the Fed could use the post offices peppered across the country. Postal banking has been popular for two centuries in Europe and was offered in US post offices from 1911 to 1967. Postal banks were in their heyday in the 1930s, when private banks were going bankrupt and were vulnerable to crushing bank runs. The postal banks were government-backed, paid 2% interest on deposits, and were very safe. Congress could have expanded that system into a national public utility that safely and efficiently served the banking needs of local communities. But instead it chose to back the private banking system with federal deposit insurance, guaranteeing private bank deposits with taxpayer funds – again showing how the winners and losers are picked by government officials, depending on whose lobbyists have the most clout.

To prevent public banks from competing with private banks, Congress capped the amount of interest postal banks could pay and strictly limited their lending. As a result, in 1967 the postal banking system was shut down as being no longer competitive or necessary. But efforts are now underway to revive it. In April 2018, US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand introduced legislation that would require every US post office to provide basic banking services.

A movement is also afoot to establish state- and city-owned banks that would have the ability to lend for infrastructure and other local needs. Local governments cannot get a risk-free 2.4% from the Fed for their demand deposits, but city- or state-owned banks could. Combining postal banks with a network of local public banks having affordable access to the Fed’s deep pocket could provide a safe and efficient public banking option for individuals, businesses and local governments.

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This article was first published on Truthdig.com.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including Web of Debt and The Public Bank Solution. A 13^th book titled Banking on the People: Democratizing Finance in the Digital Age is due out soon. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Head of High Follow up Committee for Arabs in Israel Mohammad Baraka has warned that Palestinians being held in Israeli jails are being used as guinea pigs for new medical trials, Arab48reported yesterday.

“This is a clear war against humanity and international rights groups must take Israel to the ICC over its crimes against prisoners,” Baraka said.

He added:

“There are reports that the Ministry of Health issued licenses to several international companies to carry out medical tests on Palestinian and Arab prisoners in Israeli jails without their knowledge.”

He concluded:

“This crime is added to the record of crimes against the Palestinians, mainly the prisoners inside Israeli jails, who are being denied their basic rights.”

In February, Israeli Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian revealed that the Israeli occupation authorities had issued permits to large pharmaceutical firms to carry out tests on Palestinian and Arab prisoners.

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The reported arrival of Chinese military personnel in Venezuela last weekend is undoubtedly a major event in world politics. 

Unlike Russia, which has a history of force projection abroad, this is an extremely rare Chinese move. Although vital Chinese interests are at stake in the war against terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Syria, China refrained from publicising any such deployment. 

The reports mention that the group of Chinese military personnel is 120-strong and arrived on the Margarita Island in the Caribbean Sea off the Venezuelan mainland on March 28 ‘to deliver humanitarian aid and military supplies to the government forces.’ After delivering the humanitarian supplies, the Chinese PLA troops were apparently transferred to a Venezuelan military facility.

While the delivery of aid is one of many expected shipments, according to government officials, the arrival of Chinese military personnel was under-reported in international press.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Venezuela imported $349 million worth of arms from China between 2010 and 2014 alone — initially, with less sophisticated equipment such as radars and aircraft to train pilots, reinforced vehicles and replacement parts, etc. but military goods that arrived in 2017 including armoured tanks, ammunition, uniforms and infantry equipment, as well as replacement and service parts for Russian-made pieces. 

A week ago, around 100 Russian military personnel were deployed to Venezuela to instal a military helicopter training facility, but details of the Chinese PLA mission have not been disclosed. There is close coordination between Moscow and Beijing on foreign policy issues and it is entirely conceivable that the two countries’ deployments are synchronised moves.  

Both Russia and China have heavily invested in Venezuela, the latter by far outstripping the former. According to a recent report in the LA Times,

“Over the decade ending in 2016, China loaned Venezuela approximately $62 billion, much of which Caracas could repay with oil. Moscow in the last several years gave Venezuela $17 billion in loans and investment, and in December the two governments signed a new deal in which Russia will invest $6 billion in Venezuela’s oil and gold sectors.” 

“China and Russia are Venezuela’s two main creditors, and they have been the principal economic force keeping the Maduro government afloat, making the difference between solvency and bankruptcy, financial experts say.”

Interestingly, the LA Times report, however, made a distinction that China and Russia pursued different attitudes toward their financial commitments in Venezuela, with China being “more pragmatic” and Russia “more ideological”. Whereas for its investment, Beijing sought to receive raw materials, cheap oil and other returns, Moscow was credited with having greater interest in “in extending its military presence and setting up a beachhead in the Americas — and within spitting distance of the United States…”

“For Russia, investments and military saber-rattling about protecting Venezuela has always been about showing strength in America’s neighbourhood… The Kremlin has tried to mimic what it sees as U.S. and NATO foreign policy of entering and meddling in Moscow’s perceived sphere of influence, such as Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, particularly Ukraine.” 

Indeed, Moscow’s condemnation of US interference in Venezuela has been conspicuously more forceful than that of China, which actually called for dialogue and a negotiated resolution to the crisis. Many US analysts assumed that China might even be losing faith in President Nicolas Maduro and decided to keep its head beneath the parapet preferring to focus on its lending practices in Venezuela and even scouring for bargain-basement deals. 

But such facile hypotheses have been turned on their head with the sudden arrival of the Chinese PLA troops on the languid Margarita Island famous as a popular holiday destination for its sand and mangroves, windsurfing and kiteboarding. One reason could be that in the Chinese assessment, although tensions are rising in Venezuela and uncertainties remain due to the duality of power, and a criticality may well be reached in the nearest future with the refugee problem causing disaffection among neighbouring countries and with no signs of Washington easing the pressure for regime change in Caracas, there is also at the same time an inherent balance or equilibrium that has come to prevail in the situation insofar as neither side in the conflict enjoys a decisive advantage. 

A war of attrition is under way which can end only if either side loses patience and forces a showdown, which seems unlikely as things stand. 

In the assessment of the Russian experts, while a lot of shadow boxing is going on from the American side with the US’ Latin American allies even expecting swift and tough action by the US, the fact of the matter is that there is no stomach for anyone really for demanding an outright military intervention to change the regime in Venezuela. 

Washington seems to fear that any military intervention may prove to be counterproductive and could have chaotic outcome, and, worse still, even unite the Venezuelan people against the US, apart from causing turbulence among Latin American countries. 

Nonetheless, the arrival of Russian military personnel in Venezuela “caused a nervous reaction in Washington”, as the foreign ministry in Moscow noted on March 30 in response to a sharply-worded statement by the US National Security Advisor John Bolton the previous day strongly cautioning the Kremlin against “deploying military assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the Hemisphere, with the intent of establishing or expanding military operations.” Bolton warned Moscow, “We will consider such provocative actions as a direct threat to international peace and security in the region.” 

But the Russian foreign ministry brushed off Bolton’s warning and claimed that although geographically, Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula is located in the Western Hemisphere, Moscow had no intentions to “establish or expand military operations” in Venezuela. Having said that, “any (US) attempts to intimidate Russia with sanctions for its legitimate cooperation with Venezuela look absurd.” 

The foreign ministry underscored that the US “plans for a rapid change of regime in Caracas have failed. By its self-assurance, Washington has let down those in Latin America and Western Europe who unwisely hastened   to recognise an impostor, whom the people had not elected, as the head of Venezuela. By taking this step, they have deprived themselves of any room for diplomatic manoeuvre.” Furthermore, Moscow asserted that it proposed to do “everything within our power” to promote a national dialogue in Venezuela. However, Moscow has also signalled indirectly that any ideas of establishing a military base in Venezuela so close to the US shores is far from its thoughts.

Clearly, the firm but prudent Russian stance went a long way to encourage China to shift to an overt proactive role. Needless to say, Russia (and Cuba) will welcome this Chinese shift. 

(China’s PLAAF conducted its first airdrop and air delivery training exercise using the Y-20 strategic transport aircraft last year circa May.)

If the Russian and Cuban presence in Venezuela has been bad enough for the Trump administration, the arrival of the PLA troops will be a bitter pill to swallow, given extensive Chinese involvement in Latin America. Indeed, China is joining Russia to assert the intention to safeguard its vital interests in Venezuela. 

To be sure, both Moscow and Beijing have taken note of President Trump’s recent remark that he intended to talk things over with his Russian and Chinese counterparts regarding Venezuela, which is as good as saying that he isn’t considering any military intervention, no matter the rhetorical remarks by US officials. 

No doubt, the PLA deployment to Venezuela is at once a game changer in the crisis situation surrounding that country. At a substantive level, China has conveyed its readiness and capability to salvage the besieged Maduro government. Beijing has not only underscored that it is a stakeholder but also asserted its expanding global influence. Of course, China firmly repudiates the Monroe Doctrine. Thus, in many ways, this becomes a watershed moment in world politics.

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Because there is a presidential election coming up next year, the Donald Trump Administration appears to be looking for a country that it can attack and destroy in order to prove its toughness and willingness to go all the way in support of alleged American interests. It is a version of the old neocon doctrine attributed to Michael Ledeen, the belief that every once in a while, it is necessary to pick out some crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to demonstrate that the United States means business.

“Meaning business” is a tactic whereby the adversary surrenders immediately in fear of the possible consequences, but there are a couple of problems with that thinking. The first is that an opponent who can resist will sometimes balk and create a continuing problem for the United States, which has a demonstrated inability to start and end wars in any coherent fashion.

This tendency to get caught in a quagmire in a situation that might have been resolved through diplomacy has been exacerbated by the current White House’s negotiating style, which is to both demand and expect submission on all points even before discussions begin. That was clearly the perception with North Korea, where National Security Advisor John Bolton insisted that Pyongyang had agreed to American demands over its nuclear program even though it hadn’t and would have been foolish to do so for fear of being treated down the road like Libya, which denuclearized but then was attacked and destroyed seven years later. The Bolton mis-perception, which was apparently bought into by Trump, led to a complete unraveling of what might actually have been accomplished if the negotiations had been serious and open to reasonable compromise right from the beginning.

Trump’s written demand that Kim Jong Un immediately hand over his nuclear weapons and all bomb making material was a non-starter based on White House misunderstandings rooted in its disdain for compromise. The summit meeting with Trump, held in Hanoi at the end of February, was abruptly canceled by Kim and Pyongyang subsequently accused Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of making “gangster-like” demands.

The second problem is that there are only a few actual casus belli situations under international law that permit a country to attack another preemptively, and they are usually limited to actual imminent threats. The current situation with Venezuela is similar to that with North Korea in that Washington is operating on the presumption that it has a right to intervene and bring about regime change, using military force if necessary, because of its presumed leadership role in global security, not because Caracas or even Pyongyang necessarily is threatening anyone. That presumption that American “exceptionalism” provides authorization to intervene in other countries using economic weapons backed up by a military option that is “on the table” is a viewpoint that is not accepted by the rest of the world.

In the case of Venezuela, where Trump has dangerously demanded that Russia withdraw the hundred or so advisors that it sent to help stabilize the country, the supposition that the United States has exclusive extra-territorial rights is largely based on nineteenth and early twentieth century unilaterally declared “doctrines.” The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 and the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 de facto established the United States as the hegemon-presumptive for the entire Western Hemisphere, stretching from the Arctic Circle in the north to Patagonia in the south.

John Bolton has been the leader in promoting the Monroe Doctrine as justification for Washington’s interference in Venezuela’s politics, apparently only dimly aware that the Doctrine, which opposed any attempts by European powers to establish new colonies in the Western Hemisphere, was only in effect for twenty-two years when the United States itself annexed Texas and then went to war with Mexico in the following year. The Mexican war led to the annexation of territory that subsequently became the states of California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Colorado. In the same year, the United States threatened war with Britain over the Oregon Territory, eventually accepting a border settlement running along the 49th parallel.

Meanwhile the march westward across the plains continued, forcing the Indian tribes back into ever smaller spaces of open land. The US government in the nineteenth century recognized some Indian tribes as “nations” but it apparently did not believe that they enjoyed any explicit “Monroe Doctrine” rights to continue to exist outside reservations when confronted by the “manifest destiny” proponents who were hell bent on creating a United States that would run from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

The Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 amended the Monroe Doctrine, making it clear that the United States believed it had a right to interfere in any country in the western Hemisphere to maintain good order, which inevitably led to exploitation of Latin American nations by US business conglomerates that could count on a little help from US Marines if their trade agreements were threatened. In 1898, Washington became explicitly imperialist when it defeated Spain and acquired effective control over Cuba, a number of Caribbean Islands and the Philippines. This led to a series of more than thirty interventions by the US military in the Caribbean and Central America between 1898 and 1934. Other states in the region that were not directly controlled by Washington were frequently managed through arrangements with local autocrats, who were often themselves generals.

Make no mistake, citing the Monroe Doctrine is little more than a plausible excuse to get rid of the Venezuelan government, which is legitimate, like it or not. The recent electrical blackouts in the country are only the visible signs of an aggressive campaign to destroy the Venezuelan economy. The United States is engaging in economic warfare against Caracas, just as it is doing against Tehran, and it is past time that it should be challenged by the international community over its behavior. Guns may not be firing but covert cyberwarfare is total warfare nevertheless, intended to starve people and increase their suffering in order to bring about economic collapse and take down a government to change it into something more amenable to American interests.

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

Featured image is from SCF

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg delivered the first-ever address by a leader of the US-led imperialist alliance to a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday, promoting a military buildup against Russia under conditions in which ever greater fissures are threatening to tear NATO itself apart.

Stoltenberg, whose pedestrian speech was interrupted by 18 standing ovations from the assembled US Senators and Representatives, claimed that he was not pushing a new Cold War, but nonetheless made it clear that the central axis of the NATO alliance remained preparation for a military confrontation with Moscow.

“For the first time, we have combat-ready troops deployed in the east of our alliance,” he said. “We have increased the readiness of our forces, tripled the size of the NATO Response Force, modernized our command structure, bolstered our cyber defenses, and we have stepped up support for our close partners, Georgia and Ukraine, sovereign nations with the sovereign right to choose their own path.”

This boasting over the deployment of armed battalions on Russia’s very borders came as a summit of NATO foreign ministers being held in Washington approved plans for the dispatch of NATO warships to the Kerch Strait. This passageway between the Black and Azov Seas was the scene last November of a provocation by Ukraine that ended in an armed confrontation in which Russia seized three Ukrainian ships and some two dozen sailors.

“We are going to make sure that we have the capability to deter a very aggressive Russia,” US ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison told reporters on Tuesday on the sidelines of the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting.

She said that the upcoming NATO intervention was designed “to assure that there is a safe passage for Ukrainian vessels through the Kerch Strait.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov condemned the planned action, declaring:

“It’s negative. We do not understand what they mean. The situation surrounding the Kerch Strait and shipping is well known, and in line with international legislation, with international laws, Russia’s position is quite consistent, and it is well known too.”

Stoltenberg also solidarized himself with Washington over the Trump administration’s ripping up of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, noting that “NATO allies have supported the US position on that strongly.” Washington’s action, justified on the basis of unsubstantiated claims that Russia has violated the accord, opens the way to a dangerous new nuclear arms race.

US officials have acknowledged that a principal motivation for Washington’s action is that China, which is not bound by the treaty, is deploying missiles to counter Washington’s military encirclement carried out under the banner of the “pivot to Asia.”

One Russian television commentator described Stoltenberg’s speech as a “familiar bundle of threats and phobias” based upon the concern that Russia “had placed its borders too close to NATO.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a photo-op with Stoltenberg in which she gushed that the NATO chief’s appearance on Capitol Hill was a “jubilant occasion” and thanked him for his “leadership in making the world a more peaceful place.”

Democratic lawmakers were the most enthusiastic in cheering the NATO secretary general, clearly seeing their praise for him as a rebuke to Republican President Donald Trump, who in his 2016 election campaign described the NATO alliance as “obsolete,” and has repeatedly charged that European members are taking advantage of the US by relying on its military might while achieving unfair trade advantages.

At the same time, with the report by special counsel Robert Mueller failing to confirm incessant Democratic claims of Trump’s “collusion” with the Kremlin in alleged interference in the 2016 elections, the Democrats’ embrace of Stoltenberg is part of the continuing drive by the party to oppose the Trump administration from the right with demands for an even more aggressive militarist policy against Russia.

While Stoltenberg tried to portray the increasingly acrimonious divisions within NATO as “a sign of strength” and “democracy,” US Vice President Mike Pence, speaking at a NATO anniversary event in Washington, delivered what amounted to ultimatums to both Turkey and Germany to submit to Washington’s diktats, or else.

“Turkey must choose,” Pence said. “Does it want to remain a critical partner in the most successful military alliance in history, or does it want to risk the security of that partnership by making such reckless decisions that undermine our alliance?”

The US vice president was referring to Ankara’s decision to buy S-400 missile defense systems from Russia, against which Washington has retaliated by stopping delivery of F-35 fighter jets that are being provided to other NATO countries.

Turkey’s vice president, Fuat Oktay, delivered a stinging response to Pence’s ultimatum, tweeting:

“The United States must choose. Does it want to remain Turkey’s ally or risk our friendship by joining forces with terrorists to undermine its NATO ally’s defense against its enemies.”

Oktay’s reference was to the Pentagon’s continued arming and support for the Syrian Kurdish separatist YPG militia, which Ankara views as a branch of the Turkish Kurdish PKK movement, against which it has fought a bloody counterinsurgency campaign for decades.

Earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking at another event in Washington, made it clear that Ankara was not about to bow to Washington’s demands.

“It’s a done deal,” he said in relation to the S-400s. “Turkey doesn’t have to choose between Russia and any others, and we don’t see our relationship with Russia as an alternative to others.”

Pence also turned his fire against Berlin, condemning the German government for refusing “to make the necessary investment of 2 percent of its GDP to our common defense.”

While the German government is rearming on a scale unseen since the downfall of Hitler’s Third Reich—increasing military spending by 40 percent since 2014—Pence cast Berlin as shirking its responsibilities.

More pointedly, he denounced the German government for moving ahead with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, bringing Russian natural gas to Germany through the Baltic Sea, insisting that Germany ran the risk of becoming a “captive of Russia.” Washington has pressed for Germany to accept liquefied natural gas, delivered by US companies, as an alternative to Russian gas.

In his meeting with Stoltenberg on Tuesday, Trump pressed on the same issues, while apparently attempting to soften the tone of the nakedly imperialist interests being pursued by Washington by declaring his “great respect” for Germany.

“My father is German, was German,” Trump said. “Born in a very wonderful place in Germany, so I have a great feeling for Germany.”

This was the third time that Trump has publicly claimed that his father, Fred Trump, was born in Germany, when it is public record that he was actually born in New York City in 1905.

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Featured image: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addresses Congress [Photo Credit: C-Span]

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has just completed its annual summit in Washington. It claims that 18,000 supporters attended the event, which concluded with a day of lobbying Congress by the attendees. Numerous American politicians addressed the gathering and it is completely reasonable to observe that the meeting constituted the most powerful gathering of people dedicated to promoting the interests of a foreign nation ever witnessed in any country in the history of the world.

There are a number of things that one should understand about the Jewish state of Israel and its powerful American domestic lobby. First of all, the charge that the actions of The Lobby (referred to with capital letters because of its uniqueness and power) inevitably involves dual or even singular allegiance based on religion or tribe to a country where the lobbyist does not actually reside is completely correct by definition of what AIPAC is and why it exists. It claims to work to “ensure that the Jewish state is safe, strong and secure” through “foreign aid, government partnerships, [and] joint anti-terrorism efforts…,” all of which involve the U.S. as the donor and Israel as the recipient.

Being a citizen of a country is not just an accident of birth. It requires loyalty to the interests of that country and to one’s fellow citizens. No two countries have identical interests, something that is particularly true when one is considering Israel, an ethno-religious autocracy, and the United States, where The Lobby works assiduously to compel American government at all levels to adopt positions that are beneficial to Israel and almost invariably harmful to U.S. interests. Asserting that the two nations have nearly identical interests is little more than a fraud.

Second, there is the claim that Israel benefits American security. That is also a lie. Washington’s relationship with Israel, which is now more subservient than it ever has been, is a major liability that is and always has been damaging to both American regional and global interests. The recent decisions to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights were ill-conceived and have been condemned by the world community, including by nearly all of America’s genuine close allies.

The harm done by the Israeli connection to policy formulation in Washington and to U.S. troops based in the Middle East has been noted both by Admiral Thomas Moorer and General David Petraeus, with Moorer decrying how “If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don’t have any idea what goes on.” Petraeus complained to a Senate Committee that U.S. favoritism towards Israel puts American soldiers based in the Middle East at risk. He was quickly forced to recant, however.

Former CIA Deputy Director Admiral Bobby Inman has also rejected the claim that Israel is a security asset by observing that

“Israeli spies have done more harm and have damaged the United States more than the intelligence agents of all other countries on earth combined… They are the gravest threat to our national security.”

Image on the right: Milchan and Netanyahu (Source: David Silverman/Getty Image via Haaretz)

Inman was referring to American Jewish spy Jonathan Pollard, who stole for Israel an entire roomful of the most highly classified defense information. Israeli spies, including current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hollywood movie producer Arnon Milchan, also participated in the systematic theft of weapons grade uranium and nuclear triggers in the 1960s so Israel could secretly create a nuclear weapons arsenal. The FBI, for its part, in its annual counterintelligence report, consistently identifies Israel as the “friendly” country that spies most persistently against the U.S. FBI Agents have testified that there are very few prosecutions of the swarms of Israeli spies due to “political pressure.”

Third, there is the myth that the United States and Israel have “shared values,” which is meant to imply that both are liberal democracies where freedom and human rights prevail, beacons of light offering enlightened leadership in a world where tyranny threatens at every turn. This was stressed in the opening remarks last weekend by AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr, who described Israel as

“A nation always striving to be better, more just and true to the message of its founders, a nation dedicated to freedom of religion for people of all faiths. We do our work for all to see. What unites our pro-Israel movement is the passion for bringing American and Israel closer for the benefit of both and the benefit of all. We look like America because we are America.”

Kohr is, of course, preaching to an audience that wants desperately to believe what he says in spite of what they have been able to see with their own eyes in the media when it dares to publish a story criticizing Israel. Jewish hypocrisy about one standard for Israel and Jews plus another standard for everyone else operates pretty much out in the open if one knows where to look. Zionist Organization of America’s Morton Klein, who once tweeted regarding a “filthy Arab,” was interviewed by journalist Nathan Thrall and asked why he believed it was “utterly racist and despicable” to support a “white nationalist” ethnic group but not racist for Israel to do the same. He responded

“Israel is a unique situation. This is really a Jewish state given to us by God. God did not create a state for white people or for black people.”

Senator Charles Schumer, the Democratic minority leader, who calls himself the Senate’s “shomer” or guardian for American Jews, had a slightly different take on it:

“Of course, we say it’s our land, the Torah says it, but they don’t believe in the Torah. So that’s the reason there is not peace.”

But Kohr, Klein and Schumer all know as well as anyone that Israeli Jews, fortified by their conceit of being a “Chosen people,” are not interchangeable with contemporary Americans, or at least not “like” the Americans who still care about their country. There are hundreds of mostly Jewish pro-Israel organizations in America, having a combined endowment of $16 billion, that are actively propagandizing and promoting Israeli interests by ignoring or lying about the downside of the relationship. The University of Michigan affiliate of the Hillel International campus organization alone has a multistory headquarters supported by a budget of $2 million and a staff of 15. It hosts an emissary of the Jewish Agency for Israel, an Israeli government supported promotional enterprise.

So, what is the meaning of the “American” in AIPAC? Requiring a religious-ethnic litmus test for full citizenship and rights is Israeli, not American. Having local government admissions committees that can bar Israeli-Palestinian citizens based on “social suitability” would not be acceptable to most Americans. Demanding a unique Israeli right to exist while denying it to Israel’s neighbors; demolishing homes while poisoning Palestinian livestock and destroying orchards; shooting children for throwing stones; and inflicting death, terror and deprivation upon the imprisoned people of Gaza are all everyday common practice for the Israeli government.

Israel and AIPAC have relentlessly pursued their agenda while also corrupting the Congress of the United States to support the Israeli government with money and political cover. Israel and friends like Kohr routinely make baseless charges of anti-Semitism against critics while also legislating against free-speech to eliminate any and all criticism. This drive to make Israel uniquely free from any critique has become the norm in the United States, but it is a norm driven by Israeli interests and Israel’s friends, most of whom are Jewish billionaires or Jewish organizations that meet regularly and discuss what they might do to benefit the Jewish state.

And the fourth big lie is that the American people support Israel on religious as well as cultural grounds, not because mostly Jewish money has corrupted our political system and media. Indeed, many Christian fundamentalists have various takes on what Israel means, but their influence is limited. The Israel-thing is Jewish in all ways that matter and its sanitized Exodus-version that has been sold to the public is essentially a complete fraud nurtured by the media, also Jewish controlled, by Hollywood, and by the Establishment.

Mondoweiss reported recently that

“This weekend the New York Times breaks one of the biggest taboos, describing the responsibility of Jewish donors for the Democratic Party’s slavish support for Israel. Nathan Thrall’s groundbreaking piece repeats a lot of data we’ve reported here and says in essence that it really is about the Benjamins, as Rep. Ilhan Omar said so famously. The donor class of the party is overwhelmingly Jewish, and Jews are still largely wed to Zionism– that’s the nut.” Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national-security adviser to ex-President Barack Obama recounted in the article how “a more assertive policy toward Israel” never evolved “The Washington view of Israel-Palestine is still shaped by the [Jewish] donor class.”

And the support for Israel goes beyond money. The Times article included an October 2018

“Survey of 800 American voters who identify as Jewish, conducted by the Mellman Group on behalf of the Jewish Electoral Institute, 92 percent said that they are ‘generally pro-Israel.’ In the same poll — conducted after the United States closed the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington, moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, appointed a fund-raiser for the settlements as U.S. ambassador and cut humanitarian aid to Palestinians — roughly half of American Jews said they approved of President Trump’s handling of relations with Israel. On what is considered the most divisive issue in U.S.-Israel relations, the establishment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a November 2018 post-midterm election poll of more than 1,000 American Jews that was commissioned by J Street, the pro-Israel lobby aligned with Democrats, found that roughly half said the expansion of settlements had no impact on how they felt about Israel. According to a 2013 Pew survey, 44 percent of Americans and 40 percent of American Jews believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, [a] fact that Jews believe they have rights in historic Palestine that non-Jews do not.”

And one only has to listen to the AIPAC speeches made by leading members of the U.S. government establishment to appreciate the essential hypocrisy over the U.S. wag-the-dog relationship with the Jewish state of Israel. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (image on the left) led the parade of Democrats on the first evening of AIPAC, thundering

“When someone accuses American supporters of Israel of dual loyalty, I say: Accuse me, I am part of a large, bipartisan coalition in Congress supporting Israel—an overwhelming majority of the United States Congress. I tell Israel’s accusers and detractors: Accuse me.”

Well, Steny there is a certain irony in your request and to be sure you should be accused over betrayal of your oath to uphold the constitution against all enemies “domestic and foreign.” Hoyer is a product of the heavily Jewish Maryland Democratic Party machine that has also produced Pelosi and Senator Ben Cardin. Pelosi told the AIPAC audience about her father in Baltimore, a so-called Shabbos goy who would perform services for Jews on the sabbath and who would also speak Yiddish while at home with his Italian family. Cardin meanwhile has been the sponsor of legislation to make criticism or boycotting of Israel illegal, up to and including heavy fines and prison time.

Hoyer, widely regarded as one of the most pro-Israel non-Jewish congressman, also boasted to AIPAC about the 15 official trips to Israel he’s made in forty years in Congress, accompanied by more than 150 fellow Democrats. “This August, I will travel with what I expect will be our largest delegation ever—probably more than 30 Democratic members of Congress, including many freshmen.”

Steny Hoyer will be on an AIPAC affiliate sponsored trip in which any contact with Palestinians will be both incidental and carefully managed. He also clearly has no problem in spending the taxpayer’s dime to go to Israel on additional “codels” to get further propagandized. He is flat out wrong about Israel in general, but don’t expect him to be convinced otherwise, which may be somehow related to the $317,525 in pro-Israel PAC contributions he has received.

There was much more at the AIPAC Summit. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced “the pernicious myth of dual loyalty and foreign allegiance” while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, fresh from selling out U.S. interests on a visit to Israel, declared that“We live in dangerous times. We have to speak the truth. Anti-Semitism should and must be rejected by all decent people. Anti-Semitism – anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, and any nation that espouses anti-Zionism, like Iran, must be confronted. We must defend the rightful homeland of the Jewish people.”

Vice President Mike Pence, like Pompeo an evangelical Christian, piled on in his Monday prime time speech, declaring that

“Anyone who aspires to the highest office of the land should not be afraid to stand with the strongest supporters of Israel in America. It is wrong to boycott Israel. It is wrong to boycott AIPAC. Anti-Semitism has no place in the Congress of the United States of America. Anyone who slanders this historic alliance between the United States and Israel should never have a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee.”

Clearly, there is considerable evidence to support the theory that one has to be completely ignorant to hold high office in the United States. Rejecting Zionism and/or questioning Israeli policies is not anti-Semitism and the Jewish state is in fact no actual ally of the United States. Nor is there any mandate to defend it in its questionable “rightful homeland.” Furthermore, dual-loyalty is what the relationship with Israel is all about and it is Jewish money and political power that makes the whole thing work to Israel’s benefit.

But the good news is that all the lying blather from the likes of Steny Hoyer and Howard Kohr reveals their desperation. They are running scared because “the times they are a changing.” Sure, Congressmen will continue to be bought and sold and Jewish money and the access to power that it buys will be able to prevail in the short term in a conspiratorial fashion. But, in the long run, everyone knows deep down that loyalty to Israel is not loyalty to the United States. And what Israel is doing is evil, as is becoming increasingly clear. It is trying to convince Washington to make war on Iran, a country that does not threaten the U.S., while the willingness of the American people to continue to look the other way as Benjamin Netanyahu uses army snipers to shoot down unarmed demonstrators who are starving will not continue indefinitely. It must not continue and we Americans should do whatever it takes to stop it.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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Terms of Asylum and Distraction: Ecuador’s President Moreno’s “Assange Problem”

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, April 03, 2019

The Ecuadorean response was a crowing one, arguing that the state’s treatment of Assange was in accordance with international law, and that their guest’s situation “cannot be extended indefinitely and (Ecuador) expects it to be resolved as soon as possible.”

Don’t be Surprised by the Latest Outbreak of Xenophobic Violence in South Africa

By Andrew Korybko, April 03, 2019

Rioters destroyed several migrant-owned businesses in the South African port city of Durban last weekend and drove some of them from their homes in an outbreak of xenophobic violence that many feared might portend a return to the infamous events of 2008.

US Puppet Guaido Stripped of Immunity

By Stephen Lendman, April 03, 2019

On Monday, Venezuelan Chief Supreme Court Justice Maikel Moreno called on the nation’s Constituent Assembly to strip Guaido of parliamentary immunity for flouting a High Court order, banning his foreign travel without court permission, illicit financial activities, inciting street violence, and other offenses.

Belt and Road Initiative in Full Swing in Europe

By Federico Pieraccini, April 03, 2019

Xi Jinping‘s visit to Europe confirms what many of us have been writing about over the past few months and years, namely, the reality of an ongoing global transformation of a world dominated by the United States to a pluralistic one composed of different powers collectively shaping a multipolar world.

The South Dakota Legislature Has Invented a New Legal Term to Target Pipeline Protesters

By Andrew Malone and Vera Eidelman, April 03, 2019

The government of South Dakota has made it very clear that it does not like people who protest the Keystone XL pipeline. The state’s governor has dismissed them as “out-of-staters who come in to disrupt.”

Trump-Barr’s Manipulation of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller Report of March 22, 2019: The Political Cover-up of the Century?

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, April 02, 2019

We live in a very corrupt era. A case in point is the current and scandalous manipulation of the Mueller report by the Trump administration, with hardly any outcry from people in authority.

The Financial Transaction Tax (FTT)

By Kavaljit Singh, April 02, 2019

Currently, the idea of a financial transaction tax (FTT) is gaining in popularity within the Democratic Party of the United States as a policy tool to curb excessive speculation and high-frequency trading that destabilizes markets; and to generate a significant amount of revenue to finance social programs such as free college tuition.

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The first question on everyone’s lips is “What is in those old boxes?” Remember the boxes the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office “found”  in a storage closet late last year from Mumia Abu-Jamal’s original trial?

The answer could be previously undisclosed new evidence and the “key” to a new trial.  If there is just one piece of evidence that the prosecutor failed to turn over to the defense which could have altered the result of just one juror’s vote, then it is a “Brady violation,” (a US Supreme Court precedent). If that happens the court would overturn the criminal conviction, and that is a whole new ballgame.  Mumia has one year from the discovery of the evidence to file a petition.

Innocence, Evidence & Misconduct

For decades it was the routine practice for Philadelphia police and prosecutors to illegally strike minority jurors, manufacture evidence, coerce false witness testimony and surpress evidence of innocence.

The Castille appeal which currently sits before the PA Superior Court faces an unsympathetic appellate court and potentially years of litigation.  Where as, an amended petition or a new complaint that includes Brady evidence could be a bullet train to a new trial and freedom.

Stunning Words from Philadelphia Judge Leon Tucker 

This just in 3/27/19, Common Pleas Court Judge Leon Tucker (Supervising Judge of the Criminal Division)’s  supplemental ruling.  Click here.

“Justice is being conformable, human, divine, fair, impartial, honest …no matter what.  Not sometimes or most of the time, but at all times, be it at trial or on appeal“.

And it gets better. 

“[Defendants] appeal has established by a preponderance of the evidence that…there was an unconstitutional potential for bias……[the] claims should be reviewed in the interest of justice.”

The Pennsylvania Courts are a Star Chamber

Kafka could have taken notes from these folks.  It is even possible that they would rule that the Castille petition has to be decided before the suppressed evidence can be offered in a subsequent PCRA.  For someone that has spent nearly four decades in prison and is arguably innocent, it would be par for the course in this state, for a court to make that argument.  Amnesty International has condemned Mumia’s original trial, and he has spent 36 years unjustly in prison.

While Philadelphia DA and Larry Krasner might not feel a sense of urgency, we need to.  Mumia Abu-Jamal will be 65 years old in a few weeks. His eyesight has been severely compromised making it hard for him to read, because he is suffering from as yet untreated cataracts and serious glaucoma.  He is recovering from life threatening complications of Hepatitis C and diabetic shock caused by a reaction to treatment for debilitating skin rash conditions.

The Tide is Turning- People are Rising

The grassroots movements in Philadelphia are surging.  Abolition will be the reality, this is ground zero and a tetonic change is coming.   You can just feel it.   Mumia Abu-Jamal’s quest for freedom is part of that, but in a far more universal and fundamental way the community is all rising. Because Philadelphia is so “up south”, the impact has galvanized, inspired and birthed a powerful grassroots movement that is advocating in the state capital Harrisburg and in cities in every county for decarceration.  Google any one of these groups [Human Rights Coalition, CADBI, Decarcerate PA, Lifelines, Abolitionist Law Center, Amistad Law Project].  You will see, feel, and hear thousands of people advocating for their loved ones inside.  These are the very people who swept Larry Krasner into power. They are mobilized, they are strategic and they will not be satisfied util their family members are free.  It is incredible to see they are bringing the heat, demanding real change, and holding folks accountable.

Resistance Writ Large!

“Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did and it never will.”  – Frederick Douglass

Mumia Abu-Jamal is closer to freedom than he has been in a quarter of a century,   When Mumia comes home, it will be historic.  Surviving is the first step, and now real fundamental revolutionary change, abolition is the next step.

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Yes, the latest research confirms that Venezuela is so rich in natural resources, that it could single-handedly satisfy all global demand for oil, for over 30 years. And it has much more than oil to offer, in its Orinoco basin and in other areas of the country.

But it is not all ‘about oil’; actually, far from it.

Those who believe that what propels the spread of Western terror all over the world, are just some ‘business interests’ and legendary Western greed, are, from my point of view, missing the point.

I noticed that such individuals and analysts actually believe that ‘capitalism is responsible for everything’, and that it creates the culture of violence of which, both victims and victimizers, already became hostages to.

After working in all corners of the world, I am now more and more convinced that capitalism is actually the result of Western culture, which is predominantly based on expansionism, exceptionalism and aggression. It is also constructed on a deeply rooted desire to control and to dictate. Financial/monetary greed is just a by-product of this culture which has elevated its superiority to something that could be defined as religious, or even religiously fundamentalist.

Or in other words: belief in its own superiority is actually now the main religion in both Europe and North America.

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What makes the Libyan, Syrian and Venezuelan scenarios so similar? Why was the West so eager to viciously attack, and then destroy these three, at the first glance, very different countries?

The answer is simple, although it is not often uttered in the West; at least not publicly:

‘All three countries stood at the vanguard of promoting and fighting with determination for such concepts as “pan-Africanism”, “pan-Arabism” and Patria Grande – essentially Latin American independence and unity.’

Gaddafi, Al-Assad and Chavez have been, regionally and internationally, recognized as anti-imperialist fighters, inspiring and giving hope to hundreds of millions of people.

Gaddafi was murdered, Chavez was most likely killed as well, and Al-Assad and his nation have been, literally and for several long years, fighting for their survival.

The current Venezuelan President Maduro, who is determinedly loyal to the Bolivarian revolutionary ideals, has already survived at least one assassination attempt, and, is now facing direct mafia-style threats from the West. At any moment, his country could get attacked, directly or through the Latin American ‘client’ states of the West.

It is because Africa, the Middle East and Latin America have been considered, and for centuries treated, as colonies. It is because whenever people stood up, they were almost immediately smashed into pieces by the iron fist of Western imperialism. And those who think that they are in control of the world by some divine design, do not want things to change, ever.

Europe and North America are obsessed with controlling others, and in order to control, they feel that they have to make sure to exterminate all opposition in their colonies and neo-colonies.

It is a truly mental state in which the West has found itself; a state which I, in my earlier works, defined as Sadistic Personality Disorder (SPD).

To get the complete picture, one also has to recall Indonesia, which was literally liquidated as an independent and progressive nation, in 1965. Its internationalist president Sukarno (father of the Non-Aligned Movement, and close ally of the Communist Party of Indonesia – PKI) was overthrown by the handpicked (by the West), treasonous, intellectually and morally deranged, General Suharto, opening the door to turbo-capitalism, and to the unbridled plunder of the natural resources of his nation. Once a guiding light for the entire Asian independence struggle, after the US/UK/Australia-orchestrated extreme genocide, Indonesia has been reduced to nothing more than a lobotomized and dirt-poor ‘client’ state of the West.

The West has an incredible capacity to identify true regional independence leaders; to smear them, to make them vulnerable by inventing and then upholding so-called ‘local opposition’, and later, by liquidating them and with them, also their countries and even their entire regions.

Sometimes, the West attacks particular countries, as was the case with Iran (1953), Iraq, or Nicaragua. But more often, it goes directly for the ‘big fish’ – leaders of regional opposition – such as Libya, Indonesia, Syria, and now, Venezuela.

Many defiant individuals have literally been murdered already: Gaddafi, Hussein, Lumumba, and Chavez, to name just a few.

And of course, whatever it does, the West is trying to destroy the greatest leaders of the anti-Western and anti-imperialist coalition: Russia and China.

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It is all far from only being about oil, or about profits.

The West needs to rule. It is obsessed with controlling the world, with feeling superior and exceptional. It is a game, a deadly game. For centuries, the West has been behaving like a fundamentalist religious fanatic, and its people have never even noticed that their world views have actually became synonymous with exceptionalism, and with cultural superiority. That is why the West is so successful in creating and injecting extremist religious movements of all denominations, into virtually all parts of the world: from Oceania to Asia, from Africa to Latin America, and of course, to China. Western leaders are ‘at home’ with Christian, Muslim or even Buddhist extremists.

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But Syria has managed to survive, and up to today it is standing. The only reason why the government forces are not taking the last terrorist bastion, Idlib, yet, is because the civilian population would suffer tremendous losses during the battle.

Venezuela is also refusing to kneel and to surrender. And it is clear that if the West and its allies dared to attack, the resistance, the millions of people, would fight for the villages and countryside, and if needed, would withdraw to the jungle and wage a guerilla liberation war against the occupiers, and against the treasonous elites.

Washington, London, Paris and Madrid are clearly using an extremely outdated strategy: one that worked against Libya, but which failed squarely in Syria.

Recently, in Syria, near the frontline of Idlib, two top commanders told me that they are fighting “not only for Syria, but for the entire oppressed world, including Venezuela.” They clearly detected that the West is using precisely the same strategy against Caracas, which it tried to use against Damascus.

Now, Venezuela is also suffering and fighting for the entire oppressed world.

It has ‘no right to fail’, as Syria had no right to surrender.

The destruction of Libya had already brought a tremendously negative impact on Africa. And it has opened the doors to the renewed and unbridled French plunder of the continent. France was promptly joined by the U.K. and the U.S.A.

Syria is the last bastion in the Middle East. It is all there is now, resisting the total control of the Middle East by the West. Syria and Iran. But Iran is not yet a ‘front’, although often it appears that soon it might become one.

Venezuela cannot fall, for the same reasons. It is at the northern extreme of South America. Below, there is an entire continent; terrorized by Europe and North America, for decades and centuries: brutalized, plundered, tortured. South America, where tens of millions used to be exterminated like animals, forced to convert to Christianity, robbed of everything and ordered to follow bizarre Western political and economic models.

In Brazil, the progressive socialist government of the PT had been already overthrown.

If Venezuela falls, everything could be lost, for decades, maybe even centuries.

And so, it will fight. Together with those few other countries that are still left standing in this ‘Western Hemisphere’; countries which the dictators in Washington D.C. openly describe as ‘their backyard’.

Caracas stands and fights for the vast slums of Peru, for destitute millions in Paraguay, for Brazilian favelas, for privatized aquifers and the murdered rain forest in Brazil.

As Syria has been fighting for the Palestine, for the destitute minorities in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, for Yemen, for Iraq and Afghanistan – two countries robbed of almost everything by NATO.

Russia has already showed what it can do for its Arab brothers, and now is demonstrating its willingness to support its another close ally – Venezuela.

China is rapidly joining the coalition of anti-imperialist fighters, and so is South Africa.

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No – Venezuela is not only about oil.

It is about the West being able to close access to the Panama Canal, by Chinese ships.

It is about the total control of the world: ideological, political, economic and social. About liquidating all opposition in the Western hemisphere.

If Venezuela falls, the West may dare to attack Nicaragua, and then the bastion of socialism and internationalism – Cuba.

That is why it – Venezuela – should never be allowed to fall.

The battle for Venezuela is now already raging, on all fronts, including the ideological one. There, we are not only fighting for Caracas, Maracaibo or for Ciudad Bolivar: we are fighting for the entire oppressed world, as we did and are doing in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Idlib, as we may soon have to do in many other cities, all over the world. For as long as Western imperialism is alive; for as long as it is not going to give up its dreams of controlling and ruining the entire planet, we cannot rest, we cannot let down our guard, we cannot celebrate final victory in any part of the world.

Therefore, this is all far from being ‘just about oil’. It is about the survival of our planet.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Four of his latest books are China and Ecological Civilization with John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

Featured image is from CADTM

Much of current political news swirls around President Trump and his persistent and somewhat pathological prevarications about the Mexico-U.S. border and the need to build a border wall.  While Greg Grandin’s The End of the Myth leads up to this current preoccupation it goes well beyond it, surveying the whole of the empire and its history to reveal the foundational myth of the U.S. empire.

And it is done superbly.  This is a wonderful work of history, drawing the reader in through anecdotal stories and comments combined with a strong factual research background.  Grandin’s style of writing avoids the pitfalls of a dry history, creating a theme and a storyline that consistently exposes the creation, reworking, and alterations to the imperial myth as it crosses time and place.

The frontier

In a single word, the myth is that of frontier.  It is one word that carries cartloads of baggage and contains many other subordinate but necessary mythical structures that support and extend the idea.  The idea of ‘frontier’ necessitates the idea of boundaries and borders.  As the frontier moves, so do the boundaries – mythological, psychological as well as physical.

It carries along with it the whole mythology most frequently recognized in our modern era with Ronald Reagan, Ayn Rand, Clint Eastwood, Margaret Thatcher and others of their ilk as “rugged individualism” and individual liberty unconstrained by governments and rules of society.

Another important associated idea is that of a safety valve.  This idea was recognized early by the political leaders of the day – and still in use today – where the frontier served as a release for antagonisms created by the massive influx of immigrants into the already crowded and frequently poverty laden regions of the burgeoning east coast cities as well as antagonisms aimed more directly at their own lies and misdeeds.

Superimposed on it all is racism.  This invokes more than the racism of slave labour, more than the racism of Indian ‘removal’ then military slaughter, more than the racism of incoming migrants from many different homelands, more than the racism concerning religion and nationalities.  It is a synergy of them all into a white “anglo saxon” supremacist ideal, where the ‘other’ really does not matter, extending from the rugged individual to corporate internationalism and then, yes, the wall.

Features of the frontier

The frontier and its myths are explored through history of actions and ideas combined. It is a fixed  physical construct with forts, rivers, trails and transportation routes and maps to identify them;  but it was also a “blurry, indistinct place where white settlers fled to escape routinization,” a place that goes on forever.  It is a multistoried affair where the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the conflicts with slavery and abolition pushed the boundaries of the frontier into Mexican territory and the invasion of 1846.  All these wars “came to be both valve and throttle, with each conflict simultaneously venting the hatreds produced by the last while creating the conditions for the next.”  And as war begets war, a state “born out of ceaseless expansion…could only be maintained through ceaseless expansion.”

1898 marks a redefinition of the frontier.  The frontier reached a physical limit in North America and by necessity expanded overseas creating an “American history…fast turning into an endless public parade of war and more war….Overseas war had the effect  of unifying the country, this time not some sections against others but the whole nation.”  The military became “the primary means of social mobility, allowing both whites and…blacks shelter from the capitalist market.”

Grandin’s history continues through the Roosevelt era and into the New Deal pre-war era.  After the Second World War the frontier was rejuvenated as a “future that might be obtained.”  It involved a U.S. security frontier, already established in the western hemisphere, now expanded to a global position.  A major part of that was linking the Cold War and its anti-communism to a “new politics of expansion” in particular the global economy as a new frontier – globalization in all its manifestations.

This expanded with Reagan with his promises of freedom “from restraint” with “no limits to growth.”  Individual and economic rights – markets – overpowered human and social rights.  The violence and racism ongoing along the Mexican border was redirected to Cold War counter insurgencies, leading to many more immigrants.  The U.S. was still “a beacon…a magnet for all the pilgrims from all the lost places….”  Reagan’s successor, GWH Bush expanded on the frontier idea, “In the frontiers ahead, there are no boundaries.”

NAFTA

One of the big surprises in the book – and if I had thought about it carefully, should not have been – was the emphasis Grandin placed on the North American Free Trade Agreement. Even before the agreement was enacted there were already 1925 work plants in Mexico taking advantage of the low wage labour and the lack of labour and environmental regulations.

With the  huge increase in interest rates in 1980 to an average of seventeen per cent many U.S. businesses and farmers lost their livelihoods.  Those same interest rates created  a huge debt repayment problem in Mexico leading to the IMF shock doctrine of austerity – privatization, cut spending, lax foreign investment controls, weaken labour laws, and stop land reform.  In short, even before NAFTA Mexico had succumbed to U.S.economic expansion and control.

NAFTA affected the poor farmers as subsidized U.S. corn, dairy, and pork killed their subsistence living.  They were forced into cheap wage labour for U.S.corporations, into drug trafficking, and into the urban sprawl of Mexico City.  The “corporations had their new frontier.”

The blowback to this was increased immigration and the rapid rise in border patrol actions.  The border patrol was “a frontline instrument of white supremacist power.”  The U.S. became a country “that increasingly defines itself by what it hates.”  A decade of free trade “neither created an international community of prosperous, peace loving nations nor overcome domestic political divisions.”  With the administration of George Bush, the 9/11 attack “offered a chance to turn away from the border and look out at the world anew,” now clarifying the mission as “We will extend the frontiers of freedom.”

Turning inwards

But as with the Vietnam War and the many other smaller counterinsurgencies, foreign wars produce domestic disruption as the “struggle turns inwards.”  “The backlashes to decades of disastrous policies piled up, one after the other, until the backlash to the backlashes came,” Trump.

The Mexican border wall fits into the underlying racism of U.S. culture.  It is a “valve” that needs to be turned off or on as convenient for political purposes.  It is also a valve for the many war vets to release their frustrations against a targeted ‘other’.  Along with the veterans it allows many others to practice their rugged individualism as vigilantes along the border, expressing their racist white supremacism against groups of aliens created in the most part by U.S. imperial actions.

Trump’s new freedom is freedom from constraint, his cruelty and hedonism giving permission to many others to accept those actions and also to practice them.

Still more frontiers.

While Grandin focuses on the image of the Mexican border wall as a sign of the closure of the frontier, he does not delve into contemporary U.S. military actions around the world.  The imperial frontier is faltering in many respects as events in Ukraine, and Syria, and the failure of past actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya have well demonstrated.  But it is still there, perhaps more as bluster and rhetoric as witnessed with Venezuela  than a true frontier, a rhetorical ideological rant to redirect domestic concerns and attempt to somehow keep the empire alive and its frontiers still an active zone.

The strength of The End of the Myth is that it does not take any imagination to extend the myth into other areas of U.S. foreign policy.  Grandin has explored the myth very effectively, highlighting the idea of frontier as it changed over time, leaving us with Trump as the ultimate characterization of the state of the union at this point in time.  A fascinating work, it defines the psychological/mythical constructs of the U.S. imperial mind very well.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The late Harold Washington was Chicago’s first Black mayor, elected in 1983, serving until his premature death at age-65 on November 25, 1987, the day before the Thanksgiving holiday that year.

No one before or since was like him, affectionately called Harold by admirers, his time in office Chicago’s finest hour.

Of the 14 Dem aspirants competing in the February 26 primary, six were Black, two winning more voter support than others.

On April 2, Lori Lightfoot (Chicago’s first openly gay mayoral candidate) and Toni Preckwinkle met in the runoff election, the winner becoming Chicago’s first Black female mayor, Jane Byrne the only other woman to hold the city’s highest office, serving from April 1979 – April 1983.

With nearly all votes counted, Lightfoot won a landslide victory with 74% of the vote.

“Today, you did more than make history,” she told supporters. “You created a movement for change.” The proof will be in her performance.

She was a federal prosecutor, earlier involved in investigating Chicago corruption. She formerly served as chief administrator of the city’s Department of Professional Standards, a defunct police oversight group.

Most recently, she serving as a senior equity partner in the Litigation and Conflict Resolution Group at Mayer Brown LLP, providing services for the firm’s clients. Her responsibilities included involvement on its Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Preckwinkle is president of the Cook Count Board of Commissioners, a former Chicago City Council member and alderman, an advocate of affordable housing, a living wage, and other social issues, a strong opponent of notorious city police brutality and use of excessive force against least advantaged residents.

According to University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) Political Science Professor Dick Simpson, Preckwinkle’s self-declared progressiveness is dubious, calling her part of the infamous Dem-dominated Chicago machine.

Closely tied to longtime Chicago pol Edward Burke, aged-75, the machine got him reelected despite facing an ongoing FBI probe into his activities.

In January, an unsealed federal criminal complaint charged him with attempted extortion for allegedly using his position as alderman to try steering business to his private law firm from a company seeking to renovate a fast-food restaurant in his ward.

If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison. The complaint also alleged he asked one of the company’s officials in December 2017 to attend a fundraiser for Preckwinkle, a cross she bore for close association with Burke.

Earlier, she supported former  Cook County Democratic Chairman Joe Berrios, responsible for discriminatory property tax assessments during his time in office.

Supporters praised Preckwinkle’s involvement in working with community organizations. Ties to the Chicago machine defeated her.

Lightfoot is machine connected as well, but less so than Preckwinkle. Supporters consider her a disruptor of the status quo, not seen in Chicago since Harold Washington’s time in office.

Promising police and public safety reforms, some activists consider Lightfoot’s time as a federal prosecutor a matter of concern, questioning whether she’ll follow through on pledges made.

Her ties to city criminal justice and police operations make her suspect. She can dispel concerns by changing status quo politics in city hall.

When serving as chief administrator of the city’s Department of Professional Standards, she acted against few complaints of police abuse.

She called for increased prosecutions of gun-related violence as a way to reduce it, targeting Black youths, a way to increase incarcerations instead of reducing them.

According to the Citizens Police Data Project, as Office of Professional Standards head from 2002 – 2004, only 1.8% of complaints made by civilians against police were sustained – the city infamously known as the police repression capital of the nation.

If elected, she said on day one, she’d call Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson to support his “mission to serve and protect,”, notably to reduce gun violence.

The most effective way is by increasing city social services, including affordable housing, improved public schools, and police respect for all Chicagoans, especially its most disadvantaged residents, polar opposite how things are today.

Will Lightfoot make a difference as city mayor? It’s long overdue. She’s got a lot of proving to do. Corporate interests backing her campaign made her suspect.

She’s beholden to what got her elected. Grassroots Collaborative and Grassroots Illinois Action executive director Amisha Patel expressed concern, saying:

She failed to clearly articulate a progressive vision for city governance, believing she’s “deeply flawed,” adding:

Corporate and similar “(c)ontributions tell a pretty clear story” about who she’s beholden to. They sent “a pretty clear message about where business thinks they’ve got their best shot of maintaining an agenda that puts them at the center and the rest of us on the margins.”

It’s the way it’s mostly been throughout city history, notably under father and son Daley for 40 years and outgoing mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Still, Dick Simpson hopes for “a new day in (city) politics.” Any positive change from the dismal status quo will improve things.

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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.

Yesterday, President Trump scrapped an Obama-era regulation forcing the government to publicly report the number of civilians killed in US drone strikes outside war zones. The National Security Council dismissed the regulation as an annoying bit of paperwork, describing it as a “superfluous reporting requirement”.

The move is just one more in a long line of steps President Trump has taken to move America’s drone programme back into the shadows where there is no accountability to the public or to victims. While the President has been tweeting his every thought to the world, behind the scenes he has quietly expanded America’s counterterrorism operations overseas, eliminated safeguards intended to protect civilians and rolled back what little transparency existed.

“Trump removed the requirement that strikes target only high-value terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the US”

Within a year of President Trump coming into office, US drone strikes in Yemen tripled in his first two years, while those in Somalia increased substantially. Large parts of both these countries were declared “areas of active hostilities,” loosening protections for civilians.

At the same time, Trump removed the requirement that strikes target only “high-value terrorists” who pose a “continuing and imminent” threat to the US. Instead, the target list was expanded to include “foot soldiers…with no special skills or leadership roles.”

In other words: kill as many as you can, rank or responsibility be damned.

For those innocent people, and the thousands of others who have been wrongly harmed by US drone strikes, the requirement that the US publicly disclose the civilian casualty count was anything but “superfluous”. Those numbers were at least some small, though imperfect, signal from the most powerful nation on earth that it was willing to not just acknowledge its mistakes, but to try and stop them happening again.

Through our work investigating these strikes, Reprieve has seen the devastating toll America’s drone killings have wreaked on the individuals behind the numbers. People like Faisal bin ali Jaber, whose brother-in-law, Salem was killed in a drone strike in Yemen just days after preaching against al-Qaeda. For years, Faisal has fought for one thing – a simple acknowledgement that Salem was innocent and that the US made a mistake.

Faisal has been offered secret bags of cash as an apology, but has refused. Bags of cash aren’t accountability – all he and his family want is an apology. They also want to stop others suffering the same fate as them. With this in mind, Faisal, with the help of ECCHR and Reprieve, will be in court next Thursday in Germany arguing about the role Ramstein Airbase plays in the US drone programme. The court will consider, among other things, whether President Trump’s continued efforts to erode transparency and safeguards should be factored into the German Government’s responsibility to protect people’s right to life.

Back in 2016, President Obama passed the Executive Order requiring reporting of civilian casualties. The accompanying statement acknowledged that “if we cannot explain our efforts clearly and publicly…we erode the legitimacy of our actions…and undermine accountability in our own government.”

President Trump’s latest move has done just that. Faisal once said, “a mere body count is not the end of the story,” – but without it, the story cannot even begin.

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Featured image is from TruePublica

Political asylum is an accepted if often ignored right. It is also at the mercy of those interests that grant it.  Ecuador’s repeated insistence on conditioning Julian Assange’s stay in its London abode is tantamount to corroding the idea of asylum to vacuity.  You are granted asylum as a political dissident, but political dissident you shall not be, especially when it comes to exposing the secrets of your landlord.

Assange has ventured to test the onerous limits on his conduct that have been imposed by embassy protocols, taking the matter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.  His argument has been that the strict rules applied to his stay, entailing a monitoring of visits, control of medical bills, communications, expenses and pet care were a violation of “fundamental rights and freedoms”.  The Commission, as it transpired, did not bite.

The Ecuadorean response was a crowing one, arguing that the state’s treatment of Assange was in accordance with international law, and that their guest’s situation “cannot be extended indefinitely and (Ecuador) expects it to be resolved as soon as possible.”

Ecuador’s Attorney General Íñigo Salvador, summed it up in smug fashion.

“The decision was based on the fact that the request filed by Assange did not comply with the requirements of gravity, urgency and irreparable harm provided for in Article 25 of the Rules of Procedure of the IACHR.”

The peculiar twist to this, however, was that such impositions could be justified as protecting, not impairing, Assange’s rights.

“With this decision [by the Commission], the Special Protocol of Visits, Communications and Medical Care remains in force, which guarantees the rights of the asylee.”

Assange has been accused of muddying the stables throughout his stay, but the calls have become more strident over the last eighteen months.  A year of muzzling and limiting Assange’s conduct has become both cruel and comical.  President Lenín Moreno seems to be waiting for the moment where a final stroke of agitation will release him from any sense of restraint.

On Tuesday, that moment might have come. Moreno insisted that Assange had been a serial violator of his terms of asylum.

“We should ensure Mr Assange’s life is not at risk but he’s violated the agreement we have with him so many times.”

The Ecuadorean president, in pained tones, claimed that “photos of my bedroom, what I eat and how my wife and daughters and friends dance” had been doing the buzzing rounds on social media.  While Moreno did not explicitly accuse Assange of being behind that spray of material, the accusing voice was unmistakable.  The Vice President Otto Sonnenholzner confirmed it, loudly proclaiming that what WikiLeaks had done was “repugnant”.  The Minister for Foreign Affairs, José Valencia, focused on Assange’s means of communication, arguing that he had been biting the hand that had fed him.

The office of the President has also made a formal, if risible complaint to Joseph Cannataci, the special rapporteur for the right to privacy based at the UN Human Rights Council, accusing WikiLeaks and other “possible authors” of disseminating private photos and personal information obtained from Moreno’s own computers, tablets and a miscellany of devices.  Cannataci’s good offices are being used, in turn, to deal with claims by WikiLeaks that Ecuador is spying on him.  The dark face continues.

The entire show of puffed indignation seemed an enormous distraction.  Last week, the Ecuadorean National Assembly passed a resolution calling for a corruption probe into Moreno’s affairs regarding the INA Papers.  The INA Investment Corp of Panama fame specialises in minimising (dare one say evading?) tax, and it took a publication by digital news platform La Fuente on February 19 to suggest a link between Moreno, his family and the company.  From that particular haven, it is alleged, ample funds were used from an offshore account to make an assortment of payments covering gifts, furniture purchases, and an apartment in Spain.

In the words of an official statement,

“With 74 votes, the National Assembly approved a resolution that requires the Inspection Commission to carry out an analysis of the publication dated Feb. 19, 2018, in a digital platform called ‘The Offshore Labyrinth Of The Presidential Circle.’”

A close reading of the resolution hardly suggests that Moreno is going to be in much trouble; the focus, as María José Carrión of Moreno’s own party, Alianza Pais, has explained, will involve “an analysis of this journalistic publication.  It won’t be an investigation, as it’s not possible for the President to be summoned because the law is clear and for that to happen it must be within the framework of a political trial, which is not the case.”

Fidel Narváez, former consul at the Ecuador embassy in London, has a working and plausible hypothesis: the entire spectacle is being engineered to throw the curious and vigilant off the scent, one that is becoming rather piquant.  Not a single document connected with the INA Papers matter has ever been personally leaked or published by Assange or WikiLeaks.  The Assembly, he charges, has become a place of ludicrous activity in attempting to investigate Assange in the name of protecting “national interests”.

While the increasingly crotchety approach from the Moreno government suggests an imminent decision on his fate, Assange has not been left without some legal ammunition.  The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in a ruling issued on May 30 last year, made it clear that Assange should not only be released but granted safe passage to Ecuador as part of the right to asylum.  The advisory opinion considered the right to seek and receive asylum in a foreign country pursuant to the American Convention on Human Rights (Article 22(7)) and Article XXVII of the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.

The protection against refoulement, in which a person’s life, integrity, security and/or liberty might be at risk, was held to bind States extraterritorially “whenever authorities exercise their authority or effective control over such persons, as may happen in legations, and that, by their own nature, may be in the territory of another State with that State’s consent and authorization.”  But Moreno, and his colleagues are a desperate bunch, and their latest efforts suggest that scapegoating Assange and readying him for the fall might offer some measure of therapeutic relief, however brief.

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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]

Rioters destroyed several migrant-owned businesses in the South African port city of Durban last weekend and drove some of them from their homes in an outbreak of xenophobic violence that many feared might portend a return to the infamous events of 2008. President Ramaphosa railed against the rioters and demanded that they be brought to justice, pointing out how their heinous acts endanger the development of all of Africa and are absolutely unacceptable in his “rainbow nation”. For those in the country and the broader Southern African region, what happened wasn’t necessarily anything new but was just the latest manifestation of long-simmering tensions that finally bubbled over into the public sphere once again.

South Africa is one of the continent’s best-performing economies and a favored destination of migrants from all over Africa who are drawn to its comparatively stable currency and many job opportunities, though the latter sometimes come at what some locals regard as their expense. Furthermore, there are already preexisting tribal issues within South African society as it is, so adding the large-scale influx of migrants to this already tenuous mix was bound to cause problems sooner than later, though explaining these dangerous dynamics by no means excuses them. All of this is just to help the non-African audience better understand why this is happening since many folks might have been surprised by these developments.

At the risk of provoking a “politically incorrect” controversy, many non-Africans who only have a casual interest in following African events might either be deluded by ignorance or racist misperceptions into wrongly assuming that “all Africans are the same” and overlooking the continent’s rich diversity. The reality is that Africa is home to many different people who sometimes look very different, speak different languages, practice different cultures, and follow different religions, with many of this unfortunately being lost on many non-AfricanS who can’t look beyond the fact that most of Africa’s people are of a darker-skinned complexion. Accepting Africa’s rich diversity, it’s easier to understand how xenophobic violence could suddenly explode in South Africa.

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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.

Featured image: POLICE moved 50 people, including babies, displaced in a xenophobic attack at Burnwood informal settlement in Durban to Sherwood Hall. Leon Lestrade African News Agency (ANA)

Venezuela is home to the largest oil deposits in the world, which makes the political stakes involved much higher than they would be otherwise. Enter Juan Guaidó, Washington’s puppet leader in Caracas, who will be attempting to rally the country against legitimate (i.e., democratically elected by the people) President Nicolas Maduro next month.

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó has announced that April 6 will kick off a nationwide “tactical actions” as part of the so-called Operation Freedom protests, which are designed to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

“On April 6 will be the first tactical actions of the # Operation Freedom across the country,” Guaidó declared over Twitter this week. “That day we must be ready, prepared and organized, with the Aid and Freedom Committees already formed. The rescue of Venezuela is in our hands!”

Is this the start of Maidan 2.0?

But first, who is Juan Guaidó? That’s a questioning worth pondering momentarily because just a few months ago, the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans – 81 percent of the population – had never heard of the young man before. That all changed when Guaidó, 35, was awakened by a phone call from none other than US Vice President Mike Pence. Literally overnight he had become the poster boy of the political opposition in Venezuela and leader of the National Assembly. “Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this circumstance,” Marco Teruggi, a sociologist and leading observer of Venezuelan politics, told the Grayzone. “It’s the logic of a laboratory – Guaidó is like a mixture of several elements that create a character who, in all honesty, oscillates between laughable and worrying.”

Source: SCF

In fact, Washington recognized Guaidó more than just an opposition leader; it recognized him, without a drop of legality, as the de-jure president of the Latin American country (Just this week, Guaidó’s wife Fabiana Rosales was the guest of honor at the White House, as the media referred to her as “first lady” and “first-lady-in-waiting”).

Meanwhile, the US media has wasted no time placing the laurels on Guaidó’s young, inexperienced head, declaring the quiet coup d’ etat the “restoration of democracy” in a land where the election process, which provides its voters with a digital receipt, is considered to be the most transparent and reliable in the world. In other words, if Maduro is in office, which he is, it is due to the will of the people, not the will of Mike Pence.

So what should Venezuela expect on April 6 with the commencement of Guaidó’s organized protest? Anything is possible, but the likelihood of some sort of event or incident that will heighten the tensions in the country cannot be discounted. It certainly does not help that Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton warned in the past of “serious consequences” if any harm comes to Guaidó.

“Let me reiterate – there will be serious consequences for those who attempt to subvert democracy and harm Guaidó,” Bolton tweeted back in January. Those sorts of threats must be treated with extreme caution and due consideration. Suffice it to recall what followed like clockwork in Syria after such red-line threats were delivered about what would happen in the event of a chemical attack. Unsurprisingly, a chemical attack would eventually occur, whereupon the United States would immediately blame the event on the government, as opposed to the ragtag terrorist rebels who had infinitely more reason for resorting to such methods, and more so following such declarations from the US. In other words, should anything untoward happen to Guaidó, the West would have its perfect pretext for whatever follows next, which are better left to the imagination.

Although it appears as though Juan Guaidó’s popularity is on the wane – his motorcade was attacked by a pro-Maduro crowd just this week, while turnout for his anti-government marches has been reportedly dwindling – Caracas took the step of barring him from holding public office for 15 years due to irregularities in his financial records. According to the State Comptroller, Juan Guaidó has taken 90 international trips without indicating who provided the estimated $94,000 in expenses.

“We’re going to continue in the streets,” Guaidó responded.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, a number of government officials are taking a very unhealthy interest, if not suspicious interest, in what is happening in Caracas. Senator Marco Rubio, for example, sounds worse than any opposition figure in Venezuela, and tweets about practically nothing else than what is happening south of the border. On one particularly lamentable occasion, Rubio was delusional enough to actually post before-and-after images of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The first showed him in power, the second just moments before being brutally murdered by a street mob. It boggles the mind to think that this man, who has a strange penchant for quoting Bible verse while fomenting for violent upheaval, stood on a platform as a Republican presidential hopeful.

In any case, there have been several events that strongly suggest that the United States has some sort of plan to bring about the crisis that could lift Guaidó into power, as well as open up the Latin American oil industry to foreign private interests, as he has already promised to do.

First, there is the well-documented incident from last month in which a ‘humanitarian supply’ truck, attempting to cross into Venezuela from Colombia, was torched. The US quickly blamed the incident on Maduro, however, video footage seems to indicate that it was actually anti-government protesters who carried out the attack with the use of Molotov cocktails.

Meanwhile, the beleaguered Latin American country has suffered a spate of electricity blackouts this month, which Maduro has been quick to blame on the United States. Guaidó, of course, blamed the outages on the “incompetence” of the Maduro government. However, Maduro may be forgiven for seeing the hand of the United States every time the lights go out. In fact, such things were discussed years ago, as revealed in a Wikileaks email dump that show even during the reign of Hugo Chavez, the problem of energy supplies was considered as a crowbar to break down the government. The following email was from Stratfor, which provides intelligence analysis.

“A key to Chavez’s current weakness is the decline in the electricity sector. There is the grave possibility that some 70 percent of the country’s electricity grid could go dark as soon as April 2010… This could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system. This would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate.”

Now, to what degree, if any, the United States may be tempted to hack/attack the Venezuelan power grid is anybody’s guess, but it certainly does not seem to be beyond the realm of possibility. And this could explain why the United States is so rattled by the presence of some 100 Russian cyber specialists in Venezuela, which arrived last week.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia’s relations with Venezuela are conducted “in strict accordance with the Constitution of this country and in full respect of its legislation.”

Understandably, the last thing that Moscow would like to see is yet another regime change fiasco, this time in Caracas, similar to the one that occurred on its border in Ukraine with the Maidan uprising, which continues to wreak havoc on global relations. In that sense, the global community can only hope that common sense and scruples wins out over opportunism and rogue politics, all in the name of oil profits.

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Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist.

Featured image is from Grayzone Project

Usurper in waiting Guaido is a front man for the Trump regime’s coup attempt to topple democratically elected  President Maduro. 

Most of all, the scheme aims to eliminate Bolivarian social democracy, wanting Venezuela transformed into a US vassal state, gaining control over its world’s largest oil reserves and other valued resources.

Tactics include naked aggression, color revolutions, and old-fashioned coups like what’s ongoing in Venezuela – so far failing to achieve its objective because Maduro increasingly enjoys popular support. The nation’s military backs him.

Around three-fourths of world community nations and the UN refused to recognize imposter Guaido as interim Venezuelan president.

He’s increasingly drawing smaller crowds, according to observers on the ground. Most Venezuelans want Bolivarian social democracy preserved and protected. They oppose foreign intervention in any form, overwhelmingly against it militarily.

On Monday, Venezuelan Chief Supreme Court Justice Maikel Moreno called on the nation’s Constituent Assembly to strip Guaido of parliamentary immunity for flouting a High Court order, banning his foreign travel without court permission, illicit financial activities, inciting street violence, and other offenses.

Established by national referendum to revise or rewrite Venezuela’s Constitution, restore and maintain order, as well as serving everyone in the country equitably, the Constituent Assembly is the Bolivarian Republic’s highest legal authority.

According to Article 349 of Venezuela’s Constitution, no other power can “in any way impede the decisions of the National Constituent Assembly” – not the president, National Assembly legislators and Supreme Court justices.

In 2016, Venezuela’s High Court declared National Assembly actions “null and void” for illegally seating three members accused of electoral fraud.

Article 200 of Venezuela’s Constitution states the following:

“Deputies of the National Assembly shall enjoy immunity in the exercise of their functions from the time of their installation until the end of their term or resignation.”

“Only the Supreme Tribunal of Justice shall have competence over any crimes may be charged as committed by members of the National Assembly, and only the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, subject to authorization in advance from the National Assembly, shall have the power to order their arrest and prosecution.”

“In the case of a flagrant offense committed by a legislator, the competent authority shall place such legislator under house arrest and immediately notify the Supreme Tribunal of Justice of such event.”

Because National Assembly actions are “null and void,” Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly assumed its powers.

On Tuesday, the body acted on Justice Moreno’s request, stripping Guaido of parliamentary immunity, its President Diosdado Cabello saying:

“Constituent Assembly rules…permit further investigation against (Guaido). Under normal circumstances, this request would have been sent to the National Assembly, but at present it is nonexistent as a functioning state body.”

“The ruling permits prosecution of (Guaido) in accordance with the provisions of Article 200 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”

“The continuation of the trial is formally authorized and that our justice, in accordance with the Constitution and the law, is in charge of applying the mechanisms established in the different criminal procedural codes.”

“Justice is necessary for the guarantee of peace…Sometimes the law takes time, but let’s not despair.”

The unanimously adopted measure ruled the following:

“The National Constituent Assembly of Venezuela allows the continuation of a judicial investigation against Juan Guaido.”

Assembly deputies called for creating a people’s court to prosecute individuals involved in the Trump regime’s coup plot, wanting them held accountable for their lawless actions.

So far, no warrant was issued for Guaido’s arrest. He remains under investigation, pending whatever actions Constituent Assembly members intend to pursue against him.

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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.

“We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”—Rod Serling

Have you noticed how much life increasingly feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone?

Only instead of Rod Serling’s imaginary “land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas,” we’re trapped in a topsy-turvy, all-too-real land of corruption, brutality and lies, where freedom, justice and integrity play second fiddle to political ambition, corporate greed, and bureaucratic tyranny.

It’s not merely that life in the American Police State is more brutal, or more unjust, or even more corrupt. It’s getting more idiotic, more perverse, and more outlandish by the day.

Somewhere over the course of the past 240-plus years, democracy has given way to idiocracy,  and representative government has given way to a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

Examples abound.

In Georgia, political organizers posted a “Black Media Only” sign outside a Baptist Church, barring white reporters from attending a meeting about an upcoming mayoral election.

In Arizona, a SWAT team raided a family’s home in the middle of the night on the say-so of Child Protective Services, which sounded the alarm after the parents determined that their 2-year-old—who had been suffering a 100-degree fever—was feeling better and didn’t need to be admitted to the hospital.

In Virginia, landlords are requiring dog-owning tenants to submit their pets’ DNA to a database that will be used to track down (and fine) owners who fail to clean up after their dogs poop in public.

In Texas, a police officer who allegedly gave a homeless man a sandwich with dog feces won’t be held accountable for his actions.

In Illinois, Chicago police used a battering ram and a sledgehammer to crash into a family’s home with weapons drawn, terrorizing the young children gathered for a 4-year-old’s birthday party, only to find that they were at the wrong house.

In Kansas, a 61-year-old back man in the process of moving into his new house found himself held at gunpoint and handcuffed by police, who refused to believe he was a homeowner and not a burglar.

If you’re starting to notice a pattern here, it speaks to the fact that nearly 50 years after Serling’s creative brainchild, The Twilight Zone, premiered on national television, we’re still fumbling around in the dark, trying to make sense of a world dominated by racism, cruelty, war, violence, poverty, prejudice, intolerance, ignorance, injustice and a host of other social maladies and spiritual evils.

The Twilight Zone was an oasis in television wasteland: a show that captured imaginations; challenged moral hypocrisy and societal prejudices; and railed against inhumanity, racism, prejudice, the mechanization of human beings by way of their technology, tyrants of all shapes and colors, a passive populace, war, injustice, the surveillance state, corporate greed.

Fifty years later, with so much having changed legally, technologically and politically, so much still remains the same. Fear is the same. Prejudice is the same. Ignorance is the same. Hate and war and tyranny are unchanged. Police officers are still shooting unarmed citizens. Bloated government agencies are still fleecing taxpayers. Government technicians are still spying on our communications. And American citizens are still allowing themselves to be manipulated by their fears and pitted one against the other.

All of these themes can be found in The Twilight Zone.

Serling, a truth-teller who pulled no punches when it came to calling out the evils of his day, channeled his moral outrage into storytelling. As his daughter Anne explained, “The Twilight Zone was more than just the strangest show on TV, with the best theme song, but back in the 50’s Rod Serling was serving up social commentary through science fiction.”

That social commentary disguised as entertainment tackled some of the most pressing issues of Serling’s day. “It dealt with human issues which I guess is why it’s lasted so long, because it dealt with racism and mob mentality and scapegoating and things that are still very, very prevalent and relevant today sadly,” said Anne. “We don’t seem to be able to move ahead and change.”

Serling would have no shortage of material to draw from today, given the government’s greed for money and power, its disregard for human life, its corruption and graft, its pollution of the environment, its reliance on excessive force in order to ensure compliance, its covert activities, its illegal surveillance, and its blatant disdain for the rule of law.

“I can tell you [my dad] would be absolutely apoplectic about what’s happening in the world today. And deeply saddened,” said his daughter Anne Serling. “There are moments that I’m glad he’s not here to see.”

It boggles the mind how relevant The Twilight Zone and its unique brand of truth-telling are to an age in which truth has become a convenient fiction for those in power, what researchers refer to as “Truth Decay.”

As a report from the Rand Corporation explains, “Truth Decay is defined as a set of four related trends: increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data; a blurring of the line between opinion and fact; an increase in the relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion and personal experience over fact; and declining trust in formerly respected sources of factual information.”

Serling would have had a lot to say about the lies that masquerade as truth today.

I’m not sure that Serling would have been surprised by current events, though. After all, this was the man who concluded that people are alike all over: that was the kernel of truth in one of Serling’s episodes about a pair of astronauts who journey to Mars only to find that while they may have landed on an alien planet, inhabited by alien creatures, the ignorance, fear and prejudice of the “foreigner” was the same.

So many truths, packaged in 156 episodes that aired from 1959 to 1964.

Serling took pride in the writing, penning 92 of the 156 episodes himself. For the rest, he enlisted some of the best writers of the 20th century to lend their talents to Zone episodes: Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Earl Hamner, to mention a few. As such, the Twilight Zone became the embodiment of great story-telling.

If you want to watch something that fuses time and space into reality by way of a fictional setting, then I suggest that you tune into The Twilight Zone.

Director Jordan Peele has taken Serling’s material out for a new spin in a reboot airing on CBS All Access, but if you haven’t experienced the original series, do yourself a favor and spend some time with them.

There are so many to choose from, but the following are 12 of my personal favorites:

Time Enough at Last: Mild-mannered Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith), hen-pecked by his wife and brow-beaten by his boss, sneaks into a bank vault on his lunch hour to read. He is knocked unconscious by a shockwave that turns out to be a nuclear war. When Bemis regains consciousness, he realizes that he is the last person on earth.

I Shot an Arrow into the Air: Three astronauts survive a crash after their craft disappears from the radar screen. They find themselves on what they believe to be a dry, lifeless asteroid. Only five gallons of water separate them from dehydration and death. And temperamental crew member Corey (Dewey Martin) goes to great lengths to ensure his survival.

The Howling Man: During a walking tour of Europe after World War I, David loses his way and comes to a remote monastery. He is turned away but passes out, and the monks take him in. David regains consciousness and hears a bizarre howling. He eventually finds a man in a jail cell who the monks say is the Devil himself, kept in his prison by the “staff of truth.”

Eye of the Beholder: Janet lies in a hospital bed, her face wrapped in bandages, hiding the hideous face that has made her an outcast all her life. This is her eleventh hospital visit and the last allowed by the government. The faces of the doctors and nurses are also hidden by shadows and camera angles. Janet’s bandages are finally removed, and the medical staff retreat in disgust.

The Invaders: A haggard woman (Agnes Morehead) hears a strange sound on the roof. She climbs up to see a miniature flying saucer and tiny spacemen who invade her home. Their small ray guns sting, but she fights back.

Shadow Play: Adam (Dennis Weaver) is on trial, and the judge gives him the electric chair. Adam chortles that it’s all a joke, a recurring nightmare in which all the participants are bit players in a scripted play. But will anyone listen?

The Obsolete Man: Romney (Burgess Meredith) is a God-fearing librarian in a totalitarian state in which books and religion have been banned. Romney is judged obsolete by the government chancellor but is granted several requests before he dies. He chooses to have a television audience watch his execution. Forty-five minutes before he is to die, he invites the chancellor to his room and locks them both inside.

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Robert (William Shatner) boards an airplane after having been discharged from a mental hospital for a nervous breakdown. He looks out his window during the flight and sees a weird creature on the wing. Alarmed, he alerts others. However, when they look out, the creature disappears. Robert eventually realizes that what he sees is a demon trying to dismantle the plane so it will crash. Robert decides to act.

Living Doll: Erich (Telly Savalas) is angry at his wife for buying his stepdaughter an expensive doll. Erich has a nasty disposition and soon discovers that the doll has a life of its own and it dislikes him. In fact, the doll tells him so. Talky Tina says emphatically “I hate you” and “I’m going to kill you.”

The Masks: On his deathbed, Jason Foster calls his four heirs to his side on a Mardi Gras evening. Each heir has a character flaw—self-pity, avarice, vanity or cruelty. Foster demands that each wear a mask he has fashioned for them. If they refuse to keep the masks on until midnight, they will be disinherited. The masks are hideous, and the heirs do not want to don them. But out of greed, they slide them onto their faces.

It’s a Good Life: Peaksville, Ohio, a small community, has been “taken away” from the so-called normal world—ravaged by 6-year-old “monster” Anthony (Billy Mumy). By mere thought and/or wishes, Anthony can make things and people disappear or turn into hideous creatures. All of the adults kowtow to his every desire.

To Serve Man: The Kanamits—nine-foot-tall, large-headed creatures—come to Earth from outer space, bringing gifts, spouting peace and promising to end famine. After some initial resistance by earthlings, the world relents and humans become entranced by the visitors. However, government agent Mike (Lloyd Chambers) soon discovers a sinister and shocking plot being hatched by the Kanamits.

The Twilight Zone was a paradox.

Although the series is often seen as science fiction, ultimately it was not science fiction.

Whatever weird or far out setting may have been involved in a particular episode, the focus was always on the angst, pain and suffering we face in the so-called “real” world. As author Marc Scott Zicree writes:

The Twilight Zone was the first, and possibly only, TV series to deal on a regular basis with the theme of alienation—particularly urban alienation…. Repeatedly, it states a simple message: The only escape from alienation lies in reaching out to others, trusting in their common humanity. Give in to the fear and you are lost.

Fifty years after the original The Twilight Zone series questioned whether we can maintain our humanity in the face of authoritarian forces trying to reduce us to mindless automatons, we’re still struggling with the demons of our age who delight in fomenting violence, sowing distrust and prejudice, and persuading the public to support tyranny disguised as patriotism.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we don’t have to be stranded in this alternate universe, this twilight zone of tyranny, brutality and injustice.

We still have the power to change our circumstances for the better.

However, overcoming the evils of our age will require more than intellect and activism. It will require decency, morality, goodness, truth and toughness.

As Serling concluded in his remarks to the graduating class of 1968:

“Toughness is the singular quality most required of you… we have left you a world far more botched than the one that was left to us… Part of your challenge is to seek out truth, to come up with a point of view not dictated to you by anyone, be he a congressman, even a minister… Are you tough enough to take the divisiveness of this land of ours, the fact that everything is polarized, black and white, this or that, absolutely right or absolutely wrong. This is one of the challenges. Be prepared to seek out the middle ground … that wondrous and very difficult-to-find Valhalla where man can look to both sides and see the errant truths that exist on both sides. If you must swing left or you must swing right—respect the other side. Honor the motives that come from the other side. Argue, debate, rebut—but don’t close those wondrous minds of yours to opposition. In their eyes, you’re the opposition. And ultimately … ultimately—you end divisiveness by compromise. And so long as men walk and breathe—there must be compromise.”

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

The government of South Dakota has made it very clear that it does not like people who protest the Keystone XL pipeline. The state’s governor has dismissed them as “out-of-staters who come in to disrupt.” And other officials have similarly leveraged long-debunked and harmful tropes, mischaracterizing those speaking out as “paid protesters.”

In this atmosphere, South Dakota enacted a new law last week, the Riot Boosting Act. The law seeks to suppress protests before they even start and prohibits people from engaging in full-throated advocacy. It does so by creating a new, ambiguous term: “riot boosting.”

If you’re wondering what that means, so is everyone else, including those who want to speak out. And that’s a big problem.

The new law gives the state the authority to sue individuals and organizations for “riot boosting,” but it does not clearly describe what speech or conduct it considers to be “riot boosting.” The law is written so broadly that even a tweet encouraging activists to “Join a protest to stop the pipeline and give it all you’ve got!” could be interpreted as “riot-boosting” should a fight break out at the protest. The law joins two existing state criminal laws that also target such speech, meaning that advocacy could now result in up to 25 years of prison time, fines, or civil penalties — or a combination of all three.

Let’s be very clear: States are within their rights to prohibit incitement of violence — a narrow category of unprotected speech that refers to words intended and likely to cause imminent violence. But these laws go far beyond that by criminalizing impassioned advocacy that lies at the core of our political discourse. They instill a fear among peaceful organizers that their actions or words could be misconstrued by the government as “riot boosting.” As a result, activists are now forced to think twice before even encouraging others to join a protest, let alone train, educate, or advise those who plan to protest. And, because of these laws, they may forgo such speech and association altogether.

That is a clear First Amendment violation — and why we are in court to challenge the laws on behalf of the Sierra Club, NDN Collective, Dakota Rural Action, and the Indigenous Environmental Network.

According to the state’s website, the Riot Boosting Act is a result of Governor Kristi Noem’s discussions with TransCanada — the company that is set to build and operate the Keystone XL pipeline — and other stakeholders. Notably, the state did not meet with Native American tribes or environmental groups.

This comes across loud and clear in the final law, which not only gives the state the authority to sue anti-pipeline groups and activists but also gives third-parties — including TransCanada — the ability to join in. Further, the money seized from protesters through these lawsuits can be used to fund the very thing they are protesting, thereby giving the company an added financial incentive to go after pipeline protesters.

If this attack on protest sounds eerily familiar, that’s because it is.

In just the last two years, we’ve seen a rise in government efforts to stifle protests, particularly those led by Indigenous and environmental activists, often in opposition to pipelines. There have been attempts to equate protesters with domestic terrorists and saboteurs. Law enforcement authorities have partnered with private security companies to surveil activists and control protests. Known FBI informants have infiltrated activist spaces and camps. The federal government has implemented “no-fly zones” to black out media coverage during heightened police crackdowns.

And if Governor Noem’s rhetoric on “shut[ting] down” “out-of-state people” who come into South Dakota to “slow and stop construction” of the pipeline sounds familiar, it should. It echoes government attempts throughout our history to justify anti-protest actions by delegitimizing protesters as “outside agitators.”

In 1964, infamous segregationist George Wallace said racial tensions did not exist in the South “except in a very few isolated instances” caused exclusively by “outside agitators.” He was not alone in attempting to frame the civil rights movement in the South as the work of “outside agitators.” Southern authorities frequently attempted to discount legitimate grievances and protests by Black people as nothing more than an attempt by radical outsiders to sow dissent. They even called Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. an “outside agitator.”

More recently, in 2014, after the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, the police blamed “outside agitators” for the majority of the unlawful activities. Not only were these claims later debunked in a scathing report by the Department of Justice, they also allowed the police to minimize the harmful impact of their own improper practices that caused the citizens of the city to protest in the first place.

What’s happening in South Dakota is no different. The government has dismissed Native Americans, state farmers and ranchers, and residents of nearby states who opposed the pipeline as outside agitators. But the pipeline, if constructed, would have a substantial impact on all of their lives – including our clients, many of whom are South Dakotans. Moreover, the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline is a national issue, and it deserves a national debate.

Opposition to the construction of the pipeline may agitate Gov. Noem, but the First Amendment guarantees the right to voice that opposition. Those affected by the pipeline’s construction deserve to be heard even if Gov. Noem and TransCanada want them all to shut up.

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Andrew Malone, Staff Attorney, ACLU of South Dakota and Vera Eidelman, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project

Featured image is from ACLU

President Trump used to attack President Obama as being weak with regard to Syria for not being more ruthless in the American led war of aggression against Syria, a prelude to war with Iran; that he had drawn red lines in the sand and dared the Russians to cross. That the Russians had called his bluff and nothing happened, he said, as if the death of hundreds of thousands and destruction of entire cities are nothing. Trump bragged that when he was in power and America “was great again” Russia would be forced to dance to the American tune because, of course President Putin would respect him more, making the mistake of thinking that Vladimir Putin respects brutality and arrogance rather than good intentions and intelligence.

But now, in Venezuela, Trump is in the same position as Obama, having drawn red lines in the sand only for them to be ignored by the Venezuelan government and people and by the Russians and the Chinese. In a feeble fury the American government has issued one warning after another against “Russian intervention” forgetting that Venezuela can have any friends it wants, and forgetting that the United States is not the ruler of the planet. The warnings are issued the more sternly the less effective their plans and actions become. They hope every day for the Venezuelan army to change sides. They hope their selected hand puppet Juan Guaido will somehow catch on with all the people who hate him. They hope God is on their side. They have no hope.

When 100 Russian military technicians arrived in Caracas with tons of equipment last week, Trump’s national security adviser, that is, war adviser, claimed that Russian support of a popular and legitimate government to guarantee its peaceful development was “a direct threat to international peace and security in the region,” an astounding claim from a man who had just conducted an attempted armed coup against the government of Venezuela and whose boss was threatening to bombard and invade it if their economic war and sabotage was not enough to destroy the country. When he made this absurd statement Bolton echoed the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which was just as much a statement of American arrogance then as Bolton’s statements are now.

The more President Maduro proves his resilience, against rising economic warfare and sabotage of the electricity grid, and other infrastructure, and the more Russia and China increase their support of the government of Venezuela, the more frustrated the Americans become. There is no indication that a big military action is planned, nevertheless the “all options are on the table” card is still being played in statements and the media. “We may not do it, but let’s scare the hell out of them anyway” is the type of psychopathic thinking we are dealing with. But the main strategy is not a direct military one. Instead they are intending to conduct a long hybrid war on Venezuela to wear the people down. Elliott Abrams, a notorious American war criminal, the State Departments’ special representative for Venezuela, whose crimes span Latin America, stated,

“I don’t imagine that Juan Guaido is deeply worried because the Maduro regime, while it may be around in 15 days, is not going to be around in 15 years.” He threatened to cut oil sales and threatened Russia by saying “It would be a mistake for the Russians to think they have a free hand here-they don’t.”

But of course they do. Russia will conduct its affairs as suits its interests and that means support of Venezuela. It is instead the Americans who are making the mistake, because it is a fact that they no longer have a free hand in the region. Trump’s opponents in the Democratic Party and their allied media, still dazed and confused about the Mueller investigation’s inability to produce any evidence at all of Trump being a Russian agent, are still calling him weak on Russia because he is not doing enough to oppose Russia.

But the truth is they have tried to oppose Russia in every way at every possible opportunity, from Germany to Ukraine, to Turkey, from Syria to Venezuela, and failed at every point. Trump is the scapegoat for the real decline in American power and prestige and all they can do is fall back on their nuclear threat, to demand more nuclear weapons and fight wars they cannot pay for and cannot win in the vain hope, that somehow, just by brute force, they can regain their former power ad prestige. But they can’t because brute force is not enough to win the ultimate political objectives of the war. Power means little if everyone thinks you’re a thug.

In August 2011, Obama declared that “for the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside’ Yet Obama is now history while President Assad leads his people still. It was Obama who stated “the use of chemical weapons” is a changer, and then had his proxy and special forces stage several chemical attacks to be followed by big attacks on the Syrian forces. But he was stopped every time by the skills and resistance of the Syrian, Russian and Iranian forces resisting the American aggression. Obama was accused of stepping back from decisive action, the old “stabbed in the back” claims made by the Germans to explain their defeat in World War One and used by many American to explain their defeat in Vietnam, and Trump was one of those to make that claim.

But the truth was not about having the moxy to confront the Russians. It was about what the Americans knew would happen to them if they did. The Americans have suffered defeat in Syria though they still cause trouble for example for the refugees they hold hostage at the Rukban refugee camp, located in the American occupation zone at Al Tanf near the Jordanian border, where they block food and medicine from relieving the suffering of the Syrians held hostage there, and where they refused access to senior dignitaries of the UN and Red Crescent to inspect conditions in the camp. They try to cause trouble among the tribes and other groups with the few remaining forces illegally in the country, The Russians report the French and Belgian special forces are plotting to stage yet another chemical attack provocation and British lawyers, with close links to British and NATO intelligence, are attempting to have the ICC label President Assad a war criminal. These actions are planned with the USA. So Trump and his men can still cause a lot of trouble in the pain of their Syrian defeat.

They have suffered another defeat in Venezuela but their war goes on. They intend to cause a lot more trouble. The Americans are going to apply, besides all types of sabotage, political and economic pressure, as well as quasi-legal actions. They think they have a strength the Russians do not have, their proximity to the regions against Russia’s distance. But again, they misjudge the situation and Russia has demonstrated that it is in the region to stay not only being able to fly in aircraft from great distances, but has expanded military training and flight schools, S300 missile battery training, and other areas of cooperation.

The coup attempt failed. Guaido has failed. Sabotage and sanctions have failed. Political pressure has also failed, despite the fact that Canada led the Lima Group in support of the US aggression against Venezuela. But they do not have Mexico on their side and it is making them furious. President Obrador has proven more independent than they expected. He refused to join the Lima Group, refused to condemn Maduro, and has demanded reparations on behalf of the Mexican people from Spain and The Vatican for all their crimes committed during the colonial period. There is already talk in Washington about what actions to take against him. The Americans seem to have lost the art of making friends and know only how to make enemies for now Trump has cut aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as if he wants the entire region to be opposed to the USA and in support of the Venezuelan people.

President Trump, on behalf of the United States of America, keeps drawing red lines in the sand. He has paralyzed the US government to build one along the Mexican border, a hostile act towards Mexico, he has drawn them in Ukraine, in Turkey, in Syria, in the Pacific, in Korea, and now Venezuela but the trouble with red lines is they’re never the right lines. Red lines issued by a nation that acts as a neo-colonial power are violations of international law. They are ultimatums. The peoples of the world rejected this type of aggression from militaristic, chauvinist powers at the end of World War Two when the militarism of Germany and Japan was destroyed, the United States claimed it’s role in the world was to “bring democracy,” the United Nations was formed. A Charter was adopted, to which they agreed, which makes everything the USA is doing a crime against peace. We don’t need more red lines, we need the leaders of the American state to read and understand and adhere to the lines written in the Charter of the United Nations, to join the society of nations that wants to live in peace and respect with each other, instead of standing outside the society of nations; a threatening monster everyone fears.

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

Featured image is from NEO

The multipolar transformation that is occurring across the Eurasian continent confirms the industrial and diplomatic cooperation between China and the European continent in spite of strong opposition from the United States.

Xi Jinping‘s visit to Europe confirms what many of us have been writing about over the past few months and years, namely, the reality of an ongoing global transformation of a world dominated by the United States to a pluralistic one composed of different powers collectively shaping a multipolar world.

Europe therefore finds itself in fortuitous position, balanced as it is between its old world links to the United States on the one side and the fledgling Eurasian one being ushered in by Russia and China on the other.

Countries like Germany and France, but even the United Kingdom, have long implemented commercial policies that encourage integration between the countries of the Eurasian supercontinent. In 2015, the United Kingdom was among the first Western countries to join the Chinese Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which finances projects of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The Chinese BRI mega project kicked off in 2014 with the ambitious goal of integrating trade between China and Europe by sea and by land, in the process incorporating all the countries in between. The idea, as a natural consolidation of trade, is to shorten the delivery times of goods by rail and integrate sea routes. The project covers not only ports and rail lines but also the construction of technological infrastructure to achieve global interconnectivity using the 5G technology developed by the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

Germany and France have over the years deepened their partnerships with Beijing. Paris in particular boasts historical ties with China stemming from the nuclear cooperation between China General Nuclear Power Group (CGNPC) and Électricité de France (EDF) stretching back to 1978, as well as the aerospace one between Airbus and the Chinese aviation companies that has been ongoing since 1985.

Source: SCF

Italy has in recent months approached the BRI as a result of the new government consisting of the Lega Nord and Five Star Movement (M5S). The decision to sign a memorandum of understanding between Beijing and Rome underlines how the new government wants to maintain a balanced position between Washington and Beijing in certain sectors. This is exactly the approach of Germany, which has elected to continue deepening its ties with Moscow vis-a-vis hydrocarbons and Nord Stream 2 in the face of pressure from Washington. Moreover, both Germany and Italy have confirmed that they want to rely on Huawei for the implementation and management of 5G traffic, which is fundamental to a world dominated by the internet of things.

The decisions of Germany, France and Italy to continue their cooperation with Moscow and Beijing in various fields flies in the face of the narrative advanced by the American-controlled scaremongering media controlled that attempts to discourage European politicians from acting in the interests of their countries and engaging with Russia and China.

What Washington continues to misunderstand is why certain European countries are so determined to embrace the opportunities offered by the East. Italy’s recent example is quite easy to understand. The Italians hope that the BRI will provide much needed stimulus to their production industry, which has been in the doldrums in recent years. The desire for Chinese capital to give a boost to the export of Italian-produced goods is the driving force behind the proposed agreement between Beijing and Rome.

In addition to the obvious and natural desire for capital, there is also the idea of ​​ensuring energy supply, as Germany is doing with the construction of the Nord Stream 2 with Russia. Despite strong US opposition, Berlin has favored its own national interest in energy diversification, avoiding giving in to pressure from Washington, which wanted Germany to rely on LNG supplied all the way from the US at an exorbitant price when compared to Russian-supplied gas.

There are striking divergences between Europe’s politicians, especially if we look at the relations between Macron and Salvini in Italy, or those between May and her European colleagues. Even between Merkel and Macron there seem to be notable frictions surrounding energy independence. However, in spite of these apparent divergences, the prevailing theme in the final analysis is that of wishing to escape Washington’s suffocating dominance in favor of a greater participation in the concept of a multipolar world.

No European capital – whether it be Paris, Rome, Berlin or London – intends to break the Atlantic pact with Washington. This is confirmed at every possible formal occasion. However, as Beijing becomes more and more central to questions concerning technology or the supply of liquid capital for investments or business expansion, the changes to the global order seem unstoppable.

The last obstacle remains those countries still closely linked to pro-Atlantic policies, those who find in Beijing, and above all Moscow, an excellent excuse to invite Washington’s greater intrusion into the sovereign affairs of Europe. The Baltic countries and Poland seem to offer the best inroads for US policy makers to try to influence the debate on the old continent regarding ties with the East. The artificial crises created in Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela also serve as tools to divide European leaders into opposing camps, creating the conditions to scupper European cooperation with the East.

It is no coincidence that for US strategists the two greatest dangers lie in the possibility of Moscow and Beijing, or Moscow and Berlin, cooperating and coordinating their efforts. The Berlin-Moscow-Beijing triangle, with the addition of Rome and Paris, represents a scenario for Washington that is unprecedented in terms of its challenge to US hegemony in Europe.

Wang Yiwei, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, during Xi Jinping’s historic visit to Rome expressed in concrete terms the changing global order

“With the 16+1 cooperation plan between Central and Eastern European nations and China, several countries signed memoranda of understanding with China to jointly build the BIS. So far, the governments of 16 Central and Eastern European countries have signed memoranda of understanding on BIS cooperation with China. Currently, 171 cooperation agreements have been reached with 123 countries and 29 international organizations under the BIS “.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

Venezuela’s Comptroller General Elvis Amoroso announced Thursday that the opposition politician Juan Guaido has been barred from holding public office for 15 years over irregularities in his financial activities.

This decision was taken “considering that the deputy Juan Guaido has refused to present his sworn statement (…) has systematically violated our Constitution (…) has usurped public functions and has performed actions with foreign governments which have harmed Venezuela’s People,” the Comptroller General said explaining his agency’s decision.

The sanction against the U.S.-backed opposition politician stems from violations of the Organic Law of the Comptroller General, all of which could not be dismissed because the lawmaker refused to justify his income sources. More specifically, it is the consequence of a “fiscal fraud,” that is, the legally unjustified use of more than US$100,000 to fund more than 91 trips inside and outside Venezuela.

In compliance with his public functions, the Venezuelan State Comptroller initiated an audit of Guaido’s financial activities in February. Amoroso’s authority and capabilities are defined by the Organic Law of the Comptroller General and the National System of Fiscal Control, whose Article 78 defines that the state Comptroller may request affidavits of assets from any public official.

The Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic of Venezuela is the institution that monitors and controls the nation’s income, expenses, public goods and assets. According to the lawyer Ana Cristina Bracho, Guaido as a congressman is a public official who has specific functions, rights and prohibitions.

“Upon assuming his term, he vowed to respect the country’s laws and institutions,” Bracho said and added that “he also vowed to respect the absolute prohibition of accepting honors, charges and rewards of foreign countries.”

Article 187 of the Constitution of Venezuela states that members of Congress are obliged to perform tasks for the benefit of the Venezuelan people and cannot receive additional income, or hold positions other than their parliamentary functions.

Guaido was out of the country for a total of eight months. So far, however, he has not explained the origin of the money used to finance his international political tour.

Summing up, the U.S.-backed opposition politician has been disqualified from holding public office for the following reasons:

1. Guaido hid and falsified data at his affidavit of patrimony. He received money from natural or legal persons, either national and international. These resources were not declared or justified before the Comptroller’s Office.

2. Guaido did not respect legal and constitutional standards which specify that the congressmen must comply with law-defined tasks and cannot perform other jobs or receive other income.

3. Guaido usurped functions, performed actions backed by foreign governments against the Venezuelan people and accepted honors or rewards of foreign governments.

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Featured image: Juan Guaidó speaking in Caracas on January 21, 2018 (Luis Dávila/República Bolivariana de Venezuela).

Even if you think you know all about the Chagos story – an entire population forcibly removed from their island homeland at British gunpoint to make way for a US Air Force nuclear base, the people dumped destitute over a thousand miles away, their domestic animals gassed by the British army, their homes fired and demolished – then I beg you still to read this.

This analysis shows there could be no more startling illustration of the operation of the brutal and ruthless British Establishment in an undisguisedly Imperialist cause, involving actions which all reasonable people can see are simply evil. It points out that many of the key immoralities were perpetrated by Labour governments, and that the notion that either Westminster democracy or the British “justice” system provides any protection against the most ruthless authoritarianism by the British state, is utterly baseless.

Finally of course, there is the point that this is not only a historic injustice, but the injustice continues to the current day and continues to be actively promoted by the British state, to the extent that it is willing to take massive damage to its international standing and reputation in order to continue this heartless policy. This analysis is squarely based on the recent Opinion of the International Court of Justice.

Others have done an excellent job of chronicling the human stories and the heartache of the Islanders deported into penury far away across the sea. I will take that human aspect as read, although this account of one of the major forced transportations is worth reading to set the tone. The islanders were shipped out in inhuman conditions to deportation, starved for six days and covered in faeces and urine. This was not the 19th century, this was 1972.

The MV Nordvaer was already loaded with Chagossians, horses, and coconuts when it arrived at Peros Banhos. Approximately one hundred people were ultimately forced onto the ship. Ms. Mein, her husband, and their eight children shared a small, cramped cabin on the ship. The cabin was extremely hot; they could not open the portholes because the water level rose above them under the great weight of the overloaded boat. Many of the other passengers were not as fortunate as Ms. Mein and shared the cargo compartment with horses, tortoises, and coconuts. Ms. Mein remembers that the cargo hold was covered with urine and horse manure. The horses were loaded below deck while many human passengers were forced to endure the elements above deck for the entirety of the six-day journey in rough seas. The voyage was extremely harsh and many passengers became very sick. The rough conditions forced the captain to jettison a large number of coconuts in order to prevent the overloaded boat from sinking. Meanwhile, the horses were fed, but no food was provided for the Chagossians.

Rather than the human story of the victims, I intend to concentrate here, based squarely on the ICJ judgement, on the human story of the perpetrators. In doing so I hope to show that this is not just a historic injustice, but a number of prominent and still active pillars of the British Establishment, like Jack Straw, David Miliband, Jeremy Hunt and many senior British judges, are utterly depraved and devoid of the basic feelings of humanity.

There is also a vitally important lesson to be learnt about the position of the British Crown and the utter myth that continuing British Imperialism is in any sense based on altruism towards its remaining colonies.

Before reading the ICJ Opinion, I had not fully realised the blatant and vicious manner in which the Westminster government had blackmailed the Mauritian government into ceding the Chagos Islands as a condition of Independence. That blackmail was carried out by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The court documentation makes plain that the United States was ordering the British Government on how to conduct the entire process, and that Harold Wilson deliberately “frightened” Mauritius into conceding the Chagos Islands. This is an excerpt from the ICJ Opinion:

104. On 20 September 1965, during a meeting on defence matters chaired by the United Kingdom Secretary of State, the Premier of Mauritius again stated that “the Mauritius Government was not interested in the excision of the islands and would stand out for a 99-year lease”. As an alternative, the Premier of Mauritius proposed that the United Kingdom first concede independence to Mauritius and thereafter allow the Mauritian Government to negotiate with the Governments of the United Kingdom and the United States on the question of Diego Garcia. During those discussions, the Secretary of State indicated that a lease would not be acceptable to the United States and that the Chagos Archipelago would have to be made available on the basis of its detachment.

105. On 22 September 1965, a Note was prepared by Sir Oliver Wright, Private Secretary to the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, Sir Harold Wilson. It read: “Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam is coming to see you at 10:00 tomorrow morning. The object is to frighten him with hope: hope that he might get independence; Fright lest he might not unless he is sensible about the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago. I attach a brief prepared by the Colonial Office, with which the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office are on the whole content. The key sentence in the brief is the last sentence of it on page three.”

106. The key last sentence referred to above read: “The Prime Minister may therefore wish to make some oblique reference to the fact that H.M.G. have the legal right to detach Chagos by Order in Council, without Mauritius consent but this would be a grave step.” (Emphasis in the original.)

107. On 23 September 1965 two events took place. The first event was a meeting in the morning of 23 September 1965 between Prime Minister Wilson and Premier Ramgoolam. Sir Oliver Wright’s Report on the meeting indicated that Prime Minister Wilson told Premier Ramgoolam that “in theory there were a number of possibilities. The Premier and his colleagues could return to Mauritius either with Independence or without it. On the Defence point, Diego Garcia could either be detached by order in Council or with the agreement of the Premier and his colleagues….”

I have to confess this has caused me personally radically to revise my opinion of Harold Wilson. The ICJ at paras 94-97 make plain that the agreement to lease Diego Garcia to the USA as a military base precedes and motivates the rough handling of the Mauritian government.

Against this compelling argument, Britain nevertheless continued to argue before the court that the Chagos Islands had been entirely voluntarily ceded by Mauritius. The ICJ disposed of this fairly comprehensively:

172. …In the Court’s view, it is not possible to talk of an international agreement, when one of the parties to it, Mauritius, which is said to have ceded the territory to the United Kingdom, was under the authority of the latter. The Court is of the view that heightened scrutiny should be given to the issue of consent in a situation where a part of a non-self-governing territory is separated to create a new colony. Having reviewed the circumstances in which the Council of Ministers of the colony of Mauritius agreed in principle to the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago on the basis of the Lancaster House agreement, the Court considers that this detachment was not based on the free and genuine expression of the will of the people concerned.

A number of the individual judges’ Opinions put his rather more bluntly, of which Judge Robinson gives perhaps the best account in a supporting Opinion which is well worth reading:

93. … The intent was to use power to frighten the Premier into submission. It is wholly unreasonable to seek to explain the conduct of the United Kingdom on the basis that it was involved in a negotiation and was simply employing ordinary negotiation strategies. After all, this was a relationship between the Premier of a colony and its administering Power. Years later, speaking about the so-called consent to the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago Sir Seewoosagur is reported to have told the Mauritian Parliament, “we had no choice”42It is also reported that Sir Seewoosagur told a news organization, the Christian Science Monitor that: “There was a nook around my neck. I could not say no. I had to say yes, otherwise the [noose] could have tightened.” It is little wonder then that, in 1982, the Mauritian Legislative Assembly’s Select Committee on the Excision of the Archipelago concluded that the attitude of the United Kingdom in that meeting could “not fall outside the most elementary definition of blackmailing”.

The International Court of Justice equally dismissed the British argument that the islanders had signed releases renouncing any claims or right to resettle, in return for small sums of “compensation” received from the British government. Plainly having been forcibly removed and left destitute, they were in a desperate situation and in no position to assert or to defend their rights.

At paragraphs 121-3 the ICJ judgement recounts the brief period where the British government behaved in a legal and conscionable manner towards the islanders. In 2000 a Chagos resident, Louis Olivier Bancoult, won a judgement in the High Court in London that the islanders had the right to return, as the colonial authority had an obligation to govern in their interest. Robin Cook was then Foreign Secretary and declared that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office would not be appealing against the judgement.

Robin Cook went further. He accepted before the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva that the UK had acted unlawfully in its treatment of the Chagos Islanders. And he repealed the Order in Council that de facto banned all occupation of the islands other than by the US military. Cook commissioned work on a plan to facilitate the return of the islanders.

It seemed finally the British Government was going to act in a reasonably humanitarian fashion towards the islanders. But then disaster happened. The George W Bush administration was infuriated at the idea of a return of population to their most secret base area, and complained bitterly to Blair. This was one of the factors, added to Cook’s opposition to arms sales to dictatorships and insistence on criticising human rights abuses by Saudi Arabia, that caused Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell to remove Robin Cook as Foreign Secretary.

Robin Cook was replaced by the infinitely biddable Jack Straw. There was never any chance that Straw – who received large donations to his office and campaign funds from British Aerospace – would stand against the interests of the arms industry or of the USA, particularly in favour of a few dispossessed islanders who would never be a source of personal donations.

Straw immediately threw Cook’s policy into reverse. Resettling the islanders was now declared “too expensive” an option. The repealed Order in Council was replaced by a new one banning all immigration to, or even landing on, the islands on security grounds. This “coincided” with the use of Diego Garcia, the Chagos island on which the US base is situate, as a black site for torture and extraordinary rendition.

Straw was therefore implicated not just in extending the agony of the deported island community, but doing so in order to ensure the secrecy of torture operations. I don’t have the vocabulary to describe the depths of Straw’s evil. This was New Labour in action.

The estimable Mr Bancoult did not give up. He took the British Government again to the High Court to test the legality of the new Order in Council barring the islanders, which was cast on “National security” grounds. On 11 May 2006, Bancoult won again in the High Court, and the judgement was splendidly expressed by Lord Hooper in a statement of decency and common sense with which you would hope it was impossible to disagree:

“The power to legislate for the “peace order and good government” of a territory has never been used to exile a whole population. The suggestion that a minister can, through the means of an Order in Council, exile a whole population from a British Overseas Territory and claim that he is doing this for the “peace, order and good government” of the Territory is, to us, repugnant.” (Para 142)

The judgement did not address the sovereignty of the islands.

Unlike Robin Cook, Jack Straw did appeal against the judgement, and the FCO’s appeal was resoundingly and unanimously rebuffed by the Court of Appeal. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office then appealed again to the House of Lords, and to general astonishment the Law Lords found in favour of the British government and against the islanders, by a 3-2 judgement.

The general astonishment was compounded by the fact that a panel of only 5 Law Lords had sat on the case, rather than the 7 you would normally expect for a case of this magnitude. It was very widely remarked among the legal fraternity that the 3 majority judges were the only Law Lords who might possibly have found for the government, and on any possible combination of 7 judges the government would have lost. That view was given weight by the fact that the minority of 2 who supported the islanders included the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham.

The decision to empanel only 5 judges, and the selection of the UK’s three most right wing Law Lords for the panel, was taken by the Lord Chancellor’s office. And the Lord Chancellor was now – Jack Straw. The timing is such that it is conceivable that the decision was taken under Straw’s predecessor, Lord Falconer, but as he was Blair’s great friend and ex-flatmate and also close to Straw, it makes no difference to the Establishment stitch-up.

If your blood is not now sufficiently boiling, consider this. The Law Lords found against the islanders on the grounds that no restraint can be placed on the authority of the British Crown over its colonies. The majority opinion was best expressed by Lord Hoffman. Lord Hoffman’s judgement is a stunning assertion of British Imperial power. He states in terms that the British Crown exercises its authority in the interests of the UK and not in the interest of the colony concerned:

49. Her Majesty in Council is therefore entitled to legislate for a colony in the interests of the United Kingdom. No doubt she is also required to take into account the interests of the colony (in the absence of any previous case of judicial review of prerogative colonial legislation, there is of course no authority on the point) but there seems to me no doubt that in the event of a conflict of interest, she is entitled, on the advice of Her United Kingdom ministers, to prefer the interests of the United Kingdom. I would therefore entirely reject the reasoning of the Divisional Court which held the Constitution Order invalid because it was not in the interests of the Chagossians.

It is quite incredible to read that quote, and then to remember that the British government has just argued before the International Court of Justice that the ICJ does not have jurisdiction because the question is nothing to do with decolonisation but rather a bilateral dispute. Thankfully, the ICJ found this quite incredible too.

You may think that by the time it fixed this House of Lords judgement the British government had exhausted the wells of depravity on this particular issue. But no, David Miliband felt that he had to outdo his predecessors by being not only totally immoral, but awfully clever with it too. Under Miliband, the FCO dreamed up the idea of pretending that the exclusion of all inhabitants from around the USA leased nuclear weapon and torture site, was for environmental purposes.

The propagation of the Chagos Marine Reserve in 2010 banned all fishing within 200 nautical miles of the islands and, as the islanders are primarily a fishing community, was specifically designed to prevent the islanders from being able to return, while at the same time garnering strong applause from a number of famous, and very gullible, environmentalists.

As I blogged about this back in 2010:

The sheer cynicism of this effort by Miliband to dress up genocide as environmentalism is simply breathtaking. If we were really cooncerned about the environment of Diego Garcia we would not have built a massive airbase and harbour on a fragile coral atoll and filled it with nuclear weapons.

In retrospect I am quite proud of that turn of phrase. David Miliband was dressing up genocide as environmentalism. I stand by that.

While the ruse was obvious to anyone half awake, it does not need speculation to know the British government’s motives because, thanks to Wikileaks release of US diplomatic cables, we know that British FCO and MOD officials together specifically briefed US diplomats that the purpose was to make the return of the islanders impossible.

7. (C/NF) Roberts acknowledged that “we need to find a way to get through the various Chagossian lobbies.” He admitted that HMG is “under pressure” from the Chagossians and their advocates to permit resettlement of the “outer islands” of the BIOT. He noted, without providing details, that “there are proposals (for a marine park) that could provide the Chagossians warden jobs” within the BIOT. However, Roberts stated that, according to the HGM,s current thinking on a reserve, there would be “no human footprints” or “Man Fridays” on the BIOT’s uninhabited islands. He asserted that establishing a marine park would, in effect, put paid to resettlement claims of the archipelago’s former residents. Responding to Polcouns’ observation that the advocates of Chagossian resettlement continue to vigorously press their case, Roberts opined that the UK’s “environmental lobby is far more powerful than the Chagossians’ advocates.” (Note: One group of Chagossian litigants is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) the decision of Britain’s highest court to deny “resettlement rights” to the islands’ former inhabitants. See below at paragraph 13 and reftel. End Note.)

Incredible to say, that is still not the end of the ignominy of the British Establishment. As the irrepressible Chagossians continued their legal challenges, now to the “Marine reserve”, the UK’s new Supreme Court shamelessly refused to accept the US diplomatic cable in evidence, on the grounds it was a privileged communication under the Vienna Convention. This was a ridiculous decision which would only have been valid if there were evidence that the communication were obtained by another State, rather than leaked to the public by a national of the state that produced it. For a court to choose to ignore a salient fact is an abhorrent thing, but it allowed the British Establishment yet another “victory”. It was short lived, however.

Mauritius challenged the UK to arbitration before a panel constituted under Article 287 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a Convention I am happy to say I was directly involved in bringing into force, by negotiating and helping draft the Protocol. Mauritius argued that the UK could not ban fishing rights which it enjoyed both traditionally, and specifically as part of the agreement to cede the Chagos Islands. The UK brought four separate challenges to the jurisdiction of the panel, and lost every one, and then lost the main judgement. It is pleasant to note that acting for the Chagos Islands was Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the FCO Legal Adviser who had resigned her position, telling Jack Straw that the attack on Iraq constituted an illegal war of aggression.

Which brings us up to the present Opinion by the International Court of Justice after the government of Mauritius finally took resolute action to assert sovereignty over the islands. Astonishingly, having repudiated the decision of the Arbitration Panel on the Law of the Sea, very much a British-inspired creation, Jeremy Hunt has now decided to strike at the very heart of international law itself by repudiating the International Court of Justice itself, something for which there is no precedent at all in British history. I discuss the radical implications of this here with Alex Salmond.

This is apposite as throughout the 21st Century developments listed here in this continued horror story, the Chagossians’ cause was championed in the House of Commons by two pariah MPs outside the consensus of the British Establishment. The Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Chagos Islands was Jeremy Corbyn MP. His Deputy was Alex Salmond MP.

Chagos really is a touchstone issue, a key litmus test of whether people are in or out of the British Establishment. The attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, the manufactured witch-hunt on anti-semitism, all are designed to return the Labour Party to a leadership which will continue the illegal occupation of the Chagos Islands; the acid test of reliable pro-USA neo-conservative policy. The SNP, at least under Salmmond, was an open challenge to British imperialism and hopefully will remain so.

Chagos is a fundamental test of decency in British public life. If you know where a politician – or judge – stands on Chagos, most other questions are answered.

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“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. “ Edward Louis Bernays (1891-1995), (in ‘Propaganda’, 1928, ch. 1)

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), (as quoted in Thinkexist.com)

“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap!” Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), (as quoted by http://www.parismarais.fr)

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We live in a very corrupt era. A case in point is the current and scandalous manipulation of the Mueller report by the Trump administration, with hardly any outcry from people in authority. Indeed, of the close to 400 pages (excluding  tables and appendices) of the Mueller report delivered to the U.S. Attorney General on Friday March 22, 2019, not a single page has yet to be made public, as of the Tuesday April 2 deadline established by the House of Representatives, either to the elected Congress and/or to the American people to see for themselves the real content of the full report.

The only thing made public, so far, is a four-page memo written by Attorney General William Barr, a recent appointee of Donald Trump, which says nice things about his boss and contains a vague promise to release a heavily censored version of the Mueller report sometime in the future (see below). To take at face value what a Trump’s appointee says, especially a lawyer, could be a big mistake.

This is an administration known for its serial lies. It has no respect for the truth whatsoever. —It has only partisan interests. In fact, Donald Trump is a believer in the “Big Lie” political theory, a propaganda technique first advanced by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in his 1925 book Mein Kampf. According to this theory, the bigger a politician’s lies and the more out of the ordinary, the more part of the population will be ready to believe them.

Donald Trump was at it again on Thursday March 28, when he wrongly claimed in a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that the Mueller report “fully exonerated him” of any wrong doing. This is curious since no part of the report has yet been made public and Barr’s own opinion and brief interpretation were only that “Mueller had reached no conclusion about whether Trump had obstructed justice”! This is an example of stretching the truth, if I’ve ever seen one. Trump’s political career has been a long series of lies, falsehoods, untruths, exaggerations and misrepresentations, and there is no reason to think that the future would be different from the past.

But, there is something fishy here. —If the 400-page report by the Department of Justice’s special Counsel Robert Mueller (about Donald Trump cheating and obstructing justice in his relations with Russia) really does contain positive conclusions about the current occupant of the White House, his family and associates, don’t you think the tandem Trump-Barr would have rushed to make it public? At the very least, wouldn’t they have delivered copies of the full report to Congress? Why are they willing to fight to keep it secret from the elected Congress? The only logical answer is that the complete Mueller report contains very damaging material about Trump, his family and his administration, and William Barr does not want Americans to see it.

In any case, even if some media have jumped onboard Mr. Barr’s presentation of the contents of the report, a net majority of Americans are not falling for the Trump-Barr sleight of hand trick of hiding the report Nor do they accept their game of hide and seek, claiming that the report contains conclusions favorable to them, but keeping those conclusions secret. A NPR/PBS NewsHour/Maris poll, for example, indicated that only Trump’s gullible political base, just 36 percent, believe the Trump-Barr manipulation of the report, i.e. that Donald Trump has been “cleared” from wrongdoing. What is more, 56 percent believe the contrary, and 75 percent want the full report, uncensored, un-redacted, unedited and with no blackouts, to be made public ASAP.

Attorney General Barr has lately pulled a rabbit, or maybe a red herring, out of his hat to stall things further, in an obvious attempt to ‘drown the fish’ and take the sting out of the Mueller report. Indeed, on Friday March 29, Mr. Barr wrote a letter to the chairmen of the relevant committees of both the House and the Senate offering to rewrite the Mueller report on his own in order to exclude some so-called “sensitive” sections, some of which no doubt referring to his boss and his immediate family working in the White House. It is doubtful that such censorship is really necessary because it is most likely that special counsel Mueller and his team, knowing full well that their report will be made public, have been very careful not to include any sensitive or classified intelligence or any other touchy legal information. —This could be the political cover-up of the century.

Indeed, the Attorney General now wants to make public his own censored version of the Mueller report by excluding four broad categories of information from the official report:

1. Grand jury material;
2. Information that could compromise sensitive intelligence sources or methods;
3. Details related to ongoing investigations; and
4. Information that would unduly infringe on ‘the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties’.

This is an obvious attempt to gut the entire report.

In conclusion, it appears that the Trump administration is very busy making sure that anything in the Mueller report found damaging to the president, his immediate family and associates will be purged from the censored version, to be released in a few weeks. I doubt very much that the Democratic leadership in Congress will acquiesce to such blatant censorship of a report about political figures and originally designed to be made public in its entirety.

Mr. Adam Schiff’s indictments of Republicans

Considering this development, it may be useful to recall House Intelligence Committee chairman  Adam Schiff’s admonitions to his Republican colleagues, on Thursday, March 28, about their lack of probity and honesty and their “immoral,” “unethical,” “unpatriotic,” and “corrupt” behavior:

Transcript of Adam Schiff’s Statement:

“You [the Republicans] might think that it is okay:

• That the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic candidate for president as part of what’s described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign. You might think that’s okay.
• That when that was offered to the son of the president (Donald Trump Jr.),who had a pivotal role in the campaign, that the president’s son did not call the FBI, and that he did not adamantly refuse that foreign help — no, instead that son said he would ‘love’ the help of the Russians. You might think it was okay that he took that meeting?
• That Paul Manafort, the campaign chair, someone with great experience running campaigns, also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law (Jared Kushner) also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that they concealed it from the public. You might think it’s okay that their only disappointment after that meeting was that the dirt they received on Hillary Clinton wasn’t better. You might think it’s okay. — I don’t.
• That, when it was discovered a year later that they had lied about that meeting and said it was about adoptions, you might think it’s okay that the president is reported to have helped dictate that lie. You might think it’s okay. — I don’t.
• That the campaign chairman of a presidential campaign would offer information about that campaign to a Russian oligarch in exchange for money or debt forgiveness. You might think that’s okay. — I don’t.
• That [Donald Trump’s] campaign chairman offered polling data, campaign polling data, to someone linked to Russian intelligence. — I don’t think that’s okay.
• That the president himself called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails, if they were listening. You might think it’s okay that, later that day, the Russians in fact attempted to hack a server affiliated with that campaign. — I don’t think that’s okay.
• That the president’s son-in-law (Jared Kushner)sought to establish a secret back-channel of communication with Russians through a Russian diplomatic facility. — I don’t think that’s okay.
• That an associate of the president (Roger Stone) made direct contact with the GRU (the Military intelligence service of Russia) through Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks, that is considered a hostile intelligence agency. You might think it’s okay that a senior campaign official was instructed to reach that associate and find out what that hostile intelligence agency had to say, in terms of dirt on his opponent.
• That the national security adviser-designate (Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn) secretly conferred with a Russian ambassador about undermining U.S. sanctions, and you might think it’s okay he lied about it to the FBI. You might say that’s all okay. You might say that’s just what you need to do to win. — But I don’t think it’s okay.

I think it’s immoral, I think it’s unethical, I think it’s unpatriotic and, yes, I think it’s corrupt, and it is an evidence of collusion…

[Moreover], I don’t think it’s OK that during a presidential campaign Mr. Trump sought the Kremlin’s help to consummate a real estate deal in Moscow that would make him a fortune — according to the special counsel, hundreds of millions of dollars. I don’t think it’s OK to conceal it from the public. I don’t think it’s OK that he advocated a new and more favorable policy towards the Russians even as he was seeking the Russians’ help, the Kremlin’s help to make money. I don’t think it’s OK that his attorney lied to our committee. There is a different word for that than collusion, and it’s called ‘compromise’.” (Adam Schiff)

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International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, of the book “The New American Empire”, and the recent book, in French “La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018“. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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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Electoral Dirty Tricks in Israel. Fake Social Media Promoting Likud and PM Netanyahu

By Stephen Lendman, April 02, 2019

According to Haaretz, the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post and other Israeli media, hundreds (maybe thousands) of fake social media accounts are promoting Likud propaganda, Netanyahu’s party, according to the Big Bots Project online watchdog group.

China’s President Xi Jinping in Italy: It’s the Maritime Ports!

By F. William Engdahl, April 02, 2019

To the concern of Germany, France, Holland and other EU countries, Italy’s coalition has just signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China to join China’s Belt Road Initiative, the so-called New Economic Silk Road.

The CIA Takeover of America in the 1960s Is the Story of Our Times. The Killing of the Kennedys and Today’s New Cold War

By Edward Curtin, April 02, 2019

When Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, 1968, the American public fell into an hypnotic trance in which they have remained ever since. The overwhelming majority accepted what was presented by government authorities as an open and shut case that a young Palestinian American, Sirhan Sirhan, had murdered RFK because of his support for Israel, a false accusation whose ramifications echo down the years.

Corporate Media Propaganda: Protecting the EU from ‘Russian Influence’ – by Manufacturing History

By Nina Cross, April 01, 2019

It is now apparent with the release of the Mueller investigation findings, that the great storm that has embattled the US government and establishment since 2016 over supposed Russia-Trump collusion during the US elections, originates not from a genuine tangible source, but a constant stream of rhetoric  driven by partisan corporate media.

Syria: Suspected Al-Qaeda Chemical Attack in Northern Hama and Al Skeilbiyyeh Bells Ring in Defiance

By Vanessa Beeley, April 01, 2019

HTS is a poorly disguised rebrand of Al Qaeda or Nusra Front in Syria and now controls the majority of Idleb province and terrorist-held areas of Northern Hama bordering Al Skeilbiyyeh.

Lawyers Worldwide Urge International Court: Investigate Israeli Crimes

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, April 01, 2019

On the eve of the first anniversary of the “Great March of Return” at the Gaza border, lawyers and jurists around the world are calling on the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute Israeli crimes against the Palestinians.

Bolton Torpedoed the Trump-Kim Hanoi Summit

By Mike Whitney, April 01, 2019

Bolton presented Kim with an offer he knew Kim would reject, the same offer that led to the destruction of Libya and the savage murder of Gaddafi. Bolton wanted the talks to fail so he could push for tougher sanctions that would pave the way for regime change.

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The financial transaction tax is an issue that never goes away from the public agenda completely. It keeps coming back to the policy and political discussions in different forms across the world. Currently, the idea of a financial transaction tax (FTT) is gaining in popularity within the Democratic Party of the United States as a policy tool to curb excessive speculation and high-frequency trading that destabilizes markets; and to generate a significant amount of revenue to finance social programs such as free college tuition.

On March 5, Democrats in both houses of Congress introduced bills to introduce a financial transaction tax in the US. Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii introduced a bill titled, “The Wall Street Tax Act of 2019”[1] in the Senate while Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon introduced a companion bill in the House of Representatives. The bill proposes a 0.1 percent tax (i.e., 10 cents on every $100 financial transaction) on stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, derivatives and other financial assets traded in the US markets. While initial public offerings (IPOs) and short-term debt of fewer than 100 days would be exempted from the proposed FTT. Further, the proposed tax would apply to the actual payment for the derivatives contracts between the seller and the buyer, rather than to the notional value of derivatives contracts.

The bills are co-sponsored by more than a dozen lawmakers (including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kirsten Gillibrand) from the House and Senate. Besides, labor unions, civil society groups, and progressive economists have also supported the idea of an FTT.

The likelihood of proposed bill becoming a law in 2019 seems remote because not a single Republican in either chamber of Congress has extended support besides there is strong resistance from the powerful financial lobbyists in the US. Despite these obstacles, the financial transaction tax may become a part of progressive tax ideas with the approach of the 2020 presidential and congressional campaigns. Some Presidential candidates – including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – have supported versions of an FTT in the recent past.

The History of Financial Transaction Taxes

Contrary to popular perception, financial transaction taxes are not new. Many countries including the US, the UK, Australia, Belgium, France, India, Italy, Sweden, and Taiwan have already implemented similar taxes on a variety of financial transactions with mixed outcomes.

In the UK, investors pay a Stamp Duty Reserve Tax of 0.5 percent on the purchase price of shares of a company incorporated in the UK or shares of a foreign company that has a UK share register.

From 1914 to 1965, a federal FTT was levied on sales and transfers of stock in the US. At present, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) levies a modest “Section 31 fee” on stock transactions, and the proceeds are used to fund the agency’s regulatory costs. In 2018, about $2bn were collected by the SEC from this fee.

In 1984, Sweden introduced a tax of 1 percent on stock transactions. The tax was doubled in 1986, and it was extended to fixed-income securities and derivatives in 1989, albeit at lower rates. In 1991, the tax was abolished. There is a broad consensus in the economic literature that the Swedish FTT was a failure. There are three key reasons why the Swedish FTT failed. First, the tax rates on stocks and some derivatives transactions were too high. Second, the tax was poorly designed as it was levied only on registered Swedish brokerage services that encouraged foreign investors to avoid the tax by moving their trading in Swedish stocks to non-Swedish brokers based in London. As a result, more than half of equity trading volume migrated from Sweden to London. Third, some fixed-income securities were exempted from the FTT due to its narrow scope. Nevertheless, there are many important lessons to be learned from Sweden’s failed experience with the FTT in the 1980s.

The Potential Revenue from an FTT

There is no denying that the revenue potential of any financial transaction tax would depend on its specific design. However, the potential revenue that could be raised with an FTT is very large in the US because more than $1 trillion in stocks and bonds is traded on each business day in its financial markets.

As several FTT proposals have been floated in the US in recent years, the revenue potential estimates vary depending on the design of the FTT and modeling assumptions. Also, it is difficult to predict precisely how the behavior of financial market participants will change due to a small transaction tax. Besides, actual revenue collections can fall short of the estimates if market conditions deteriorate.

Nevertheless, most estimates show that an FTT in the US could raise between $35bn and $100bn annually. These are not trivial amounts. A recent Congressional Budget Office report[2] calculated that a 0.1 percent tax on the value of the securities and 0.1 percent tax on payments flows under derivatives would increase revenues by $777 billion over ten years (2019-2028), based on an estimate by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (see Table 1). This estimate takes into account offsets in income and payroll tax revenues.

Table 1: FTT Revenue Estimates by Congressional Budget Office (2018)

Source: Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. *A loss in revenues is expected in 2019 because the transaction tax would immediately lower the value of financial assets.

Apart from reducing the federal budget deficit, part of proceeds of an FTT could be used to fund the Green New Deal (proposed recently by congressional Democrats), healthcare and other welfare programs.

Further, the FTT is a progressive way to generate tax revenues as the top 10 percent of American households, own 84 percent of all stocks. Therefore, anyone concerned about the growing income and wealth inequality in the US should welcome the financial transaction tax as it would be progressive in nature.

Will the FTT drive trading away from the US to FTT-free jurisdictions? Not necessarily. An FTT in the US may encourage other countries to adopt a similar tax thereby reducing the scope of tax avoidance. As discussed below, some EU member-states are supportive of implementing an FTT within the bloc. If both the US and the EU agree on tax harmonization, international cooperation on the FTT is also feasible in the long run.

Taxing the Bloated Finance Sector

It is widely acknowledged that the financial sector in the US has remained undertaxed despite achieving unprecedented growth in the last three decades. For instance, most financial services are exempted from value-added tax (VAT) in the US. Same is the case with other developed countries. At its peak in 2007, the financial sector contributed 8.3 percent to the US GDP and accounted for 41 percent of total corporate profits. Eleven years later, Wall Street profits are heading back to pre-crisis levels.

Strange it may sound, but too much finance could be bad for the economy as a growing body of economic literature shows that financial development benefits economy only up to an optimal point, beyond which the costs begin to rise.[3]

While analyzing the relationship between financial development and growth, the IMF Staff Discussion Notes 15/08 (May 2015) stated that “the effect of financial development on economic growth is bell-shaped: it weakens at higher levels of financial development.”[4]

On whether real economy has benefited from the recent growth of the financial sector, Adair Turner, the then chairman of the Financial Services Authority of the UK, wrote in 2010: “There is no clear evidence that the growth in the scale and complexity of the financial system in the rich developed world over the last 20 to 30 years has driven increased growth or stability, and it is possible for financial activity to extract rents from the real economy rather than to deliver economy value.”[5]

Not only excessive finance can increase the frequency of boom-bust cycles thereby undermining financial stability, but it can also divert resources, talent and human capital from productive sectors of the economy to the financial sector.

The 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing bank bailouts have clearly shown that the bloated financial sector can impose significant costs on the broader economy and society. Hence there is a strong rationale for seeking a “fair and substantial contribution” from the financial sector to the fiscal costs of bank bailouts.

The 2008 crisis has also raised legitimate questions about the benefits of an oversized financial industry in the US. There is a growing consensus that a stable and well-regulated financial sector is vital for the achievement of long-term sustainable economic growth and developmental objectives. Post-crisis, there has been a great deal of discussion on curbing the short-term speculative trading in the US financial markets. In this context, a financial transaction tax could be a part of the policy toolkit to dampen the unproductive parts of the financial sector.

Curbing High-Frequency Trading

Another key objective of a financial transaction tax is to curb high-frequency trading of doubtful social value.

In the last two decades, the landscape of stock market trading has changed drastically with the high-frequency trading (HFT) came into vogue during the 2000s. On Wall Street, the high-frequency traders rely on high-speed connections to trading platforms, use high-powered computers to execute trading orders, and take very short-term positions.

HFTs belong to a broader group of traders called algorithmic traders. Algorithmic trading is based on a technology-driven pre-programmed mathematical model that allows execution of trading orders at a very high speed (without human intervention) to benefit from the smallest movement in the prices of stocks, commodities, and currencies. Computers execute the buy or sell orders, not in seconds, but microseconds. The high-frequency traders take advantage of tiny differences in prices to book profits at the expense of retail investors with slower execution speeds.

Fears have been expressed that HFT could be a source of market instability as witnessed during the 2010 Flash Crash when a rogue algorithm sparked a sudden 9 percent fall in Dow Jones index and wiped out nearly $1 trillion in market value within few minutes. There are also legitimate concerns that the high trading volumes generated by HFT firms can push prices away from fundamental values.

The supporters of HFT often highlight its important role as providers of liquidity. However, that role is increasingly being questioned by experts in the light of evidence which shows that high-frequency traders can withdraw from their market-making role if the volatility rises abruptly or if they detect markets are becoming more one-sided.

As most high-frequency traders employ similar algorithms and adopt similar strategies, a simultaneous withdrawal by HFTs can pose a systemic risk to the entire market, as happened during the 2010 Flash Crash. As pointed out by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou of JPMorgan: “A simultaneous withdrawal by HFTs not only amplifies the initial market move, but also creates step changes or gapping markets as liquidity provision gets impaired and quotes are withdrawn.”[6]

In a relevant research paper, Didier Sornette and Susanne von der Becke noted that

“HFT provides liquidity in good times when it is perhaps least needed and takes liquidity away when it is most needed, thereby contributing rather than mitigating instability.”[7]

After the 2010 flash crash, regulatory authorities in the US and Europe have introduced new measures (such as circuit breakers) to regulate the harmful HFT. A financial transaction tax could also complement such regulatory measures to rein in high-frequency trading in the US markets. An FTT will make transactions with a shorter time horizon costlier, hence curbing aggressive short-term trading that benefits high-frequency traders more than ordinary investors.

What is good for high-frequency traders is not necessarily good for ordinary investors.

Europe Leads the Way

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the idea of introducing a financial transaction tax has gained momentum in Europe.

After the G20 leaders failed to endorse an FTT for raising new resources for poor countries, the European Commission in 2011 proposed a European Union financial transaction tax (EU FTT) that would apply to all financial transactions, except the bank loans and primary markets. The base of the proposed EU FTT is very broad covering a wide range of financial instruments and transactions such as securities, derivatives, repos, and money market instruments. Under this proposal, the trading of shares and bonds would be taxed at a rate of 0.1 percent while derivative contracts would be taxed at a rate of 0.01 percent. Further, the FTT would have to be paid if one party to the transaction is located in the EU.

The proposed tax was supposed to be launched in January 2014, but it got postponed several times due to lack of unanimity among all EU member states on how this tax would be implemented. In 2013, an attempt was made to introduce an FTT in 11 member-states through the instrument of ‘enhanced cooperation’. After that, the UK’s 2016 referendum to leave the European bloc has further delayed this process.

It is important to note that some member-states such as France, Belgium, Italy, and Greece have already introduced a tax on financial transactions within their jurisdictions. France introduced an FTT on equities in August 2012 while Italy introduced it in March 2013. These member-states have confirmed their commitment to introducing an EU-wide FTT, despite strong opposition from European financial firms and some member-states such as the UK and Sweden.

In the coming years, the FTT is likely to remain on the EU agenda even though the bloc is currently grappling with the potential Brexit fallout.

Financial Transaction Taxes in India: Alive and Kicking

India introduced a securities transaction tax (STT) on stock market transactions in 2004 and based on its success, a commodity transaction tax (CTT) on trading of non-agricultural commodity futures contracts in 2013. From 2018 onwards, the CTT has also been imposed on commodity options contracts which were introduced in the Indian markets.

The rate of STT varies with the type of transaction and security. Table 2 provides the STT rates applicable to various types of securities transactions in India for FY 2019-20.

Table 2: Securities Transactions Tax Rates in India for FY 2019-20

In a recent op-ed article in Financial Times, Kirsten Wegner, chief executive of Modern Markets Initiative, an advocacy group sponsored by high-frequency traders, claimed that India’s experiment with the FTT had failed badly.[8]

Contrary to Ms. Wegner’s assertion, financial transaction taxes are alive and kicking in India. From a revenue generation perspective, India’s STT has been a success story with the average collection of $1bn for the past eight fiscal years. During 2017-18, the STT collection touched Rs.118bn ($1.6bn), not a trivial amount in a country with a narrow tax base.

The Indian experience shows that both transaction taxes are an efficient instrument of tax collection as the tax is collected by the exchanges which then pay it to the exchequer, thereby overcoming cumbersome bureaucratic processes.

Some of the concerns raised by the critics of India’s financial transaction taxes have not yet materialized in the Indian markets. The critics had anticipated a lower trading volume would reduce liquidity, and thereby market quality. There is no evidence to suggest that the transaction taxes have triggered a liquidity squeeze in the Indian markets.

Ms. Wegner refers to fall in trading volume in the Indian commodity markets during 2013-14 and puts the blame solely on the CTT. There is no denying that the commodity trading volume dropped during 2013-14, but the principal reason behind the drop was the Rs.6bn payment scam that broke out at National Spot Exchange Limited in July 2013, not the CTT of 0.01 percent as argued by Ms. Wegner. In this scam, some 200 big commodity brokers alleged to have colluded with the exchange to defraud investors. Since 2017, trading volumes and liquidity at the Indian commodity exchanges have gone up despite the CTT.

Besides broadening the taxation of the financial sector, these taxes can enable Indian authorities to trace certain transactions that undermine market integrity. The transaction taxes could be particularly valuable to the authorities as alternative mechanisms to track the flow of illicit money into the Indian financial markets are weak. Besides, a centralized database of money flows helps fill the large information gaps about the real ownership of financial assets.

Is the FTT a Silver Bullet?

Of course, an FTT is not a panacea to all the ills plaguing Wall Street but its potential to raise substantial tax revenues and to curb high-frequency trading of doubtful social value cannot be overlooked.

The success of an FTT in the US would largely depend on the design of the tax. The tax should be levied widely, covering a wide range of financial instruments, transactions, and institutions to prevent tax avoidance. The US authorities need to design the FTT in such a manner that maximizes revenue and minimizes the distortions. Achieving multiple policy objectives through an FTT will always be a balancing act. To make it effective and responsive, the proposed FTT may need additional fine-tuning as nowadays market conditions change rapidly.

The US is in an advantageous position as it can learn from different countries experiences (both positive and negative) with the STT. It can design the proposed tax based on some successful examples while avoiding the design flaws of the Swedish FTT.

If carefully designed, and used in conjunction with other regulatory measures, an FTT has the potential to rein in casino mentality and short-termism that characterize the US financial markets.

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 Kavaljit Singh is Director, Madhyam, a public policy research institute, based in New Delhi. 

Notes

The structures of politics have become so rigid, so distant, and ultimately so irrelevant to those who vote for them that a trend through countries can now be confirmed.  Brittleness has set it.  The part and election strategists have few answers, they, who saw the voter as yet another subject, another follower, another convert of a faith. The churches and their following have been turned into secular sceptics and the disenchanted.  The non-politician who, nonetheless practices a craft of politics (we are all Aristotle’s creatures), has become a burning disruption. 

It started as series of shocks and disruptive announcements in 2016, confusing and upending the psephology across the establishment.  That year yielded results that might seen the abolition of the entire witchcraft.  The Brexit referendum outcome; the US presidential vote – both were predicted as victories for the politician, the experienced practitioner.  Along the way, there were a few pompous, gilded pretenders – Emmanuel Macron managed to give the impression of lacking the sheep’s clothing he always donned.  While his political achievement from the grind of the French political machine was impressive, he could never hide his establishment credentials.  These are now revisiting him with brute reality.

Recent electoral developments to the centre and east of Europe suggest that not all populism need be filled with the toxins of violent divorce and nationalist disagreement.  In recent days, a Slovakian lawyer and the comedian in Ukraine have added their spots to this new form of anti-political exuberance.  Of these, the former is more conventional, though she remains salad green in experience.

While it is necessary to exercise caution in seeing a spectacular, rippling movement in the exceptional and irregular, the election of Zuzana Čaputová (image on the right) after Slovakia’s presidential runoff on Saturday against establishment choice Maroš Šefčovic is seen as a veritable toot of approval for a new approach.  “Perhaps,” she claimed, “we thought politics was only a sign of weakness, and today we see it as a sign of strength.”

Čaputová had been boosted by the mood which took a turn in February 2018.  That month saw the killing of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak, who had been rummaging through Slovak links with the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate, and his fiancée Martina Kušnírvá.  Their deaths propelled people to the streets with a zeal not seen since the anti-Communist demonstrations of 1989.  While having a whiff of the hyperbolic, the killings have been remarked upon as having the momentous influence of the fall of New York’s Twin Towers in September 2001.  This gave sufficient and shuddering notice to Prime Minister Robert Fico to hand in his resignation papers.  The murkiness of the whole business was profound; the individual said to be responsible for directing the killings, Marián Kočner, purportedly had ties to Fico’s SMER Party and various government officials.  The rot had set deep.

In what might be seen as a characteristic neuroses of Central European politics, the reaction to the killings came in parliamentary laws affecting journalistic practice rather than political corruption: a right of reply would have to be given to politicians; in the event this was not done, a fine might be imposed.  The ghost of Fico had made its unwelcome appearance.  “It’s the opposite of what should have been done,” lamented former Slovakian prime minister Iveta Radičová.

In a sense, this made the inroads by Čaputová, who defeated SMER’s choice, Šefčovic, even more striking.  Far from seeing the European Union as an anti-nationalist bugbear to be slain or fled from, the new president shows a desire to bring Slovakia closer to its bosom.  “My main focus is to bring about change in Slovakia, and for Slovakia to be a reliable and predictable partner of the European Union.”

The Ukrainian example is even more fitting, tinged with a degree of the exemplary absurd.  A comedian whose main act is to play the good president finds himself in the running to become one. In politics, the comedian is usually inadvertent, an accident arising from a miscalculation of factors.  He is magnificently idiotic (US Vice President Dan Quayle on thinking Latin was spoken in Latin America), or dangerously ignorant (US President George W. Bush: the French have no word for entrepreneur).

In Ukraine, with half the ballots counted, Volodymyr Zelenskiy was leading with some 30 percent.  Incumbent Petro Poroshenko was lagging at 16 percent.  Not even the usual electoral violations could sway the vote dramatically, despite assertions by the third placed “gas princess” Yulia Tymoshenko that she might have nabbed the second spot.

Zelenskiy’s satirical television show Servant of the People features the antics, and efforts of an Ordinary Citizen and history school teacher turned President.  The dragon he slays, or at least aspires to, is that of corruption.  Invariably he is accused of lacking political mettle and clear policies, though he is open to conversing in both Ukrainian and Russian, a point that has earned some traction in the Russian-speaking east of the country.  The establishment tend to critique the politician from the perspective of seasoning: like fermented fish, he must have pungency and long experience.

Not Zelenskiy who, for the moment, has a certain sense of rude freshness about him.  “People want to show the authorities the middle finger, and he is playing the role of this middle finger,” surmised political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko.  Like other figures hostile to the political formula, he has abandoned any semblance of orthodoxy.  He is not interested in interviews; he eschews rallies for the most part.  But he is something of a social media junkie.

For all that, he is not immune to that tradition of patronage, having ties with Igor Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s wealthiest and sketchiest oligarchs.  Think Kolomoisky, think the collapse of PrivatBank.  Depending on viewpoints, Kolomoisky was simply incompetent in causing the loss of $248 million; or he was a ruthless marauder who raided the bank’s assets to the tune of billions of dollars.

Zelenskiy’s retort to claims that he is merely Kolomoisky’s closely controlled puppet has been simple: attacking my oligarch necessitates attacking your dubious business dealings and even more dubious business partners; “are you,” he asked pointedly of Poroshenko, “Mr. Synarchuk’s puppet?”  The Ukrainian defence sector is pickled by the stench of the association between Poroshenko’s former business partner Oleh Svynarchuk and son Ihor.

Such instances supply notes of truly dark humour in the age of the finite politician, and one that promises to play out in the second, run-off election.  And will debating Poroshenko matter in a now promised debate?  No, claims the comedian.  “What difference does it make?”  A fond farewell has been made to political tradition – for the moment, at least.

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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]

Why not! Elections in the US, other Western countries and Israel are rife with dirty tricks. 

According to Haaretz, the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post and other Israeli media, hundreds (maybe thousands) of fake social media accounts are promoting Likud propaganda, Netanyahu’s party, according to the Big Bots Project online watchdog group, saying:

Despite no clearly identifiable links to Netanyahu, the accounts are promoting the same message in cahoots with Likudniks.

Facing bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges, Netanyahu is desperate to cling to power, hoping to mitigate his post-election indictment and prosecution.

The suspect accounts got over 2.5 million hits, activity increasing five-fold since Netanyahu announced April 9 elections last December.

According to the report, the fake accounts are linked to Yitzhak Haddad. A YouTube channel he’s associated with offered money for “responding on Facebook and on the internet with political messages,” he said, adding:

“You just get political messages and you post them,” admitting he created videos, saying he “post(s) them to Twitter (and) all kinds of places.”

“I don’t want to say tens of millions, but loads of money is being invested here. It takes money. There’s no volunteering here,” adding he’s connected to “very senior people” in Likud.

His attorney denied “what was attributed to him” and threatened a million-dollar libel lawsuit against anyone publishing otherwise.

The Hebrew-language report claimed the network of fake social media accounts “operates through manipulations, slander, lies and spreading rumors.”

“On its busiest days, (it) sends out thousands of tweets a day…mobilized at climactic moments for Netanyahu, such as the announcement of the indictment against him.”

According to the report, the network of fake accounts may violate Israeli electoral, campaign finance, privacy and tax laws. A Likud spokesman denied the existence of fake accounts, saying:

“All (party) digital activity is entirely authentic and is based on the great support of the citizens of Israel for Prime Minister Netanyahu and the great achievements of the Likud.”

Big Bot Project’s report was prepared together with a so-called Israeli Alliance group. A suspect network account posting called main Netanyahu rival Benny Gantz a rapist, the accusation reposted on other network accounts.

Another posting was by a woman claiming Gantz sexually harassed her in high school, no evidence cited proving it. Gantz denied the accusation. He sued Israel Hayom’s editor-in-chief Boaz Bismuth for publishing the claim.

He sued him and correspondent Danielle Roth-Avneri for “a series of false reports concerting fictitious charges…published about him.”

Longtime Netanyahu supporter billionaire Sheldon Adelson owns Israel Hayom. Separately, Gantz published videos on social media, accusing Netanyahu of supporting Hamas by backing Israel’s 2005 Gaza disengagement, along with Israel’s high cost of living and healthcare system problems.

Both figures are in a tight race that can go either way, each seeking to get a leg up on the other, dirty tactics part of their strategy.

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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.