Global Research

It’s become popular over the past few years to talk about the so-called “Arab NATO” that the US is reportedly trying to assemble in the Mideast to militarily contain Iran, but the actual entity being created doesn’t resemble its European predecessor at all. Rather, it appears as though the NATO branding was tacked onto it in order to simplify the purpose of this emerging alliance, not to accurately describe its intra-organizational workings or anything else related to NATO for that matter. In order to understand why everyone has it so wrong whenever they talk about the “Arab NATO”, it’s necessary to list off the main differences between these two structures.

Here’s what defines the original NATO:

• Formed after World War II;
• A directly US-led military alliance;
• Unprecedented at the time;
• A common/central operational command;
• A “captured market” for US arms.

Compare that to what the “Arab NATO” is beginning to look like:

• Forming without a regional war having taken place;
• Modelled off of the “Lead From Behind” strategy of back-end, indirect US support;
• Built upon the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC);
• Divided between Saudi Arabia and the UAE;
• Military diversification after recent deals with Russia and China.

For all their differences, here’s what the two alliances have in common:

• Predominant American strategic influence;
• Common foes (USSR/Russia and Iran, respectively);
• Key component of larger geopolitical containment strategies;
• Based along the Eurasian Rimland;
• Multilateral military integration between regional partners.

Dual Redundancies

Unlike NATO at the moment of its inception, the “Arab NATO” is doubly redundant because two interconnected military structures already exist that preceded it. The GCC has gradually been transitioning from an economic group to a military one over the past few decades, but then Saudi Arabia unveiled its transregional Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition (IMCTC) in 2015 stretching from West Africa to Southeast Asia. The latter entity is comprised of Saudi-friendly countries all across the Eastern Hemisphere’s strategically positioned “Islamic Belt”, but it has thus far appeared to be more of a symbolic creation than anything substantive. In any case, the GCC and IMCTC already exist and make one wonder what exactly it is that the US wants to achieve with the “Arab NATO”.

The Containment Core

It can’t be known for certain, but it seems like the US intends for the GCC to simply rebrand as the “Arab NATO”, whether officially or not, since the countries that are usually included in this plan are oftentimes the same ones. This suggests that the US wants to strengthen the IMCTC’s core and hopefully one day turn that larger aforementioned organization into a gigantic proxy against Iran and other Muslim targets all across the Eastern Hemisphere, though this is much easier said than done for several reasons. Here are the most basic challenges facing the US’ strategic efforts to transform the GCC into an “Arab NATO” and then expand that entity all throughout the IMCTC’s member states:

• Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the “core of the core”, are in a “friendly competition” with one another;
• “Peripheral members” of the “GCC+” like Egypt and Jordan would first have to officially join the GCC;
• Israel’s behind-the-scenes support of the “Arab NATO” is controversial without peace in Palestine;
• Some of the IMCTC’s members such as Pakistan don’t want to be “contract soldiers” for the US;
• It takes years of training, coordination, and trust-building to form an effective multinational alliance.

Being mindful of these serious challenges, it’s unlikely that the US will ever succeed in anything more than strengthening military coordination between the GCC’s members, which is already difficult enough as it is seeing as how Saudi Arabia and the UAE are basically waging two separate but semi-coordinated campaigns in Yemen. Neither of those two countries wants to enter into a position where they cede military sovereignty to the other, let alone to the US, so the very optics of an “Arab NATO” are an obstacle in and of themselves. It’s possible that they might put aside their sensitivities for symbolism’s sake, but in that case, they wouldn’t be an “Arab NATO”, but rather a strengthened GCC.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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

Featured image: President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump join King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, and the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, Sunday, May 21, 2017, to participate in the inaugural opening of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

As Congress and the public debate the pros and cons of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), or New NAFTA, behind the scenes and in the shadows transnational corporations are doubling down on their plans to weaken and eliminate public protections through a related entity, the secretive Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC). This little-known council has the mission of promoting trade by “reducing, eliminating or preventing unnecessary regulatory differences” between Canada and the United States. Since the RCC’s inception, agribusiness—including factory-farmed livestock producers, the feed industry, and chemical and pesticide manufacturers and linked transportation businesses—has had a seat at the regulatory cooperation table. Their focus, without exception, has been advocating the scaling back and even elimination of important safety protections in both countries. In the U.S., recommendations made by the RCC feed directly into regulations enacted (or eliminated) by the Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency, among others.

Cross-border regulatory cooperation activities aimed at eliminating so-called “non-tariff barriers” to trade—standards that can increase the cost of importing products that don’t meet another country’s health and safety protections, or prevent the import altogether—began following the signing of the original NAFTA. Initially, informal working groups were established to harmonize pesticide and other regulations. The RCC was formally created in 2011 by an Executive Order from President Obama, and proceeded to establish work plans to harmonize U.S. and Canadian regulations in 23 policy areas, including meat and plant inspections, food safety, workplace chemicals, chemicals management, rail safety and transport of dangerous goods. The RCC was revitalized in June 2017 by the Trump and Trudeau administrations with a new Memorandum of Understanding.

The Trump administration recently sought comment from “stakeholders” on what the RCC’s activities and focus should be going forward. It is very clear that the administration’s RCC initiative is part of its broader deregulatory plan. The U.S. request for comment specifically states that international regulatory cooperation initiatives “may serve deregulatory functions and help agencies achieve the objectives of Executive Order 13771.” This executive order “requires that, for each fiscal year, agencies must identify in their Regulatory Plans offsetting regulations for each regulation that increases incremental cost” and at a minimum, must repeal two regulations for every one that is adopted. The Trump government intends for the RCC process to promote these regulatory rollbacks.

Predictably, the RCC stakeholder submissions were mostly from transnational corporations and industry associations. Most of the public, as well as many food, consumer and environmental groups, have never heard of the RCC. (IATP’s comments were among very few from civil society.) The corporate commenters have a consistent message, which mirrors that of the Trump administration: Use the RCC to get rid of regulations. Many also see the RCC as a mechanism for implementing new restrictions on public protections that are part of the New NAFTA. Here are some of the most egregious industry asks:

• All inspections of imported meat at the border should be eliminated. In their joint comments on the RCC, the North American Meat Institute (NAMI) and Canadian Meat Council (CMC) said that “microbial and residue testing of meat products at the border should be eliminated” in order to facilitate trade, and opined that “Free Trade Agreements between the US and Canada provide the legal basis” for this action. As Food & Water Watch has pointed out, the no-inspection demand is one these meat industry lobbyists have been making since the RCC was established in 2011. Border inspections are important for protecting public health because U.S. and Canadian food standards and practices are not the same. It also protects the public as government is privatizing meat inspection and shifting to self-reporting while slaughtering line speeds increase. Food & Water Watch gives the example of USDA’s zero tolerance policy for the pathogen Listeria monocytogenes on all products it regulates. Canada does not have this ban. Without checking at the border, there is no way to know if Canadian products that violate U.S. policy on this pathogen are being imported into the U.S. While the industry’s earlier demands to end border inspections were upended by a major recall of contaminated Canadian beef in 2012, the industry is trying again under the Trump administration. This time, they may succeed.

• If all border inspections aren’t eliminated, then food safety inspectors should reduce tested sample size. If you test less of a product, you will undoubtedly find fewer violations. Of course, this isn’t the reason meat industry lobbyists NAMI and CMC give for their request that the RCC focus on reducing sampling lot size—instead they say their goal is to prevent food waste! When it comes to food safety, what you don’t know can hurt you.

• Prevent Canada’s new mandatory Front of Package health and nutrition labels from going into effect. The U.S. Meat Export Federation wants the RCC to harmonize front-of-package labeling between the U.S. and Canada. What does this mean? The industry’s goal is to use the RCC process to stop Canada from implementing new health warnings on packaged foods. In their regulatory cooperation comments, NAMI and CMC assert that food nutrition labels proposed by Health Canada were promulgated in a manner inconsistent with “good regulatory practice as outlined in the text” of New NAFTA, and that the proposed rule “creates a non-tariff trade barrier for U.S. companies.” The groups falsely claim that the Canadian measures are not evidence-based and “will be unique in the world and set a dangerous precedent,” mentioning particularly their objection to linking the labeling provisions to restrictions on marketing to children. In fact, health warnings on junk food packaging has been effectively implemented in several countries to combat obesity, diabetes and other diet-related diseases. As we reported previously, U.S. negotiators, egged on by agribusiness, sought to prevent Canada (as well as Mexico and the U.S.) from implementing effective front-of-package junk food warning labels. The proposed anti-labeling negotiating text was leaked, and the ensuing public outcry killed the proposal. It appears that the meat industry wants to use this secretive regulatory cooperation process to achieve through the back door what it was unable to accomplish directly in New NAFTA.

• Allow Canadian-grown meat to be sold with chemical treatments and in packaging that currently isn’t allowed. Canada doesn’t allow some “food safety interventions and packaging” that the U.S. does, according to meat industry lobbyists CMC and NAMI. The industry suggests that since some U.S. meat products exported to Canada are allowed to be sold even when chemically treated or in packaging that Canada does not allow domestically, “there is a compelling rationale to converge these approval processes.” In their view, Canada should simply adopt the U.S. standard, and the RCC can help achieve this outcome.

• Reduce safety testing of containers used to transport pesticides and other hazardous chemicals. The Industrial Packaging Alliance of North America (IPANA) wants to use the RCC to limit required safety inspections of containers used to transport hazardous goods. Currently, under U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration rules, these containers must be retested every 12 months. Right now, Transport Canada does not require any periodic safety retesting, but it has proposed testing every five years. The industry group says the U.S. standard “represents a competitive cost disadvantage for U.S. manufacturers” and that changing to the Canadian proposal “would eliminate a significant and unnecessary regulatory burden.” How would workers and others exposed to leaking pesticides or exploding hazardous materials be affected if these containers fail because of inadequate testing? IPANA doesn’t say.

• Use obscure words instead of plain language to hide information from consumers. The Chamber of Commerce thinks the RCC should help get rid of a U.S. rule that requires English words instead of obscure Latin terms for 57 ingredients on some consumer product labels. Since Canada allows the Latin terms, harmonizing the two countries’ regulations to the Canadian standard presents a unique opportunity to further confuse consumers trying to decipher what’s really in these household products—and whether they are safe.

• Exempt U.S. exporters from some Canadian safety standards for explosive grain dust in animal feed and non-food grain. This is one of many joint requests from the National Grain and Feed Association and North American Export Grain Association. Canada requires hazard labeling and safety data sheets for workers handling animal feed and non-food grain, whereas the U.S. does not. The feed associations want the RCC to harmonize regulations intended to prevent dangerous grain dust explosions by allowing the less protective U.S. standard to apply. The industry solution? Of course, harmonize downward.

• Roll back controls on climate-harming hydrofluorocarbon gases. The Chemistry Society of Canada and the American Chemistry Association want Canada to piggy-back on a Trump administration attempt to roll back rules meant to prevent the leaking and venting of organic compounds called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) from large refrigerating and air-conditioning units. HFCs contribute to global warming and ozone depletion. The chemical industry lobbyists state the RCC should be used to “encourage collaboration between Canada and the U.S., which could reduce burden, enhance compliance, and promote a North American market.” It would also further accelerate climate change, not to mention contribute to more cases of skin cancer, facts the chemical industry fails to mention.

It is very clear that the Regulatory Cooperation Council, and related language in the new NAFTA, is part of a broader deregulatory plan. New NAFTA hasn’t yet been sent to Congress for ratification and isn’t in effect, but that hasn’t stopped industry lobbying groups from trying to use it to deregulate. Several comments submitted by industry groups made the case that provisions in New NAFTA should be implemented through the RCC, or that a domestic regulation they object to violates provisions in the deal. As we discuss above, in their objections to Canada’s new junk food labeling rule, the meat industry claims the rule is inconsistent with New NAFTA’s “Good Regulatory Practices” (GRP) chapter. The GRP chapter includes provisions defining what information and studies may be used to develop domestic regulations, how other countries should be involved in the rule-making process, and procedures for adopting, reviewing and repealing regulations. It also includes many provisions promoting regulatory cooperation and harmonization. Other New NAFTA chapters, including provisions on technical rules including labeling, also encourage or require regulatory cooperation prior to adoption of new mandatory public protections.

While different regulations in the two countries could be harmonized to the most protective of the divergent standards, that approach is not reflected in any of these recent industry demands. Nor is it what actually happened during the decade since the RCC was established. Perhaps there is no more devastating and obvious proof of this than U.S. and Canadian regulators’ actions both before and after the 2013 Lac Mégantic train disaster.

From the early days of the RCC, it was a forum for regulators to seek to harmonize regulations governing rail safety and the transport of dangerous goods, including policies regulating the rail transport of volatile crude from North Dakota’s Bakken formation and Alberta’s oil sands through Canada and the U.S. We know now that these regulatory cooperation initiatives did nothing to improve rail safety, either before or after a 72-car runaway oil train crashed and exploded like a bomb in the Quebec village of Lac Mégantic, directly killing 47, destroying the community’s historic center, and spilling thousands of gallons of crude oil on the edge of what had been a pristine lake and tourist destination.

The disaster was caused by reckless industry cost-cutting, abetted by massive regulatory failure as the Canadian government pursued a single-minded focus on deregulation. This deregulatory agenda has many parallels with what’s going on now under the Trump administration, including the arbitrary and foolish 2-for-1 policy that requires repealing two existing regulations for every new rule. Transport of dangerous goods and rail safety continue to be part of the RCC’s mission. It’s hard to see how secretive discussions aimed at eliminating regulatory differences that impede free trade will improve safety, especially with the Trump administration busy rolling back many measures intended to address some of the biggest safety gaps that led to the Lac Mégantic disaster. As Bruce Campbell’s book on Lac Mégantic details, these rollbacks include delaying or completely stopping:

• measures to require more than one crew member on dangerous goods transporting trains;
• positive train control, the remote control satellite-based protection system that helps prevent derailments;
• a rule requiring certain trains carrying high-hazard liquids to be operated with an electronically controlled pneumatic braking system by 2021;
• prospective regulations to address track deterioration;
• and proposals to require engineers to be screened for sleep apnea.

The current RCC agenda, added to New NAFTA’s “Good Regulatory Practices,” points to a concerted effort by corporations and their allies in government to lower standards in North America and beyond. Neither the Canadian nor U.S. government seems likely to use the RCC to harmonize rules upwards. Obviously, when at least one of the two countries seeking to harmonize regulations across the border is hell-bent on rescinding public protections, harmonization will lead to lower standards. Protective standards and oversight are already deficient in both countries—from meat inspection and food safety, to protecting workers and the public from exploding grain elevators and exploding oil trains. Without the will to hold industry accountable and adopt strict protections, regulatory cooperation in and of itself does nothing to improve those standards. In fact, as the rail safety example illustrates, the RCC experience even under the more regulation-friendly Obama administration failed the public interest. Indeed, just this month there was another major derailment which killed the crew as a freight train plunged 60 meters off a bridge near the British Columbia-Alberta border.

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Featured image is from IATP

“One cannot praise enough the intelligent legislation of Spanish America’s new republics, which, since their inception, have been seriously concerned with slavery’s total cessation. In that respect, this vast part of the earth has an immense advantage over the South of United States.”

“In North America white men have created for themselves a white republic with the most shameful laws of slavery.”

— Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)

In 2019 we celebrate the 250th birthday of the scientist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt, the true “discoverer” of America according to Simon Bolívar, who knew him personally. Between 1799 and 1804, Alexander von Humboldt, accompanied by the French botanist Aimé Bonpland, traveled through the colonies of Spanish America, exploring regions that today belong to Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Cuba. Back in Europe, Humboldt began publishing several books recounting his adventures in America, revealing the natural and cultural riches of South America to a curious and fascinated European public.

While writing about the wonders of the tropical nature of America and the cultural wealth of its original peoples, Humboldt denounced — like no other before him — the horrors of slavery, the oppression of Indigenous peoples, and the injustices of the colonial system. Its importance for our time is due precisely to his ability to see the interrelations between the environment, society, politics and the economy. He was the first modern Western thinker to scientifically describe the planet as a living organism where humans, plants, animals, soils and climate interact and influence each other. The novelty of this vision at his time, when a mechanistic view of nature still prevailed, was revolutionary. For Humboldt, poetry and science were two complementary and necessary ways of understanding the world. His influence on poets, writers, and scientists was enormous. Goethe loved spending hours talking to his younger friend Humboldt. Both “Faust” and his studies of plants might not have existed as we know them today had it not been for Humboldt’s influence.

Charles Darwin took several of Humboldt’s books with him on his Beagle voyage, with which he was in constant dialogue. Without Humboldt, Darwin would hardly have written the Origin of Species, nor would Thoreau hardly have written Walden.

Humboldt was probably the last scientist capable of understanding almost all scientific thinking of his day, and used this knowledge to show how different phenomena relate to each other in an approach that we would call today «interdisciplinary».

While exploring the Valencia Lake region in present-day Venezuela, for example, Humboldt began to understand the relationship between agriculture and climate change. He wrote:

“When forests are destroyed, as they are everywhere in America by the European planters, with an imprudent precipitation, the springs are entirely dried up, or become less abundant. The beds of the rivers, remaining dry during a part of the year, are converted into torrents, whenever great rains fall on the heights. The sword and moss disappearing with the brush-wood from the sides of the mountains, the waters falling in rain are no longer impeded in their course; and instead of slowly augmenting the level of the rivers by progressive filtrations, they furrow during heavy showers the sides of the hills, bear down the loosened soil and form those sudden inundations that devastate the country.”

Humboldt drew attention to the fact that forests increase the ability of soils to retain water and how they contribute to regulate climate. Understanding these interrelationships and how they contribute to climate change is a key part of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — what Humboldt did more than 100 years ago. Moreover, Humboldt clearly denounced the colonial system and the capitalist mode of production — without using this term — as the main mode responsible for the destruction of the environment and consequent impacts on climate: European farmers and their production turned to the interests of the metropolis, using slave labor and expelling Indigenous peoples from their lands. Humboldt clearly denounced European colonial “barbarism” and presented a vision of South American Indigenous peoples and black slaves differently from the dominant assumptions of their time. Humboldt not only rejected the endemic racism and the supposed “superiority” of the “white race”, but declared that the cultures of Indigenous peoples are as creative and diverse as European cultures. In addition, Humboldt vehemently attacked Count Buffon, one of the leading proponents of European “scientific racism,” and exposed the ridicule of his ideas.

The progress of science in the 19th century has inevitably led to even greater specializations and the relative isolation of various scientific disciplines, thus hindering an integral view of the planet that Humboldt still could have. This situation is still prevalent today, since the greatest difficulty we have is integrating the enormous amount of knowledge that we accumulated in several fields into an overview — a fundamental task that could contribute immensely to our future. Once again, the work of the IPCC is a concrete and current example of this attempt. However, by its very nature, the IPCC cannot clearly and precisely include the political and economic dimensions in its studies — or even superficially allude to the problems posed by the capitalist economy, not to mention condemning capitalism itself.

If, on one hand, Humboldt’s world-view, combining philosophy, poetry and natural sciences, was possible only at the time he lived; on the other hand, in a certain way, Humboldt came “too soon”. He died before Germany began its experiments with colonies in Africa, especially in Namibia, and the consequent upsurge of “scientific” racism in Germany and throughout Europe.

The Count de Gobineau, who would retake the banner of Bouffon racism so ridiculed by Humboldt, was born in 1816 — Humboldt was then 47 — and lived until 1882, so over 20 years after Humboldt died, over 20 years of “work” spreading racist theories with no one with the same reputation and ability as Alexander von Humboldt to contradict him. The connection between German colonialism in Africa and the later emergence of the Nazi movement has been amply demonstrated by historians such as David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen in “The Kaiser’s Holocaust.” With the rise of Nazism in Germany in the late 1920s, how could the thinking of Humboldt, the most celebrated German scientist of the 19th century, be reconciled with the Nazi ideology? In fact, at the end of the 19th century, Humboldt had already become an embarrassing character for Europe’s cultural capitalist elite. Consequently, his work had to be expunged from its most visionary part: its denunciation of colonialism, economic exploitation of the environment, and of human beings — especially Indigenous peoples and slaves. We had to forget that the most celebrated scientist of all time attacked racism and defended the Indigenous peoples and black slaves from capitalist economic exploitation, precisely so that the exploitation of third world countries by the same European powers denounced by Humboldt could continue.

I may be mistaken, but I do not think that Karl Marx – an exact contemporary of the Count de Gonineau – studied the writings of Humboldt in depth. I believe that Marxism would have acquired another understanding of colonialism, racism and the supposed “superiority” of European civilization and the “white race” over Indigenous and black peoples. The ideas of Hegel on all that – a contemporary of Humboldt who greatly influenced Marx – were much closer to the thinking of Count de Gobineau than to the revolutionary vision of Humboldt.

Perhaps the most relevant contribution of Humboldt to the understanding of our own times comes from the relationship between him, Simon Bolivar (image on the right), and Thomas Jefferson (image below). On his return from the voyage through Spanish America in 1804, Humboldt spent a short time in the United States where he met Thomas Jefferson, the then celebrated President of the U.S.A. Jefferson shared the same interests in natural sciences as Humboldt, and also had an encyclopaedic mind. The two got along very well, talking for hours when Humboldt was a guest at the White House. But there was an irreconcilable fundamental question between the two: slavery. Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the new republic that claimed to be the homeland of liberty and equality was not only the owner of slaves, but also advocated the importance of maintaining slavery for the economic development of the United States. Humboldt denounced the horror and hypocrisy underlying such an idea of “economic development”. Jefferson also agreed with Buffon’s ideas about the “inferiority” of the “black race”, which Humboldt considered idiotic.

Shortly after his return to Paris, Humboldt was introduced to a young gentleman, newly arrived from the Spanish colonies of America: Simon Bolívar, the future “liberator”. Bolivar reported how the meeting with Humboldt opened his eyes to the wonders and potential of his own country: the future Venezuela.

As Bolívar wrote in his famous “Letter of Jamaica”, it was Humboldt who really showed him his own continent, America.

The two met again some months later in Rome – and at this time Bolívar already spoke about the independence of Spanish America. At this moment, the advice and wisdom of Humboldt were fundamental for the political maturity of young Bolívar. While in Rome, Bolivar would swear an oath to free America, and then return to his country.

Bolívar’s fight for the independence of the Spanish colonies did not go unnoticed by Thomas Jefferson, who corresponded with Humboldt, requesting information about the revolutionary movement led by Bolivar as it unfolded — questions that Humboldt could answer “better than any other”, as Jefferson wrote. But Jefferson’s relationship with the struggle for liberation from the Spanish colonies was rather ambiguous. If on one hand, Jefferson considered important the establishment of republics and the end of control by the Spanish monarchy in the American territory, he also feared the consequences of this liberation on the U.S. economy. While Spain maintained its control over the colonies, the U.S. economy benefited from the export of grains and wheat to Spanish America, since the agriculture of the colonies was entirely geared to the financial interests of the metropolis or, as we would say today, was an economy based on the export of a few products to the world market. With independence, the colonies could produce their own food, which was a blow to U.S. exports.

The independence of Spanish America posed another, much greater danger to the United States — a danger that Jefferson understood very well: he hoped the colonies would remain separate and not unite in one country, for as “a single mass they will be a very powerful neighbour”, Jefferson admitted.

And since then, this has been the great nightmare of the US: a united, independent and powerful South America. It is the main reason behind the United States’ aggression towards Venezuela today. Venezuela has oil and other natural resources coveted by the large multinational corporations intrinsically linked to the elite that governs the United States. But this fact does not fully explain the U.S.A’s intense aversion and hostility towards Venezuela. The deepest and oldest reason dates back to Humboldt’s time, to the liberation wars of Bolivar and the Jefferson administration: the necessity of preventing, by all means, the union of South America, of not allowing its development to be independent and sovereign. Since his election in 1999, Hugo Chavez suffered three violent attacks: the 2002 coup, the 2002-2003 “strike” and the 2004 “recall” referendum, not to mention the permanent attempts to destabilize and strangle Venezuelan economy. But Chávez also contributed most to Latin American integration: UNASUR and CELAC were initiatives led mainly by Venezuela under his government, the most dangerous challenge to U.S. hegemony in the region since the Cuban revolution. Hugo Chávez and Venezuela dared to revive Simon Bolivar’s dream of an independent, united, sovereign and powerful South America. The empire cannot bear this affront — nor this threat.

Simon Bolívar, unlike Jefferson, freed all his slaves and put in the constitution of the first country he liberated from Spanish rule the prohibition of slavery, hence Humboldt’s admiration in the quotation at the beginning of this text. Humboldt accompanied and encouraged the struggles for Spanish America’s independence until the end of his life. Between Jefferson and Bolivar, between a nation that frees its slaves and another that feeds on them, Humboldt chose the side of Bolivar and his project.

In the 20th century, Humboldt would have defended and supported the liberation movements of the European colonies in Africa and Asia, exchanged letters with Ho Chi Min and defended Vietnam; he would have welcomed the Cuban revolution and been friends with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Humboldt would have admired Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian project, ALBA. There is no doubt that, today, Humboldt would be defending Venezuela against the aggressions of the “Republic of white men”. Gabriel Garcia Marquez knew this, that’s why Humboldt appears in his novel “The General in his Labyrinth” and is also mentioned in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.

Perhaps the planned events of the “Humboldt Year”, mainly by institutions in Germany, will not speak of this Humboldt. Perhaps they will describe him as a character of the past, with little relevance to the present or to the future, but then this could be considered the most glaring example of Europe’s betrayal of its own Enlightenment ideals today. When we see the elite of Europe joining the lies of the Empire about Venezuela, when we see Europe joining the coup against the legitimately elected government of Nicolas Maduro — it is clear that this aggression is not only against the Venezuelan people, but also against the best of European culture. Celebrating Humboldt today and at the same time not defending Venezuela will be yet another example of the hypocrisy and lack of intellectual honesty that seems to have become the hallmark of our time.

It will perhaps be up to Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia to move the celebrations of the “Humboldt Year” forward since Alexander von Humboldt and his legacy live much more among these Latin American peoples than in a neoliberal Europe increasingly submissive to the interests of the Empire and the “white supremacy” it represents.

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This article was originally published on Alai. Translated from Spanish by Tamanna Kohi.

Recently, the heads of five South Korean political parties visited Washington (February 12 to 14) with a mission to assure the supports of American politicians for the success of the second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi.

But, what is hard to believe is that while the leaders of the four political parties made lobbying for the success of the Summit, the leader of the main conservative opposition party, the Ja-yoo Hangook- Dang (LKP), Mme Na Kyung-won, tried to convince Washington politicians that North Korea should not be trusted and there should be no end of the Korean War. This party seemed to wish for the continuation of the nuclear crisis.

This episode illustrates how deeply the Korean society is divided between the “conservatives” and the rest of the population over the question of the nuclear crisis and the North-South relations. This relation between the conservatives and the rest of the population has been one of mutual suspect, mistrust, animosity and even outright hostility

This friction between the conservatives and the rest of the population is called “south-south friction within South Korea” (the Nam-Nam-gal-deung)  

This is a serious problem in South Korea, for it can impact not only the peace process, but the future of democracy, the North-South economic cooperation and even the eventual reunification of Koreas.

In this paper, first, the focus is on the origin of the conservative group. This group was created by those who collaborated with the Japanese so that in the eyes of Koreans, the conservative government had neither the strong legitimacy to rule nor popular trust.

Second, it will be shown that lacking the legitimacy and popular trust, the conservative government needed to rule as long as it could; it ruled Korea for 58 years.

Third, the discussion is about the oppressive methods and dubious tactics which allowed the conservative government to rule so long.

Fourth, this section will show how the Korean people fought against the conservative government.

Finally, in the final 5th section, there will be some concluding remarks.

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1. Origin of the pro-Japan conservative group.

To find the origin of the conservative group, we have to go back to 1910 when Korea was illegally annexed to Japan because of unpatriotic actions taken by a group of individuals considered as traitors; this group, pro-Japan, was led by Lee Wan Yong, prime minister then; he signed the treaty of annexation without the approval of Emperor Gojong of the Lee Dynasty.

During the 35 years of harsh Japanese colonial rule, many of the pro-Japan group members (Chin-il-pa) took side with Japan and abused their power by collaborating with the Japanese colonial government in sending young Koreans to labour slave camps in Japan and elsewhere, recruiting and sending the Korean youth to the Japanese imperial army, confiscating the land and other real estate assets belonging to Korean patriots and forcing Koreans to change Korean names into Japanese names.

One of the worst crimes against humanity committed by Japan was the large scale sex slavery; 200,000 teen age girls, mostly Koreans, were captured and sent to Japanese military camps where they suffered from years of cruel sub-human sex slavery. Some of the pro-Japan Koreans did collaborate with Japanese police in finding and sending these girls to serve as sex slaves.

The most serious crime committed by the pro-Japan conservative group was their collaboration in capturing those Korean patriots who fought with their lives for the independence of Korea against the Japanese oppressive colonialism.

The collaborators knew that they were working for the interest of Japanese at the expense of those of Koreans. This made them to distance themselves from the rest of Koreans; they found themselves isolated. To survive, they had to form a tightly knit group and their priority was to develop and conserve their personal and group interests.

In 1945, Korea was liberated from the yoke of Japanese brutal colonialism. In a normal situation, Korea should have punished those Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese.

This did not happen; none of the collaborators were punished. A committee was formed to punish them. But Washington did not allow it. Under the U. S. military government which ruled South Korea from 1945 to 1948, many of the former Korean collaborators worked for the American military government.

In 1949, Rhee Sygnman formed the firs Korean government. Most of the high ranking government officials were former collaborators. About 40% of police force was organized with former Korean police officers who served under the Japanese colonial government.

Three Koreans shot for pulling up rails as a protest against seizure of land without payment by the Japanese (Source: Public Domain)

The Korean patriots fought against the Japanese government mainly in Manchuria, China and the Korean peninsula. Many of them fought alongside with the Chinese and the Russian army. Their political leader was Kim Koo who was the president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea established in 1919 operating in China. Kim Koo came back to Korea in 1945 with the hope to establish an independent government excluding the collaborators, but he was assassinated in 1949 by the government of Rhee Sygnman. A great number of Korean patriots were assassinated or fled to North Korea.

Thus, the destiny of the post-liberation Korea was in the firm hands of former collaborators and the Korean society was clearly divided between pro-Japan collaborators and powerless Koreans. This was Nam-Nam friction which begun right after 1945 to last for 70 years: it is still a reality.

The pro-Japan conservative conservatives have had six governments under six presidents: Rhee Sygnman (1948-1960), Park Chung-hee (1961-1979), Chun Doo-hwan (1981-1987), Rho Tae-woo (1987-1992) Lee Myong-bak (2007-2012) and Park Geun-hye (2013-2017).

Each of these presidents has terminated his or her term in a tragic manner. One was chased by students; one was assassinated; two served prison terms. There are two more currently in prison. They are or were all accused for the abuse of power and corruption

2. Longevity of the Conservative Government

The pro-Japan conservative had ruled Korea for 35 years (1910-1945) in collaboration with the colonial Japanese; they have continued to govern Korea for 58 more years out of 70 years passed since 1948.

You may wonder how and why the conservative government could keep power for so long. The following factors explain: the strategy of “Northern Wind”, Coups d’état, the manipulation of the Constitution, and the oppressive government policies.

The “Northern Wind” is an electoral tactics used by the conservatives in order to maximize the chance of winning elections. It involves two steps. First, a few week before the election, they create a climate of fear of war with the North in such a manner that the national security becomes the top priority. To do so, the conservatives fabricate threats from the North often based on fake eye witnesses. In one occasion, the conservatives would have asked the North to make hostile actions in exchange of a large sum of money, but the attempt would have failed.

Second, the conservatives launch a media campaign to convince the voters that they are the most qualified to protect the population from the threats from the North. To prove this, they boast the long history of military regime of the conservatives. This tactics have been very effective tool for the electoral victories of the conservatives. Thus, ironically North Korea has been a useful electoral ally of the conservatives.

The coups d’état have been one of the tactics of preserving the power.  There were two major coups d’état in Korea:  one by General Park Chung-hee (image on the right) on the 16th of May, 1961 and the other by General Chun Doo-hwan on the 12th of December, 1980

The manipulation of the Constitution was another favoured means of preserving the conservatives’ power. President Rhee Sygnman amended the Constitution in 1956 allowing him to stay in power for 12 years from 1948 to 1960. General Park Chung-hee imposed on the population the “Yushin” Constitution in 1972 to keep power for life. General Chun Doo-hwan imposed the Yushin Constitution of his predecessor when he took power in 1980; he stayed in power until 1987.

Until the Constitution of 1987, the regime of indirect presidential election had prevailed; General Park Chung-hee and General Chun Doo-hwan were elected by a pre-selected electoral college

The conservative governments’ oppressive policies have been another powerful tool for the preservation of their power. The purpose of these policies was to silence the voices of opposition to government policies. These oppressive policies have taken several forms: mass killing, fabrication of North Korean spies, police harassing, torturing to the death of young students for having participated in demonstration against the government and the oppression of the media

Nobody knows how many innocent Koreans were accused as “Reds” and killed, imprisoned and tortured by the conservative governments. But several millions could have been the victim. Under the government of Rhee Syngnman, more than 200,000 innocent Koreans were killed in the areas of Jeju, Yosu and Soonchon. The government accused these poor victims for being “communists”, “Reds”, “PPal- gaing-ie” Among the victims were children and old people who had nothing to do with ideology.

General Chun Doo-hwan had his share of killing the people. In 18th of May, 1980, the citizens of Gwang-ju organized a street demonstration to protest the Chun’s dictatorship. Chun mobilized highly trained air-born battalion and killed at least 1,000 citizens with tanks and helicopters. A great number of citizens were wounded. Moreover, Chun set up, during his presidency (1980-1987), a massive killing field in the Sancheong Education School; about 100,000 young people were massacred for not supporting Chun’s government policies and some other dubious reasons.

The true reason behind these massacres was to silence the voice of opposition against the corruption and the violation of human rights committed by the conservatives. These people were falsely condemned as “Reds” or “being friendly with North Korea” (Chin-book). In other words, the existence of North-South tension provided a good reason to oppress the people.

Under the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, millions of South Korean citizens were harassed by the police for having a friend, or a family member who are “suspected” to be “Reds”.

Countless young people were falsely accused for being “Reds”, imprisoned, tortured and killed. More than ten Japanese-Korean students who had come to South Korea to study were falsely accused by the CIA of the Park Chung-hee’s government as North Korean spies; they were all judged later not guilty; this was a typical case of fabricated spy stories.

Under Chun Doo-hwan, numerous young students were tortured to death including Park Jeong-chul who was tortured to death on the 14 of January 1987.

On the 25th of 2016, an old man named, Baik Nam-ki died as a result of police water-canon shooting during a street demonstration against the corruption of the government of Park Geun-hye. Baik was simply asking the government to raise the price of rice frozen for more than ten years.

The oppression of the media was a regular part of the conservative government’s abuse of power. The government of Lee Myong-bak, forced the MBC TV Chain to fire hundreds of highly competent TV reporters, because they criticized the government policies.

The most celebrated case was the removal of Choi Sung-ho and Lee Sang-ho of MBC. Now, Choi is the head of MBC, while Lee runs “Gobal News” which is doing a good job of detecting false news massively manufactured by conservative corporate media.

The oppression of the media became even worse under Park Geun-hye. Her government made a black list of 10,000 artists, film makers, painters and a host of others individuals who are suspected to have ideas which were not friendly to her government policies; these people on the black lists were under constant surveillance and penalized in the allocation of government subsidies.

3. Negative Impact of the Conservative Governments

It is true that the conservatives have made significant contributions to the modernization, the industrialization and the rapid development of the Korean economy. In particular, the strong leadership of President Park Chung-hee during the process of the take-off of the Korean economy is well recognized. However, unfortunately, they are mainly responsible for the culture of corruption in the South, the Nam-Nam friction and the North-South tension.

The 58 years of rule by the South Korean conservative government has left profound and devastating footprints on the Korean society. First, as we saw above, this group was formed during the Japanese colonial era; many of them were collaborators with the Japanese; this made them find themselves alienated and isolated.

Having been collaborated with the Japanese and damaged the interest of Korea, they lacked the legitimacy in governing the country and they had to cope with strong resistance of the people. This may have led them to consider the population as an adversary, if not enemy.

For the conservatives, North Korea has been more than an adversary; it was an enemy for two reasons. To begin with it was a communist country. Second, the government of North Korea was established by the patriots who regarded the pro-Japanese collaborators as enemy. Thus, the South Korean conservatives had to live with the unfriendly population in the South and the hostile enemy in the North.

Under such situation, the priority of the conservatives had to be its own defence and its own survival; the concern with the social justice and the welfare of the people could have been regarded as unimportant; the top priority was the maximization of their personal and group interests.

Under such situation, the wide spread corruption was inevitable. The conservatives are the elite of the Korea society; they are the upstream of the society, the rest of the population is the downstream of the society. There is the old saying: “if the upstream is rotten, so is the downstream”. The corrupted hands of the conservatives have touched every sector, every corner of the society. That is, the corruption has become a “culture”.

The corruption of the conservatives is dramatically revealed by the embezzlement of millions even billions of US dollars by the heads of the conservative governments.

Nobody knows how much of tax payers’ money was taken by the family of President Park Chung-hee and President Park Geun – hye; it may amount to billions of dollars invested in real estate abroad.

President Chun Doo-hwan and President Rho Tae-woo were accused for the embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars of tax payers’ money.

President Lee Myong-bak is accused for receiving millions of dollars as bribery. He is also suspected for enriching himself through the infamous “4-River Projects” and the scandalous “Natural Resource Diplomacy” in which a Canadian firms was implicated. Lee Myong-bak is in prison waiting for the final judgment; at this first trial he was condemned for 15 years.

The corruption culture can impose fatal damage to the entire society. The bailout of insolvent firms because of bribery weakens the firm’s competitiveness. Because of bribery, a dangerous criminal does not go to prison. Because of kick-knacks, the navy buys a submarine that does not go underwater. An embezzler of millions of dollars goes free, because the police chief is his father. All these are more than capable of destroying a society.

But what makes me very sad is that the corruption culture and the abuse of power can shake the very moral foundation of human relations. The warmth, the mutual trust, the mutual respect which have ruled personal relationship in Korea for thousands of years have barely survived; the money has become the key determinant of human relations.

Nowadays, “wealth is might and right”. In the world where money is god, the human nature is such that the strong and rich despise and oppress the weak and the poor.

In Korea, such distorted relation is called “Kap-jil” meaning that the strong mistreats the weak. A few years ago (December 5, 2014), there was an incidence of kap-jil on a Korean Air flight from new York to Seoul involving a daughter of the founder of Korean Air, Cho hyun-ah. She insulted and treated the staff on board almost as slaves. The problem was the way the staff served her the macadonia nuts

In fact, every member of Cho family did kap-jils to the employees of the Korean Air. Regrettably, the practice of kap-jils is widely spread among the elite largely represented by the conservatives.

4. Popular Uprising Against the Conservatives

The dictatorship, the abuse of power and the corruption of the conservative government could have gone even further, if the Korean people did not fight back.

At critical moments of history; the Korean people fought on the streets against the conservative governments.

On the 19th of April, 1960, fifty thousand students fought against the rigged presidential election. This was “the April Revolution”. They succeeded in chasing President Rhee Sygnman; he fled out of Korea on a U.S. CIA plane.

On the 16th of October 1979, more than 100,000 people young and old fought in Busan-Masan areas against the Park Chung-hee’s attempt to perpetuate his presidency. This was “The Bu-Ma Democratic Protest”. President Park Chung-hee was assassinated by his CIA director on the 26th of October 1979.

In May 1980, the citizens of Gwangju City fought against the tyranny of the dictatorship of General Chun Doo-hwan for ten days (18th to 27th); this was “the May 18 Democratic Uprising”. More than thousand citizens were killed by tanks and helicopters and young girls were raped. It was the victory over Chun’s criminal regime.

On the 16th of 1987, a few weeks after the Gwangju Uprising, more than one million people went to the street and battled for 19 days for a new constitution, the end of the Yushin constitution and the coming of a new political system of direct presidential election. In this new constitution, all authorities come from the people. This movement was “The June Democratic Movement”..

The final massive citizen protest came in 2016. More than 17 million citizens fought for 20 weeks from October 2016 against the corruption, abuse of power, traffic of influences, the transactions of high ranking jobs and all sorts of illegal and immoral activities of Park Geun-hye’s government and its friends. This was “The Candle-Light Revolution”.

Park Geun-hye was impeached; Moon Jae-in has restored the liberal government in 1987. Park Geun-hye is imprisoned for at least 25 years.

5. Concluding Remarks

The liberal government headed by Moon Jae-in took over the power in 2018 after the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye.

With Moon Jae-in, Korea may allow itself to hope for a better future where there will be no more Nam-Nam friction, where the North and the South will co-exist in harmony, where there will be no more kap-jils, where a sense of public morality will be restored and where the money will be no more a “god”

However, the conservatives are not dead; the footprints of corruption are still there. They are fighting back to restore their power. They have a lot of money; money can buy the power. There is a real possibility that they will try to prevent the peace process from succeeding in collaboration with the Japanese conservatives and Washington hawks.

The Japanese conservatives may need the nuclear crisis, for it facilitates electoral wins. Washington hawks may want to maintain the tension on the Korean peninsula so that they can sell more weapons. The South Korean conservatives may not wish for denuclearization so that they can win elections and, at the same time, make dark money deriving from weapon buying. In short, the South Korean conservatives could be the most ardent opponent to denuclearization.

Even if the second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi at the end of February succeeds, the conservatives can kill the peace process, if they win the presidential election in three years.

Thus, President Moon Jae-in and the liberals have two choices. First, they can make the conservatives powerless through the process of the purification of corruption. This is not easy. A better way is to win the second term of liberal government. This is not impossible.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is co-director of the East Asia Observatory (OAE)-the Study Center for Integration and Globalization (CEIM) of Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG)

The Trump administration is threatening to unleash a flood of lawsuits involving Cuba, which no U.S. president has ever done. It has set a deadline of March 2 to announce whether it will create, in the words of the National Lawyers Guild, “a second embargo” of Cuba — “one that would be very difficult to dismantle in the future.”

Trump may give current U.S. citizens standing to sue in U.S. courts even if they were Cuban citizens when the Cuban government nationalized their property after the 1959 Revolution. They would be able to bring lawsuits against U.S. and foreign companies that allegedly profit from the nationalized properties.

In accordance with international law, the Cuban government had offered compensation to U.S. nationals for the taking of their property, as I explain below. If Trump permits myriad new lawsuits to proceed, it would unleash a tsunami of litigation that would harm U.S. companies and punish the Cuban people even more.

For 59 years, the United States has maintained a cruel embargo against Cuba.

“The embargo on Cuba is the most comprehensive set of U.S. sanctions on any country, including the other countries designated by the U.S. government to be state sponsors of terrorism — Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria,” according to the U.S. government.

In 1960, the Eisenhower administration declared a partial embargo on trade with Cuba in an attempt to pressure Cuba to change its form of government. The embargo was prompted by a secret State Department memorandum that proposed “a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

This type of action is illegal under international law, according to Idriss Jazairy, the U.N. special rapporteur concerned with the negative impact of sanctions.

“Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state,” said Jazairy. “The use of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in violation of all norms of international law.”

That includes the Charter of the Organization of American States and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States.

Nonetheless, John F. Kennedy expanded the embargo in 1962 and every U.S. president since has continued it, hurting the Cuban people, but not succeeding in overthrowing Cuba’s government.

In 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Helms-Burton Act, which codified the embargo into law so that no president could unilaterally lift the sanctions against Cuba. Although Barack Obama took some limited steps toward normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba, Helms-Burton would have prevented him from lifting the embargo.

Will Trump Open the Floodgates of Litigation?

After the Cuban Revolution, the new government led by Fidel Castro nationalized the property of Cuban nationals, many of whom then fled Cuba and emigrated to the United States. Helms-Burton contains a notorious provision in Title III that allows private lawsuits against U.S. and foreign entities for allegedly “trafficking” in property confiscated in Cuba since 1959. “Trafficking” as defined includes knowingly engaging in a commercial activity or otherwise “benefitting from confiscated property.”

Every U.S. president beginning with Clinton has delayed the implementation of Title III by waiving its provisions in six-month increments. Clinton put Title III “on hold because it triggered immense opposition from U.S. allies, whose companies operating in Cuba would become targets of litigation in U.S. courts,” American University professor and Cuba scholar William M. LeoGrande wrote in The Conversation.

Clinton’s waiver was also motivated by the European Union’s filing of a complaint against the United States in the World Trade Organization and adoption of a statute that forbids EU members and their firms from complying with Title III.

Thus far, the Trump administration has followed suit with three six-month waivers. But on January 16, the president waived Title III for only 45 days, from February 1 to March 17, while his administration conducts “a careful review” of whether to allow the provision to go into effect. He will announce his decision by March 2.

If Trump does activate Title III, it would be the first time since Helms-Burton was enacted. It would tie up U.S. and foreign firms in a tidal wave of litigation if they do business with Cuba — including in medicine and agriculture — and have allegedly benefited from confiscated properties.

Up to 200,000 people who were not U.S. citizens at the time of their property’s confiscation would be able to file claims for property they held in Cuba when they were Cuban citizens. This is considerably more than the nearly 6,000 claims already filed by U.S. parties at the time their property was nationalized.

Cuba’s Nationalization Did Not Violate Either U.S. or International Law

The U.S. State Department takes the well-established position that a sovereign’s nationalization of the property of its own nationals does not violate international law. In 1962, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk told the National Business Advisory Council:

Any sovereign national has the right to expropriate property, whether owned by foreigners or nationals. In the United States we refer to this as the power of eminent domain. However, the owner should receive adequate and prompt compensation for his property.

On several occasions, Cuba has offered to negotiate compensation of the nearly 6,000 claims of U.S. parties, as it has successfully done with claims from other countries.

“It is well-known that all nationalizations of foreign property, including that of the U.S., were provided by law with a commitment to compensation, which the U.S. government refused even to discuss, while it was adopted by the governments of claimants of other countries, all of which enjoyed due compensation,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba said in a statement.

Permitting lawsuits to proceed under Title III would overturn long-standing law. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino that U.S. courts should not decide the legality of taking property in Cuba’s jurisdiction and that state-to-state negotiations provide the best way to resolve these issues.

“Title III attempts to reverse that precedent, placing the long-term future of U.S.-Cuban relations into innumerable private hands and holding hostage the ability to normalize relations for decades,” according to the National Lawyers Guild’s International Committee.

Trump Says “Make Rubio Happy”

On January 16, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) ominously tweeted,

“Todays waiver of Title III of Helms-Burton for only 45 days instead of the customary 180 days & the accompanying warning, is a strong indication of what comes next.”

Does Rubio have inside information? Very likely. The New York Times recently called Rubio “a virtual secretary of state for Latin America.” Indeed, Trump described his Cuba policy to White House staff early in his term: “Make Rubio happy.”

Rubio and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Florida), whose brother pressured Clinton into signing Helms-Burton, are the leading advocates for Title III. They represent the richest and most conservative people in Miami’s Cuban-American community, once known as Cuba’s “One Percent,” LeoGrande writes. Since Title III exempts private residences and small businesses from potential compensation, it is the one-percenters — people who owned businesses worth more than $433,000 at today’s prices — who have the most to gain if Trump unblocks Title III and allows litigation to proceed.

Trump is also apparently making Rubio happy by recognizing Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president, albeit in violation of international law. Rubio is part of Trump’s inner circle working with the opposition in Venezuela to carry out an illegal coup.

“Venezuela is really an extension of the position on Cuba,” Ricardo Herrera, director of the Cuba Study Group, told The New Republic. Both nations are targets in a plan to reassert U.S. control over Latin America, and finally overthrow the Cuban Revolution, according to The Wall Street Journal.

At a February 18 rally in Miami, Trump played to a large voting bloc by criticizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. South Florida has the largest population of Venezuelans in the United States, many of whom are opposed to Maduro’s government. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Florida) accused the Trump administration of “using Venezuelans’ suffering to score political points here in Florida,” adding, “We shouldn’t be using this as a political weapon.”

But, “Trump doesn’t care about Latin America. It’s still about domestic politics,” LeoGrande told The New Republic. “Trump thinks he won Florida because of the Cuban American vote. Rubio convinced him that that’s what made the big difference in Florida.”

Many older Cuban Americans oppose the Cuban government and have been pivotal votes for Republican presidential candidates in the swing state of Florida.

Who Stands to Lose If Title III Is Activated?

It is the Cuban people who would suffer most from the activation of Title III. A torrent of lawsuits would not only discourage foreign firms from trading with, investing in, or operating in Cuba; they would also endanger the food supply and other essentials for life in Cuba for years to come. They would weaken Cuba’s fragile economy.

Title III could affect firms that currently operate in Cuba on confiscated property and companies that profit from such “trafficking.” Because of jurisdictional issues, U.S.-based companies would be the most vulnerable to these lawsuits, which would disadvantage them internationally. They would be unlikely to expand their operations in Cuba.

Ending the suspension of Title III would have a chilling effect on future efforts to normalize relations with Cuba because it was written to prevent future U.S. administrations from interfering with this private litigation. Sanctioning lawsuits under Title III could also negatively impact areas such as travel, academic exchanges and research collaboration.

Meanwhile, Cuba has asserted its own claims against the U.S. for billions of dollars of injury due to the impact of the illegal and expanded multinational economic embargo against Cuba, which had been intentionally enacted to deny money and supplies to Cuba, to impose hunger and hardship and seek to overthrow its government, as quoted above. One such case filed in Cuban civil courts in 2000 sought over $120 billion in damages. A prior case sought more than $180 billion in damages based on illegal acts of violence and sabotage, including CIA sponsorship of the Bay of Pigs invasion; this resulted in a judgment in 1999. Cuba seeks resolution of its claims as part of its attempt to mutually resolve issues between Cuba and the United States.

“Activating Title III would represent a quantum leap in hostility [against Cuba],” LeoGrande maintains. By refusing to further suspend Title III, Trump would effectively be punishing the Cuban people with a second embargo.

Cuba represents no threat to the United States. It is time to end the illegal 59-year-old embargo against Cuba once and for all.

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

Observers of developments in the Middle East have long taken it as a given that the United States and Israel are seeking for an excuse to attack Iran. The recently terminated conference in Warsaw had that objective, which was clearly expressed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it failed to rally European and Middle Eastern states to support the cause. On the contrary, there was strong sentiment coming from Europe in particular that normalizing relations with Iran within the context of the 2015 multi party nuclear agreement is the preferred way to go both to avoid a major war and to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation.

There are foundations in Washington, all closely linked to Israel and its lobby in the U.S., that are wholly dedicated to making the case for war against Iran. They seek pretexts in various dark corners, including claims that Iran is cheating on its nuclear program, that it is developing ballistic missiles that will enable it to deliver its secret nuclear warheads onto targets in Europe and even the United States, that it is an oppressive, dictatorial government that must be subjected to regime change to liberate the Iranian people and give them democracy, and, most stridently, that is provoking and supporting wars and threats against U.S. allies all throughout the Middle East.

Dissecting the claims about Iran, one might reasonably counter that rigorous inspections by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirm that Tehran has no nuclear weapons program, a view that is supported by the U.S. intelligence community in its recent Worldwide Threat Assessment. Beyond that, Iran’s limited missile program can be regarded as largely defensive given the constant threats from Israel and the U.S. and one might well accept that the removal of the Iranian government is a task best suited for the Iranian people, not delivered through military intervention by a foreign power that has been starving the country through economic warfare. And as for provoking wars in the Middle East, look to the United States and Israel, not Iran.

So the hawks in Washington, by which one means National Security Adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and, apparently President Donald Trump himself when the subject is Iran, have been somewhat frustrated by the lack of a clear casus belli to hang their war on. No doubt prodded by Netanyahu, they have apparently revived an old story to give them what they want, even going so far as to develop an argument that would justify an attack on Iran without a declaration of war while also lacking any imminent threat from Tehran to justify a preemptive strike.

What may be the new Iran policy was recently outlined in a Washington Times article, which unfortunately has received relatively little attention from either the media, the punditry or from the few policymakers themselves who have intermittently been mildly critical of Washington’s propensity to strike first and think about it afterwards.

The article is entitled “Exclusive: Iran-al Qaeda alliance May Provide Legal Rationale for U.S. military strikes.” The article’s main points should be taken seriously by anyone concerned over what is about to unfold in the Persian Gulf because it is not just the usual fluff emanating from the hubris-induced meanderings of some think tank, though it does include some of that. It also cites government officials by name and others who are not named but are clearly in the administration.

As an ex-CIA case officer who worked on the Iran target for a number of years, I was shocked when I read the Times’ article, primarily because it sounded like a repeat of the fabricated intelligence that was used against both Iraq and Iran in 2001 through 2003. It is based on the premise that war with Iran is desirable for the United States and, acting behind the scenes, Israel, so it is therefore necessary to come up with an excuse to start it. As the threat of terrorism is always a good tactic to convince the American public that something must be done, that is what the article tries to do and it is particularly discouraging to read as it appears to reflect opinion in the White House.

As I have been writing quite critically about the CIA and the Middle East for a number of years, I am accustomed to considerable push-back from former colleagues. But in this case, the calls and emails I received from former intelligence officers who shared my experience of the Middle East and had read the article went strongly the other way, condemning the use of both fake and contrived intelligence to start another unnecessary war.

The article states that Iran is supporting al Qaeda by providing money, weapons and sanctuary across the Middle East to enable it to undertake new terrorist attacks. It is doing so in spite of ideological differences because of a common enemy: the United States. Per the article and its sources, this connivance has now “evolved into an unacceptable global security threat” with the White House intent on “establishing a potential legal justification for military strikes against Iran or its proxies.”

One might reasonably ask why the United States cares if Iran is helping al Qaeda as both are already enemies who are lying on the Made in U.S.A. chopping block waiting for the ax to fall. The reason lies in the Authorization to Use Military Force, originally drafted post 9/11 to provide a legal fig leaf to pursue al Qaeda worldwide, but since modified to permit also going after “associated groups.” If Iran is plausibly an associated group then President Trump and his band of self-righteous maniacs egged on by Netanyahu can declare “bombs away Mr. Ayatollah.” And if Israel is involved, there will be a full benediction coming from Congress and the media. So is this administration both capable and willing to start a major war based on bullshit? You betcha!

The Times suggests how it all works as follows: “Congressional and legal sources say the law may now provide a legal rationale for striking Iranian territory or proxies should President Trump decide that Tehran poses a looming threat to the U.S. or Israel and that economic sanctions are not strong enough to neutralize the threat.” The paper does not bother to explain what might constitute a “looming threat” to the United States from puny Iran but it is enough to note that Israel, as usual, is right in the middle of everything and, exercising its option of perpetual victim-hood, it is apparently threatened in spite of its nuclear arsenal and overwhelming regional military superiority guaranteed by act of the U.S. Congress.

Curiously, though several cited administration officials wedded to the hard-line against Iran because it is alleged to be the “world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” were willing to provide their opinions on the Iran-al Qaeda axis, the authors of the recent Worldwide Threat Assessment issued by the intelligence community apparently have never heard of it. The State Department meanwhile sees an Iranian pipeline moving al Qaeda’s men and money to targets in central and south Asia, though that assessment hardly jives with the fact that the only recent major attack attributed to al Qaeda was carried out on February 13^th in southeastern Iran against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a bombing that killed 27 guardsmen.

The State annual threat assessment also particularly condemns Iran for funding groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which are, not coincidentally, enemies of Israel who would care less about “threatening” the United States but for the fact that it is constantly meddling in the Middle East on behalf of the Jewish state.

And when in doubt, the authors of the article went to “old reliable,” the leading neocon think tank the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which, by the way, works closely with the Israeli government and never, ever has criticized the state of democracy in Israel. One of its spokesmen was quick off the mark: ““The Trump administration is right to focus on Tehran’s full range of malign activities, and that should include a focus on Tehran’s long-standing support for al Qaeda.”

Indeed, the one expert cited in the Times story who actually is an expert and examined original documents rather than reeling off approved government and think tank talking points contradicted the Iran-al Qaeda narrative. “Nelly Lahoud, a former terrorism analyst at the U.S. Military Academy and now a New America Foundation fellow, was one of the first to review documents seized from bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. She wrote in an analysis for the Atlantic Council this fall that the bin Laden files revealed a deep strain of skepticism and hostility toward the Iranian regime, mixed with a recognition by al Qaeda leaders of the need to avoid a complete break with Tehran. In none of the documents, which date from 2004 to just days before bin Laden’s death, ‘did I find references pointing to collaboration between al Qaeda and Iran to carry out terrorism,’ she concluded.”

So going after Iran is the name of the game even if the al Qaeda story is basically untrue. The stakes are high and whatever has to be produced, deduced or fabricated to justify a war is fair game. Iran and terrorism? Perfect. Let’s try that one out because, after all, invading Iran will be a cakewalk and the people will be in the streets cheering our tanks as they roll by. What could possibly go wrong?

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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 www.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

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

In a pre-dawn airstrike at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday, 12 Indian Mirage 2000 fighter jets intruded into Pakistan’s airspace and dropped their payload on the top of a mountain at a terrorist training camp, allegedly belonging to a jihadist group that had claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack in the Indian-administered Kashmir on February 14 in which more than 40 Indian soldiers had lost their lives.

Although the Pakistan Army’s official spokesman, Major General Asif Ghafoor, tweeted after the Indian incursion that the Indian jets had intruded 3-4 miles in Muzaffarabad sector of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, according to location provided by local residents, as reported by BBC Urdu[1], the site of the airstrike was dozens of miles inside the Pakistani territory between Balakot and Mansehra.

In order to understand the underlying causes of the Kashmir dispute, the history of India and Pakistan needs to be revisited. Although secularism, pluralism and multiculturalism are the accepted social axioms of modern worldview, the demand for separate nationhood on the basis of ethno-linguistic identity is accepted in the Western discourse; and it cannot simply be dismissed on the premise that since pluralism and multiculturalism are the accepted principles, therefore the creation of a nation state on the basis of ethno-linguistic identity becomes redundant. The agreed-upon principles of pluralism and multiculturalism become operative after the creation of a nation state and not before it.

Similarly, even though secularism is an accepted principle in the Western discourse, but an ethno-religious group cannot be denied its right to claim separate nationhood on the basis of religious identity; in this case also, the principle of inclusive secularism becomes functional after the creation of a state and not prior to it.

The Muslims of Pakistan share a lot of cultural similarities with their Hindu brethren as well, because we share a similar regional culture and lingua franca, Urdu or Hindi; however, different ethno-linguistic groups comprising Pakistan – the Punjabis, Pashtuns, Sindhis and Baloch – have more in common with each other than with the Hindus of India, because all of them belong to the same religion Islam.

Before joining the Muslim League, Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was one of the leading proponents of Hindu-Muslim unity. He attended the meetings of the inner circle of the Indian National Congress, and reached a well-considered conclusion that the outwardly liberal and secular Congress was nothing more than a thinly veiled Hindu nationalist party.

Even today, 70 years after the independence, Muslims constitute 15% of India’s 1.2 billion population, that’s more than 180 million Muslims in India today. Although we do find a few showpiece Muslims in ceremonial positions, I would like to know what is the representation of Muslims in India’s state institutions, their proportion in higher bureaucracy, judiciary, police and army, and their presence and participation in India’s civic and political life?

Fact of the matter is that just like the Indian National Congress, the Republic of India is also nothing more than a thinly disguised Hindu nationalist state. The Indian Muslims have lagged so far behind and they have been disenfranchised to such an extent that they need some kind of an “affirmative action,” like the one carried out in the US during the 1960s to improve the miserable lot of Afro-American communities.

Regardless, here we must try to understand the attitudes and mindsets of the British Indian leaders that why did they favor certain rallying calls and disapproved the rest? In my opinion, this preferential treatment had to do with personal inclinations and ambitions of the British Indian leaders and the interests of their respective communities as perceived by the leaders in heterogeneous and multi-ethnic societies like the British India.

A leader whose ambitions were limited only to his own ethnic group would rally his followers around their shared ethno-linguistic identity, but politicians who had larger ambitions would look for common factors that unite diverse ethnic groups, that’s where the role of religion becomes politically relevant in traditional societies.

It suited the personal ambitions of the Muslim League leadership to rally their supporters around the cause of Islamic identity, and it benefited the political agenda of the Congress leadership to unite all Indians under the banner of a more inclusive and secular Indian national identity in order to keep India united under the permanent yoke of numerical Hindu majority.

However, mere rhetoric is never a substitute for tangible actions, no matter how noble and superficially appealing it may sound. The Indian National Congress right from its inception was a thinly disguised Hindu nationalist party that only had a pretense of inclusive secularism, that’s why some of the most vocal proponents of Hindu-Muslim unity, like Jinnah and Iqbal, later became its most fierce critics, especially after Gandhi and his protégé Nehru took over the leadership of Congress in 1921.

Although Orientalist historians generally give credit to Jinnah, as an individual, for single-handedly realizing the dream of Pakistan, in fact the Pakistan Movement was the logical conclusion of the Aligarh Movement. This fact elucidates that how much difference a single educational institution can make in the history of nations. Aligarh Muslim University bred whole generations of educated Muslims who were acutely aware of decadent state of Muslims in British India, and most of them later joined the Muslim League to make the dream of Pakistan a reality.

Regarding the allegation that the Muslim League leaders were imperialist collaborators, until Lord Wavell, the British viceroys used to take a reasonably neutral approach toward communal issues in British India, but on the eve of the independence of India and Pakistan, the Indian leaders Gandhi and Nehru specifically implored Clement Attlee’s government in the UK to appoint Lord Louis Mountbatten as the viceroy of British India.

More importantly, the independence of India and Pakistan was originally scheduled for June 1948, but once again the Indian National Congress leadership beseeched the British Empire to bring the date of independence forward to August 1947. It was not a coincidence that on both critically important occasions, Her Majesty’s government obliged the Congress leadership because the British wanted to keep the Dominion of India within the folds of the British Commonwealth after the independence.

Had the British Raj in India not brought forward the date of independence by almost an year, the nascent Indian and Pakistani armed forces and border guards could have had an opportunity to avert the carnage that took place during the division of Punjab on the eve of independence.

Furthermore, Lord Mountbatten served as India’s first governor general and he helped Jawaharlal Nehru’s government consolidate the Indian dominion by forcefully integrating more than 500 princely states. Mountbatten also made a similar offer to Jinnah to serve as Pakistan’s governor general, too, and when the latter refused, Mountbatten threatened Jinnah in so many words: “It will cost you and the dominion of Pakistan more than just tables and chairs.”

No wonder then, it was the collusion between the Congress leadership, Radcliffe and Mountbatten that eventually culminated in the Indian troops’ successful invasion of the princely state of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir by using the Gurdaspur-Pathankot corridor that was provided to India by the Radcliffe boundary commission. Thus, creating a permanent territorial dispute between two neighbors that has not been resolved 70 years after the independence despite several United Nations resolutions and mediation efforts.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Note

[1] Indian airstrike in Pakistan-administered Kashmir:

https://www.bbc.com/urdu/pakistan-47366220

Featured image is from India.com

The following is the full English-language interview that Andrew Korybko gave to RT (German) about the latest developments in Libya, which was published by the outlet in an abridged form under the title “Colonialism 2.0: France & Italy Are In A Proxy War In Libya”:

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RT: General Khalifa Haftar’s army has declared that it has captured the largest oil field in Libya. What are the consequences for the internationally recognized government in Tripoli that has controlled the field so far?

Andrew Korybko: The so-called “Government of National Accord” (GNA) is becoming increasingly marginalized and forced by circumstances into “politically compromising” with General Haftar’s unrecognized “Libyan National Army”, similar in a sense to how the internationally recognized Kabul government in Afghanistan is being pushed into doing the same with the Taliban despite the latter still being internationally regarded as a “terrorist organization” (currently banned by Russia but Moscow recently said that it would support lifting UN sanctions against it).

RT: How great is the chance that Khalifa Haftar could militarily take power in Tripoli in the absence of a political solution?

AK: General Haftar wants to avoid a military solution to the Libyan Civil War for both symbolic and pragmatic reasons, understanding how counterproductive it would be for his national reconciliation vision if both Libyan “governments” fight one another to the end in a disastrous battle that would only make life worse for the average citizen. Therefore, his strategy seems to be to make incremental progress around the capital’s peripheral regions in order to position the LNA as the kingmaker of Libyan affairs, after which the GNA would be pressured into making “political compromises” with it in the interests of national unity.

Libyan National Army (Source: South Front)

Failing that, the LNA might advance closer to the capital, though possibly holding back on launching a full offensive and instead “tightening the noose” around it to provoke the people to “rise up” against the GNA and “open the gates” to General Haftar’s forces afterwards. Engaging in a large-scale battle for the capital would also be disadvantageous to the LNA’s soft power abroad because it could be interpreted as an unrecognized armed group trying to seize power from an internationally recognized government, which is another reason why he’s so sensitive about advancing that scenario.

RT: France has carried out air raids in the border area between Libya and Chad. Previously, Macron visited Egypt, considered the main supporter of the rival government in Tobruk under Khalifa Haftar. Does France undermine Tripoli?

AK: France has always had interests in Libya since the so-called “Scramble for Africa”, and it’s using its “G5 Sahel” regional anti-terrorist mandate to expand its influence near the southern Libyan border after it bombed an invading rebel group in northern Chad, which also complements the tacit (if not direct covert) support that it’s giving o General Haftar on the same implied basis (i.e. that he’s the most effective anti-terrorist force in the country). Paris expects that its efforts will pay off handsomely if he comes to power and grants French companies privileged rights in the Libyan energy industry.

RT: To what extent can it be said that France is waging a kind of proxy war against Italian interests in Libya? Italy is regarded as an influential supporter of the internationally recognized government in Tripoli and the energy giant ENI is also at risk of losing influence.

AK: The historic Italian-French competition reemerged after the 2011 NATO War on Libya succeeded in destroying the Jamahiriya and both European countries raced for control of its resources, with Paris trying to gain the upper hand over Rome’s entrenched interests there (inherited as a result of its colonial-era influence and geographic proximity). Nowadays the two neighboring countries are ideological enemies after Italy’s EuroRealist government stood up to France’s EuroLiberal one several prominent times over the past year, most notably with the Yellow Vests and the issue of illegal migration. Therefore, it’s not inconceivable that Paris might be hoping that General Haftar can be used as a proxy of sorts against Rome’s influence over Tripoli in order to carry out a geopolitical coup in the EU’s “Near Abroad” and send a message to Italy to “know its place” and never dare challenge France’s African ambitions again.

RT: France and Italy are both former colonial powers in Africa. How much does the colonial heritage still shape the geopolitical considerations of both countries in the region today?

AK: Both European powers’ colonial-era footprints in Africa powerfully shape their present-day geopolitical tussle over Libya. Italy is only just returning to the continent in a strategic sense after decades of withdrawing from it, so it has a lot of “catching up” to do with France. Paris has much more experience in this “game” than Rome does, which is why it prudently threw its weight behind General Haftar after correctly predicting that he’d be much more effective of a national unifying and anti-terrorist force than the deeply divided authorities in Tripoli that Rome decided to back instead. In terms of international law, Italy is “playing by the rules” while France is “breaking” them, though the latter will probably succeed because its strategy is much more pragmatic for pursuing its interests.

RT: The Foreign Policy article “The West Is Letting Libya Tear Itself Apart” points out that the European powers are using the Libyan conflict to make their own profit. To what extent do the Europeans have no long-term interest in peace in the country despite the continuing waves of refugees entering Europe from there?

AK: For as convincing as the argument put forth in the piece may be, and bearing in mind that there are some actors (both state and non-state ones) in Europe that want to perpetuate the conflict, it’s in the objective interests of the European powers to see peace prevail as soon as possible. Not only would this help them contain large-scale migrant flows from West Africa (which might become even worse in the coming future as Mali’s Libyan-triggered destabilization spreads to Burkina Faso and endangers stability in its neighboring coastal nations of Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, and Benin), but it would also make the profitable enterprises of energy extraction and post-war reconstruction much more reliable.

RT: Officials in Tripoli like to explain that Haftar cannot market the oil despite taking the wells because the National Oil Corporation (NOC) controls its sale. To what extent could Haftar possibly circumvent this process in the future? What other reasons could there be for Haftar to launch his offensive in southern Libya?

AK: Tripoli’s international backers are surely scrutinizing activities along the Libyan coast and trying to ensure that General Haftar isn’t in violation of the prohibition placed upon selling the country’s oil outside of the NOC’s ambit, and he probably understands that it would be more politically beneficial in the long term for him to abide by this than to circumvent it for the sake of short-term profits. He didn’t capture the southern Libyan oilfields to finance his war effort, but to enter into a kingmaker position whereby the NOC and its internationally recognized owners of the GNA in Tripoli are placed in a position of strategic dependence on him that could consequently compel them to make “political compromises” such as constitutional reform and a power-sharing arrangement ahead of national elections.

RT: The United States AFRICOM commander Thomas Waldhauser accused Russia of seeking to reinforce its presence in Libya. Does Russia really play such a strong role on the Haftar side? After all, it also maintains relations with Tripoli.

AK: Russia’s 21^st-century strategic vision is to becoming the supreme “balancer” of Afro-Eurasian affairs, which I elaborated on at length in my analysis on the topic last year titled “Russia’s Grand Strategy In Afro-Eurasia (And What Could Go Wrong)”. In this specific context, most of the reports about Russia’s so-called “presence” in Libya originate from the Western Mainstream Media’s unverified accusations that reek of a discrediting infowar intent designed to disrupt Moscow’s equally cordial relations with both the GNA and Haftar and therefore undermine its delicate “balancing” strategy between them. Russia isn’t taking sides in this conflict but hopes to use its diplomatic influence with both parties to broker a political solution to the conflict along the lines of what it just astonishingly pulled off in the much more war-wrecked Central African Republic earlier this month.

RT: Russia is particularly active in Africa in the Central African Republic. It also maintains good relations with Sudan and is an actor in Libya. What geopolitical strategy is Moscow pursuing on the continent and are there goals such as building up spheres of influence during Soviet times?

AK: Russia is creatively utilizing various low-cost but highly effective instruments of power to bring stability to Africa following the “Democratic Security” model that I described in detail in my recent piece titled “The US Is More Afraid Of Losing Africa To Russia Than To China”, all of which is in accordance with international law and importantly doesn’t violate state sovereignty unlike the US and France’s preferred methods when they claim to be doing the same. Sudan is Russia’s gateway into the continent, which I explained in an analysis last year titled “Russia’s Railroad Expertise Could Reshape African Geopolitics” about how Khartoum’s invitation for Moscow to participate in its international railway projects could result in Russia powerfully exerting its multipolar integrational influence all across the continent. It should also be noted that Sudan’s diplomatic assistance was crucial for reaching the latest Russian-brokered Central African Republic peace accord that was just clinched in Khartoum.

Contrary to the comparatively more static state of affairs during the Old Cold War, the New Cold War doesn’t have any clear-cut ideological or geopolitical fault lines and is much more dynamic, seeing as how methods of influence have diversified to the point where information networks, soft power, and integrational projects are much more important than ever. Russia is in the process of crafting a comprehensive but nevertheless flexible strategy for all of Africa capable of adapting to changing circumstances and shaping them in the direction of its partners’ shared interests, which takes the form of implementing custom “Democratic Security” solutions that can sustainably create the environment for socio-economic development and international integration initiatives to succeed. With Sudan as its bridgehead, it can be said that Russia is focusing on Northeast (Horn of Africa), Central, and East Africa most of all, which also happen to be the regions where other extra-regional powers like China, the UAE, and India are deepening their presence as well.

RT: Turkey and Qatar support the Tripoli-backed troops in Misrata. Again and again there are coming up pictures of alleged arms deliveries from Turkey. Will Ankara, which has also invested heavily in Ubari, interfere in the conflict in southern Libya?

AK: Turkey or any other of the Misrata forces’ alleged foreign backers have a much easier time supporting them than those in Ubari would for reasons of simple geography: Misrata is a Mediterranean coastal city while Ubari is a Saharan oasis. Ankara has amazing relations with Khartoum, but its regional partner is dealing with a lot of internal turmoil at the moment and also has no desire to allow its territory to be used for interfering with its Libyan neighbor, thereby precluding the possibility of Turkey clandestinely shipping weapons there through that access point and somehow also circumventing General Haftar’s forces across the approximately 1,000 miles from the Sudanese border to that city.

It might, however, try to funnel some of the weapons that it’s reported to have provided to the Misrata forces towards the southern front, but that probably won’t be a game-changer in any case even if it does so because those fighters might already be demoralized by General Haftar’s swift successes in the region. Turkey simply lacks the means to change the military dynamics in that part of Libya, though its continued support for the Misrata forces might make it impossible for General Haftar to stage a final assault on the GNA without suffering unacceptable casualties and resulting in the total destruction of the northern region around the capital.

RT: There are rumours that Misrata wants to use the conflict in southern Libya actually to consolidate its own power in Tripoli. What do you think of such statements?​

AK: It’s possible that the weakening of the GNA coalition brought about by the defeat of their southern forces could lead to Misrata’s becoming even more pivotal players in the internationally recognized government, resulting in General Haftar having to secure their support for any “political compromise” that he compels Tripoli to undertake in the coming future.

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This article was published on Eurasia Future.

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

The United Nations’ highest court on Monday called Britain’s claim of sovereignty over the Chagos Islands “illegal” and urged London to “decolonize” the remote archipelago — which is home to one of the most important US overseas military bases — by returning the islands to Mauritius.

In a 13-1 vote, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands issued an advisory opinion declaring that the Chagos Islands were not lawfully separated from the former British colony of Mauritius, which was forced to give up the islands in 1965 in exchange for independence. ICJ President Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said the “unlawful” separation had not been based on a “free and genuine expression of the people concerned” and was therefore a “wrongful act.”

“The United Kingdom is under an obligation to bring an end to its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible, thereby allowing Mauritius to complete the decolonization of its territory,” Yusuf asserted.

The ICJ agreed with Mauritius’ submission, which argued it had been coerced into giving up the islands. Such an act is a violation of UN Resolution 1514, which prohibits the breakup of colonies before independence. The only judge who dissented from the court’s main opinion was Joan E. Donoghue of the United States.

“This is a historic moment for Mauritius and all its people, including the Chagossians who were unconscionably removed from their homeland and prevented from returning for the last half century,” Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth said after the decision. “Our territorial integrity will now be made complete, and when that occurs, the Chagossians and their descendants will finally be able to return home.”

The British Foreign Office responded by noting the ICJ action was “an advisory opinion, not a judgment” and that it would “carefully” consider its contents. London calls the remote archipelago the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). It paid Mauritius, which gained independence in 1968, over £4 million, or nearly $90 million today, for islands, which include the Diego Garcia atoll.

Today Diego Garcia is one of the largest and most important US military bases in the world. Dozens of US warships along with thousands of troops and support staff are stationed there, and the base is crucial to US operations in the Middle East. However, until the late 1960s Diego Garcia was home to around 1,500 Chagossians, a Creole-speaking people who lived peacefully in the paradisiacal archipelago with their beloved dogs. The John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations secretly convinced Britain to grant exclusive control over the atoll, “without local inhabitants,” to the US. American documents refer to “sweeping” and “sanitizing” the island, while a top British official privately wrote that “we must surely be very tough about this… there will be no indigenous population except seagulls.” One British diplomatic cable at the time referred to Chagossians as “Tarzans.”

The island’s residents were tricked, scared or forced into leaving. When a contingent of US Marines arrived, they told the Chagossians they would be bombed or shot if they didn’t go. In a bid to hasten the evacuation, the islanders’ dogs were rounded up and gassed to death with exhaust fumes from US military vehicles before being burned in front of grieving and terrified children. Chagossians were allowed to take a single suitcase each before being herded onto cargo ships, never to return home again.

Most Chagossians were dumped, initially without any compensation, a thousand miles (1,600 km) away in the island nation of Mauritius, where they were treated as second-class citizens and where many ended up living lives of abject poverty and heartbreak in the slums of the capital, Port Louis. There, they learned the meaning of debt, unemployment, drugs and prostitution. It wasn’t long before suicides and child deaths took a heavy toll on the refugees. Meanwhile, and without any apparent sense of irony, the US military called its new Halliburton-built base on Diego Garcia Camp Justice.

The expulsion of an entire people from its homeland was not reported to Congress or the American people. Britain lied, claiming “there is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation.” To this day, Chagossians are fighting for the right to return to their homeland. They’ve been unsuccessful despite two British High Court rulings declaring their removal illegal. Most will likely die without ever seeing home again.

“Back home was paradise,” 81-year-old Samynaden Rosemond, who was 36 when he was forced from Diego Garcia, told the BBC in Port Louis, Mauritius last year. “If I die here my spirit will be everywhere; it wouldn’t be happy. But if I die there, I will be in peace.”

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Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based freelance author and editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal. His work, which focuses on issues of war and peace and human rights, is archived at www.brettwilkins.com.

Featured image is from PA

After Congress rejected President Trump’s request for 5.7 billion dollars for the border wall, the president declared a national emergency at the southern border. Present Trump claims this “emergency” gives him the authority to divert funds appropriated for other purposes to building the border wall.

President Trump’s emergency declaration is not just an end run around Congress. It is an end run around the Constitution. Article One of the Constitution gives Congress sole authority to allocate federal funds.

While President Trump’s order may be a particularly blatant abuse of power, it is hardly unprecedented. Most modern presidents have routinely used so-called national emergencies to expand their power, often at the expense of liberty. For example, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used “emergency powers” to justify internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two.

President Trump, like other recent presidents, is relying on the 1976 National Emergencies Act for legal justification for his emergency declaration. This act gives the president broad powers to declare national emergencies for almost any reason. All the president need do is inform Congress he has declared an emergency. Once the emergency is declared, the president simply needs to renew the declaration once a year to maintain a state of emergency. Since this act passed, 59 emergency declarations have been issued, with 31 of those still in effect.

Another statute giving the president broad “emergency” powers is the Defense Production Act. Under this law, the president can force private businesses to produce goods for the military. The law also enables the president to impose wage and price controls and even make loans to private businesses. All a president need do to invoke these vast powers is submit “findings” to Congress that “national security” requires the president seize near-dictatorial control of certain industries or even the entire economy. According to the Congressional Research Service, some presidents have invoked the Defense Production Act without making the required findings to Congress, and the act has been used to justly federal interference in areas having little or nothing to do with national defense.

Section 606(c) of the Communications Act gives the president “emergency” power to seize control of every television network, radio station, smartphone, laptop, and other electronic devices.

Emergency powers are not the only means by which presidents violate the Constitution. The 2001 authorization for use of military force (AUMF), which only authorizes the president to use force against those responsible for the September 11 attacks, has been used to justify military interventions that have no relationship to those attacks. The 2001 AUMF has been used to justify mass surveillance, indefinite detention, and even “kill lists.” Fortunately, Representative John Garamendi has introduced the Walter B. Jones Restoring Power to Congress Act that would pay tribute to a true champion of peace by repealing the 2001 AUMF.

Many neoconservatives and progressives who defended prior presidents’ abuses of power are critical of President Trump’s emergency declaration. These “never-Trumpers” will no doubt resume their love affair with the imperial presidency when the Oval Office is again occupied by someone who shares their agenda.

This week, the House of Representatives will vote on a resolution terminating President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency. Hopefully, this precedent will be used against all future presidents who use spurious claims of national emergencies to expand their powers and shrink our liberties.

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If more people understood that “aid” often goes hand in hand with military intervention there would be less uncritical support for it.

An important, though little acknowledged, principle of Canadian ‘aid’ policy is that military intervention elicits international assistance. Or, in the case of Venezuela ‘aid’ is a tool being used to stoke military conflict.

In fact, a long-standing element of foreign policy is that wherever Canadian and US troops kill Ottawa provides ‘aid’. This military-intervention-equals-aid pattern dates back at least to the 1950-53 Korean War when the south of that country was a major recipient of Canadian assistance. Canadian ‘aid’ flowed  to south Vietnam during the U.S. war there and to Grenada after the 1983 US invasion. During the 1990-91 Iraq war Canada provided $75 million in assistance to people in countries affected by the Gulf crisis. Hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into Haiti after Canadian troops helped overthrow the country’s elected government in 2004. In the years after the invasions, Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti were the top three recipients of Canadian ‘aid’. A sizable proportion of the $2 billion in ‘aid’ Canada spent in Afghanistan was a public relations exercise to justify the war.

The intervention-equals-aid pattern is an outgrowth of the primary objective of Canadian overseas assistance, which is to advance Western interests, particularly keeping the Global South tied to the US-led geopolitical order (as articulated  in 1950 when Ottawa began its first significant non-European allocation of foreign aid through the Colombo Plan).

Justin Trudeau announced Canada would deliver $53 million in ‘aid’ to Venezuelans at the most recent “Lima Group” meeting. The Ottawa gathering also called on the Venezuelan military to oust  the elected president and urged the military not to impede humanitarian assistance from entering the country. The US and self-appointed interim president Juan Guaidó have made delivering ‘aid’ central to their campaign to oust Maduro. US military planes have transported hundreds of tons of ‘aid’ to the Colombian border City of Cucuta. To test the military’s loyalty to the government, Guaidó announced plans to force ‘aid’ into the country.The US and Colombia clearly aimed exploit this moment to intervene.

Whether it reaches the point of armed confrontation, the ‘aid’ gambit is a public relations strategy. The aim is to exaggerate the scope of the economic downturn and to portray Nicolas Maduro as indifferent to the population’s (real) hardships.The public relations campaign even included a “Live Aid” style Venezuela fundraiser put on by billionaire Richard Branson in Cucuta last night before Guaido said he will seek to force ‘aid’ into the country. The concert fizzled with only about 5,000 people showing up and some artists pulling out at the last minute.

For their part, the International Red Cross and UN have refused to participate in the US led ‘aid’ endeavor. A UN spokesperson called Washington’s ‘aid’ plan “politicised”.

The politics driving the ‘aid’ deployment is obvious, but some progressives have been seduced by the label. In an internal memo responding to media backlash over their principled criticism of Ottawa’s regime change efforts in Venezuela, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) said it supports the federal government’s decision to increase humanitarian assistance to Venezuelans. But, the slow-moving coup attempt and Canadian ‘aid’ disbursements can’t be separated. They are simply different parts of a single plan.

It’s not uncommon for progressive organizations to support ‘imperial aid’ as a way to soften their criticism of international policies. At their 2006 convention, for instance, the NDP leadership sought to temper the “troops out” of Afghanistan demand pushed by activists by including language in the resolution that called for “support[ing] the continuation of development assistance to Afghanistan.” But, the ‘aid’ there was obviously designed to support Canada’s military occupation.

In the academic literature it’s understood that the Canadian International Development Agency was “not a policy maker, but a policy taker.” The dissolution of CIDA into Global Affairs Canada in 2013 further subordinated aid policy to foreign policy objectives.

Far and away the largest contribution announced, Canada’s humanitarian assistance to Venezuela is not designed to alleviate suffering. Its aim is to overthrow the government, which may spark and/or require war. If that disastrous situation develops, we need to add the ‘aid-leading-to-military intervention principle’ to our critical foreign policy lexicon.

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Featured image is from Yves Engler

Yesterday the Prime Minister, Theresa May pledged £200 million worth of aid for the people of Yemen. However, she has refused to stop arming and supporting the Saudi Arabian regime, which has caused much of the damage. The ongoing bombardment has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

Since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015, the UK has licensed £4.7 billion worth of arms to the Saudi regime, including:

• £2.7 billion worth of ML10 licenses (Aircraft, helicopters, drones)
• £1.9 billion worth of ML4 licenses (Grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures)

In reality the figures could be a great deal higher, with most bombs and missiles being licensed via the opaque and secretive Open Licence system.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:

“Any aid that reaches people in need must be welcomed. But that can’t disguise the role of UK-made arms or the complicity of the UK Government in the bombardment, which has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

This war could not be fought without the fighter jets and bombs being licensed by the UK and other arms dealing governments. The best thing that May and her colleagues can do for the people of Yemen is to stop the arms sales and do all that she can to end this terrible war.”

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Featured image is from Stop the War Coalition

The self-proclaimed “Provisional President of Venezuela,” Juan Guaidó, is an expert in dangerous actions, who — in pursuit of his unending ambition — will go down in history as a person that broke all the rules of decency and democracy.

Colombian journalist Rafael Croda recalls that Guaidó was elected Chairman of the Venezuelan National Assembly, a body that has proclaimed its unwillingness to accept the mandate of the duly-elected president of the country, Nicolas Maduro.

Since the President of Venezuela was elected by a sizable majority of the population in free, democratic elections, the step taken by Guaidó is unconstitutional.

The other two politicians that shared the leadership of his political formation are two criminals sanctioned by the courts.  One is Leopoldo López, who is serving a term of house arrest, and the other is Freddy Guevara, a fugitive of justice who is enjoying temporary asylum in the Chilean Embassy in Caracas.

When the opposition group in the National Assembly managed to approve a decision that rejected the ample victory of President Nicolas Maduro in the recent elections, the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice rejected the Parliamentary decision.  This was the opportunity of Juan Guaidó to proclaim himself Interim President of Venezuela, in open violation of the national constitution and the will of the Venezuela voters.   In fact, the Venezuelan National Assembly was taken by surprise by the move of Juan Guadó.   One possible explanation is that Mr. Guaido knew very well that the National Assembly would never choose him as provisional “president,” a move dictated by Guaidó’s ambitions and by his masters in Washington.

This overly-ambitions person has broken all constitutional rules in Venezuela, but apparently he and his boss, Donald Trump, couldn’t care less.   Guaidó’s master, with eyes fixed on Venezuela’s oil and other valuable mineral reserves, was quick to extend diplomatic recognition to his Venezuelan protege and was able to get many Western European nations to follow suit.

Guaidó himself showed his true self when he tearfully called for a military intervention against his own country, even if he knows that such a move will spread death and destruction in Venezuela.

If this aggression takes place, every single death, every single injury, every single tear, every desolated mother or fatherless child, will fall upon this worthless human being.

If the U.S. attack on Venezuela takes place, every single victim will fall upon the conscience of Guaidó and his protector: Donald Trump.

They should know, however, that it won’t be easy. Latin America and the people of the world are backing the Venezuelan people and their inalienable right to rule themselves and protect their resources from foreign imperialists and their local henchmen.

The aggressors are properly identified and their names will be inscribed in the world’s memory as what they are: traitors!

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Featured image is from Sky News

Last August during an Oval Office meeting, Trump pressed aides, asking why can’t the US invade Venezuela to topple Maduro.

“why can’t the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country?”

According to AP News, then-Secretary of State Tillerson and national security advisor McMaster opposed the idea, according to an unnamed regime official “familiar with what was said,” AP reported.

McMaster reportedly explained that US military action against Venezuela is opposed by Latin and Central American countries. Employing this option would risk losing their support.

Vanity Fair, July 4, 2018

Reportedly, Trump pushed back, citing earlier “gunboat diplomacy” in Central America, AP saying

“(t)he idea, despite his aides’ best attempts to shoot it down, would nonetheless persist in the president’s head.”

He raised the issue several more times, including with then-Colombian narco-terrorist president/Nobel Peace Prize recipient Juan Manuel Santos. Separately, he said

“(w)e have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if necessary.”

Last September, he discussed it on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly with four Latin American leaders, including Santos, according to Politico.

AP said his talk of military action against Venezuela “unnerve(d)” Latin American leaders. In early February on CBS News’ Face the Nation, he said military intervention against the Bolivarian Republic is an “option.” It’s “something” he’s considering.

In his Presidents’ Day address in Miami, he indirectly raised the issue as an option, saying “(w)e  seek a peaceful transition of power (sic), but all options are open.”

In response, Maduro blasted what he called his “Nazi style” address, adding: “Who is the commander of the armed forces, Donald Trump from Miami? They think they are the owners of the country.”

A previous article explained that US SOUTHCOM commander General Mark Stammer visited Colombia in early February. He met with hardline Duque regime Foreign Minister Guillermo Botero, likely with its military commanders as well.

A US army EO-5C reconnaissance plane was spotted flying in Colombian airspace near the Venezuelan border, spying on the Maduro government.

Weeks earlier, Bolton’s notebook had a notation about 5,000 US troops to Colombia. Acting war secretary Patrick Shanahan said the Pentagon is closely monitoring events in Venezuela. When asked about possible US military intervention, he declined to rule it out.

On Saturday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza tweeted:

“The agencies of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross are not taking part in the US-Colombian show on the (Venezuelan) border due to a certain reason: it is absolutely clear that this operation has political goals and could not be described as humanitarian.”

“…Pompeo, a CIA specialist on false flag operations, thinks that he will fool the world with the truck that was set on fire in Colombia by his own agents,” adding:

“Pompeo and his hit men are desperately looking for a cause for war. Today, the operation failed. If you want to find those who burnt the truck with fake humanitarian aid, look for them among your own staff.”

Addressing thousands of supporters on Saturday, Maduro said

“I am steady as never before, firm like this tree, governing this country now and” for the remainder of his term of office.

On Saturday, a Pompeo press statement recited a litany of bald-faced Big Lies. He lied calling usurper in waiting Guaido “an inspiration to the world.”

He lied calling democratically elected and reelected Maduro “a dictator.” He lied claiming Saturday’s Trojan horse PR stunt aimed to deliver “life-saving humanitarian aid to” the Venezuelan people.

He lied blaming Maduro for US-orchestrated violence along Venezuela’s borders with neighboring states. He falsely blamed Maduro for US high crimes against the sovereign state.

“Tomorrow is a new day,” he roared, falsely calling illegal US intervention its “support for democracy” Republicans and undemocratic Dems abhor at home and abroad.

He threatened Maduro saying

“(t)he United States will take action against and hold accountable those who oppose the peaceful restoration of democracy (sic) in Venezuela.”

On Saturday, the Trump regime’s malign intent was foiled. Along with tougher illegal sanctions, is military intervention its next option – either by invasion or by use of armed proxies.

The latter option is most likely. Trump’s envoy for regime change in Venezuela Elliott Abrams is an expert in smuggling arms to US proxies, used to topple governments targeted for regime change.

More US-orchestrated violence and bloodshed is likely coming – Maduro to be falsely blamed for Trump regime high crimes against sovereign Venezuela.

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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.

It is hard to say exactly when it started – in 2008 in the midst of the credit crisis, in the early 2000’s when the Federal Reserve initiated artificially low interest rates which helped to create the vast US mortgage bubble, or maybe the root goes all the way back to 1913 when the Federal Reserve was founded, but somewhere along the line America entered severe economic decay. One certainty is that signals in the fundamentals become visible every time the Fed inflates a financial bubble to stall a crash and then tightens policy without waiting for the economy to show true alignment.

This pattern is, in my view, not about the Fed “bumbling in the dark”. In fact, I see most Fed activities as quite deliberate, including the creation and deflation of large credit and equities bubbles. Sometimes these crashing bubbles are used as an excuse by the Fed to launch an even more invasive program of stimulus, and sometimes the bubbles are allowed to collapse, allowing international banks to vacuum up hard assets for pennies on the dollar. During the most widespread collapse events, the banking elites use the chaos and distraction to not only centralize assets, but shift entire geopolitical and fiscal dynamics in order to centralize power.

There is much debate in alternative economic analysis on which type of event we are facing today. There is not much debate, though, on the fact that the fundamentals are screaming bloody murder. The cycle has started over again.

I would point out that since the 2008 credit crash a true recovery has never materialized. We have heard about in endlessly in the mainstream financial media, and to this day we hear Fed officials declare the US economy “on course” and “strong”, but the evidence has always been to the contrary. The Fed itself presents two primary factors as proof of recovery: GDP and Employment.

GDP is of course a fallacy, with a large portion of US “production” attributed to government spending, or government programs that tax the public in order to generate revenue. This is not true production as the government is not a producer. Rather, the government tends to misallocate and erase wealth instead of creating it.

Employment is another fraudulent statistic. The numbers released to the public are a gross misrepresentation of the economic picture, as they ignore the 95 million working age people no longer counted by the Bureau of Labor as unemployed because they have been removed from the rolls. The numbers also do not take into account the quality of jobs being created versus the quality of jobs that have been lost. Part time and low wage service sector jobs do not boost the economy, nor do they allow people to adequately support a family, but these are the kinds of jobs (U-6 Measurements) that make up the majority of the so-called economic recovery.

Other fundamentals have remained in poor condition for years but are rarely discussed in the mainstream media. The system has been kept barely afloat by one factor and one factor alone – Federal Reserve stimulus and low interest rate measures. It is important to note that multiple fundamentals began blaring recessionary alarms the moment the Fed began raising interest rates and cutting assets from its balance sheet. Without endless Fed stimulus, the illusion of recovery melts away.

For the past several months the housing market has been in steep decline, with sales cratering in December by 10.3%. Housing prices are falling in many areas of the country, but lag (as they tend to do) far behind the more immediate indicator of sales. The Fed’s increasing interest rates have translated to higher mortgage rates across the board. Without low interest rates corporate buyers are leaving the market, resting the fate of housing on normal consumers who clearly do not have the capital or credit.

Auto sales have been comparatively dismal, posting declines through the end of 2018 into early 2019, with 2019 expected to be the worst year overall. Once again, with rising interest rates, major purchases have become less appealing to the average consumer.

Retail sales have now posted the worst December numbers since 2009. Retail sales are often presented by the mainstream media as the end all argument for economic recovery. Yet they fail to mention the problem of consumer credit, which has ballooned over the past several years to record highs. In our unstable economic environment, low interest rates fuel debt, debt fuels credit and credit (instead of savings) fuels consumer purchases. Without low interest rates, the entire house of cards comes tumbling down.

I also find it interesting that while retail sales are crumbling, consumer debt continues to rise. If consumers are taking on more debt, where is that money going if not into purchases? My suspicion is that new debt is being taken on in order to pay off old debts. If this terrible cycle is the underlying source of expanding personal credit, then retail sales indicate that we are close to the end of the game.

Credit and lending where it counts is now faltering. Small business loans have plunged the past few months, with a 9.7% drop in December. While consumer credit is inflating, lending on a broader scale to support the business sector is falling as interest rates rise.

US PMI manufacturing stats have been falling for most of the past year as well, recently posting the biggest drop in 17 months.  The decline in manufacturing globally has translated to a sharp decline in the amount of freight shipped each month across the country as well as shipped overseas.  It’s beginning to look a lot like 2008 once again.

According to traditional thinking in essentially every concrete aspect of the US economy we are entering recession territory. I would amend this thinking and say that we were ALWAYS in a recession or depression; it was only the Fed’s low interest rates and stimulus that allowed this fact to be hidden from the public. Now that the Fed has tightened policy, the lie of recovery has become obvious.

The question is what the Fed plan calls for next. Will they use the current downturn to reintroduce even more stimulus? This seems to be what the majority of analysts believe will happen, but I disagree. The ‘Everything Bubble’ was created by the Fed for a reason; it was not an accident. Such a bubble is a perfect weapon for triggering sweeping economic and political changes not just in the US but around the globe. Why would the Fed create such a weapon and then refuse to use it?

The mainstream narrative has been building for over two years now – a “populist uprising” has begun in the Western world, and it will cause great turmoil as it undermines the “stability” of globalism. With an acceptable scapegoat in place to take the blame for a crash, the Fed has pulled the plug on life support for the ailing economy. In order to cover their bases, they have now changed the vocabulary of their statements, using words like “accommodation”.

What amazes me, though, is how quickly the alternative media have bought into this rhetoric. The Fed changes a few words within their statements, and suddenly this means they have “capitulated” on interest rates and asset cuts? The Fed uses a few choice words and suddenly we are all talking about QE4? This is absurd.

The Fed has not stopped policy tightening so far.  With a week left in the month of February, the central bank has already cut approximately $58 billion from its balance sheet.  This is one of the largest asset dumps so far.  Some economists have argued that the Fed would never actually dump the announced $50 billion, and would stay below $34 billion per month.  Obviously they were wrong.

Fed dot plots still remain unchanged, with at least two more rate hikes planned for this year.

What I see is more smoke and mirrors and magical thinking, more hints at promises that were never actually promised, and a host of dangerous assumptions permeating the economic world. It is certainly possible that the damage of Fed tightening has already been done. Perhaps there is no longer any need for them to tighten further to cause the crash they obviously desire. However, asset cuts have not stopped yet, and Fed dot plots still call for at least two more rate hikes in 2019.

I wonder what will happen if, in March, the Fed does not capitulate as the majority expect? Would it come as a shock if the Fed continues dumping its balance sheet? It will certainly send markets into a spiral if it hikes interest rates yet again (or indicates future interest rate hikes), given that almost everyone is factoring in rate cuts for 2019 rather than rate hikes.

Until we see an actual reversal of asset cuts and rate hikes, I’m not buying the rhetoric from the Fed.

And what will the Fed say if this shock occurs? Well, I expect they would continue to say that the US economy is “strong”, ignoring the fundamentals as they always have. I also expect that they would say that they never promised a reversal of tightening policy (which is true), though they will probably continue to add “dovish” words into their public statements as a psychological steam valve for the crash. In fact, the markets have made an array of assumptions that were not at all in line with Fed comments on the “strong” US economy. The blame will fall on over-zealous investors, the blame will fall on the media in part for encouraging false optimism, and the establishment will blame the “populist menace” and the trade war for any negative consequences.

This is why it is important to expose the direct relationship between Fed bubbles, Fed tightening and the collapse of the fundamentals. The central bank is deliberately creating economic crisis conditions.  When chaos strikes, the Fed will attempt to obscure their dominant role in economic decline. It is our job to grab hold of their neck like pitbulls and never let them free.

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Featured image is from Alt-Market.com

A leading pro-Israel group in Brussels has seen its budget increase fivefold over the past few years.

The European Jewish Association has become increasingly prominent in efforts to counter the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions. One of its campaign priorities is to convince political parties that they should issue policy statements rejecting the BDS movement as anti-Semitic.

The association has a massive war chest.

The latest annual budget that it declared came to $8.5 million. That is five times the $1.7 million per year figure previously stated by the association.

I asked Menachem Margolin (image on the right), head of the European Jewish Association, to explain the increase. I asked him, too, how much his group receives from the Israeli government.

Margolin replied that “since we can’t really consider you as a great supporter” of his organization, “we won’t answer your questions and won’t provide you [with] any information” about it.

The $8.5 million budget was declared by the association for the 2016 financial year. It has not yet entered figures for subsequent years into a register of lobbyists set up by European Union administrators.

The latest such entry made by the association cites “donations” as the source of all its funding, without giving further details. A trawl through the EU’s lobbying register indicates that the European Jewish Association is now the wealthiest pro-Israel lobby group headquartered in Brussels.

The budget increase enjoyed by the association reflects how Israel and its supporters are spending more on trying to fight BDS activists. In late 2017, it was reported that $72 million had been earmarked for that purpose, with the funds coming both from the Israeli state and from private donors.

Double standards

The efforts to combat the BDS movement have been overseen by Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister for strategic affairs. He has warned that campaigners who urge a boycott of Israel will pay an unspecified “price.”

A documentary made by Al Jazeera – censored under pressure from the Israel lobby – showed how the strategic affairs ministry is gathering data on Palestine solidarity activists, with a view to taking action against them. In a recent report, the ministry dismissed as “terrorists in suits” a number of Palestinians who are outspoken in demanding justice and equality for their people.

The European Jewish Association has been in direct contact with Erdan. Photographs on its website show that the association played host to Erdan during a 2017 visit to Brussels.

Furthermore, the association has organized events jointly with the Israeli government.

Like many similar lobbyists, Menachem Margolin has displayed double standards. At the same time as accusing the BDS movement of anti-Semitism – even though it strenuously opposes racial and religious bigotry – Margolin has advocated engagement with genuine anti-Semites.

Last year, he contended that Israel should be willing to work with Europe’s far-right parties if they are in government. He was effectively stating that Israel should be prepared to overlook how Austria’s Freedom Party wants concentration camps for refugees or how Poland’s Law and Justice has denied what really happened during the Holocaust once their top figures are being driven around in ministerial cars.

Smeared

I am among the campaigners whom Margolin has smeared.

In January, the European Jewish Association issued a statement alleging that my blog on The Electronic Intifada “glorifies” the actions of Hamas. When I challenged Margolin to produce evidence of such glorification, he said “everyone can make mistakes and get wrong information.”

Despite acknowledging – at least implicitly – that he had made false claims against me, Margolin has not yet retracted his statement.

He indicated that he would only be prepared to do so if I condemned Hamas. That is an unreasonable condition.

Arguing that Palestinians have the right to resist Israel’s apartheid system – as I have repeatedly – is not the same thing as glorifying the actions of a particular organization.

Margolin has formed a number of pro-Israel organizations in Brussels. Some – including The Joseph Project and the European Cultural Center – are secretive and appear to have published virtually no information about their activities. Margolin works from a building within walking distance of the main EU institutions.

The European Jewish Association is not the only pro-Israel group to see its budget rise substantially.

The AJC Transatlantic Institute – the Brussels branch of the American Jewish Committee – has almost $1 million per year at its disposal. That is more than three times the institute’s declared budget for 2010.

David Harris, a top figure in the American Jewish Committee, explained back in 2004 how the pro-Israel lobby was paying greater attention to the European Union as the bloc was expanding in size. “We need to be there, just as we need to be at the United Nations,” Harris said.

Israel and its supporters are evidently investing vast sums on trying to influence the EU and thwart the BDS movement. While they may have some short-term successes, they could ultimately find out that all their money has been wasted.

BDS tactics rely on people power if they are to prove successful. With public awareness about Palestine growing, there appears to be little danger that ordinary folk will suddenly fall in love with Israel, no matter how much it spends in Brussels, Geneva, New York or Washington.

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Featured image: The European Jewish Association has played host to Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister for strategic affairs. (European Jewish Association)

We know that the genetic engineering of the plant and animal kingdom alters their DNA, and does the same to those who regularly ingest GM foods. People, animals, fish, insects and plants that absorb or are cross contaminated by other genetically modified species, are the victims of the recombinant DNA laboratory techniques used in genetic engineering.

It’s not for nothing that the engineered produce that emerges out of this process earned the title ‘Frankenstein Food’.

But, as GMO hit the fields, another Frankenstein was in development that was to have its own special set of devastating consequences for life on this planet: Electro Magnetic Frequencies (EMF). This synthetic form of pulsed electricity started its life as a military/secret service weapon, using microwave frequencies to penetrate buildings and spy on human activities.

We now know that both GMO and EMF come from the same stable and that both are being used as ‘intentional’ weapons of biological destabilization. There is no chance that (EMF) technologies capable of such drastic alteration to the genome responsible for the propagation of life on Earth, were commercialized simply to provide people with convenient pocket-sized wireless communication tools and Flavor Saver tomatoes.

GMO and 5G share the same basic goal: to alter living matter in such a way as to exert 100% control over it. In the case of GMO, for example, genetically altering the DNA of maize, soya, cotton or a tomato, so they can be sprayed with the toxic herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) – and remain unaffected – while the weeds around them shrivel to the ground and die.

In human terms, this technique is called eugenics.

The EMF known as 5G, starts from the same basic premise, but moves from eugenics into genocide. The microwave pulses emitted by EMF already form the foundation of 2G, 3G, 4G telecommunications and of WiFi. Scientists now have irrefutable evidence that these pulses (resonances) denature and distort the cellular composition and DNA of living matter.

5G shortens the resonance spaces into millimeter pulses and raises the output by a factor of at least ten; so that being within their range has been compared to being closed into an activated microwave oven.

WiFi and cell phone tower microwave transmissions are non-targeted, they are delivered as ‘broad spectrum’; just like the agrichemical herbicides that kill every living plant they hit and most soil organisms too. They are blanket attacks on nature and man, and the WiFi is tuned to wavelengths almost identical to the natural vibrational levels received by the human brain. Thus their operators can exert a direct controlling influence over the thought and behavioral patterns of those in the firing line; and these days, that is all of us. And of course, people are no aware that this is happening to them.

WiFi and electromagnetic microwaves were developed as secretive weapons of war in the 1950’s.

‘Silent weapons for quiet wars’ as their promoters described them, in the course of US military defense programs secretively rolled-out during the cold war period of stand-off between Russia and the USA.

Scientific minds engaged in single pointed deliverance of a weapons system, do not concern themselves with the affect their products have on human animal and ecological life. They accept lucrative contracts which are designed to keep them quiet, while superpower government defense agencies demand ever more ‘effective’ technologies to maintain their domination over world events.

So when you place your cell-phone next to your ear, remember it’s a weapon and not a harmless play-thing.

In mainstream commercial agriculture the same ethos is practiced. Plant breeding R&D is paid for by agribusiness corporations determined to dominate and control, in a global market centered around supplying super and hypermarket chains, animal feed conglomerates and raw material processing units. Genetic engineering the staple dietary commodities enables a corporation to patent  – and therefore ‘own’ – the plant genome. In this way, the corporate body exerts a despotic power over planetary diversity, reducing the soils of fields in which their crops are sown, to a sterile waste land, in which just one patented crop stands – while everything around it is poisoned to death. This is called ‘ecocide’.

Thus we can add ecocide to eugenics in defining the practice of corporate agriculture under the auspices of such names as Monsanto, Bayer and Cargill. And indeed, research the background of corporations at the forefront of global agribusiness and you will find many have military origins and war related agendas. The war on nature is at least as drastic to the future of the planet as is the war on mankind.

GM foods and all monoculturally raised mass produced supermarket foods, are treated by agrichemical pesticides known for their toxic biological impacts; including malignant neuro-degenerative, reproductive, carcinogenic, respiratory and metabolic disorders in humans. And if that wasn’t bad enough they also, as I mentioned earlier, sterilize the soil of living matter, rendering it largely lifeless.

WiFi does its life diminishing sterilization from above. During the coming two years (2019/2020) the proposed 5G roll-out is to include the launching of 20,000 satellites whose multi targeting antennae – known as ‘phased arrays’ – will steadily irradiate (industry states: ‘will provide lag free internet’)  ‘every square inch of the planet’, with electromagnetic microwaves beamed from the edge of space.

Common to both GMO and 5G, is a continuation of the process of rendering nature – and indeed man – a slave to the insatiable corporate appetite for profit, power and control. Both GMO and EMF are tools for rendering the planet inhospitable to humanity and devoid of natural diversity of flora and fauna, essential for the health and welfare of us all. Ultimately rendering this planet as a place only suited to those who feel no empathy, no compassion and no sense of belonging.

For, let us be clear, this is the actual psychological state of mind of those who are attempting to block humanity from developing its creative essence and spiritual aspirations. Block these unique gifts, so as to put in place a robotic substitute entirely devoid of free will and emotion. The cyborg.

We need to recognize that inhuman minds are behind inhuman technologies. Just think of the tens of thousands who have suffered a cruel fate under the commercial villainy of Monsanto over the past decades. With its asbestos, agent orange and aspartame  – well before toxic GM soya beans ever saw the light of day. Its marriage to ex Nazi Bayer corporation, reveals common fascistic ideologies.  These same ideologies fuel the ambitions of politicians, media tycoons, bankers, corporate executives, technocrats and military hegemonists who rule the world today.

The proposed 20,000 5G satellite global microwaving exercise, which threatens all life on Earth, goes even further. It is a display of cold, calculating megalomania on the part of its ‘Star Link’ backers. It displays, in many respects, ambitions that are a mirror image of the corporate GMO gene splicer’s stated intention of dominating planetary agriculture. But 5G WiFi exponents have their eyes on controlling the input and output of  ‘the internet of things’ – thereby designing and controlling the matrix of daily life. Google, Facebook and other social media operatives are at work on this agenda as I write.

Until now, many have fought-shy of recognizing the dark-side agenda that underpins such operations. But the time is soon coming when a critical mass of individuals will realize that the sinister manipulation of planet Earth and its inhabitants, by a tiny ascendant corporate cabal, would never have been possible without the unspoken complicity of around 95% of humanity. And if you and I look carefully, we will find our own contribution in there too.

Sign the Global Appeal to Stop 5g! Click here.

None of us are outside ‘the system’. But more and more of us are at least waking-up to an admission of our duplicity/hypocrisy; and that is a crucial step in the process of liberation.

The next step is to act on one’s new found knowledge. Decisively. To become aware – and not to act on this awareness – is a betrayal of the unique gift each of us inherited at birth. It is like consigning one’s life to a prison camp. Don’t do it.

From this day forth, get on the front foot ‘in defense of life’ – and never look back!

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Julian Rose is an international activist, writer, organic farming pioneer and actor.  In 1987 and 1998, he led a campaign that saved unpasteurised milk from being banned in the UK; and, with Jadwiga Lopata, a ‘Say No to GMO’ campaign in Poland which led to a national ban of GM seeds and plants in that country in 2006. Julian is currently campaigning to ‘Stop 5G’ WiFi. He is the author of two acclaimed titles: Changing Course for Life and In Defence of Life and is a long time exponent of yoga/meditation. See Julian’s web site for more information and to purchase his books www.julianrose.info

While most of the US mainstream media was “shocked” by Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Elections, the same can’t be said about all media outlets. Although, to be fair, it was a difficult call because of the reluctance of Americans to admit to pollsters they’d vote for Trump, given the demonization of Trump and anyone who’d support him over Clinton by the media, as racists, sexists and xenophobes.

One reason for Trump’s victory was because many Americans who’d have voted for Bernie Sanders, voted for Trump, having seen leaked documents and e-mails published by WikiLeaks which showed that the Democratic nomination was stolen from Sanders and given to Clinton. Later, the former Interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Donna Brazile, had to admit in her book, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, that WikiLeaks was right, and recalled in detail how the Democratic primary was rigged against Sanders; something that Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren also said on CNN on November 2, 2017.

This, however, was one of the very few times that the mainstream media admitted or reported on this. Neither did it report on how Sanders was attacked from within his own party, with Clinton’s campaign Chair John Podesta saying, “stick the knife in[to Sanders]”, and one Democratic PR strategist replying,

“Bernie needs to be ground to a pulp…Crush him as hard as you can.”

But, then again, reporting on it would have been an embarrassment for the media, given that the same batch of leaked e-mails also detailed how its own members were colluding with the Clinton campaign, including by “planting false stories” as Maggie Haberman of The New York Times is alleged to have done “many times” by Podesta himself.

This is an old tactic often used by western intelligence agencies that merged with, and had, in fact, taken over the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned about, as evidenced by the now exposed CIA’s Operation Mockingbird programme and others, and by Dr Udo Ulfkotte, former assistant editor for German daily newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, among other top western journalists. What these and the recent “Integrity Initiative leaks”—alleging that British intelligence used the British media to create damaging narratives against Russia—by the global hacktivist group Anonymous shows, according to legendary journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, is that the media, “never more so than now”, is “an appendage of [the] established power” that is the military-industrial-intelligence complex—often referred to as the “Deep State”.

Like WikiLeaks was proven correct about Sanders being taken down by this Deep State—or permanent state, comprising of members from influential segments of society who always stay in power—it seems that Trump too is now being proven right about its attempt to depose him. In an article for the late great Robert Parry’s (best known for breaking the CIA’s involvement in the Contra cocaine trafficking scandal in the 1980s) Consortium News on February 16, John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the CIA’s infamous torture programme wrote:

“I was a member of that ‘Deep State’ throughout my 15 years at the CIA. I can tell you from first-hand experience that the CIA doesn’t care who the president is. Neither does the FBI.”

Kiriakou, who is not a fan of Trump nor his CIA Director Gina Haspel (also known as “Bloody Gina” for her role in the torture programme that Kiriakou exposed)—highlighting an interview of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe with CBS’s 60 Minutes, where he admitted that he and other FBI officials had discussed the possibility of recruiting a cabinet secretary to help push the president out of office using the 25^th Amendment of the Constitution—had this to say:

“McCabe’s almost offhanded comments on ‘60 Minutes,’ that the FBI actively considered deposing a sitting president should be cause for alarm. Set partisan politics aside for a moment. We’re talking about deposing a sitting president. We’re talking about wearing a wire to catch a sitting president saying something because you’re angry that he fired your boss. Even the idea of it is unprecedented in American history.”

As shocking a revelation as this may be, for those paying attention, this is not the first evidence of attack on Trump by the Deep State that has come out. If we rewind back to how the Mueller investigation began—which has so far come up with zero evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign, WikiLeaks and Russia during the 2016 election, and charged individuals only for totally different crimes, or misdemeanours, as the Senate Intelligence Committee has found—one may recall that it was started using the false “Steel Dossier” produced by a former British intelligence agent, and paid for by the DNC and the Clinton campaign—in breach of US law. Moreover, at the centre of recommending the appointment of a Special Prosecutor (Robert Mueller) was (now fired) FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who had previously promised his fellow FBI Agent (and lover) Lisa Page through text messages, that they would “stop” Trump from winning the White House, among other things.

Finally, the most obvious fact which showed that the Mueller Investigation is nothing but a “Witch Hunt” against Trump, as he has continuously claimed, is the fact that William Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA and inventor of its ThinThread Programme, now at the core of all its surveillance systems, along with other forensic experts, have proven with forensic and technical evidence (none of which are ever discussed by the media) that the speed at which the DNC files were transferred was so fast, that it could not have been sent over the Internet (and wasn’t hacked), and had to be transferred using other means (but was leaked instead)—most likely, a thumb-drive.

But why would the Deep State go after Trump? Well, one reason is Trump’s foreign policy of wanting to withdraw troops from Syria, Afghanistan, etc., and of making peace with North Korea—all extremely damaging for the war profiteers that are also a part of the Deep State. And why is it that the media has joined the Deep State in its attacks? Again, because large parts of the media no longer cover the news, but only exists to promote the Deep State’s narrative, while the rest of it is just there to push their own ideology (both Left and Right) onto the masses; which is why they’ve almost never covered the different evidence (that have not once been credibly refuted, despite being publicly available) that I’ve mentioned so far.

To put it all into perspective using the words of Julian Assange:

“Hillary Clinton unified the establishments…Trump is the anti-establishment candidate. Despite himself being from the wealthy New York real estate establishment, he was not connected in a serious way to the Washington DC political intelligence or diplomatic establishment. So the media were part of that and…acted, in a disgraceful way by constantly making editorial endorsements to their candidate [Clinton]… they were forced to make editorial endorsements for Clinton…otherwise they couldn’t publish anything.”

What is most interesting about this ongoing battle happening underneath the surface is the massive exodus of personnel from within all the three letter US intelligence agencies (now standing at record numbers), which could imply that Trump is actually winning, at least to some extent for now, against the Deep State. But, as the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reminded everyone on MSNBC:

“You take on the intelligence community—and they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

President John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan had that reminded to them with bullets. Is that why Trump surrounds himself with members of the military? Only time will tell. But what has become obvious from Trump’s presidency is that not everything is as it seems, when it comes to matters concerning the Deep State.

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Eresh Omar Jamal is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star. His Twitter handle is: @EreshOmarJamal

First published in September 2012 prior to Venezuela’s October 2012 presidential elections, in which Chavez was reelected.

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Real News 2012 Report on Venezuela’s electoral system

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Senator Rubio Tells Maduro He Will End Up Like Gaddafi

By Kurt Nimmo, February 25, 2019

Mike Pompeo, the former boss of the world’s most prolific terror organization, the CIA, climbed up on his high State Department horse Saturday and lectured us on the crimes of the “sick tyrant” Nicolas Maduro. 

Cuba’s Constitutional Reform: Attempting to Reflect the Will of the Cuban People

By Dr. Birsen Filip, February 25, 2019

Like Fidel and Raúl Castro before him, President Díaz-Canel is highly critical of injustice, poverty, exclusion, the unequal global distribution of wealth and income, as well as other destructive outcomes associated with colonialism, neo-liberalism, imperialism, and racism.

NATO Is an Appendage of the U.S. Empire

By Mark Taliano and The Syria Times, February 25, 2019

He has made it clear that US-led globalizing institutions seek to destroy international law, and displace international law, in favour of a cancerous political economy that siphons wealth from the world into the clammy hands of a tiny international oligarch class.

The Bull Market and Today’s Financial Crisis. “The Great Crash of 1929”. Will History Repeat Itself?

By Bryant Brown, February 25, 2019

Since 1922 the stock market had been going up at almost 20% a year. On September 3’rd of 1929 it hit a record high when in closed at 381.2. There was a small rumble in March when the market dropped about 10% but it recovered.

Since the 2008 Great Recession and the Fed’s action to save the ‘to big to fail’ banks by pumping over two trillion dollars into the market with what it calls Quantitative Easing. There is no doubt that that propped up the stock market. But as the Fed starts to undo that with what is called Quantitative Tightening, what will that do to the market?

Israel Pharmaceutical Firms Test Medicines on Palestinian Prisoners

By Middle East Monitor, February 25, 2019

Israeli Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian revealed yesterday that the Israeli occupation authorities issues permits to large pharmaceutical firms to carry out tests on Palestinian and Arab prisoners, Felesteen.ps reported.

City of Xi’an and Why the New Chinese Silk Road Terrifies the West?

By Andre Vltchek, February 25, 2019

Attempts by the Communist Party to turn China into an ‘Ecological Civilization’ are visible at every step: trees are revered and protected, comfortable walking is encouraged, while heavy duty, efficient and super modern public transportation is extremely cheap and ecological: the metro, and electric buses.

Mobilise for Peace. America is No Longer “The Top Dog”: The Threat of World War Grows as U.S. Power Declines”

By Christopher Black, February 24, 2019

All the while the peoples targeted by their aggression call for dialogue and the peaceful resolution of issues, whether real or feigned. They call for an end to war, to never-ending conflict, and ask simply to be treated with the mutual respect due to each nation from each.

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The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal toured open air markets in Caracas full of food and supplies subsidized by the Venezuelan government, which debunk the “humanitarian crisis” lie spread by corporate media.

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Featured image is from teleSUR

Mike Pompeo, the former boss of the world’s most prolific terror organization, the CIA, climbed up on his high State Department horse Saturday and lectured us on the crimes of the “sick tyrant” Nicolas Maduro. 

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We denounce Maduro’s refusal to let humanitarian assistance reach #Venezuela. What kind of a sick tyrant stops food from getting to hungry people? The images of burning trucks filled with aid are sickening. pic.twitter.com/bJ1Qsxkgx8

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) February 24, 2019

This little tweeted tirade was intended for the ignorant masses in America who know virtually nothing about Venezuela beyond what a lying and script-reading corporate media tells them.

For instance, they don’t know Russia and other countries have sent food and supplies to Venezuela and the US-orchestrated events on the border are designed to make you think Maduro is denying aid and willfully starving his people. 

#Russia delivers 7 tons of humanitarian aid to #Venezuela#HumanitarianAid pic.twitter.com/sE9diLf3nT

— Press TV (@PressTV) February 22, 2019

US guide to "helping" people of #Venezuela:
– Step 1. Sanction billions $ worth of oil exports, needed to import food & vital supplies.
– Step 2. Offer instead few trucks of "USAID aid" to "save" #Venezuela, while using it as a tool to carry out coup d'etat.#HandsOffVenezuela pic.twitter.com/m374f013tR

— Russia in RSA 🇷🇺 (@EmbassyofRussia) February 24, 2019

Pompeo would also have you believe evil Cuban communists are calling the shots in Venezuela.

Cuban agents are directing attacks on the people of #Venezuela on behalf of Maduro. The Venezuelan military should do its duty, protect the country’s citizens, and prevent the Havana puppeteers from starving hungry children. #EstamosUnidosVE

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) February 24, 2019

So, what are these vile communists doing? In return for subsidized oil, they are providing doctors and diplomats.

But if you read The War Street Journal, you will get a different picture: the Cubans are orchestrating the murder of Venezuelans and spying on Venezuelan army officers to head off a coup.

“If the international community wants to head off disaster, a good place to start would be in Havana,” Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote for the newspaper in 2017.

Neocon favorite Marco Rubio let it be known what the US has in mind for Maduro. He tweeted out this on Sunday:

pic.twitter.com/ZwxbWyV1HF

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 24, 2019

Senator Marco Rubio tweets picture of slain Gaddafi in an apparent threat to Venezuela's Maduro. Rubio championed overthrowing Gaddafi, claiming in 2011 "a new beginning for the people". The resulting civil war left it with tens of thousands killed, terrorism & slave markets. https://t.co/M9fbiBhFvk

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 24, 2019

Prior to this, Rubio posted a couple photos of Manuel Noriega, the CIA’s favored drug kingpin who fell from favor. 

pic.twitter.com/6eV5ZkbMF1

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 24, 2019

Noriega’s useful past for the neoliberal cartel is of course not mentioned by Rubio. 

“Noriega was recruited as a CIA informant while studying at a military academy in Peru,” writes Mark Tran. “He received intelligence and counterintelligence training at the School of the Americas at Fort Gulick, Panama, in 1967, as well as a course in psychological operations at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He was to remain on the CIA payroll until February 1988.”

The Panamanian dictator “made himself valuable to the US during the Contra wars when he allowed the US to set up listening posts in Panama and by helping the US campaign against the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Noriega allowed Panama to be used as a conduit for US money and weapons for the Contras as then US president Ronald Reagan sought to undermine the Sandinistas. But Noriega’s increasing brutality turned him into a liability, especially after the assassination of Hugo Spadafora, a political opponent who was found beheaded in 1985.”

After the 1988 Senate subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations concluded that US support for Noriega “represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures for the United States,” the first Bush administration decided the small Central America country with its strategically invaluable canal must be invaded and Noriega taken down. 

Rubio also didn’t mention the fact after Noriega was removed the new government agreed to ditch the Torrijos treaties, under which all US military bases in Panama would be shut down by the year 2000.

Meanwhile, those of us who can’t find Venezuela on a map will likely fall for the narrative pushed by the corporate media as it reads from its government script.

As noted by Mark Cook of FAIR, the propaganda media in the US has engaged in serial and pathological lying about Venezuela. 

In other words, those of us who either refuse to do our homework, are intellectually incurious, and take the media’s gross distortions and lies as a matter of fact will support the continuation and escalation of economic sanctions and the growing probability of war waged against not only Venezuela, but Nicaragua and Cuba as well. 

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

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Gage Skidmore/Flickr

On April 18, 2018, the Cuban National Assembly selected Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez[i] to be Raúl Castro’s successor as President of Cuba for two terms totalling 10 years. The very next day, Díaz-Canel assumed office as the 17^th President of Cuba. Like Fidel and Raúl Castro before him, President Díaz-Canel is highly critical of injustice, poverty, exclusion, the unequal global distribution of wealth and income, as well as other destructive outcomes associated with colonialism, neo-liberalism, imperialism, and racism. All three were also in agreement that capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, and neoliberalism are responsible for promoting the notion that self-interest maximization represents the true nature of human beings, while neglecting the importance of achieving social justice, equality, and the common good.

President Díaz-Canel and the Castro brothers have all claimed that they were willing to do anything in order to strengthen and advance the Revolution. For example, Fidel Castro is quoted as saying that

‘it has been stated that socialism must be improved. No one can deny this principle, which is inherent and permanently applicable to every human endeavor’ (Fidel Castro, December 7, 1989).

Fidel Castro actually began implementing economic and social reforms in 1991, in an attempt to improve Cuba’s socialist system after living standards severely worsened following the collapse of the Soviet Union. That year, Cuba started on a path of economic reform, which included gradually liberalizing prices and permitting Spanish and Canadian companies to invest in the tourism industry through joint ventures with the Cuban government. Subsequently, Raúl Castro continued implementing economic reforms after taking over the presidency from his brother in 2006. Among the specific reforms, which began to be implemented in 2009, were initiates to decentralize the agricultural sector, allow small businesses to flourish, liberalize real estate markets, and make it easier for Cubans to obtain permission to travel overseas. Raúl Castro also played a key role in reaching an agreement with Barak Obama to re-establish diplomatic relations with Washington, which was announced on December 17, 2014.

Like the Castro brothers before him, President Díaz-Canel is of the view that societal systems are not rigid; rather, they evolve over time by adjusting to changing circumstances and conditions, sometimes necessitating government intervention to respond to economic shocks or system failures. One of President Díaz-Canel’s first major reforms will be to update the 1976 Constitution in a manner that benefits the Cuban people, while maintaining the ideals of the Revolution under the premise that ‘the revolution, socialism and national independence are indissolubly linked.’ By doing so, the new Constitution should maintain the legacies of heroes of the Cuban Revolution (1953–1959), namely Fidel and Raúl Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos (1932-1959), Ché Guevara (1928-1967), and Juan Almeida Bosque (1927-2009), as well as those of other national heroes like José Julián Martí Pérez (1853-1895) and Ignacio Agramonte y Loynáz (1841-1873).

The constitutional reform, which has been planned over the course of several years, is being headed by former President Raúl Castro. It was drafted by a 33-person commission consisting of deputies, legal experts and academics in a variety of disciplines, all of whom were appointed by the National Assembly of People’s Power[ii] on June 2, 2018. Subsequently, on July 22, the National Assembly of People’s Power approved the modifications to the 1976 Constitution that were proposed by the commission. The proposed draft maintained 11 articles from the original Constitution, while 113 articles were amended, 13 were deleted, and 87 new ones were added.

To ensure that the reformed Constitution represents the will of the people, 133,681 meetings were held across the island from August 13 to November 15, 2018, which allowed approximately 9 million people, including Cuban exiles, to express their views and opinions on the proposed changes. In the end, the meetings elicited almost 2 million comments on the draft Constitution. Consequently, a total of 760 changes were made as a direct result the comments that were received, with 134 of the draft Constitution’s articles being modified, meaning that ordinary Cubans played a role in the final outcome. According to President Diaz-Canel, this process ensures that ‘all the Cubans will be able to freely express their opinions’ in developing the new Constitution. The success of this process will be determined on February 24, 2019, when Cubans go to the polls to vote in a referendum that will decide whether the newly-reformed Constitution is formally approved.

The draft Constitution reaffirms that Cuba’s political, economic and social system are socialist, and that the Communist Party of Cuba will continue to play a leading role on the island. That means the goal of the reform process is not to move the country towards the establishment of a capitalist system[iii]; rather, it seeks to rejuvenate the island’s socialism, so that it meets the changing needs and desires of the Cuban people and better prepares them to face contemporary global challenges. Although the draft Constitution continues to build on recent reforms pertaining to private ownership, it mostly aims to modernize the island’s economy without regime change. Some of the specific proposals for the new Constitution include: a limited recognition of private property, while avoiding the concentration of wealth and private property in too few hands; facilitating the conditions for a freer market; limiting the presidency to a maximum of two consecutive five-year terms; prohibiting discrimination[iv] based on gender, ethnicity, or disability; altering the definition of marriage from a union between a man and  woman to one between two persons of unspecified gender; and, restoring the presumption of innocence in the justice system. Additionally, the country’s leadership structure will be modified from the current system where one leader holds the position of President of the Council of State and of Ministers to one that distributes authority by including a President of the Republic, Vice-President and Prime Minister.

President Díaz-Canel expressed his view that the restructured Constitution, if approved, will demonstrate the government’s continued commitment to the Revolution, which continues to exist for the people through the socialism that it brought. His statements also suggest that, under his presidency, Cuba will continue on its path of instituting reforms aimed at improving the country’s economic and social development, thereby allowing it to remain a symbol of global anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist movements, as well as a sovereign, independent, socialist, and sustainable state, free from all forms of foreign influence.

‘The revolution has not aged, it remains young.’ (Raúl Castro, Jan 1,2019)

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Global Research contributor Dr. Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Ottawa.

Notes

[i] President Díaz-Canel is an electronic engineer by training. He made his first foray into politicsin 1993,during the special period, when he became a member and secretary of the Young Communist League of Villa Clara. In 1994, he became first secretary of the Provincial Party Committee of Villa Clara before becoming a member of the Communist Party of Cuba in 2003. In 2009, he served as Minister of Higher Education until 2012, when he became Vice President of the Council of Ministers (deputy prime minister). He became Vice President of Cuba in 2013 and served in that capacity until RaúlCastro stepped down as President in 2018.

[ii] ‘The National Assembly of People’s Power is the supreme body of state power and represents and expresses the sovereign will of all the people. The National Assembly of People’s Power is the only body in the Republic invested with constituent and legislative authority. The National Assembly of People’s Power is comprised of deputies elected by free, direct and secret vote, in the proportion and according to the procedure established by law.’ http://www.granma.cu/granmad/secciones/elecciones/112.html

[iii] President Díaz-Canel often contends that the production and consumption patterns of the capitalist system (neo-liberalism) require militarism, war, and terrorism, and that the pursuit of neo-liberal goals often produces an array of negative consequences, including violations of human rights, the destruction of nature, death, poverty, and exploitation.

[iv] ‘The economic and social rights are reformulated, in particular, the right to health and education, which are maintained as a function of the State and free of charge, although it is envisaged that the law will define other issues related to them.  The content of the right to equality is further developed by incorporating non-discrimination on the basis of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnic origin and disability into existing rights (skin color, sex, race, etc.).’ https://walterlippmann.com/draft-cuban-constitution-2018/

The Canadian Political analyst and Research Associate at Global Research Mark Taliano has argued that his country must leave the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which he sees as an appendage of the U.S. Empire.

He has told the Syria Times e-newspaper that Canada is spending billions of dollars yearly on an organization that is advancing imperial wars of conquest and death and poverty beneath lies of humanitarianism and freedom and democracy.

“I see NATO as an appendage of Empire.

It was meant to bring Peace and Security after catastrophic world war, but its original purpose has been defiled. Now the US Empire and its globalizing institutions, including NATO and international financial institutions, are subverting peace and prosperity through economic warfare and by waging criminal wars of aggression,” Taliano has said.

He has made it clear that US-led globalizing institutions seek to destroy international law, and displace international law, in favour of a cancerous political economy that siphons wealth from the world into the clammy hands of a tiny international oligarch class.

“Americans themselves are victims of this same cancer. The US has the world’s highest incarceration rates, third world poverty rates are expanding, even as the plutocrats enrich themselves and shower the masses with obscene media messaging that totally obliterates reality,” the analyst has added.

He explained why his country must leave NATO, saying:

“Canada must leave NATO because it is spending billions of dollars yearly on an organization that is advancing imperial wars of conquest and death and poverty beneath lies of humanitarianism and freedom and democracy. None of this is about defense. Through our actions and inactions we are supporting Nazis, ISIS, al Qaeda and an imperial Project for a New American Century, led and directed by neocon megalomaniacs, that is destroying the world and imperiling life on earth itself.”

Terrorists will be deployed against Iran

Regarding US demand that European countries take back their citizens, who have been fighting for ISIS in Syria, the Canadian analyst believes that those terrorists are being located to Europe and Canada for various reasons, possibly for redeployment at later dates.

 “Syria and its allies are, thankfully, destroying the terrorists that Canada and its allies support and protect. The terrorists are Western military assets that are being deployed elsewhere, for example in Kiev, Afghanistan, Yemen, and so on. No doubt they will be deployed against Iran as well. Hence, the on-going utility of the White Helmets psyop,” Taliano says.

He has expressed sorrow that terrorist and their allies are somewhat protected beneath the “humanitarian lie”, which most Canadians still believe, about White Helmets being “saviours”.

The Canadian political analyst, who was in Syria in in April, 2018, at the same time that the U.S, France, and U.K bombed Syria with their cruise missiles following the Ghouta false flag, published in 2017 a book entitled ‘Voices from Syria’ after he came to Syria in September 2016 as he sensed that the official narrative being fed to North Americans across TV screens, in newsprint and on internet were false.

Voices from Syria is a very short book, but it is full of primary source documentation and evidence that refutes the incessant Western war propaganda. It also explains what we as Westerners can do to amplify the Truth for Peace and Justice.

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This article was originally published on Syria Times.

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

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

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Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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In a victory for advocates of precaution, an Italian court has ordered the government to launch a campaign to advise the public of the health risks from mobile and cordless phones.

The information campaign must begin by July 16.

The court in Rome reached its decision last November, but the announcement was only made yesterday. The decision is here.

Today, the government announced that it would not appeal the ruling, Stefano Bertone told Microwave News. Bertone is with the law firm of Ambrosio and Commodo in Turin, and is helping represent a citizens group called APPLE, which sued to force the government to act. APPLE is an acronym for the Association for the Prevention of and Fight Against Electrosmog.

In a joint press release, three different ministries —of Health, of Environment and of Education and Research— acknowledge that there is a need to raise public awareness on how to use mobile phones safely.

“This case has important implications not only in Italy, but worldwide,” Bertone said. “At the moment, health and safety information is contained —or, I should say, buried— in cell phone manuals. This is not good enough. If it was, the court would have agreed with the government that sufficient information is already available.”

In October 2012, the Italian Supreme Court affirmed a ruling granting a claim for workers compensation filed by a businessman who claimed that his use of a cell phone for 12 years had caused a tumor to develop on one of his cranial nerves (the trigeminal nerve). Gino Angelo Levis, a founder of APPLE, was an expert witness for the plaintiff.

APPLE’s press release is here.

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In a series of tweets posted in her twitter account a few hours ago Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirmed that the US government is moving special forces to the borders of Venezuela along with military equipment.

She also alerted that the same US government (and US companies) with the help of some NATO allies is seeking to buy arms and ammunition in east European countries to arm the Venezuelan opposition.

#Zakharova: There is evidence that #US companies and their #NATO allies are discussing the possibility of buying a large batch of weapons and ammunition in some East European country to arm the Venezuelan opposition forces

— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) February 22, 2019

This weekend near the Tienditas Bridge, the Venezuelan border with Colombia, there are two concerts being organized, one calling for peace and labeled #HandsOffVenezuela on the Venezuelan side of the border, the other on the Colombian side called Aid Venezuela, trying to forcefully introduce into Venezuela’s border some so called “humanitarian aid” delivered by the US Army Southern Command. In this respect Zaharova stated that “It is fraught with a clash of the current government’s supporters and opponents and provides a convenient pretext for forceful action to remove the legitimate President from power”.

#Zakharova: It is fraught with a clash of the current government’s supporters and opponents and provides a convenient pretext for forceful action to remove the legitimate President from power

— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) February 22, 2019

The Russian and Chinese governments are straregic allies of the Venezuelan goverment but lately the Russian Goverment is the most outspoken about US promoting “regime change” in Venezuela with the excuse of “humanitarian aid”.

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Featured image is from Orinoco Tribune

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement on Thursday, February 21, “A small peace keeping group of about 200 US troops will remain in Syria for a period of time,” as reported by the CNN [1] on Friday. According to the report: “The 200 troops who will remain will be divided between al-Tanf, an area near the Iraq-Jordan border, and northeast Syria.”

The report further adds:

“The troops in northeast Syria currently advise the Syrian Democratic Forces. The idea would be that these 200 remaining US troops would be able to provide unique high-end capabilities – such as logistics, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and calling in airstrikes – that would help encourage coalition countries like France and the United Kingdom to also keep their troops in Syria to help ensure the safe zone with a force of some 1,500 international troops.”

The al-Tanf military base is strategically located in southeastern Syria on the border between Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and it sits on a critically important Damascus-Baghdad highway, which serves as a lifeline for Damascus. Washington has illegally occupied 55-kilometer area around al-Tanf since 2016, and several hundred US Marines have trained Syrian militant groups, including Maghawir al-Thawra, there.

The news doesn’t come as a surprise, though, as in an exclusive report [2] by the Middle East Eye’s Turkey correspondent, Ragip Soylu, on January 10, he mentioned that the US delegation presented a five-point document to the Turkish officials during National Security Advisor John Bolton’s recent visit to Turkey.

A senior Trump administration official briefed on objectives outlined at the meeting said on January 10,

“As the president has stated, the US will maintain whatever capability is necessary for operations needed to prevent the Islamic State’s resurgence.”

The official further said:

“The US is not withdrawing from the base at al-Tanf at this time.”

Moreover, National Security Advisor John Bolton also alluded to maintaining long-term US military presence at the al-Tanf base during his visit to Jerusalem on January 6.

Furthermore, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also delivered contradictory messages in a speech in Cairo on January 10. On the one hand, he said Washington would withdraw American troops from Syria in line with Donald Trump’s momentous announcement of withdrawal of US troops from Syria on December 19, and on the other, he emphasized the US would continue fighting the Islamic State and would also contain the influence of Iran in the Middle East region. Obviously, both those divergent goals were impossible to achieve, unless Washington was planning to maintain some sort of long-term military presence in Syria.

It’s worth noting, moreover, that rather than fighting the Islamic State, the condition of continued presence of the US forces at al-Tanf military base has been acceded to by the Trump administration in order to address Israel’s concerns regarding the expansion of Iran’s influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Furthermore, the exact number of the US troops stationed at al-Tanf and in northeast Syria in the Kurdish towns of Hasakah and Qamishli wouldn’t be just 200, as claimed by the CNN report, because whenever the US military deploys its forces in a foreign country, it simply mentions the number of service members in its official reports and elides over the number of private military contractors, which quite often outnumber service members by a ratio of three to one. Thus, the number of the US troops that would still be deployed in Syria despite the official “withdrawal” would amount to several hundred American troops.

Thus, for all practical purposes, it appears the withdrawal of American troops from Syria will be limited to Kurdish-occupied Arab-majority towns of Manbij and Kobani in northern Syria in order to address the concerns of Washington’s NATO-ally Turkey pertaining to the presence of Kurdish militias in northern Syria along Turkey’s southern borders, and the US will maintain continued military presence in the Kurdish-majority towns of Hasakah and Qamishli in northeast Syria and at al-Tanf military base in southeast Syria along the border between Syria, Iraq and Jordan.

Regarding the evacuation of American troops from the Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria, clearly an understanding has been reached between Washington and Ankara. According to the terms of the agreement, the Erdogan administration released the US pastor Andrew Brunson on October 12, which had been a longstanding demand of the Trump administration, and has also decided not to make public the audio recordings of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, which could have implicated another American-ally the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in the assassination.

In return, the Trump administration has complied with Erdogan’s longstanding demand to evacuate American forces from the Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria. Another demand Erdogan must have made to Washington is to pressure Saudi Arabia to lift the Saudi-UAE blockade imposed in June 2017 against Qatar, which is ideologically aligned to Erdogan’s AKP party since both follow the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, in return for not making public the audio recordings of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

It bears mentioning that after the Khashoggi assassination and the international outrage it generated against the Saudi royal family, Saudi Arabia is already trying to assuage Qatar as it invited Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to attend the Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Riyadh on December 10, though Doha snubbed the goodwill gesture by sending a low-ranking official to the meeting.

Regarding the murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, a question would naturally arise in the minds of astute readers of alternative media that why did the mainstream media, Washington Post and New York Times in particular, take the lead in publicizing the assassination?

One apparent reason could be that Khashoggi was an opinion columnist for The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon. The Washington Post has a history of working in close collaboration with the CIA as Bezos won a $600 million contract [3] in 2013 to host the CIA’s database on the Amazon’s web-hosting service.

It bears mentioning that despite the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman being primarily responsible for the war in Yemen that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and created a famine in Yemen, the mainstream media hailed him as a “moderate reformer” who brought radical reforms in the conservative Saudi society by permitting women to drive and by allowing cinemas to screen Hollywood movies.

So what prompted the sudden change of heart in the mainstream media that the purported “moderate reformer” was all of a sudden reviled as a brutal murderer? More than anything, it was the timing of the assassination and the political mileage that could be obtained from Khashoggi’s murder in the domestic politics of the United States that prompted the mainstream media to take advantage of the opportunity and mount a smear campaign against the Trump administration by publicizing the assassination.

Jamal Khashoggi was murdered on October 2, when the US midterm elections were only a few weeks away. Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner in particular have known to have forged close business relations with the Saudi royal family. It doesn’t come as a surprise that Donald Trump chose Saudi Arabia and Israel for his maiden overseas visit in May 2017.

Thus, the corporate media’s campaign to seek justice for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was actually a smear campaign against Donald Trump and his conservative political base, which is now obvious after the US midterm election results have been tallied. Even though the Republicans have retained their 51-seat majority in the Senate, the Democrats now control the House of Representatives by gaining 39 additional seats.

Clearly, two factors were responsible for the surprising defeat of the Republicans in the US midterm elections. Firstly, the Khashoggi murder and the smear campaign unleashed against the Trump administration by the neoliberal media, which Donald Trump often pejoratively mentions as “Fake News” on Twitter.

Secondly, and more importantly, the parcel bombs sent to the residences of George Soros, a dozen other Democratic Congressmen and The New York Times New York office by Cesar Sayoc on the eve of the elections. Although the suspect turned out to be a Trump supporter, he was likely instigated by shady hands in the US deep state, which is wary of the anti-establishment rhetoric and pro-Russia tendencies of the so-called “alt-right” administration.

Finally, after losing the midterm elections and the consequent decision of withdrawal of American forces from Syria on December 19, it appeared the non-interventionist “alt-right” Trump administration had decided to take a hardline with the American deep state, but after the policy reversal and the decision to maintain continued American military presence in Syria, it’s obvious that Donald Trump is too inexperienced to confront the American deep state, comprising the State and Defense department bureaucracies, foreign policy think tanks, advocacy groups, such as AIPAC and the mainstream media.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] About 200 US troops to stay in Syria:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/21/politics/200-troops-syria/index.html

[2] The US five-point ‘non-paper’ for Syria delivered by Bolton to Turkey:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-us-five-point-non-paper-syria-delivered-bolton-turkey-1769325167

[3] Jeff Bezos Is Doing Huge Business with the CIA:

http://www.alternet.org/media/owner-washington-post-doing-business-cia-while-keeping-his-readers-dark

Today February 24, 124 years since the re-initiation of the nation’s independence struggle, in accordance with the law, thousands of Cubans are participating in the construction of a better future and strengthening unity around the Revolution

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Voting ends in Constitutional Referendum

Polling stations closed as scheduled at 6:00 p.m. this Sunday, following the Referendum on the new Constitution of the Republic of Cuba.

The vote count immediately began, a process that is open to the public to observe, with results due to be announced shortly.

The National Electoral Commission informs that by 2:00 p.m. 74.09% of the electorate had exercised their right to vote

A total of 6,772,619 voters had cast their ballot by 2:00 p.m., representing 74.09% of the electoral register, reported María Esther Bacallao, secretary of the National Electoral Commission, speaking to Cuban Television.

The official noted that there has been a constant flow of voters at polling stations throughout the day, eager to exercise their constitutional right, which she considered very positive.

She highlighted the support of different institutions and organizations on this historic date, which also marks the 124th anniversary of the resumption of Cuba’s independence struggles.

She also pointed out that this is the result of an organized electoral process, including the installation of 198 special polling stations to facilitate voting.

Esther also noted that no incidents have been reported on this election day, which has seen a greater mobilization of voters than the last elections held on the island.

Raúl exercises his right to vote

On the morning of this Sunday, February 24, the First Secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, exercised his right to vote in a polling station of the Havana municipality of Playa, to endorse the new Constitution of the Republic of Cuba.

After depositing his ballot, Raúl exchanged with the pioneers who guard the ballot boxes, and with members of the polling station staff.

Read full article here.

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All images in this article are from Granma

On Twitter, the US president’s preferred forum to reveal foreign policy and state decisions, Donald Trump asked “Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS captured in Syria” from 44 countries. Otherwise, Trump will “release them” without specifying where and in which country. The US President is no longer ready to spend time waiting “for others (EU countries) to do their job”. This is what the US establishment’ foreign policy and relationship with allies are all about. The US asked European, Canadian, Australian and Middle Eastern countries to send troops to Syria to “fight ISIS”.

But before that, some years ago, the US asked European countries to allow potential jihadists to travel to Syria and Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Jordan to open their prisons and pardon core jihadists in order to reach their favourite destination, the Levant, to destroy the Syrian state and create a “failed state” scenario.

But their wishes did not come true and President Bashar al-Assad didn’t fall in 3 to 6 months as predicted in 2011. Today the world is facing a new puzzle: what should be done with those we helped reach Syria in order to terrorise, rape, and murder the people of Syria, who now want to return to their countries of origin? It is obvious the US establishment is unwilling to help Europe deal with their human refuse who joined ISIS at US request.

Up to now thousands of ISIS members have managed to return to Europe and much more to their Middle Eastern, Asian and African countries of origin. These are fighters, few formerly incarcerated in their countries of origin, who answered the call and reached Syria and Iraq with the help of western and allied intelligence services to wage jihad and join the Caliphate of an “Islamic State”.

ISIS prisoners © Quora.com

They travelled to the Levant for various reasons: to join a family member, to join friends, love of adventure, the adrenaline of carrying weapons and killing, to find one or several wives, to belong to a friendlier and warmer society (in the Middle East, society and family gatherings are closer and warmer than in Europe). Very few knew much about Islam before reaching their destination and fewer still had detailed knowledge of Islamic teaching, Hadith and Islamic laws. But one thing many of these have in common: they have killed thousands of Iraqi and Syrians.

Europe and Middle Eastern countries facilitated “jihadi-corridors” to Syria, mainly via Turkey whose authorities welcomes Jihadi immigration. Ankara airport had special corridors to accommodate newly arriving fighters and send them eastwards. The objective was to divide Syria and Iraq. The world looked on impassively as ISIS gathered substantial financial resources. ISIS robbed hundreds of millions of dollars from banks in cash and gold. It was selling oil, infrastructure and handcrafts to Turkey and collecting huge sums monthly from local taxes on services, housing, electricity, agriculture, cars crossing, merchandise exchange and other sources which brought a huge income to the area under its control.

President Barack Obama had the courage to say he wanted to avoid polluting the air over Syria and Iraq if bombing ISIS oil tankers. From 2014-2015 the US allegedly fought ISIS in Syria while the territory under its command continuously expanded and flourished. It required Russian intervention beginning in September 2015 to destroy those tanker trucks, thereby reducing the flow of stolen oil to Turkey and diminishing ISIS oil-income.

ISIS militants surrendering to Kurdish fighters in Baghous, Syria.

It is very possible that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi followed Saddam Hussein’s example in hiding away financial resources and weapons for dark days. Iraqi intelligence services believe ISIS has established many civilian businesses to keep cash flowing in order to finance insurgency and continue recruitment. According to Iraqi security sources, the Iraqi Intelligence Unit arrested tens of ISIS-linked cells running wealth of hundreds of million dollars to the benefit of the group.

ISIS is also present in many caves and locations in the desert linking Syria and Iraq. Tens of less spectacular but significant attacks and assassinations conducted every month in the provinces of Salahuddin, Nineveh, Diyala, Kirkuk and Hamrin-Makhol mountains causing the death of tens of Iraqi. ISIS kidnapped this month 19 Iraqi along the Saudi and the Iraqi borders (‘Ar’ar to Nekheyb) in al-Anbar desert. Six bodies were discovered so far.

Indeed, ISIS now needs to carry out as many terrorist attacks as possible to show it is still alive and capable. It would not be surprising to witness many insurgency attacks in the Middle East even after ISIS loses all its territory.

But the ISIS insurgency is not far from Europe, where any attack can bring more publicity to the group and help boost its propaganda efforts. The Paris and Brussels attacks (to name a couple) gave a colossal sense of power to ISIS fanboys. These attacks were planned by ISIS command in Raqqa.

Thus, the return of hundreds of ISIS militants to Europe will create a real dilemma for the same European leaders who may have been behind sending these terrorist candidates to the Levant, most of whom became prolific killers in Syria and Iraq. Many were also killed in terrorist attacks but those who remain are those who have best learned how to conduct warfare and brutal killing.

Kurdish fighter resting between battles (Source: Twitter)

ISIS has been defeated and the circumstances that allowed it to grow in 2014 are no longer present. Many are surrendering now in their last stronghold in Syria. Nevertheless, the disappearance of ISIS territory doesn’t mean the group will no longer be present in the Middle East, Europe and the rest of the world (mainly in West Africa, Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Afghanistan and Philippines).

Trump is throwing a ball of fire at Europe when he asks European countries to take back their nationals, indicating he is not willing to deliver ISIS prisoners to the Syrian government. There are no adequate prisons in Europe capable of holding such recruits, no means of deradicalizing or altering the brain-washing these Europeans have been exposed to. There is no guarantee that ISIS arrested militants will refrain from spreading their ideology and skills to become sleeper cells reading to strike at the first opportunity.

There are ways to confront ISIS ideology by using the same tools ISIS has used. Its creed can be condemned intellectually and religiously by Islamic religious authorities. The group has been contested by the Sunni religious Ulema who criticised its rationalisations and its self-declared state. al-Qaeda is also vulnerable to such ideological attack. But how effective such criticism will be is open to question.

Although the French Security Minister Christophe Castaner welcomes ISIS militants to return to France, most European countries would rather reject their human refuse. They lack the resources and expertise to deal with ISIS militants willing to return home. Heiko Maas, the German Foreign Minister, commented on Trump’s tweet that “it is not as easy as they think in America”. The European authorities should learn from the Syrian and Iraqi governments how to fight ISIS; otherwise, they will find it difficult to stand up to and prevent the expansion of this cancer.

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All images in this article are from EJM unless otherwise stated

As of November 19, last year, lethal force by Israeli forces resulted in the killing of 252 and injuring of 25,522 Palestinians in Gaza, OCHA has reported. Many of the injuries were life-changing, including hundreds of cases of severe soft tissue damage, some necessitating amputation of limbs.

Most of the killings took place in the context of protests, where Israeli forces, following orders from senior officials, used live ammunition against people who approached or attempted to cross or damage fences between Gaza and Israel. Israeli officials rejected the international human rights law standard in policing situations that prohibits the intentional use of lethal force except as a last resort to prevent an imminent threat to life.

Israeli authorities continued to illegally expand settlements in the occupied West Bank and to discriminate systematically against Palestinians and in favour of settlers, in providing services, allowing freedom of movement, and issuing building permits, among other actions. During 2017 and the first eight months of 2018, Israeli authorities approved the illegitimate plans for 10,536 housing units in West Bank settlements, excluding East Jerusalem, and issued tenders for a further 5,676.

Meanwhile, Israeli authorities destroyed 390 Palestinian homes and other property, forcibly displacing 407 people as of November 19, the majority for lacking construction permits that Israel makes nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain in East Jerusalem or in the 60 percent of the West Bank under its exclusive control (Area C).

The indisputable fact is that there are two peoples both with a valid claim to the land of Palestine. To allow one to be butchered by the other is a violation of international law, human rights and an abject failure of democratic government.

For that butchery of men, women and children to be openly funded and facilitated by the United States Congress is a violation of the principles of the United Nations of which both Israel and the United States are members. It is also a gross violation of both the tenets of Judaism and Christianity.

The status quo is anathema to every true democracy in the world.  The killings and oppression must end and end now.  Failing which, the UN Security Council should pass a Resolution declaring Israel under its current government to be a rogue state which is outside the norms of accepted conduct and with which no other country should continue to trade until it undertakes to accept and implement in full the requirements of UN Security Council Resolution 2334.

It is completely unacceptable to hide behind the patently false accusation of anti-Semitism.  Ordinary Jewish men and women throughout the world are sickened and ashamed at the brutality perpetrated in their name in the Occupied Territories in exactly the same way as are we all in Britain, Europe and around the world.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Just World Educational

It has been observed that the neoconservatives are a lot like the legendary bird the Phoenix, which burns to death and then, miraculously, rises from the ashes in new plumage. The neocons first rose to prominence under President Ronald Reagan, when they took over key offices in the Pentagon. They were subsequently somewhat ostracized under George H.W. Bush who did not like them, but they got their revenge by joining in the chorus that brought the incumbent elder Bush down and replaced him with Bill Clinton, who, in fact, pursued an interventionist foreign policy much more to their taste. Again dominant in the Pentagon and White House under George W. Bush, the neocons went into exile under President Barack Obama, though they were at the same time infiltrating the foreign policy establishment of the Democratic Party. This transformation produced Hillary the Hawk and the Democrats have now become the party of war just as enthusiastically as the Republicans, with both favoring what might be described as a neocon foreign policy.

The emergence of Donald Trump was a shock to the neocon ascendancy. Most neoconservatives condemned his candidacy because of his critique of useless Middle Eastern wars and his stated intention to mend relations with Russia. While some neocons have crept back into the White House, most notably John Bolton and Elliot Abrams, some have continued to rail against Trump. Under the banner of the “Never Trump Resistance” neocon leaders like Bill Kristol have continued the struggle to replace Trump with a more to their taste Mitt Romney or Lindsay Graham, leaders who are fully prepared to crush the Mullahs in Iran and to wage perpetual war against Godless communism.

Kristol nevertheless paid a personal price for his obstinacy. The neocon flagship publication The Weekly Standard, long Kristol’s mouthpiece, ceased publication in December, partly over to its waning popularity due to its hostile attitude towards Trump. But in today’s America, mendacity is nearly always rewarded and, in early January, a new webzine publication headed by Kristol emerged under the banner of The Bulwark, which was at least somewhat intended to take the place of the old Weekly Standard. The publication’s launch promoted the enterprise as the center of the “Never Trump Resistance.”

Given that pedigree, one might well have expected a barrage of articles condemning Donald Trump and all his works, which, indeed, are part of its still miniscule archive, but the first article on The Bulwark that has popped up somewhat into the mainstream is, predictably, all about Israel. It is entitled “How the Democrats Can Get Rid of Ilhan Omar: It’s going to take a primary opponent, but not just any primary opponent.”

Ilhan Omar’s education in the realities of Jewish power has apparently been ongoing for the past year, since before she was elected to Congress. Minnesota media reports describe how “fellow Minnesotan U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, a Jew representing a neighboring district, engaged her in a type of educational discussion following what he called an “impassioned face-to-face conversation with Omar.” And last year, leaders of the Minneapolis Jewish community came together for what might be described as an “anti-Semitic intervention of Omar.” It was organized by state Senator Ron Latz, who invited Omar to his house, where a number of Jewish leaders had gathered. “We wanted to reach out to her. We were a bit troubled about several things she had said.” Among their concerns was a 2012 tweet in which Omar wrote: “Israel has hypnotized the world…” Subsequently, Latz would not describe in any detail what was discussed but he personally commented that the problem wasn’t in the policy dispute over Israel, but the “diction and tone.”

It should be noted that Omar has spoken and tweeted about Israel but has never denigrated American Jews either as a religion or ethnicity. Nevertheless, at the same time, it is clear that some American Jews have determined that nearly any criticism of Israel equals criticism of Jews which is equal to anti-Semitism, so one has to wonder about the standard that is being applied to the congresswoman even given Latz’s denial that it is a question of foreign policy.

The Bulwark article, which pointedly seeks to get rid of the freshman congresswoman for her anti-Israeli views, goes on to lament that “Omar’s district is solidly Democratic. No Republican will ever win it. So is America just stuck with a prominent, very vocal, publicity-seeking anti-Semite in Congress for an indefinite period? Is there anything Omar’s critics can do? They need to beat her in a primary. But that must be done carefully… with the right primary opponent, she could be vulnerable in 2020.”

The Bulwark advises that beating Omar requires a perfect candidate and they have just such a person in mind: Minneapolis City Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins. Jenkins is a progressive dream candidate. She is the first transgender African-American woman elected to office in America. Enabling a generously funded and media-friendly campaign are child’s play for the Israel Lobby and the article notes that it would be impossible for Omar to depict herself as the victim of anti-Muslim bigotry in a race against Jenkins.

The Bulwark’s website features the subheading “Conservatism conserved.” Its article concludes that “Omar and her boosters had better hope that she stops alienating so many people so fast that her opponents could recruit, run, and vote for literally a tree trunk to replace her…” but the interesting point of the story is that while Bill Kristol and company paint themselves as principled America-first conservatives, they are anything but. They are prepared to do what it takes to get rid of a virtually powerless freshman congresswoman who suggested in a tweet that money fuels the congressional bias in favor of Israel, the protection of which is, of course, ever the neocons’ first priority. It is particularly ironic that Omar’s comment is something that everyone in politics and the media knows to be true about Jewish power in America but is afraid to talk about because of the intimidation coming from people like Kristol. And Kristol and his friends are proposing to get rid of the relatively minor nuisance represented by Omar by running a black transgender “woman” against her to undercut her support on the political left. Politics make for strange bedfellows, but perhaps it is time for the neoconservatives to cut the conservative part out of their own defining label while also removing it from top of the website of The Bulwark.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Carlos Latuff/ Mondoweiss.net

Sen. Marco Rubio and coup leaders claim the Venezuelan National Guard burned US aid trucks on the bridge in Colombia. But all available evidence points in the opposite direction.

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The Trump administration’s coup against Venezuela culminated on February 23 with US-backed opposition attempting to ram several trucks loaded with boxes of USAID “humanitarian aid” across the previously unused Francisco de Paula Santander bridge connecting Colombia to Venezuela.

The trucks failed to reach the other side — but that was never really the point of the stunt. As Father Sergio Munoz, a right-wing Venezuelan activist posted on the Colombian side of the border, explained to journalist Dan Cohen, the humanitarian “aid” was a purely symbolic provocation aimed at discrediting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in international eyes and generating waves of destabilizing violence.

By the end of the day, the trucks lined up on the Francisca de Paula Santander bridge were flanked by gangs of guarimberos.

Photo courtesy: Telesur

These were the nihilistic masked youth who form the shock troops of the right-wing opposition, and who placed Caracas under siege with violent barricade protests, known as guarimbas, at several points between 2014 and 2017. A mob of guarimberos burned to death Orlando Figuera, a 22-year old black Venezuelan accused of supporting Maduro, on an eastern Caracas street in broad daylight, back in June 2017.

On the Santander bridge this February 23, the guarimberos rained down a hail of rocks and molotov cocktails on Venezuelan national guardsmen holding the line against the USAID trucks. Suddenly, the trucks caught fire and the masked youth began unloading boxes of aid before they burned. Within minutes, pro-opposition media reported that the Venezuelan national guard forces were responsible for the fires.

A reporter for the private anti-government channel NTN24 claimed without evidence that the Venezuelan security forces had caused the fires with tear gas:

Another false flag at the border with Colombia. A "reporter" from @NTN24ve (opposition tv known for fake news) said a truck went on fire because the Venezuelan police launched tear gas. Let me know if you've seen tear gas burn a truck before#Venezuela #HandsOfVenezuela pic.twitter.com/P5uRWEBgCd

— taseenb (@taseenb) February 23, 2019

The claim was absurd on its face. I have personally witnessed tear gas canisters hit every kind of vehicle imaginable in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, and I have never seen a fire like the one that erupted on the Santander bridge.

In 2013, the San Bernadino Sheriff’s Department deployed special incendiary teargas canisters (“burners”) to torch the house where fugitive cop killer Chris Dorner had holed up. But it is highly unlikely that the Venezuelan national guardsmen had anything like this weapon in their arsenal when they confronted the rioters on February 23.

The total lack of evidence of Venezuelan culpability did not stop Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio from tweeting this accusation from nearby in Cucuta, Colombia:

The whole world saw the regime use security forces & gangs to injure & kill unarmed civilians.

The whole world saw them set fire to 3 trucks carrying food & other humanitarian aid.

They will soon realize just how badly they overplayed their hand today.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 24, 2019

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is facing calls for her own resignation after video appeared of her condescendingly browbeating a group of environmentalist children, repeated Rubio’s baseless allegation, using it to call for Maduro to step down.

By blaming the Venezuelan government for burning the USAID trucks, Rubio was clearly attempting to establish the casus belli he had been seeking. Yet neither he nor anyone in the “whole world” had seen the national guard set the fire, as he claimed. In fact, the evidence pointed in the exact opposite direction, suggesting that the masked opposition youth had torched the trucks themselves.

Colombian writer Humberto Ortiz produced footage from a pro-opposition channel showing what appears to be the exact moment when a guarimbero sets the aid on fire with a molotov cocktail:

Creo que @NoticiasUno nos puede ayudar a aclarar si la molotov lanzada por este muchacho pudo causar el incendio del camión. pic.twitter.com/UCR7x9qNkA

— Humberto Ortiz (@graffitiborrao) February 24, 2019

Telesur reporter Madelein Garcia published photographs showing a guarimbero with a gas canister next to one of the burning trucks:

1. #ÚltimoMinuto| en #exclusiva @teleSURtv aquí las evidencias de quienes quemaron el camión con supuesta ayuda humanitaria en #Ureña, fueron los mismo guarimberos pic.twitter.com/4gv2K54NpE

— Madelein Garcia (@madeleintlSUR) February 23, 2019

Drone footage also published by Garcia shows how far away the trucks were from Venezuelan national guardsmen when they caught fire, and demonstrates that they were clearly on the Colombian side of the border:

2. Ahora veamos las imágenes aéreas este fue justo el momento cuando quemaron los camiones pic.twitter.com/M66Wy7nOQM

— Madelein Garcia (@madeleintlSUR) February 23, 2019

Even Bloomberg News, which has run a relentless stream of pro-opposition reports, published video showing guarimberos on the bridge making molotov cocktails, which could easily set a truck cabin or its cargo alight:

MORE: As a group of Venezuelans, most of them young, attempt to access the Venezuelan side of the border, a group is seen preparing molotov cocktails #tictocnews pic.twitter.com/TG9JSxo5rh

— TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) February 23, 2019

Meanwhile, the International Red Cross issued a statement condemning Venezuelan opposition activists disguising themselves as Red Cross workers – a blatant breach of humanitarian protocol. A screenshot from pro-opposition NTN24 coverage shows a fake Red Cross worker near one of the burning trucks:

Not sure if the Venezuelan opposition activists disguised as Red Cross workers actually mean well pic.twitter.com/Gry9qc7EML

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 23, 2019

Days ago, self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido announced that he would lead a “human wave” across the bridge and into Venezuela. But as darkness fell on February 23, Guaido found himself at a stormy press conference with other right-wing, US-aligned Latin American leaders. By his side was Colombian President Ivan Duque, who repeated the evidence-free allegation that Venezuelan security forces had burned the aid trucks.

Having failed miserably at every phase of the coup he had attempted engineer, Rubio ended the day with a Twitter tantrum that peaked with a call for “multilateral actions” against Venezuela’s government. What form that action could take is still unclear, but it will certainly be justified by a series of baseless claims about what took place on the Santander bridge.

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Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

Featured image is from Grayzone Project

When I was a kid there was a local basketball team called the Washington Bullets. The team changed its name when “bullets” became offensive due to the high rate of gun murders in Washington, D.C. This is the same city that to this day has a football team called the Washington Redskins. What offends is not, perhaps, violence, but violence directed at people who matter. (Compare: tens of thousands of Yemenis vs. one Washington Post reporter.)

The government headquartered in Washington D.C. is to this day, and increasingly so, the top supplier of bullets to the world, as well as of the guns with which to fire them, as well as of military training in how to use them “successfully.” The U.S. government is an equal opportunity bullet dealer, providing them to dictatorships and democracies alike, just as with other weapons and training.

Most of the most violent areas on the planet, the places we think of as being somehow inherently violent, manufacture few if any weapons. The weapons dealing is overwhelmingly a north-to-south, rich-to-poor, and in good part west-to-east enterprise. And the United States is “number one.”

In writing a book called Curing Exceptionalism, I tried to identify something in which the United States truly was tops in the world. While I didn’t find anything admirable for that list, I did find some shameful things, prominent among them: weapons dealing.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. bullet business is booming, the country having exported a record $474.8 million worth of bullets between January and November 2018.

Here are some of the places those bullets went:

When a U.S.-made missile blows up a family or a school bus or a wedding, there’s sometimes a made-in-the-USA identification visible at the scene. When U.S.-made tear gas suppresses resistance to a U.S.-backed dictator, the same can often be said. Not so with bullets. But when a bullet takes a life anywhere on earth, there is a decent chance the bullet was made in the United States. Wars are often fought with U.S. weapons on both sides, including the side fighting against the United States. Examples include U.S. wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, the Iran-Iraq war, the Mexican drug war, World War II and many others.

So the bullet-dealing “jobs program” that in reality eliminates, rather than adds to, jobs, may be dealing plenty of bullets destined to end the lives of, or severely injure, the very people who are generally advertised as mattering.

Domestically, U.S. culture has been infiltrated by the idea that black lives matter. But the majority of the dark-skinned human beings who will die from U.S.-made and/or U.S.-fired bullets live far from the United States. To my mind, their lives matter too. Yet I’m well aware that the most relevant difference between Venezuela and Norway, as oil-rich nations being, respectively, threatened with a coup and invasion and not threatened with anything of the sort, is the color of the skin of the inhabitants.

The least we can do, I think, is to be aware of what is happening. Renaming the basketball team the Bullets would be an honest educational step.

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David Swanson is Director of World BEYOND War.

All images in this article are from WBW

Washington declared it won’t fully withdraw its troops from Syria but will leave “400 peace keeping forces”, making these soldiers an official occupation force since the last ISIS stronghold is about to be freed. This new situation leaves the US and European allies without any cloak of legality, since the pretext of counterterrorism is no longer plausible. The number of remaining forces is irrelevant because the US has never revealed an accurate count of the number of its troops deployed in Syria and Iraq. Moreover, even if the number of soldiers is small, these remaining US forces can call for air strikes and prevent any forces, including the Syrian army, from crossing the Euphrates—at any moment they can call on US units stationed nearby in Iraq. Moscow and its allies foresaw the US decision not to withdraw from the start. Russia, Iran and Syria never trusted Donald Trump’s announcement of full withdrawal from Syria.

Now that the dust has settled over the real US intention to remain in the Levant, Russia and its allies need to reconsider their plans. Negotiations between the Kurds and the government of Damascus will become more complicated and the relationship between Russia, Iran, and Turkey will be recalibrated. Tensions between the US and Turkey and between Russia, Turkey and Iran will impose themselves again in the Syrian arena.

The continuing presence of US troops at al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi borders and in north-eastern Syria makes it likely that the Kurds in al-Hasaka and Qamishli may not reach a clear deal with the Syrian government until the outcome of the US decision becomes clearer.

Nevertheless, the situation of the Kurds is not enviable: they have fought against ISIS and have lost thousands of fighters in their fight to end the occupation of north-east Syria by terrorist groups. But that is not the end of their military role: the US still definitely need the Kurds as human shields for its remaining troops.

However, Trump wants the participation of Turkey in the future 12000 square kilometre “buffer zone” he intends to create in territory controlled by Syrian Kurds and Arab tribes along the borders between Syria and Turkey. Simultaneously, Trump wants the Turks to protect their fiercest enemies, the “People Protection Units” (YPG), a Syrian branch of the PKK.

Trump never explained how this contradictory situation could be achieved. A resolution must mean either full withdrawal of the YPG allowing Turkish regular forces (and their proxies) to take over, or Turkey refusal of the US plan. A couple of phone conversations between President Trump and President Erdogan triggered a large mobilisation of Turkish troops and their Syrian proxies on the borders with Syria. This long due mobilisation is exhausting the Turkish army with no visible sign of what could be the following step.

To add to the complexity of the situation, the Russian leadership explained to Turkey that Moscow will not accept the presence of any Turkish troops in north-east Syria without the approval of the central government in Damascus.

That also leads to another dilemma: notwithstanding direct Syrian-Turkish military level contacts, it is not evident that Damascus can accept talks with Ankara on any other level, particularly in the current state of affairs. Normally, this kind of communication is conducted indirectly through Russia. The lack of direct contacts and Damascus’ unwillingness to talk to Ankara will put further pressure on Russia and the US to achieve progress on the ground.

In the north west city and rural areas of Idlib, the situation is now clear: either the al-Qaeda jihadist group formerly called al-Nusra, currently Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, change their colours as the other jihadist group of “Ahrar al-Sham” has done, or the Syrian forces and their allies will attack and recover some territory. Although Ahrar al Sham are jihadists and include foreign fighters in their ranks, Russia and Turkey have agreed to accept their presence in the area.

Sources on the ground say that Russian forces have been on full alert for the last several days on the Idlib front. Syrian allies based in Aleppo confirmed that six jihadists militants were shot and killed while trying to cross towards Aleppo. Russian air power has been intermittently bombing the jihadist forces, but not on an intensive basis.

Turkey has shown its inability to remove jihadists from Idlib as agreed last September between Turkey and Russia. This is why the Syrian army and its allies are preparing a new round of attacks. The outskirts of the city of Aleppo are occasionally hit by mortars and home-made rockets fired by the jihadists. The Syrian army is shelling jihadist positions in the area: when spring comes, the liberation of Idlib is in the offing.

The US has frequently threatened to intervene in defence of the jihadists in Idlib; in the past Trump himself threatened on many occasions to hit the Syrian army in case it were to move on Idlib. This time the situation is a bit different, as Russia is taking a more aggressive stand towards the US and may not allow the US to bomb its area of influence in Syria. It promises to be a hot summer in Syria.

The US establishment is in a quandary: the President wants to leave Syria while the establishment resists and delays his plans. Washington believes its foothold in Syria costs little, thanks to the local protection provided by its Kurdish proxies (YPG). Moreover, there are indications that the Iraqi government may ask US forces to leave the country. The Iraqi government and parliament are divided over this issue. The US establishment is preparing for this eventuality, exploring the possibility of reducing its presence in Iraq. If this becomes necessary it will entail a plan B, namely continued occupation of Syria; this will be a problem only if local resistance rises against the occupation forces.

ISIS is losing its last kilometres in Syria. Its infamous slogan “Baqiya wa tatamaddad” (remaining and expanding) now belongs in the dustbin of history. This slogan has evidently now been taken over by the US establishment, who mean to remain and perhaps expand their presence in Syria. From the White House, Trump can now shout: “Baqiya wa tatamaddad”.

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Last December the Dow Jones dropped slightly, 1,788 points down to 23,327 points, that’s about 7% and the business press reported as if the sky was falling. It has since recovered.

But that was enough to get me thinking. We’ve been in a bull market for over eight years, that’s almost a decade during which time the price of stocks has been climbing to ever higher prices. This run began in 2011 with the Dow Jones at 11,670 and has essentially doubled since then. That’s lovely, but when the bull ends, prices will drop – no one knows when or by how much. When the bull ended in 1929, it was also after an eight year run after which prices dropped by 25%. The impact on people and the economy was devastating. It took close to twenty five years for prices to recover.

To try to understand what this might mean today, I reread the wonderful short history John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in 1954 about The Great Crash. The Atlantic monthly praised his book for its ‘grace and wit’ and it still has it. “A period of financial insanity” he wrote “can be a source of pure enjoyment because nothing is being lost but someone else’s money”.

What does his study of 1929 teach us today? Let’s begin with a short recap.

Since 1922 the stock market had been going up at almost 20% a year. On September 3’rd of 1929 it hit a record high when in closed at 381.2. There was a small rumble in March when the market dropped about 10% but it recovered. However in mid-October and through mid-November there were a series if drops amounting to an overall 25% drop. In addition the drop in stock prices precipitated a decline in business conditions globally. GDP dropped about 15%. Unemployment in the US went from 5% to over 20%. Crop prices fell up to 60%. The crash affected the whole of the western world; the great depression had started. It took twenty five years to recover. There was and still is something fundamentally wrong with a system that is so volatile. It’s one of the reasons Galbraith wrote his book.

Most of us know that the stock exchange is one way to finance businesses and to reward successful risk taking. It was historically an uncontrolled process until the eighties. In the five years prior to 1987 the market had more than tripled but then there were two market crashes, one in 1987 when the market dropped 22% in a day and a near crash in 1989. As a result, in 1989 President Ronald Reagan created the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, which still exists. This new working group is generally assumed to meddle with the market and is better known as the Plunge Protection team. You can read more about it in my book. Since that time this group has meddled and continues to meddle with the market behind the scene.

Also, in my book (Chapter 10) there is a section entitled how high can the Dow Jones go? Included is a simple chart which covers the value of the Dow Jones for over one hundred years. It has a wee bump at 1929 when the market boomed and then crashed. The chart has an easy to see trend line that is pretty flat for about 100 years up until the mid-eighties. Then it soars! Why?? While the Dow Jones is at 25,000 as I write this, a simple straight line projection from the pre eighties suggests it should be at about 2,000 today. Since it’s not, we need to understand why. I can’t explain it. The closest thing to an explanation is that this time the peak is different but that is a classic fool’s explanation.

It’s such a classic explanation that it’s the title of a book; This Time is Different; Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. The two authors state in their preface that this time is never different because we have always “been here before.” Carmen Reinhart is a professor of economics at the University of Maryland who honed her skills on financial crises at Bear Stearns and her coauthor is Kenneth S. Rogoff, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard.

One possible explanation that this time is different has come and gone; the dot com craze. During the bull market of the late 1990’s technology driven stocks dominated over a five year span of exponential growth. NASDAQ was the home of many internet companies and it rose from 1000 in 1996 to 5000 in the year 2000. Money was pouring into companies that had never made a profit. This was all new territory moving into all new technologies. The market peaked on March 10 2000 having doubled in the last year. By the end of the next year a majority of the newly funded dotcom companies had folded. Trillions of dollars of investment capital had evaporated. The NASDAQ market crashed to just above a thousand in 2002, a decrease of 78%. The Dow Jones was less exposed but it too dropped 32%. No, that time wasn’t different!

Since the 2008 Great Recession and the Fed’s action to save the ‘to big to fail’ banks by pumping over two trillion dollars into the market with what it calls Quantitative Easing. There is no doubt that that propped up the stock market. But as the Fed starts to undo that with what is called Quantitative Tightening, what will that do to the market?

We are left with the problem of when will it collapse and how far down will it go. Below is a chart that covers 91 years ending in 2018. It begins with the wee bump in 1929 and has the long trend line from the twenties to the nineties. If you look at that, how low do you think it should be until the next crash comes?

Remember, the Dow Jones rose and then fell in the twenties from 80.8 in 1922 to 381.2 in 1929 a gain of 310% and then dropped to settle at 164 in 1931.Our current bull market began in 2009 with the Dow at 8776. Today it’s at 25,883 a gain of 294%. Where will it settle?

As Galbraith noted history will repeat itself. And, then

“There would be a rush, pell-mell, to unload. This was the way past speculative orgies had ended. It was the way the end came in 1929. It is the way speculation will end in the future.”

Something to think about.

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Snow is falling on the wide sidewalks of the historic city of Xi’an, but people don’t seem to be troubled by the bitter cold.

One of the oldest cities in China, Xi’an, is now vibrant, optimistic and stunningly beautiful. Sidewalks are paved with expensive stones and have more than enough space for pedestrians, electric bicycles, plants, trees and bus shelters.

Attempts by the Communist Party to turn China into an ‘Ecological Civilization’ are visible at every step: trees are revered and protected, comfortable walking is encouraged, while heavy duty, efficient and super modern public transportation is extremely cheap and ecological: the metro, and electric buses. All scooters are also electric, and so are the tricycles that are intended to transport passengers between the metro stations.

Endless line of Xi’an electric public buses

Compared to most Asian cities, but even to those in the United States and Europe, Chinese metropolises, including Xi’an, look like sort of urban areas of the future. But they are not ‘impersonal’, nor atomized. They are built for the people, not against them.

Xi’an is where the old Silk Road used to begin, connecting China to India, Central Asia and the Middle East.

It has a special significance and deep symbolism in Chinese history, and it is essential for China’s present and future.

Xi’an is the oldest of the four ancient capitals, and home to the Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang. This tremendous world heritage site is a titanic symbol of loyalty, endurance and optimism. According to the legend, the entire tremendous army followed its commander to the other life, ready to defend him, to fight for him and if necessary, to offer the ultimate sacrifice. What does it all really mean? Is it just an emperor that these brave warriors are ready to sacrifice their lives for, with smiles on their faces? Or is it the nation, or perhaps even the entire humanity they are determined to defend?

Terracotta soldiers outside Xi’an

Whatever it is, it is enormous, and seeing the sheer size of the monument sends shivers all over my body.

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Some fifty kilometers away, at the North Station of Xi’an City, an army of the fastest trains on earth is lined up at countless platforms. These beautiful bullet trains connect Xi’an with Beijing, Shanghai and soon, Hong Kong. Some of them are already speeding towards the city of Zhangye, which is the first step on the new rail Silk Road that will soon continue all the way towards the north-western tip of China, at Kashgar. And Kashgar is only 100 kilometers from the border with Kyrgyzstan, and 150 kilometers from Tajikistan.

If someone thinks that China is simply a north Asian country, far away from the rest of the world, they should think twice. In the center of Xi’an, there is a bustling neighborhood, similar to those found in any bustling city of the Middle East. There is a Grand Mosque, a bazaar, and endless lanes of colorful stalls, jewelry workshops, restaurants and halal eateries. Many women here wear colorful clothes and headscarves, while men cover their heads with skullcaps.

The western part of China is a vibrant mix of cultures from the north, as well as Central Asia. And the ancient capital of China – Xi’an – is well known and admired for its multi-cultural identity. Like the former Soviet Union, Communist China is an enormous and diverse country.

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And the West doesn’t like what it sees.

It hates those super high-speed trains, which, at tremendous speed, as well as cheaply and comfortably, cover distances of thousands of kilometers. It hates where they are going: towards the former Soviet Central Asian republics, and soon, hopefully, towards Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and one day, maybe even India.

It hates the optimistic spirit of the people of Xi’an, as well as the wise and at the same time, avant-gardeenvironmental policies of China.

It hates that in cities like Xi’an, there are no slums, no homeless people, and almost no beggars: that instead of advertisements, there are beautiful paintings with messages highlighting socialist virtues, including equality, patriotism, respect for each other, democracy and freedom. It hates that most of the people here look determined, healthy, in good spirits, and optimistic.

The West passionately hates the fact that China is essentially Communist, with a centrally planned economy and tremendously successful social policies (by 2020, China will eliminate the last pockets of extreme poverty), even strive for the ecological civilization.

Elegant new avenues of Xi’an

China defies Western propaganda, which hammers into the brains of the people that any socialist society has to be drab, uniform and infinitely boring. Compared to such a city as Xi’an, even the European capitals look dull, depressing, dirty and backward.

Yet China is not rich, not yet. At least on paper, (read: using statistics produced and controlled predominantly by the countries and by the organizations controlled by Washington, London and Paris), its HDI (Human Development Index, compiled by UNDP), is the same as Thailand’s. While the contrast between two countries is striking. Thailand, a feudal society glorified by the West, because of its staunch support during the Vietnam War and because of its anti-Communist drive, is suffering from collapsed infrastructure (no public transportation outside Bangkok, awful airports and train system), monstrous, almost ‘Indonesian-style’ city planning (or lack of it), urban slums, endless traffic jams and basically no control of the government over business. In Thailand, frustration is everywhere, and the murder rate is consequently even higher than in the United States (per capita, according to INTERPOL data), while in China it is one of the lowest on earth.

But above all, the West hates China’s growing influence on the world, particularly among the countries that have been for centuries brutalized and plundered by European and North American corporations and governments. And it is scared that they will, eventually, fully understand that China is determined to stop all forms of imperialism, and to eradicate poverty in all corners of the world.

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Xi’an is where the old and new Silk Roads have their starting points. The new one is called the Belt Road Initiative (BRI), and very soon it will account for tens of thousands of kilometers of railroads and roads connecting and crisscrossing Asia, Africa and Europe, pulling out of misery billions of men, women and children. Once completed, everybody will benefit.

But that is not how the West likes it. ‘Everyone benefiting’ is a totally foreign, even hostile concept, at least in the Western capitals. Only the West, plus those few ‘chosen’ and highly obedient countries (including Japan, South Korea and Singapore) have been, until now, allowed to prosper, forming a strictly ‘by appointment only’ club of nations.

China wants everyone to be rich, or at least not poor.

Most Asians love the idea. Africans love it even more. The new elegant train station in Nairobi, Kenya, is a new symbol, a promise of a better future. Tram lines in Addis Ababa, the construction of a high-speed train line that will go through Laos, all these are marvels unimaginable only a few years ago.

The world is changing, mainly thanks to the determined efforts of China and Russia to finally destroy Western colonialism (the ‘project’ that began so well right after WWII, but, except on paper, was never fully completed).

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Xi’an is rising. In the West, they used to say that life in China is improving, but only for Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong.

Later they said, for the Pacific coast, OK, life is better, but go further West… Xi’an, Chengdu, Kunming and other cities followed.

Then, the propagandists regrouped: ‘Chinese cities are doing well, but the countryside is suffering’. Then came President Xi’s brainchild – ‘Ecological civilization’, and decisive reforms aimed at improving the standards of living and quality of life all over the most populous country on earth. In 2018, for the first time in modern history, there was a reverse migration from Chinese cities, to the rural areas.

One has to repeat again and again, until it sinks into people’s brains: After 2020, there will be no extreme misery in China.

In our upcoming book “China and Ecological Civilization”, a dialogue between me and leading philosopher John Cobb Jr, John who has been working very closely with the Chinese government on issues of environment and education, explained:

“As I compare China’s success in giving serious attention to the well-being of its natural environment and needy citizens with that of European countries, my reason for betting on China is that I have some confidence that it will maintain governmental control of finance and of corporations generally.  If it does this, it can also control the media.  Thus, it has a chance of making financial and industrial corporations serve the national good as perceived by people not in their service.  Less centralized governments are less able to control the financial and other corporations whose short-term interests may conflict with the common good.”

That may be the main reason why the West is horrified, and trying to antagonize China by all means: If China succeeds, colonialism will collapse, but also corporatism, which, like a fairy-tale monster devours everything in its sight.

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Facing thousands of determined Terracotta soldiers, I felt the enormity of China.

I imagined hundreds of millions of men and women building the nation; millions of construction sites, not only in China itself, but also abroad. I recalled my neighbors in Nairobi, when I used to live in Africa – optimistic, well-natured but tough Chinese engineers, who used to power-walk, together, every night. I liked, I admired their spirit.

To me, they were like present-day Terracotta soldiers: brave, determined and loyal. Loyal not to the emperor, but to humanity. Not military men, but people who are constructing, building a much better world in all corners of the globe, often with their own hands. Despite the vitriolic spite and nihilism unleased against them by the West.

In Xi’an, I stood in front of the old gate, where everything began, many centuries ago; the old Silk Road. Now, everything was returning here, in a grand circle. The new beginning.

It was cold. It was beginning to snow. But I was immensely happy to be here, and I felt alive and full of optimism for the future of humanity.

I made a few symbolic steps. Millions did before me. Millions will, again, soon.

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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 Civilizationwith John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

All images are from the author

Canadian troops may have recently been deployed to Haiti, even though the government has not asked Parliament or consulted the public for approval to send soldiers to that country.

Last week the Haiti Information Project photographed heavily-armed Canadian troops patrolling the Port-au-Prince airport. According to a knowledgeable source I emailed the photos to, they were probably special forces. The individual in “uniform is (most likely) a member of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) from Petawawa”, wrote the person who asked not to be named. “The plainclothes individuals are most likely members of JTF2. The uniformed individual could also be JTF2 but at times both JTF2 and CSOR work together.” (CSOR is a sort of farm team for the ultra-elite Joint Task Force 2.)

What was the purpose of their mission? The Haiti Information Project reported that they may have helped family members of President Jovenel Moïse’s unpopular government flee the country. HIP tweeted, “troops & plainclothes from Canada providing security at Toussaint Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince today as cars from Haiti’s National Palace also drop off PHTK govt official’s family to leave the country today.”

Many Haitians would no doubt want to be informed if their government authorized this breach of sovereignty. And Canadians should be interested to know if Ottawa deployed the troops without parliamentary or official Haitian government okay. As well any form of Canadian military support for a highly unpopular foreign government should be controversial.

Two days after Canadian troops were spotted at the airport five heavily armed former US soldiers were arrested. The next day the five Americans and two Serbian colleagues flew to the US  where they will not face charges. One of them, former Navy SEAL Chris Osman, posted on Instagram that he provided security “for people who are directly connected to the current President” of Haiti. Presumably, the mercenaries were hired to squelch the protests that have paralyzed urban life in the country. Dozens of antigovernment protesters and individuals living in neighborhoods viewed as hostile to the government have been killed as calls for the president to step down have grown in recent months.

Was the Canadians deployment in any way connected to the US mercenaries? While it may seem far-fetched, it’s not impossible considering the politically charged nature of recent deployments to Haiti.

After a deadly earthquake rocked Haiti in 2010 two thousand Canadian troops were deployed while several Heavy Urban Search Rescue Teams were readied but never sent. According to an internal file uncovered through an access to information request, Canadian officials worried that “political fragility has increased the risks of a popular uprising, and has fed the rumour that ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently in exile in South Africa, wants to organize a return to power.” The government documents also explain the importance of strengthening the Haitian authorities’ ability “to contain the risks of a popular uprising.”

The night president Aristide says he was “kidnapped” by US Marines JTF2 soldiers “secured” the airport. According to Agence France Presse, “about 30 Canadian special forces soldiers secured the airport on Sunday [Feb. 29, 2004] and two sharpshooters positioned themselves on the top of the control tower.” Reportedly, the elite fighting force entered Port-au-Prince five days earlier ostensibly to protect the embassy.

Over the past 25 years Liberal and Conservative governments have expanded the secretive Canadian special forces. In 2006 the military launched the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) to oversee JTF2, the Special Operations Regiment, Special Operations Aviation Squadron and Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit.

CANSOFCOM’s exact size and budget aren’t public information. It also bypasses standard procurement rules and their purchases are officially secret.While the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Communications Security Establishment and other government agencies face at least nominal oversight, CANSOFCOM does not.

During a 2006 Senate Defence Committee meeting CANSOFCOM Commander Colonel David E. Barr responded by saying, “I do not believe there is a requirement for independent evaluation. I believe there is sufficient oversight within the Canadian Forces and to the people of Canada through the Government of Canada — the minister, the cabinet and the Prime Minister.”

The commander of CANSOFCOM simply reports to the defence minister and PM.

“Even the U.S. President does not possess such arbitrary power,” notes Michael Skinner in a CCPA Monitor story titled “Canada’s Ongoing Involvement in Dirty Wars.”

This secrecy is an important part of their perceived utility by governments. “Deniability” is central to the appeal of special forces, noted Major B. J. Brister. The government is not required to divulge information about their operations so Ottawa can deploy them on controversial missions and the public is none the wiser. A 2006 Senate Committee on National Security and Defence complained their operations are “shrouded in secrecy”. The Senate Committee report explained, “extraordinary units are called upon to do extraordinary things … But they must not mandate themselves or be mandated to any role that Canadian citizens would find reprehensible. While the Committee has no evidence that JTF2 personnel have behaved in such a manner, the secrecy that surrounds the unit is so pervasive that the Committee cannot help but wonder whether JTF2’s activities are properly scrutinized.” Employing stronger language, right wing Toronto Sun columnist Peter Worthington pointed out that, “a secret army within the army is anathema to democracy.”

If Canadian special forces were secretly sent to Port-au-Prince to support an unpopular Haitian government Justin Trudeau’s government should be criticized not only for its hostility to the democratic will in that country but also for its indifference to Canadian democracy.

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Imperialism has initiated provocation for beginning its planned military intervention in Venezuela. Imperialism is treading a bloody path.  Already it has spilled blood along Brazil border.

The MSM including Reuters, BBC, The Independent reported on February 22, 2019: Incident of death and injury at Venezuela’s border with Brazil.

However, an AFP report said: On Friday morning in the southern Venezuelan town of Kumarakapay, a group of persons confronted the Venezuelan security forces while the forces were trying to move to secure the country’s border.

A BBC report said: A group tried to block the Venezuelan security forces from travelling to the border.

A Kumarakapay, Venezuela/Cucuta, Colombia datelined Reuters report said: “Friday’s violence broke out as indigenous leaders in southern Venezuela said they had attempted to stop a military convoy heading toward the border with Brazil […]”

“Gran Sabana mayor Emilio Gonzalez said members of the Pemon indigenous group clashed with the Venezuela National Guard and the army […] Mr Gonzalez claimed the soldiers fired rubber bullets and tear gas”, said the Reuters report.

Another MSM report said: “[A]t a road blockade in Venezuela, […] lawmakers clashed with soldiers”.

The Venezuelan government dismissed the proxy camp’s accusations that soldiers used live fire against civilians.

“What happened has nothing to do with the versions that have circulated,” Venezuela’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, said in New York at UN headquarters, claiming that some of the wounded were injured with “knives, machetes, and even arrows.” Maduro “would never give orders to shoot unarmed people,” the foreign minister insisted.

Arreaza accused the proxy camp of following imperialism’s regime change plan and seeking to provoke the armed forces into clashes.

Details of the incidents will reveal more. But, it is clear that acts of provocation are already on the move. Otherwise, security forces wouldn’t have been obstructed and confronted while the security personnel were moving to secure the border of the country, and lawmakers wouldn’t have clashed with soldiers. Is there any sovereign country that allows such acts – obstruction in the path of securing the border?

Then, the question comes: why a group of persons was organized and activated to obstruct and confront security forces while the force moves to secure border? Who organized these persons to obstruct the security forces while the forces were moving to deliver the lawfully assigned job?

The acts of provocation turn clear if claim made by the spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry is considered:

“We have evidence that US companies and their NATO allies are working on the issue of acquiring a large batch of weapons and ammunition in an Eastern European country for their subsequent transfer to Venezuelan opposition forces.”

Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson, made further claims while making a briefing: The US is planning to transfer weapons and special troops close to Venezuela.

The spokesperson’s other observations are also significant as she said:

“The development of events in Venezuela has come to a critical point, everyone understands this. On 23 February, a dangerous large-scale provocation is set to take place, instigated by the Washington-led crossing of the Venezuelan border with a so-called humanitarian convoy, which may lead to clashes between supporters and opponents, forming a convenient pretext for military action to remove the current legitimate president from government.”

In very-recent past, such acts of provocation are many – beginning from Latin America to Asia, from Nicaragua to Syria.

Within the last few days, air force planes from at least two countries – the US and Brazil – already landed in areas bordering Venezuela. The planes, it was told, carried materials claiming to be of humanitarian nature.

But, the question comes: Why not hand over the material claimed to be of humanitarian nature to the constitutionally defined party – the government of Maduro. Have not other countries including Cuba, Russia and China done so?

Unusual movement of air force/military planes of a major country involved in the act of intervention in Venezuela have been reported by Cuba. President of one country publicly suggested armed forces of another country to revolt against democratically elected government. A lawmaker of Venezuela also made similar call. How many similar examples are there in the modern day-world? Shall any sovereign country keep its eyes close to such acts of provocation?

Memories of the (in)famous White Helmets in Syria are fresh in the public mind. Still fresh is the incident in a small Syrian town that saw flaring up of a small protest into armed clashes. Public mind has not forgotten the tact with which clashes were incited and organized in Libya.

The public mind has not forgotten the concocted story of Saddam Husain’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, the drama with a vial in the UN, which were totally false and fake. All these stories were organized, fabricated in the house of imperialism, and the MSM, essentially imperialist media in today’s world, faithfully propagated the stories.

In Venezuela today, the same story is unfolding: An intervention, with possibilities of armed aggression, a proxy war, and, acts of provocation for initiating the planned proxy war or armed aggression. Therefore, the Venezuelan border area has been soaked with blood through an act of provocation.

Now, it depends on the Venezuelan people, and people around the world to expose these acts of provocation enacted by Washington and stand in solidarity in the struggle against imperialist intervention.

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Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

You see those commercials on the boob tube for the Addiction Network. It’s another for profit that helps folks with addictions, IF they either have the insurance or the cash. Isn’t it grand that we Americans have to use private businesses to rehab those of us who are under the spell of drug addictions?

If you took a few moments of pause, you would realize that it should be our government which should be helping those with addictions- many such ones that have occurred because of the power of Big Pharma.  Do you realize that they were giving out opioids like candy through foolish MDs and false advertising… but that’s for another column folks.

We do have a much more subtle but powerful Addiction Network operating here in America, and this one is in fact run by our government.. forever it seems. This network has mesmerized the public into thinking two such false facts: A) The Two Party/ One Party system works for a viable democracy, and B) Free Market Free Enterprise works for all. Think about that for a moment:

• The Two Party/ One Party System- Like some monopoly business setup whereupon two mega corporations control 90% of sales, this Republican/ Democrat fixture all but runs the electoral playing field. The super rich who really control both of these parties made sure that money, and lots of it, is needed to run elections. We, the suckers, just look on and decide if it is, as Ralph Nader aptly put it, Tweedledum or Tweedledee. Sad but true. Of course, if you are like a Howard Schultz, mega mega millionaire who runs Starbucks, or a Ross Perot, then you can get the exposure needed to reach ‘We the suckers’. Think about this for a second: If, when he decided to take on the Republican establishment, Donald Trump did not have zillions of his own dough and that of a few billionaires, he would not be tweeting from the oval office. Folks, there is NO democracy until we totally eliminate private money from electoral politics!
• Free Market/ Free Enterprise– We’ve been sold another lie that the ‘Market works’ and that if you work hard and are creative you can succeed. Right! That’s why when the price of oil was down to $ 30 a barrel, or when it was up to $ 100, the gasoline at your pump was about the same price. Or that the 1996 Telecommunications Act was going to make competition work in the marketplace. Yeah, that’s why our cable bills have been going sky high for these 23 years. How about wages? Well, the late, great Col. Bob Bowman, who flew in the Nam as a Navy pilot and then became ‘born again progressive/ Anti empire’, said it best to this writer in 2006. He was running for Congress in the Democratic primary that year, in Florida (another example of how if you want to have a chance of being elected you must do it via those two parties) and was a guest on my radio talk show. After the show, we went to lunch. Over lunch I asked him how he analyzed Wall Street. “Very simple Philip. When wages are higher the market goes lower. When wages stay stagnant or lower, the market goes up. That’s all you need to know.”

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

The road to war has many signposts along the way, even that small sign buried under weeds, squashed down by marching boots, that has scribbled on it, in haste, by a fleeing hand, “the lost path to peace”. But the US-NATO war alliance and its allies litter the road with threatening alarms, proclamations, and edicts, disguising their plans with lies, frightening everyone as they drive the world on to total destruction.

All the while the peoples targeted by their aggression call for dialogue and the peaceful resolution of issues, whether real or feigned. They call for an end to war, to never-ending conflict, and ask simply to be treated with the mutual respect due to each nation from each.

Russia has called for dialogue and peace, China, Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Venezuela; there is a never-ending outpouring of pleas for peace from them. But the gangster nation that wants to run the world like a mafia don, the United States of America, rejects them all, and just as Adolf Hitler pulled Germany out of the League of Nations, President Trump has de facto pulled the USA and its war allies out of the obligations imposed upon them by the United Nations Charter to keep the peace.

The United Nations suited American purposes while they were top-dog in the world, but now that their post World War II dominance is weakening the UN is used simply as a vehicle for their propaganda and otherwise ignored while the powers of capital in the USA rely solely on their military machine and their military alliances to achieve their supreme objective; dictatorship of the world. Increasingly, the statements of Jens Stoltenberg, the General Secretary of NATO, of the American president and his flunkies, appear as if statements from a world government, while statements by the UN Secretary General are as obscure as the man’s name.

The control of the western media by state forces directly and indirectly is almost absolute. Independent, objective voices are relegated to small journals which themselves are subject to harassment and attack. Even the social media allowing for fast exchange of information which can spread those voices, is more and more controlled, so that those voices cannot be heard, except by a few. On Facebook, attacks on science and reason are common; they don’t want us to know anything or to think. Attacks on Jews are increasing, and not just about Israeli state policies in the Middle East; Jews are to blame for everything, made scapegoats once again for the crises generated by capitalism and peoples’ disillusionment with it. Muslims, atheists, communists, whoever suits their purpose, a scapegoat can be found. History is rewritten to justify the aggression and those who challenge the rewrites are condemned while the ignorant don’t even notice. Love and fellowship between people, the realisation of our common destiny on the planet, our common interest to work together to save it, as exemplified in the new Chinese movie blockbuster, ‘The Wandering Earth,’ which reflects the concept of a community of mankind with a shared humanistic future, isreplaced by a general hatred for everyone; reflecting the suspicion that runs deep in American society that somehow everyone is out to get you, so you better get them first.

The great Canadian theoretician of electronic communications, Marshal McLuhan, once said that the “medium is the message.” Later, he changed it to the “medium is the massage” that is, the machine that washes your mind of original thought and the capacity to reason and leaves it a sponge for false images, false words, hatred and deceit. Instead of producing the informed citizen, the electronic systems that communicate data at light speed, produce the propagandised citizen, the non-thinking being who is reduced to an automaton. To ensure this new being stays an automaton reactionary governments, reactionary journalists and intellectuals, corrupted news presenters, tell us over and again that only the mass media are to be trusted, only the establishment voices are to be listened to.

And so in the campaign by American capital for world domination that began after World War II the general population, fed and fattened on propaganda about “spreading freedom” and “democracy,” not seeing that what is meant by the first is the freedom of capital to exploit them, and, by the second, the crushing of any democracy that fulfils the needs of the people, make themselves parties to crimes they have no comprehension of.

In its January statement, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has kept the Doomsday Clock at 2 minutes to midnight, the time of the apocalypse, citing three reasons, the nuclear threat, the threat of rapid human caused global warming, the threat of propaganda. With regard to the nuclear threat they cite the rapid destruction by the United States of treaties designed to limit the use and development of nuclear arms and the desperate measures taken by nations such as Russia, China and North Korea to defend themselves against the increasingly imminent threat to their existence posed by the United States.

Just in the past few days since the US announced its withdrawal from the INF Treaty dealing with intermediate range nuclear missiles, the US has announced that it will place nuclear capable missiles right up against Russia’s borders, shortening the time to target while American generals and admirals talk openly of launching a nuclear first strike on Russia or China. In response the Russians, who correctly see this as the aggression it is, the existential threat it is, the threat of nuclear attack at any time, are placing in position advanced supersonic nuclear weapons systems that cannot be stopped targeting the command and control centers in the United States as was the case in the so-called Cold War.

The obligations imposed on the United States, by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to commence immediate negotiations with other nuclear-armed powers to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, the only way in which the world can approach a state in which war is no longer an available means to achieve political objectives, are ignored by the American leaders and western commentators and governments. Instead the United States builds up its nuclear forces, announces it is prepared to use them in any situation, and with each day increases its provocative actions against the world. It even threatens Europe with retaliation if it continues to buy Russian gas instead of more expensive and less reliable American gas, the old Chicago mob racket; or if they continue to trade with Iran. North Korea, a nation that wants only peace, is threatened with annihilation by the nation that refuses to remove the threat that led them to development nuclear weapons in the first place. But even the scientists and intellectuals that drafted the Doomsday Clock bulletin, sponsored partly by corporations and foundations linked to the American war machine, puts the blame in every one of these scenarios on the smaller nation or makes it appear as if the threats are mutual when the threats come from only one direction.

The threat of world war from the United States grows as their power declines. Their project for the New American Century, for their take over of the world, bogged down in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Russia is no longer subservient. China is the economic dynamo that keeps the system afloat. Even the European “allies,” no longer trusting that the US is on their side, are thwarting its directives wherever they can when their interests are threatened. Germany and France even dream of establishing a European Army to impose European hegemony on the world while the weak and hobbled United Kingdom fantasises about a ‘global Britain” and Canada’s leaders, equally deluded, talk of Canada’s “global backyard,” while Turkey revives memories of its victories over the British at Cannakale and Kut in the First World War, and the glories of the Ottoman past. Some have compared this period in history with the 1930s but it is not a stretch to compare it to the scramble for empire that led to the First World War.

Yet, the failed coup attempt in Venezuela by the US, Canada and allied nations, using the leader of a small far-right party as their tool, to try to topple a popular and democratically elected leader seems to have surprised them. They have been so long corrupted themselves that they have forgotten that not everyone can be bought or intimidated and can’t understand that they are seen not as “liberators” but as a very painful and dangerous condition we’re all seeking the cure for. Still they hold their dark meetings, prepare every intrigue, advance their plans for war; for the more they fail, the more determined they are.

But what, you will ask me, can we do about it? The governments of the west do not listen to the people unless they are forced to. That we have learned time and again. Power only listens to other power. Unless we, and I mean the working class, the majority of us who have to work for a living and are exploited by capital for their wars, their ambition, their enrichment, get on the streets and make it clear to those who have control of the government machinery that we want peace, that we want them to adhere to their legal and moral obligations under the UN Charter, and that they will have no peace from us until they commit to disarmament and peace for the world. So just as they call for mobilisation for war we must call for a peoples’ mobilisation for peace. Do what you can, join local peace groups, as I joined the Canadian Peace Congress, affiliated with the World Peace Council. Write, meet, organise, ask radio stations to play Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance, or Dylan’s Masters of War. It’s up to you. But do something. We have enough to worry about with abrupt man-made climate change. Let’s establish peace and mutual concern for each other as first principles. Until then, my friends, we’re in such grave danger that it cannot be described.

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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” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

In Part II of our series Trump Expanding the Empire, Abby Martin addresses the surprise order from Trump that he was “ending the war” in Syria.

Having drastically escalated the war in Syria and Iraq, find out what’s behind the supposed troop withdrawal and the hidden facts in the policies.

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The largest international aid organization has demanded that activists at the Venezuela-Colombia border not use the insignia of the Red Cross, which isn’t participating in what Caracas has dismissed as a US “propaganda show.”

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Video: “I’m Committing Professional Suicide”: CBS Star Reporter Admits “Mostly Liberal” Journalists Are Now “Political Activists”

By Zero Hedge, February 24, 2019

During an appearance on the Mike Drop podcast with retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland, Logan admitted that “the media everywhere is mostly liberal, not just the U.S.,” adding that it was nearly impossible for viewers to decipher if they were being told the truth at any given time.

No One Trusts the US Government, Not Even the American People

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, February 24, 2019

The latest Gallup Poll reveals that Americans regard America’s top problem to be the US government.  Twice as many respondents regard the US government to be the top problem than regard immigration, and Americans see Washington to be six times the problem that health care is. 

The U.S.-Venezuela Aid Convoy Story Is Clearly Bogus, but No One Wants to Say It

By Adam Johnson, February 24, 2019

Without litigating who’s responsible for what, whether U.S.-led sanctions and economic sabotage are more to blame or the economic policies of Nicolás Maduro, one simple fact is true: The status quo is untenable.

Guaidó-USAID Trucks Torched on Border

By Kurt Nimmo, February 24, 2019

It looks like the situation on the border will devolve into violence and the US will use this to argue for military intervention, either by the US or in combo with Brazil and especially Columbia. The sanctions imposed on the country will take too long for impatient neocons. 

Northwest Tribes Respond to Canada’s Continued Push for Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion

By Earth Justice, February 23, 2019

A Canadian federal agency today formally recommended approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion, a move strongly condemned by Coast Salish Tribes on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.

Anti-semitism Is Cover for a Much Deeper Divide in Britain’s Labour Party

By Jonathan Cook, February 23, 2019

The announcement by seven MPs from the UK Labour Party on Monday that they were breaking away and creating a new parliamentary faction marked the biggest internal upheaval in a British political party in nearly 40 years, when the SDP split from Labour.

Video: An Ocean of Lies on Venezuela

By Abby Martin and Alfred de Zayas, February 22, 2019

On the eve of another US war for oil, Abby Martin debunks the most repeated myths about Venezuela. She uncovers how US sanctions are crimes against humanity with UN investigator and human rights Rapporteur Alfred De Zayas.

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No matter who comes out on top as president in the March 31 “election,” ordinary Ukrainians lose, along with any chance for regional peace – ruled out by Washington.

Over 40 candidates are running for president. Few among them have any chance to become puppet leader.

The country’s process combines travesty, tragedy, and farce, an illusion of what democratic elections are supposed to be, tolerated nowhere by the US, Ukraine part of its colonial empire, along with nearly all European, Latin, and Central American countries.

Candidates include US-installed sitting president Petro Porochenko. He’s a neoliberal, belligerent billionaire. Taking orders from Washington, he’s been waging intermittent war without mercy on Donbass Ukrainians. He entered politics for power and greater wealth, along with wanting to avoid prosecution for criminality.

As long as they’re part of the dirty system in bed with Washington, Ukrainian pols have immunity. In the months ahead of the US February 2014 coup, Poroshenko helped bankroll Kiev putschists.

His business interests include food, automotive, shipping, and media. Bodgan Corporation is a leading Ukrainian car and bus manufacturer.

Roshen Confectionery Corporation earned Poroshenko the “chocolate king” nickname.

It’s the world’s 18th largest confectionery producer.

Kanal English language television channels feature state-sponsored propaganda and other worthless programming.

Leninska Kuznya shipyard produces river ships, industrial ones, small fishing vessels, self-propelled barges, related products and various military equipment.

Poroshenko’s single-digit approval rating assures him no chance for “reelection” if conducted legitimately.

Days earlier, Tass cited Ukrainian political scientist Konstantin Bondarenko, saying the following:

“Ukraine’s five leading polling companies are cooperating with” Poroshenko. Presidential polls “do not reflect the real picture, showing only general trends and the degree of protest voting rather than support for a certain candidate.”

They artificially increased “Poroshenko’s (dismal) approval rating” at the expense of his chief rival Yulia Timoshenko. More on her below. Saintly she’s not, far from it!

Bondarenko believes Poroshenko will artificially “take the lead in the polls a few weeks before the election, so these ratings are also used to justify future manipulations by” his regime.

Ukrainian Institute for Policy Analysis and Management director Ruslan Bortnik explained that “about 20%-30% of the population vote for the winner of the polls,” real ratings suppressed, state approved fake ones alone published.

Approval ratings will likely artificially change in the run-up to March 31. Comedian/entertainer Vladimir Zelensky currently leads other aspirants with about 20% voter support.

According to Bortnik, mostly young Ukrainians “under age of 25…unlikely to go to the polling stations” back him. “Zelensky is a convenient choice for those who do not know who to vote for.”

Under a free, fair and open process, along with Bortnik’s assessment aside, Zelensky should be best positioned to replace Poroshenko as Ukrainian president, Timoshenko finishing second, followed by the current incumbent and former vice prime minister Yuri Boiko.

Others in the race include Security Service chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, State Fiscal Service head/accused embezzler Roman Nasirov, accused sex offender Volodymyr Petrov, and dozens of others with no chance of winning.

If the Trump regime wants Poroshenko retained as its man in Kiev, he’ll most likely be re-anointed to serve US imperial interests in Central Europe.

Otherwise, billionaire Timoshenko most likely will replace him. Earlier she was imprisoned for embezzlement and serious “abuse of public office.”

Charges included illegally diverting $425 million meant for environmental projects into pension funds. A second case involved stealing around $130 million for personal use.

She headed United Energy Systems (UES). Her shady business practices earned her the nickname “gas princess.”

As US orchestrated 2004 Orange Revolution prime minister, she operated extrajudicially, scorning economic reform, along with furthering her presidential ambitions, a platform if gained for greater abuse of power and corruption.

Ukrainian governance has no legitimacy, serving Western and its own interests at the expense of ordinary people and peace.

No matter who’s named Ukrainian president after the March “election,” dirty business as usual will triumph like earlier in 2014

It’s how things work in America. Money-controlled elections are farcical, mocking what democracy is supposed to be. One party rule with two extremist right wings runs things. The war party wins every time.

A Final Comment

According to a Ukrainian Strana news service investigation, Poroshenko intends trying to rig his reelection, his only chance to stay in office, the publication saying:

“Members of the Poroshenko election team expect that the scheme will allow the incumbent president to receive additional seven to ten percent of the vote, provided that voter turnout will reach 60%,”

adding:

“This will make it possible for Poroshenko to reach the runoff election. A thing to note is that the Setka scheme will be financed by the budget, that is, by taxpayers.”

Whatever the outcome, the possibility of a legitimate process is virtually nil, the nation run by US-installed fascist extremists.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The United States will help the people of Nicaragua and Cuba to resist “non-democratic regimes” in their countries, Mike Pompeo has said. His comments come as Washington steps up calls for a new government in Venezuela.

At Shannon today (23rd Feb), one United States of America executive Boeing C40C, number 09-0540 and one lame-duck Omni Air US troop carrier N207AX being protected for the past 5 days by a joint Garda and Irish Army patrols while it undergoes some repairs. 

Yes, Ireland’s police and defence forces are watching over a US troop carrier at Shannon.

The Omni Air plane arrived on 18 Feb from Colorado Springs. The city is home to both Army and Air Force bases. There are six military installations there; five of them border the city, to the north, south and east, and Schriever Air Force Baseis located east of the city in El Paso County.

One of these, Peterson Air Force Base shares an airfield with the adjacent Colorado Springs Municipal Airport. It is home to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the Air Force Space Command headquarters, and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) headquarters.

Shannon must also be feeling a bit like home to many US military personnel. They spend quite a lot of time there.

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All images in this article are from Shannonwatch

I was sitting in my apartment in Caracas, Venezuela, reading the online edition of Time magazine (5/19/16), which carried a report that there was not even something as basic as aspirin to be found anywhere in Venezuela: “Basic medicines like aspirin are nowhere to be found.”

I walked out of the apartment to the nearest pharmacy, four blocks away, where I found plenty of aspirin, as well as acetaminophen (generic Tylenol) and ibuprofen (generic Advil), in a well-stocked pharmacy with a knowledgeable professional staff that would be the envy of any US drugstore.

A few days after the Time story, CNBC (6/22/16) carried a claim that there was no acetaminophen to be found anywhere, either: “Basic things like Tylenol aren’t even available.” That must have taken the Pfizer Corporation by surprise, since it was their Venezuelan subsidiary, Pfizer Venezuela SA, which produced the acetaminophen I purchased. (Neither Time writer Ian Bremer nor CNBC commentator Richard Washington was in Venezuela, and there was no evidence offered that either of them had ever been there.)

I purchased all three products, plus cough syrup and other over-the-counter medications, because I doubted that anyone in the United States would believe me if I couldn’t produce the medications in their packages.

Unrelenting drumbeat of lies

In fact, I myself wouldn’t have believed anyone who made such claims without being able to produce the proof, so intense and unrelenting has been the drumbeat of lies. When the Youth Orchestra of Venezuela gave a concert in New York in early 2016, before I moved to Caracas, I went there thinking, “Gee, I hope that the members of the orchestra are all well-dressed and well-fed.” Yes, of course they were all well-dressed and well-fed!

When I mentioned this in a talk at the University of Vermont, a student told me that he’d had the same feeling when he was following the Pan American soccer championship. He wondered if the Venezuelan players would be able to play, because they’d be so weakened from lack of food. In fact, he said, the Venezuelan team played superbly, and went much further in the competition than expected, since Venezuela has historically been a baseball country, unlike its soccer-obsessed neighbors Brazil and Colombia.

Hard as it may be for followers of the US media to believe, Venezuela is a country where people play sports, go to work, go to classes, go to the beach, go to restaurants and attend concerts. They publish and read newspapers of all political stripes, from right to center-right, to center, to center-left, to left. They produce and watch programs on television, on TV channels that are also of all political stripes.

CNN was ridiculed recently (Redacted Tonight, 2/1/19) when it carried a report on Venezuela, “in the socialist utopia that now leaves virtually every stomach empty,” followed immediately with a cut to a demonstration by the right-wing opposition, where everybody appeared to be quite well-fed.

But surely that’s because most of the anti-government demonstrators were upper-middle class, a viewer might think. The proletarians at pro-government demonstrations must be suffering severe hunger.

Not if one consults photos of the massive pro-government demonstration on February 2, where people seemed to be doing pretty well. This is in spite of the Trump administration’s extreme economic squeeze on the country, reminiscent of the “make the economy scream” strategy used by the Nixon administration and the CIA against the democratic government of President Salvador Allende in Chile, as well as many other democratically elected governments.

Rival demonstrations

That demonstration showed considerable support for the government of President Nicolás Maduro and widespread rejection of Donald Trump’s choice for president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó. Guaidó, who proclaimed himself to be president of the country and was recognized minutes later by Trump, even though a public opinion poll showed that 81 percent of Venezuelans had never heard of him, comes from the ultra-right faction in Venezuelan politics.

The pro-Maduro demonstration suggested, not surprisingly, that Guaidó had failed to win much popular support outside the wealthy and upper-middle class. But Guaidó couldn’t even win support from many of them. The day before rival rallies February 2, Henrique Capriles, the leader of a less extreme right-wing faction, gave an interview to the AFP that appeared in Últimas Noticias (2/1/19), the most widely read newspaper in Venezuela. In it, Capriles said that most of the opposition had not supported Guaidó’s self-proclamation as president. That may explain the surprisingly weak turnout at Guaidó’s demonstration, held in the wealthiest district of Caracas, and obviously outshone by the pro-government demonstration on the city’s main boulevard.

The New York Times did not show pictures of that pro-government demonstration, limiting itself to a claim by unnamed “experts” (2/2/19) that the pro-government demonstration was smaller than the anti-government one.

Readers can look at the photos of the rival demonstrations and judge for themselves. Both groups did their best to pull out their faithful, knowing how much is riding on a show of popular support. The stridently right-wing opposition paper El Nacional (2/3/19) carried a photo of the right-wing opposition demonstration:

If that was the best photo it could find, it was remarkably unimpressive compared to the photos in the left-wing papers CCS (2/2/19)….

…and Correo del Orinoco  (2/3/19), which were only too happy to publish pictures of the pro-government event:

Unlikely humanitarian

A huge anti-government demonstration was supposed to make possible a coup d’état, a maneuver the CIA has used repeatedly—in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964 and many more, straight through to Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2015. The turnout at the Trump administration’s demonstration was disappointing, and the coup d’état never occurred. The result is that Trump has expressed a sudden interest in getting food and medicine to Venezuelans (FAIR.org, 2/9/19).

Trump, who let thousands die in Puerto Rico and put small children in cages on the Mexican border, seems to be an unlikely champion of humanitarian aid to Latin Americans, but the corporate media have straight-facedly pretended to believe it.

Most have suppressed reports that the Red Cross and the UN are providing aid to Venezuela in cooperation with the Venezuelan government, and have protested against US “aid” that is obviously a political and military ploy.

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

Canada’s CBC (2/15/19) at least had the honesty to acknowledge that it had been had in swallowing a lie from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the Venezuelan government had blockaded a bridge between Colombia and Venezuela to prevent aid shipments. The newly built bridge has not yet been opened: it has never been open, apparently because of hostile relations between the two countries, but the non-opening long predates the US government’s alleged food and medicine shipments.

The absurdity of $20 million of US food and medicine aid to a country of 30 million, when US authorities have stolen $30 billion from Venezuela in oil revenue, and take $30 million every day, needs no comment.

‘Failed state’

The campaign of disinformation and outright lies about Venezuela was kicked off in 2016 by the Financial Times. Ironically, it chose the 14th anniversary of the 2002 failed coup d’etat against President Hugo Chávez—April 11, 2016—to claim that Venezuela was in “chaos” and “civil war,” and that Venezuela was a “failed state.” As with the Time and CNBC reports, the Financial Times reporter was not in Venezuela, and there was no evidence in the report that he had ever been there.

I asked right-wing friends in Venezuela whether they agreed with the Financial Times claims. “Well, no, of course not,” said one, stating the obvious, “there is no chaos and no civil war. But Venezuela is a failed state, since it has not been able to provide for all the medical needs of the population.” By that standard, every country in Latin America is a failed state, and obviously the United States too.

The New York Times has run stories (5/15/16, 10/1/16) claiming that conditions in Venezuelan hospitals are horrendous. The reports enraged Colombians in New York, who have noted that a patient can die on the doorstep of a Colombian public hospital if the patient has no insurance. In Venezuela, in contrast, patients are treated for free.

One Colombian resident in New York said that his mother had recently returned to Bogotá after several years in the United States, and had not had time to obtain medical insurance. She fell ill, and went to a public hospital. The hospital left her in the waiting room for four hours, then sent her to a second hospital. The second hospital did the same, leaving her for four hours and then sending her to a third hospital. The third hospital was preparing to send her to a fourth when she protested that she was bleeding internally and was feeling weak.

“I’m sorry, Señora, if you don’t have medical insurance, no public hospital in this country will look at you,” said the woman at the desk. “Your only hope is to go to a private hospital, but be prepared to pay a great deal of money up front.” Luckily, she had a wealthy friend, who took her to a private hospital, and paid a great deal of money up front.

Such conditions in Colombia and other neoliberal states go unmentioned in the US corporate media, which have treated the Colombian government, long a right-wing murder-squad regime, as a US ally (Extra!, 2/09).

Well, OK, but are the reports of conditions in Venezuelan hospitals true or grossly exaggerated? “They are much better than they were ten years ago,” said a friend who works in a Caracas hospital. In fact, he said, ten years before, the hospital where he worked did not exist, and new hospitals are now being opened. One was dedicated recently in the town of El Furrial, and another was opened in El Vigia, as reported by the centrist newspaper Últimas Noticias (3/3/17, 4/27/18).  The government has also greatly expanded others, like a burn center in Caracas and three new operating rooms at the hospital in Villa Cura.

Meanwhile, the government is inaugurating a new high-speed train line, The Dream of Hugo Chávez, in March (Correo del Orinoco, 2/6/19). Since the US media have never allowed reporting on any accomplishments in the years since  Chávez took office in 1999, but only any alleged, exaggerated or, as noted, completely invented shortcomings, readers have to consult an alternative history. Here is one offered by a Venezuelan on YouTube (3/31/11): “Por Culpa de Chávez” (“It’s Chávez’s Fault”). Depicting new hospitals, transit lines, housing, factories and so on built under Chavismo, it might help many understand why the Maduro government continues to enjoy such strong backing from so many people.

Economic warfare

This is not to minimize Venezuela’s problems. The country was hit, like other oil-producing countries, and as it was in the 1980s and ’90s, by the collapse of oil prices. That failed to bring down the government, so now the Trump administration has created an artificial crisis by using extreme economic warfare to deprive the country of foreign exchange needed to import basic necessities.  The Trump measures seem designed to prevent any economic recovery.

Like any country at war (and the Trump administration has placed Venezuela under wartime conditions, and is threatening immediate invasion), there have been shortages, and products that can mostly be found on the black market. This should surprise no one: During World War II in the US, a cornucopia of a country not seriously threatened with invasion, there was strict rationing of products like sugar, coffee and rubber.

The Venezuelan government has made food, medicine and pharmaceuticals available at extremely low prices, but much of the merchandise has made its way to the black market, or over the border to Colombia, depriving Venezuelans of supplies and ruining Colombian producers. The government recently abandoned some of the heavy price subsidies, which resulted initially in higher prices. Over the past few weeks, prices have been coming down as supplies stayed in Venezuela, especially as the government gained greater control over the Colombian border to prevent smuggling.

There has never been a serious discussion of any of this in the US corporate media, much less any discussion of the campaign of lies or the Trump administration warfare. There has been no comparison with conditions in the 1980s and ’90s, when Venezuela’s neoliberal government imposed IMF economic recipes, resulting in a popular rebellion, the bloody 1989 Caracazo, when wholesale government repression took the lives of hundreds (according to the government at the time) or thousands (according to government critics), and martial law took the lives of many more.

Efforts by the right-wing opposition to provoke a similar uprising, and another Caracazo that could justify a foreign “humanitarian intervention,” have failed repeatedly. So the US administration and corporate media simply resort to the most extreme lying about Latin America that has been seen since the Reagan administration wars of the 1980s.

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Featured image is from FAIR

CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan has broken ranks and admitted that journalists have lost their objectivity and become “political activists.” 

During an appearance on the Mike Drop podcast with retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland, Logan admitted that “the media everywhere is mostly liberal, not just the U.S.,” adding that it was nearly impossible for viewers to decipher if they were being told the truth at any given time.

“85% of journalists are registered Democrats,” Logan said. “How do you know you’re being lied to? How do you know you’re being manipulated? How do you know there’s something not right with the coverage? When they simplify it all [and] there’s no grey. It’s all one way. Well, life isn’t like that. If it doesn’t match real life, it’s probably not. Something’s wrong. For example, all the coverage on Trump all the time is negative. … That’s a distortion of the way things go in real life.”

“There’s no grey. It’s all one way,” said Logan.

CBS Laura Logan ~All coverage of Trump was negative -that's distortion We abandoned our pretense to be objective pic.twitter.com/MvH16FE692

— Ruthann (@TeaBoots) February 19, 2019

Logan says that the heavy bias has warped people’s ability to know what’s really true.

“When you turn on your computer, or you walk past the TV, or you see a newspaper headline in the grocery store If they’re all saying the same thing, the weight of that convinces you that it’s true,” said Logan. “You don’t question it, because everyone is saying it.”

She also admitted that journalists today are more or less lobbyists for liberal interests, adding that the weight of the liberal media machine overwhelms “the other side” unless people actively seek outlets such as Breitbart.

The Washington Post is a Fact Checker only for the Democrats. For the Republicans, and for your all time favorite President, it is a Fake Fact Checker!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2019

Noting recent comments by former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, Logan said

“Although the media has historically always been left-leaning, we’ve abandoned our pretense — or at least the effort — to be objective, today. … We’ve become political activists, and some could argue propagandists, and there’s some merit to that.”

Logan said that MSM reports using anonymous or single government sources are bunk.

“That’s not journalism, it’s horseshit,” she said – demanding more accountability.

“Responsibility for fake news begins with us.”

Watch the entire interview below (relevant part begins at 2:16:00):

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Atlantic Bridge, a German front organization set up by Washington to propagandize Germans to serve Washington, has failed in the job.  The latest survey conducted by the front group shows that 85% of Germans are alienated from the US.  The front group’s chairman acknowledged “the great lost of trust in the United States.”  By a margin of two to one, Germans see China as a more reliable partner for Germany than the US. (See this) 

Americans have come to the same conclusion about the US government as have Germans.  The latest Gallup Poll reveals that Americans regard America’s top problem to be the US government.  Twice as many respondents regard the US government to be the top problem than regard immigration, and Americans see Washington to be six times the problem that health care is.   

As many have concluded, the United States is not a democracy. It is an oligarchy ruled by monied private interest groups. (See this) 

There has clearly been a revolution in America.  An aristocracy has overthrown the people. Democracy is dead.  We live in the Oligarchy United Against the People.

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

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

It’s not proper form to open a blog post by calling a sitting president an idiot who knows not what he talks or tweets about. Even so, the conclusion is inescapable. 

President Donald Trump is an idiot, at least when it comes to navigating politics, but then this is basically de rigueur in America. As a nation, we know very little about the rest of the world or for that matter our own country, and that includes the real number of criminals, drug smugglers, human traffickers, and terrorists crossing the border. 

I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico, less than fifty miles from the US-Mexico border. There is far less crime here than in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco (the liberal troika). I lived in Chicago in the late 1990s, and I can say the murder rate there at that time was far worse than anything happening along the border. 

No reasonable person can look at the southern border and agree that it rises to the level of a national emergency, writes @AlexNowrasteh…. https://t.co/uPx4LVegco #CatoImmigration pic.twitter.com/RK6kLisUpv

— Cato Press (@CatoPress) February 20, 2019

Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute posted an article recently breaking down the numbers. It doesn’t look good for the president and his zombified MAGA supporters. 

“First, the crime rate in the 23 counties along the U.S. border with Mexico is below that of counties in the United States that do not lie along the Mexican border,” Nowrasteh writes. “Violent and property crime rates are both slightly lower along the border, but the homicide rate along the border is a whopping 34 percent below the homicide rate in non-border counties. If the entire United States had a homicide rate as low as that along the border in 2017, then there would have been about 5,720 fewer homicides nationwide that year.”

He points out that illegal immigrants “apprehended along the border have a low criminal conviction rate… The most serious offense of ‘homicide, manslaughter’ accounted for 0.04 percent of all convictions of apprehended illegal immigrants from FY2015 through August 31, 2018.”

Nowrasteh points out

“resident illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated or convicted of crimes than native-born Americans. The estimated nationwide illegal immigrant incarceration rate in 2016 was 47 percent below that of native-born Americans, including those in immigration detention. 

If dangerous drug smugglers, cartel assassins, gang members, and other violent individuals (including nonexistent terrorists) were in fact a serious issue, there would be scores of Border Patrol agents killed in the line of duty. 

“Border Patrol agents are unlikely to be murdered while on the job. If there was a national emergency on the border, we should at least expect that that would be reflected in a murder rate of Border Patrol agents killed in the line of duty. From 2003 through the end of 2018, six Border Patrol agents were murdered on the job. All of those are tragic, but that amounts to a murder rate of about 2 per 100,000 agents per year during that time. That’s far below the national murder-rate of about 5.1 per 100,000 per year during the same time.”

Trump rants about gang violence, but as Cato notes “gang apprehensions by Border Patrol agents in the Fiscal Year 2018 (through August 31st), account for about 0.2 percent of all apprehensions.  One must take these statistics with a grain of salt, but there is no obvious large-scale crossing of gang members along the border.”

Trump’s claim about terrorists crossing the border is pure, unadulterated bunkum.

“The perceived threat of terrorists crossing the border with Mexico has been a major justification for beefing up security, but there is little justification for it.  Those most worried about terrorists infiltrating along the border cannot point to any attack, any conviction for planning an attack, or any plot planned by an illegal immigrant who crossed the border with Mexico from 1975 through the end of 2017.”

The King Of Lies Is At It Again. The Trump administration won’t stop saying that the border is overrun with suspected terrorists, but that’s not actually the case. pic.twitter.com/AInFl61YKe

— Tomthunkit™ (@TomthunkitsMind) February 13, 2019

In short, Trump’s justification for imposing a national emergency is based on hyperbole, similar to the exaggerations and lies told following the attacks of 9/11. 

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead writes that Trump’s national emergency “is not about illegal immigration or porous borders or who will pay to build that wall. This is about unadulterated power and the rise of an ‘emergency state’ that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.” 

He believes the “seeds of this present madness were sown more than a decade ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency.” 

For Trump, the border wall is all about his legacy and his grossly overinflated ego. The border wall remains his number one issue, never mind it is a mirage in the desert that disappears when reality is factored in. 

Trump built casinos and developed real estate, but when it comes to politics—and especially foreign policy—he is an ignoramus. Donald Trump is certainly unfit for the job. He will eventually be either voted or thrown out of office and the “swamp,” the “deep state” of insiders and corporate interests will find another smooth-talker like Obama to mollify an uninformed and ignorant public. 

The real national emergency is an unsustainable national debt. This avalanche will ultimately bury the American people alive and make the largely imaginary situation on the border look like a fender-bender by way of comparison. 

ZeroHedge News /// Peter Schiff: "The Real National Emergency Isn't At The Border. It's The National Debt!" https://t.co/raaKxPMc48 pic.twitter.com/tEjsZ0QuYR

— ÖZEL BÜRO (@TC_OZEL_BURO) February 22, 2019

Finally, if Trump and his CFR-Goldman Sachs handlers really wanted to stop people crossing the border, they would forbid illegal immigrants from recieving welfare handouts and other goodies (including the unearned “right” to vote for Democrats). 

Additionally, his administration—now replete with neocons like Bolton, Abrams, and Pompeo—will make the flight of Central Americans far worse. 

They plan to take down both Venezuela and Nicaragua. The violence-wracked “Northern Triangle”—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—was made possible by US intervention in the region. The “civil wars” in El Salvador and Guatemala were fueled by the US. It organized and trained death squads and staged a coup in Guatemala. Honduras was destabilized by US support for the Contras. Reagan’s “freedom fighters” killed untold numbers in its effort to destroy the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. 

It is entirely possible Trump knows virtually nothing about this, along with most of the rest of the country, which remains locked in a “civil war” of its own, artificially produced in classic Hegelian fashion to distract you from real issues—a national debt of crushing proportion and the scourge of wars engineered to never end and feed an obese military-industrial-surveillance complex. 

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Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Daily Dot

No one actually thinks the same Donald Trump who kicked off his run for the White House by calling Mexicans rapists, and subsequently, as president, left Puerto Rico for dead after Hurricane Maria, cares at all about the Venezuelan poor. No one actually thinks the murderers row of Cold Warriors—led by two of the most extreme right-wingers in American politics, Venezuela envoy Elliott Abrams and national security adviser John Bolton—cares at all about the starving people in Venezuela or their plight. No one reading this, be they right, left, center, libertarian or communist, actually buys the prevailing narrative that the U.S. is sending “aid” to Venezuela as a humanitarian gesture.

So why is everyone pretending otherwise?

There are a number of reasons why these superficial narratives take hold, but I’d like to speculate on two of them.

First, the crisis in Venezuela is very real and very daunting. Without litigating who’s responsible for what, whether U.S.-led sanctions and economic sabotage are more to blame or the economic policies of Nicolás Maduro, one simple fact is true: The status quo is untenable. Perhaps, then, the instinct to “do something” is understandable. But as with previous crises, both organic and contrived, what that “something” is remains unclear. Liberals—as they did in the build-up to the invasions of Iraq and Libya—are easily pressured into this “do something” posture.

The way these things work, however, is that this vague moral directive often involves a combination of CIA and U.S. military intervention. During the Syrian conflict, for example, it meant U.S.- and NATO-led bombings of Syrian forces and a tacit declaration of war under the guise of “no-fly zones.” What’s never considered is a reduction or cessation of U.S. involvement, be it CIA weapons running, wide-scale bombing campaigns, or the imposition of sanctions—all of which prolong a given conflict or simply make it more violent.

Because a core tenet of American liberalism is to avoid assigning blame—at worst, its adherents believe, the U.S. is run by a bunch of bumbling do-gooders—what the American empire is actually doing to fuel a conflict cannot be debated, much less censured. And so the notion that we could simply cease our crippling sanctions, which even the pro-opposition Economist acknowledges are designed to “starve” the Venezuelan people, is simply not an option.

The current “something” in Venezuela we’re all compelled to “do” is ensure the arrival of a humanitarian aid convoy. The fact that the bulk of the international aid community has either distanced itself from this PR stunt or outright opposes it has been widely ignored by the mainstream media. One exception is NPR, which recently reported this inconvenient truth:

The U.S. effort to distribute tons of food and medicine to needy Venezuelans is more than just a humanitarian mission. The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela — which is why much of the international aid community wants nothing to do with it. Humanitarian operations are supposed to be neutral.

That’s why the International Committee of the Red Cross, United Nations agencies and other relief organizations have refused to collaborate with the U.S. and its allies in the Venezuelan opposition who are trying to force President Nicolás Maduro from power.

“Humanitarian action needs to be independent of political, military or any other objectives,” Stéphane Dujarric, the U.N. spokesman, told a press briefing last week in New York. “The needs of the people should lead in terms of when and how humanitarian assistance is used.”

In fact, no neutral observer of international aid thinks Bolton and Abrams’ convoy is anything but a mechanism to foment civil war and regime change. We know this because high-level administration officials and their allies on the right keep telling us that’s the case. As the New York Post recently proclaimed, “U.S. delivers aid to town bordering Venezuela to undermine President Nicolas Maduro.”

Donald Trump delivered a long and rambling speech in Miami last week and didn’t once mention human rights, instead railing against the evils of socialism. Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe reflects in his new book that Trump has openly fantasized about overthrowing Maduro, something he has discussed in White House meetings. “That’s the country we should be going to war with,” Trump said, according to McCabe. “They have all that oil, and they’re right on our back door.”

Determined to maintain U.S. hegemony and control over the world’s largest-known oil reserves, the Trump officials plotting this latest coup aren’t even bothering to take its humanitarian pretext seriously. Why, then, are purportedly centrist and liberal media outlets?

A second matter to consider is how our government has weaponized the public’s sense of morality. Since the Spanish-American War, the U.S. has used humanitarian concerns as a shield against criticism or skepticism, and it has more or less worked every time. It’s why “aid” organizations like Air America used food transports to ship guns to anti-Communists in Indochina in the 1960s and ’70s. (Weapons were code-named “hard rice.”) And it’s why Elliott Abrams—the current quarterback of this latest affair in Venezuela—used humanitarian aid shipments to smuggle weapons to the Nicaragua’s Contras in the ’80s. Ultimately, these shipments allow for massive military buildups, without anyone in the media or Congress asking too many questions. After all, what kind of monster is opposed to helping starving people?

It’s impossible to know if the current shipments to Venezuela are being used to transport weapons, although Venezuelan authorities say they have intercepted American arms shipments. But given the history of the U.S. (to say nothing of Abrams’), and the fact that the Trump administration is openly calling for Maduro’s ouster while amassing forces along the Colombian border, it’s not exactly a long shot. Still, our political press dismisses the possibility as tin-foil hat stuff, at least in part because mocking wacky Latin American “conspiracy theories” is a mark of one’s seriousness in foreign policy circles.

Unlike a lot of U.S. regime change activities, reports indicate that this latest stunt was exceptionally rushed and slapdash. The Wall Street Journal paints a picture of a U.S. operation its architects believed would work in a day or two:

“The people who devised it in Caracas and sold it here [in Washington], sold it with the promise that if Guaidó made a move and [South American countries] and the U.S. came in behind, the military would flip and Maduro would go,” said a former senior U.S. official. “They thought it was a 24-hour operation.”

Because the large-scale military defections expected never took place (as they almost never do), the U.S. has had to resort to its Plan B for promoting conflict and galvanizing the Venezuelan opposition: On Sat., Feb. 23, President of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó will carry out a “humanitarian avalanche” at the Venezuelan border with Colombia and Brazil that, when one reads the fine print, sounds a lot like a U.S.-led invasion. Billionaire Richard Branson is reportedly organizing a “humanitarian aid” concert the night before. But we know this is a fig leaf, and we know this because those running this operation say so again and again. Bolton himself has speculated that Maduro could end up in a “beach area like Guantanamo.”

Despite all the evidence before them, MSNBC, CNN and countless other networks and publications across the ideological spectrum refuse to frame this humanitarian gambit as an act of hostility. Instead, knowing what they know and who they are covering, they have largely portrayed Trump, Bolton and Abrams as champions of the Venezuelan people.

It goes without saying that hundreds of thousands are suffering in Venezuela, and the instinct to alleviate that suffering is a healthy one. But a craven marketing stunt by far-right Cold Warriors—without any buy-in from actual aid organizations—cannot be taken at face value.

Just as the U.S. military has made calls to high-ranking Venezuelan officials, I am writing directly to the editors, television producers and reporters of our most prominent news outlets. I’m asking you to defect and come to the side of the patently obvious. Unlike the Pentagon, I can’t bribe you or promise you amnesty, but I can appeal to your basic sense of integrity and intellectual honesty: At best, you are helping provide cover for a campaign designed to starve the Venezuelan people; at worst, you are enabling a military conflict that will drag on for years.

One does not need to hold any normative opinions about the fate of Venezuela to be able to identify a naked PR campaign when they see one. Journalists with blue checkmarks on Twitter must say so before this gets any further out of hand.

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The “humanitarian aid” false flag has devolved into violence on the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge in Venezuela. 

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All aid trucks on the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge to Venezuela are now on fire — the cargo was able to be removed from the last truck and taken back across the bridge into Colombia. #Venezuela pic.twitter.com/ivzk2Ai9Db

— WorldCentralKitchen (@WCKitchen) February 23, 2019

Venezuelan security forces attack trucks carrying humanitarian aid.

Clashes between security forces and protesters at the Simon Bolivar breach continue. #breaking #23feb #venezuela #23FAvalanchaHumanitaria pic.twitter.com/rqFFNGlsHx

— Amir Richani (@amir_richani) February 23, 2019

BREAKING: Violence amid protests and clashes at Venezuela's borders, as efforts ramp up to force foreign humanitarian aid into the country, despite the Maduro regime's efforts to keep it out. pic.twitter.com/QCPAUWzTfz

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 23, 2019

Meanwhile, in Santa Elena de Uairén near the Venezuela-Brazil border, gunfire has erupted.  

Heavy gunfire heard in Santa Elena de Uairén near the Venezuela-Brazil border; reports of injuries and possible fatalities pic.twitter.com/bGy4FqhhCY

— BNO News (@BNONews) February 23, 2019

Imagine the response if Venezuela tried to drive a caravan of “humanitarian aid” across the border in McAllen, Texas, Nogales on the Arizona border, or the crossing in California at Mexicali. It would likely resemble Bush the Elder’s Highway of Death in Kuwait. 

Aerial view of "The Highway of Death" on which Iraqi forces suffered devastating losses at the hands of Coalition Forces as they retreated from Kuwait in February 1991. Between 1,400 and 2,000 vehicles were destroyed or abandoned. pic.twitter.com/fcSNgKolL7

— Antoine Bousquet (@AJBousquet) February 21, 2019

Meanwhile, there was an opportunity for Juan Guaido, the self-proclaimed leader of Venezuela, to partake in a photo-op.

#Guaido mounts humanitarian aid truck headed to #Venezuela#Colombia #23FAvalanchaHumanitaria pic.twitter.com/ajVbtWXABB

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) February 23, 2019

This was played up by Trump’s neocon national security adviser, John Bolton. He said earlier the next target is Nicaragua and its leader, Daniel Ortega. 

The U.S. has provided critically needed aid for the people of Venezuela. Now is the time for Venezuelan military to allow aid through the border. As Interim President Guaido said today “Those who accompany us to save the lives of Venezuelans are true patriots.” https://t.co/Ha3PZFBjoF

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 23, 2019

Amid Washington's crude attempts to carry out regime change in Venezuela, John Bolton already threatens the next victim – Nicaragua is in the cross-hairs now. via Angelina Siard pic.twitter.com/hBId4fzCHB

— Victor Kuhnovets (@vicktop55) February 23, 2019

If you ever had doubt Bolton and the neocons are living in 1963 during the height of the Cold War, consider the following tweet. 

National security adviser John Bolton: "Some people call the country now 'Cuba-zuela' reflecting the grip that Cuba's military and security forces have on the Maduro regime. We think that's a strategic significant threat to the United States" https://t.co/fW6GsThWut pic.twitter.com/S7GF7j7qnS

— ABC News (@ABC) January 28, 2019

“On November 1, 2018, Bolton denounced Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela as a “troika of tyranny” and saying that he looks forward to watching their governments fall.” (by K. Livingstone) https://t.co/q5VHjV6Z9k

— Carly (@CarlyJMorris) February 23, 2019

It looks like the situation on the border will devolve into violence and the US will use this to argue for military intervention, either by the US or in combo with Brazil and especially Colombia. The sanctions imposed on the country will take too long for impatient neocons. 

The incidents on the border crossings in Venezuela are a great propaganda victory for the US. It’s not clear who is responsible for torching (and possibly bombing) “aid” trucks on the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge, but the blame was quickly placed on the Maduro and the Venezuelan military. 

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Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

This article was originally published on Global Research on January 2015. It is of particular relevance to the ongoing SNC-Lavalin scandal which implicates the Trudeau government.

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Canada has the dubious honour of being home to the largest number of firms on a World Bank blacklist of corrupt companies.

But virtually all of that can be attributed to one Canadian company — SNC Lavalin, the construction and engineering giant whose name is becoming a paragon of Canadian corruption.

Of the more than 600 companies now listed as barred from doing business with the World Bank over corruption, 117 are Canadian, the most of any one country. And of those, 115 represent SNC-Lavalin and its subsidiaries, the Financial Post reports.

Among the listed SNC subsidiaries are Candu Energy, which designs CANDU nuclear reactors, and Evergreen Rapid Transit Holdings, the SNC-Lavalin company established to build Vancouver’s new Sky Train line.

The World Bank’s head of corruption investigations, James David Fielder, told the paper the SNC subsidiaries’ inclusion was due to “a World Bank investigation relating to the Padma Bridge project in Bangladesh where World Bank investigators closely cooperated with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in an effort to promote collective action against corruption.”

As if on cue, the RCMP on Wednesday announced charges against former SNC executive Kevin Wallace, in conjunction with the probe into the Padma Bridge project.

Wallace was charged with bribery of a foreign official under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act.

“In some countries, bribes are still accepted as a necessary part of doing business. However, bribery raises serious moral and political concerns, undermines good governance and sustainable economic development, and distorts the conditions of international competition,” the RCMP said in a statement.

The World Bank is in the midst of a crackdown on corrupt companies. It expanded its list by some 250 names in the first seven months of this year alone, the South China Morning Post reports.

“We’re not a global policeman, but what we can do is facilitate the global conversation against corruption,” Stephen Zimmerman, director of operations at the bank’s integrity division, told the Financial Times.

After Canada’s 117 listed companies, the U.S. is in second place, with 46 listed. That’s followed by Indonesia (43 firms) and Britain (40 firms).

Bangladesh is not the only place where SNC-Lavalin is alleged to have engaged in bribery.

The company’s former CEO, Pierre Duhaime, was arrested last year on corruption charges related to $56 million in “questionable payments” believed linked to some of the company’s overseas operations. Duhaime was arrested again earlier this year in connection with allegations of corruption surrounding a contract to build a new facility for the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) in Montreal.

SNC-Lavalin’s links to the former Gadhafi regime in Libya are said to have been so close that the company offered one of the dictator’s sons a vice-president position in 2008, according to news reports.

SNC-Lavalin is also alleged to have been engaged in corrupt practices in Algeria.

Campaign Against Arms Trade has welcomed the Germany Government’s decision to continue its arms embargo against Saudi Arabia. The ban on arms sales was put in place in 2018, following the escalation of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

This week it was revealed that the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, wrote to the German Government urging it to lift the ban.

Since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015, the UK has licensed £4.6 billion worth of arms to the Saudi regime, including:

• £2.7 billion worth of ML10 licenses (Aircraft, helicopters, drones)
• £1.9 billion worth of ML4 licenses (Grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures)

In reality the figures could be a great deal higher, with most bombs and missiles being licensed via the opaque and secretive Open Licence system.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:

“It is totally inappropriate for Jeremy Hunt to use his position in this way. He is meant to be a statesman, not a lobbyist for arms companies and the Saudi dictatorship.

The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is the worst in the world. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in this brutal and devastating war, and yet the main goal for the UK Government and the Foreign Secretary has been to maximise arms sales. That tells us everything we need to know about their priorities.

Germany should never have been arming Saudi forces in the first place, but it has done the right thing by ending the sales. If Jeremy Hunt, Theresa May and their colleagues want to do the right thing for the people of Yemen then they must follow Germany’s lead.”

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A Canadian federal agency today formally recommended approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion, a move strongly condemned by Coast Salish Tribes on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.

In November 2018, representatives from U.S. Coast Salish Tribes joined Canadian First Nations in Victoria, British Columbia, to testify before Canada’s National Energy Board as part of a review of the proposed pipeline expansion.

Despite testimony and legal arguments presented by First Nations and U.S. Tribes describing the significant harms the pipeline expansion project will cause for their communities, the Canadian federal government made a determination to push ahead with the project. The Trans Mountain expansion will triple oil tanker traffic through the Salish Sea — imperiling endangered orcas, increasing navigation risks for fishermen, and increasing the risk of a major oil spill.

“The NEB found that the Trans Mountain Pipeline will harm Indigenous people and endangered orcas, but it still recommended the project,” said Stephanie Tsosie, an Earthjustice attorney representing the U.S. Tribes before the Energy Board. “It has twisted the definition of public interest to sacrifice the Salish Sea, the people who rely on it, and even the air we breathe.”

Tulalip Chairwoman Marie Zackuse, Suquamish Chairman Leonard Forsman, Lummi Hereditary Chief Bill James, Swinomish Senator Brian Wilbur, and Swinomish Senator Jeremy James Wilbur lead U.S. Coast Salish tribal members into a hearing before the Canadian National Energy Board in November 2018 in Victoria, British Columbia. (Source: ALEX HARRIS FOR EARTHJUSTICE)

Quotes from US Coast Salish Tribes

“We are in danger of losing our relatives the southern resident killer whales,” said Lisa Wilson of the Lummi Nation. “We know the impact of vessel traffic, we know the impact of the noise, and we know what the impact would be if there is an oil spill — the major devastation that’s going to wipe out all of the species in the Salish Sea.”

“Salmon is one of the resources that has sustained our people since time immemorial,” said Swinomish Senator Jeremy James Wilbur. “We’ve always relied on salmon, clams, halibut, shrimp, prawns, diving. Usual and accustomed fishing areas are places our tribes have fished for many, many generations. And to impact that would be a major disaster.”

“We are very concerned about the Trans Mountain Pipeline’s impact on the orcas, and also on the rest of the food chain in the Salish Sea,” noted Chairman Leonard Forsman of the Suquamish Tribe. “Everything interrelates. The orca’s just an alarm bell — there are other places where we have a lot of other problems with salmon habitat, shellfish habitat, water quality and all those things that impact the food web. Also, the promotion of fossil fuel use and combustion will contribute more to climate change, which is bringing warming waters and raising sea levels.”

“You don’t poison where you get your food. You just don’t do that,” said Noel Purser, of the Suquamish Tribe. “I understand in British Columbia, this pipeline will provide a way of having an income. But is it worth the potential of a spill, that risk? Is it really worth that? Because that will impact everybody, not just here in British Columbia. It will impact us in Suquamish; it will impact our relatives in Alaska.”

“As Coast Salish people, we do not recognize the imaginary line that divides us from First Nation relatives,” said Chairwoman Marie Zackuse, from the Tulalip Tribes. “The Salish Sea does not recognize this border. Our relatives, the salmon and the killer whales do not recognize this border. Pollution, industrial waste, and climate change do not recognize this border. Impacts to these species are felt throughout the Salish Sea on both sides of the border, and they are cumulative effects. This Trans Mountain expansion may just be the project that brings us past the point of no return.”

The National Energy Board decision disregarded these and other comments shared during the November 2018 oral testimony. For media interviews, reporters should reach out to Tribal contacts listed above.

The proposed tar sands pipeline expansion is one of several projects that would dramatically increase the passage of tankers and bulk carriers through the Salish Sea on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.

Background

In 2013, four Northwest U.S. Tribes — the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Tulalip Tribes, Suquamish Tribe, and Lummi Nation — intervened in Canadian permit proceedings over the new tar sands pipeline, joining scores of Canadian First Nations and conservationists, the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby, and the Province of British Columbia in opposition to the pipeline. The U.S. Tribes’ position before Canada’s National Energy Board represented a critical call to safeguard the Salish Sea from increased oil tanker traffic and greater risk of oil spills.

The Trans Mountain Pipeline Project calls for tripling the amount of oil shipped from tar sands fields in Alberta to approximately 890,000 barrels per day to the British Columbia coast. The pipeline would cause an almost seven-fold increase in oil tankers moving through the shared waters of the Salish Sea, paving way for an increase in pollution, noise, groundings, accidents, and oil spills.

The proposed tar sands pipeline expansion is one of several projects that could dramatically increase the passage of tankers and bulk carriers through the Salish Sea on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.

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Featured image: Tulalip Tribes Chairwoman Marie Zackuse before addressing Canada’s National Energy Board. (Source: ALEX HARRIS FOR EARTHJUSTICE)

As I write this, there is a false flag underway on the border of Venezuela and Brazil. 

It looks like two people were killed and a dozen wounded after Venezuelan troops opened fire on locals. The confrontation is part of an effort to deliver “aid” to the crisis-wracked nation (thanks in large part to US sanctions). 

Of course, the Maduro government doesn’t trust USAID, a US government funded agency that specializes in “democratic” color revolution and undermining elections around the world under the banner of “humanitarianism.”

WHEELS UP 🛫: Another plane transporting @USAID food & medical supplies is on its way to #Colombia, where we are pre-positioning aid for the people of #Venezuela #EstamosUnidosVE pic.twitter.com/0bQq8cannG

— Mark Green (@USAIDMarkGreen) February 22, 2019

Here’s a clueless rich guy pushing a “concert” in favor of oligarchic rule by the Venezuelan elite.  

We are on a bridge, today we want to build a bridge of hope #VenezuelaAidLive pic.twitter.com/qcPgriPy8x

— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) February 22, 2019

And here’s the “entertainers” who are headlining Venezuela Aid Live, a PR effort to make the violent overthrow of a democratically elected leader soft and squishy and palatable to liberal America.

These entertainers are, naturally, almost completely braindead on Venezuela, the CIA’s efforts to overthrow the Hugo Chavez government, and the bottomline—handing over the nation’s oil wealth to transitional corporations and banksters. 

All Together For Venezuela #LineUp #AidVenezuela #AyudaVenezuela pic.twitter.com/qMQyZ1Zexk

— Venezuela Aid Live (@VenezuelaAid) February 22, 2019

Fortunately, some of us understand what’s going on behind the scenes of this rich man’s concert—regime change.

Roger Waters, formerly of the group Pink Floyd, understands what’s behin

The Red Cross and the UN, unequivocally agree, don’t politicize aid. Leave the Venezuelan people alone to exercise their legal right to self determination. pic.twitter.com/I0yS3u75b6

— Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) February 18, 2019

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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.

With Damascus and its allies firmly in control of Syria and its future – the war having been decided on the ground rather than “politically” as envisioned by Western politicians, media, and policymakers – the US proxy war against Syria has all but failed.

Despite the obvious defeat – and as contemporary American history has illustrated – the US will unlikely relent and instead, do all within its power to complicate the war’s conclusion and disrupt desperately needed reconstruction efforts.

Encapsulating current American intentions in Syria is a Foreign Policy article titled, “The New U.N. Envoy to Syria Should Kill the Political Process to Save it.”

The article – written by Julien Barnes-Dacey of the NATO-Soros-funded European Council on Foreign Relations –  suggests the otherwise inevitable end of the conflict be delayed and that reconstruction aid be held hostage until political concessions are made with the militarily-defeated foreign-backed militants dislodged from much of Syria’s territory by joint Syrian-Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah efforts.

The article makes an unconvincing argument that maintaining Idlib as a militant bastion, delaying the conflict’s conclusion, and withholding reconstruction aid will somehow positively benefit the day-to-day lives of Syrian civilians despite all evidence suggesting otherwise.

Demands made toward “decentralizing” political power across Syria seems to be a poorly re-imagined and watered down version of America’s Balkanization plans rolled out in 2012 when swift regime change was clearly not possible. The article also indicates concern over Europe’s potential pivot toward Russia and an abandonment of European complicity with US regime change efforts.

But what is most striking is the article’s – and Washington’s insistence that Syria make concessions to a defeated enemy – funded and armed from abroad and with every intention of transforming Syria into what Libya has become in the wake of the US-led NATO intervention there – a fractured failed state overrun by extremists disinterested and incapable of administering a functioning, united nation-state.

It is striking because it has been the US who has for over half a century predicated its foreign policy on the age-old adage of “might makes right.” The US – no longer mightiest – now demands concessions despite no leverage to logically compel anyone to make such concessions.

At the Wrong End of “Might Makes Right”

While the US poses as leader of the “free world” and self-appointed caretaker of a “rules based international order,” such rhetorical constructs are mere smokescreens obfuscating what is otherwise naked modern-day imperialism.

By the end of the Cold War, the US saw an opportunity to cement this “might makes right” international order by plundering a collapsed Soviet Union and liquidating old Soviet client states from North Africa, through the Middle East, and all across Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was perhaps the apex of American “might makes right” in action. It was a war based entirely on intentionally fabricated claims to underwrite what was otherwise a war of conquest. It was the keystone of a much larger project to reorganize Cold War spheres of influence into a single realm under Wall Street and Washington.

The US possessed not only the military and economic means of forcing nations to concede to its interests, it monopolized global information and public perception to convince the world it was doing so for a nobler cause.

With the acceleration of technology – in terms of information, industry, and defense – the disparity between the sole global superpower and even developing nations has begun to shrink – saying nothing of the growing parity between Russia and China vis-a-vis the US and Europe.

The US-led war in Libya was perhaps the last, mostly unopposed “might makes right” war Washington executed with full impunity.

Its attempts to repeat the Libyan experience in Syria met a political and military brick wall with the 2015 Russian intervention. The US also suffered serious setbacks in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014 when Crimea was reunited with Russia and separatists in eastern Ukraine spoiled a US-backed coup aimed at transforming the entire nation into a proxy not only hostile toward Moscow, but sitting right on Russia’s borders.

In an international order predicated on “might makes right,” Washington finds itself no longer the mightiest. Rather than reexamining American priorities and reforming US foreign policy, the US is instead doubling down on its commitment toward regional and global primacy. The corporate-financier interests underwriting this foreign policy do so for a lack of a better alternative.

The Tropism of Imperialism 

Like an evolutionary tropism – the economic and political forces that have taken hold of America, its people, and its resources could no more redirect the course of American foreign policy than a tree could redirect its growth toward the sun. However, external forces – an emerging multipolar world order – are more than capable of pruning this overgrown empire, and perhaps redirecting its growth into a shape more conducive toward global stability.

In Syria, a significant branch of American imperialism is being pruned away.  US troops lodged in Syria’s east represent an expensive and vulnerable occupation. The ability or inability of Syria and its allies to dislodge the US presence there will indicate just how aggressive the rolling back of American imperialism will be – which may be one explanation as to why the US is so stubbornly refusing to withdraw them.

A US withdrawal from Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan would be perceived as a sign of weakness. But it is weakness already more than apparent to the world – thus stubborn long-term and now multiplying occupations in and of themselves are a sign of growing American impotence. There is no positive outcome regarding current US foreign policy – not for those directing it and for the time being benefiting from it, nor for those subjected to it.

In Syria and elsewhere the US is engaged, the task at hand is to manage America’s decline with patient persistence and avoid deadly, desperate attempts by Washington and Wall Street to reassert American influence through destructive wars and proxy wars.

Rome was not built in a day, nor was it dismantled in a day. But it was ultimately dismantled. It would be unrealistic to believe otherwise regarding modern American hegemony.

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

Featured image is from NEO

The announcement by seven MPs from the UK Labour Party on Monday that they were breaking away and creating a new parliamentary faction marked the biggest internal upheaval in a British political party in nearly 40 years, when the SDP split from Labour.

On Wednesday, they were joined by an eighth Labour MP, Joan Ryan, and three Conservative MPs. There are predictions more will follow.

With the UK teetering on the brink of crashing out of the European Union with no deal on Brexit, the founders of the so-called Independent Group made reference to their opposition to Brexit.

The chief concern cited for the split by the eight Labour MPs, though, was a supposed “anti-semitism crisis” in the party.

The breakaway faction seemingly agrees that anti-semitism has become so endemic in the party since Jeremy Corbyn became leader more than three years ago that they were left with no choice but to quit.

Corbyn, it should be noted, is the first leader of a major British party to explicitly prioritise the rights of Palestinians over Israel’s continuing belligerent occupation of the Palestinian territories.

‘Sickeningly racist’?

Luciana Berger (image on the right), a Jewish MP who has highlighted what she sees as an anti-semitism problem under Corbyn, led the charge, stating at the Independent Group’s launch that she had reached “the sickening conclusion” that Labour was “institutionally racist”.

She and her allies claim she has been hounded out of the party by “anti-semitic bullying”. Berger has suffered online abuse and death threats from a young neo-Nazi who was jailed for two years in 2016. There have been other incidences of abuse and other sentences, including a 27-month jail term for John Nimmo, a right-wing extremist who referred to Berger as “Jewish scum” and signed his messages, “your friend, the Nazi”.

In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, the former Labour MP said the Independent Group would provide the Jewish community with a “political home that they, like much of the rest of the country, are now looking for”.

In a plea to keep the party together, deputy leader Tom Watson issued a video in which he criticised his own party for being too slow to tackle anti-semitism. The situation “poses a test” for Labour, he said, adding: “Do we respond with simple condemnation, or do we try and reach out beyond our comfort zone and prevent others from following?”

Ruth Smeeth, another Jewish Labour MP who may yet join a later wave of departures, was reported to have broken down in tears at a parliamentary party meeting following the split, as she called for tougher action on anti-semitism.

Two days later, as she split from Labour, Ryan accused the party of being “infected with the scourge of anti-Jewish racism”.

Hatred claims undercut

The timing of the defections was strange, occurring shortly after the Labour leadership revealed the findings of an investigation into complaints of anti-semitism in the party. These were the very complaints that MPs such as Berger have been citing as proof of the party’s “institutional racism”.

And yet, the report decisively undercut their claims – not only of endemic anti-semitism in Labour, but of any significant problem at all.

That echoed an earlier report by the Commons home affairs committee, which found there was “no reliable, empirical evidence” that Labour had more of an anti-semitism problem than any other British political party.

Nonetheless, the facts seem to be playing little or no part in influencing the anti-semitism narrative. This latest report was thus almost entirely ignored by Corbyn’s opponents and by the mainstream media.

It is, therefore, worth briefly examining what the Labour Party’s investigation discovered.

Over the previous 10 months, 673 complaints had been filed against Labour members over alleged anti-semitic behaviour, many based on online comments. In a third of those cases, insufficient evidence had been produced.

The 453 other allegations represented 0.08 percent of the 540,000-strong Labour membership. Hardly “endemic” or “institutional”, it seems.

Intemperate language

There is the possibility past outbursts have been part of this investigation. Intemperate language flared especially in 2014 – before Corbyn became leader – when Israel launched a military operation on Gaza that killed large numbers of Palestinian civilians, including many hundreds of children.

Certainly, it is unclear how many of those reportedly anti-semitic comments concern not prejudice towards Jews, but rather outspoken criticism of the state of Israel, which was redefined as anti-semitic last year by Labour, under severe pressure from MPs such as Berger and Ryan and Jewish lobby groups, such as the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement.

Seven of the 11 examples of anti-semitism associated with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition adopted by Labour concern Israel. That includes describing Israel as a “racist endeavour”, even though Israel passed a basic law last year stripping the fifth of its population who are not Jewish of any right to self-determination, formally creating two classes of citizen.

Illustrating the problem Labour has created for itself as a result, some of the most high-profile suspensions and expulsions have actually targeted Jewish members of the party who identify as anti-Zionist – that is, they consider Israel a racist state. They include Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni, Glyn Secker and Cyril Chilson.

Another Jewish member, Moshe Machover, a professor emeritus at the University of London, had to be reinstated after a huge outcry among members at his treatment by the party.

Unthinking prejudice

Alan Maddison, who has been conducting statistical research on anti-semitism for a pro-Corbyn Jewish group, Jewish Voice for Labour, put the 0.08 percent figure into its wider social and political context this week.

He quoted the findings of a large survey of anti-semitic attitudes published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in 2017. It found that 30 percent of respondents from various walks of society agreed with one or more of eight anti-semitic views, ranging from stereotypes such as “Jews think they are better than other people” to Holocaust denial.

However, lead researcher Daniel Staetsky concluded that in most cases, this was evidence of unthinking prejudice rather than conscious bigotry. Four-fifths of those who exhibited a degree of anti-semitism also agreed with at least one positive statement about Jewish people.

This appears to be the main problem among the tiny number of Labour Party members identified in complaints, and is reflected in the predominance of warnings about conduct rather than expulsions and suspensions.

Far-right bigotry

Another of the institute’s findings poses a particular problem for Corbyn’s opponents, who argue that the Labour leader has imported anti-semitism into the party by attracting the “hard left”. Since he was elected, Labour membership has rocketed.

Even if it were true that Corbyn and his supporters are on the far-left – a highly questionable assumption, made superficially plausible only because Labour moved to the centre-right under Tony Blair in the late 1990s – the institute’s research pulls the rug out from under Corbyn’s critics.

It discovered that across the political spectrum, conscious hatred of Jews was very low, and that it was exhibited in equal measure from the “very left-wing” to the “fairly right-wing”. The only exception, as one might expect, was on the “very right-wing”, where virulent anti-semitism was much more prevalent.

That finding was confirmed last week by surveys that showed a significant rise in violent, anti-semitic attacks across Europe as far-right parties make inroads in many member states. A Guardian report noted that the “figures show an overwhelming majority of violence against Jews is perpetrated by far-right supporters”.

Supporters of overseas war

So what is the basis for concerns about the Labour Party being mired in supposed “institutional anti-semitism” since it moved from the centre to the left under Corbyn, when the figures and political trends demonstrate nothing of the sort?

A clue may be found in the wider political worldview of the eight MPs who have broken from Labour.

All but two are listed as supporters of the parliamentary “Labour Friends of Israel” (LFI) faction. Further, Berger is a former director of that staunchly pro-Israel lobby group, and Ryan is its current chair, a position the group says she will hold onto, despite no longer being a Labour MP.

So extreme are the LFI’s views on Israel that it sought to exonerate Israel of a massacre last year, in which its snipers shot dead many dozens of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza in a single day. Faced with a social media backlash, it quietly took down the posts.

The eight MPs’ voting records – except for Gavin Shuker, for whom the picture is mixed – show them holding consistently hawkish foreign policy positions that are deeply antithetical to Corbyn’s approach to international relations.

They either “almost always” or “generally” backed “combat operations overseas”; those who were MPs at the time supported the 2003 Iraq war; and they all opposed subsequent investigations into the Iraq war.

Committed Friends of Israel

In one sense, the breakaway group’s support for Labour Friends of Israel may not be surprising, and indicates why Corbyn is facing such widespread trouble from within his own party. Dozens of Labour MPs are members of the group, including Tom Watson and Ruth Smeeth.

Smeeth, one of those at the forefront of accusing Corbyn of fostering anti-semitism in Labour, is also a former public affairs director of BICOM, another stridently pro-Israel lobby group.

None of these MPs were concerned enough with the LFI’s continuing vocal support for Israel as it has shifted to the far-right under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to have stepped down from the group.

‘Wrong kind of Jews’

Anti-semitism has taken centre stage in the manoeuvring against Corbyn, despite there being no evidence of significant hatred against Jews in the party. Increasingly, it seems, tangible abuse of Jews is of little interest unless it can be related to Corbyn.

The markedly selective interest in anti-semitism in the Corbyn context among the breakaway MPs and supposed anti-semitism watchdogs has been starkly on show for some time.

Notably, none expressed concern at the media mauling of a left-wing, satirical Jewish group called Jewdas when Corbyn was widely attacked for meeting “the wrong kind of Jews”. In fact, leading Labour figures, including the Jewish Labour Movement, joined in the abuse.

And increasingly in this febrile atmosphere, there has been an ever-greater indulgence of the “right kind of anti-semitism” – when it is directed at Corbyn supporters.

A troubling illustration was provided on the TV show Good Morning Britain this week, when Tom Bower was invited on to discuss his new unauthorised biography of Corbyn, in which he accuses him of anti-semitism. The hosts looked on demurely as Bower, a Jewish journalist, defamed fellow Jewish journalist Michael Segalov as a “self-hating Jew” for defending Corbyn on the show.

Revenge of the Blairites

So what is the significance of the fact that the Labour MPs who have been most outspoken in criticising Corbyn – those who helped organise a 2016 leadership challenge against him, and those who are now rumoured to be considering joining the breakaway faction – are heavily represented on the list of MPs supporting LFI?

For them, it seems, vigorous support for Israel is not only a key foreign policy matter, but a marker of their political priorities and worldview – one that starkly clashes with the views of Corbyn and a majority of the Labour membership.

Anti-semitism has turned out to be the most useful – and damaging – weapon to wield against the Labour leader for a variety of reasons close to the hearts of the holdouts from the Blair era, who still dominate the parliamentary party and parts of the Labour bureaucracy.

Perhaps most obviously, the Blairite wing of the party is still primarily loyal to a notion that Britain should at all costs maintain its transatlantic alliance with the United States in foreign policy matters. Israel is a key issue for those on both sides of the Atlantic who see that state as a projection of Western power into the oil-rich Middle East and romanticise Israel as a guarantor of Western values in a “barbaric” region.

Corbyn’s prioritising of Palestinian rights threatens to overturn a core imperial value to which the Blairites cling.

Tarred and feathered

But it goes further. Anti-semitism has become a useful stand-in for the deep differences in a domestic political culture between the Blairites, on one hand, and Corbyn and the wider membership, on the other.

A focus on anti-semitism avoids the right-wing MPs having to admit much wider grievances with Corbyn’s Labour that would probably play far less well not only with Labour members, but with the broader British electorate.

As well as their enthusiasm for foreign wars, the Blairites support the enrichment of a narrow neo-liberal elite, are ambivalent about austerity policies, and are reticent at returning key utilities to public ownership. All of this can be neatly evaded and veiled by talking up anti-semitism.

But the utility of anti-semitism as a weapon with which to beat Corbyn and his supporters – however unfairly – runs deeper still.

The Blairites view allegations of anti-Jewish racism as a trump card. Calling someone an anti-semite rapidly closes down all debate and rational thought. It isolates, then tars and feathers its targets. No one wants to be seen to be associated with an anti-semite, let alone defend them.

Weak hand exposed

That is one reason why anti-semitism smears have been so maliciously effective against anti-Zionist Jews in the party and used with barely a murmur of protest – or in most cases, even recognition that Jews are being suspended and expelled for opposing Israel’s racist policies towards Palestinians.

This is a revival of the vile “self-hating Jew” trope that Israel and its defenders concocted decades ago to intimidate Jewish critics.

The Blairites in Labour, joined by the ruling Conservative Party, the mainstream media and pro-Israel lobby groups, have selected anti-semitism as the terrain on which to try to destroy a Corbyn-led Labour Party, because it is a battlefield in which the left stands no hope of getting a fair hearing – or any hearing at all.

But paradoxically, the Labour breakaway group may have inadvertently exposed the weakness of its hand. The eight MPs have indicated that they will not run in by-elections, and for good reason: it is highly unlikely they would stand a chance of winning in any of their current constituencies outside the Labour Party.

Their decision will also spur moves to begin deselecting those Labour MPs who are openly trying to sabotage the party – and the members’ wishes – from within.

That may finally lead to a clearing out of the parliamentary baggage left behind from the Blair era, and allow Labour to begin rebuilding itself as a party ready to deal with the political, social, economic and environmental challenges of the 21st century.

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Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth since 2001, is the the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a past winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at: www.jonathan-cook.net He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The issue for us all is: No to military intervention in Venezuela and full support for the right of Venezuela to defend itself.

“Maduro declared in his February 4 Caracas speech: ‘Not one Yaqui soldier will enter Venezuela.’”

Is Trump contributing to a unique experience in protagonist democracy in Venezuela? If so, his administration and the Democratic Party supporting the U.S. elite’s Venezuela policy are in for a big surprise. On February 25, 2014 – five years ago! – BAR published my article titled “Obama’s Arrogant Interference in Venezuela and Resistance by a Participatory Democracy.” Over the five years of tampering, obstruction and suffocating sanctions, the Obama and Trump administrations have not been able to conquer Venezuela. Why?

The U.S.-centric mindset has been steeped in the white supremacist notion of the “chosen people” from the time of the Pilgrims. It consists, among other features, of the racist outlook that peoples in the “Third World,” such as Latin America, cannot take their destiny in their own hands. Since the publication of that piece five years ago, history — along with my experience during other short visits to Caracas and my close following of TeleSUR in both English and Spanish — has forced me to revise my appreciation of Venezuela’s unique experience in democracy. It has certainly gone up more than just a notch. As a result of U.S. policies, democracy in Venezuela has been crossing the Rubicon from participatory democracy to a protagonist one. While the two are similar, especially in comparison with the experience of the Diktat in the capitalist North, there is a qualitative difference. Any hesitation at this time to qualify Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution’s democracy as being “above all” – as Chávez predicted and desired – “protagonist and not only participatory” vanished on February 4, 2019 in Caracas.

“The main issue now is the right of Venezuela to its sovereignty and to choosing its own path without foreign interference.”

Many valuable articles have already been published in BAR concerning the legitimate election of Maduro in the last elections of May 2018 on the one hand and, on the other, regarding the violation of Venezuelan and international law, including the United Nations in “recognizing” its man in Caracas. Furthermore, the main issue now is the right of Venezuela to its sovereignty and to choosing its own path without foreign interference, irrespective of any other considerations. Moreover, within this optic, the principal reality – ignored by the international media – is the civilian military union as a key component of Venezuelan democracy. It is not recognized either by ignorance or by mere wishful thinking, as those who want to eliminate the Bolivarian Revolution know very well it is this union that blocks their plan.

Although it was not the first time that I had heard Maduro speak, his February 4 talk in that semi-private meeting with Venezuelans and foreign guests was a clincher. Among other points, he outlined in detail how he and the other leaders (whom I also met briefly in that meeting) have been and are today still working to organize and inspire — and in turn are being inspired by — all the sections of the armed forces all over the country, from pilots, navy to the army to the people’s militia. He pointed out that this civilian military union has been developing in the country over several decades.

“The principal reality is the civilian military union as a key component of Venezuelan democracy.”

To flesh this out, I would add that more recently in the 1990s Chávez spent considerable time and effort to build a civilian military union. The goal was to overthrow the U.S.- backed de facto dictatorship that had ruled for many decades through the “two-party system” — all too familiar to Americans — alternating from one discredited party to another… that also soon became disgraced and so on. On February 4, 1992, Chávez and other officers and civilian revolutionary leaders organized a coup to overthrow the corrupt wealthy political elite to be replaced by the Bolivarian principles of independence and social justice. It failed, but then Chávez returned from prison to declare to the people on state TV that “for the moment” [por ahora] the rebellion had failed. This now iconic image and perspective words had further cemented the union between the military and the civilian population who had never before seen a political-military leader ready to give his life for a new Venezuela.

This union rose to the fore again on April 13, 2002 when the civilian-military alliance brought Chavez back to power as the legitimate president after a short- lived US-backed coup executed on April 11, 2002.

“Maduro and the other leaders have been working to organize and inspire all the sections of the armed forces all over the country.”

What then is this civilian-military union, its history and tradition?

Chávez said that he found the idea of the civilian-military alliance in the political thought of the Venezuelan intellectual, guerrilla leader, Fabricio Ojeda, who wrote in his 1966 book La guerra del pueblo (The People’s War):

“The anti-feudal and anti-imperialist basis of our revolutionary process suggests a form of alliance that can accommodate differences in background, political credo, philosophical conception, religious convictions, economic or professional status, or party affiliation among Venezuelans. The strength and might of the common enemy calls for a united struggle to defeat it… The forces most inclined to fight for national liberation are the workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie, students, intellectuals, and professionals as well as the majority of officials, Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs), and soldiers of the air, sea, and land forces…” In Ojeda’s vision, which Chávez shared, all these civilian and military sectors are called upon to come together in a genuine national revolutionary alliance. (Ramonet, Ignacio, Hugo Chávez: Mi primera vida. Conversaciones con Ignacio Ramonet, Vintage Español, Nueva York, 2013. [Translation by Arnold August]).

“The civilian population had never before seen a political-military leader ready to give his life for a new Venezuela.”

Today, more than ever before, in the face of a potential U.S. military intervention, this feature of the people being the authors of their ownBolivarian Revolution, rather than just participants in it, Venezuela is displaying a protagonist democracy to the world. It can be the death knell to any military adventure.

The U.S. should not be mistaken. While Maduro declared in his February 4 Caracas speech to us that his government is ready to participate in any efforts at mediation, he also made clear that Venezuela is ready to defend its country: “Not one Yaqui soldier will enter Venezuela.”

The threat of U.S.-led military intervention is more real than ever. The issue for us all: No to military intervention in Venezuela and full support for the right of Venezuela to defend itself in the worse-case scenario. Polls in Europe and other countries show support for this position, while the main unions in Canada have issued and are issuing statements rejecting the pro-Trump position of the Justin Trudeau Liberal Party position and demonstrations are taking place in the U.S.

“The strength and might of the common enemy calls for a united struggle to defeat it.”

The Justin Trudeau government hosted the so-called Lima Group in Ottawa on that same day, February 4, when we were in Caracas meeting with the Maduro government leadership. The official communiqué reaffirmed its support for the Trump position on Venezuela, consisting of foreign interference in the internal affairs of that country with full support of its puppet as the so-called president. The position of the Justin Trudeau government is a major and historical (in the very negative sense of the term)changein Canadian foreign policy, including within his own Liberal Party.In contrast for example, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War (March 2013) former Liberal Party Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said in an interview regarding Canada’s position to NOT support the U.S. war in Iraq, that he [Chrétien]has no regrets about rejecting Canada’s participation in the U.S.-led mission. It was a very important decision, no doubt about it. It was, in fact, the first time ever that there was a war that the Brits and the Americans were involved, and Canada was not there, Chrétien told CTV’s [Canadian national news network] Power Play.

The move also helped assert Canada’s independence on the world stage, he said.

Unfortunately, a lot of people thought sometimes that we were the 51st state of America. It was clear that day that we were not.

“The main unions in Canada have issued and are issuing statements rejecting the pro-Trump position.”

Chrétien said he refused to commit to military action in Iraq without a resolution from the UN Security Council. He said Canada always followed the UN and intervened in other conflicts when asked to.

Chrétien also said he was not convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — the threat that fuelled support for a U.S.-led invasion of the country — and that turned out to be true.

Chrétien also addressed his visit to Venezuela last week [March 2013] (to attend President Hugo Chávez’s funeral).

He said he went because he knew Chávez personally and “never had any problem” with the controversial leader, even though he didn’t agree with him “on many things.” He also wanted to show his respect for the people of Venezuela.

He had support of the people and he was loved by the poor of his country. He was kind of a Robin Hood, Chrétien said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper [of the Canadian Conservative Party] angered the Venezuelan administration by saying in a statement that he hoped the country can have a better, brighter future after Chávez’s death.

Chrétien said the Venezuelan authorities were very, very happy to see him at the funeral, because they were very unhappy with Harper’s remarks.

Let us recall what most political people in Cuba, Latin America, and many in the West know: Justin Trudeau’s own father, as Liberal Party Prime Minister of Canada, went to Cuba when he stood next to Fidel Castro in June 1976 and shouted in a public meeting “Long live Prime Minister Fidel Castro!,” and had taken other positions independent of the U.S.

“Everyone in Canada hates Trump for all his policies, yet Justin Trudeau is aligned with him.”

As the Canadian and other peoples increasingly recognize now, like any other family in whatever system, family relations and characteristics change. Regarding foreign relations, Justin Trudeau is not at all like his father. The press can quote me here as a Canadian: “Justin Trudeau’s father would turn over in his grave if he knew what his own son was doing.” Everyone in Canada hates Trump for all his policies, yet Justin Trudeau is aligned with him.

While the Trudeau government admonishes Venezuela for its supposed lack of democracy, it does not seem to recognize cynical incongruities, such as when, last January 2019 (while the Lima Group anti-Venezuela “pro-democracy “conspiration was in full swing), the Canadian government’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — as part of the century-long racist colonial occupation of indigenous lands — arrested 14 native people and entered a fortified checkpoint on a forest service road in northern B.C., where people at the Gidimt’en camp were barring a pipeline company from access (CBC). That led to more protests (YouTube: Toronto Star).

“Democracy” in the North is one thing. The constantly developing protagonist democracy in Venezuela is entirely the opposite. Furthermore, it is the main shield to defend the fledgling Bolivarian socialist path against U.S.-led foreign interference which we must all fully oppose.

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This article was originally published on Black Agenda Report.

Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and the recently released Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. As a journalist he collaborates with many web sites in the U.S., Canada, Latin America and Europe. He writes occasionally for Black Agenda Report and Global Research. Follow Arnold on Twitter , Facebook, His website: www.arnoldaugust.com

Featured image is from BAR