Global Research

The American political system is experiencing a crisis of hegemony. The moderate, bipartisan center that had been the mythical linchpin of American politics during the “long Cold War” is facing the possibility of a terminal decline.¹ Donald Trump’s election has put this crisis into stark relief, having turned the Republican Party’s decades long flirtations with white ethnonationalism into an overt endorsement.

At the same time, the organized left is also resurgent. This revival was first exemplified in Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, and turned more durable with Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign during the 2016 primaries. Sanders’ social democratic message galvanized the Democratic Party’s progressive base, and spurred the rapid growth and the electoral victories of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The DSA and other left organizations outside the Democratic Party have achieved the unimaginable by returning “socialism” to the mainstream.

The American left currently finds itself on unfamiliar political terrain. Interest in socialism is growing, especially among a younger generation. Outrage toward Trump’s racism and xenophobia, millennials’ anxieties about their economic prospects, and a deepening skepticism about the ability of establishment to address these problems has caused many to seek answers on the left. The American left hasn’t experienced such a rapid influx of activists and adherents since the 1960s.

Uncertainty and Potential

And yet, this rebirth comes with uncertainty. One of the challenges facing the left since the anti-globalization movement of the late 1990s is producing lasting institutions, and making tangible inroads within working class communities, especially among people of color. Though a diffuse swathe of organizations and groups are cultivating substantial political capital, these forces have yet to cohere into a unified movement or forge durable coalitions. Potential working class constituencies for a left agenda and their institutions – trade unions, churches, and social organizations – remain wedded to the Republican and Democratic parties. Questions about the sources of political power, how to take it, and the very ideological and institutional nature of democratic socialism dog many activists. Moreover, the task of recomposition into a new political force has inflicted the American left with its own internal polarization. It remains a patchwork of different groups split between trying to push the Democratic Party to the left or to carve out an independent space outside the American political duopoly. Though revived, the left has a long uphill battle before it can claim solid support among working class Americans.

The current situation is best understood as a period of ideological and organizational renewal and consolidation. At the same time, within these disparate articulations of the left’s content and form, it is possible to identify certain emerging tendencies and contradictions in its trajectory. Four issues in particular – the meaning and content of “democratic socialism,” the left’s relationship to the Democratic Party, bridging the divide between class and identity along which the left has fragmented since the 1980s, and the tension of organizing via both social movements and elections – are likely to shape its organizing successes in the near future.

The U.S. Left at the Beginning of the 21st Century

The brief surge of the American left in 2011 with Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a reawakening of political forces sublimated by the War on Terror. The 9/11 terrorist attacks punctured an active and vibrant anti-globalization (or alterna-globalization) movement. After a short period of disorientation, these left forces quickly recalibrated into an antiwar movement in the run up to the Iraq War. Though the Iraq and Afghan wars quickly descended into quagmire, opposition to the American imperial thrust failed to unite the many strands of left tendencies into a coherent opposition.

The 2008 financial crisis offered opportunities for the articulation a new left politics, especially in magnifying the growing class disparities that have defined post-1970s capitalism in the United States. The spontaneous explosion of OWS in September 2011 injected enthusiasm into a mostly dormant protest politics as Occupy camps mushroomed in cities across the United States. Like the antiwar and anti-globalization movements before it, Occupy was an eclectic mix of progressives, socialists, anarchists, and even libertarians. This archipelago of protest activity, centered around the occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York City, though successful in putting forward the slogan “We are the 99%”, failed to resolve all of its ideological and organizational contradictions.

OWS’ emphasis on horizontalism prevented its concretization into lasting institutions once its protest energies were exhausted. In their demand for autonomy and mutuality beyond state institutions, the Occupiers aspired to a society “based on organic, decentralized circuits of exchange and deliberation – on voluntary associations, on local debate, on loose networks of affinity groups.”² As Jodi Dean has argued, the “individualism of [OWS’] democratic, anarchist, and horizontalist ideological currents undermined the collective power the movement was building.”³

The ephemeral nature of OWS and its organizational form based on the physical occupation of public space made it highly susceptible to police repression. By late fall 2011, Occupy camps were dismantled in a nationally coordinated effort between local police and the Department of Homeland Security. Activists were placed under surveillance and subject to arbitrary arrest. In all, by June 2014, the website OccupyArrests had chronicled 7,775 arrests in 122 American cities.

The American left’s inability to consolidate after the 2008 crisis was due to its uneasy relationship with the Obama administration. Though it quickly revealed itself as Clinton-lite on economics and foreign policy, legislation like the Affordable Care Act, social-cultural victories like same-sex marriage, and the right’s vitriol toward both Obama and his agenda were enough to temper the emergence of a left opposition after the defeat of OWS.

While an active left pushing a more equitable social-economic agenda went dormant after 2012, the racism at the heart of the American carceral state surged to the surface. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement illuminated not only police extrajudicial killings and the prison industrial complex, but the embedded racism in the American criminal justice system as a whole. The issue of police violence and incarceration, long ignored and even justified by the American media, became a focal point of public discussion. BLM transformed political activism in African-American communities, brought in a new generation of activists, especially black LGBTQ and feminist leaders, and signified the end of the Civil Rights generation’s long dominance over black politics. Uttering “black lives matter” publicly even became a brief litmus test for many mainstream Democratic candidates, a gesture that reinforced the precarity of black bodies versus the privilege of white bodies. Though BLM’s lasting political successes were few and highly localized, its rhetorical intervention returned racism, police violence, and radical prison reform to a central place in any viable agenda for the new American left.

Despite their limitations, Occupy Wall Street and BLM made crucial contributions. First, OWS’ channeling of outrage toward the 1% moved income inequality and class into the American political mainstream. Black Lives Matter underscored the centrality of race to the American class structure by zeroing in on the “whiteness” of that 1% and the institutions of state violence that maintain it. Ultimately, BLM reiterated an age-old left truism: any serious analysis of capitalism must see the liberation of people of color as a condition for the equality of all. Both of these contributions laid the ideological and rhetorical foundations for a social democratic message that took aim at the Democratic Party’s neoliberal turn.

Second, the burning out of OWS and the fading of BLM from the national agenda signaled the shortcomings of horizontalism and activistism that had been hegemonic in the American left since the 1990s. Activists who cut their teeth in OWS learned from its limits and began reevaluating the necessity of institutional engagement, organization building, and the party form as a locus for political activity. Those inside and outside BLM realized that coalition building and the forming of united fronts on the local and national levels with other movements were necessary for substantive radical political change. Both of these became major features of the American left’s flowering in the watershed year of 2016.

The New American Socialism

The return of the “socialism” to American political discourse surprises many. Most liberals and conservatives assumed that socialism as a viable political project disappeared with the collapse of Soviet communism. Yet since the 2008 economic crash, attraction to alternatives to really existing capitalism among the post-Cold War generation has increased. Among self-identified Democrats, positive views of socialism now outpace those of capitalism, 57% to 47%, even as Americans’ views about the two have stayed relatively consistent since 2010. Bernie Sanders’ Presidential campaign, the rapid growth of the DSA, and the election of new figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have revived curiosity in what “democratic socialism” exactly is, and how it differs from “socialism” and even “communism.”

The growing popularity of democratic socialism has placed new pressure on its advocates to provide a clear definition. Part of the confusion comes from Sanders’ own popularization of “democratic socialism.” In a speech in November 2016, Sanders equated “socialism” with Roosevelt’s New Deal, robust labour and environmental regulations, and the welfare state. While no socialist would oppose such measures, many would see Sanders’ notion as rather milquetoast. Judging from debates about “democratic socialism” in the left press, the ideology contains much of what socialists from previous generations have advocated: an end of exploitation and oppression through the radical democratic restructuring of political, economic, and social relations along equitable and cooperative lines.

Notions of what a socialist economy would look like range from a form of mixed economy to one based on cooperatives and workers’ control. Most democratic socialists are skeptical of centralized planning. Many call for a market socialist approach where the nationalization of healthcare, telecommunications, and the financial sector coexists with small, privately-owned businesses and worker-owned cooperatives.⁴ Like socialists of the past, today’s adherents broadly see the end of all oppressive Isms (sexism, racism, imperialism) as only possible through the radical transformation of the relations of production under capitalism.

If “identity politics” dominated much of the American left since the 1970s, today’s left seeks to reinsert class back into the pantheon of struggle. But rather than being economically determinist, socialist ideology today is an eclectic mix of a variety of Marxist, post-structuralist, and progressive tendencies. While class analysis may provide the primary lens for a socialist analysis, sexual, gendered, racial and other identities and positionalities are seen as adding layers that shape the particularities of a group’s class relationship and struggle.

Within democratic socialism, the modifier “democratic” plays two functions. First, it is an ideological commitment to democracy as a central aspect of any socialist policy, institution, or practice. The insistence on democratic is at once a distancing from and a recognition that the lack of democracy caused the failures and tragedies of communist states in the twentieth century. Rhetorically, it is also a preemptive rebuttal of the dismissals of socialism as a necessarily totalitarian ideology. Following from this, the democratic aspect is a disavowal of the democratic centralism of the Leninist party model, and of insurrection and violence as the primary means for revolutionary change.

Today’s democratic socialists range from gradualists to advocates of immediate sweeping reforms. But all show a willingness to work politically within the confines of liberal democracy, at least temporarily and provisionally, to achieve power. Unlike the communist revolutions of the last century, democratic socialists seek to build a constituency for socialism via a combination of mass movements and the ballot. In this, the strategic orientation of today’s democratic socialists is closer to the Eurocommunist movements of the 1970s than to the Bolsheviks of the early 1900s.

Despite consensus on the broad strokes of democratic socialism, the DSA is a “big tent,” multi-tendency organization. It includes a myriad of left-wing trends, many of which entered the organization during its membership boom in 2016. This has resulted in a fragmented identity within and between local chapters. Moreover, the influx of new members often unfamiliar with the nuances of socialist ideology, terminology, history, and practices add to the challenges of forging a shared organizational identity. This “identity crisis” is most vivid in discussions over the left as a community, its values (ideological, moral, and cultural), and how to regulate them.

The left as a community of shared values, ethics, friendship, comradeship, and mutual aid has a long history. Socialist and communist parties were more than just political movements. They were also social and cultural spaces that gathered like-minded people. Crucial to party life was the provision of entertainment, spaces of sociability, and the cultivation of personal relations in addition to politics. However, the history of these organizations also shows that the line between politics and values is porous. Not only do internal alliances intersect with personal relations, but conflicts over values tend to take on political valances. As historians of socialist and communist parties have shown, most party expulsions resulted not from ideological differences, but from personal behaviors deemed in violation of “party ethics.”

The DSA recognizes the importance of community building as an important aspect to political work. “Community building helps sustain us,” reads one chapter organizing document. Members are urged to recruit friends, hold house parties, and, especially for newcomers, speak to their personal socialist conversion experience. The document suggests: “Let people talk about why they are there and tell their personal story,” “how did you become political?” “what does democratic socialism mean to you?” All of this “builds bonds between people.” The importance of a socialist community contains a crucial political thrust: to “counter neoliberal capitalism which divides and isolates us.”⁵

Yet the left has a poor track record in reconciling its political mission (build a mass base among the working class) with its emphasis on community (providing a social space for its adherents). One of the main hindrances is the left’s historical tendency to slip into puritanism and overly regulate and adjudicate norms. Often, and the DSA has endured many national and local scandals (exacerbated by social media), building a “socialist” community is constituted through the identification, shaming, or expulsion of its transgressors. Given the politically charged atmosphere of the left, these ethical questions are often articulated, judged, and punished in a political and ideological key.⁶

The contradictions between politics and community have not gone unnoticed. The ethical contours of the “socialist community” has been the subject of debates about the social purpose of organizations like the DSA. In a biting critique, Benjamin Studebaker warned against the left as serving as a site of “spiritual self-actualization.”⁷ Others have cautioned against members’ tendency to “fixate on the purity and homogeneity of their own in-group and attack other members of DSA for not meeting their standards.”⁸ Still others point at a penchant toward “rigid radicalism” by reducing “good” politics to an individual’s values, morals, and ethics.⁹

The question of the socialist community raises other challenges. Building working class power requires facilitating the activism of that class. Yet activism often requires a measure of social and economic privilege. The demands of work, family, and other responsibilities and risks can preclude the involvement of working class members, especially those of color. In these cases, activism tends to fall on the shoulders of a small coterie of members. Often it is privileged minorities that exercise disproportionate power in shaping a community, and substitute informal relations for procedure. Like socialist and communist organizations before them, today’s left runs the risk of cliques and factionalism not necessarily based in ideology (though often expressed in those terms), but forged through informal networks and friendships. Common attempts to remedy the power of informal networks with calls for horizontalism (a flattening of internal hierarchies) or transparency can merely mask the persistence of these relations.

Organizing Beyond Class and Identity

A major effect of the post-2016 period was to relitigate the longstanding debate on the left about class and the politics of identity. On the surface, Sanders’ narrative of the corruption of the “billionaire class” and Clinton’s cynical deployment of the language of intersectionality seemed to neatly capture this division between an Old Left focus on “working class issues” (jobs, social protection) and a post-New Left shoehorning of the language of identity into what Nancy Fraser has called the “progressive neoliberalism” of the Clinton and Obama years.¹⁰

Trump’s victory, as well as Sanders’ earlier success in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana, prompted many liberal observers to advance a narrative of populism and white working class revenge. Centrists like David Brooks, Mark Lilla, and Francis Fukuyama have blamed the left’s focus on identity politics over the material concerns of average Americans. These readings understand the 2016 election through the lens of anti-elite ressentiment: silent Americans’ embrace of Sanders and Trump are equivalent expressions of populist anti-establishmentarianism.

Still, to read the resurgence of the left strictly as the “materialist” pushback against liberal identity politics cedes far too much ground to the liberal narrative of a clash between class and identity – between material and “post-material” concerns, or between the winners and losers of globalization. Today, the American left is being forged anew through mutually-informing organizing and critique. It is undergoing a complex process of organic reconstitution, in which traces of both the Old and New Lefts exist. Old debates – on nationalism and internationalism, race and political economy, social reproduction and the limits of neoliberal feminism – are being reworked and reframed, now more closely influenced by the immediate pressures of contesting for power than before.

There is a shared understanding that the left must move beyond the neoliberal identity politics of the 1990s and 2000s.¹¹ More controversial is the political subject that should be the main focus of organizing efforts. One fault line has been a distinction between a strategy backing a handful of national campaigns (Medicare for All, a Green New Deal) in coalition with organized labour’s “rank and file,” and one seeking to broaden the sites of struggle to include precarious and undocumented workers, racial minorities (especially in poor urban areas), tenants, students, the LGBT community, and sex workers, among others. The two outlooks agree on the need for building a mass movement and the democratization of existing political and social institutions. Their disagreement is about the locus of the most transformative and radical energy. Namely, who will be the new political subject, what form will it take, and how to balance between a national program and local initiatives?

One point of controversy is whether the socialist left should throw the bulk of its energy and resources into universal, popular demands, such as Medicare for All. Building on Adolph Reed’s critique of liberal identity politics, proponents argue for the creation of a “cohesive block” forged from “shared economic demands based on one’s location in the capitalist class structure.”¹² At the core of this approach is an insistence upon the ultimate class character of identity politics, and against the essentialization of the identity-subject position of an oppressed group.¹³

In contrast, those who stress the unique structure of racial domination and the racialized and gendered nature of all class struggles argue that adhering to a normative concept of class “excludes social relations anchored in rightlessness, wagelessness, and extra-economic coercion, [that obscure] the violence constituting capitalism’s capacity to reproduce itself.”¹⁴ Per these accounts, the left cannot neglect the radical origins of identity politics and the multifaceted struggles, demands, and contestatory narratives that they enable.¹⁵

“Today’s left faces the challenge of articulating existing grievances into a new political formation.”

These discussions over identity and class have functioned as a proxy for strategic debates, within the DSA and beyond, about the most effective means for a socialist movement to achieve institutional power. If the major problem with liberal identity politics has been its tendency to essentialize subjects and project a specific political affect onto them, today’s left faces the challenge of articulating existing grievances into a new political formation. Rather than the conversion of people to socialism, the left must see politics as the process of forging unity out of plurality. It can do so by advancing concrete measures that speak to popular discontent and draw specific subject positions into a broader coalition of forces.

Should the left hope to overcome the stale debate between the primacy of class or identity, this will involve bridging grassroots mobilizational campaigns, including for racial and criminal justice, climate justice, and a “feminism for the 99%,” with local, city, and state-level electoral efforts that can cement the gains of these localized struggles within public institutions, potentially opening the way for further radical demands.

Between Elections and Movements

The new American socialism is highly aware that the pressing short-term issues that will determine the future of this movement will be fought out on the terrain of the liberal-capitalist state. Today’s socialists are beginning to ask what it would take to govern, and if so, how a political movement can meaningfully engage with the state. These conversations have become more concrete and nuanced, and largely inspired by Marxists like Luxemburg, Gramsci, Miliband, and Poulantzas that sought to move beyond the dichotomy of “reform or revolution.” This revival of state-strategic thinking has attempted to outline a viable path that draws on the best of both electoral and mass movement politics, while acknowledging the productive tension between them.¹⁶

Given that the United States’ “first past the post” electoral system incentivizes a two-party arrangement that has historically marginalized socialist and labour parties, the Democratic Party casts a shadow over most of these left strategic and tactical conversations. Historically, the DSA’s political strategy had been pragmatically pushing the Democratic Party to the left, toward what its founder, Michael Harrington, had called “the left-wing of the possible.” Yet today’s DSA is a different organization. The rapid influx of younger members dropped the median age from 68 to 33 in the last five years. Though a national organization, its decentralized structure provides substantial autonomy for local chapters (although not always autonomy within a given chapter) to set their own priorities. Each chapter is, in theory, capable of adopting initiatives that are sensitive to the local correlation of political forces, institutional capacities, and resources for political campaigns.

Two broad political trajectories have formed within the DSA. One prioritizes electoral activism within the Democratic Party around universal social measures such as housing, healthcare, and criminal justice reform. The other focuses on “base-building” and mutual aid by organizing workers, tenants, and students, and stressing autonomist initiatives with the aim of immediately breaking from the Democrats.

A dominant intellectual tendency within Jacobin, with which the DSA is closely linked, advocates “non-reformist reforms” or “revolutionary reforms.” Vivek Chibber has argued for a gradualist approach: a “combination of electoral and mobilizational politics” seeking to eventually build a labour-based party that can both pursue policy reforms and generate power in civil society.¹⁷ With the emergence of such a labour-based party unlikely in the short term, the focus has been on actualizing Sanders’ “political revolution” by supporting popular universal measures such as Medicare for All and the more radical gains that this would inspire.¹⁸

Responses to this dualist strategy have pointed to the structural limitations set by both state and capital, and the inherent contradictions in a strategy that bridges electoral participation and cultivating social movements. To that extent, critics argue that substantive, base-building socialist reforms cannot be won through the Democratic Party. Attempts to either reform the Democratic Party or compete on its terrain, they posit, is counterproductive. Instead, political energies are best directed at immediately cultivating independent organizations and building a mass socialist party.¹⁹

Yet appeals to “base building” within the working class are likely to remain a political slogan without an accurate concept of that class. Apart from the superficial discussions of the “white working class” in relation to Trump, the relative absence of the language of the “working class” in American political discourse compared to the overwhelming appeals to the “middle class” is indicative of this problem. Recent campaigns such as the Fight for $15, the 2018 West Virginia teachers’ strike, numerous graduate student unionization efforts, and the Marriott workers’ strike hint at the reformation and emergence of a more racially diverse and increasingly precarious “new working class,” especially drawn from education, service work, and care work.²⁰ Still, these pockets of organizing have not yet coalesced into a larger movement representing all skilled and unskilled, full-time and itinerant, native and immigrant, and industrial and service workers. Forging a new politics that brings a multifaceted conception of class to the center of working people’s identities and constitutes them as a new political subject will be the crucial test of the left’s success.

The institutional barriers of the American electoral system also present challenges that largely incentivize socialist candidates to run as Democrats. A “first past the post” arrangement discourages the left from splitting the vote. A decentralized voting system encourages state-level voter-suppression schemes, including frequent voter roll purges and strict identification requirements. These, in addition to the anachronistic electoral college, mean that the American system structurally over-represents sparsely populated, conservative, rural areas at the expense of left-leaning urban centers.

Thus far, DSA’s legal status as a political organization rather than as a party has allowed it to instrumentally use the Democratic ballot line to either endorse or run left candidates without the accompanying financial and legal constraints. Seth Ackerman has advocated a popular proposal in favor of a “national political organization that would have chapters at the state and local levels, a binding program, a leadership accountable to its members, and electoral candidates nominated at all levels throughout the country.”²¹ Yet this proposal has not been officially adopted, and the majority of DSA-endorsed candidates simply run on Democratic Party ballots in a patchwork manner.

The results have been mixed. In the 2018 electoral cycle, DSA-endorsed candidates were elected to state-level offices in Virginia, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Maine, among other states. In addition, Ocasio-Cortez, the face of the new electoral socialism for many, was recently elected to the House of Representatives as the youngest ever woman in Congress. However, a number of other progressive candidates backed by Sanders’ Our Revolution organization lost in red-blue swing states. In the autumn 2018 midterm elections, it was a broader liberal antipathy to Trump, especially in more moderate suburban areas, rather than a thirst for a more social democratic agenda, that motivated the Democratic “Blue Wave.”

The example of Ocasio-Cortez notwithstanding, socialist organizations like the DSA do not currently have the capacity to define or influence either federal-level or gubernatorial elections. Even its ability to influence or win local elections is highly subject to local conditions. Concerns about the cooptation of the DSA by the Democratic Party are thus more indicative of the growing pains over the collective identity of an organization that saw an unexpected, rapid influx of new members. The DSA’s growth over the last two years has largely been via disaffected liberals and progressives. With DSA-backed candidates continuing to run as Democrats, successfully pushing the Democratic Party to the left may encourage the exit of newer members who joined as part of the organization’s post-2016 membership surge. Yet at this moment, the tactical disagreement between working with(in) the Democratic Party and independent base building is a false binary. Both cases overstate the left’s capacities to simply choose one or the other path, rather than its course being largely determined by circumstances not of its own choosing.

The DSA’s self-described character as a “big tent” organization also raises questions about its future direction, especially regarding Sanders’ likely declaration of his 2020 presidential candidacy. His campaign’s success will indicate just how much the left has made socialist messaging more mainstream for both Democrats and the general electorate. While the DSA is likely to endorse Sanders, sympathetic critics have pointed out the risks of doing so. Mainstream Democrats will likely be hostile to Sanders’ messaging even as they appropriate parts of his agenda. Sanders’ supporters will also be expected to back another Democrat should he lose the nomination, potentially reducing the DSA to another electoral auxiliary for the Democratic Party. Finally, there is uncertainty as to what exactly the DSA can independently contribute to Sanders’ campaign beyond that of Our Revolution.

Given these nuances, the choice between elections and social movements is more tactical than strategic. Put differently, it requires a shift from ideological struggles to political ones, and realizing them into institutional power. Radicalizing disaffected liberals by appealing to “socialist” values is in tension with the support for policies that speak to the interests of disaffected but largely non-politicized people. Short-term alliances with Democrats and progressive liberals, especially in congressional and local elections, may be necessary both as defensive and offensive measures. Defensive, to stave off right-wing assaults on democratic institutions (civil and political rights, including voting rights and birthright citizenship). Offensive, to challenge Republican hegemony in local and state legislatures across much of the country. Such a “Popular Front” would not mean a blanket support of Democratic Party candidates and policies, nor official endorsements (which should be extremely selective). Instead, such a progressive-left coalition would be contingent on the left’s ability to set the agenda on popular reforms such as health care, labour and reproductive rights, and immigration.

Looking Forward

One hundred years ago, the Bolshevik Party was able to channel the demands of the masses – peace, land, and bread – into a revolutionary political program. Today, the challenge facing American socialists is more daunting. Unlike the revolutionary wave that swept Europe in the aftermath of WWI, capitalism – in its regional, national, and global forms – remains hegemonic. However, the current crisis of capitalism and liberal democracy has produced cracks in the edifice. If we are currently living through an interregnum between a dysfunctional old order and an uncertain new one, the task of the American left is to articulate a convincing alternative vision to the current widespread societal discontent, economic inequality, and racial domination. Not only must this vision be transmittable to a broad spectrum of the population, it must also posit convincing, short-term, realizable reforms without tempering its long term goals for a total social transformation.

So far, the growing popularity of socialism has been bolstered by a handful of energetic electoral victories and a widespread sense that politics as usual is incapable of addressing the magnitude of the social problems facing the USA. At the same time, these challenges require a reevaluation of the left itself. Notions of a left simply comprised of a “movement of movements” or an amorphous multitude have revealed their limits. Growing a mass social movement requires turning outward the many ideological struggles within the left, transforming them into political struggles, and building tangible institutional power to achieve victory.

Despite positive signs, as of now, the left is yet to have a significant impact on the political balance of forces. As socialist ideas become more mainstream and popular amidst a broader, generational shift in the organization of class hegemony, they will also draw more scrutiny from both the right and the liberal center. At the same time, the left is confronted with its own internal growing pains, conflicts, and challenges. The left, therefore, remains a target of two old foes: repression and delegitimation from without, and self-destruction and cannibalism from within. How the American left navigates these waters in the run up to 2020 and beyond will reveal just how much mettle the current resurgence possesses. The real test of the left’s power and influence, in other words, is still to come.

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Since most of us are aware of the way Washington approaches its alleged fight against terrorism, murdering tens of thousands of civilians in the process, it seems that the relatives of all those who perished under American bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria may finally get their day in court. To be specific, it has recently been reported that a US court found Damascus liable in the death of American journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed during the shelling of Baba Amr district of Homs back in 2012.

It was stated that Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia chose to double the typical compensation that the relatives of the deceased journalist would receive, bringing it up to 302.5 million dollars.

This decision was made in spite of the fact that in his interview for NBC News, Syria’s president Bashar Assad made it clear that:

“It’s a war and she came illegally to Syria. She worked with the terrorists, and because she came illegally, she’s been responsible of everything that befall on her.”

As most of you must be aware, the US legal system is based on the so-called common law principle that America inherited from the United Kingdom. In this situation it’s only natural to ask: could the above mentioned US District Court decision force Washington to pay billions of dollars in compensations to the families of those who are being unscrupulously referred to in the West as “collateral damage”? As it’s pretty clear for everyone that a precedent has been set. Moreover, on numerous occasions, US authorities would be forced to officially describe a great many of the air raids they launched as erroneous, thus taking full responsibility for the civilian death toll those attacks inflicted.

And the number of such air strikes is growing by the day! Thus, in Afghanistan alone, there’s been an unprecedented increase in the number of civilians killed by the US Air Force, while Washington pretends to be interested in negotiations with the Taliban. Over the last two months, at least 10 of such erroneous strikes were reported, resulting in 68 people perishing. Over the last two weeks alone, some 35 peaceful Afghan citizens would die in the course of US air raids. A lot of attention should be paid to the most recent incident when a US military drone murdered 16 civilians in a single attack in the Afghan province of Helmand in late January. On the next day, the funeral procession organized by the relatives of the victims of the first strike came under fire of yet another US drone, which resulted in 13 more people perishing. So far, the Pentagon failed to provide any intelligible comment on the bloodbath its people created, while only making a remark that it was going to launch an investigation. However, as it became evident from hundreds of similar investigations, nobody in the US armed forces is ever going to be held accountable for such crimes.

In Syria, similar air raids have become a daily occurrence. For instance, as it’s been reported by the Kurdish TV-channel Rudaw, a recent air strike launched by the Pentagon in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate resulted in numerous civilian casualties, including women and children.

This attack took place on January 23, when local refugees would try to flee advancing militant groups, when they were hit by the US Air Force. A week later, 11 civilians perished in yet another attack launched by the US-led coalition in the same province. Earlier, in mid-December, a similar strike in Deir ez-Zor left 17 civilians dead.

To make the matters worse, the US-led coalition has been repeatedly accused of using white phosphorus munitions in its attacks against residential areas; which resulted in Syrian authorities filing a request to the UN last year so this blatant violation of international law would be properly investigated.

On January 19, Syria’s officials demanded the United Nations to put an end to the onslaught that the US-led coalition has been carrying on for months across numerous Syrian towns.

However, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq are not the only states that fell victims of the unscrupulous bombing raids of the US armed forces.

So it’s safe to say that countless lawyers across different countries may now have their hands full of work, filing lawsuits to numerous US courts to represent the families where people felt victims to American bombs.

If the family of Mary Colvin alone managed to receive 300 million dollars in compensation, it’s safe to say that the sky is the limit if those lawsuits start piling up across all of the US District Courts.

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Grete Mautner is an independent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Featured image is from NEO

US National Security Advisor John Bolton has more or less admitted that the ongoing destabilisation of Venezuela is about grabbing its oil. He recently stated:

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

The US’s hand-picked supposed leader-in-waiting, Juan Guaido, aims to facilitate the process and usher in a programme of ‘mass privatisation’ and ‘hyper-capitalism’ at the behest of his coup-instigating masters in Washington, thereby destroying the socialist revolution spearheaded by the late Hugo Chavez and returning to a capitalist oligarch-controlled economic system.

One might wonder who is Bolton, or anyone in the US, to dictate and engineer what the future of another sovereign state should be. But this is what the US has been doing across the globe for decades. Its bloody imperialism, destabilisations, coups, assassinations, invasions and military interventions have been extensively documented by William Blum. 

Of course, although oil is key to the current analysis of events in Venezuela, there is also the geopolitical subtext of debt, loans and Russian investment and leverage within the country. At the same time, it must be understood that US-led capitalism is experiencing a crisis of over-production: when this occurs capital needs to expand into or create new markets and this entails making countries like Venezuela bow to US hegemony and open up its economy.

For US capitalism, however, oil is certainly king. Its prosperity is maintained by oil with the dollar serving as the world reserve currency. Demand for the greenback is guaranteed as most international trade (especially and significantly oil) is carried out using the dollar. And those who move off it are usually targeted by the US (Venezuela being a case in point).

US global hegemony depends on Washington maintaining the dollar’s leading role. Engaging in petrodollar recycling and treasury-bond ‘super-imperialism’ are joined at the hip and have enabled the US to run up a huge balance of payments deficit (a free ride courtesy of the rest of the world) by using the (oil-backed) paper dollar as security in itself.

More generally, with its control and manipulation of the World Bank, IMF and WTO, the US has been able to lever international trade and financial systems to its advantage by various means (for example, see this analysis of Saudi Arabia’s oil money in relation to African debt). US capitalism will not allow its global dominance and the role of the dollar to be challenged.

Unfortunately for humanity and all life on the planet, the US deems it necessary to attempt to prolong its (declining) hegemony and the age of oil.

Oil, empire and agriculture

In the article ‘And you thought Greece had a problem’, Norman Pagett notes that the ascendance of modern industrialised humans, thanks to oil, has been a short flash of light that has briefly lifted us out of the mire of the middle ages. What we call modern civilisation in the age of oil is fragile and it is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to extract remaining oil reserves. The age of oil is a driver of climate change, that much is clear. But what is equally disturbing is that the modern global food regime is oil-dependent, not least in terms of the unnecessary transportation of commodities and produce across the planet and the increasing reliance on proprietary seeds designed to be used with agrochemicals derived from petroleum or which rely on fossil fuel during their manufacture.

Virtually all of the processes in the modern food system are now dependent upon this finite resource:

“Vast amounts of oil and gas are used as raw materials and energy in the manufacture of fertilisers and pesticides, and as cheap and readily available energy at all stages of food production: from planting, irrigation, feeding and harvesting, through to processing, distribution and packaging. In addition, fossil fuels are essential in the construction and the repair of equipment and infrastructure needed to facilitate this industry, including farm machinery, processing facilities, storage, ships, trucks and roads. The industrial food supply system is one of the biggest consumers of fossil fuels and one of the greatest producers of greenhouse gases.” Norman J Church (2005)

Pagett notes that the trappings of civilisation have not altered the one rule of existence: if you don’t produce food from the earth on a personal basis, your life depends on someone converting sunlight into food on your behalf. Consider that Arabia’s gleaming cities in the desert are built on its oil. It sells oil for food. Then there is the UK, which has to import 40 per cent of its food, and much of the rest depends on oil to produce it, which also has to be imported. Pagett notes that while some talk about the end of the oil age, few link this to or describe it as being the end of the food age.

Without oil, we could survive – but not by continuing to pursue the ‘growth’ model China or India are pursuing, or which the West has pursued. Without sustainable, healthy agriculture, however, we will not survive. Destroy agriculture, or more precisely the resources to produce food sustainably (the climate, access to fresh water and indigenous seeds, traditional know-how, learning and practices passed on down the generations, soil fertility, etc.), which is what we are doing, and we will be in trouble.

The prevailing oil-based global food regime goes hand in hand with the wrong-headed oil-based model of ‘development’ we see in places like India. Such development is based on an outmoded ‘growth’ paradigm:

“Our politicians tell us that we need to keep the global economy growing at more than 3% each year – the minimum necessary for large firms to make aggregate profits. That means every 20 years we need to double the size of the global economy – double the cars, double the fishing, double the mining, double the McFlurries and double the iPads. And then double them again over the next 20 years from their already doubled state.” – Jason Hickel (2016)

How can we try to avoid potential catastrophic consequences of such an approach, including what appears to be an increasingly likely nuclear conflict between competing imperial powers?

We must move away from militarism and resource-gabbing conflicts by reorganising economies so that nations live within their environmental means. We must maximise human well-being while actively shrinking out consumption levels and our ecological footprint.

Some might at this point be perplexed by the emphasis on agriculture. But what many overlook is that central to this argument is recognising not only the key role that agriculture has played in facilitating US geopolitical aims but also its potential for transforming our values and how we live. We need a major shift away from the current model of industrialised agriculture and food production. Aside from it being a major emitter of greenhouse gases, it has led to bad food, poor health and environmental degradation and has been underpinned by a resource-grabbing, food-deficit producing US foreign policy agenda for many decades, assisted by the WTO, World Bank, IMF and ‘aid’ strategies. For instance, see ‘Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia’ by Michel Chossudovsky and ‘Destroying African Agriculture’ by Walden Bello.

The control of global agriculture has been a tentacle of US capitalism’s geopolitical strategy. The Green Revolution was exported courtesy of oil-rich interests and poorer nations adopted agricapital’s chemical-dependent model of agriculture that required loans for inputs and related infrastructure development. It entailed trapping nations into a globalised system of debt bondage, rigged trade relations and the hollowing out and capture of national and local economies. In effect, we have seen the transnational corporate commercialisation and displacement of localised productive systems.

Western agricapital’s markets are opened or propped up by militarism (Ukraine and Iraq), ‘structural adjustment’ and strings-attached loans (Africa) and slanted trade deals (India). Agricapital drives a globalised agenda to suit its interests and eradicate impediments to profit. And it doesn’t matter how much devastation ensues or how unsustainable its food regime is, ‘crisis management’ and ‘innovation’ fuel the corporate-controlled treadmill it seeks to impose.

But as Norman J Church argues, the globalisation and corporate control that seriously threaten society and the stability of our environment are only possible because cheap energy is used to replace labour and allows the distance between producer and consumer to be extended.

We need to place greater emphasis on producing food rooted in the principles of localisation, self-reliance, (carbon sequestrating) regenerative agriculture and (political) agroecology and to acknowledge the need to regard the commons (soil, water, seeds, land, forests, other natural resources, etc) as genuine democratically controlled common wealth. This approach would offer concrete, practical solutions (mitigating climate change, job creation in the West and elsewhere, regenerating agriculture and economies in the Global South, etc) to many of the world’s problems that move beyond (but which are linked to) agriculture.

This would present a major challenge to the existing global food regime and the prevailing moribund doctrinaire economics that serves the interests of Western oil companies and financial institutions, global agribusiness and the major arms companies. These interlocking, self-serving interests have managed to institute a globalised system of war, poverty and food insecurity.

The deregulation of international capital flows (financial liberalisation) effectively turned the world into a free-for-all for global capital. The further ramping up of US militarism comes at the back end of a deregulating/pro-privatising neoliberal agenda that has sacked public budgets, depressed wages, expanded credit to consumers and to governments (to sustain spending and consumption) and unbridled financial speculation. This relentless militarism has now become a major driver of the US economy.

Millions are dead in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan as the US and its allies play out a continuation of what they regard as a modern-day ‘Great Game’. And now, in what it arrogantly considers its own back yard, the US is instigating yet another coup and possible military attack.

We have Western politicians and the media parroting unfounded claims about President Maduro, like they did with Assad, Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi and like they do about ‘Russian aggression’. All for what? Resources, pipelines, oil and gas. And these wars and conflicts and the lies to justify them will only get worse as demand across the world for resources grows against a backdrop of depletion.

We require a different low-energy, low-carbon economic system based on a different set of values. As the US ratchets up tensions in Venezuela, we again witness a continuation of the same imperialist mindset that led to two devastating world wars.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

The unanimously approved resolution characterized the installation of the razor wire, recently installed by U.S. Army personnel, as “not only irresponsible but inhuman.”

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It was, in a way, Reaganesque.

On Wednesday night, the city council of Nogales—an Arizona border town with a population of 20,000 people—unanimously passed a resolution calling for the Trump administration to remove razor wire that covers in near entirety a border wall that passes through its downtown.

The resolution characterized the installation of the razor wire, recently installed by U.S. Army personnel, as “not only irresponsible but inhuman.”

Arizona city officials want troop-installed razor wire removed from border wall https://t.co/0oWhPRx3of pic.twitter.com/p7eOCcyDJ8

— Military Times (@MilitaryTimes) February 7, 2019

The resolution—which says such a wall “is only found in a war, prison or battle setting” and has no place in the city—says that if the government does not remove the wire, it will file a lawsuit to have it taken down.

As Tuscon.com notes,

“The council’s action came one day after President Donald Trump made his case to the American people about the need for a border wall and how he has ordered 3,750 troops to prepare for what he called a ‘tremendous onslaught.'”

To some critical observers, however, it was unclear if the razor wire was intended to keep refugees and migrants out, or keep U.S. residents in:

As you can see, the braintrust that is Trump’s coterie of dumbalinas came up with the genius idea of putting up razor-wire…

…on the U.S. side of the wall.

If you’re planning on fleeing the country on foot, I’d suggest avoiding Nogales. They’ve really fenced you in.

7/ pic.twitter.com/qivzDbungT

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) February 7, 2019

Earlier in the week, Mayor Arturo Garino told the local Nogales International that the razor wire was “lethal” to the town’s residents. “I really don’t know what they’re thinking by putting it all the way down to the ground,” he said.

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Featured image: In this Monday, Feb. 4, 2019 photo, a school bus rolls past the razor wire-covered fence at East International and Nelson Streets in downtown Nogales, Ariz. (Photo: Jonathan Clark/Nogales International via AP)

The US president’s annual State of the Union address traditionally focuses on domestic issues but it also throws some light on the foreign policy priorities. President Trump’s speech on Tuesday adhered to the pattern and if anything, the portions on foreign policy received scant attention, restricted to his “agenda to protect America’s National Security.” Trump’s re-election bid for a second term in 2020 provided the backdrop. 

Trump boasted about the US’ military build-up and flagged the mammoth budget allocation of $716 billion to “fully rebuild” the US military. As part of it, he said, the US is “developing a state-of-the-art Missile Defence System.” He saw no reason to be apologetic about “advancing America’s interests” and cast his decision to withdraw the US from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in that light. 

Trump made a pro forma offer to consider negotiating a “different (INF) agreement, adding China and others (read India and Iran)” but himself sounded sceptical, and went on to assert that the US “will outspend and out-innovate all others by far” in an arms race. He all but sought the US’ nuclear superiority.    

Clearly, the global strategic balance is going to come under enormous stress in the period ahead. It is inconceivable that Russia will allow the global strategic balance to be shifted. In conventional forces, Russia is at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the West and that gives added impetus to maintain the overall strategic parity with the US. 

Notably, Russia test-fired an RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missile today following Trump’s speech and within hours of an earlier similar American test-firing of a Minuteman ICBM  in California. The RS-24 Yars is a vastly improved version of the famous SS-29 ICBM that the Soviet Union deployed. It is presently the mainstay of the ground-based component of Russian nuclear triad.

This thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missile has a range of 12 000 km, which brings the entire territory of the United States within its reach. Yars is equipped with multiple independent re-entry vehicle (MIRV) and is designed to evade missile defense systems (which Trump boasted about.) It maneuvers during the flight and carries both active and passive decoys and has at least 60-65% chance to penetrate defenses.

Significantly, during Tuesday’s address before the Congress, Trump made no references to arms control negotiations with Russia, leave alone to comment onthe fate of the New START nuclear arms reduction agreement (2010), which is due to expire in 2021. 

Indeed, the ‘breaking news’ in Trump’s speech was the announcement of his second summit meeting with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on February 27-28 in Vietnam. Trump sounded upbeat about his “bold new diplomacy” with North Korea and claimed credit (justifiably so) for avoiding a catastrophic war on the Korean Peninsula. He acknowledged that there is much unfinished business, but placed trust in his “relationship” with Kim. 

The only other foreign-policy topics that Trump touched in the speech were the US’ standoff Venezuela, the Middle Eastern conflicts (Syria and Afghanistan) and of course Iran. While he was rhetorical about the “brutality” and the “socialist policies” of the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro, Trump steered clear of any threats to intervene in that country. Trump merely said that the US stands with the Venezuelan people “in their noble quest for freedom.” On the other hand, Trump gently moved away from Venezuela to attack the “new calls to adopt socialism” in the US too and stated his resolve that “America will never be a socialist country.” 

As regards the Middle East, Trump said his approach is based on “principled realism”. He recalled that his approach has been consistent: “Great nations do not fight endless wars.” Trump said it is time the troops came home from Syria, having defeated the Islamic State. 

Curiously, in comparison with Syria, Trump made a somewhat nuanced reference to the Afghan war. Without elaborating, Trump hinted that the Taliban is not the US’ sole interlocutor for holding negotiations to reach a political settlement in Afghanistan. But the surprising part was when he said,

“As we make progress in the negotiations, we will be able to reduce our troop presence and focus on counter-terrorism. We do not know whether we will achieve an agreement.” 

The carefully-worded formulation steered clear of making a commitment of a total US withdrawal from Afghanistan. In fact, Trump pointedly spoke of a reduced troop presence in Afghanistan while also underscoring the need to continue with counter-terrorist operations. 

From Trump’s remarks, it appears that the US has somewhat pulled back from the reported progress at the recent 6-day talks in Qatar with the Taliban representatives. Whether this ambivalence is due to pressure from the US military and the Ashraf Ghani government against a withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan or is merely a tactical posturing to pressure the Taliban to make concessions remains to be seen. 

Ghani’s preferred strategy (which US military commanders also advocate) is to reconcile the Taliban on the terms in which he had earlier reconciled Gulbuddin Hekmatyar two years ago — which is to say, by offering the insurgents an opportunity to join his government. The Pentagon has been doggedly opposed also to giving up the American bases in Afghanistan, which it considers to be of vital importance for the US’ long term global strategies. 

Ghani had telephoned the US Vice-President Mike Pence in the weekend before Trump’s speech on Tuesday. Yet, Trump plainly ignored the Ghani government. 

Trump made harsh references to Iran as “sponsor of terror” and the government in Tehran as a “radical regime” and “corrupt dictatorship”, but, strangely, he stopped well short of adopting any confrontational overtone, leave along threaten Iran. Trump merely said, “We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants death to American and threatens genocide against the Jewish people.” 

In overall terms, the impression will be that Trump projected a foreign-policy outlook where the US will eschew military interventions in foreign countries that are in the nature of protracted entanglements through the remaining period of his term in office and concentrate instead on his domestic agenda, which he intends to make the centre piece of his campaign for re-election. A mood of retrenchment is evident all through and left to himself, Trump would like to avoid foreign-policy entanglements that do not directly impact American interests or his own campaign to win a second term as president. 

Having said that, make no mistake, fundamentally and in a longer term perspective, Trump is actually pitching for “America First”. He believes in a strong America, whose military superiority will be unchallenged and whose capacity to force its will on the world community is never in doubt. Implicit in the strategy is a resumption of the US’ elusive chase for nuclear superiority — through an extremely expensive arms race in which Trump thinks Russia lacks the financial resources to compete with the US and China can be overwhelmed in military technology. 

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Featured image is from Indian Punchline

Brexit should be a wake-up call to all British people. When Vote Leave said Britain should ‘take back control’ – perhaps they were right because what the campaigning actually showed us was that Britain is being covertly turned into a subordinate state of America. This is not some cooked up conspiracy theory dreamt up by the political left. In America, Brexit means something completely different to how the British Leavers see it. American magazine The New Republic reports as other publications do that – “A web of wealthy think tanks, lobbying groups, and organizations that seem to blur the line between such distinctions are behind the Brexiteers. These individuals and organizations are bound by a shared dream of deregulating the British economy and opening it up to U.S. markets—billed as the “Brexit prize.”

The shameful interventions by shadowy but influential think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs in Brexit, embroiled in all sorts of scandals, including vague funding from shady American donors – talks about the Brexit Prize, which says it all: “There is a substantial Brexit prize available to the UK if it is able to improve its own regulatory system, sign trade deals with other countries, and help work towards greater global liberalisation in areas that matter most.” Replace the ‘UK’ for USA – and the text is exactly right. The trouble is, not one single trade deal is close to being signed and even the WTO has just rejected Britain’s application. America wants free access, not access with any type of regulation – and so it was the biggest objector to Britain joining the WTO.

The American magazine continues:

“The main proponents of a hard Brexit are radical free-market Conservatives with a history of trans-Atlantic ties. A recent blueprint for a future U.K.-U.S. trade policy post-Brexit shined a light on the shared interests their project entails. The proposal listed as contributors a nexus of British and American libertarian organizations and received glowing endorsements from Brexit’s most influential figures.“

That blueprint advocated opening up Britain’s public services—including education, legal services, and, eventually, health care—to U.S. competition. Current EU regulations that prevent certain U.S. products from entering the British marketplace -particularly rules governing food hygiene and environmental standards—should be discarded, it argued, along with the EU’s relatively progressive policies on workers’ rights.

The big problem here being fought out in parliament daily is that under May’s plan, Britain remains tied to the EU’s regulatory system, the consequence is that the barriers to U.S. trade persist.

The truth about Brexit is that it was fought out in the shadows with right-wing American think tanks funded by transnational corporations and individual billionaires using illegal data, illegal funding sources and illegal strategies. The evidence of this keeps piling up. But once the American’s have a foot in the door, Britain will spiral into terminal decline. American political attack operations have already opened their doors to further poison political discourse in Britain and a once tolerant unified nation of stiff upper lips with an attitude of keeping calm and carrying on will descend further into division, dissent and intolerance.

The Electoral Reform Society and Open Democracy have just reported on what we can expect if Britain does not defend itself from the final American goal of turning the UK into a serf island state on the edge of Europe.

By Kyle Taylor: If you are interested in a preview of what British politics could look like in 20 years without urgent reform, look no further than the United States.

In less than two decades, a system that was already controlled by moneyed interests and required constant fundraising (some elected representatives report spending 80 per cent of their time asking for donations) has spiralled beyond a point of no return where corporations have no limit on what they can donate. In addition, ‘non-partisan’ third-party groups can spend an unlimited amount of money as long as they do not ‘coordinate’ with official campaigns.

Sound familiar? We got our first taste of this in the EU referendum where we now know Vote Leave and supposedly unaligned groups coordinated their work, overspending to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds. While there has been little political will or desire to take action (mainly because of partisan vested interests), the need for reform is the most urgent issue of our time.

Democracy is already more unpopular with the citizenry than at any point since records have been kept. If our very way of life – the very foundation of how we ‘set up’ our society – falters, there is little chance we will be able to come back from the brink without some cataclysmic event.

Any type of electoral reform is almost immediately put into the ‘too hard’ basket as politicians and parties conflate a multitude of issues to discourage change and overcomplicate basic, simple problems. There are three areas where urgent reform is not only fairly easy, but already has broad support:

Re-democratise democracy by keeping big money out of politics.

The most powerful constituency in a democracy should be the voters themselves. This should be self-evident, but we are dealing with a democratic landscape where that is no longer the case. Historically, the strict spending controls in UK elections have ensured a level of fairness in elections. As a result of structural changes both to how spending rules work and the means by which campaigners campaign, this system is no longer fit for purpose.

While spending caps should remain (and be better enforced, below), the EU referendum and, in particular, the £8 million donation from Arron Banks have made it abundantly clear that our democracy also needs funding caps. These should not only limit the amount an individual, company, organisation or entity can give, but also require a clear trail to be certain of the source. These caps should be in place all the time, not just during an election campaign. There is no point restricting funding, if from five years to one minute before the regulated period someone can completely escape scrutiny.

Increase transparency by modernising reporting.

At present, election spending is reported offline consisting of a spreadsheet ‘top sheet’ and physical copies of individual invoices. These are often heavily marked up to represent ‘splits’ between local and national spending as well as ‘wastage’ or the percentage of a particular leaflet that was not actually distributed. In addition, there is no requirement to supply detailed evidence of online election spend – the fastest growing area of spending – beyond non-itemised receipts from digital platforms. These physical returns are then held by local councils for candidate expenditure and centrally for national expenditure.

There are countless cases of individuals and entities having to pursue freedom of information requests to gain access to what are obviously public documents. Election spending should be reported in near real-time on a national online database that is easily and publicly accessible and searchable. This should include copies of all leaflets and digital ads produced, alongside audience details (who received what and why) and detailed reports of spend, reach and so on, which can then be cross-referenced against publicly available records held by online platforms themselves. This is easily the simplest way to push for rapid rule-following.

Be 22nd century ready by closing digital loopholes.

At the moment we are roughly three decades behind in properly legislating for our election system. We not only need to catch up. We need to be decades ahead. While the broader digital space needs adequate regulation, driven and overseen by an independent regulator, there are immediate changes we can make to close digital loopholes.

The two most basic (and obvious) are firstly, applying the same standard of transparency to digital advertisements as is applied to physical leaflets in the form of an election imprint. This ensures that any ad no matter where it appears – can be traced back to a campaign and the campaign’s legally responsible party (the agent). And secondly making information on who’s targeting you in digital adverts available within “two clicks.”

The above are not only sensible recommendations – they are actionable almost immediately. Regardless of whether we have a general election or referendum any time soon, the public’s trust in our democratic processes and outcomes will continue to decline unless we take these problems seriously. Without real change now, the only path forward is the American one. That is not the future we want nor one we deserve.

This is an edited extract from the Electoral Reform Society’s new report: “Reining in the Political ‘Wild West’: Campaign Rules for the 21st Century” published by OpenDemocracy.

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Why read about a book that was published in 1948 and a text book at that?

For two reasons; first It wasn’t just a textbook…. it was the economic textbook for most of the world for over half a century, the bestselling economic textbook of all times. Over four million have been sold; 19 different editions in 41 languages. It defined what the world came to believe was economics.

It was my textbook in the 1950’s and then as if to underscore the point about twenty years ago I took a taxi in New York. The driver was Russian and had studied economics at Moscow University; his textbook too was Samuelson’s, that’s how pervasive it became.

It was probably the first book to explain the way society had evolved from the centuries in which society was driven by some mix of tradition, decency, religious values and the church to the new world driven by something called market forces.

And the more important reason to look back at this textbook is because today we can see that many of Samuelson’s assumptions were wrong and as time passes those errors work increasingly against us.

Paul Samuelson (1915 – 2009) was born to Polish immigrants in Gary Indiana, went to the University of Chicago during the depression and then was able to go to Harvard for a PHD. You can read more about him in the first chapter of my book. He saw economics as a tool to do many things; he wanted to fix the economic cycle of boom and bust and to enhance the system to provide more equal opportunity. He was driven by first-generation American zeal to outdo the Russians by having a better economic system than the cold war Russian communists.

His book assumed a near perfect free enterprise system which built easily on Adam Smith’s observations from 1776. To recap, Smith had said that by everyone pursuing their own self-interest the free market system would provide goods and services seamlessly and fairly, as if guided by an invisible hand.

Samuelson’s competitive capitalism was a neutral system that would naturally lead to a fair society. If some people were getting too rich, others would go into that business and competition would level the playing field. It would do so with limited government interference. He accepted that the state had some role in protecting the system as the British Economist John Maynard Keynes (1883 to 1946) had advised. But the dominant message was that competition was all we needed.

Those views dominated for decades and are so well accepted that we now have trouble understanding why the rich are getting so much richer; that isn’t supposed to happen.

It turns out that the system does not lead to fairness but leads, as we are seeing, to the rich getting richer and the poor poorer. Fewer and fewer businesses control more and more of the world economy as competition defeats itself. Marx had pointed that out in his 1885 book on Capital. Samuelson was aware of Marx but dismissed his writing as ‘baleful prophesies.’ About six of the over seven hundred pages in Samuelson’s book are about Marx but missing is recognition of the wisdom that Marx provided. Consequently, the world has evolved as Marx foretold but Samuelson didn’t.

In 1970 Paul was the second person to receive what is commonly called the Nobel Prize for Economics and that requires some comment.

Alfred Nobel never created a prize for economics and for good reason. Economics is not a science. Science builds discovery on discovery to redefine a world view that has allowed us to progress into the heart of atoms and to the edge of the universe. The prize in medicine has recognized mankind’s gains in conquering malaria, diabetes and more. Economics has done nothing similar; there is not even a common view among economists as to how the economy works.

More accurately the prize given today is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

It’s sponsored by the National Bank of Sweden (the Sveriges Riksbank) and of the 81 awards given, 28 have been to people at the University of Chicago where the economics department has been a cult of neoliberalism, these are the missionaries of the creed of unregulated markets and globalization theories that make the rich richer and the rest poorer.

Samuelson was more decent than that; he believed in progressive taxation, taxing based the ability to pay. He didn’t dwell much on money nor its creation. Huge omissions, nor did he differentiate between money earned by working and money received on investments. As a result the strong argument that ‘unearned income’ should be taxed higher than money worked for never survived.

His dominant legacy was the idea that economics is neutral… supply and demand should result in wages going up in low income countries and down in high… unimpeded competition should naturally results in steady movement towards neutral; just trust it.

As the rich get inexorably richer we see how wrong he was but the influence of his book over decades has created a mythology about markets that is hard to overcome.

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Eminent climate scientist Professor James Hansen has published a must-read, 55-page summary of the worsening climate emergency.

In short, to correct the Earth’s presently disastrous energy imbalance we must urgently reduce the atmospheric CO2 to 342-373 ppm CO2 from the present disastrous 407 ppm CO2.

The cost of extracting 1 ppm of CO2 from the atmosphere is $878-1803 billion but continuing inaction is not an option – the Paris commitments mean a 3C temperature rise  and eventual inundation of coastal areas by a 15-25 meters sea level rise. Hope is not lost  –  resolutely promised prosecutions of politician, corporate and media climate criminals may finally force urgent climate action.

Professor James Hansen was formerly head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is presently an adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at 96-Nobel Laureate Columbia University [1]. However his latest summary of the science underlying the worsening climate emergency [3] will fall on deaf ears because climate criminal corporate Big Money malignantly dominates, perverts and subverts Mainstream media [4-10]  and trumps the voices of Humanity’s leading climate scientists such as James Hansen.

Indeed while scientists are overwhelmingly concerned about the worsening climate emergency as evidenced by a 2017  letter signed by over 15,000 scientists [11, 12], and the 2018  IPCC Report on plus 1.5C [13, 14], industrial carbon pollution and atmospheric  CO2 continue to rise inexorably  [3, 11-20].

Profit-driven, corporate-backed climate change denial has been well documented [7, 8]  but Naomi Klein has summarized the fundamental neoliberal capitalist objection to climate change action:

“Many deniers are quite open about the fact that their distrust of the science grew out of the powerful fear that if climate change is real, the political implications would be catastrophic … I think these hard-core ideologues understand the real significance of climate change better than most of the “warmists” in the political center , the ones who are still insisting that the response can be gradual and painless and that we don’t need to go to war with anybody, including the fossil fuel companies… the real reason we are failing to rise to the climate moment is because the actions required directly challenge our reigning economic paradigm (deregulated capitalism combined with public austerity)… [and] spell extinction for the richest and most powerful industry the world has ever known – the oil and gas industry)” ([5], pages 42, 43 and 63).

While there is “outright climate change denial” by right-wing, anti-science buffoons  like US president Donald Trump,  there is a dominant global political culture of “effective climate  change denial”  through climate change inaction that is best illustrated by the woefully insufficient national commitments at the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference that even if adhered to will amount to a catastrophic 2-9-3.4^oC temperature rise by 2100 [21, 22].

Grossly insufficient climate action through “outright climate change denial” and “effective climate change denial” is well illustrated by climate criminal Australia that is among the world leaders in 14 global warming-related areas of climate criminality, specifically

(1) annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution,

(2) live methanogenic livestock exports,

(3) natural gas exports,

(4) actual or adumbrated exploitation of recoverable shale gas reserves that can be accessed by hydraulic fracturing (fracking),

(5) coal exports,

(6) land clearing,  deforestation and ecocide,

(7) speciescide – species extinction,

(8) coral reef destruction,

(9) whale killing  and extinction threat through global warming, (10) terminal carbon pollution budget exceedance,

(11) per capita carbon debt,

(12) GHG generating iron ore exports,

(13) climate change inaction and

(14) climate genocide and approaches towards omnicide and terracide [23].

While about half of the ruling Coalition Australian Government MPs idiotically espouse “outright climate change denial”,  the whole government is involved in “effective climate change denial” through climate change inaction in these 14 areas. While it pays lip service to the reality of global warming and the need for massive investment in renewable energy, the Labor Opposition is just as “effective climate change denialist” as the Coalition by having a common policy with the Coalition Government of unlimited exports of coal, gas and methanogenically-derived meat. A picture says a thousand words, and PM Scott “Scomo” Morrison, leader of the pro-coal Coalition (COALition) Government  held up  a lump of coal in the Australian Parliament, declaring “This is coal. Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared” [24].

However Humanity does have serious cause to be afraid and to be scared over coal and greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution. Thus air pollution from carbon fuel burning ultimately kills about 7 million people globally each year, with pollutants from the burning of Australia’s world-leading coal exports contributing to about 75,000 of these annual deaths [25]. Global warming from greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution has been estimated to kill about 0.4 million people annually [26], but this is surely an under-estimate because 15 million people die avoidably each year from deprivation in tropical and sub-tropical Developing countries (minus China) [27], countries that are disproportionately impacted by global warming through  more severe droughts, forest fires, floods, intense storms, and storm surges. Several leading climate scientists, namely Dr James Lovelock FRS and Professor Kevin Anderson, have suggested that only 0.5 billion may survive this century if global warming is not requisitely tackled, this translating to a worsening climate genocide in which 10 billion people will die from climate change this century at an average rate of 100 million per year [26] i.e. 6 times greater than the current 15 million avoidable deaths from deprivation each year  [27].

The present and predicted carnage poses the questions of personal responsibility, complicity, and climate criminality. Indeed one must consider individual and collective complicity in manslaughter, murder, genocide and depraved indifference to such deadly events. Briefly, manslaughter is unintentional killing, murder is intentional killing, and genocide is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention which states

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” [28].

Individual or collective complicity is more difficult to define. Thus, for example,  I spend a lot of my time researching and writing about the deadly consequences of man-made climate change  but I am a citizen of a country, Australia, that is among world leaders in climate criminality and, as a measure of carbon footprint,  has a per capita  GDP  ($56,000) that is 35 times greater than that of acutely global warming-threatened  Bangladesh ($1,600) and 28 times greater than that of acutely global warming-threatened  India ($2,000) [29]. Setting aside these embarrassing realities, we can nevertheless readily identify the worst individual climate criminals – the directors of fossil fuel companies, “climate change denialist” or  “effective climate change denialist” politicians guilty of deadly climate criminality through climate change inaction, and journalists, editors and commentators guilty of depraved indifference through espousing “outright climate change denial” or “effective climate change denial”.

There is a compelling case for   resolutely promised, global prosecutions of politician, corporate and media climate criminals – a resolute promise by decent Humanity that may finally force urgent climate action. However before  considering this promised retribution in detail it is useful to consider the resolute rejection or ignoring by climate criminals of 3 key realities  set out by  leading climate scientist Professor James Hansen  in his recent, must-read analysis of the worsening climate emergency, “the gathering storm” [3].

1. James Hansen on the Earth’s energy imbalance and the need for negative CO2 emissions to 342-373 ppm CO2: “Earth is now substantially out of energy balance. The amount of solar energy that Earth absorbs exceeds the energy radiated back to space. The principal manifestations of this energy imbalance are continued global warming on decadal time scales and continued increase in ocean heat content. Quantitative understanding of Earth’s energy imbalance has improved over the past decade. The upper two kilometers of the ocean, where most of the excess energy is stored, has been well-monitored by the international Argo floats program since 2005. Over the full solar cycle 2005-2016 Earth’s energy imbalance is 0.75 ± 0.25 W/m2 . The range 0.5 to 1 W/m2 is substantial. For example, in order to restore Earth’s energy balance by reducing atmospheric CO2, which is the principal cause of the imbalance, CO2 would need to be reduced from its 2018 407 amount to 373 ppm if the imbalance is 0.50 W/m², but to 342 ppm if the imbalance is 1 W/m² . In reality CO2 is not only continuing to increase, its rate of growth is increasing. The reason is that global population and energy demands continue to increase, and about 85 percent of global energy is provided by fossil fuels” [3].

The climate criminal reality is that atmospheric CO2 is increasing [3, 18], the rate of growth of atmospheric CO2 is increasing [3, 18], electricity sector use of coal, gas and oil is remorselessly increasing [17], and annual industrial CO2 pollution is increasing [19, 20], as is atmospheric pollution by the potent greenhouse gases  methane (CH4) [30, 31] and nitrous oxide (N2O) [31, 32].  The remorseless increase in carbon pollution and GHG pollution rejects even the notion of zero carbon pollution, and likewise the vital concepts of “negative carbon pollution” and “negative economic growth” are utterly ignored [15]. Using coral reefs as a “canary in the coal mine” one can estimate that coral reefs starting dying when the CO2 reached 320 ppm at a time (1965) when the world’s population was 3.3 billion as compared to the present 7.5 billion i.e. on this basis the Earth is overpopulated by a factor of about 2 [15].  However the presently dominant neoliberal economists argue that  present “negative population growth” in some advanced countries is bad for the “economic growth” to which they are ideologically committed.

2. James Hansen on paleoclimatological evidence for the predicted 3°C of warming meaning a long-term 15-25 meters sea level rise:  “Sea level reached heights as great as 6-9 meters during the prior interglacial period, the Eemian about 120,000 years ago, when global temperature was only about 1°C above the pre-industrial level, i.e., similar to today’s global temperature. During the early Pliocene, several million years ago, when global temperature was at most about 3°C warmer than pre-industrial conditions, sea level probably reached as high as 15-25 meters above today’s level. In other words, there is plenty of vulnerable ice available to cause eventual sea level rise that would inundate today’s coastal cities, in response to a warming level that we could produce this century. Burning all of the readily available fossil fuels would eventually melt almost all the ice on the planet, raising sea level 65-75 meters (more than 300 feet)” [3].

The climate criminal reality is that long-term sea level rise is essentially ignored by the North and the problem, if at all recognized, is left to future generations to deal with in a process of extraordinary  intergenerational injustice [3,  33 ]. The Island Nations and mega-delta countries of the South such as Bangladesh are acutely aware of the problem that is already impacting them severely, and indeed talk of a worsening climate genocide [26, 34].

3. James Hansen on the $1-2 trillion cost of lowering atmospheric CO2 by merely 1 ppm: “How much CO2 must be extracted from the air today to offset the excess growth of greenhouse gas forcing in a single year, i.e., to reduce climate forcing by 0.015 W/m2? Atmospheric CO2 must be reduced almost exactly 1 ppm CO2 to increase heat radiation to space by 0.015 W/m2. [We actually need to suck more than 1 ppm from the air, because the ocean reacts to the reduction of atmospheric CO2 by increasing the net backflux of CO2 to the atmosphere. However, we can make our point without including this added difficulty in achieving CO2 drawdown.] One ppm of CO2 is 2.12 billion tons of carbon or about 7.77 billion tons of CO2. Recently Keith et al.(2018) achieved a cost breakthrough in carbon capture, demonstrated with a pilot plant in Canada. Cost of carbon capture, not including the cost of transportation and storage of the CO2, is $113-232 per ton of CO2. Thus the cost of extracting 1 ppm of CO2 from the atmosphere is $878-1803 billion” [3].

The climate criminal reality is that in the last decade the atmospheric CO2 (as measured at Mauna Loa in Hawaii)  has been increasing at about 2.5 ppm CO2  per year [18] and the cost of reducing atmospheric CO2 by this amount would accordingly be about $2-4.5 trillion each year, a bill to be eventually and inescapably paid by future generations in a process of gross  intergenerational injustice [3, 33]. In his Papal Encyclical “Laudato Si’” Pope Francis cogently argued that the environmental and social costs of pollution must be “fully borne” by those incurring them (i.e. a full Carbon Price) ([35], Section 195 [36]. However the climate criminals insist that the environmental and social costs of pollution must be “fully borne” by the Biosphere, Humanity as a whole, and in particular by the young and future generations i.e. monstrous,   “might is right” climate theft, climate larceny, climate murder,  and intergenerational injustice. It is notable that climate economist Dr Chris Hope from 90-Nobel laureate Cambridge University has estimated a damage-related carbon price of about $100-$200 per tonne of CO2 [37, 38].

There still is hope – resolutely promised prosecutions of climate criminals may force urgent climate action

My science-informed and scientist friends and colleagues are very despondent about climate change inaction. As a scientist I am generally optimistic about things but in relation to climate change I have had to concede for several years now  that avoiding a catastrophic plus 2^oC temperature rise is now essentially unavoidable, while nevertheless  asserting that we must do everything we can to help make the future “less bad” for our children and future generations. However 2 things augur well for  “making the future less bad”, specifically Climate Revolution [39] and Climate Justice involving resolutely promised prosecutions of climate criminals [40, 41].

At some point Climate Revolution will happen when the South and the Young revolt (non-violently one hopes) against the rich, neoliberal One Percenters of the North who own half the world’s wealth and are hell-bent on pushing Humanity and the Biosphere over the edge of the existential cliff. The key issue that is assiduously hidden by the mendacious, One Percenter-controlled Mainstream media is Humanity’s gigantic,  ever-increasing and inescapable Carbon Debt [38]. The Historical Carbon Debt (aka Historical Climate Debt) of a country can be measured by the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) it has introduced into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century.

Thus the total Carbon Debt of the world from 1751-2016 (including CO2 that has gone into the oceans) is about 1,850 billion tonnes CO2. Assuming a damage-related Carbon Price of $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent,   this corresponds  to a Carbon Debt of $370 trillion, similar to the total wealth of the world and 4.5 times the world’s total annual GDP. Using estimates of national contributions to Historical  Carbon Debt and assuming a damage-related Carbon Price in USD of  $200 per tonne CO2,  the World has a Carbon Debt of $370 trillion that is increasing at $13 trillion per year.

My own country, Australia, has a Carbon Debt of US$7.5 trillion (A$10.7 trillion) that is increasing at US$400 billion (A$570 billion) per year and at US$40,000 (A$57,000) per head per year for under-30 year old Australians. When young Australians realize the enormity of this imposition they will be enraged and take resolute action – but that day of reckoning has been  delayed by the mendacity of largely US-owned Australian Mainstream media. Nevertheless young Australians are well aware that they have been horribly betrayed without realizing the enormity of the betrayal.

Already the climate criminal, pro-coal COALition is facing a landslide electoral loss in the mid-year 2019 Federal elections. In 2018 thousands of school children across the country skipped school to demonstrate for climate action (after PM Scott Morrison asserted that they should go back to school, the children correctly replied that it is PM Morrison who should go back to school). When under-30 year old young Australians realize their inescapable Carbon Debt   is increasing at about A$60,000 per year per person they will utterly reject the climate criminal parties at the ballot box.

There is a real prospect of Climate Justice  involving resolutely promised prosecutions of climate criminals  and confiscation of their assets (as presently happens to traders in illicit drugs). There is no legislative retrospectivity  required in this – climate murder, climate homicide and climate genocide are presently just as  deadly as “conventional” murder, homicide and genocide. Something of the order of 1 million people die climate-related deaths annually, with this set to soar to an average of 100 million such deaths per year this  century if man-made climate change is not  requisitely addressed [26].  Of course such punishments will be scant comfort to the loved ones of those who have died. However most importantly it is the resolute threat of prosecutions of climate criminals that may finally force urgent climate action. There needs to be a new globally-endorsed social contract to the effect that significant, present-day  climate criminals will be inescapably held to account with judicially-imposed penalties ranging up to life imprisonment with confiscation of all assets.    Please tell everyone you can – there still is realistic hope that we can stop the present slide to disaster.

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This article was originally published on Countercurrents.

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003).

Notes

[1]. “James Hansen”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen

[2]. “List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation 

[3]. James Hansen, “Climate change in a nutshell: the gathering storm”, Columbia University, 18 December 2018: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2018/20181206_Nutshell.pdf  .

[4]. “Climate change denial”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial .

[5]. Naomi Klein, “This Changes Everything. Capitalism vs. the Climate”, Allen Lane, London 2014.

[6]. Gideon Polya, “This Changes Everything. Capitalism vs. the Climate” by Naomi Klein – Green Socialist Revolution ASAP”, Countercurrents, 11 December, 2014: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya111214.htm .

[7]. Robert Kenner, “Merchants of Doubt” movie, 2014.

[8].  Stephen Leahy, “Merchants of Doubt” film exposes slick US industry behind climate denial”, Guardian, 20 November 2014: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/20/merchants-of-doubt-film-exposes-slick-us-industry-behind-climate-denial .

[9]. Andrew Glikson, “The gathering climate storm and the media cover-up”, Countercurrents, 2 January 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/01/02/the-gathering-climate-storm-and-the-media-cover-up/ 

[10]. Mary Debrett, ”The media on climate change: a perfect storm of miscommunication”, La Trobe University, 20 December 2018: https://www.latrobe.edu.au/big-fat-ideas/bold-thinking-social-conscience/the-media-on-climate-change-a-perfect-storm-of-miscommunication .

[11]. William J. Ripple et al., 15,364 signatories from 184 countries, “World scientists’ warning to Humanity: a second notice”, Bioscience, 13 November 2017: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/bix125/4605229 .

[12]. Gideon Polya, “Over 15,000 scientists issue dire warning to Humanity on catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss”, Countercurrents, 20 November 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/11/20/over-15000-scientists-issue-dire-warning-to-humanity-on-catastrophic-climate-change-and-biodiversity-loss/ .

[13]. IPCC, “Global warming of 1.5 °C. Summary for Policymakers”, 8 October 2018: http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf .

[14]. Gideon Polya, “IPCC +1.5C avoidance report – effectively too late but stop coal burning for  “less bad” catastrophes”, Countercurrents,  12 October 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/10/12/ipcc-1-5c-avoidance-report-effectively-too-late-but-stop-coal-burning-for-less-bad-catastrophes/ .

[15]. Gideon Polya, “How much negative carbon emissions, negative population growth & negative economic growth is needed to save planet?”, Countercurrents, 28 November 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/11/28/how-much-negative-carbon-emissions-negative-population-growth-negative-economic-growth-is-needed-to-save-planet/ .

[16]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-coal Australia & Trump America Reject Dire IPCC Report & Declare War on Terra”, Countercurrents, 17 October 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/10/17/pro-coal-australia-trump-america-reject-dire-ipcc-report-declare-war-on-terra/ .

[17]. David Spratt, “Our energy challenge in 6 eye-popping charts”, Climate Code Red, 17 June 2018: http://www.climatecodered.org/2018/06/our-energy-challenge-in-6-eye-popping.html .

[18]. US NOAA, “Full Mauna Loa CO2 record”: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html .

[19]. Catherine Hours and Marlowe Hood, “”Bad news”: CO2 emissions to rise in 2018, says IAE chief”, Phys. Org., 18 October 2018: https://phys.org/news/2018-10-bad-news-co2-emissions-iea.html .

[20]. AP, “Global carbon pollution rose in 2018”, New York Post, 5 December 2018: https://nypost.com/2018/12/05/global-carbon-pollution-rose-in-2018/ .

[21]. Alex Kirby, “World set for 3.4^oC by 2100”, Climate News Network, 15 November 2017: https://climatenewsnetwork.net/23422-2/ .

[22]. “World is set to warm 3.4^oC by 2100 even with Paris climate deal”, New Scientist, 3 November 2016: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2111263-world-is-set-to-warm-3-4c-by-2100-even-with-paris-climate-deal/ .

[23]. Gideon Polya, “Offences of Pentecostal Christian Scott Morrison, PM after Australia’s fourth PM-removing coup in 5 years”,  Countercurrents, 18 September 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/09/18/offences-of-pentecostal-christian-scott-morrison-pm-after-australias-fourth-pm-removing-coup-in-8-years/ .

[24]. Katharine Murphy, “Scott Morrison brings coal to question time: what fresh idiocy is this?”, Guardian, 9 February 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-coal-to-question-time-what-fresh-idiocy-is-this .

[25]. “Stop air pollution deaths”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/stop-air-pollution-deaths .

[26]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[27]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes a succinct history of every country and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/  .

[28]. “UN Genocide Convention” : http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html .

[29]. “List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita .

[30]. “Methane Bomb Threat”: https://sites.google.com/site/methanebombthreat/ .

[31].  “2011 climate change course”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/2011-climate-change-course .

[32].  “Global N2O levels”: https://www.n2olevels.org/

[33]. “Climate Justice & Intergenerational Equity”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/climate-justice .

[34]. Pacific Islands Development Forum 4 September  2015 “Suva Declaration on Climate Change”: http://pacificidf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/PACIFIC-ISLAND-DEVELOPMENT-FORUM-SUVA-DECLARATION-ON-CLIMATE-CHANGE.v2.pdf .

[35]. Gideon Polya, “Green Left Pope Francis Demands Climate Action “Without Delay” To Prevent Climate “Catastrophe””, Countercurrents, 10 August, 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya100815.htm .

[36]. Pope Francis , Encyclical Letter “Laudato si’”, 2015: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html .

[37]. Dr Chris Hope, “How high should climate change taxes be?”, Working Paper Series, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, 9.2011: http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/media/assets/wp1109.pdf .

[38]. “Carbon Debt Carbon Credit”: https://sites.google.com/site/carbondebtcarboncredit/ .

[39]. “Climate Revolution Now”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/climate-revolution .

[40]. “Punish climate criminals”: https://sites.google.com/site/punishclimatecriminals/ .

[41]. “Stop climate crime”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/stop-climate-crime .

The United States’ economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba celebrates today 57 years of its official enactment, repudiating the international community which considers this policy anachronistic and a violation of human rights.

According to historical notes, on February 3, 1962, under the legal authority of Section 620(a) of the 1961 Foreign Aid Act, President John F. Kennedy approved the Presidential Proclamation 3447 (27 FR 1085).

It imposed a blockade on trade between the United States and Cuba, ordering the Treasury Secretary to implement it with respect to imports and the Secretary of Commerce to continue the blockade previously imposed on exports.

The Secretaries of Commerce and Treasury were also authorized to administer and modify the blockade.

Although the total blockade against Cuba was formally implemented by Washington on February 7, 1962, since 1959 the northern country had been applying this strategy against Cuba.

This policy – considered in international law as an act of war – was based on measures aimed at undermining vital points of the Caribbean nation.

Hence they applied the abolition of the sugar quota, then the main and almost the only support for the island’s economy and finances.

It also promoted the non-supply and refining of oil by American oil companies that monopolized energy activity.

According to the report “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”, which covers the period between April 2017 and March 2018, U.S. policy in that period caused losses to Cuba estimated at 4.321 200 billion dollars.

The effect caused by the blockade on the sphere of foreign trade during the period amounts to 3,343,400,000 dollars.

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Featured image is from Tony Seed

On January 2nd, 2019, eleven people from New York, New Jersey, Maine, Illinois and Iowa protested the the Saudi-led, U.S.-supported bombardment and siege of Yemen by nonviolently blocking the doors of the United States Permanent Mission to the United Nations at 799 United Nations Plaza in New York. Far outnumbered by officers of the New York City Police, the protestors were arrested and later released pending court appearances.

The protest was a part of “Fast for Yemen,” two weeks when participants fasted from solid food in solidarity with the people of Yemen suffering from the world’s worst famine in over a century and took part in daily protests and marches in New York City and in Washington, DC. Along with the US Mission, the fasters and their friends brought their protest to some of the other parties to war crimes in Yemen, to the missions or consulates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, France and to the offices of Lockheed Martin.

The eleven defendants, Kathy Kelly, Joan Pleune, Alice Sutter, Manijeh Saba, Trudy Silver, Jules Orkin, Brian Terrell, Bud Courtney and Al Pereira, will appear in Criminal Court of the City of New York, 100 Center St., at 9:30 AM on Monday, February 25, to answer to charges of disorderly conduct. Carolyn Coe and Ed Kinane will be represented by an attorney. The public is encouraged to attend this hearing to show solidarity with the defendants and with the people of Yemen.

After Court:

4 to 7 PM: The defendants and their friends invite the public to an event, The Fierce Urgency of Now: YEMEN! at the 5C Cafe and Cultural Center at 68 Avenue C, on the corner of E. 5th Street. This will be an afternoon to raise awareness and also raise funds for legal and other expenses. $10 donation is requested. Among the performers for the afternoon will be Rose Tang, Vinie Burrows, Flames of Discontent, Trudy Silver’s Where’s the Outrage, Bud Courtney and Anthony Donovan, Raymond Nat Turner and Ras Moshe. For information call 212-477-5993.

Other Events in New York February 22 to 26:

Friday, February 22, at 11 AM- 1 PM: gather at the “Isaiah Wall,” Ralph Bunche Park, 1st Avenue and E 42nd Street, across from the United Nations. At 11:30, process to 42nd and Lexington, offices of Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin is one of many arms manufacturers that are profiting from the war in Yemen- On August 8, 1918, A Saudi Air Force jet dropped a 500 pound bomb made by Lockheed Martin was dropped on a school bus, killing more than 40 children and their teachers.

Saturday, February 23: 11 AM- 12:30 PM: join the weekly Vigil for Yemen, held each Saturday at Union Square on E 14th Street

Tuesday, February 26: 11 AM: at 11 AM- 1 PM: gather at the “Isaiah Wall,” Ralph Bunche Park, 1st Avenue and E 42nd Street, across from the United Nations. At 11:30, process to US Mission and Saudi Consulate, 866 2nd Avenue, to demand that the United States and Saudi Arabia immediately and permanently end all military and economic assault on Yemen.

7:PM: Rise and Resist meeting at People’s Forum, 320 W 37th Street. Rise and Resist is a direct action group committed to opposing, disrupting, and defeating any government act that threatens democracy, equality, and our civil liberties. Kathy Kelly and Brian Terrell of Voices for Creative Nonviolence will lead a discussion about resisting the war in Yemen.

Contact Brian Terrell, 773-853-1886, Kathy Kelly, 773-619-2418 or Jules Orkin, 201-566-8403

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All images in this article: January 2 at the US Mission by Sophia Ko

 

Flashback, Chile (1970-73)

On 15 September 1970, US President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger authorised the US government to do everything possible to undermine the incoming government of the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Nixon and Kissinger, according to the notes kept by CIA Director Richard Helms, wanted to ‘make the economy scream’ in Chile; they were ‘not concerned [about the] risks involved’. War was acceptable to them as long as Allende’s government was removed from power.

The CIA started Project FUBELT, with $10 million as a first instalment to begin the covert destabilisation of the country.

CIA memorandum on Project FUBELT, 16 September 1970.

US business firms, such as the telecommunication giant ITT, the soft drink maker Pepsi Cola and copper monopolies such as Anaconda and Kennecott, put pressure on the US government once Allende nationalised the copper sector on 11 July 1971. Chileans celebrated this day as the Day of National Dignity (Dia de la Dignidad Nacional). The CIA began to make contact with sections of the military seen to be against Allende. Three years later, on 11 September 1973, these military men moved against Allende, who died in the regime change operation. The US ‘created the conditions’ as US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger put it, to which US President Richard Nixon answered, ‘that is the way it is going to be played’. Such is the mood of international gangsterism.

Phone Call between Richard Nixon (P) and Henry Kissinger (K) on 16 September 1973.

Chile entered the dark night of a military dictatorship on September 11, 1973 that turned over the country to US monopoly firms. US advisors rushed in to strengthen the nerve of General Augusto Pinochet’s cabinet.

What happened to Chile in 1973 is precisely what the United States has attempted to do in many other countries of the Global South. The most recent target for the US government – and Western big business – is Venezuela. But what is happening to Venezuela is nothing unique. It faces an onslaught from the United States and its allies that is familiar to countries as far afield as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The formula is clichéd. It is commonplace, a twelve-step plan to produce a coup climate, to create a world under the heel of the West and of Western big business.

Tweet from US Senator Marco Rubio on 24 January 2019.

Step One: Colonialism’s Traps. Most of the Global South remains trapped by the structures put in place by colonialism. Colonial boundaries encircled states that had the misfortune of being single commodity producers – either sugar for Cuba or oil for Venezuela. The inability to diversify their economies meant that these countries earned the bulk of their export revenues from their singular commodities (98% of Venezuela’s export revenues come from oil). As long as the prices of the commodities remained high, the export revenues were secure. When the prices fell, revenue suffered. This was a legacy of colonialism. Oil prices dropped from $160.72 per barrel (June 2008) to $51.99 per barrel (January 2019). Venezuela’s export revenues collapsed in this decade.

Step Two: The Defeat of the New International Economic Order. In 1974, the countries of the Global South attempted to redo the architecture of the world economy. They called for the creation of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) that would allow them to pivot away from the colonial reliance upon one commodity and diversify their economies. Cartels of raw materials – such as oil and bauxite – were to be built so that the one-commodity country could have some control over prices of the products that they relied upon. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), founded in 1960, was a pioneer of these commodity cartels. Others were not permitted to be formed. With the defeat of OPEC over the past three decades, its members – such as Venezuela (which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves) – have not been able to control oil prices. They are at the mercy of the powerful countries of the world.

Step Three: The Death of Southern Agriculture. In November 2001, there were about three billion small farmers and landless peasants in the world. That month, the World Trade Organisation met in Doha (Qatar) to unleash the productivity of Northern agri-business against the billions of small farmers and landless peasants of the Global South. Mechanisation and large, industrial-scale farms in North America and Europe had raised productivity to about 1 to 2 million kilogrammes of cereals per farmer. The small farmers and landless peasants in the rest of the world struggled to grow 1,000 kilogrammes of cereals per farmer. They were nowhere near as productive. The Doha decision, as Samir Amin wrote, presages the annihilation of the small farmer and landless peasant. What are these men and women to do? The production per hectare is higher in the West, but the corporate take-over of agriculture (as Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Senior Fellow P. Sainath shows) leads to increased hunger as it pushes peasants off their land and leaves them to starve.

Step Four: Culture of Plunder. Emboldened by Western domination, monopoly firms act with disregard for the law. As Kambale Musavuli and I writeof the Democratic Republic of Congo, its annual budget of $6 billion is routinely robbed of at least $500 million by monopoly mining firms, mostly from Canada – the country now leading the charge against Venezuela. Mispricing and tax avoidance schemes allow these large firms (Canada’s Agrium, Barrick and Suncor) to routinely steal billions of dollars from impoverished states.

Step Five: Debt as a Way of Life. Unable to raise money from commodity sales, hemmed in by a broken world agricultural system and victim of a culture of plunder, countries of the Global South have been forced to go hat in hand to commercial lenders for finance. Over the past decade, debt held by the Global South states has increased, while debt payments have ballooned by 60%. When commodity prices rose between 2000 and 2010, debt in the Global South decreased. As commodity prices began to fall from 2010, debts have risen. The IMF points out that of the 67 impoverished countries that they follow, 30 are in debt distress, a number that has doubled since 2013. More than 55.4% of Angola’s export revenue is paid to service its debt. And Angola, like Venezuela, is an oil exporter. Other oil exporters such as Ghana, Chad, Gabon and Venezuela suffer high debt to GDP ratios. Two out of five low-income countries are in deep financial distress.

Step Six: Public Finances Go to Hell. With little incoming revenue and low tax collection rates, public finances in the Global South has gone into crisis. As the UN Conference on Trade and Development points out, ‘public finances have continued to be suffocated’. States simply cannot put together the funds needed to maintain basic state functions. Balanced budget rules make borrowing difficult, which is compounded by the fact that banks charge high rates for money, citing the risks of lending to indebted countries.

Step Seven: Deep Cuts in Social Spending. Impossible to raise funds, trapped by the fickleness of international finance, governments are forced to make deep cuts in social spending. Education and health, food sovereignty and economic diversification – all this goes by the wayside. International agencies such as the IMF force countries to conduct ‘reforms’, a word that means extermination of independence. Those countries that hold out face immense international pressure to submit under pain of extinction, as the Communist Manifesto (1848) put it.

Step Eight: Social Distress Leads to Migration. The total number of migrants in the world is now at least 68.5 million. That makes the country called Migration the 21^st largest country in the world after Thailand and ahead of the United Kingdom. Migration has become a global reaction to the collapse of countries from one end of the planet to the other. The migration out of Venezuela is not unique to that country but is now merely the normal reaction to the global crisis. Migrants from Honduras who go northward to the United States or migrants from West Africa who go towards Europe through Libya are part of this global exodus.

Step Nine: Who Controls the Narrative? The monopoly corporate media takes its orders from the elite. There is no sympathy for the structural crisis faced by governments from Afghanistan to Venezuela. Those leaders who cave to Western pressure are given a free pass by the media. As long as they conduct ‘reforms’, they are safe. Those countries that argue against the ‘reforms’ are vulnerable to being attacked. Their leaders become ‘dictators’, their people hostages. A contested election in Bangladesh or in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in the United States is not cause for regime change. That special treatment is left for Venezuela.

Alfredo Rostgaard, OSPAAAL poster, 1969.

Step Ten: Who’s the Real President? Regime change operations begin when the imperialists question the legitimacy of the government in power: by putting the weight of the United States behind an unelected person, calling him the new president and creating a situation where the elected leader’s authority is undermined. The coup takes place when a powerful country decides – without an election – to anoint its own proxy. That person – in Venezuela’s case Juan Guaidó – rapidly has to make it clear that he will bend to the authority of the United States. His kitchen cabinet – made up of former government officials with intimate ties to the US (such as Harvard University’s Ricardo Hausmann and Carnegie’s Moisés Naím) – will make it clear that they want to privatise everything and sell out the Venezuelan people in the name of the Venezuelan people.

Step Eleven: Make the Economy Scream. Venezuela has faced harsh US sanctions since 2014, when the US Congress started down this road. The next year, US President Barack Obama declared Venezuela a ‘threat to national security’. The economy started to scream. In recent days, the United States and the United Kingdom brazenly stole billions of dollars of Venezuelan money, placed the shackles of sanctions on its only revenue generating sector (oil) and watched the pain flood through the country. This is what the US did to Iran and this is what they did to Cuba. The UN says that the US sanctions on Cuba have cost the small island $130 billion. Venezuela lost $6 billion for the first year of Trump’s sanctions, since they began in August 2017. More is to be lost as the days unfold. No wonder that the United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy says that ‘sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela’. He said that sanctions are ‘not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes’. Further, Jazairy said, ‘I am especially concerned to hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela’. He called for ‘compassion’ for the people of Venezuela.

Step Twelve: Go to War. US National Security Advisor John Bolton held a yellow pad with the words 5,000 troops in Colombia written on it. These are US troops, already deployed in Venezuela’s neighbour. The US Southern Command is ready. They are egging on Colombia and Brazil to do their bit. As the coup climate is created, a nudge will be necessary. They will go to war.

Edson Garcia, Titina Silá (1943-1973).

None of this is inevitable. It was not inevitable to Titina Silá, a commander of the Partido Africano para a Independència da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) who was murdered on 30 January 1973. She fought to free her country. It is not inevitable to the people of Venezuela, who continue to fight to defend their revolution. It is not inevitable to our friends at CodePink: Women for Peace, whose Medea Benjamin walked into a meeting of the Organisation of American States and said – No!

Medea Benjamin (CodePink) disrupts the Organisation of American States meeting.

It is time to say No to regime change intervention. There is no middle ground.

Warmly, Vijay.

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This incisive report was prepared by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

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All images in this article are from tricontinental unless otherwise stated

From the caves of the Hindu Kush mountains to conference rooms in swanky Moscow hotels, the Taliban have come a long way in their national liberation struggle and are proving themselves by the day to be the most capable stewards of post-US Afghanistan after their recent travels to the Russian capital turned them into seasoned diplomats.

The Intra-Afghan Peace Dialogue

The Taliban are still officially recognized as an “international terrorist group” by the UN in general and many of its member states in particular, but that hasn’t stopped the most important Great Powers from politically interacting with them for pragmatic reasons as every country in the world (except for India) excitedly waits to see whether Trump will really clinch a peace deal with the group prior to withdrawing American forces from the war-torn nation.

The month-long interim period before the resumption of US-Taliban peace talks in Doha at the end of February was importantly marked by an intra-Afghan peace dialogue that just took place in the Russian capital and which was organized by the Council of Afghan Society in Russia. This meeting wasn’t formally part of the Moscow peace process but obviously complemented it and was greatly aided by the previous trust-building inroads that Russia made with all responsible Afghan actors through Pakistan’s facilitation.

From “Cavemen” To “Statesmen”

The gathering was noteworthy for many reasons, not least of which was the powerful symbolism of the Taliban-led prayer ceremony that took place in Moscow before the event. This National Liberation Movement has come a long way from the caves of the Hindu Kush mountains to conference rooms in swanky Moscow hotels, and the fact that they even led their former adversaries prayers (and in the capital of their Old Cold War-era Soviet enemies, no less!) spoke to just how powerful they’ve become over the past 18 years. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Taliban are proving themselves to be the most capable stewards of post-US Afghanistan, and their recent travels to Moscow as both official dignitaries participating in the government-organized peace process and private citizens meeting with their fellow compatriots have turned them into seasoned diplomats. Nowhere is this seen more prominently than in the nine-point agenda agreed to after the aforementioned meeting.

The Nine-Point Agenda

According to Afghan media outlet TOLOnews, the joint declaration is as follows:

1. All parties in this conference have agreed that a dignified and lasting peace is the aspiration of all the people of Afghanistan and this principle has been achieved in Moscow.

2. All parties agreed that in view of the current sensitive situation, the intra-Afghan dialogue must continue on regular basis.

3. All parties agreed to support the ongoing talks in Qatar and consider these talks a positive step towards ending the imposed war on Afghanistan.

4. All parties have agreed that systematic reforms be put in place in all national institutions including the security sector after a peace deal is signed

5. All parties agreed that the cooperation of regional countries and major countries are essential to determine lasting and nationwide peace in Afghanistan

6. All parties agreed that the values such as respect for the principles of Islam in all parts of the system, the principle that Afghanistan is a common home to all Afghans, support to a powerful centralize government with all Afghan ethnicities having a role in it, protecting national sovereignty and promoting social justice, to keep Afghanistan neutral in all regional and international conflicts, protecting Afghanistan’s national and religious values and undertaking a unified and single policy.

7. All parties agreed that to determine lasting peace in Afghanistan, the following points are important : the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from the country, asking all countries to avoid interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, providing assurance to the international community that Afghanistan will not be used against any other nation, protection of social, economic, political and educational rights of the Afghan women in line with Islamic principles, protection of political and social rights of the entire people of Afghanistan and protection of freedom of speech in line with Islamic principles, undertaking efforts for attracting international assistance for the reconstruction of Afghanistan’s infrastructure. 

8. All parties agreed that in order to create the atmosphere of trust and promote peace, in the first step, it is important that these items are taken into consideration, tackling the issue of all those inmates who are old, or suffering uncurable diseases or have completed their prison sentences and the removal of leaders of the Taliban from the UN blacklist, opening of an official political office in Qatar for acceleration of peace talks.

9. All parties agreed that the next intra-Afghan meeting to be held in Doha, Qatar as soon as possible. Agreement was also made to work further on some other important issues related to the peace process in Afghanistan.”

Analytical Interpretations

And here’s how each point can be analytically interpreted:

1. All Afghans regardless of ethnicity want to live in peace with one another, understanding that a final settlement to their conflict mustn’t end with one group dominating the others.

2. Moscow will probably host more such intra-Afghan dialogues in the future, which will grow more important as the US-Taliban peace talks and the Russian-organized peace process progress.

3. Practically every Afghan political force of significance apart from Kabul (which is increasingly irrelevant nowadays anyhow) wants to see the US-Taliban peace talks succeed.

4. The Taliban will probably become part of every national institution by the end of the war, and its fighters will likely be recognized as a legitimate part of a reconstituted Afghan National Army.

5. The international multilateralization of the Afghan peace process with the full involvement of all relevant regional stakeholders (especially Russia and Pakistan) is a prerequisite for peace.

6. Afghanistan will become a militarily neutral and politically centralized Islamic Republic, importantly precluding its participation in the Hybrid War on CPEC and preventing the country’s “internal partition”.

7. Post-war Afghanistan wants no foreign forces (also implying mercenaries), will base its socio-political system on Islamic principles, and is courting international investment (e.g. Silk Road, NSTC, RuPak Rail).

8. A prisoner swap and the delisting of Taliban leaders from the UN blacklist are the next steps in the confidence-building measures that have already been undertaken by the Afghan parties.

9. The next intra-Afghan dialogue will take place in Qatar, which might precede, coincide with, or closely follow the next round of US-Taliban peace talks there.

Additional Insight

Bearing this insight in mind, a few significant points can be made:

• The Taliban are displaying flexible pragmatism that shows just how much its peacemaking outlook has changed from the rigidly dogmatic stance that it was previously known for.
• A comparatively “softer” interpretation of Islamic law will afford more benefits to women and minorities (both ethnic and political) than they had before 2001.
• The Taliban want to build an inclusive Afghanistan that they recognize is impossible to achieve if they continue their armed quest to “seize the whole country” by force and obtain a “monopoly on power”.
• The most efficient means of implementing the agreed-upon nine-point agenda is to write a new constitution like the Taliban recently suggested.
• Russia is becoming a diplomatically indispensable party to the Afghan peace process, and this is a direct outcome of the Russian-Pakistani Strategic Partnership.
• Building off the above, a Syrian-like “constitutional committee” could be assembled with meetings possibly taking place in Kabul, Islamabad, Doha, Tashkent, Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow, and Beijing.
• It’s strongly implied that the multilateral internationalism of the Afghan peace process and the country’s intended future neutrality might see it join the SCO and Golden Ring geopolitical projects.
• Afghanistan’s dire need for reconstruction aid means that it won’t discriminate against potential patrons, thereby allowing American and Indian companies an opportunity to remain in the country.
• The Taliban have rapidly “evolved” from “cavemen” to “statesmen”, and this is largely due to the newfound pragmatism that they’ve shown since traveling to Moscow during their high-profile trips.

Concluding Thoughts

Peace in Afghanistan is more of a realistic prospect than ever before following Trump’s decision to apply his “America First” strategy to the conflict after he finally realized that it’s an unwinnable quagmire of endless blood and treasure for his nation. The Taliban’s recent large-scale attacks of the past couple of months occurred during the “winter offseason” and taught Trump that the Taliban are no longer taking any time off from their armed struggle. This coincided with the Republicans’ loss of the House during the November midterm elections and inspired Trump to reach a peace deal with the group as soon as possible in order to gain the upper hand with voters ahead of the heated 2020 presidential election. Nevertheless, no substantive progress could have been made had it not been for the “statesmen”-like diplomatic pragmatism that the Taliban have recently displayed after their Moscow meetings, which might be the turning point towards possibly reaching a political solution to this conflict.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from Dhaka Tribune

What bothers me is not that we are unable to find solutions to our problems, what bothers me more is the fact that neoliberals are so utterly unaware of real structural issues that their attempts to sort out tangential problems will further exacerbate the main issues. Religious extremism, militancy and terrorism are not the cause but the effect of poverty, backwardness and disenfranchisement.

Empirically speaking, if we take all other aggravating factors out, such as poverty, illiteracy, disenfranchisement, deliberate training and arming of certain militant groups by regional and global players and, more importantly, grievances against the duplicitous Western foreign policy, I don’t think that the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and the likes would find abundant supply of foot soldiers that they are getting now in insurgency-wracked regions of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

Although I do concede that the rallying call of “jihad in the way of God” might be one reason for abundant supply of foot soldiers to jihadists’ cause, on an emotional level, it is the self-serving and hypocritical Western interventionist policy in the energy-rich Middle East region that adds fuel to the fire. When Muslims all over the Islamic countries see that their brothers-in-faith are getting massacred in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan, on an emotional level, they feel outraged and seek justice.

This emotional outrage, in my opinion, is a far more potent factor that makes Muslims vulnerable to radical ideologies and violence than the sterile theological argument of God’s supposed command to fight holy wars against infidels. If we take all other contributing factors out of the equation, I don’t think the Muslims are an “exceptional” breed of human beings who are hell-bent on killing heretics all over the world.

Peaceful, or not, Islam is only a religion just like any other cosmopolitan religion whether it’s Christianity, Buddhism or Hinduism. Instead of taking an essentialist approach, that lays emphasis on essences, we need to look at the evolution of social phenomena in its proper historical context.

For instance: to assert that human beings are evil by nature is an essentialist approach; it overlooks the role played by nurture in grooming human beings. Human beings are only intelligent by nature; they are neither good nor evil by nature; whatever they are, whether good or evil, is the outcome of their nurture or upbringing.

Similarly, to pronounce that Islam is a retrogressive or violent religion is an essentialist approach; it overlooks how Islam and its scriptures are interpreted by its followers depending on the subject’s socio-cultural context. For example: the Western expat Muslims who are brought up in the West and have imbibed Western values would interpret a Quranic verse in a liberal fashion; an urban middle class Muslim of the Muslim-majority countries would interpret the same verse rather conservatively; and a rural-tribal Muslim who has been indoctrinated by the radical clerics would find meanings in it which could be extreme. It is all about culture rather than religion or scriptures per se.

Regarding Islamic radicalism, if we look at the evolution of Islamic religion and culture throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, it hasn’t been natural. Some deleterious mutations have occurred somewhere which have negatively impacted the Islamic societies all over the world.

Social conditioning plays the same role in social sciences that natural selection plays in biological sciences. It selects the traits, norms and values which are most beneficial to the host culture. Seen from this angle, social diversity is a desirable quality for social progress, because when diverse customs and value systems compete with each other, the culture retains the beneficial customs and values and discards the harmful traditions and habits.

A decentralized and less organized religion, like Sufi (mystical) Islam, engenders diverse strains of beliefs and opinions which compete with one another in gaining social acceptance and currency. A heavily centralized and tightly organized religion, on the other hand, depends more on authority and dogma than on value and utility. In addition, a centralized religion is also more ossified and less adaptive to change compared to a decentralized faith.

Islam is regarded as the fastest growing religion of the 20th and 21st centuries. According to World Religion Database, the share of world population by religion during the last century was:

• Christianity: 1910: 34.8% ; 2010: 32.8%
• Islam: 1910: 12.6% ; 2010: 22.5%
• Hinduism: 1910: 12.7% ; 2010: 13.8%
• Agnosticism: 1910: 0.2% ; 2010: 9.8%
• Chinese folk religion: 1910: 22.2% ; 2010: 6.3%
• Buddhism: 1910: 7.9% ; 2010: 8%

Thus, while the number of adherents of all other religions has remained static or dwindled, the proselytization of Islam has nearly doubled during the last century.

The only feature that sets Islam apart from the rest of major cosmopolitan religions, like Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, and which is also primarily responsible for this atavistic phenomena of Islamic resurgence in the modern era is that Islam as a religion and political ideology has the world’s richest financiers.

After the 1973 collective Arab oil embargo against the West in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war, the price of oil quadrupled; and the contribution of the Gulf’s petro-sheikhs toward the ‘spiritual well-being’ of Muslims all over the world magnified proportionally. This is the reason why we are witnessing an exponential growth of Islamic charities and madrassas (religious seminaries) all over the world and particularly in the Islamic world.

The phenomena of Islamic radicalism all over the world is directly linked to Islamic madrassas that are generously funded by the Gulf’s petro-dollars. These madrassas attract children from the most impoverished backgrounds in the Third World Islamic countries, because they offer the kind of incentives and facilities which even the government-funded public schools cannot provide: such as free boarding and lodging, free meals for destitute students, no tuition fee at all and free of cost books and stationery; some generously funded madrassas even pay monthly stipends to their students.

Moreover, it’s a misconception that the Arab sheikhs of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and some conservative emirates of UAE generally sponsor the Wahhabi-Salafi sect of Islam. The difference between numerous sects of Sunni Islam is more nominal than substantive. Islamic charities and madrassas belonging to all the Sunni denominations get generous funding from the Gulf Arab states as well as from wealthy private donors.

Besides madrassas, another factor that promotes the Gulf’s Wahhabi-Salafi ideology in the Islamic world is the ritual of Hajj and Umrah. Every year, millions of Muslim men and women from all over the Islamic world travel to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina to perform the pilgrimage.

When the pilgrims return home to their native countries, after spending a month or two in Saudi Arabia, along with cleansed hearts and purified souls, they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality and their supposedly ‘true and authentic’ version of Islam, which some Muslims, especially the backward rural folks, find attractive and worth-emulating.

Yet another factor which contributes to the rise of Wahhabi-Salafi ideology throughout the Islamic world is the migrant workers. Millions of Muslim men, women and families from all over the developing Islamic countries live and work in energy-rich Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. Some of them permanently reside there but mostly they work on temporary work permits.

Just like the pilgrims, when the migrant workers return home to their native villages and towns, they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality and their version of supposedly ‘authentic Islam.’ Spending time in the Gulf Arab states entitles one to pass authoritative judgments on religious matters, and having a cursory understanding of Arabic, the language of Quran, makes one equivalent of a Qazi (a learned jurist) amongst illiterate, rural Muslims; and such charlatans simply reproduce the customs and traditions of the Arabs as the authentic version of Islam to their backward rural communities.

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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 frequent contributor to Global Research.

In Defence of Jeremy Corbyn

First off, let me get the ‘defending Corbyn’ bit out of the way. I do defend Corbyn’s defence of the downtrodden and the dispossessed, a rare quality in Britain’s despicable, dishonest and hypocritical political class. The attacks on him accusing him of anti-semitism are reprehensible and fundamentally originate with the Zionist entity, Israel, launched by Israel’s supporters inside the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and reinforced by that other supporter of Israel, the BBC (with the able assistance from the rest of the corporate media).[1]

The despicable hatred shown by the state/corporate media toward Corbyn has nothing to do with the man but with the state’s abject fear of Corbyn’s (remote) connection to socialism, made all the worse by airbrushing him out of what passes for a public debate on Corbyn’s politics. What are they afraid of? Clearly not Corbyn’s politics but instead, it’s the idea of an alternative, no matter how remote it may be at present (though I suspect that given the parlous nature of contemporary British capitalism, it may be closer than we think. Think the Gilets Jaunes+).

So Corbyn gets endless and vicious ad hominem attacks but is never given the chance to defend himself in the public arena. And they call it democracy. On the one hand, it reveals the nasty nature of capitalism, bare in tooth and claw, and on the other, how desperate and clueless the ruling political class is, best exemplified by the utter farce (turning into disaster) called Brexit, a sick joke that backfired on the comedians in power that drags on ad infinitum.

But I also think it’s important to understand why Corbyn chose not to vigorously defend his position on the issue of Palestine, after all this is what the attack is all about, not Jews but Palestine. His defence of Palestinian rights has absolutely nothing to do with anti-semitism unless, like the Zionists you choose to link the two. This is the reason why Zionism is itself intrinsically anti-semitic. The entire purpose of tarring Corbyn with the anti-semitism brush is to defend Israel’s theft of Palestine. It’s a stratagem that aims to legitimise the theft, which is why Corbyn’s essentially liberal position capitulated to the attack. He was bullied into silence, afraid of the power of the Israeli lobby in our public affairs that could to do him permanent political damage.

Why I Don’t Support Corbyn

Anybody who has read my earlier essays on Corbyn will probably have already sussed my views on the man and more especially, the political party that has been his life-long domain (35 years or so in Parliament as a Labour back bencher).[2] Before that, a full-time trade union worker.

The major reason that most of the left advance for supporting Jeremy Corbyn appears to boil down to the fact that there is simply no alternative, that Corbyn is the best we’ve got to offer. That even a bad Labour government is better than a Tory one. But is this really true? This is, after all, the argument that has been used to justify voting for Labour, literally for decades. If true, then there is no alternative to the endless, first this then that approach to (no) real change. The end product of this view is an endless spiral downwards to the bottom, with the idea of socialism receding ever further into the distance with every election that passes.

At the end of 1890s, the newly formed Labour Party (formerly the Labour Representation Committee) decided to participate in Parliamentary democracy rather than act as an external pressure group for a socialist revolution and in doing so, set the agenda for the Left for the next century (and more). They talked of ‘reforming’ capitalism, slowly, bit-by-bit, squeezing concessions from capital, culminating in the 1945 postwar Labour government. Indeed it was the high point of the reformist approach and even then nationalisation was firstly a social democratic response to a nationwide demand for real socialism from the organised working class following the horrors of the 1930s and WWII, and secondly, to save an effectively bankrupt capitalist state, a capitalist state saved from collapse by a ‘socialist’ government. The ‘social contract’ between capital and labour was signed by a Labour government and capitalism was saved.

Yet at the same time, it was a Labour Party and Labour government that was profoundly anti-communist and anti-left, a ‘socialist’ party that banned relations with the rest of the left, expelling anyone who wished to see real socialist policies, prohibitions that still exist and are carried out to this day. A Cold War, imperialist party that supported colonialism and neocolonialism that helped subsidise the Welfare State. The working class was bought off with crumbs off the capitalist table on the backs of our former colonial subjects.

The illusion of socialism (social democracy) lasted 30 years. Enter Margaret Thatcher and the return to unbridled capitalism or neoliberalism as it is now known. RIP the Welfare State. What’s important is the role of the Labour Party and subsequent Labour governments in this process of defanging the class struggle.

Critical to the end of social democracy were two, connected events: first, the destruction of manufacturing through its export to cheap labour areas and the commensurate destruction of the organised, industrial working class that went with it, principally coal mining and the National Union of Mineworkers, a union which brought down a Tory government. Other areas of manufacturing were to follow over the subsequent decades.

This process was assisted by the discovery of North Sea oil and gas and the domination of the City of London through its virtually complete deregulation. The Age of Financialisation was upon us.

A parallel process took place in the USA and in 1991 the dissolution of the Soviet Union cleared the decks for what we now call globalisation or gangster capitalism as I prefer to call it.

One can say that it’s been downhill for the working class ever since and for the rest of the planet and its people.

Throughout this latter period, Jeremy Corbyn occupied a back bench in the Houses of Parliament, one can say one of a handful of token lefties, always on hand for demonstrations and petitions but little else, but they kept the (red?) flag flying. This is the face of reformism and it’s been this way with the Labour Party for over 100 years. All that’s changed has been how many tokens have sat in Parliament. So from a party of (former) trade unionists to a party of lawyers and businessmen, culminating in ‘New’ Labour and war criminal Tony Blair. In retrospect this process was inevitable. Every successive Labour government moved further and further to the right, effectively opening the door for ever more rightwing Tory governments and policies. A Labour government would enact reactionary immigration laws and the next Tory government would build on them.

The Labour Party proved indispensable to capitalism from the moment the first Labour Party member took his seat in Parliament in 1892, Keir Hardie. Organised labour in the shape of the Labour Party became an intrinsic part of the ruling political class, the class that managed capitalism. Incorporating representatives of the organised working class cemented the illusion of democracy.

This is the Labour Party that Jeremy Corbyn would ‘rescue’ from the neoliberals.

Socialism is the only answer to this situation, the crisis of the welfare state. The only way to keep the results of economic activity inside the country and available for social services is to nationalize the industries, so that they become public goods, owned collectively and not by private individuals and stockholders. The only way to maintain and pay for the public programs that the population cherishes, is to finance them through state ownership of the means of production and distribution. The welfare state is played out, and the yellow vest protests are symptomatic of this. Rather than looking backward and wishing it to return, we should embrace the future by building the conditions for socialism. ‘The Yellow Vests, the Crisis of the Welfare State and Socialism’ By Michéle Brand (See this)

This used to be the rallying cry of the left of the Labour Party. A cry that was entirely missing from Corbyn’s Election Manifesto, missing even from his original manifesto before it was mangled by Emily Thornberry and the rest of the right wingers who surround Corbyn.

Yet the half million people who joined the Constituency Labour Party across the nation, joined because they thought that Corbyn offered them change, radical change from Austerity, from poverty, from the miserable existence inflicted on them by a rancid and bankrupt capitalism. A not inconsidersable number, perhaps 20% or more of the population.

Even Momentum, which had all the appearance of a grassroots-powered movement, was in reality covertly backed by the PLP. Run by John Lansman, Corbyn’s former election agent, a Zionist creature of the Labour establishment but with ‘leftwing’ credentials. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. In its formative period, anyone could join Momentum but once Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, everything changed. Now you had to join the Labour Party in order to be a member of Momentum. Goodbye grassroots. The rules of the Labour Party forbid anyone who joins from belonging to any other political grouping. Worse still, your politics had to be acceptable to the bureaucracy as well or else out you go. I know of lefties in the Labour Party who have to censor themselves in public for fear of being expelled for their beliefs, and they call it democracy.

Yet assuming that Corbyn is successful in his bid to head to a future Labour government, I have to ask, what is more important to Corbyn, saving the Labour Party and heading a Labour government or honouring his pledge to the millions who support him, the millions he wants to vote for him come election time?

Things don’t look promising judging by events of the past year. Corbyn has not risen to the occasion, he bottled it over the accusations of his anti-semitism; he caved in over Trident, NATO, Syria, even Austerity. What else will he sacrifice of his principles in order to ‘lead’ a Labour government? Well there’s not much of his original manifesto left to sacrifice.

A Lost Opportunity

The process set in motion by Momentum and other grassroots actions, awoke a sleeping giant, the millions of working people immiserated by Austerity and the demise of the Welfare State. It was this that powered Corbyn’s ascent to leadership of the Labour Party, not something that even Corbyn himself expected. He was, after all, near to retirement and in an age where neoliberalism was apparently triumphant, who woulda thunk it?

But millions of people acting independently of the Labour Party bureaucracy, indeed independent of our tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum electoral process, simply could not be tolerated (once more, see Gilets Jaunes). Hence the virulent, indeed slanderous attacks on Corbyn. He had to be neutralised as dangerous to the status quo.

But instead of empowering the mass base, Corbyn participated in shifting the focus back to electioneering (was this his doing?). Hence the calls that Momentum made, ‘General Election Now.’ Back into the belly of the beast and the PLP, where the neoliberals dominate and in the process of course, the grassroots are sidelined, their usefulness at an end. This is the reason why France has the Gilets Jaunes, betrayal by the political class, left and the trade unions. Once more, Labour’s grassroots support treated with contempt. And the proof of this can be seen in the polls, with Labour’s share falling.

Not only treated with contempt by the entrenched political class, but viewed as dangerous to the elite’s grip on power. Once more, it’s the idea that they’re afraid of.

So where does Corbyn stand in all of this? How does he reconcile his reliance on electoral politics with his grassroots base? What if he succeeds and they vote in a Labour government in the next election, what then? With all the compromises that Corbyn has made in order to placate the right wing that control the PLP, aren’t his support base going to be somewhat disappointed when they find out what he has had to give up in order to become prime minister? This is the dilemma that has brought down successive Labour governments, the gulf between promises and the inability or even unwillingness to deliver on those promises.

What this illustrates is a broken system, decades past its sell-by date. An anachronism with Corbyn a throwback to a bygone era, an exercise in nostalgia. But there is no going back, we can only go forward. As Michéle Brand says:

The welfare state is played out, and the yellow vest protests are symptomatic of this. Rather than looking backward and wishing it to return, we should embrace the future by building the conditions for socialism.

I think this is what Corbyn’s support base wants. They may not know it’s called socialism but that’s the challenge we face after over 40 years of neoliberalism and the ravages of the Cold War; to take the demand of millions of working people for a radical transformation of society and translate it into a realistic programme. I might add that this the same challenge that Les Gilets Jaunes face and I’m under no illusion as to how difficult a task this will be.

But now the threat of global heating adds even more urgency to the task and it’s patently obvious that not only is capitalism not up to the task, indeed it’s the cause of the disaster in the first place. Thus these two critical problems are intimately interconnected, in solving one we stand a chance of solving the other. This means that first capitalism has to go first. It’s just too urgent.

Is it realistic to expect the Labour Party to take on this challenge? Is it even possible given what appears to be the insurmountable obstacles and contradictions within the Labour Party itself? A Parliamentary Labour Party so virulently opposed even to Corbyn’s emasculated version of a welfare state, that it’s prepared to sabotage an election in order to remove him.

And then there’s the elephant in the room: the corporate-security state that has proved itself to have no qualms in assassinating its own citizens, let alone the tens of thousands slaughtered under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention’; that spies on every single one of us; that tracks our movements, our thoughts, that censors, that lies to us. How does Corbyn’s would-be government intend to deal with this? Would it even be inclined to? More to the point, how will the security state react to a Corbyn-led government, especially if it attempts to carry out anything that would loosen the grip that the corporate-security state has of us or dare to threaten the rule of capital?

Had Corbyn stayed loyal to the folks that put him where he (almost) is, it would have meant that the Labour Party machine would have lost control of its direction. Instead leadership would have come first and foremost from local Constituency Labour Party branches (CLP), where undoubtedly a firefight would have taken place between the locals and the Blairites, between left and right in the Party, with the bureaucracy controlling the Rules and hence having the advantage but the left having numbers on its side. This is after all, how Corbyn got to be the leader, the right was outvoted.

Furthermore, local Constituency Parties could reach out to the larger population that they are situated within, and potentially the trade unions. In the ‘old days’, the 50s and the 60s, we had very active local Trades Councils that brought together a range of trade unions to deal with local and national issues. They still exist of course, but they’re a shadow of their formers selves. Theoretically, CLPs can also unite single issue struggles under the ‘umbrella’ of the Party, had they the freedom of course. It’s the only way to break the stranglehold of the Party’s bureaucracy. But Corbyn chose not to take this route.

It’s principally for this reason that I can’t support Corbyn and his bid to head a Labour government with a party that’s an intrinsic part of the ruling elite. It’s a contradiction in terms, but then what’s the alternative? It’s a real dilemma for many of us, especially in such desperate and dangerous times. Is it a risk worth taking?

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This article was originally published on Investigating Imperialism.

Notes

1. See ‘Blanket Silence: Corporate Media Ignore New Report Exposing Distorted And Misleading Coverage of Corbyn’, Media Lens, 3 October 2018.

See also: ‘Charges ‘Without Merit’ – Jeremy Corbyn, Antisemitism, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky‘, Media Lens, 12 September 2018.

2. See for example: ‘Corbyn’s Dilemma’ By William Bowles. 18 December, 2015.

At face value – the notion that the US occupation of Syria is key to preventing the return of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) to Syrian territory is unconvincing. 

Regions west of the Euphrates River where ISIS had previously thrived have since been permanently taken back by the Syrian Arab Army and its Russian and Iranian allies – quite obviously without any support from the United States – and in fact – despite Washington’s best efforts to hamper Damascus’ security operations.

Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies have demonstrated that ISIS can be permanently defeated. With ISIS supply lines running out of NATO-territory in Turkey and from across the Jordanian and Iraqi border cut off – Syrian forces have managed to sustainably suppress the terrorist organization’s efforts to reestablish itself west of the Euphrates.

The very fact that ISIS persists in the sole region of the country currently under US occupation raises many questions about not only the sincerity or lack thereof of Washington’s efforts to confront and defeat ISIS – but over whether or not Washington is deliberately sustaining the terrorist organization’s fighting capacity specifically to serve as a pretext for America’s continued – and illegal – occupation of Syrian territory.

The US Department of Defense Says It Best 

A recent report (entire PDF version here) published by the US Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General himself would claim:

According to the DoD, while U.S.-backed Syrian forces have continued the fight to retake the remaining ISIS strongholds in Syria, ISIS remains a potent force of battle-hardened and well-disciplined fighters that “could likely resurge in Syria” absent continued counterterrorism pressure. According to the DoD, ISIS is still able to coordinate offensives and counter-offensives, as well as operate as a decentralized insurgency.

The report also claims:

Currently, ISIS is regenerating key functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria, but absent sustained [counterterrorism] pressure, ISIS could likely resurge in Syria within six to twelve months and regain limited territory in the [Middle Euphrates River Valley (MERV)].  

By “continued counterterrorism pressure,” the report specifically means continued US occupation of both Syria and Iraq as well as continued military and political support for proxy militants the US is using to augment its occupation in Syria.

The report itself notes that the last stronghold of ISIS exists specifically in territory under defacto US occupation or protection east of the Euphrates River where Syrian forces have been repeatedly attacked – both by US-backed proxies and by US forces themselves.

The very fact that the report mentions ISIS is “regenerating key functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria” despite the US planning no withdrawal from Iraq seems to suggest just how either impotent or genuinely uninterested the US is in actually confronting and defeating ISIS. As to why – ISIS serves as the most convincing pretext to justify Washington’s otherwise unjustified and continued occupation of both Syria and Iraq.

US DoD’s Own Report Exposes Weakness, Illegitimacy of “Kurdish Independence” 

The report is all but an admission that US-backed militants in Syria lack the capability themselves to overcome the threat of ISIS without constant support from Washington. That the report claims ISIS is all but defeated but could “resurge” within a year without US backing – highlights the weakness and illegitimacy of these forces and their political ambitions of “independence” they pursue in eastern Syria.

A Kurdish-dominated eastern Syria which lacks the military and economic capabilities to assert control over the region without the perpetual presence of and backing of US troops – only further undermines the credibility of Washington’s Kurdish project east of the Euphrates.

The Syrian government – conversely – has demonstrated the ability to reassert control over territory and prevent the return of extremist groups – including ISIS.

Were the United States truly dedicated to the destruction of ISIS – it is clear that it would support forces in the region not only capable of achieving this goal – but who have so far been the only forces in the region to do so.

ISIS as a Pretext for Perpetual US Occupation

In reality – the US goal in both Syria and Iraq is to undermine the strength and unity of both while incrementally isolating and encircling neighboring Iran. The US itself deliberately created ISIS and the many extremist groups fighting alongside it.

It was in a leaked 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo that revealed the US and its allies’ intent to create what it called at the time a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria. The memo would explicitly state that (emphasis added):

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

On clarifying who these supporting powers were, the DIA memo would state:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

The “Salafist” (Islamic) “principality” (State) would indeed be created precisely in eastern Syria as US policymakers and their allies had set out to do. It would be branded the “Islamic State” and be used first to wage a more muscular proxy war against Damascus – and when that failed – to invite US military forces to intervene in the conflict directly.

Several years onward, and with the abject failure of the US proxy war in Syria all but complete, the shattered remnants of ISIS are sheltered exclusively in regions now under the defacto protection of US forces and are being used as a pretext to delay or altogether prevent any significant withdrawal of US forces.

While many see the announcement of a US troop withdrawal from Syria by US President Donald Trump and attempts to backtrack away from the withdrawal as a struggle between the White House and the Pentagon – it is much more likely the result of a collapsing foreign policy vacillating between bad options and worse options.

The inability – so far – of Israeli airstrikes to even penetrate Syrian air defenses let alone cause any significant damage on the ground in Syria has further highlighted Western impotence and complicated Washington’s plans moving onward into the future.

Turkey’s teetering policy regarding Syria and the prospects of it being drawn deeper into Syrian territory to “take over” the US occupation – as described by the DoD  Inspector General’s report – will only further overextend and mire Turkish forces, creating vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited by everyone sitting at the negotiation tables opposite Ankara.

It is still uncertain what Ankara will do, but as an initially willing partner in US-engineered proxy war in Syria – it is now left with its own unpalatable options of bad and worse.

It is interesting that even the DoD Inspector General’s report mentions ISIS’ continued fighting capacity depends on foreign fighters and “external donations” – yet never explores the obvious state sponsorship required to sustain both. The DoD report and US actions themselves have all but approached openly defending the remnants of ISIS.

While the prospect of violently overthrowing the Syrian government seems to have all but passed, the US is still trying to justify its presence in Syria at precisely the junctions ISIS and other terrorist organizations are moving fighters and weapons into the country through – in northern Syria, in southeast Syria near the Iraqi border, and at Al Tanf near the Iraqi-Jordanian border.

Were the US to seek to consolidate its proxies and initiate a “resurge” of ISIS – the very scenario it claims it seeks to prevent – its control of these vital entry points into Syria and Iraq would be paramount. Allowing them to fall into Syrian and Iraqi forces’ hands to be secured and cut off would – ironically – spell the end of ISIS in both nations.

While Washington’s words signal a desire to defeat ISIS – its actions are the sole obstruction between ISIS and its absolute defeat.

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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. 

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

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Last week, the US formally adopted sanctions on Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA, as well as on CITGO, its US-based distribution arm, as part of its press for regime change in Caracas. National Security Advisor John Bolton estimated the actions would affect some $7 billion in assets and would block $11 billion in revenue to the Venezuelan government over the next year. The State Department was quick to add,

“These new sanctions do not target the innocent people of Venezuela…”

But of course they do. The Wall Street Journal reported:

The sanctions could create deeper gasoline shortages in Venezuela. The country’s refineries are already operating at a fraction of their capacity, crippled by a lack of spare parts and crude. Venezuela only produced a third of the 190,000 barrels of gasoline it consumed a day as of November, according to Ivan Freites, a leader of the country’s oil union.

“Immediately, it’s going to hurt the average Venezuelan,” Mr. Freites said.

Meanwhile, The New York Times noted:

But just across the street, a group of senior citizens waiting in line to collect their pensions worried that the Trump administration’s actions would further bankrupt their country and deepen the humanitarian crisis that has left so many starving, sick and without basic services.

“The United States has no business meddling in this,” said Aura Ramos, 59, a retiree who can barely afford blood pressure medicine. “It’s the regular people who will be affected.”

The Washington Office on Latin America released a statement criticizing the announced sanctions, writing:

However, we are deeply concerned at the potential for the recently announced U.S. sanctions to intensify the severe hardships and suffering that millions of Venezuelans are enduring. Venezuelans are already facing widespread scarcities of essential medicines and basic goods. Venezuela’s oil exports represent the main source of hard currency used to pay for imports. Without this revenue, it is clear that the importation of food and medicine could be put at risk. In turn, this will further accelerate a migration and refugee crisis that has strained neighboring countries and put many of the over 3 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees at risk.

It appears as though there is increasing acceptance of the basic fact that the US sanctions on Venezuela will have a negative impact on the people of Venezuela, but all this analysis misses two important points. First, the Trump administration had already imposed broad economic sanctions in 2017, though apparently both The Wall Street Journal and New York Times were unaware of this development.

From the same WSJ article:

…this week’s sanctions mark the first targeting of Venezuela’s lifeblood industry, which accounts for nearly all of the country’s hard currency income. Until now, U.S. sanctions were largely limited to individuals in Venezuela’s regime.

Another example from a NYT article a few days earlier:

The oil sanctions amount to the first punitive action taken by the United States against Mr. Maduro since the power struggle in Caracas erupted last week, and it is intended to starve the government of Mr. Maduro of cash and foreign currency. Oil production in Venezuela has already plummeted because of mismanagement and poor policies, and the country’s economy is in shambles.

These examples are certainly not alone in their misunderstanding of the sanctions ― and their impact on the oil industry. But it’s not terribly difficult to find information on the impact of the 2017 sanctions. Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez provided a useful analysis last year explaining just this ― and it is even in English.

Rodríguez’s basic story: the oil industry is critical to the Venezuelan government; underinvestment and the rapid decline in oil prices caused a significant drop in revenue; then, as oil prices began increasing, Trump imposed sanctions making any international financial transaction extremely difficult and potentially “toxic.” Rodríguez explains, using this graph of oil production in Venezuela and Colombia, how Venezuelan and Colombian oil production both declined at the same rate, until the Trump financial embargo was implemented in August 2017. Then, Venezuela’s oil production collapsed:

It is striking that the second change in trend in Venezuela’s production numbers occurs at the time at which the United States decided to impose financial sanctions on Venezuela. Executive Order 13.808, issued on August 25 of 2017, barred U.S. persons from providing new financing to the Venezuelan government or PDVSA. Although the order carved out allowances for commercial credit of less than 90 days, it stopped the country from issuing new debt or selling previously issued debt currently in its possession.

The Executive Order is part of a broader process of what one could term the “toxification” of financial dealings with Venezuela. During 2017, it became increasingly clear that institutions who decided to enter into financial arrangements with Venezuela would have to be willing to pay high reputational and regulatory costs. This was partly the result of a strategic decision by the Venezuelan opposition, in itself a response to the growing authoritarianism of the Maduro government.

It’s not just the the media’s apparent amnesia with regard to those 2017 sanctions and their impact on the oil industry that is the problem here. In fact, the impact of those sanctions was even larger. As my colleague, Mark Weisbrot has previously explained, and as Rodríguez notes in the same article linked above, the sanctions made it virtually impossible for the Venezuela government to take the measures necessary to eliminate hyperinflation or recover from a deep depression. Such measures would include debt restructuring, and creating a new exchange rate system (Exchange Rate Bases Stabilization), in which the currency would normally be pegged to the dollar.

But it actually gets worse. When the US first announced its recognition of Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela on January 23, the decision was met largely with applause within the foreign policy establishment. It seemed like nobody bothered to think about what, practically and economically, the decision would mean. Since Trump’s election, and his increasingly threatening rhetoric in relation to Venezuela, there has been wide agreement that a full-scale oil embargo would be terrible, both for Venezuela and the US. Yet somehow hardly anyone realized that by recognizing Guaidó, the US was de facto putting an oil embargo in place. Once again we turn to Rodríguez who, for what it’s worth, has been publicly supportive of the decision to recognize Guaidó and wrote the following on January 28,^[1] a day before the most recently announced sanctions:

By giving it the legal authority to invoice Venezuelan oil, the decision to recognize the Guaidó administration, therefore, would have the same implications for bilateral trade of an oil embargo. Applied by the countries that provide for nearly three-fourths of Venezuela’s imports, the decisions can be expected to have a significant effect on the country’s capacity both to produce oil and import goods. As a result, we expect Venezuela’s oil production to decline by 640tbd to 508tbd in 2019 (a fall of 55.7%), as opposed to our prior forecast of 1,070tbd. Exports will fall to USD 13.5bn (USD 12.3bn from oil), nearly half our previous estimate of USD 23.8bn. Imports of goods will decline to USD 7.0bn, a 40.3% decline (we expect the entrance of some humanitarian aid as well as the default on payments of all debt to cushion the fall). Venezuela’s economy is highly import dependent, as illustrated by the strong empirical correlation between import and GDP growth. As a result of the additional import crunch, we expect Venezuela’s economy to contract by 26.4%, as opposed to our previous forecast of 11.7%.

The impact is clear. The decision to formally recognize Guaidó will have a massive economic impact on the people of Venezuela ― irrespective of sanctions, oil embargos or whatever else is announced. The Trump administration succeeded in de facto implementing an oil embargo, without taking any of the heat they would have if it were done explicitly. And then this week, the Trump administration announced broader trade sanctions that appeared to make explicit by the recognition of a parallel government, with some specific carve outs for American oil companies already in Venezuela, like Chevron and Halliburton.

Of course, there are plenty of people who will argue that this pain and suffering is worth it in order to force Maduro from power. That’s their right, but the media should force them to make that argument openly, and honestly confront the pain and suffering these policies will inflict.

Finally, if asking for the media to get the sanctions story right is too much, maybe they can give some coverage to the fact that National Security Advisor John Bolton went on national TV and openly said the following:

It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. It would be good for the people of Venezuela. It would be good for the people of the United States. We both have a lot at stake here making this come out the right way.

A decimated oil industry in the nation with the largest proven oil reserves in the world would appear to serve some alternative interests beyond “democracy” and “human rights.”

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Note

^[1] Francisco Rodríguez, “Ecuador & Venezuela This Week,” Torino Economics and Torino Capital Group Company, January 28, 2019.

Featured image is from Energy Jobline

Donald Trump has expressed full support for the Venezuelan opposition to oust President Nicolas Maduro from power, just as the country’s authorities announced they’d seized a cache of weapons, allegedly delivered from the US.

The US-made weapons were discovered at the storage yard of Arturo Michelena International Airport in the Venezuelan city of Valencia, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday. The stash included at least 19 rifles and 118 magazines, high-caliber ammunition, as well as 90 radios and six mobile phones – and was likely sent from Miami, Florida on Sunday, authorities believe. An investigation to determine the intended recipient of the shipment has been launched.

✔19 fusiles
✔118 cargadores de fusil
✔4 porta fusil
✔3 miras para fusil
✔90 antenas de radio
✔6 teléfonos fueron hallados en el patio de almacenamiento del aeropuerto de Valencia los cuales ingresaron al país el #3Feb en el Air Bus N881YV procedente de Miami,EEUU #5Feb pic.twitter.com/5wnBFnxaFt

— GD Endes Palencia Ortiz (@PalenciaEndes) February 5, 2019

#5Feb | #EsNoticia Incautado armamento bélico procedente de EEUU en aeropuerto internacional de Valencia 👉🏻 Aquí los detalles https://t.co/PWyD5axrUh pic.twitter.com/sipf2Xfiv1

— MPPRIJP (@MIJPVenezuela) February 5, 2019

While the US never ruled out a military option to support Juan Guaidó’s claim to power, so far Washington has called for a peaceful transition of power in the Latin American country.

“We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom,” Donald Trump reiterated during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, offering full support for the Venezuelan opposition and the leader of the National Assembly.

ICYMI:

– US recognizes Guaido as new president

– Accuses Maduro of his socialist policies…

– Stands with people of Venezuela #SOTU#StateOfTheUnionAddresshttps://t.co/9QJsEqHz8O pic.twitter.com/UfPPLOvX3T

— RT (@RT_com) February 6, 2019

“We condemn the brutality of Maduro regime,” Trump added blaming Caracas, and socialism in general, for the economic downfall of the country strangled by US sanctions.

The opposition leader proclaimed himself interim president on January 23. In a matter of days, Guaidó received full support from Washington, as well as many of the EU and Latin American countries. Following the announcement, Venezuela witnessed massive rallies, both for and against Maduro.

The Venezuelan government slammed the move as “a coup attempt” and warned against any international meddling or potential military action. Despite the opposition and even US officials urging Venezuelan officers and soldiers to defect, the army has so far mostly maintained its loyalty to the elected government, while President Maduro has repeatedly stressed that Venezuela will defend its sovereignty at any cost.

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Featured image is from MPPRIJP

It had the semblance of a play lacking key actors.  They were deemed the difficult ones, and a decision was made to go through with the performance.  The Taliban were willing to talk with their adversaries, but they were keen on doing so with opposition politicians rather than the stick-in-the-mud types in government led by the current President Ashraf Ghani.  The assessment from The New York Times over the whole affair held at the President Hotel in Moscow was that the meeting could only be, at best, “a brainstorming session”. 

The Taliban officials going to Moscow were a different crew, at least in terms of perceptions.  These were not the intemperate salad day youths of 1996, yanking cassettes from car stereos in Kandahar and ranting against all matters musical and female.  These were men of diplomacy, their guns holstered.  Gone were visions of seizing the whole of Afghanistan and establishing a broader theocratic state.  Doing so, by their admission, would not bring the state to peaceful order. Nor, and here there will be questions, did they seem unwilling to reconsider their position on broader notion of human rights. 

The claims from the Taliban demonstrate their continued boldness and durability.  Enemies have come and gone, and they remain steadfast in imposing order.  Their brutality remains common and assertive, but they have become wiser, more discerning in their heavy-handedness.

“Peace is more difficult than war,” suggested Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, one of the members of the negotiating party to head to Moscow. 

The January draft agreement arising from a series of meetings with US Special Envoy for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, suggests a commitment on the part of the US to withdraw its forces from the country with a Taliban promise to prevent Afghanistan being used as a staging ground for jihadists in future. 

The Wednesday statement did little to add flesh to any potential bargain but did outline nine points.  Continued intra-Afghan talks would take place – the usual talks about talks; involving the cooperation of regional countries and others were “essential to determine lasting and nationwide peace in Afghanistan”.   

One aspiration stood out, making all aware about the traumatic divisions in a society that has resisted internally and externally imposed changes for generations.  Unity has been impossible; centralisation of the state an impracticable and unrealisable dream. 

“All parties agreed that the values such as respect for the principles of Islam in all parts of the system, the principle that Afghanistan is a common home to all Afghans, support to a powerful centralised government with all ethnicities having a role in it, protecting national sovereignty and promoting social justice, to keep Afghanistan neutral in all regional and international conflicts, protecting Afghanistan’s national and religious values and undertaking a unified and single policy.”  

The other aspirations follow on from the first: the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghan soil; an affirmation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty and the principle of non-interference.  Then come promises to protect “social, economic, political and educational rights of the Afghan women in line with Islamic principles, protection of political and social rights of the entire people of Afghanistan and protection of freedom of speech in line with Islamic principles.”

Ghani’s spokesman Samim Arif expressed his sentiments on the gathering.

“On the issue of the peace process, we respect the views of all parts of society, including the politicians.  But the ownership and the leadership of the peace process is the authority of the Afghan government.”

Ghani was even blunter:

“With whom, what will they agree upon there?  Where is their executive power?  Let hundreds of such meetings be held, but these would only be paper (agreements) unless there is an agreement by the Afghan government; Afghanistan’s national assembly and Afghanistan’s legal institutions.”

Ghani might as well have asked himself those same questions, his rule itself very much a paper based one, his claims to executive authority adventurous at best.

Notwithstanding the activities in Moscow, there will no doubt be a good number of Afghans, left confused by years of external intervention and promptings, concerned by this affirmation and legitimation of Taliban rule.  While the Moscow declaration insists on observing various rights previously anathema to Taliban theocracy, these are provisional within the remit of “Islamic principles”, which have been shown to be roughly interpreted when needed.  Schools may continue being threatened under any new regime; education for females face the prospects of being reined in (religious reasons apply, naturally), as they always tend to in areas of Taliban occupation.  Aired guarantees are simply that.   

The gathering in Moscow signalled one undeniable reality: the Taliban as a political force cannot be ignored.  Remarks made in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 by US-led forces that the Taliban would be blown to smithereens and wiped off the lunar face of the country have come to nought.  These fighters have lasted the distance; corrupt officials in Kabul, pampered and sponsored by foreign largesse, remain estranged and politically weak.  The Trump administration, prone to erratic spots of unilateral viciousness, is keen on easing part of the imperium’s commitments in the Middle East.  Eyes will be on Kabul to see how far this goes.

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

Featured image is from Moscow Times

No U.S. War on Venezuela!

We cannot be silent in the face of the latest U.S. aggression against the Venezuelan people. Nicolás Maduro is the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, chosen twice by the people as part of an internationally observed electoral process. Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, the United States has been relentless in its pursuit of regime change in Venezuela. With Donald Trump in the White House, these efforts have escalated to threats of all-out military violence, the plundering of billions of dollars in wealth from the Venezuelan people and pushing a multitude of outrageous lies in the global media.

For hundreds of years, the U.S. has waged war against the people of the world through coups, invasions and economic warfare. Juan Guaidó is a U.S. puppet. He is not a representative of the Venezuelan masses. The idea that a person can swear themselves in as president at a rally in the interest of “defending democracy” is laughable. The right wing in Venezuela claim the Bolivarian elections are rigged because they refuse to participate in them.Instead they engage in voter intimidation using violence reminiscent of Jim Crow terrorism against African-Americans in the Deep U.S. South.

U.S.-led sanctions and currency manipulation are responsible for the suffering in Venezuela. Marco Rubio and right-wing media guide the Venezuelan opposition from Miami. The U.S. cannot stand for any country on the planet to enjoy its natural wealth or the fruits of its labor independent of Wall Street and the Pentagon. Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world and is rich in gold and other mineral wealth. Iraq war architect John Bolton said that regime change in Venezuela would be a tremendous opportunity to gain more profits for Wall Street. We believe him.

Since the Bolivarian Revolution in 1998, massive strides have been taken to uplift the working class, Afro-Venezuelans and Indigenous populations in Venezuela. The working poor have made tremendous gains because the government implemented policies and passed laws to fight racism, sexism, homophobia and economic inequality. Despite sanctions and sabotage, Venezuela has maintained a transparent and democratic system through many elections. Venezuela provides aid to struggling people worldwide through subsidized fuel and by leading the way with progressive labor laws. Their gains are part of the global struggle waged by workers and the oppressed against the wealthiest and most powerful capitalists on the planet.

Therefore, we demand:

• The U.S. immediately cease all hostile actions against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela — lift all sanctions, stop backing a coup, cease efforts to destroy the Venezuelan economy and respect the right of the Venezuelan people to self-determination.
• All countries involved in the plunder of Venezuelan wealth immediately return what they have stolen to the democratically elected government of Venezuela and its people.
• Wall Street must immediately pay reparations to the Venezuelan people for their suffering under genocidal sanctions and currency manipulation.

In the internationalist and liberatory spirit of Simón Bolívar, we pledge to mobilize and fight on the side of Venezuela’s right to sovereignty, understanding that the gains won under the Bolivarian Revolution are gains for all the world’s workers and oppressed.

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US president Donald Trump’s statement of his intention to remain in Iraq in order to “be looking a little bit at Iran because Iran is a real problem” has created a political storm in Mesopotamia among local politicians and groups now determined to put an end to the US presence in the country. Many are upset by Trump’s statement, saying that the “US forces are departing from their initial mission to fight terrorism, the reason for which they are allowed to stay in Iraq”. Iraqi President Barham Saleh commented that the US administration did not ask Iraq’s permission for US troops stationed in the country to “watch Iran”.

US forces have been deployed in Iraq in large numbers since 2014 when ISIS occupied a third of the country. The US establishment under president Obama refrained from rushing to support the Iraqi government, leaving room for Iran to act rapidly and send weapons and military advisors to Baghdad and Erbil. The intentionally slow US reaction pushed the Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Sistani to call for the mobilisation of the population, a call that led to the creation of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), called Hashd al-Shaabi, who managed to stop ISIS’s advance.

Moreover, in response to Iraq’s request, a joint military operational room was formed in Baghdad’s “Green Zone” where Russian, Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian high-ranking officers are still present, coordinating military attacks and sharing electronic and other intelligence information about ISIS whereabouts and the movements of its militants, sleeping cells and leaders.

The US also offered to conduct intelligence operations and air strikes against ISIS. Nevertheless, during the period that the ISIS threat diminished the number of the US forces has more than doubled, from 5,200 to 11,000, according to sources within the Iraqi government; some Iraqi sources claim the real numbers are much larger, with as many as 34,000 US servicemen spread over 31 bases and locations, along with Iraqi forces. There are no military bases for US forces only.

US forces are officially based at Camp Victory within the perimeter of Baghdad airport, Camp Al-Taji situated 25 km north of Baghdad, Balad Airbase which is 64 km north of Baghdad, Al-Habbaniyah Camp between Ramadi and Fallujah, Qay’yara Airfield 300 km north of Baghdad, Kariz base in Zummar Nineveh, Ayn al-Assad Airbase close to Baghdadi in al-Anbar province, Kirkuk al-Hurriya Airbase, Bashur base in Erbil, Erbil International Airport command and control base, Harir Shaqlawa Kurdistan in Erbil and Atrush Field in Duhok. US forces constructed a new Airbase close to al-Qaem on the Iraqi-Syrian borders and another close to al-Rutbah east of Ramadi and close to the Syrian borders. The US forces have a military presence within the Iraqi security forces in various locations and camps, mainly within the Counter-Terrorism units.

Trump visited one of these bases, Ayn al-Assad, during the Christmas and New Year holidays. The breach of protocol associated with his visit created domestic upheaval, leading many Iraqis to call on the Parliament to expel US forces from Iraq; the three leading Iraqi officials (Speaker, President and Prime Minister) refused to meet him at the US part of the base.  For security reasons the US President was forced to keep secret his visit to a country where he has thousands of forces on the ground. By contrast the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Jawad Zarif, visited Iraq for five days meeting local officials in Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala.

Iraqi organisations – who fought ISIS for years, and share Iran’s goal of rejecting US hegemony in the region – threatened to attack US forces if they didn’t leave the country immediately. However, sources close to decision makers report that “Iraqi groups are not expected to attack US forces immediately”.

“Iran has asked all their friends in Iraq to refrain from attacking the US forces and instead to arm themselves with patience for the day when US forces refuse to leave if and when the Parliament approves a bill asking them to return home. Should this happen, US forces would be considered an occupation force, giving legitimacy for the Iraqi resistance to attain their goal”, said the source.

These Iraqi organisations are keeping a close watch on the US forces’ movement in the country. They consider the US establishment a source of trouble to the country and the region. Last week, Iraqi security Forces Hashd al-Shaabi forced a US patrol to return from their mission, preventing them from entering the city of Mosul on foot. The Iraqi forces consider the US is diverging from its mission to help Iraq fight terrorism when US forces patrol Iraqi cities for their own training purposes.

Hashd al-Shaabi has a grudge against the US forces for having bombarded Iraqi forces on the borders between Iraq and Syria, causing dozens of casualties. US officials offered repeated apologies, accusing Israel of the bombing and promising that such “mistakes” would not be repeated in the future. US officials feared the Hashd reaction and were concerned about their own troops on the ground.

According to Iraqi sources, the Parliament “needs several months to coordinate a large action and the preparation of a bill asking for the withdrawal of the US forces from the country. This campaign is expected to be guided by the Sadrist leader Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr”. The Sadrist groups are feared by the US for their long history of attacks against US forces during the occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2011. Those mainly responsible for attacking and killing US occupation forces were Sadrists leaders who today lead their own groups: Asaeb Ahl al-Haq, Kataeb al-Imam Ali and Harakat al-Nujaba’.

From 2003-11, the US declared themselves an occupation force. Today, these forces are present following an official request from the central government in Baghdad. Thus, their departure should follow on a parliamentary initiative, according to article 61 of the constitution.

The Iraq government would like to avoid an aggressive stand against the US and is not looking to have Washington as an enemy. At the same time, Iraq doesn’t want to be considered submissive and under the wing of the US and its policies. The US aims to pull out its forces from Syria – if Trump’s warmonger advisors allow him to do so – to deploy them in Iraq–a move that should increase the number of US forces in Iraq. This would represent a further provocation to the Iraqis.

Simultaneously, Iraq is cooperating with Iran on all commercial levels, especially with regard to energy. Washington would like to prevent any selling of Iranian oil and would like to make sure Iraq is not helping Iran or becoming hostile to Israel.

It is too late: the three Iraqi leaders (the president,the prime minister, the speaker) are closer to Iran than the US. Nevertheless, these leaders, unlike, for example, a figure such as Nuri al-Maliki,do not have a record of hostility to the US. Nevertheless, Trump is mistaken if he believes Mesopotamia will bow to his wishes and become the platform for an attack on Iran.

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued an ultimatum to the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday, demanding that it throw open its borders to a US-orchestrated scheme to deliver “humanitarian aid.” Washington’s aim is either to provoke a fissure within the country’s armed forces or set the stage for a US-led military intervention.

“The Venezuelan people desperately need humanitarian aid,” Pompeo tweeted. “The US & other countries are trying to help, but #Venezuela’s military under Maduro’s orders is blocking aid with trucks and shipping tankers. The Maduro regime must LET THE AID REACH THE STARVING PEOPLE.”

The sudden concern for the “starving people” of Venezuela comes from a US government that has systematically worked to strangle the Venezuelan economy, imposing a financial blockade in August 2017 and an oil embargo last week. The embargo aims to block all sales to and from the state-owned energy company PDVSA, threatening the country with the loss of its main source of foreign exchange and its ability to import food and medicine.

Washington’s intention is unmistakable. It seeks to starve the Venezuelan population into submission, render the country ungovernable and carry through a regime-change operation to install a right-wing puppet government.

To that end, the US government sponsored a political coup launched on January 23 with Juan Guaidó’s self-swearing in as “interim president,” a stunt worked out in advance with the Trump administration. Washington immediately recognized Guaidó, an operative of the extreme right, US-funded Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party, who had been suddenly elevated to the presidency of the opposition-controlled National Assembly on the eve of the coup. The Trump administration at the same time declared the Maduro government “illegitimate.”

The right-wing governments of Latin America, along with Canada and the major European powers, have followed suit in what amounts to a criminal and predatory scramble for control over Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest of any country on the planet.

Guaidó and the Venezuelan right, working in close collaboration with the CIA and the State Department, have launched a noisy public campaign over the aid promised by Washington ($20 million), Canada (US$40 million) and the European Union (US$5 million), demanding the opening of a “humanitarian corridor” and declaring that supplies are on the verge of arriving in the Colombian border city of Cúcuta and must be brought into Venezuela under the right-wing opposition’s control, without hindrance.

The main target of this propaganda campaign is the Venezuelan military, which constitutes a key pillar of the Maduro government and has thus far failed to desert it.

The Twitter account of the National Assembly led by Guaidó has kept as its lead message:

“Now is the time, soldier of the fatherland! Are you going to deny humanitarian aid to your mother?”

Guaidó, meanwhile, tweeted on Wednesday that

“in the coming hours, we will give the scope and possibilities of the humanitarian aid, to the National Armed Forces I say: let this aid in because it is for your families too.”

The Venezuelan military’s reaction to this campaign has been to block the major bridge linking Cúcuta in Colombia with Urena in Venezuela, parking a tanker truck and two large containers across the bridge’s three lanes.

The pretense that truckloads of food and medicine brought to the Colombian-Venezuelan border will reverse the profound economic and social crisis prevailing in Venezuela is absurd. The aid, whenever it may arrive, is a classic Trojan Horse, directed not at alleviating the suffering of the Venezuelan people but at provoking either a military coup or an armed confrontation.

Both the Red Cross and Caritas, the Catholic Church-affiliated aid group, have refused to participate in any operation involving the US “humanitarian corridor,” citing their principles of neutrality and independence.

The foreign ministers of both Colombia and Brazil, the two countries that border Venezuela where the US has proposed to open up its “humanitarian corridors,” were in Washington Tuesday for discussions with Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. The latter appeared at a press conference last week carrying a notepad with the words “5,000 troops to Colombia” written on it.

Undoubtedly, the preferred US option is to provoke a social, economic and political crisis in Venezuela of such magnitude that the military changes sides, overthrowing Maduro and lining up behind a US puppet regime. Failing to achieve this outcome, however, as Trump has repeatedly stated, the option of a US military intervention remains “on the table.”

The US president reiterated his recognition of the “legitimate government” of Guaidó in his State of the Union address Tuesday, to applause from both Republicans and Democrats, whose principal leaders have endorsed the US coup attempt.

The American corporate media, meanwhile, has fallen into line behind Washington’s regime-change operation in the same manner as it did in advance of the US wars in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. On cue from the State Department, the White House and the CIA, it is broadcasting reports on hunger in Venezuela and casting Maduro as a villain for failing to throw his borders open to the US “aid.”

Maduro, who heads a bourgeois government that defends private property and the interests of both domestic and foreign finance capital, has appealed to the Pope to mediate between his government and the US-backed right-wing opposition. It has welcomed the intervention of a “contact group” organized by Uruguay and Mexico, with the participation of Bolivia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and eight members of the European Union (Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK), which is convening in Montevideo today to seek a peaceful way out of the crisis.

For its part, however, the right-wing opposition led by Guaidó, acting on orders from Washington, has rejected any “dialogue” or negotiated settlement, demanding unconditional regime-change and counting on US military might to achieve it.

Underlying this intransigence is the determination of US imperialism to assert its hegemony over the most oil-rich country in the world and to roll back the influence of China and Russia, which both have extensive economic and military ties with Caracas.

The threat of Venezuela becoming a flashpoint for a major confrontation between the world’s principal nuclear-armed powers is real and growing. The New York Times published an editorial Wednesday generally supporting the overthrow of the Maduro government, but expressing the nervousness that exists within sections of the US ruling establishment over the extremely bellicose policy being pursued against Venezuela.

“In part because of the Trump administration’s all-in support for regime-change, the crisis has become a dangerous global power struggle,” the Times warned. “That’s the last thing Venezuelans need.”

Citing the ties between Caracas and Moscow and Beijing, the Times states,

“It is very much in American and Western interests to free Venezuela from such unholy alliances through negotiations between supporters of Mr. Guaidó and Mr. Maduro.”

And should such negotiations not be forthcoming? Clearly, there is ample reason for concern within ruling layers over another US war for regime-change, given the abject and bloody failure of previous such military adventures in Iraq and Libya to achieve any tangible gains for US imperialist interests. But in the end, the American ruling class as a whole is embarked on a course in Venezuela that can only produce a bloodbath and the imposition of the kind of dictatorship that was brought to power by the CIA and the Pentagon in Chile, Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, combined with the threat of a far wider war.

The working class in the United States, Europe and internationally must reject the “humanitarian” and “democratic” pretensions of both Washington and the European powers with contempt and unite with the working class of Venezuela and Latin America as a whole in a struggle against imperialist intervention and capitalism.

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The clearest indication of how the Indian military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) truly feel about America’s Afghan peace talks with the Taliban can be seen in retired Major-General Harsha Kakar’s recent article on the topic for “The Statesman”, where the otherwise presumably serious former military official shows the sour grapes that his country has over this process by resorting to a chain of emotional arguments to make the implied point that the war must go on at all costs in order to advance India’s strategic interests vis-à-vis Pakistan at the US’ expense.

Intuiting India’s Interpretation

India, which hasn’t shied away from sounding off about all manner of international issues ever since Prime Minister Modi’s election in 2014, has been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about its attitude towards America’s Afghan peace talks with the Taliban, leading many observers to intuit that it’s extremely unhappy with this process but is applying the age-old wisdom about how “it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt” in order to avoid the ignoble distinction of being the only country in the world to condemn the latest steps taken to end this nearly two-decade-long conflict. These suspicions appear to be confirmed after reading retired Major-General Harsha Kakar’s recent article on this topic for “The Statesman”, where the otherwise presumably serious former military official shows the sour grapes that his country has over this process by resorting to a chain of emotional arguments to make the implied point that the war must go on at all costs in order to advance India’s strategic interests vis-à-vis Pakistan at the US’ expense.

Double Standards On Democracy

In his piece about “Who will be responsible for Afghanistan mess?”, Kakar hits the gate running by comparing the US’ possible withdrawal from Afghanistan to its prior one from Vietnam, remarking that

“Donald Trump appears desperate to fulfill his campaign promise, ignoring sound advice.”

Seeing as how Trump was democratically elected as President of the United States partly on his campaign promise to draw down America’s involvement in costly overseas conflicts, Kakar is implying that the will of the people should be ignored in order to promote the interests of the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracy (“deep state”), which is superficially hypocritical for someone from the self-professed “world’s largest democracy” to say but makes sense when one realizes that the Indian “deep state” (of which Kakar is a part) hijacked control of the country after Modi took office. For reasons of “narrative convenience”, Kakar ignores the fact that the withdrawal from Vietnam was extremely popular with average Americans, just like a similar one from Afghanistan would be as well.

Screengrab from The Statesman

Frustration Over “America First”

Another important factor that Kakar ignores is Trump’s signature “America First” foreign policy, as he writes that

“It appears the US is presently only concerned about itself, rather than the people of Afghanistan and other states which have a stake in the country.”

This should have been self-evident because Trump’s foreign policy is all about prioritizing US interests instead of ‘taking one for the team’ and ‘doing favors’ for its international ‘partners’ who he feels have been exploiting America for far too long by freeloading off of it. India, it can be said, is one such ‘partner’, at least when it comes to Afghanistan, though this will be returned to in the next section of the present article. Continuing along, Kakar’s next series of points touch upon his views on how wounded US and NATO veterans, as well as those who lost their brothers-in-arms in the conflict, might dislike that Trump’s withdrawing without a victory, but the Major-General seems to be out of touch with the rank and file because otherwise he’d know that this war is very unpopular with them.

For the second time in two paragraphs, he then whines about “America First” again by writing that

“Trump has made up his mind and would follow his intuitions, the world be damned”, adding that “He did it in Syria and is repeating it here.”

Once more, Kakar’s angle of approach to this issue is the same as Trump’s “deep state” foes’ in that he deliberately overlooks just how popular the President’s intention to withdraw from Syria is among average Americans in order to further his own ‘class’’ institutional interests at their expense. The next chain of interconnected points that he tries to make is that the Taliban will go back on its previously stated commitment to peace and inclusive governance as part of a preplanned conspiracy with Pakistan, though not before Islamabad “obtains US largesse, has doors for IMF loans opened and pressure…applied on India to pull out of Afghanistan.” It’s actually these three outcomes of Pakistan’s diplomatic facilitation of the peacemaking process that Kakar – and by extrapolation, the Indian “deep state” that he represents – is most fearful of.

Cutting Off India’s Free Ride In Afghanistan

The Major-General doesn’t really care about the US’ international reputation potentially taking a hit after its ‘second Vietnam’ or what its wounded veterans think about the withdrawal, but his emotional embellishment of these two topics appears to be nothing more than a poorly thought-out attempt to misportray Trump’s peace talks with the Taliban in the worst possible light because of how worried India is about the strategic consequences of their success. New Delhi knows that its interests in Afghanistan are only secured so long as the Pentagon is there to protect them and that the US’ possible withdrawal from the country would remove India’s strategic depth vis-à-vis Pakistan, therefore largely stabilizing the situation in South Asia to what New Delhi’s “deep state” believes would be their ultimate detriment per the “zero-sum” paradigm that guides their decisions. Put another way, despite the War on Afghanistan being a total military failure for the US, India wants Americans to continue dying for them in order to advance their country’s regional interests.

It was written earlier that Trump’s “America First” policy is aimed first and foremost at cutting off the US’ freeloaders, so bearing in mind the aforementioned insight about how India used the US all these years as its “cat’s paw” against Pakistan by strategically profiting off of its people’s sacrifices in blood and treasure, it can be said that the application of “America First” to the War on Afghanistan is a nightmare scenario for New Delhi. Fearing that the withdrawal of American troops will leave Indian investments without protection, Kakar suggests the deployment of historically ineffective UN peacekeeping forces as a desperate last-ditch measure to defeat the same National Liberation Movement that not even the US could crush with over 100,000 troops at the height of the Obama-era surge. Of note, for as much as he hypes up the US’ possible loss of face following any prospective withdrawal from Afghanistan, Kakar doesn’t talk about what a loss of face and money it would be for India if the Taliban seizes its many investments there in the aftermath.

The End Of An Empire, But Which One?

Right near the end, Kakar predicts that “Trump would have demitted office but would remain in history books for being responsible for the death of a nation”, concluding that “It would only prove the adage of ‘Afghanistan being the graveyard of empires’”, but the US might actually save itself from collapse by withdrawing from the war-torn state, reinvesting its money in domestic infrastructure and socio-economic projects instead, and getting out of the quagmire while it still can.

On the other hand, the same can’t be said for Modi and his envisaged empire of “Akhand Bharat”, which might both be dealt political death blows ahead of India’s general elections in May if serious concern over the geopolitical consequences of a possibly impending American withdrawal from Afghanistan combines with other issues to convince voters to kick the hyper-jingoist Hindutva ideologues out of office before they lead their country to ruin. It’s little wonder then that India’s “deep state” has sour grapes over the US’ Pakistani-facilitated peacemaking progress in Afghanistan because it could end their dreams of a regional empire once and for all.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

The St Louis River of Northern Minnesota will be as Vulnerable to Annihilation as were Brazil’s Rio Doce and Paraobeba Rivers (pictured below) – if the PolyMet Project is Allowed to Proceed

(Trying to understand why every Brazilian mining catastrophe has been blacked-out by the Duluth News-Tribune)

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One of the most disturbing aspects of the past two years of Donald Trump foreign policy has been the assumption that decisions made by the United States are binding on the rest of the world. Apart from time of war, no other nation has ever sought to prevent other nations from trading with each other. And the United States has also uniquely sought to penalize other countries for alleged crimes that did not occur in the US and that did not involve American citizens, while also insisting that all nations must comply with whatever penalties are meted out by Washington.

The United States now sees itself as judge, jury and executioner in policing the international community, a conceit that began post World War 2 when American presidents began referring to themselves as “leader of the free world.” This pretense received legislative backing with passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 (ATA) as amended in 1992 plus subsequent related legislation, to include the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act of 2016 (JASTA). The body of legislation can be used by US citizens or residents to obtain civil judgments against alleged terrorists anywhere in the world and can be employed to punish governments, international organizations and even corporations that are perceived to be supportive of terrorists, even indirectly or unknowingly. Plaintiffs are able to sue for injuries to their “person, property, or business” and have ten years to bring a claim.

Sometimes the connections and level of proof required by a US court to take action are tenuous, and that is being polite. Suits currently can claim secondary liability for third parties, including banks and large corporations, under “material support” of terrorism statutes. This includes “aiding and abetting” liability as well as providing “services” to any group that the United States considers to be terrorist, even if the terrorist label is dubious and/or if that support is inadvertent.

There have been two recent lawsuits seeking civil damages under ATA and JASTA involved Iran and Syria. Regarding Iran, in June 2017 a jury deliberated for one day before delivering a guilty verdict against two Iranian foundations for violation of US sanctions, allowing a federal court to authorize the US government seizure of a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. It was the largest terrorism-related civil forfeiture in United States history. The presiding judge decided to distribute proceeds from the building’s sale, which could amount to as much as $1 billion, to the families of victims of terrorism, including the September 11^th attacks. The court ruled that Iran had some culpability for the 9/11 attacks as a state sponsor of terrorism, though it could not determine that Iran was directly involved in the attacks.

The ruling against Iran has to be considered somewhat bizarre as it is clear that Iran had nothing to do with 9/11 but was considered guilty anyway because the State Department in Washington has declared it to be a state sponsor of terror. Being able to determine guilt based on an interpretation of a foreign government’s behavior puts incredible power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats who are making political decisions regarding who is “good” and who is “bad.”

A second, more recent, court case has involved Syria. Last week a federal court in the District of Columbia ruled that Syria was liable for the targeting and killing of an American journalist who was covering the shelling of a rebel held area of Homs in 2012.

The court awarded $302.5 million to the family of the journalist, Marie Colvin. In her ruling, Judge Amy Berman Jackson cited “Syria’s longstanding policy of violence” seeking “to intimidate journalists” and “suppress dissent.” As it is normally not possible even in American courts to sue a foreign government, a so-called human rights group funded by the US and other governments called the Center for Justice and Accountability made its case relying on the designation of Damascus as a state sponsor of terrorism. The judge believed that the evidence presented was “credible and convincing.”

The complexities of what is going on in Syria are such that it is difficult to imagine that a Washington based judge could possibly render judgment in any credible fashion. Colvin was in a war zone and the plaintiffs, whose agenda was to compile a dossier of war crimes against Syria, made their case using documents that they provided, which certainly presented a partisan viewpoint and might themselves have been fabricated. Based on her own comments, Judge Amy Berman Jackson certainly came into the game with her own particular view on Syria and what the conflict there was all about.

Another American gift to international jurisprudence has been the Magnitsky Act of 2012, a product of the feel-good enthusiasm of the Barack Obama Administration. It was based on a narrative regarding what went on in Russia under the clueless Boris Yeltsin and his nationalist successor Vladimir Putin that was peddled by one Bill Browder, who many believe to have been a major player in the looting of the former Soviet Union. It was claimed by Browder and his accomplices in the media that the Russian government had been complicit in the arrest, torture and killing of one Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant turned whistleblower working for Browder. Almost every aspect of the story has been challenged, but it was completely bought into by the Congress and White House and led to sanctions on the Russians who were allegedly involved despite Moscow’s complaints that the US had no legal right to interfere in its internal affairs relating to a Russian citizen.

Worse still, the Magnitsky Act has been broadened and is now the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act of 2017. It is being used to sanction and otherwise punish alleged “human rights abusers” in other countries. It was most recently used in the Jamal Khashoggi case, in which the US sanctioned the alleged killers of the Saudi dissident journalist even though no one had actually been convicted of any crime.

Independent of Magnitsky and the various ATA acts is the ability of the US Treasury Department and its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to sanction a country’s ability to move money through the US controlled dollar financial system. That is what is taking place currently regarding payments for Venezuela’s oil exports, which have been sanctioned and will not be able to use the dollar denominated system after April 28th. A similar US imposed sanctioning is currently in effect against Iran, with all potential purchasers of Iranian oil themselves being subject to secondary sanctions if they continue to make purchases after May 5th.

Most of the world oil business is transacted in dollars, so the Treasury Department has an effective weapon in hand to interfere in foreign countries without having to send in the Marines, but there is, of course, a danger that the rest of the world will eventually read the tea leaves and abandon the use of petrodollars altogether. If that occurs it will make it more difficult for the American government to continue to print dollars without regard for deficits as there will be little demand for the extra US currency in circulation.

The principle that Washington should respect the sovereignty of other states even when it disagrees with their internal policies has effectively been abandoned. And, as if things were not bad enough, some new legislation virtually guarantees that in the near future the United States will be doing still more to interfere in and destabilize much of the world. Congress has passed and President Trump has signed the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, which seeks to improve Washington’s response to mass killings. The prevention of genocide and mass murder is now a part of American national security agenda. There will be a Mass Atrocity Task Force and State Department officers will receive training to sensitize them to impending genocide, though presumably the new program will not apply to the Palestinians as the law’s namesake never was troubled by their suppression and killing by the state of Israel.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is 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 SCF

Many see Trump conspiring with oilmen to capture Venezuelan petroleum reserves. Trump’s earlier blunt talk about seizing oilfields buttresses this thesis. As well, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron appreciate better than anyone the astronomic value of Venezuela’s heavy oil. There are, however, flaws in the petro-conquistador thesis. Foremost, it does not explain why oil-resistant Democrats and Europeans play lead roles in this regime change travesty.

On December 18, 2014 a Democrat-led Senate passed the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act. This legislation, sponsored by Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, imposed sanctions on Venezuela while promising support for Venezuelan “civil society.” The Act also sought to meet “the information needs of the Venezuelan people” through publications and broadcasts; and through “distribution of circumvention technology.” Obama signed immediately.

On March 9, 2015 Obama declared:

“…a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States presented by the situation in Venezuela.”

His accompanying Executive Order 13692 extended sanctions while undertaking to: “support greater political expression in Venezuela.”

At this time the US deep state conducted an orchestra of American and European agencies and foundations disbursing $50 million a year to Venezuelan “civil society” (opposition politicians, student activists and journalists). Key agencies were USAID and National Endowment for Democracy. Participating foundations included: (Jimmy) Carter Centre; (Soros’s) Open Society; (Democratic Party-affiliated) National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; plus several Spanish and German concerns.

On January 16, 2017, four days before Trump’s inauguration, Obama renewed his declaration designating Venezuela a national security threat. Venezuela’s Foreign Minister called the move “new aggression by Barack Obama” extending Obama’s “legacy of hate and serious violation of international law.”

On January 4, 2019 a Democrat-led House of Representatives swore in.

On January 10 House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair, Eliot Engel (Democrat-NY) said he would waste no time holding “Mr. Maduro” accountable. Simultaneously, former DNC Chair and Hillary Clinton fixer, Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz unveiled her Venezuelan-Russian Threat Mitigation Act. She was flanked by former Clinton cabinet member and Clinton Foundation boss, Democratic Congresswoman Donna Shalala who announced her Venezuelan Arms Restriction Act to prevent weapons sales, including non-lethal police gear, to Venezuela. Next up was Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, sponsor of the Venezuelan Humanitarian Assistance Act aimed at allowing US operatives to bypass Venezuelan authorities and distribute “aid” directly to Venezuelans.

On January 24, less than 24 hours after Juan Guaido declared himself Venezuelan President, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff (House Intelligence Committee Chair) blamed Maduro’s “dictatorial” rule for devastating Venezuela’s economy, then recognised Guaido as Venezuela’s “rightful leader.” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (Democrat-IL) piped in calling Venezuela’s 2018 election a sham before endorsing Guaido’s presidency.

Of 280 Democratic Senators and Representatives 3 dissented. This troika did not include Bernie Sanders. On January 24 Bernie boarded the war-train with a battle-whoop beginning:

“The Maduro government in Venezuela has been waging a violent crackdown on Venezuelan civil society, violated the constitution by dissolving the National Assembly and was re-elected last year in an election that many observers said was fraudulent. Further the economy is a disaster and millions are migrating.

Bernie goes on to warn of the perils of regime change while leaving wide open the door to punitive sanctions. His statement is silent on America’s economic war on Venezuela. His support for “civil society” is willfully naïve about such groups’ involvement in political meddling up to and including regime change. (Bernie supported starvation sanctions against Iraq, and the bombing of Serbia. He calls Hugo Chavez a “dead communist dictator.”)

Regarding Venezuela the Democrats march in lockstep with: the Liberal Party of Canada under PM Trudeau; Merkel’s ruling coalition in Germany; French President Macron; and the governments of Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Spain.

These governments are committed to phasing petroleum out of their economies. All champion the Paris Climate Accord. None can be quickly dismissed as Exxon’s goons. None take orders from Trump. Thus, the petro-conquistador thesis appears ill-equipped to explain their behaviour.

No doubt Washington DC hosts cabals of oilmen and politicos coveting unfettered access to the Orinoco Belt. Here, however, it seems fantastical that President Maduro might be removed by anything short of civil war; or that the Orinoco Belt might be exploitable amidst the Vietnam-style conflagration surely to ensue. Then, arises the enigmatic spectacle of a dozen “liberal-leftist-environmentalist” Western parties and governments frantically tilting at the same windmill. Pourquoi?

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A letter was sent today to the Science for Peace list-serve in response to the Science for Peace Statement on the Government of Canada’s ongoing campaign to overturn the elected government of Venezuela.

Science for Peace is based in the Dept of Physics of the University of Toronto.

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What is most welcome in this statement is its expeditious issue and wide-lensed comprehension of the hypocritically self-serving role of Canada’s state, major mining corporations and banks in the plundering of Latin American societies and interference in their internal affairs to ensure that it can continue on and grow against elected governments seeking self-determination.  (now for the first time our foreign minister mendaciously publicly leading the alliance of the externally orchestrated oppression, exploitation and coup in Venezuela).

This exact passage deserves verbatim support:

“Canada has, in recent years, supported the replacement of elected governments in Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and now in Venezuela, and its relations with Latin America are problematical in broader terms.

Canada provides a financial and legal haven for businesses that exploit labour and decimate the forests, agriculture, and watersheds in these countries. Canadian banks mire these countries in debt and buy up public utilities.

Protests against Canadian mining companies in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala are met with police and military brutality. In addition, Canada needs to maintain a distance from the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Bolsonaro, among other policies, threatens our common future by opening up the Amazon, the lungs of the planet, to deforestation for profit.”

I would like to add, however, that it is not only or primarily “the Trudeau government” that is “shaping its interventionist stance toward Venezuela”. It is, more specifically, Foreign Minister Freeland who also leads Canada and NATO towards massive militaristic operations on Russia’s borders, as well as warlike policies of the violent-coup established government of Ukraine with, as the right-wing states of Latin America, a chilling fondness for fascist military rule of the past.

But to be fair, this is just as much the policy of the now Conservative opposition whose leader stands full-square for this illegal interference in Venezuela, and whose admired Harper predecessor was the most militaristic regime in Canada’s history with its bombers leading NATO’s near eco-genocide of Libya. The Conservatives not the Liberals signed the still fulfilled contract “to sell military hardware to Saudi Arabia” that helps to starve and destroy Yemen society today. Only the NDP has advised against Canada’s US-like interference in Venezuela’s government, but the media have bayed against its leader for saying so.

The excellent Sandbrook/Science for Peace statement also points out the hypocrisy of Canada still selling armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia (as it murders its critic and bombs poverty-stricken neighbour Yemen into mass starvation), while at the same time “condemning the Maduro regime for lesser crimes”.

But the question arises even here, what are “Maduro’s crimes“ under law?  Everywhere in the mass media and government statements Maduro is accused of them – from ‘massive corruption’ to ‘fraudulent elections’. But internet search cannot find any evidence of abuse of public power for private gain – the definition of corruption.

Moreover, the pervasive claim of ‘fraudulent elections’ is plainly refuted by the international evidence of nearly 100 professional journalists and others from around the world whose June 26 report on the 2018 May election was unanimous in declaring the Venezuela’s electoral system as “fraud proof”, and by President Jimmy Carter’s earlier report on Venezuela’s electoral system as “the most excellent I have known”.

There is no testimony from any direct observer to the contrary. But then none of Minster Freeland’s foreign allies now ganging up on Venezuela had any known observers at the election which some of then-fractured opposition boycotted (the sole irregularity).

What is most shocking about Canada’s fomenting of a right-wing led uprising against Venezuela’s elected government is the long line of official lies of its government and the corporate media at collective and individual levels.

They completely suppress the cause of Venezuela’s economic and civil collapse by ever more US-led financial embargoes on all its lifeline of support – from its international credit to food and medical imports to recent seizure of banked assets in the US to externally orchestrated mobs in the street over 20 years.

Led by Canada’s Foreign Minister (right) embracing all fellow conspirators to Bolsonaro’s man most warmly, she claims and all echo in variations that this externally-wrought coup in violation of international law is “the rule of law” and “according to the Constitution” for “free and fair elections” to end the “illegitimate Maduro dictatorship”.  

 

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John McMurtry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada whose work is translated from Latin America to Japan. He is the author of the three-volume Philosophy and World Problems published by UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), and his most recent book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The agenda for the “Montevideo Mechanism” being held in Uruguay on Thursday will be a four part process, foreign ministers said Wednesday.

International delegates were directed to a press conference led by Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa and Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrand where they presented a brief outline of the meeting.

Held in hopes to mediate the domestic turmoil between Venezuelan opposition forces and the legitimate Nicolas Maduro administration, the conference will be broken into four segments, the foreign ministers said.

The first mode of action will be to map out the conditions to encourage the two parties to dialogue. Following this, negotiations will ensue, with the international delegation assisting the two Venezuelan sides debate their demands, concessions, and the results of the initial talk. The third step will be to commit to these agreements and, finally, implement the changes into government policy.

Gobiernos de México, Uruguay, y @CARICOMorg, en atención al llamado del secretario General de la #ONU, @antonioguterres, coinciden en que la única vía para abordar la situación en Venezuela es el diálogo para la negociación, desde el respeto al derecho internacional y los #DDHH. pic.twitter.com/DvhCYseNsd

— SRE México (@SRE_mx) February 6, 2019

“Governments of Mexico, Uruguay, and @CARICOMorg, in attention to the call of the Secretary-General of the #ONU, @antonioguterres agree that the only way to address the situation in Venezuela is the dialogue for negotiation, out of respect for international law and the #DDHH.”

In a Twitter statement, the Mexican Foreign Ministry said,

“This initiative is made available to Venezuelan actors as a peaceful and democratic alternative that privileges dialogue and peace, to foster the necessary conditions for a comprehensive, comprehensive and lasting solution.

“This mechanism is testimony to an active, proactive and conciliatory diplomacy to bring the disputing parties closer, and subscribes to the principles of non-intervention, the legal equality of States, the peaceful settlement of disputes, respect for human rights, and the self-determination of peoples,” the statement said.

“Similarly, we reiterate our decision to help restore the tranquility of the Venezuelan people, through dialogue and peace, to reduce tensions between political forces and avoid the threat or use of force,” the minsitry said.

Both Mexico and Uruguay have shown solidarity with Venezuela and Maduro after a coup was attempted on Jan. 23 by Juan Guaido, an opposition lawmaker and the self-proclaimed “interim president” and the United States reiterated its threats of militarized intervention once again.

They will overseeing the talk which will be attended by various Caribbean and South American representatives as well as members of the European Union associated with the International Contact Group, namely Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Costa Rica, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

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Featured image: They will overseeing the talk which will be attended by various representatives from the Caribbean, South American, and the European Union. | Photo: Twitter: @SRE_mx

The decision from Global Affairs Canada to recognize an unelected, unconstitutionally self-proclaimed interim president of Venezuela came “within minutes” of Juan Guaido’s  declaration on Jan. 23, the CBC reports. A mere two weeks after the inauguration of democratically-elected Nicolas Maduro, Guaido, a little-known politician heading Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly declared himself president until another election is held. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland issued a statement shortly thereafter fully supporting Guaido and demanding the ouster of Maduro.

It’s imperative to note, however, that contrary to what Freeland claims, Guaido’s declaration violates Venezuela’s Constitution. According to the document, defined by its radical mechanisms that ensure power rests largely in democratically-elected popular institutions such as communes, for instance, the nation’s president must first be deemed unfit or absent to carry out his or her duties before someone else can legally assume the presidency. Section 233 outlines all the ways, including death, resignation or mental incapacity, to name just a few, that a president can be deemed unfit. As such, a very alive, mentally aware and democratically-elected Maduro candidly, and with the infectious humor Venezuelans are known for, pointed out during a televised Jan. 24 speech:

“Estoy vivo, gracias a Dios y seguiré vivo por muchos años….y estoy bien del coco…y más duro que nunca.” (I’m alive, thank God, and will be for many years to come… My mind is still clear… and I’m going harder than ever.)

Additionally, Section 233 clearly states that if the president is indeed deemed unfit or absent within the first four years of taking office, new elections shall be called within the following 30 days, during which time the Executive Vice President will assume the presidency. The constitution only allows the president of the National Assembly – in this case, Guaido – to assume the presidency during the first 30 days if the elected president is deemed unfit or absent before taking office. None of these conditions have been met, making Guaido’s self-declaration unconstitutional and thus illegal.

Screengrab from The Guardian

What’s more, Guaido, as well as Canada’s mainstream media, claim that despite the illegality of his self-declaration, the move was necessary because Maduro won under contested terms in the May 20, 2018 presidential elections.

But the truth is that all of the 150 international observers, including members from various civic organizations and former heads of states, who were there to monitor the elections as part of an agreement between the opposition and the Maduro government, “unanimously” agreed that the elections were fair and transparent. In the 11-page report prepared by the Canadian delegation, for example, all members conclude they all “witnessed a transparent, secure, democratic and orderly electoral and voting process.”

In fact, even members of the opposition, many of whom reportedly participated in the world-renown vote-auditing process, which includes several different levels of electronic and manual auditing, had agreed at that time that the process had been carried out fair and square. It wasn’t until they lost (and in the months leading up to the audited elections) that they cried foul. What’s more, contrary to the media’s narrative that the elections were rushed by Maduro – which parrots the Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry’s position – the elections were held when they were, largely at the request of the opposition.

That’s evidenced in the formal written peace agreement presented to both the Maduro government and the opposition members by former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero after almost two years of peace negotiations. On February 2018, the “Agreement of Democratic Coexistence for Venezuela” was finally ready to be signed by everyone, teleSUR English reported. In it, the incumbent Maduro government had agreed to many of the oppositions’ demands, including getting rid of pro-government “red points” controlled by Chavistas and a call for international UN and OAS observers and to hold the presidential elections as early as possible rather than in December, as is customary in Venezuela, the Canadian delegation’s report states. “But at the last minute,” Raul Burbano, one of the observers from that delegation tells the Media Co-op, “the opposition walked away.” Although there is no conclusive evidence, the Canadian delegation’s report states that on the same week the agreement was to be signed,

“Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson while on tour of Latin America openly called for regime change in Venezuela. A day later, the Venezuelan opposition backed out of the agreement and refused to participate in the early elections which they had called for.”

As for the claim that Maduro barred individuals or parties from running in the elections, the truth is that it was the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Venezuela (not Maduro) who disqualified certain parties due to violations of the aforementioned electoral process.

On Jan. 25, 2018, the Canadian delegation’s report states that the Court “ordered the (Electoral National Council) to exclude the MUD from ballot validation process” after ruling that the coalition’s structure, “the consolidation of various political organizations, some renewed and others pending renewal violated the electoral process.” Essentially, Burbano explains, the coalition was trying to double-dip by putting forward representatives as both individual candidates and as parties. They weren’t really trying to “rig the system,” he says, “but play the system.” Other opposition members like Leopoldo Lopez and Henrique Capriles – two of the most popular ones – were not able to run because they have been either accused, tried and convicted of crimes or barred from running due to corruption. Currently, Lopez is serving a 14-year prison term, which has been commuted to house arrest due to “humanitarian measures” taken by the supreme court, The Guardian reports, for inciting the violent 2014 protests that claimed several lives. And in 2017, the Comptroller General’s office barred Capriles from holding public office for 15 years “on the ground of alleged misconduct, though no bribery charges were brought against him,” according to a report by Venezuelanalysis.com.

These facts, it seems, are inconsequential to Canada’s officials and the media.

But while much of this news may come as a surprise to people, the wheels of the American Empire had actually been in motion in Venezuela for a long time, and Canada had been serving as the oil greasing those wheels.

Anticipating a Coup

As the Canadian Press would reveal, the plot among Canadian diplomats in Caracas and their Latin American and Caribbean counterparts, united under the so called Lima Group, to install Guaido in order to undermine Maduro had been “a labour of months.” Together with the other dozen or so heads of states, Canada had been brainstorming how to unite Venezuela’s opposition under one strongman. That man, described in a piece by alternative news source The Gray Zone as a “previously unknown political bottom-dweller,” would be Guaido. But “political bottom-dweller” though he may have been, he had also been the “product of more than a decade of assiduous grooming by the US government’s elite regime change factories,” according to The Gray Zone’s piece, titled “The Making of Juan Guaido: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader.”

Active among Venezuelan right-wing student activists, Gray Zone writers Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal say Guaido grew up learning to undermine the socialist government. As a politician, he immersed himself in the “most violent faction of Venezuela’s most radical opposition party, positioning himself at the forefront of one destabilization campaign after another.” This made him prime meat for Washington.

“Guaido is more popular outside Venezuela than inside, especially in the elite Ivy League and Washington circles,” Diego Sequera, a Venezuelan journalist and writer for the investigative outlet Mision Verdad told The Gray Zone. “He’s a known character there, is predictably right-wing, and is considered loyal to the program.”

So it should come as no surprise that Canadian officials had “anticipated” Guaido’s move, as the Canadian Press reports, since they had been “keeping in close contact with” him long before everything unfolded. In fact, exactly one year before Guaido’s illegal proclamation, on Jan. 23, 2018, Canada had already played a key role in the fourth Lima Group meeting, in which it voiced total “rejection” for the presidential election call, according to a 2018 official government document. On Feb. 4, Ottawa will host yet another Lima Group meeting on the subject. Canada also provided more than $800,000 in “humanitarian aid” to various “humanitarian partners.” Many of those “humanitarian partners,” however, include the likes of organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, to name a couple, which are run by “politicians and ‘managers,’” says Alfred De Zayas, former UN special rapporteur to Venezuela. And since they “all depend on donations…the donors tend to set the agenda.”

Of note is the fact that despite claims to Canada’s historic rejection of US-style intervention in Latin America, as one Toronto Star editorial purports, the truth is that Canada’s record for backing, financing and  facilitating US-led invasions of Latin America is as sordid as it is opportunistic – in the shadows and behind the curtains, waiting to feed on what the empire breaks off, not unlike the actual species of bottom-feeding fish that have learned to cover themselves before they strike.

It is thus entirely in step with its foreign policy – founded on colonialism and capitalism – that Canada has formally recognized an unelected, self-proclaimed interim president in Venezuela who is backed by the US and who stands against everything Hugo Chavez, the Bolivarian Revolution, and the democratically-elected president Nicolas Maduro defend. That Canada is openly endorsing a US-led coup d’etat in-the-making should be a clear sign that its foreign policy is one rigidly guided by the same corporate interests as those of the American empire which seek to, above all, control the world’s oil supply.

It should not come as a surprise, however, says Todd Gordon, a law and society professor at Laurier University and author of Blood of Extraction: Canada’s Imperialism in Latin America, as it is “nothing new.”

“If your policies are not deferential to multinational corporations and the neoliberal orthodox,” he told the Media Co-op, “you’re going to find yourself on the wrong side of Canadian policy.”

In the Shadow of The Empire

Intervention justified by manufactured humanitarian crises. Destabilization masqueraded as popular opposition. And regime change via coup d’etat.

That has been the United States’ proven formula in Latin America for over 100 years. During the 1970s and 1980s, the CIA was directly funding right-wing dictatorships to fight the rise of socialist governments in the region. While ostensibly the goal then was to quell the supposed evils of Soviet communist influence, the real purpose was neutralizing all popular social movements by force in order to secure access to the natural resources of those countries. As the Cold War thawed, and after two decades of backing military dictatorships, Cuba remained one of the American empire’s only remaining threats in the region, despite over 600 assassination attempts against Fidel Castro.

Then, in 1998, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez came into the picture with a firebrand anti-imperialist, anti-Washington fervor that swept up many other South American nations and, more importantly, limited America’s access to one of the world’s largest oil reserves. The empire, once again, trembled. Since then, the socialist PSUV party, now led by Nicolas Maduro, has won over 25 elections despite a violent though fragmented opposition.

And then there are, of course, the unilateral economic sanctions the US has imposed on Venezuela, which former UN Special Rapporteur to that nation, Alfred de Zayas (image on the right), says are unequivocally illegal. They amount to “unilateral coercive measures,” De Zayas, an expert in international law, wrote in an online interview with the Media Co-op. And those “are always illegal, because they contravene the UN Charter, customary international law, and in the case of Latin America, chapter 4, article 19 of the OAS Charter.” Burbano, one of the 150 international observers, can attest to the effects of the sanctions. Pulling a quote out of Richard Nixon’s playbook, Burbano likens what’s happening to Venezuela to what happened to Salvador Allende’s socialist government in Chile in 1973, where US policy was meant to “make the economy scream.”

Less talked about, however, is Canada’s shadowy history in Latin America, which dates back to the 19th century, when its corporations and banks began to stake claims to the region. By the 20th century, those same banks had direct relationships with many of those military dictatorships the US backed. But it wasn’t until the 1990s when Canadian foreign investment in Latin America, led by banks and mining companies, really took off, making Canada one of the major foreign investor nations in the world. From that moment on, Canada began applying a “persistently aggressive…foreign policy,” says Gordon. The Pink Tide – inspired by Chavez’s 21st Century Socialism – that would push many South American nations to reject the neoliberal status quo at the turn of the century was, in fact, Canada’s key foreign policy concern. Consequently, under Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, Canada played a major role in the coup d’etats in Haiti (2004), Honduras (2009) and Paraguay (2012), ousting democratically-elected leaders. As a result, says Gordon, to date, Canadian banks have “one of the largest foreign footprints” across Latin America and the Caribbean.

By deftly promoting an image of benevolent peacekeeper, a message then sanitized by a complacent and arguably ideologically-led media, Canada has managed to reap all the rewards of the American Empire without getting its hands as dirty. On the contrary, Canada has often been considered the diplomatic, apologetic cousin of the empire, able to deliver its messages precisely because of that facade. A Trojan Horse with hockey sticks.

In The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy, for instance, Yves Engler notes conversations between Canadian, American and Venezuela opposition officials who, aware of the U.S.’ dirty history in the region, colluded on how Canada could inject themselves in the country to serve as the intermediary. Canada is “a country that can deliver messages that can resonate in ways that sometimes our messages don’t for historical or psychological reasons,” Thomas Shannon, a US diplomat had quipped following Chavez’s 2006 reelection. Gordon confirms this.

“They’re very conscious of that,” he says. “Because (Canada is) in the shadow of the US, it can get away with things it otherwise might not have.”

That behavior extends beyond party lines.

Canada’s aggressive interference in Venezuela, for instance, began under the right-wing government of Stephen Harper, who, like his US counterparts, felt threatened by Venezuela’s anti-capitalist, anti-Washington stance. As early as 2006, when Chavez won with 63 percent of the vote, Canada was the only member of the OAS to join the US in denouncing Chavez’s legitimate victory.

“Six months later,” writes Engler in The Ugly Canadian, “Harper toured South America to help stunt the region’s rejection of neoliberalism and US dependence.”

By 2010, former deputy foreign affairs minister under Harper, Peter Kent, was already meeting opposition figures. Then, as in now, Kent parroted the same unsubstantiated claims about the shrinkage of democratic space in Venezuela. From then, baseless, unsubstantiated accusations against the Venezuelan government have continued to be levied by both Conservatives and Liberals alike. “Both are capitalist, corporate-oriented parties whose goal is to protect the interests of the rich and the powerful both in Canada and internationally,” Gordon says. “Liberals put a more social and glossy face on things. Conservatives are more blunt about it. But the end goal…is the same.”

Indeed, today, under Trudeau, nothing has changed – not the tone or scope of media coverage nor Canada’s foreign policy. The narrative remains the same.

Selling a Humanitarian Crisis

It’s indisputable that the situation in Venezuela is dire. Many hardships, particularly economic and social ones, have shaken that nation, and political divisions are rooted deep within the population. But these bare facts, stripped of an explanation, context or analysis do not amount to a humanitarian crisis, which is the narrative that western media has continued to push despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

For instance, in a CBC interview late last month with Burbano of Common Frontiers, the host took what many listeners on Twitter later described as a “combative” tone. During a short eight-minute interview on the CBC’s As It Happens, host Carol Off seemed uninterested in Burbano’s side of the story, which contradicted the calamitous picture she had been trying to paint.

“I don’t think anybody can deny there are challenges, economic, social, political in Venezuela,” Burbano said, explaining he had seen it for himself last May when he was there and spoke to people on the ground. “But there’s not a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela…The term ‘humanitarian crisis’ is used as a political screen to create the political conditions to intervene.”

But Off pushed ahead with her script, claiming that neither of them could opine on the matter since they didn’t live there but, in the same breath, asserting: “This is a humanitarian crisis.” Burbano pointed out that what he said was based on what he experienced, which had been confirmed by many others who had also visited the country, including De Zayas, whose detailed UN report Burbano mentioned repeatedly. Off made no attempt to inquire about that report. Burbano also mentioned the human rights violations that mar other countries supporting Guaido like Colombia, for instance. Off ignored that too.

By contrast, on Jan. 31, the CBC devoted 20 minutes to interviewing Maria Corina Machado, a prominent member of the opposition who helped plot and execute the unsuccessful 2002 coup, and former Canadian Ambassador to Venezuela Ben Roswell, who bumbled on about how Canada’s intervention is not the same as the American intervention.

During the unusually-long segment of the CBC’s The Current with Anna Maria Trimonti, Machado and Roswell – two uncritical faces of the same coin – were essentially given an ample platform to further the same narrative with next to no critical questions coming from Trimonti. Perhaps one of the few moments when Trimonti pushed Machado was when she played back a recording of an earlier interview with a prominent Canadian writer who has denounced Canadian and the US’ intervention in Venezuela as a coup, hoping to elicit a response. Instead, Machado evaded the question and went back to her talking points suggesting the fight isn’t ideological but about helping starving Venezuelans. Machado went on for minutes without Trimonti even attempting to return to her question. Near the end of Machado’s nine-or-so minutes on air, Trimonti mentions Machado’s role in the 2002 coup. Machado once again evades the question. Trimonti doesn’t push.

The only thing Machado didn’t twist or lie about was when she admitted the main priority for the opposition was to return Venezuela to a neoliberal, open-market economy – the same that kept millions of Venezuelans in poverty before Chavez. This “goes beyond Maduro,” said Machado, a disgraced member of the National Assembly who in 2014 was welcomed to Toronto’s financial district by Harper in order to (unsuccessfully) rally anti-Maduro support. “We want…Venezuela to be brought again to the bloc of Western democracies,…open markets and true integration.”

The thing is, Burbano is not alone. As he pointed out to Carol Off during his short interview, others such as former UN Rapporteur De Zayas himself, as well as all 150 international observers, 68 percent of the Venezuelan voters who supported Maduro and huge parts of the international civic and political community all agree that there is no humanitarian crisis and that Maduro is the legitimate, democratically-elected president. But if a humanitarian crisis can be created, or at least its illusion sold, foreign intervention can be justified. “That’s what they do,” Gordon says, referring to how the mainstream media helped sanitize Canada’s role in the coups of Haiti, Paraguay and Honduras. “They don’t say, ‘We’re fomenting a coup.’ They say, ‘We’re doing democracy promotion.’” De Zayas agrees: “The only purpose of maintaining that Venezuela is suffering a humanitarian crisis is to justify a military humanitarian intervention – which of course would violate article 2(4) of the UN charter.”

So why does the media refuse to give a voice to these dissident views? Or not at least present this other side of the story, which is publicly available, documented and verified?

In a word: Money.

Money, Money, Money

“There is too much money at stake,” De Zayas, the first UN Special Rapporteur to visit Venezuela in 21 years, tells the Media Co-op. “Venezuela’s oil and gold reserves are so huge that many in the US and EU are rubbing their hands in the expectation of the loot if Maduro is toppled and the natural resources of Venezuela are privatized.”

Indeed, in a particularly revealing freudian slip, US National Security Adviser John Bolton admitted during a Fox News interview that Venezuelan oil was their main target.

“We’re in conversations with major American companies that are now either in Venezuela or in…the United States,” the senior official admits. “I think we’re trying to get to the same end result here. Venezuela is one of the three countries….(that) will make a big difference to the United states economically, if we can have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

For his part, De Zayas has spent most of his adult life shouting this from the rooftops to no avail. He was a former member of the Office for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights for decades, as well as Secretary of the Human Rights Committee and Chief of the Petitions Department. He is also an international law expert and was the Douglas McKay Brown Chair in International Law at the University of British Columbia in 2003. Following his two-year fact-finding mission to Venezuela concluding in 2018, De Zayas wrote a detailed and lengthy report clearly stating that while criticisms exist of the Maduro government (as criticism exist in every country, including Canada), the main factors affecting the Venezuelan economy and fomenting social and political unrest were the United States’ economic sanctions and economic war that has been waged in collusion with other nations against Venezuela. Yet, that report, as many others, has fallen mostly on deaf ears at the UN, he says. The few who do pursue it in hopes of challenging the accepted narrative – namely that “We Americans are the good guys, we know what is good for the world, we bring them democracy and human rights” – are often “ostracized, mobbed, ignored,” De Zayas says.

But that doesn’t excuse the “unprofessional journalists” who choose to ignore the findings, which are public domain and available for anyone to explore and challenge. “It was and is unprofessional of the journalists to suppress information,” he says. “If they disagree with the findings and recommendations in my report, they should say so. But since they cannot disprove my findings, they prefer to ignore them.”

Of course, De Zayas, like Sisyphus, may be perpetually condemned to push his findings on institutions, not merely individuals, with core structures defined by “hardball politics, blackmail and twisting of arms,” as he candidly puts it. “Ambassadors have told me more than once what pressures they have been subjected to — not only from the US, but also from the UK and EU. Basically it is geopolitics and money — human rights have been weaponized in order to destabilize states where there is something to gain.”

Unfortunately, in Venezuela, one of the few remaining bastions of Socialism in Latin America and the Caribbean alongside Cuba and Bolivia, there is much the American empire wants to gain. But contrary to the idea the mainstream media wants to sell, Maduro’s socialist, democratically-elected government does not stand alone in the world, is not a dictatorship, and has more than enough support at home and abroad to withstand the empire and all its servants’ attacks.

Very Much Alive

That’s perhaps why the opposition and its international allies, including Canada, and the media that transmits its messages, are desperately trying to portray dissidence in the military, as it is the loyalty of that institution to Maduro which, to a large extent, is keeping the wolves at bay. But except for a few low-ranking and in-between dissident officers, one “attache” quoted in the Toronto Star, and one air force general, the truth is the military has remained steadfastly loyal to Maduro, to the Bolivarian Revolution and Constitution and, above all, to the People.

In fact, it didn’t take but a day following Guaido’s unconstitutional declaration for those in high commands, and virtually all of the military, to openly and publicly support Maduro and denounce Guaido.

“We, the Homeland’s soldiers, do not accept a president imposed in the shadow of obscure interests and self-proclaimed outside of the law,” Padrino Lopez, Venezuela’s Defence Minister, Tweeted in Spanish on the 24th of January, reported Sputnik News.

That same day, Maduro delivered a speech from inside Venezuela’s Supreme Court alongside other delegates and the military’s various high commanding officers.

Additionally, while the media continues hyping the number of countries that are backing Guaido, the number that support Maduro are also rising. Yet, in a world where geopolitics reigns, perhaps more important than how many, is who is supporting Maduro and who is supporting a US-led coup. For instance, among the top US supporters are Brazil, who is currently led by an extremist right-wing fascist; Ecuador, led by a traitor of that country’s Citizen’s Revolution who is currently leading the nation down a neoliberal path; and Colombia, a major and recognized violator of human rights, to name just a few.

Supporting Maduro since the beginning have been Bolivia and Cuba’s public pride – two nations whose social policies have lifted millions out of poverty (facts that are well-documented), and, in the case of Cuba, produced some of the best and most internationalist-oriented doctors who’ve assisted nations in emergencies despite their governments’ ideological differences. Other international heavy players like Mexico, Russia, China, Turkey and Iran have also come out in support of Maduro. And though many people may raise legitimate critiques of some of those countries, most will nevertheless certainly and conveniently ignore the fact that the US’ and Canada’s official recognition of Guaido actually violates international law, as De Zayas, the international law expert, explains. That should matter to a country like Canada that is “ostensibly committed to democracy, the rule of law and human rights,” De Zayas argues, pointing to the “arbitrarily” selective nature in which international law and human rights abuses are pursued: “It’s human rights a la carte – today yes, tomorrow no. For some victims yes, for others not.”

Venezuela by and for Venezuelans

The Lima Groups’ meetings over the next few months, says Gordon, will likely continue to focus on how to oust Maduro – either by rushing military action or by waiting and hoping Maduro loses more support. The Americans have certainly not taken a military invasion off the table. However, says Gordon, what’s more likely is that they all will opt for backing a military coalition in which “the US was not the major player” but led instead by Colombians and Brazilians, with “some smaller role for the US in terms of direct military intervention, and some small role for Canada.”

To Gordon, the possibility that the US-led opposition will fully realize the coup is “definitely” real. “I think if they feel they can do it with little bloodshed, they will,” he says. “But whether they can or not, is another question.” That’s why international solidarity movements are crucial. Though he doesn’t believe they alone can deter a coup if a coup is coming, he says it’s still “very important…to let governments know not everyone buys into what they’re doing.”

Burbano is more hopeful. He considers the solidarity of labour movements across state lines imperative to challenging the status quo and, more importantly, defending the onslaught of attacks from the empire and its servants. “The best thing the labour movement in Canada can do is…build links with the labour movement [in Venezuela],” he says, “and get a better sense of what social movements are saying on the ground.”

At the very least, the solidarity actions which are happening across Canada prove that not everyone is drinking the kool-aid. Canada’s largest union, CUPE, representing over 700,000 workers has publicly denounced Canada, the US and Guaido for their attempts to foment a coup, according to a released statement. CUPE “rejects any attempt by the Canadian government to interfere with the democratic processes and sovereignty of the Venezuelan people,” the public statement says. Memebers of Canada’s NDP have also denounced Canada’s move, most notably Nikki Ashton.

It would be interesting to know what minister Freeland, whose constituent office is in downtown Toronto, where many of the solidarity actions have taken place, thinks of all this. Unfortunately, neither she nor anybody from her office provided comment for this story, despite multiple requests made. The minister must be busy preparing for talks with Lima Group members, including other human rights abusers, set to take place Monday, February 4th in Ottawa.

One thing is for certain: Venezuelans and Venezuelans alone will fix their own problems, and as long as the People speak up – not coup plotters or foreign governments – the Bolivarian Revolution will live to struggle yet another day.

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Featured image: Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland in Switzerland announcing Canada’s support for Guaido. Photo: Alan Santos

In our new book, we describe a ‘Propaganda Blitz’ as a fast-moving campaign to persuade the public of the need for ‘action’ or ‘intervention’ furthering elite interests. Affecting great moral outrage, corporate media line up to insist that a watershed moment has arrived – something must be done!

A classic propaganda blitz was triggered on January 23, when Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself ‘interim President’. This was presented as dramatic new evidence that the people of Venezuela had finally had enough of Nicolas Maduro‘s ‘regime’.

In reporting this news the following day, the BBC website featured a disturbing graphic of a captive with arms tied behind his back being tortured. The caption read:

‘Inside Venezuela’s secret torture centre’

Perfectly on cue, the BBC's regime change propagandists – veterans of earlier campaigns in Iraq, Libya and Syria – move into overdrive https://t.co/kW6FOK3Xir More of the same discussed here https://t.co/0M4iI1wGna pic.twitter.com/4VTjMKpNIR

— Media Lens (@medialens) January 24, 2019

The image linked to a complex interactive piece that allowed readers to explore the torture centre. There was also a long report on the same centre. The interactive report included this statement by a former prisoner, Rosmit Mantilla:

‘In a country like Venezuela there’s no difference between being in or out of prison. You are equally persecuted and mistreated, and you can die either way.’

Venezuela, then, is a giant gulag. The interactive piece had clearly taken a good deal of time and effort to produce – odd that it should appear on the same day that news of Guaidó’s coup attempt was reported. The BBC followed this up with a piece on January 25 openly promoting ‘regime’ change:

‘Venezuela’s Maduro “could get Amnesty”

‘Self-declared leader Guaidó also appeals to the powerful army, after receiving foreign backing.’

Another openly pro-regime change front page from the BBC. pic.twitter.com/ajQbORNjJm

— Media Lens (@medialens) January 25, 2019

In fact, Guaidó, also received foreign rejection from China, Russia, Turkey, Greece, Syria and Iran. On January 29, the BBC front page headline read:

‘Venezuela, “living under dictatorship”

‘The opposition leader tells the BBC President Maduro has abused power, and renews calls for polls.’

Echoing the BBC’s ‘amnesty’ front page story, the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall, also talked up the merits of the coup:

‘It seems clear that Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader, has the backing of many if not most Venezuelans.’

A remarkable claim, given that George Ciccariello-Maher reported in The Nation that an opinion poll in Venezuela conducted between January 7-16 had found that 81 per cent of Venezuelans had never heard of Juan Guaidó. But then this is the same Simon Tisdall who wrote in 2011:

‘The risky western intervention had worked. And Libya was liberated at last.’

The Guardian may currently be Guaidó’s greatest UK cheerleader. After the opposition leader gave the paper an exclusive interview, former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook tweeted:

‘Extraordinary even by the Guardian’s standards. Juan Guaido, the CIA’s pick to lead a coup against Venezuela’s govt, gives the paper one of his first interviews – and it simply acts as a conduit for his propaganda. It doesn’t even pretend to be a watchdog’

On February 1, Cook added:

‘Oh look! Juan Guaido, the figurehead for the CIA’s illegal regime-change operation intended to grab Venezuela’s oil (as John Bolton has publicly conceded), is again presented breathlessly by the Guardian as the country’s saviour’

The BBC continues to administer a daily dose of propaganda. On January 31, the big morning news story was:

‘Venezuela opposition “speaking to army”

‘Opposition leader Juan Guaidó says his team has held talks with the army about regime change’

This is the BBC in full Propaganda Blitz mode, keeping the 'regime' change narrative top of the news page.

Imagine what would happen to a US political leader who admitted this – life in jail, for sure, probably the death penalty https://t.co/8JFOsYIat3

— Media Lens (@medialens) January 31, 2019

As we noted, if a US version of Guaidó made that admission in public, he would soon be paid a visit by Navy Seals, perhaps shot on the spot and dumped at sea, or bundled away to a life on death row for probable later execution.

On February 4, the front page of the BBC website featured a heroic picture of Guaido’s mother kissing her son on the forehead at a protest rally. Sombre, stoic, the saviour’s head appears bowed by the weight of the hopes and expectations of his people (people who, until recently, had no idea who he was and had never voted for him). This was a pure propaganda image. More will certainly follow. We discussed earlier BBC efforts here.

‘Tyranny’ As A Motive For Corporate Media Concern

The BBC, of course, is not alone in promoting the view that Venezuela is a ‘dictatorship’. The Times offered a typically compassionate ‘view on Venezuelan protests against Maduro’:

‘paradise lost – A ruthless dictator has driven his people to the brink’.

The reference to ‘paradise lost’ recalled a famously foolish remark on Venezuela made by BBC journalist John Sweeney in the Literary Review in 2013:

‘The country should be a Saudi Arabia by the sea; instead the oil money has been pissed away by foolish adventurism and unchecked corruption.’

Apart from any obvious issues of head-chopping tyranny, the fact is that Saudi Arabia is ‘by the sea’.

The Economist focused on:

‘How to hasten the demise of Venezuela’s dictatorship

‘Recognising an interim president instead of Nicolás Maduro is a start’.

The Mail on Sunday wrote of the ‘despot of Venezuela’. In the Telegraph, Ross Clark discussed ‘brutal dictatorships like Venezuela and Zimbabwe’. The editors of the Sun appeared to be holding a vigil for the suffering people of Venezuela:

‘We hope too that Venezuelans finally topple Nicolas Maduro, the crooked hard-left tyrant Corbyn once congratulated, and rebuild their economy.’

The Sun’s Westminster correspondent Kate Ferguson reported that John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, was backing ‘the hard-left Venezuelan despot Nicolas Maduro’. The Express wrote of ‘the corrupt regime in Venezuela’.

Writing in The Australian, Walter Russell Mead observed that ‘dictator Nicolas Maduro clings to power’. (Walter Russell Mead, ‘Moscow savours latest Latin American crisis to destabilise region,’ The Australian, 31 January 2019)

Under the title, ‘Venezuelan spring,’ Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

‘The latest Venezuelan effort to topple dictator Nicolas Maduro is a pivotal moment in Latin American history…’

The Guardian habitually uses the term ‘regime’ to signal the illegitimacy of the Maduro government.

An emotional Minister for Europe, Sir Alan Duncan – who once worked as a trader of oil and refined products, initially with Royal Dutch Shell, and who, in 1989, set up Harcourt Consultants, which advises on oil and gas matters – told Parliament:

‘The UK and our partners cannot and will not stand by and allow the tyranny of Maduro’s regime to continue. He has caused endless suffering and oppression to millions of his own people…

‘The people of Venezuela do not need the weasel words of a letter to The Guardian, from assorted Stalinists, Trotskyists, antisemites and, apparently, dead people, and also from members of Labour’s Front Bench. What they need is our solidarity with the legitimate, elected, social democratic president of the National Assembly: interim President of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó.’

Writing in the Independent, Patrick Cockburn commented in September 2016:

‘Sir Alan does have a long record of befriending the Gulf monarchies, informing a journalist in July that Saudi Arabia “is not a dictatorship”.’

Sir Alan tweeted:

‘The dictatorial abuses of Nicolás Maduro in #Venezuela have led to the collapse of the rule of law and human misery and degradation.’

We replied:

‘How much human misery and degradation did *you* cause by voting for war on oil-rich Iraq in 2003 and by supporting oil-rich Saudi tyrants attacking famine-stricken Yemen? Your compassion for the people of oil-rich Venezuela is completely and utterly fake.’

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also tweeted:

‘We stand with the people of #Venezuela as they seek to build a better life. We cannot ignore the suffering or tyranny taking place in this proud nation. Neither should other countries who care about freedom and prosperity.’

Political analyst Charles Shoebridge commented:

‘now speaking of “US standing with the people of #Venezuela against tyranny”, when just days ago he was also speaking of the US standing with US allied repressive tyrannies such as UAE Saudi Arabia Bahrain’

Glenn Greenwald made the same point, adding:

‘I’d have more respect for the foreign policy decrees of US officials if they’d just admit what everyone knows – “we want to change this country’s government to make it better serve our interests” – rather than pretending they give the slightest shit about Freedom & Democracy.’

Writing on the Grayzone website, Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal describe how:

‘Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.’

Almost entirely overlooked in ‘mainstream’ coverage, the New York Times reported last September:

‘The Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, according to American officials and a former Venezuelan military commander who participated in the talks.’

Associated Press reported last week:

‘The coalition of Latin American governments that joined the U.S. in quickly recognizing Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president came together over weeks of secret diplomacy that included whispered messages to activists under constant surveillance and a high-risk foreign trip by the opposition leader challenging President Nicolas Maduro for power, those involved in the talks said.

‘In mid-December, Guaido quietly traveled to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to brief officials on the opposition’s strategy of mass demonstrations to coincide with Maduro’s expected swearing-in for a second term on Jan. 10 in the face of widespread international condemnation, according to exiled former Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, an ally.’

Labour MP, Chris Williamson, virtually a lone honest voice on this issue in the UK Parliament, commented:

‘Donald Trump, who received nearly 3m fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, throws his weight behind a guy [Guaidó] who didn’t even stand in last year’s Venezuelan presidential election and UK foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, gives Trump his servile support’

Williamson was impressively rational in this interview with Going Underground. Sir Alan remains unimpressed, commenting shamefully of Williamson in Parliament:

‘I’m astonished he’s even been prepared to show his face in this House today.’

Lack Of Free Elections As A Motive For Corporate Media Concern

As we have seen, the corporate media’s first great reason for opposing Maduro is that he is a ruthless ‘dictator’. This label is credible only if he prevents free elections, which of course are intolerable to any self-respecting tyrant.

Again, corporate media are as one in their opinion. The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, writes that Maduro was ‘re-elected last May in a vote widely seen as fraudulent’. The ‘impartiality’ of Phillips’ reporting on Venezuela is clear even from the tweet ‘pinned’ to his Twitter feed:

‘It is 20 years since Hugo Chávez’s election kicked off his ill-fated Bolivarian dream.’

A Guardian editorial noted that Maduro had won a ‘dodgy presidential vote boycotted by the opposition’. The Economist went further: ‘The election he won in May was an up-and-down fraud.’ Ross Clark in the Telegraph:

‘Opposition politicians have been jailed, while observers in last May’s election reported inflated vote tallies.’

The Observer editors opined on January 27:

‘Nicolás Maduro was re-elected Venezuela’s president last May by fraudulent means, as regional governments and independent observers noted at the time, and his leadership lacks legitimate authority.’

Echoing its positions on earlier ‘regime change’ efforts that brought utter catastrophe to Iraq and Libya, the Observer added:

‘Given this grim record, Venezuela would be well rid of him and the sooner the better. If Maduro truly has the people’s best interests at heart, he should recognise that he has become an obstacle to national renewal – and step aside.’

Venezuela needs ‘national renewal’, or ‘modernisation’ in Blairspeak. Like the Guardian, the Observer then insisted that reasonable options ’emphatically do not include US intervention in Venezuela’. Nobody should be fooled by this apparent anti-war sentiment. US media analyst Adam Johnson of FAIR made the point:

‘I love this thing where nominal leftists run the propaganda ball for bombing a country 99 yards then stop at the one yard and insist they don’t support scoring goals, that they in fact oppose war.’

A further prime example of propaganda ball-running was supplied by The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan:

‘I’m no expert on Venezuela but I’m pretty sure you can think Maduro is a horrible/bad/authoritarian president *and* also think it’s bad for the US to back coups or regime change there.’

Beyond the ‘mainstream’, credible voices have argued that last May’s elections were free and fair. Human rights lawyer Daniel Kovalik of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, writing for Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, commented:

‘I just returned from observing my fourth election in Venezuela in less than a year. Jimmy Carter has called Venezuela’s electoral system “the best in the world,” and what I witnessed was an inspiring process that guarantees one person, one vote, and includes multiple auditing procedures to ensure a free and fair election.

‘I then came home to the United States to see the inevitable “news” coverage referring to Venezuela as a “dictatorship” and as a country in need of saving. This coverage not only ignores the reality of Venezuela, it ignores the fact that the U.S. is the greatest impediment to democracy in Venezuela, just as the U.S. has been an impediment to democracy throughout Latin America since the end of the 19th century.’

More than 150 members of the international electoral accompaniment mission for the elections published four independent reports. Their members ‘include politicians, electoral experts, academics, journalists, social movement leaders and others’. The mission’s General Report concluded:

‘We the international accompaniers consider that the technical and professional trustworthiness and independence of the National Electoral Council of Venezuela are uncontestable.’

The Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America, a grouping of electoral technicians from across the continent, many of whom have presided over electoral agencies, commented:

‘The process was successfully carried out and that the will of the citizens, freely expressed in ballot boxes, was respected…the results communicated by the National Electoral Council reflect the will of the voters who decided to participate in the electoral process.’

The African Report:

‘Our general evaluation is that this was a fair, free, and transparent expression of the human right to vote and participate in the electoral process by the Venezuelan people, and that the results announced on the night of May 20 are trustworthy due to the comprehensive guarantees, audits, the high tech nature of the electoral process, and due to the thirteen audits carried out previous to and on the day of elections which we witnessed.

‘We can also conclude that the Venezuelan people who chose to participate in the electoral process of May 20 were not subject to any external pressures.’

And also the Caribbean Report:

‘The mission was satisfied that the elections were conducted efficiently in a fair and transparent manner. All of the registered voters who wanted to exercise their right to vote participated in a peaceful and accommodating environment. Based on the process observed, the mission is satisfied that the results of the elections reflect the will of the majority of the voters in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.’

If all of this has been ignored in the current debate, it is because corporate media in fact do not care about free elections in Venezuela.

Consider the elections held in Iraq on January 30, 2005. On the BBC’s main evening news that month, reporter David Willis talked of ‘the first democratic election in fifty years’ (Willis, BBC News at Ten, January 10, 2005). A Guardian leader referred to ‘the country’s first free election in decades’. The Times, the Financial Times, the Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, the Observer, the Independent, the Express, the Mirror, the Sun and numerous other media repeated the same claim hailing Iraq’s great ‘democratic election’.

But this was all nonsense. Iraq was not just under illegal, superpower occupation; invading armies were waging full-scale war against the Iraqi resistance. Just weeks before the election, Fallujah, a city of 300,000 people, was virtually razed to the ground by US-UK forces. Six weeks before the election, the UN reported of the city that, ’70 per cent of the houses and shops were destroyed and those still standing are riddled with bullets.’ A quarter of a million people had been displaced from this one city alone by the onslaught. One year later, The Lancet reported 655,000 excess Iraqi deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion.

There was obviously no question of a free election under these lawless, extremely violent conditions. The corporate press was not the least bit interested or concerned. Indeed, our search of the LexisNexis media database at the time of the elections showed that there had not been a single substantive analysis of the extent of press freedom in Iraq under occupation anywhere in the UK press over the previous six months. And yet the media were all but unanimous in describing the elections as free and fair.

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Featured image is from The Mantle

On Tuesday evening, Trump delivered his State of the Union Address, delayed because of 35 days of government shutdown, DLT and undemocratic Dems sharing blame.

A possible shutdown resumption looms on February 15 if things aren’t resolved – or a state of emergency declared by Trump when none exists over the great US border crisis hoax while permanent war on humanity rages endlessly, supported by both right wings of the nation’s war party.

The key takeaway from Trump’s SOTU address is all politicians lie. Believe NOTHING they say. Follow only what they do.

Trump is a serial liar, time and again saying one thing and doing another, proving he and rule by hardline extremists can never be trusted.

Their record speaks for itself, including endless wars of aggression, one-sided support for monied interests, contempt for ordinary people everywhere, consistently breaching the rule of law, continuing the lurch toward full-blown homeland tyranny – along with risking nuclear war with Russia, Iran, perhaps even North Korea and/or China.

Today is the most perilous time in world history. Daily events should scare everyone at a time when endless warmaking and handing the nation’s wealth to its privilege class inflict enormous harm on most Americans and others abroad.

At the same time, an ongoing attempt aims to replace democratic governance in Venezuela with a US proxy regime,  perhaps by military intervention if other Trump regime methods fail – the fate of the nation and its people hanging in the balance.

Trump’s theme was “choosing greatness” in a nation posing humanity’s greatest threat, run by its criminal class, a gangster state,  not democracy.

Rule of the people in America means of, by, and for its privileged class exclusively, most others exploited.

The world’s richest nation doesn’t give a hoot about its most disadvantaged citizens, including combat veterans, treated with disdain – lied to about democracy building abroad, Washington’s deadliest export, their mission all about pursuing imperial dominance worldwide.

Trump saying

“(t)ogether we can break decades of political stalemate. We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions, and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future. The decision is ours to make” – belies America’s deplorable state.

His regime and Congress share blame for heading the nation into an economic and financial abyss, a fiscal nightmare, a class of civilizations with sovereign independent states, backing terrorism instead of combating it, the nation’s destructive agenda supported by establishment media instead of sounding the alarm about what’s happening.

Trump’s address was beginning-to-end deception and Big Lies. Jobs he promised to protect are largely low-pay/poor-or-no benefit part-time or temp rotten ones.

Free trade he promotes isn’t fair, serving corporate interests exclusively at the expense of the general welfare and threat of ecocide.

Warmaking is prioritized over “rebuild(ing) and revitaliz(ing) our nation’s infrastructure.” Prescription drugs and other healthcare costs are increasingly unaffordable for most Americans, not the other way around as Trump pledged to work for earlier and last night.

The “immigration system” he supports excludes Blacks, Latinos, and Muslims from the wrong countries – white Anglo-Saxons and others like them welcomed.

A “foreign policy that puts America’s interest first” prioritizes exploiting others nations and their people so the US privileged class can benefit at their expense.

That’s what “winning for our country” is all about, not “sav(ing) (increasingly eroding) freedom(s)…redef(ying) the middle class,” disappearing in plain sight, not “more prosperous than ever before,” or “creat(ing) a new standard of living for the 21st century.”

Ordinary Americans are experiencing a declining “quality of life” in a nation increasingly becoming a ruler-serf society, poverty its leading growth industry, along with warmaking on humanity at home and abroad.

At a time of protracted main street Depression, real unemployment exceeding 20%, no “unprecedented economic boom, a boom that has rarely been seen before” exists – except for the nation’s privileged class, benefitting by exploiting the great majority of Americans and countless millions abroad.

Wages fail to keep pace with inflation. Social justice is fast eroding. It’s on the chopping block for elimination altogether.

The great December 2017 GOP tax cut heist for the rich at the expense of everyone else will likely increase the federal debt to around $35 trillion by 2028.

In 1981, the national debt was less than 32% of GDP. Today it’s a ticking time bomb exceeding 105% of GDP, growing by over $1 trillion annually, heading for $2 trillion annually by the mid 2020s, according to David Stockman, the national debt to increase by about “$17 trillion over the next 10 years,” he estimates.

He called DLT “the Great Disrupter…the mad man in the Oval Office,” pursuing a ruinous agenda, heading the country for a “fiscal calamity now unfolding,” adding:

“(T)here is exactly zero chance of any legislative action to stem Washington’s exploding red ink” based on how things are going.

Trump bragged about “cut(ing) more regulations in a short period of time than any other administration during its entire tenure” – ignoring the enormous economic, financial, and ecological harm it’s causing.

“We must be united at home to defeat our adversaries abroad,” he roared, affirming the nation’s permanent war agenda in less than so many words.

Washington is responsible for human wreckage worldwide, nations held captive to their demands. Imperial caused crises result in humanitarian disasters in one country after another, the same is true in impoverished US inner cities by exploitive economic and financial policies.

The nation I grew up in no longer exists. It was never beautiful. Today it’s unsafe and unfit to live in. Imperial madness threatens to destroy planet earth to own it.

Regime change begins at home, challenging authority essential, nonviolent revolution the only solution, making America work for all its people, transforming swords into plowshares for a new era of peace, equity and justice, polar opposite how things are now.

People power alone can save us, collective resistance for change, indifference no longer an option.

There is no alternative (TINA). The choice between freedom or fascism is simple – living free or under the yoke of tyrannical rule.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from USA Today

For more than 30 years, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) has been one of the cornerstones of the international security system. This ended on February 2, 2019 when the US officially suspended its participation in the Treaty. Washington said that it will fully terminate the treaty in 6 months if Russia does not comply with its ultimatum – the “verifiable” destruction of what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described as “INF-violating missiles, their launchers and associated equipment”. US President Donald Trump said in an official statement that the US “will move forward with developing” its “own military response options” and will work with NATO members and other allies “to deny Russia any military advantage from its unlawful conduct.” By this statement, Trump in fact announced that the US is restoring production and deployment of INF-banned weapons.

On the same day, Russia also halted participation in the Treaty. President Vladimir Putin said that Russia will no more initiate talks to try and save the deal and publicly gave a green light to development of a mid-range hypersonic missile and a ground-based model of the sea-launched cruise missile Kalibr.

The US withdrawal from the Treaty can be traced back to 2013-2014, when Washington, during the administration of President Obama, started to accuse Russia of violating the INF. The US claimed that between 2008 and 2011, a ground-based cruise missile was tested at the Kapustin Yar test site (Russia’s Astrakhan region) that achieved a range greater than 500 km which is prohibited under the Treaty. Under the Trump administration, Washington and the NATO leadership continued to accuse Russia of violating the INF. US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and the Permanent US Representative to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison have stated that Moscow has a new 9M729 missile, describing it as a land-based version of the Kalibr submarine launched, medium-range missile. This attitude is based on the assertion that Russia understates the officially disclosed characteristics of the missiles under development and currently equips the OTMS Iskander (operational tactical missile system) with missiles violating the Treaty.

The White House National Security Adviser John Bolton is also a longtime supporter as well as initiator of the idea of withdrawal from the agreement. He has repeatedly said that the bilateral nature of the treaty is its disadvantage. He claimed that the INF Treaty is limiting the ability of Moscow and Washington to strengthen their potential, while the threat of building up weapons of this type is increasing from third parties – in particular from China and Iran. According to this point of view, the main reason of the US withdrawal from the INF is the strengthening of the Chinese nuclear potential, as well as the emergence of new types of intermediate and shorter range missiles in its arsenal. Therefore, the United States’ decision to withdraw from the treaty is not so much due to the fact that there is any evidence of Russia having prohibited missiles, but rather because China is increasing its capabilities in intermediate and shorter-range missiles. As a result of this reality, the United States feels limited in its ability to counter such a military threat.

However, the aforementioned reasons are largely just a formal pretext. The underlying reasons to withdraw from the contract are different.

The U.S. Armed Forces have held the dominant position on the planet for the past 25 years. The absence of an equal opponent has led to the U.S. Army and Navy’s complacency and relaxation, and if these negative tendencies are not stopped, they will also lead to a degrading of readiness and capability. The U.S. military-industrial complex produced its last nuclear warhead in 1991. The last U.S. ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile was commissioned in 1986, and then their production was discontinued. The production of the Trident II (D5) submarine-launched ballistic missile was discontinued in 2010. In order to eliminate the scientific and technical gap in the field of nuclear missile weapons, the US Department of Defense adopted the Nuclear Posture Review program in 2018, the implementation of which requires 400 billion dollars. In this regard, the main reason for the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty can be considered President Trump’s attempt to saturate the domestic military-industrial complex with money, launch new weapons designs and then, of course, sell these weapons. Thus, the question arises, other than the U.S. military, who will buy such weapons? Only those nations who have small militaries, or weapons systems that are too old and under threat of actual physical destruction. Trump has repeatedly stated that NATO countries spend too little on their defense contributions to the organization. But in order to force European countries to buy US weapons, the usual anti-Russia and Iran rhetoric is not enough. More radical means are needed to this end, such as coercion, manipulation and threats. The most sophisticated of these methods is the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty. Now, European countries will likely be forced to buy US air defense/missile defense systems and spend astounding amounts of money that will finance the US military-industrial complex. The accusations against Russia are used as a pretext for the United States to save face on the international stage.

From its turn, Russia is concerned by the deployment of weapons in Europe, which are in one way or another a likely violation of the INF. These include unmanned combat aerial vehicles, which, due to a combination of characteristics, can carry or are themselves intermediate-range missiles. Of similar concern is the transfer of the Mk-41 launchers of the ship-based combat information and control system Aegis from ships to land-based facilities (the Aegis Ashore program). In Romania, the Aegis Ashore facility is based at the Debeselu air base (3 batteries with 8 SM-3 Block IB missiles) and in Poland a second installation is currently under construction at the village of Redzikovo. These launchers are not only platforms for SM-3 anti-ballistic missiles, but also potentially for Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles. The positioning of these intermediate range missiles on land is forbidden under the INF Treaty. In addition, a number of Russian military experts have expressed concern over the development of the United States X-51A Waverider Hypersonic Cruise Missile. This hypersonic missile is not subject to the INF Treaty, but it has the characteristics of a shorter-range cruise missile. Furthermore, the United States is actually violating the INF when it tests its anti-ballistic missile systems. In order to test missile defense systems, intermediate- and shorter-range mock missiles are used for the Hera, MRT, Aries, LV-2, Storm, Storm-2, and MRBM complexes. The Russian Defense Ministry also said on February 2 that the US had been preparing production facilities for INF-banned missiles since at least June 2017.

Either way, both the US and Russia have developed and are developing intermediate and short range missiles in one way or another. Both nations are able to fully continue developing missiles as mentioned above, and commission them into active use. Therefore, the irrevocable withdrawal from the treaty could unleash a new arms race similar to that experienced in the 1980s.

Furthermore, with the release of Russia and the United States from the INF Treaty, the START-3 (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) loses its meaning, and as a result, the entire non-proliferation system starts to collapse. Europe and especially its eastern countries become hostage to the created situation. This fact will greatly complicate the already quite complex US relations with its European allies. As for the US, the consequences of the exit for them will not be as dire as they would be for Russia. In the event of a conflict, only the bases and locations of the US Armed Forces in Europe would be in range of intermediate and shorter range missiles. Russia on the other hand, cannot provide a reciprocal answer to the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty. Russia does not have military bases near US territory, where a large number of intermediate and shorter range missiles could be deployed. However, this does not mean that Moscow does not have weapons in its arsenal other than intercontinental ballistic missiles, to counterbalance the threat from the United States. In addition to the traditional US deterrence factor; the threat of guaranteed nuclear annihilation, recently a new generation of cruise missiles began being delivered to the Russian Navy and strategic aviation. It is obvious that these missile programs will be revised to reflect the new strategic realities post-INF, and will be accelerated accordingly. It is worth noting that, due to the small size of the Russian military relative to that of the Soviet Union, it is not realistic to expect military actions in the European theater with the use of combined armed forces. In the event of a conflict, the Russian military leadership may have to create a zone of continuous destruction of the infrastructure, or even a zone of radioactive contamination with tactical conventional and nuclear weapons, which will be delivered via intermediate and short range ballistic missiles. This zone of destruction would most likely be created along its borders from where the enemy predominantly attacked Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries – Eastern Europe.

Consistently nulling the system of strategic missile restrictions with Russia, the United States does not want and does not intend to abide by the previous agreement or, alternatively, build a multilateral system of agreements in which China, Pakistan and India could participate. Consequently, the United States intends to continue to dictate its conditions to the entire world. Supremacy in the field of strategic offensive weapons, an effective missile defense system, and the deployment of intermediate and shorter range ballistic missiles in Europe or the Pacific is nothing more than a dangerous utopia that does not add security to the United States or its allies.

More than thirty years after the signing of one of the fundamental agreements in the field of global security on both sides of the ocean, possible nuclear annihilation once again became one of the key factors threatening European security.

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

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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.

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One Step Closer to Nuclear Oblivion: US Sabotages the INF Treaty

By Federico Pieraccini, February 06, 2019

The Trump administration announced on February 1 that the country was suspending its participation in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF treaty) for 180 days pending a final withdrawal. Vladimir Putin, in a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovand Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu, announced on Saturday that the Russian Federation is also suspending its participation in the treaty in a mirror response to Washington’s unilateral decision.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Lists Sacred Land Outside Chaco Culture National Historical Park in Newest Fracking Lease Sale

By Ashley Curtin, February 06, 2019

Just as the government shutdown ended, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management quietly listed many new sites in their attempt to expand the sale of oil and gas leases. Among those sites includes land outside Chaco Culture National Park and other public land revered by Native Americans, the Associated Press reported.

Brexit Poll: 80% of UK Adults Disapprove of Government’s Handling of Brexit Negotiations

By ORB International, February 06, 2019

This month’s ORB International Brexit Confidence tracker poll shows 80% of UK adults disapprove of the way the government is handling the Brexit negotiations, the highest figure recorded since this tracker poll began in November 2016

Twitter Greenlights Venezuela’s Pro-Opposition Online Blitz – Shuts Down Genuine Opponents

By Alexander Rubinstein, February 06, 2019

Shady anonymous actors are waging an information war manipulating social media with automated posts in an apparent attempt to manufacture a faux consensus for regime change in Venezuela.

The Future of Statehood: Israel & Palestine

By Richard Falk and Correio Braziliense, February 06, 2019

It is difficult at this stage to interpret the significance of the recent dissolution of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), which serves as the Parliament of the Palestinian Authority that governs the West Bank and enjoys formal recognition as the representive of the Palestinian people internationally.

The Lima Group: Conspiracy to Destroy Venezuela

By Mark Taliano, February 06, 2019

The “Lima group”, which convened in Canada on Feb. 4, 2019, represents a group of governments opposed to Venezuela’s elected government.

U.S. “Military Aid” to Al Qaeda, ISIS-Daesh

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 06, 2019

The Pentagon has lost control of its allies, according to CNN. The unspoken truth is that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are acting on behalf of the US. And Washington is responsible for the death of tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians.

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Important analysis which provides an understanding of Washington’s relentless threats directed against Venezuela. Please forward this article.

Firt published in October 2016

Hugo Chavez defied the most powerful interests, and he refused to bow down… I believe there is a very strong possibility that President Chavez was assassinated. — Eva Golinger

MW– Do you think that Hugo Chavez was murdered and, if so, who do you think might have been involved?

Eva Golinger–  (image right) I believe there is a very strong possibility that President Chavez was assassinated. There were notorious and documented assassination attempts against him throughout his presidency. Most notable was the April 11, 2002 coup d’etat, during which he was kidnapped and set to be assassinated had it not been for the unprecedented uprising of the Venezuelan people and loyal military forces that rescued him and returned him to power within 48 hours. I was able to find irrefutable evidence using the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that the CIA and other US agencies were behind that coup and supported, financially, militarily and politically, those involved. Later on, there were other attempts against Chavez and his government, such as in 2004 when dozens of Colombian paramilitary forces were captured on a farm outside of Caracas that was owned by an anti-Chavez activist, Robert Alonso, just days before they were going to attack the presidential palace and kill Chavez.

There was another, lesser-known plot against Chavez discovered in New York City during his visit to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2006. According to information provided by his security services, during standard security reconnaissance of an event where Chavez would address the US public at a local, renowned university, high levels of radiation were detected in the chair where he would have sat. The radiation was discovered by a Geiger detector, which is a handheld radiation detection device the presidential security used to ensure the President wasn’t in danger of exposure to harmful rays. In this case, the chair was removed and subsequent tests showed it was emanating unusual amounts of radiation that could have resulted in significant harm to Chavez had it gone undiscovered. According to accounts by the presidential security at the event, an individual from the US who had been involved in the logistical support for the event and had provided the chair was shown to be acting with US intelligent agents.

There were numerous other attempts on his life that were thwarted by the Venezuelan intelligence agencies and particularly the counterintelligence unit of the Presidential Guard that was charged with discovering and impeding such threats. One other well known attempt was in July 2010 when Francisco Chavez Abarca (no relation), a criminal working with Cuban-born terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, responsible for bombing a Cuban airliner in 1976 and killing all 73 passengers on board, was detained entering Venezuela and later confessed he had been sent to assassinate Chavez. Just five months earlier, in February 2010, when President Chavez was at an event near the Colombian border, his security forces discovered a sniper set up just over a quarter of a mile away from his location, who was subsequently neutralized.

While these accounts may sound like fiction, they are amply documented and very real. Hugo Chavez defied the most powerful interests, and he refused to bow down. As head of state of the nation without the largest oil reserves on the planet, and as someone who openly and directly challenged US and Western domination, Chavez was considered an enemy of Washington and its allies.

So, who could have been involved in Chavez’s assassination, if he was assassinated? Certainly it’s no far stretch to imagine the US government involved in a political assassination of an enemy it clearly – and openly – wanted out of the picture. In 2006, the US government formed a special Mission Manager for Venezuela and Cuba under the Directorate of National Intelligence. This elite intelligence unit was charged with expanding covert operations against Chavez and led clandestine missions out of an intelligence fusion center (CIA-DEA-DIA) in Colombia.  Some of the pieces that have been coming together include the discovery of several close aides to Chavez who had private, unobstructed access to him over prolonged periods, who fled the country after his death and are collaborating with the US government. If he were assassinated by some kind of exposure to high levels of radiation, or otherwise inoculated or infected by a cancer-causing virus, it would have been done by someone with close access to him, whom he trusted.

MW– Who is Leamsy Salazar and how is he connected to the US Intelligence Agencies?

Eva Golinger– Leamsy Salazar was one of Chavez’s closest aides for nearly seven years. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Venezuelan Navy and became known to Chavez after he waved the Venezuelan flag from the roof of the presidential guard’s barracks at the presidential palace during the 2002 coup, as the rescue of Chavez was underway. He became a symbol of the loyal armed forces that helped defeat the coup and Chavez rewarded him by bringing him on as one of his assistants. Salazar was both a bodyguard and an aide to Chavez, who would bring him coffee and meals, stand by his side, travel with him around the world and protect him during public events. I knew him and interacted with him many times. He was one of the familiar faces protecting Chavez for many years.  He was a key member of Chavez’s elite inner security circle, with private access to Chavez and privileged and highly confidential knowledge of Chavez’s comings and goings, daily routine, schedule and dealings.

After Chavez passed away in March 2013, because of his extended service and loyalty, Leamsy was transferred to the security detail of Diosdado Cabello, who was then president of Venezuela’s National Assembly and considered one of the most powerful political and military figures in the country. Cabello was one of Chavez’s closest allies. It should be noted that Leamsy remained with Chavez throughout most of his illness up to his death and had privileged access to him that few had, even from his security team.

Shockingly, in December 2014, news reports revealed that Leamsy had secretly been flown to the US from Spain, where he was allegedly on vacation with his family. The plane that flew him was said to be from the DEA. He was placed in witness protection and news reports have stated he is providing information to the US government about Venezuelan officials involved in a high level ring of drug trafficking. Opposition-owned media in Venezuela claim he gave details accusing Diosdado Cabello of being a drug-kingpin, but none of that information has been independently verified, nor have any court records or allegations been released, if they exist.

Another explanation for his going into the witness protection program in the US could include his involvement in the assassination of Chavez, possibly done as part of a CIA black op, or maybe even done under the auspices of CIA but carried out by corrupt elements within the Venezuelan government. Before the Panama Papers were released, I had accidentally discovered and was investigating a dangerous corrupt, high level individual within the government, who Chavez had previously dismissed, but who returned after his death and was placed in an even more influential, powerful position.  This individual also appears to be collaborating with the US government. People like that, who let greed obscure their conscience, and who are involved in lucrative criminal activity, could have also played a role in his death.

For example, the Panama Papers exposed another former Chavez aide, Army Captain Adrian Velasquez, who was in charge of security for Chavez’s son Hugo. Captain Velasquez’s wife, a former Navy Officer, Claudia Patricia Diaz Guillen, was Chavez’s nurse for several years and had private, unsupervised access to him. Furthermore, Claudia administered medicines, shots and other health and food-related materials to Chavez over a period of years. Just one month before his deadly illness was discovered in 2011, Chavez named Claudia as Treasurer of Venezuela, placing her in charge of the country’s money. It’s still unclear as to why she was named to this important position, considering she had previously been his nurse and had no similar experience. She was dismissed from the position right after Chavez passed away. Both Captain Velasquez and Claudia appeared in the Panama Papers as owning a shell company with millions of dollars. They also own property in an elite area in the Dominican Republic, Punta Cana, where properties cost in the millions, and they have resided there since at least June 2015. The documents show that right after Chavez passed away and Nicolas Maduro was elected president in April 2013, Captain Velasquez opened an off-shore company on April 18, 2013 through the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonesca, called Bleckner Associates Limited.  A Swiss financial investment firm, V3 Capital Partners LLC, affirmed they manage the funds of Captain Velasquez, which number in the millions. It’s impossible for an Army Captain to have earned that amount of money through legitimate means. Neither him nor his wife, Claudia, have returned to Venezuela since 2015.

Captain Velasquez was especially close with Leamsy Salazar.

MW– Can you explain the suspicious circumstances under which Salazar was flown out of Spain to the safety of the United States on a plane belonging to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)?  Doesn’t that strike you as a bit strange? At the very least, this suggests that Salazar was acting as an agent for a country that is openly hostile towards Venezuela? That makes him either a collaborator or a traitor. Do you agree?

Eva Golinger– Of course it was highly suspicious that Salazar was flown out of Spain, where he was allegedly on vacation with his family, and taken to the United States on a DEA plane. There is no question that he was collaborating with the US government and betrayed his country. What remains to be seen is what his exact role was. Did he administer the murderous poison to Chavez, or was it one of his partners, such as Captain Velasquez or the nurse/treasurer Claudia?

While this all may sound very conspiracy theory-ish, these are facts that can be verified independently. It is also true, according to declassified secret US documents, that the US Army was developing an injectable radiation weapon to use for political assassinations of select enemies as far back as 1948. The Church Commission hearings into the Kennedy Assassination also uncovered the existence of an assassination weapon developed by CIA to induce heart attacks and soft-tissue cancers. Chavez died of an aggressive soft-tissue cancer. By the time it was detected it was too late. There is other information out there documenting the development of a “cancer virus” that was going to be weaponized and allegedly used to kill Fidel Castro in the 1960s. I know most of that seems like science fiction, but do your research and see what really exists. I don’t believe everything I read either. As a lawyer and investigative journalist, I need hard evidence, and multiple, verifiable sources. Even if we just go on the official US Army document from 1948, it’s a fact that the US government was in the process of a developing a radiation weapon for political assassinations. More than 60 years later we can only imagine what technological capacities exist.

MW– Can you explain why the DEA was involved in this operation and not the CIA as many would expect?

Eva Golinger– I think CIA was involved. They work together on high-profile political cases, and they were operating out of the Intelligence Fusion Center in Colombia together. Why it was DEA and not CIA that brought Leamsy Salazar to the US has not yet been revealed, but I don’t think that means the CIA wasn’t involved in the whole operation.

MW– On a personal note, Hugo Chavez was a giant among men and a real hero. Would you please tell us what his loss has meant to you personally and how his death has impacted the people of Venezuela?

Eva Golinger– The loss of Hugo Chavez has been crushing. He was my friend and I spent nearly ten years as his advisor. The void he has left is impossible to replace. Despite his human flaws, he had a huge heart and genuinely dedicated himself to build a better country for his people, and a better world for humanity. He cared deeply about all people, but especially the poor, neglected and marginalized.

There is a picture taken of Chavez by a bystander, when he had been at an event in the center of Caracas and was walking through a large plaza that had been cleared by security. All of a sudden, he saw a young man, disheveled and seemingly on drugs, barely able to keep himself upright, wearing ragged clothes. To the horror of his security guards, Chavez went over to him and lovingly put his arm around him and offered him a cup of coffee. He didn’t judge the poor guy or reprimand him, or show disgust. He treated him like a fellow human being who deserved to be seen with dignity. He stayed there with him for a while, just telling stories and chatting like old friends. When he had to go, he told one of his guards to offer the man whatever help he needed.

There were no cameras there, no TV, no public. It wasn’t a publicity stunt. It was genuine, sincere care and concern for a fellow human in need. Despite being president and a powerful head of state, Chavez always saw himself as an equal to all people.

His unexpected death has had a tragic toll on Venezuela. Sadly, those he left in charge have been unable to manage the country through this difficult times. A combination of corruption and external sabotage by opposition forces (with foreign support) has crippled the economy. Mismanagement has been widespread and destructive. US agencies and their allies in Venezuela have seized the opportunity to further destabilize and destroy all remaining remnants of chavismo. Now they are trying to tarnish and erase Chavez’s legacy, but I believe this is an impossible task. Even if the current government doesn’t survive the vicious attacks against it, Chavez’s memory in the millions of people he impacted and improved the lives of, will weather the storm. “Chavismo” has become an ideology founded on principles of social justice and human dignity. But do people miss him terribly? Yes.

Eva Golinger is winner of the International Award for Journalism in Mexico (2009), named “La Novia de Venezuela” by President Hugo Chávez, is an Attorney and Writer from New York, living in Caracas, Venezuela since 2005 and author of the best-selling books, “The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela” (2006 Olive Branch Press), “Bush vs. Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela” (2007, Monthly Review Press)

Since 2003, Eva has been investigating, analyzing and writing about US intervention in Venezuela using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain information about US Government efforts to undermine progressive movements in Latin America.

A version of this interview appeared on Telesur at: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Golinger-Chavez-Assassination-Attempts-Documented-Very-Real-20160413-0025.html

Article originally published by Global Research in 2005, which points to previous attempts to assassinate President Hugo Chavez.

This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation.  “How do we know that the CIA was behind the coup that overthrew Hugo Chávez?” asked historian William Blum in 2002.

“Same way we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. That’s what it’s always done and there’s no reason to think that tomorrow morning will be any different.”

Now we have a bit more evidence the CIA and the FBI connived with reactionary elements to not only briefly overthrow Chávez, abolish the constitution and the National Assembly, but later assassinate the Venezuelan State Prosecutor, Danilo Anderson. He was killed by a car bomb in Caracas on November 18, 2004, while investigating those who were behind the coup. Giovani Jose Vasquez De Armas, a member of Colombia’s right wing paramilitary group called the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, claims he was in charge of logistics for the plot to kill Danilo Anderson. Vasquez De Armas told the Attorney General’s office that those planning the killing, “all discussed the plan with the help of the FBI and CIA.”

And the sun will rise tomorrow.

“According to the Attorney General, Vasquez De Armas said that during a meeting in Darien, Panama, on September 4 and 6, 2003, an FBI Officer called ‘Pesquera’ and a CIA agent called ‘Morrinson,’ attended a meeting along with two of the plot’s alleged organizers, Patricia Poleo and Salvador Romani, as well as two of those who actually did the killing, Rolando and Otoniel Guevera,” writes Alessandro Parma. “An official from the Attorney General’s office, speaking on behalf of Vasquez De Armas, said that in Panama the FBI and the plotting Venezuelans agreed, ‘to take out Chavez and the Government.’ He said, ‘the meeting’s final objective was to kill President Chavez and the Attorney General.’”

None of this is new or particularly revelatory.  Steve Kangas writes:

“CIA operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business interests abroad are threatened by a popular or democratically elected leader. The people support their leader because he intends to conduct land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers, consumers and the environment. So, on behalf of American business, and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition. First it identifies right-wing groups within the country (usually the military), and offers them a deal: “We’ll put you in power if you maintain a favorable business climate for us.” The Agency then hires, trains and works with them to overthrow the existing government (usually a democracy). It uses every trick in the book: propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even assassination. These efforts culminate in a military coup, which installs a right-wing dictator. The CIA trains the dictator’s security apparatus to crack down on the traditional enemies of big business, using interrogation, torture and murder. The victims are said to be “communists,” but almost always they are just peasants, liberals, moderates, labor union leaders, political opponents and advocates of free speech and democracy. Widespread human rights abuses follow.”

Examples include the coup to overthrow the democratically elected leader Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, the ouster of democratically elected Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala, one coup per year (between 1957-1973) in Laos, the installation of the murderous “Papa Doc” Duvalier in Haiti, the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the overthrow of Jose Velasco in Ecuador, the assassination of the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba in the Congo (later Zaire), the overthrow of the democratically elected Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart in Brazil, the overthrow of the democratically elected Sukarno government in Indonesia, a military coup in Greece designed to install the “reign of the colonels” (when the Greek ambassador complained about CIA plans for Cypress, Johnson told him: “F— your parliament and your constitution”), the overthrow of the popular Prince Sahounek in Cambodia, the overthrow of Juan Torres in Bolivia, the overthrow and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile, the assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, and dozens of other incidents rarely if ever taught in American school history lessons.

As John Perkins (author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man), as a former respected member of the international banking community and National Security Agency economist, told Amy Goodman: “Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring—to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government…. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men.” Perkins’ job was “deal-making”:

It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan—let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador—and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure—a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you’re not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we’re going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It’s an empire. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It’s been extremely successful.

Most of the money for these loans, according to Perkins, is provided by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the two premier neolib loan sharking operations (it is important to note that the Straussian neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, is now president of the World Bank, thus demonstrating how closely related the neocons and traditional neolibs are).

If the loan sharks are unable to steal natural resources (oil, minerals, rainforests, water) as a condition of repaying this immense debt, “the next step is what we call the jackals.”

Jackals are CIA-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn’t work, they perform assassinations—or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren’t able to get through to Saddam Hussein… His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq.

Hugo Chávez is now between the assassination point of this neolib plan and invasion, when “our young men and women” will be “sent in to die and kill” Venezuelan peasants the same way they are now killing poor Iraqis. Of course, it remains to be seen if Bush can actually invade Venezuela—the neocon roster is teeming with targets, from Syria to Iran—and so we can expect the Bushcons and their jackals to continue efforts to assassinate Chávez, as Giovani Jose Vasquez De Armas reveals the CIA and the FBI are attempting to do, with little success. One notable failure by the jackals is Fidel Castro in Cuba, who experienced numerous assassination attempts and CIA counterinsurgency specialist Edward Lansdale’s Operation Mongoose (consisting of sabotage and political warfare), also known as the ‘’Cuba Project.’‘

As Blum notes, we know all of this is happening, same as we know the sun will come up tomorrow.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer, multimedia artist and writer. You can visit his blog “Another Day in the Empire” at www.kurtnimmo.com/blog. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Important analysis which provides an understanding of Washington’s relentless threats directed against Venezuela. Please forward this article.

First published on March 11, 2013, following the death of Hugo Chavez.

President Hugo Chavez, who died on March 5, 2013 of cancer at age 58, marked forever the history of Venezuela and Latin America.

1. Never in the history of Latin America, has a political leader had such incontestable democratic legitimacy. Since coming to power in 1999, there were 16 elections in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez won 15, the last on October 7, 2012. He defeated his rivals with a margin of 10-20 percentage points.

2. All international bodies, from the European Union to the Organization of American States, to the Union of South American Nations and the Carter Center, were unanimous in recognizing the transparency of the vote counts.

3. James Carter, former U.S. President, declared that Venezuela’s electoral system was “the best in the world.”

4. Universal access to education introduced in 1998 had exceptional results. About 1.5 million Venezuelans learned to read and write thanks to the literacy campaign called Mission Robinson I.

5. In December 2005, UNESCO said that Venezuela had eradicated illiteracy.

6. The number of children attending school increased from 6 million in 1998 to 13 million in 2011 and the enrollment rate is now 93.2%.

7. Mission Robinson II was launched to bring the entire population up to secondary level. Thus, the rate of secondary school enrollment rose from 53.6% in 2000 to 73.3% in 2011.

8. Missions Ribas and Sucre allowed tens of thousands of young adults to undertake university studies. Thus, the number of tertiary students increased from 895,000 in 2000 to 2.3 million in 2011, assisted by the creation of new universities.

9. With regard to health, they created the National Public System to ensure free access to health care for all Venezuelans. Between 2005 and 2012, 7873 new medical centers were created in Venezuela.

10. The number of doctors increased from 20 per 100,000 population in 1999 to 80 per 100,000 in 2010, or an increase of 400%.

11. Mission Barrio Adentro I provided 534 million medical consultations. About 17 million people were attended, while in 1998 less than 3 million people had regular access to health. 1.7 million lives were saved, between 2003 and 2011.

 

 

12. The infant mortality rate fell from 19.1 per thousand in 1999 to 10 per thousand in 2012, a reduction of 49%.

13. Average life expectancy increased from 72.2 years in 1999 to 74.3 years in 2011.

14. Thanks to Operation Miracle, launched in 2004, 1.5 million Venezuelans who were victims of cataracts or other eye diseases, regained their sight.

15. From 1999 to 2011, the poverty rate decreased from 42.8% to 26.5% and the rate of extreme poverty fell from 16.6% in 1999 to 7% in 2011.

16. In the rankings of the Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP), Venezuela jumped from 83 in 2000 (0.656) at position 73 in 2011 (0.735), and entered into the category Nations with ‘High HDI’.

17. The GINI coefficient, which allows calculation of inequality in a country, fell from 0.46 in 1999 to 0.39 in 2011.

18. According to the UNDP, Venezuela holds the lowest recorded Gini coefficient in Latin America, that is, Venezuela is the country in the region with the least inequality.

19. Child malnutrition was reduced by 40% since 1999.

20. In 1999, 82% of the population had access to safe drinking water. Now it is 95%.

21. Under President Chavez social expenditures increased by 60.6%.

22. Before 1999, only 387,000 elderly people received a pension. Now the figure is 2.1 million.

23. Since 1999, 700,000 homes have been built in Venezuela.

24. Since 1999, the government provided / returned more than one million hectares of land to Aboriginal people.

25. Land reform enabled tens of thousands of farmers to own their land. In total, Venezuela distributed more than 3 million hectares.

26. In 1999, Venezuela was producing 51% of food consumed. In 2012, production was 71%, while food consumption increased by 81% since 1999. If consumption of 2012 was similar to that of 1999, Venezuela produced 140% of the food it consumed.

27. Since 1999, the average calories consumed by Venezuelans increased by 50% thanks to the Food Mission that created a chain of 22,000 food stores (MERCAL, Houses Food, Red PDVAL), where products are subsidized up to 30%. Meat consumption increased by 75% since 1999.

28. Five million children now receive free meals through the School Feeding Programme. The figure was 250,000 in 1999.

29. The malnutrition rate fell from 21% in 1998 to less than 3% in 2012.

30. According to the FAO, Venezuela is the most advanced country in Latin America and the Caribbean in the erradication of hunger.

31. The nationalization of the oil company PDVSA in 2003 allowed Venezuela to regain its energy sovereignty.

32. The nationalization of the electrical and telecommunications sectors (CANTV and Electricidad de Caracas) allowed the end of private monopolies and guaranteed universal access to these services.

33. Since 1999, more than 50,000 cooperatives have been created in all sectors of the economy.

34. The unemployment rate fell from 15.2% in 1998 to 6.4% in 2012, with the creation of more than 4 million jobs.

35. The minimum wage increased from 100 bolivars ($ 16) in 1998 to 247.52 bolivars ($ 330) in 2012, ie an increase of over 2,000%. This is the highest minimum wage in Latin America.

36. In 1999, 65% of the workforce earned the minimum wage. In 2012 only 21.1% of workers have only this level of pay.

37. Adults at a certain age who have never worked still get an income equivalent to 60% of the minimum wage.

38. Women without income and disabled people receive a pension equivalent to 80% of the minimum wage.

39. Working hours were reduced to 6 hours a day and 36 hours per week, without loss of pay.

40. Public debt fell from 45% of GDP in 1998 to 20% in 2011. Venezuela withdrew from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, after early repayment of all its debts.

41. In 2012, the growth rate was 5.5% in Venezuela, one of the highest in the world.

42. GDP per capita rose from $ 4,100 in 1999 to $ 10,810 in 2011.

43. According to the annual World Happiness 2012, Venezuela is the second happiest country in Latin America, behind Costa Rica, and the nineteenth worldwide, ahead of Germany and Spain.

44. Venezuela offers more direct support to the American continent than the United States. In 2007, Chávez spent more than 8,800 million dollars in grants, loans and energy aid as against 3,000 million from the Bush administration.

45. For the first time in its history, Venezuela has its own satellites (Bolivar and Miranda) and is now sovereign in the field of space technology. The entire country has internet and telecommunications coverage.

46. The creation of Petrocaribe in 2005 allows 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, or 90 million people, secure energy supply, by oil subsidies of between 40% to 60%.

47. Venezuela also provides assistance to disadvantaged communities in the United States by providing fuel at subsidized rates.

48. The creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in 2004 between Cuba and Venezuela laid the foundations of an inclusive alliance based on cooperation and reciprocity. It now comprises eight member countries which places the human being in the center of the social project, with the aim of combating poverty and social exclusion.

49. Hugo Chavez was at the heart of the creation in 2011 of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) which brings together for the first time the 33 nations of the region, emancipated from the tutelage of the United States and Canada.

50. Hugo Chavez played a key role in the peace process in Colombia. According to President Juan Manuel Santos, “if we go into a solid peace project, with clear and concrete progress, progress achieved ever before with the FARC, is also due to the dedication and commitment of Chavez and the government of Venezuela.”
Translation by Tim Anderson

 

First published by Global Research in March 2013

The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was warned by Fidel Castro to be careful of a very specific attack, namely a quick jab from an infected needle. Such a warning coming from a leader who has reportedly been the target of CIA assassination plots more than 600 times in over 50 years, was sure to be heeded.

Was the illness of Hugo Chavez a completely deniable assassination by the CIA? William Blum spoke with the VOR’s John Robles and discussed this issue and more.

Robles: I’ve read your Anti-Empire report regarding Hugo Chavez. Can you give us your comments on speculation that he was assassinated by the CIA?

Blum: I cannot prove it of course, but I believe he was. It would be totally in keeping with the entire history of the CIA and its attitude towards people like Hugo Chavez.

The CIA has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders and successfully at least half the time. And very few of them were as despised by the US government as Chavez was, I would say. So, there would be no reason at all to expect that the CIA would not at least plan on killing, and the nature of his ailment is very odd.

He went from a cancer, which would not go away despite several sessions of chemotherapy and what have you. Then it went to serious lung infections, which would not go away no matter what they did. And then it went to, suddenly, a massive heart attack. All in the same man with no apparent cause, he was only 58-years-old, and as far as we know he was a very healthy until this happened, it is all very odd.

And given the great motivation that the US Government and the persons in the CIA has put for killing a man like Hugo Chavez, I’m pretty sure that the CIA played a role in this.

Robles: Do you know or have you heard of any credible new technology or new programs that could deliver such a cancer?

Blum: The means would be a needle with a quick, sharp jab and what you need is getting one person close enough to Chavez to do that.

Chavez was always in the public eye, he was always embracing people. There must have been countless occasions in the past few years when he was vulnerable to a quick jab by a needle that would be the method of transmitting the ailments.

Robles: Did he ever complain that he had been poked by something in public? Were there any reports of anything like that happening that you had heard about?

Blum: He did mention that Fidel Castro warned him about just that. He said: “A quick jab with a needle, and they’ll do…I don’t know what!” Actually he was told by Fidel.

Robles: A quick jab with a needle. Do you think that happened with Fidel because he had become very ill?

Blum: Well, Fidel…According to Cuban intelligence, there were more than 600 attempts on the life of Fidel Castro by the CIA. There is an entire book on that subject by Cuban intelligence.

And many of the methods were pretty bizarre, including an exploding cigar, but over the course of 50 years the Cubans claim there were more than 600 attempts on his life and it may have taken just one with Chavez.

Robles: Have you heard anything from your sources or from where you get some of your information? Have you heard anything detailing any connection between these two US Air Force attaches that were expelled from the country and the death of Hugo Chavez?

Blum: No. I would assume that there is a connection but I don’t know if the Venezuelan government has actually said so.

Getting back to Chavez’s case, we have to keep in mind that four other South American leaders, prominent people on the left, all came down with cancer within the past year or two.

Robles: I think it was seven, wasn’t it, altogether?

Blum: The four that I named in my report…You can add the ones that you know just for my information… were Cristina Fernandez…

Robles: De Kirchner, right…

Blum: of Argentina, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, the former Brazilian head of state Lula da Silva. Who would you add into that list?

Robles: Well, and then of course Hugo Chavez himself…

Blum: Castro is one of them…

Robles: I would add Castro to the list and Kirchner’s husband who died of a mysterious heart attack as well.

Blum: Right.

Robles: We might add that as a mysterious illness, not exactly a cancer but…

Blum: Right! If the CIA was involved it doesn’t have to be cancer necessarily of course.

Robles: Oh, sure, it could be anything. Have you heard anything about cancer strains or any kind of killing weapons like this, any kind of biological weapons that would give maybe cancer-like symptoms, not exactly a certain type of cancer?

Blum: I very well may have read of such over the years. I have read so much about the CIA, but at the moment I can’t think of anything to supply you with that information. Although we do know, it is well known, that for decades the CIA was looking for a method of killing somebody which would not leave a trace. The CIA itself has used those words. For the entire period of the Cold War that was a major stated project of the CIA. But where that stands today, I have no idea.

Robles: Yes, of course that is all very secret and no one is going to talk about it, but perhaps there are some echoes or some whispers? Maybe somebody has come out and said something? What other reasons would you give to back up the argument that he was assassinated?

Blum: I will mention there is no one in the entire universe who was more hated, no leader more hated than Chavez was by the US government. In the eyes of the US power that be, Chavez was worse than Fidel Castro and Salvador Allende.

Robles: Why was he so hated?

Blum: Because he was the most outspoken leader in the world when it came to criticizing US foreign policy. He never pulled his punches for a moment, he made a claim that it was all crimes against humanity and the US leaders were war criminals, and he said so explicitly. It is unusual for a head of state to be talking that way. And at the UN he attacked Bush in front of the whole world.

Robles: Oh yes, I remember he said that the Devil had been there the day before or something, and it still smelled like sulfur.

Blum: Yes, Bush had spoken to the UN before Chavez from the same platform. And Chavez said there was a smell of sulfur in the air because of that.

Robles: That’s usually the domain of the United States, I mean… Isn’t it? I mean Bush was calling everybody the axis of evil, and all this stuff, branding everyone evil. Wasn’t that kind of a shock to see the same thing done to an American leader?

Blum: Yeah, it is a shock for anyone under any circumstances to be so outspoken in the criticism of the US foreign policy. It is a point in Chavez’s favor that he could have the honesty and the courage to say such things, which very much needed to be said.

Robles: So, you supported the way he stood up?

Blum: Well, in general yes. I think there certainly were times when he may have overdone it, even for me. I mean, he felt obliged to comment on everything under the sun, and I thought several times that he could have held off on saying certain things, they were not serving any good purpose. But that’s a minor criticism of his overall marvelous record.

Robles: You say he had a marvelous record. What do you think were his major achievements in your opinion?

Blum: What he’s brought to the poor people of Venezuela in the way of education and healthcare, and housing, and what have you. And what he brought to the rest of the South America, he formed various anti-US empire blocs which stood in the way of expansion of the US influence.

He and others formed a new…A counter to the OAS, the Organization of American States, which for decades has been dominated and corrupted by the US and Canada. And they formed a new organization in South America excluding the US and Canada. So it was that simple.

Robles: Do you think his achievements will continue or do you think the US will be successful in rolling back everything he did? Which of course I assume they would want to.

Blum: Yes, they would want to. But if Maduro who was chosen and backed by Chavez, wins, and he is expected to win in the election next month, then most of it will continue, I assume.

NATO website and articles:
http://rickrozoff. wordpress. com

The Trump administration announced on February 1 that the country was suspending its participation in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF treaty) for 180 days pending a final withdrawal. Vladimir Putin, in a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu, announced on Saturday that the Russian Federation is also suspending its participation in the treaty in a mirror response to Washington’s unilateral decision.

The INF treaty was signed by the US and the USSR in 1987 at the height of negotiations that had begun years earlier and directly involved the leaders of the two countries. The treaty entered into force in 1988, eliminating missiles with a range of 500-1,000 kilometers (short to medium range) and 1,000-5,500 km (intermediate range). The treaty has always concerned land-based launchers and never sea- or air-launched missiles, a legacy of a bygone era where most nuclear warheads were positioned on missiles launched from the mainland. In subsequent years, thanks to technological advances, solutions like submarines, stealth bombers and the possibility of miniaturizing nuclear warheads became increasingly important in the military doctrines of both the US and Russia, nullifying the basis on which the INF treaty was initially signed, which was to avert a direct confrontation between Washington and Moscow on the European continent.

The INF treaty, together with the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks/Treaty (SALT treaty), signed by Washington and Moscow on the issue of long-range missiles, aimed to create a safer global environment by seeking to avoid the prospect of a nuclear exchange. It was also aimed at reducing the number of nuclear warheads owned by the US and the USSR, as well as generally reducing proliferation in line with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In particular, the INF treaty guaranteed a lasting peace on the European continent through Washington not deploying nuclear weapons in Europe aimed at the USSR and Moscow in turn not deploying systems capable of eliminating these European-based US missiles. The initial promoters of an INF agreement were obviously the European countries, who would have found themselves in the middle of a nuclear apocalypse in the event of war between Moscow and Washington.

With 1970s technology, the time between the launch and impact of a missile with a range of 500-5500 km was about 10-12 minutes; that was the amount of time Moscow and Washington’s leaders had during the Cold War to decide whether to retaliate and thereby launch WWIII. With today’s technology, the time to decide would probably be reduced to less than 5 minutes, making it all the more difficult to avert a nuclear exchange in the event of an accident or miscalculation. The INF treaty was thus a life-insurance policy for humanity that decreased the statistical probability of nuclear provocation or of an accident.

During the Cold War, the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) was central to the nuclear doctrines of the two great powers. The INF treaty served the purpose of taking concrete steps towards greatly reducing the possibility of mutually assured destruction.

With the unilateral withdrawal from the treaty by the US, all these safeguards and guarantees are lost, with all the consequences that ensue from such a reckless as dangerous act.

The American and European mainstream media have applauded the withdrawal from the INF, in the same way that they have applauded Trump whenever he has been pro-war. Former CIA and military personnel, as well as the former CEO’s of major arms manufacturers, have been eager to share their views as “experts”, literally invading television programs and thereby showing why they are paid lots of money to lobby for the military-industrial complex. They praised Trump’s move, blaming Moscow for the ending of the treaty, but in the end revealing the covert geopolitical reason why Washington decided to end the deal, namely, the fact that China is not bound by the same treaty.

These vaunted experts on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News alluded to the danger of Washington being bound by such a treaty while Beijing was not, thereby limiting Washington’s options in the Asia-Pacific. Trump and his staff view the INF treaty as an intolerable imposition that ties America’s hands in its efforts to contain China.

US foreign policy, especially under this administration, sees every kind of agreement, past or future, as a concession, and therefore a sign of weakness. Trump and his generals drafted the National Defense Posture, stating that the time of great-power competition is back and that Washington’s peer competitors were Moscow and Beijing. The return of great-power competition is an excuse to “strengthen the military”, as Trumps loves to say, and his decision is in line with the new defense posture review Trump approved, seeking to confront every adversary in any domain by all means. The newly announced Space Force is a reflection of this, seeking to put weapons in space in violation of all existing treaties. At the same time, the development of tactical nuclear weapons also expands the use of nuclear weapons in certain circumstances, pushing the envelope on the prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons. These new programs will end up draining even more money from taxpayers to fill the coffers of shareholders, CEOs and lobbyists for the big arms manufacturers.

To justify the withdrawal from the INF, the military-industrial complex, which drives US foreign policy, needed a suitable justification. Of course in a time of anti-Russia hysteria, the choice was obvious. Since 2014, the attention of so-called US experts has been focused on the 9M729 missile in particular, an evolution of the 9M728, used by the Iskander-K weapons system, a Russian technological gem with few equals.

NPO Novator, the company that produces the 9M729, reassures that the missile does not violate the INF treaty and has a range shorter than the 500 km limit (470 km). Moscow even organized an exhibition open to the public, with the missile on display along with its main features, inviting Washington to officially send its experts to view the characteristics of the 9M729. Washington refused, knowing full well that the missile does not violate the the INF, preferring instead to use the 9M729 as an excuse to abandonment the treaty.

Washington will suspend its participation in the treaty within 180 days, and Moscow has responded with an identical measure. With hysteria surrounding Russia (Russiagate) and the impossibility of Trump and Putin engaging in dialogue following the complete sabotaging of relations between Moscow and Washington, it is almost impossible that a fruitful dialogue can be created to seal a new agreement in the remaining 180 days. This, however, is not even the basic objective of the Trump administration. Unofficially, Trump says that he would rather include Beijing in the agreement with Moscow. But knowing that this goal is impossible to achieve, he is pursuing his broader objective of withdrawing the US from all major treaties, including the INF treaty.

In the specific case of withdrawing from the INF, there is little need to raise a big hue and cry as was the case with the Paris Agreement, as the media-intelligence-military apparatus has a lot to gain from this. This just goes to show how the MSM and their rolled-out “experts” thrive on war and the money that is to be made from it. There is a major psyop going on to convince the American public that the withdrawal from the INF treaty, and the resulting arms race with major nuclear-armed countries, is apparently the best way to keep America safe!

The withdrawal from the INF treaty opens the gates for a new nuclear-arms race that will bring great advantages to arms industries, with great returns for shareholders, executives and CEOs, all paid for by the American taxpayer. It is more than probable that the official defense budget in 2020, having to cover for the development of weapons previously prohibited by the INF treaty, could be more than 800 billion dollars, seeing an increase of tens of billions of dollars in the space of 12 months.

Moscow has for several years been accusing the US of malfeasance regarding various aspects of nuclear-weapons agreements. Russia’s defence minister stated to Tass News Agency:

“Two years before making public unfounded accusations against Russia of alleged INF Treaty violations, Washington not only took a decision, but also started preparations to production of missiles of intermediate and shorter range banned by the Treaty. Starting already June 2017, the program of expansion and upgrade of production facilities with the aims of developing intermediate and shorter range missiles banned by the Treaty was launched at Raytheon’s plant in the city of Tucson, Arizona. The plant is a major diversified enterprise of the US aerospace industry that produces almost all types of missile weapons. Over the past two years the space of the plant has increased by 44% – from 55,000 to 79,000 square meters, while the number of employees is going to rise by almost 2,000 people, according to official statements. Almost at the same time as production facilities expanded, on November 2017, Congress provided the first tranche amounting to $58 mln to Pentagon, directly pointing at the development of a land-based missile of intermediate range. Consequently, the nature and time of the works demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the US administration decided to withdraw from the INF Treaty several years before unfounded accusations against Russia of violating the Treaty were made public.”

The unilateral withdrawal by George W. Bush from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) in 2002, citing the need for the US to protect itself from countries belonging to the Axis of Evil (Iran, Iraq, North Korea), was an excuse to deploy the Aegis system (land- or sea-based) in strategic areas around the Russian Federation, so as to diminish Moscow’s deterrent capacity for a nuclear second strike.

The Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System (Aegis BMD) is designed to be able to theoretically intercept Russian missiles in their initial boost phase, the period when they are the most vulnerable. Moscow has been openly questioning the rationale for the Aegis system deployed in Romania. According to Russian military experts, the possibility of reprogramming the system from defensive to offensive, replacing the conventional warheads used for intercepting missiles with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, could be undertaken within an hour, without the Russian Federation possibly being aware of it. Putin has cited this specific case and its technical possibility more than once when pointing out that the US is already in violation of the INF treaty by deploying such systems in Romania.

The US unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002 in order to be able to disguise the deployment of an offensive system under the guise of an ABM system for the purported purposes of defending against Iran, thereby de facto violating the INF treaty, an excess of arrogance and presumption. Such perfidy caused Putin to make his famous 2007 Munich speech, where he warned the US and her allies of the consequences of reneging on such treaties and agreements. Deploying defensive systems close to the Russian border that can easily be converted into offensive ones with a nuclear capacity was a red line that could not be crossed.

At the time the West ignored Putin’s warnings, dismissive of the Russian leader. But only a few months ago, the Russian Federation finally showed the world that the warnings issued in 2007 were not empty bluster. Hypersonic weapons, a submarine drone and other cutting-edge systems were presented by Putin in March 2018, shocking Western military planners and analysts who had not taken Putin seriously back in 2007. These new technological breakthroughs provide Russia with the ability to eliminate targets by kinetic, conventional or nuclear means. Such offensive deployments near the Russian border as the ABM systems in Romania can now be eliminated within the space of a few minutes, with no possibility of being intercepted.

Putin recently said:

“The (US) has announced research and development works, and we will do the same. I agree with the Defense Ministry’s proposals to start the work on ‘landing’ Kalibr missiles and developing a new area to create a land-based hypersonic missile with intermediate range.”

Putin has already put his military cards on the table, warning 10 years ago what would happen if Washington continued in its duplicitous direction. As Putin said in March 2018: “They did not listen to us in 2007. They will listen to us now”.

The consequences of withdrawing from the INF treaty fall most heavily on the shoulders of the Europeans. Federica Mogherini indicated deep concern over Washington’s decision, as well as the new super-weapons that were either being tested or were already operational in Russia, causing consternation amongst the Western military establishment that had thought that Putin was bluffing in March 2018 when he spoke about hypersonic weapons.

The US military-industrial complex is rejoicing at the prospect of money rained down as a result of this withdrawal from the INF treaty. But in Europe (with the exception of Romania and Poland), nobody is too keen to welcome US missiles that have no defense against Russian hypersonic weapons. NATO’s trans-Atlantic arms lobby will try to push as many European countries as possible towards a new Cold War, with US weapons deployed and aimed at Moscow. It will be fun to see the reactions of European citizens facing the prospect of being annihilated by Russian missiles simply to please the CEOs and shareholders of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. No doubt there will be some European politicians in countries like Poland keen to scream about the “Russian threat”, ready to throw tens of billions worth of Polish taxpayers’ money into useless and ineffective projects for the purposes of pleasing their American friends.

Are US generals even aware of how idiotic it is for the US to withdraw from the INF for Washington? Moscow is already ahead in the development of such systems, both land-based but above all sea- and air-launched, without forgetting the hypersonic variants of its conventional or nuclear missiles. Washington has a huge gap to close, exacerbated by the fact that in spite of heavy spending over many years, there is little to show for it as a result of massive corruption in the research-and-development process. This is not to mention the fact that there are few European countries willing to host offensive missile systems aimed at Russia. In reality, there is little real advantage for Washington in withdrawing from the INF treaty, other than to enrich arms manufacturers. It diminishes US military options strategically while expanding those of Beijing and Moscow, even as the latter oppose Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the treaty.

The hope of expanding the INF treaty to include the US, Russia, China and the EU appears slim due to Washington’s intransigence. Washington only aims to increase expenditure for the development of weapons prohibited by the treaty, and in strategic terms, improbably hopes to find some Asian and European countries willing to host these systems aimed against China and Russia.

The world is certainly more dangerous following Washington’s decision, heading in a direction where there are less and less rules while there are more nuclear powers. For decades, the United States has been trying to achieve nuclear supremacy by overcoming the limitations of MAD, whereby Washington would be able to carry out a decapitating nuclear first strike without worrying about an opponent’s ability to launch a retaliatory second strike. It is precisely this type of thinking that is bringing humanity closer to the brink of destruction from a nuclear accident or miscalculation. The miniaturization of nuclear warheads and the apparently limited nature of “tactical nukes” further encourages the justification for using such weapons.

Moscow’s decision in 2007 to develop state-of-the-art weapons and focus on new technologies like hypersonic missiles guarantees that Russia and her allies have an effective deterrent against the attempts of the US to alter the nuclear balance of power, which otherwise threatens the future of humanity.

The withdrawal from the INF treaty is another worrying sign of the willingness of the US to push the world to the brink of catastrophe, simply for the purposes of enriching the CEOs and shareholders of it arms manufacturers through a nuclear arms race.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCF

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“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   

A Review of Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas by Cass Sunstein (based on an earlier paper co-authored with Adrian Vermeule); In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Nemeth; and Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski

***

On January 25 2018 YouTube unleashed the latest salvo in the war on conspiracy theories, saying

“we’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”

At first glance that sounds reasonable. Nobody wants YouTube or anyone else to recommend bad information. And almost everyone agrees that phony miracle cures, flat earthism, and blatantly false claims about 9/11 and other historical events are undesirable.

But if we stop and seriously consider those words, we notice a couple of problems. First, the word “recommend” is not just misleading but mendacious. YouTube obviously doesn’t really recommend anything. When it says it does, it is lying.

When you watch YouTube videos, the YouTube search engine algorithm displays links to other videos that you are likely to be interested in. These obviously do not constitute “recommendations” by YouTube itself, which exercises no editorial oversight over content posted by users. (Or at least it didn’t until it joined the war on conspiracy theories.)

The second and larger problem is that while there may be near-universal agreement among reasonable people that flat-earthism is wrong, there is only modest agreement regarding which health approaches constitute “phony miracle cures” and which do not. Far less is there any agreement on “claims about 9/11 and other historical events.” (Thus far the only real attempt to forge an informed consensus about 9/11 is the 9/11 Consensus Panel’s study—but it seems unlikely that YouTube will be using the Consensus Panel to determine which videos to “recommend”!)

YouTube’s policy shift is the latest symptom of a larger movement by Western elites to—as Obama’s Information Czar Cass Sunstein put it—“disable the purveyors of conspiracy theories.” Sunstein and co-author Adrian Vermeule’s 2008 paper “Conspiracy Theories,” critiqued by David Ray Griffin in 2010 and developed into a 2016 book, represents a panicked reaction to the success of the 9/11 truth movement. (By 2006, 36% of Americans thought it likely that 9/11 was an inside job designed to launch wars in the Middle East, according to a Scripps poll.)

Sunstein and Vermuele begin their abstract:

Many millions of people hold (sic) conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law.

Sunstein argues that conspiracy theories (i.e. the 9/11 truth movement) are so dangerous that some day they may have to be banned by law. While awaiting that day, or perhaps in preparation for it, the government should “disable the purveyors of conspiracy theories” through various techniques including “cognitive infiltration” of 9/11 truth groups. Such “cognitive infiltration,” Sunstein writes, could have various aims including the promotion of “beneficial cognitive diversity” within the truth movement.

What sort of “cognitive diversity” would Cass Sunstein consider “beneficial”? Perhaps 9/11 truth groups that had been “cognitively infiltrated” by spooks posing as flat-earthers would harbor that sort of “beneficial” diversity? That would explain the plethora of expensive, high-production-values flat earth videos that have been blasted at the 9/11 truth community since 2008.

Why does Sunstein think “conspiracy theories” are so dangerous they need to be suppressed by government infiltrators, and perhaps eventually outlawed—which would necessitate revoking the First Amendment? Obviously conspiracism must present some extraordinary threat. So what might that threat be? Oddly, he never explains. Instead he briefly mentions, in vapidly nebulous terms, about “serious risks including the risk of violence.” But he presents no serious evidence that 9/11 truth causes violence. Nor does he explain what the other “serious risks” could possibly be.

Why did such highly accomplished academicians as Sunstein and Vermuele produce such an unhinged, incoherent, poorly-supported screed? How could Harvard and the University of Chicago publish such nonsense? Why would it be deemed worthy of development into a book? Why did the authors identify an alleged problem, present no evidence that it even is a problem, yet advocate outrageously illegal and unconstitutional government action to solve the non-problem?

The too-obvious answer, of course, is that they must realize that 9/11 was in fact a US-Israeli false flag operation. The 9/11 truth movement, in that case, would be a threat not because it is wrong, but because it is right. To the extent that Americans know or suspect the truth, the US government will undoubtedly find it harder to pursue various “national security” objectives. Ergo, 9/11 “conspiracy theories” are a threat to national security, and extreme measures are required to combat them. But since we can’t just burn the First Amendment overnight, we must instead take a gradual and covert “boil the frog” approach, featuring plenty of cointelpro-style infiltration and misdirection. “Cognitive infiltration” of internet platforms to stop the conspiracy contagion would also fit the bill.

It is quite possible, perhaps even likely, that Sunstein and Vermeule are indeed well-informed and Machievellian. But it is also conceivable that they are, at least when it comes to 9/11 and “conspiracy theories,” as muddle-headed as they appear. Their irrational panic could be an example of the bad thinking that emerges from groups that reflexively reject dissent. (Another, larger example of this kind of bad thinking comes to mind: America’s disastrous post-9/11 policies.)

The counterintuitive truth is that embracing and carefully listening to radical dissenters is in fact good policy, whether you are a government, a corporation, or any other kind of group. Ignoring or suppressing dissent produces muddled, superficial thinking and bad decisions. Surprisingly, this turns out to be the case even when the dissenters are wrong.

Scientific evidence for the value of dissent is beautifully summarized in Charlan Nemeth’s In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business (Basic Books, 2018). Nemeth, a psychology professor at UC-Berkeley, summarizes decades of research on group dynamics showing that groups that feature passionate, radical dissent deliberate better, reach better conclusions, and take better actions than those that do not—even when the dissenter is wrong.

Nemeth begins with a case where dissent would likely have saved lives: the crash of United Airlines Flight 173 in December, 1978. As the plane neared its Portland destination, the possibility of a problem with the landing gear arose. The captain focused on trying to determine the condition of the landing gear as the plane circled the airport. Typical air crew group dynamics, in which the whole crew defers to the captain, led to a groupthink bubble in which nobody spoke up as the needle on the fuel gauge approached “E.” Had the crew included even one natural “troublemaker”—the kind of aviator who joins Pilots for 9/11 truth—there almost certainly would have been more divergent thinking. Someone would have spoken up about the fuel issue, and a tragic crash would have been averted.

Since 9/11, American decision-making elites have entered the same kind of bubble and engaged in the same kind of groupthink. For them, no serious dissent on such issues as what really happened on 9/11, and whether a “war on terror” makes sense, is permitted. The predictable result has been bad thinking and worse decisions. From the vantage point of Sunstein and Vermeule, deep inside the bubble, the potentially bubble-popping, consensus-shredding threat of 9/11 truth must appear radically destabilizing. To even consider the possibility that the 9/11 truthers are right might set off a stampede of critical reflection that would radically undermine the entire set of policies pursued for the past 17 years. This prospect may so terrify Sunstein and Vermeule that it paralyzes their ability to think. Talk about “crippled epistemology”!

Do Sunstein and Vermeule really think their program for suppressing “conspiracy theories” will be beneficial? Do YouTube’s decision-makers really believe that tweaking their algorithms to support the official story will protect us from bad information? If so, they are all doubly wrong. First, they are wrong in their unexamined assumption that 9/11 truth and “conspiracy theories” in general are “blatantly false.” No honest person with critical thinking skills who weighs the merits of the best work on both sides of the question can possibly avoid the realization that the 9/11 truth movement is right. The same is true regarding the serial assassinations of America’s best leaders during the 1960s. Many other “conspiracy theories,” perhaps the majority of the best-known ones, are also likely true, as readers of Ron Unz’s American Pravda series are discovering.

Second, and less obviously, those who would suppress conspiracy theories are wrong even in their belief that suppressing false conspiracy theories is good public policy. As Nemeth shows, social science is unambiguous in its finding that any group featuring at least one passionate, radical dissenter will deliberate better, reach sounder conclusions, and act more effectively than it would have without the dissenter. This holds even if the dissenter is wrong—even wildly wrong.

The overabundance of slick, hypnotic flat earth videos, if they are indeed weaponized cointelpro strikes against the truth movement, may be unfortunate. But the existence of the occasional flat earther may be more beneficial than harmful. The findings summarized by Nemeth suggest that a science study group with one flat earther among the students would probably learn geography and astronomy better than they would have without the madly passionate dissenter.

We could at least partially solve the real problem—bad groupthink—through promoting genuinely beneficial cognitive diversity. YouTube algorithms should indeed be tweaked to puncture the groupthink bubbles that emerge based on user preferences. Someone who watches lots of 9/11 truther videos should indeed be exposed to dissent, in the form of the best arguments on the other side of the issue—not that there are any very good ones, as I have discovered after spending 15 years searching for them!

But the same goes for those who watch videos that explicitly or implicitly accept the official story. Anyone who watches more than a few pro-official-story videos (and this would include almost all mainstream coverage of anything related to 9/11 and the “war on terror”) should get YouTube “suggestions” for such videos as September 11: The New Pearl Harbor, 9/11 Mysteries, and the work of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Exposure to even those “truthers” who are more passionate than critical or well-informed would benefit people who believe the official story, according to Nemeth’s research, by stimulating them to deliberate more thoughtfully and to question facile assumptions.

The same goes for other issues and perspectives. Fox News viewers should get “suggestions” for good material, especially passionate dissent, from the left side of the political spectrum. MSNBC viewers should get “suggestions” for good material from the right. Both groups should get “suggestions” to look at genuinely independent, alternative media brimming with passionate dissidents—outlets like the Unz Review!

Unfortunately things are moving in the opposite direction. YouTube’s effort to make “conspiracy videos” invisible is being pushed by powerful lobbies, especially the Zionist lobby, which seems dedicated to singlehandedly destroying the Western tradition of freedom of expression.

Nemeth and colleagues’ findings that “conspiracy theories” and other forms of passionate dissent are not just beneficial, but in fact an invaluable resource, are apparently unknown to the anti-conspiracy-theory cottage industry that has metastasized in the bowels of the Western academy. The brand-new bible of the academic anti-conspiracy-theory industry is Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them (Oxford University Press, 2019).

Editor Joseph Uscinski’s introduction begins by listing alleged dangers of conspiracism: “In democracies, conspiracy theories can drive majorities to make horrible decisions backed by the use of legitimate force. Conspiracy beliefs can conversely encourage abstention. Those who believe the system is rigged will be less willing to take part in it. Conspiracy theories form the basis for some people’s medical decisions; this can be dangerous not only for them but for others as well. For a select few believers, conspiracy theories are instructions to use violence.”

Uscinski is certainly right that conspiracy theories can incite “horrible decisions” to use “legitimate force” and “violence.” Every major American foreign war since 1846 has been sold to the public by an official theory, backed by a frenetic media campaign, of a foreign conspiracy to attack the United States. And all of these Official Conspiracy Theories (OCTs)—including the theory that Mexico conspired to invade the United States in 1846, that Spain conspired to sink the USS Maine in 1898, that Germany conspired with Mexico to invade the United States in 1917, that Japan conspired unbeknownst to peace-seeking US leaders to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, that North Vietnam conspired to attack the US Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, and that 19 Arabs backed by Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and everybody else Israel doesn’t like conspired to attack the US in 2001—were false or deceptive.

Well over 100 million people have been killed in the violence unleashed by these and other Official Conspiracy Theories. Had the passionate dissenters been heeded, and the truths they told about who really conspires to create war-trigger public relations stunts been understood, none of those hundred-million-plus murders need have happened.

Though Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them generally pathologizes the conspiracy theories of dissidents while ignoring the vastly more harmful theories of official propagandists, its 31 essays include several that question that outlook. In “What We Mean When We Say ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Jesse Walker, books editor of Reason Magazine, exposes the bias that permeates the field, pointing out that many official conspiracy theories, including several about Osama Bin Laden and 9/11-anthrax, were at least as ludicrously false and delusional as anything believed by marginalized dissidents.

In “Media Marginalization of Racial Minorities: ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ in U.S. Ghettos and on the ‘Arab Street’” Martin Orr and Gina Husting go one step further:

“The epithet ‘conspiracy theorist’ is used to tarnish those who challenge authority and power. Often, it is tinged with racial undertones: it is used to demean whole groups of people in the news and to silence, stigmatize, or belittle foreign and minority voices.” (p.82)

Unfortunately, though Orr and Husting devote a whole section of their article to “Conspiracy Theories in the Muslim World” and defend Muslim conspiracists against the likes of Thomas Friedman, they never squarely face the fact that the reason roughly 80% of Muslims believe 9/11 was an inside job is because the preponderance of evidence supports that interpretation.

Another relatively sensible essay is M R.X. Dentith’s “Conspiracy Theories and Philosophy,” which ably deconstructs the most basic fallacy permeating the whole field of conspiracy theory research: the a priori assumption that a “conspiracy theory” must be false or at least dubious:

“If certain scholars (i.e. the majority represented in this book! –KB) want to make a special case for conspiracy theories, then it is reasonable for the rest of us to ask whether we are playing fair with our terminology, or whether we have baked into our definitions the answers to our research programs.” (p.104). Unfortunately, a few pages later editor Joseph Uscinski sticks his fingers in his ears and plays deaf and dumb, claiming that “the establishment is right far more often than conspiracy theories, largely because their methods are reliable. When conspiracy theorists are right, it is by chance.” He adds that conspiracy theories will inevitably “occasionally lead to disaster” (whatever that means). (p.110).

I hope Uscinski finds the time to read Nemeth’s In Defense of Troublemakers and consider the evidence that passionate dissent is helpful, not harmful. And I hope he will look into the issues Ron Unz addresses in his American Pravda series.

Then again, if he does, he may find himself among those of us exiled from the academy and publishing in The Unz Review.

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Featured image is from The Unz Review

“Oil and gas has already devastated our state’s air quality, water quality and flow, and public health. It’s clear the Trump administration will stop at nothing to sacrifice public interest for private profits.”

***

Just as the government shutdown ended, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management quietly listed many new sites in their attempt to expand the sale of oil and gas leases. Among those sites includes land outside Chaco Culture National Park and other public land revered by Native Americans, the Associated Press reported.

The Great Chaco Region in New Mexico, which includes Chaco Canyon, is a major center of ancient Pueblo culture and a UNESCO World Heritage Site,” EcoWatch reported.

“Oil and gas has already devastated our state’s air quality, water quality and flow, and public health,” Rebecca Sobel, senior climate and energy campaigner for WildEarth Guardians, said. “It’s clear the Trump administration will stop at nothing to sacrifice public interest for private profits.”

Prior intense protests and public pressure regarding cultural and environmental concerns caused former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to postpone a lease sale in the Great Chaco Region.

A new protest period, which will accept public comment, will begin on Feb. 11 and run through Feb. 20. An auction is scheduled for March 28, which will include more than 50 parcels in New Mexico and Oklahoma that will be up for grabs, EcoWatch reported.

About 90 percent of the Great Chaco Region is currently leased, but the New Mexico BLM wants to expand oil and gas development to as close to the park’s 10-miles, no drilling buffer zone, where more fossil fuel can be found, EcoWatch reported.

Newly elected Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, just signed an executive order to combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, many New Mexicans are looking to “newly elected state and federal representatives to finally address fracking impacts.”

“We’re looking to New Mexico’s newly elected state and federal representatives to finally address fracking impacts, and with this week’s Executive Order on Climate and a slew of proposed statewide bills aimed at enforcement and accountability around oil and gas, we hope New Mexico can tun the tide and reign in this dangerous industry, protecting our people and sacred landscapes,” Sobel said.

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Ashley is an editor, social media content manager and writer at NationofChange. Before joining NoC, she was a features reporter at The Daily Breeze – a local newspaper in Southern California – writing a variety of stories on current topics including politics, the economy, human rights, the environment and the arts. Ashley is a transplant from the East Coast calling Los Angeles home.

Featured image is from Dot Nielsen/Flickr

This month’s ORB International Brexit Confidence tracker poll shows 80% of UK adults disapprove of the way the government is handling the Brexit negotiations, the highest figure recorded since this tracker poll began in November 2016

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Full tables are available here, and charts are here,

Methodology:

N=2,014 interviews conducted among a representative sample of the GB adult population February 1st-3rd 2019. The statistical margin of error at the 95% confidence level is + 2.2%.

1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way in which the Government is handling the Brexit negotiations?

• Approve 20% (-5)
• Disapprove 80% (+5)

2. How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statement?  I think the Prime Minister has got the right deal for Britain in the Brexit negotiations

• Strongly agree 3%
• Agree 16%
• Disagree 30%
• Strongly disagree 31%
• Don’t Know 20%

NET

• Agree 18%
• Disagree 62%

3. How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statement?  Britain will be economically better off post Brexit

• Strongly agree 11%
• Agree 26%
• Disagree 19%
• Strongly disagree 23%
• Don’t Know 21%

NET

• Agree 37% (+2)
• Disagree 41% (-1)

4. How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Post-Brexit, I think I personally will be financially better off

• Strongly agree 4%
• Agree 18%
• Disagree 27%
• Strongly disagree 20%
• Don’t Know 31% (-2)

NET

• Agree 22% (+2)
• Disagree 47% (-)

5. How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statement?  Having greater control over immigration is more important than having access to free trade with the EU

• Strongly agree 15%
• Agree 25%
• Disagree 26%
• Strongly disagree 19%
• Don’t Know 15%

NET

• Agree 40%
• Disagree 45%

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Shady anonymous actors are waging an information war manipulating social media with automated posts in an apparent attempt to manufacture a faux consensus for regime change in Venezuela.

***

As the U.S.-backed coup attempt in Venezuela continues to take shape, shady anonymous actors are waging an information war manipulating social media with automated posts in an apparent attempt to manufacture a faux consensus for regime change in the online theater.

If you’ve been on Twitter since January 23, you could be forgiven for thinking that the only pastimes in Venezuela are protesting and replying to anyone and everyone on the platform critical of Washington’s clear collusion with the Venezuelan opposition in its quest for regime change.

Juan Guaido — who had a mere 90,000 followers on Twitter around the time of the coup attempt one year prior, and 340,000 around January 23, 2019 – has since skyrocketed on the platform, currently enjoying a following of more than 1,100,000.

While the phenomenon has not yet been linked to manipulation by the opposition, it raises questions about the online influencers who have tried to turn the previously little-known figure into a household name the world over.

An “immense campaign” and Twitter’s perverse response

Meanwhile, Twitter disinformation researcher and data visualization artist Erin Gallagher uncovered an immense campaign sympathetic to the right-wing Venezuelan opposition that used a variety of tools and applications to artificially inflate the reach of certain posts.

“The Venezuelan opposition is far from censored on Twitter,” she wrote. “To the contrary, their trends generate billions of impressions every day.”

Gallagher’s bombshell report was dropped on Thursday. The following day, Twitter took action — but not against the pro-opposition network. The company banned “764 accounts located in Venezuela” that it said used “spammy” political content “similar to that utilized by potential Russian [Internet Research Agency] accounts” and 1,200 accounts it said “appear” to be “engaged in a state-backed influence campaign targeting domestic [Venezuelan] audiences.” Those accounts have been characterized online as “pro-Maduro.”

The apparent double standard wasn’t confined just to Twitter, however. The Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL), often the mainstream media’s go-to institution of “experts” on such matters, claimed in a blog post that it “did not find clear evidence of automated amplification of hashtags trending around the protests” against Maduro on January 23 (#23E), the day of Maduro’s inauguration, Gallagher noted.

The DFRL post, entitled “Protests Go Viral in Venezuela,” primarily took aim at the government for allegedly censoring the web and perhaps gaming hashtags on Twitter.

DFRL is an arm of the neoconservative Atlantic Council think tank, which is funded by NATO, Gulf monarchies, and the arms industry. Twitter has previously worked closely with the DFRL in countering alleged state-backed disinformation campaigns.

Gallagher wrote that she was “shocked at the contrast between the way DFRLab portrayed Venezuelan social media versus what I’ve been monitoring for 1.5 years.”

In that time, Gallagher discovered a hashtag — #TeamHDP — that was “used by an anonymous group of right-wing political hackers who have attacked the Venezuelan government, leaked documents online,” and doxxed Chavistas. Another hashtag employed by the network was #LaListaJustin, (Justin’s List, which is named after a fake Justin Bieber account that was a primary pusher of #TeamHDP). The #LaListaJustin released hacked documents showing personally identifiable information (such as home addresses, etc.) of Maduro supporters, members of the military, police, and their spouses and families.

The revelation is particularly troubling because the Venezuelan opposition has used vigilantism to enact violent retribution on Chavistas and public officials.

Apparently spearheading the #TeamHDP hashtag is a Miami-based company called DolarToday, which is used by financial websites and media to report on black market exchange rates for Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar. Maduro has previously accused DolarToday of manipulating exchange rates and fueling an economic war against his country

User-to-user network for 18,116 #23E tweets from Jan 24 to Jan 28. Erin Gallagher | Medium

Between January 24 and January 28, DolarToday was a “central influencer of the #23E hashtag,” Gallagher wrote.

The company’s own Twitter account “averages” 349 tweets per day, but picks up steam around uprisings in Venezuela. Gallagher found more than 1,000 tweets per day around the attempted coup.

Beyond its own Twitter account, DolarToday’s tweets are reposted by a network of other accounts. One such artificially amplified message accused the late president Hugo Chavez of being a “perverted drug addict.”

DolarToday has two applications, SWAT Comunicacional and another named after itself. The apps allow users to log in and allow DolarToday to automatically repost the company’s tweets.

Gallagher wrote that she has “never seen anything with such a  tremendous reach” as the Venezuelan opposition #TeamHDP hashtag, which was associated with hacking and doxxing (which is against Twitter’s terms of service.)

The researcher concluded that “Venezuelan opposition social media networks are engaging in inauthentic coordinated activity on Twitter.” Such “coordinated inauthentic activity,” it should be noted, has been the primary explanation given by social-media giants such as Twitter and Facebook as their reason for purging tens of thousands of accounts, including those of independent reporters.

A double standard beta-tested in Syria

Twitter and the DFRL appear to be turning a blind eye to violations of Twitter policy from pro-opposition networks while taking aim at allegedly pro-government disinformation operations, while neither has provided evidence of such a campaign by the government.

In many ways, the war in Syria served as a testing ground for propaganda tools — from the U.S.-funded “civil defense” group White Helmets to U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, who were portrayed as defenders of an anarchist commune in the north.

But Venezuela today exists in an even more precarious position online due to the advent of institutions and “experts” that have made a name for themselves in the frenzy that has followed allegations that Russia used coordinated inauthentic behavior to sway the 2016 presidential elections; even more so because social-media giants like Twitter and Facebook have acquiesced.

For example, back in July, Twitter and Facebook were unaware of any state actors manipulating social media besides Russia. Since then, they have levied such accusations against Iran, and now Venezuela.

With these institutions now revealing their allegiances to the U.S. regime-change machine, and the usual suspects (the Atlantic Council, for example) in full lockstep, it becomes incumbent on social-media users to ignore the “experts” and come to their own conclusions about the facts on the ground in Venezuela.

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

Featured image: A composite image of screenshots of Twitter accounts involved in online Venezuelan opposition social media campaigns. Image | MintPress News

Interview with a Brazilian journalist Rodrigo Craveiro on behalf of Correio Braziliense: (Jan. 30, 2019) on current prospects of Palestinian national movement.

***

Fatah, Hamas, the Future of Statehood and Peace Prospects

Rodrigo Craveiro: With the dissolution of government do you see any risk for unity among all Palestinian factions? Why?

Richard Falk: It is difficult at this stage to interpret the significance of the recent dissolution of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), which serves as the Parliament of the Palestinian Authority that governs the West Bank and enjoys formal recognition as the representive of the Palestinian people internationally. The PLO continues to exist as an umbrella framework to facilitate coordination among Palestinian political factions aside from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have never been associated with the PLO. It seems that dissolution of the PLC is related to the prospect of new leadership of the Palestinian Authority, especially the speculation that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas will soon retire, and be replaced. It is also possible that this move is an attempt by the PA to create a stronger basis for creating an actual Palestinian state in an atmosphere in which the Oslo diplomatic framework has been superseded.

Without the prospect of a diplomatic resolution of the conflict by negotiation between the parties, the Abbas leadership is trying to establish for Palestine the status of an international state by way of its own unilateral moves. Israel on its side it trying by its unilateral initiatives to create its own expanded state that extends Israeli sovereignty over all or most of the West Bank, which remains legally ‘occupied’ despite a variety of fundamental encroachments on Palestinian autonomy. In other words we are witnessing contradictory moves by both Israel and Palestine to achieve their goals by unilateral political moves rather than through international diplomacy under U.S. auspices based on a negotiated agreement reflecting compromise. In the process both the PA and Israel are in the process abandoning earlier pretensions of democratic governance. This move by Abbas to dissolve the PLC is most accurately interpreted as the further de-democratization of Palestine, and the establishment of a more robust autocratic governing structure that does not inspire trust among many Palestinians and their supporters throughout the world. The failure, for instance, of the PA to back BDS is indicative of the gap between global solidarity initiatives and the timid leaders provided the Palestinian national movements by Abbas leadership in Ramallah.

RC: How do you analyze the role of Hamas inside the political life of Palestinian people?

RF: It is again difficult to be too definite about the role of Hamas at this time. This is partly because Hamas is likely affected by the changes in the tactics and leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which continues to be internationally regarded as the sole representative of Palestinian interests while being subject to criticism and rejection by large segments of the Palestinian people, especially those spread about the world by being refugees, exiles, and displaced persons., For some time, Hamas has indicated its willingness to agree to a long-term truce (or hudna)with Israel lasting up to 50 years, but only on condition that Israel withdraws from the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as Gaza, and ends the blockade that has been used to deny the entry and exit of goods and people to Gaza ever since 2007. It is possible that a different leadership in Israel as a result of the April elections will produce a new Israeli approach to Gaza, which could include some kind of grant of autonomy or even independence as one type of alternative policy or intensified coercion that sought to destroy Hamas and its military capabilities as another.

What remains clear is that Hamas, as opposed to the PA, has been a consistent source of resistance to Israeli occupation and expansionism, although evidently willing to pursue its goals by political tactics rather than armed struggle. It is Israel that has insisted that Hamas is a terrorist organization, refusing even to consider establishing a ceasefire regime of indefinite length. It is also the case that Hamas is rooted in Islamic beliefs and practices, which are resented by secularized Muslims and non-Muslim Palestinians. This tension has erupted at various times in the course of the decade of Hamas governance in Gaza. Nevertheless, Hamas has popular support throughout occupied Palestine, and one explanation for the failure of the PA to hold elections is the anticipation that Hamas would likely be the winner, or at least make a strong showing.

RC: Do you consider Hamas a danger for peace efforts building by Palestinian factions with Israel in future? Why?

RF: There is no doubt that if the Palestinian Authority persists in excluding Hamas from participation in shaping the future of the national movement that the friction of recent years will continue, if not intensify. It is also possible that any new, post-Abbas PA leadership will try with increased motivation to find an embracing political framework that brings together the secular factions with those of religious persuasion, and especially Hamas. If the Trump ‘deal of the century’ is made public in coming months, and is treated as a serious proposal that is accepted as a basis of negotiation by the Palestinian Authority, then it would test whether the Palestinian people will be represented in a manner that joins in a single political actor secular and religious forces. The people of Gaza have suffered for many years, the conditions of poverty and environmental hazards are becoming more severe, with shortages of medical supplies, health hazards from polluted drinking water, astronomical levels of unemployment, and the absence of nutritious food creating emergency conditions for the entire civilian population of Gaza of about two million. Given these realities it is almost certain that Hamas will seek to pursue a more viable future for Gaza, but as the Great March of Return has demonstrated in recent months, the population, despite years of demoralization, retains a strong will to resist oppressive conditions of Israel domination.

RC: Until now all efforts to overcome the division between Hamas and Fatah didn’t work. Why? Why is it difficult to achieve a common sense?

RF: I believe the principal reasons that all attempts to achieve a sustainable accommodation tween Hamas and Fatah have failed relate to both ideology and questions of trust. This failure has also been a consequence of Israel’s overt and covert feverish efforts to promote Palestinian disunity and fragmentation. Israel’s emphasis on a politics of fragmentation in addressing the Palestinian challenge is expressed in many ways, including establishing separate governance regimes for the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem, as well as for the Palestinian minority living in Israel and the refugees in neighboring countries.

On ideology there are two main sources of division between Fatah and Hamas—the secular/religious divide, and the greater readiness of Fatah to accept and legitimate the permanence of the Israeli state than is Hamas. For Hamas Israel remains a usurper of Palestine, and such a illegitimate state that can never be formally accommodated, although as suggested, Hamas is prepared to accept a truce of long duration without altering its underlying claims to exercise sovereignty over the whole of historic Palestine. If such a truce was to be agreed upon by Israel it would amount to a de facto acceptance of Israel, and vice versa. If the truce held, it could lead to some kind of indefinite extension that would allow both governing leaderships to feel that they achieved their primary goals, in other words, a win/win outcome.

Fatah, at least since 1988, as well as the PLO, has been willing to normalize relations with Israel and to agree to a territorial division of Palestine along the 1967 boundaries, provided that the arrangement provided for the retention of East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. As matters now stand, it is almost unimaginable that Israel would accept the Hamas approach to a future relationship, and given the continuing expansion of the settlements it seems unlikely that Israel would agree to the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state under any conditions, that is, even if Hamas did not exist.

It is quite likely that Israel would seek to impose a one-state solution by annexing the West Bank in a manner similar to their annexation of the city of Jerusalem. The unresolved tensions between Fatah and Hamas are in my judgment less fundamental than is Israel’s increasing clarity about rejecting any negotiated compromise on such core issues as territory, refugees, and Jerusalem. Israel seems to regard the present situation as one in which it feels almost no pressure to compromise, and instead that it is possible for Tel Aviv to push forward toward an end of the conflict by claiming victory, a view endorsed by Zionist extremists and seemingly supported by the Trump diplomacy to date. I find these perspectives to be shortsighted and unsustainable. Even should the Palestinian leadership is forced given present realities to accept a political surrender, such an induced outcome will produce a ceasefire not a lasting peace. In this post-colonial age denying the Palestinian people their fundamental right of self-determination is almost certain to be unable to withstand the tests of time.

RC: In your opinion what is the recipe or formula to make all Palestinians join together in pursuing common goal, which is the establishment of Palestine State?

RF: I have partially given my answer to this question in earlier responses to your questions. In essence, I am arguing that given the present outlook in Israel, as well as regional and global considerations.

It is not possible to envision the establishment of a Palestinian state even if Palestinians were able to achieve unity and went on to accept the 1967 boundaries excluding the Israeli settlement blocs along the border. Israel no longer hides its intention to expand its state boundaries to encompass the whole of ‘the promised land,’ considered a biblical entitlement within the dominant view of the Zionist project.

As earlier suggested, Israel will do its best to disrupt Palestinian efforts to overcome the cleavages in their movement so as to keep the Palestinian movement as fragmented as possible. As long as the United States continues its unconditional support Israel seems able to ignore the adverse character of international public opinion, as exhibited at the UN and elsewhere. Israel makes little secret of the absence of any  pressure to seek a political compromise. Ever since the 1990s a political compromised has been assumed to mean an independent  Palestinian state. Only recently, as Israel’s expansionism has made a Palestinian state a diplomatic non-starter and even a political impossibility has the idea of a single state embracing both peoples gained traction.

This shift to a one-state approach has taken to two forms: a single democratic secular state in which the expansionist goals of Zionism are renounced, and no longer would a Jewish state as such exist. Jews would have to accept equality of treatment within such a non-ethnic state, although the establishment of a Jewish homeland might be possible. The alternative single statehood model would be to absorb all Palestinians into a single Jewish state of Israel, perhaps conferring full or more likely partial citizenship rights to Palestinians. Both of these statehood models are post-diplomatic, as is the PA effort to establish a state of its own while enduring a prolonged occupation.

The Israeli version of a single state outcome of the struggle is more in keeping with present realities than is the Palestinian version. Such as assessment also gains strength by noting that the main Arab neighbors of Israel, in particular Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have withdrawn support for Palestinian national aspirations, and are actively cooperating with Israel, giving an Arab priority to the containment of extremist threats to their governments and to their sectarian rivalry with Iran. All in all, the regional and global geopolitical trends of late remove almost all incentives on the Israeli side to do anything other than to manage the favorable status quo until the moment arrives when it seems right to declare and claim that the boundaries of New Israel encompass of the entire territory managed between the two world wars as the British Mandate of Palestine.

As matters now stand it is utopian to anticipate a Palestinian state or a single secular democratic state, but these conditions that seem currently so favorable to Israel are unstable and deceptive, and unlikely to last. There are signs that a position of balanced support as between  Israel and Palestine is gaining strength in the West, especially among the American public. Account should also be taken of a growing global solidarity movement that has become more militant, and exerts greater pressure on Israel, especially by way of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Campaign (BDS). In this respect, conditions could change rapidly as happened in South Africa in the early 1990s against all expectations and expert opinion at the time. Israel is increasing regarded as an apartheid state, which the Knesset itself virtually acknowledged by enacting in 2018 the Basic Law of the Nation-State of the Jewish People. Finally, it should be appreciated that by virtue of Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, apartheid is classified as a crime against humanity. The experience of South Africa, although very different in its particular, is instructive with respect to the untenability over time of apartheid structures of control over a resisting ethnicity. Whatever the governance arrangement, Palestinian resistance will produce a cycle of insurgent and repressive violence, and this can provide stability for Israel only so long as its apartheid regime remains in place. If the apartheid regime is dismantled it would be accompanied by the end of any claim to impose a Jewish state on the Palestinian people.

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Featured image: Palestinian take cover as Israeli forces fire at protesters at the Gaza border on 14 December 2018 [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]

Over the past week tens of thousands of pounds have been spent on Facebook adverts promoting a ‘no deal’ Brexit. It is not possible to find out who is funding these highly targeted campaigns, despite new regulations intended to make political messaging on Facebook more transparent.

Over the seven days to last Saturday, spending by campaigners pushing for ‘no deal’ far outstripped that of anti-Brexit groups. Some of these paid-for Facebook adverts described pro-EU MPs as “traitors” and “globalist scumbags”.

A single pro-Brexit group with almost no public presence spent almost £50,000 on Facebook. Britain’s Future – which does not declare its funders and has no published address – is running hundreds of very localised targeted ads pushing for ‘no deal’.

Politicians and campaigners have called for greater transparency of political advertising. Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said: “We have no idea who these people are or where their money comes from. It shows again how unfit for purpose the rules are that govern online campaigning and the use of data.”

‘Don’t let them steal Brexit’

Some of the adverts claim that a ‘no deal’ Brexit “will reduce barriers to world trade and cut prices”, a claim contradicted by most economists. Britain’s Future has also run over 100 adverts in the last week urging voters in specific Labour constituencies to write to their MP.

These targeted adverts include messages such as “Don’t let them steal Brexit” and include a link for voters to email their MP. Politicians have reported receiving a significant number of pro-’no deal’ messages in recent weeks.

Over the past week, anti-Brexit groups have spent far less money on Facebook adverts than pro-’no deal’ outfits, reversing a trend that had seen generally anti-Brexit groups spend more money on Facebook since last October.

Over the last four months, the People’s Vote and Best for Britain campaigns spent £266,369 and £183,943, respectively. Neither of these anti-Brexit groups is fully transparent either: both publish some details about themselves, such as addresses, but do not publish full details of all funders and donors. During the same time period, Britain’s Future has spent more than £200,000 on Facebook ads.

While anti-Brexit spending has slowed down in recent weeks, however, adverts pushing a ‘no deal’ Brexit have spiked. Britain’s Future has spent more than £110,000 on Facebook ads since mid-January. It is not clear where the money for this huge ad push has come from.

The only person publicly identified with the group is Tim Dawson, a former ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’ scriptwriter. Dawson is listed as editor on Britain’s Future’s website.

In November, Dawson told the BBC that he was “raising small donations from friends and fellow Brexiteers” after it was reported that a paid-for Britain’s Future advert topped Google searches for “what is the Brexit deal” ahead of the UK government’s own site. Dawson has yet to respond to queries from openDemocracy about the source of his funding.

Dawson has written for The Spectator, Spiked and other right-wing publications. In last year’s local election, he ran as a Conservative candidate in Hulme, in Manchester. He finished a distant sixth.

During the 2016 EU referendum Vote Leave and other campaigns spent almost £4m on social media adverts, including erroneous warnings that Turkey was joining the EU. Britain’s Future’s adverts are far more geographically targeted than Vote Leave’s were, and appear to be focused on influencing Labour MPs not to back Theresa May’s withdrawal bill on 14 February, which would increase the chances of a ‘no deal’ Brexit.

Brexit Defence Force

Some paid-for pro-Brexit ads on Facebook are more sinister. A group called ‘Brexit Defence Force” paid hundreds of pound for adverts that included messages about “remoaner Globalist scumbags” and calling for a ‘no deal’ Brexit.

In one advert posted this week (below), John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, was described as “a Saboteur amongst us” and a “nasty little globalist scumbag”. Above a cartoon image of a witch in a long black hooded cloak a message says “Burkow must go”.

It is impossible to find out who is actually paying for these adverts. Under rules introduced by Facebook last year, all political advertising in the UK has to be labelled and those placing the adverts to verify they are living at a UK postal address.

But Facebook’s new rules, introduced following concerns about social media campaigning during the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election, do not force an advertiser to declare the ultimate source of the money for any political campaign. For groups such as Brexit Defence Forces and others it is simple to place adverts without having to disclose who is actually paying for them.

Sam Jeffers, co-founder of Who Targets Me?, which tracks political adverts, said  “While there are circumstances where anonymity for campaigners is necessary, we don’t think any of these campaigns are performing a democratic service by hiding their true identity.”

Last month, Facebook removed threats of violence against pro-EU MPs made in response to a paid-for Brexit Defence Force advert. But Facebook ruled that the advert itself – which accused anti-Brexit MPs of “treason” – did not breach its community standards.

As well as paid for ‘no deal’ adverts, many popular pro-Brexit Facebook sites have shared images depicting the European Union as Nazis and Theresa May as a traitor. Others have even used iconography from 1930s Germany to spread a hardline pro-Brexit message.

Another obscure anti-Brexit outfit, We are the 52%, has spent more than £4,000 over the last seven days. We are the 52%, which has spent almost £25,000 on Facebook ads since October, has also been pushing for a ‘no deal’ Brexit.

We are the 52% appears to be affiliated with Nigel Farage’s Leave Means Leave. The only person publicly connected with the group is former Vote Leave activist Theodora Dickinson (below).

Dickinson also runs a website that offers political communications services including “social media solutions for candidates and elected representatives”. openDemocracy has contacted We are the 52% to ask what the source of the funding for its Facebook adverts is but has yet to receive a response.

Labour’s Ben Bradshaw said:

“This is the latest example of shady groups that keep their identity secret pushing misleading and factually inaccurate hard-Brexit ads on social media. We have no idea who these people are or where their money comes from. It shows again how unfit for purpose the rules are that govern online campaigning and the use of data.”

Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake said:

“There is a clear agenda from a clique of comfortable businessmen and donors to block attempts at preventing a chaotic No-Deal scenario – the very worst Brexit outcome.

“We must uncover the true nature of murky pro-Brexit groups like Britain’s Future, to help finally debunk their propaganda and lay bare the true devastation of the Brexit these secretive groups are desperate for.”

Sam Jeffers said:

“People spending large sums to influence voters and MPs should be transparent by default. Equally, Facebook could implement stronger rules to force greater transparency on organisations who want to reach people through its service. As soon as possible, we want to see new rules for transparency of political campaigns, to reassure the voting public that the messages they see can be trusted – wherever they see them.”

London. A bleak London assailed by daily news about Brexit negotiation, prospects of food shortages and higher prices in the event of a no-deal with the European Union, provides the perfect apocalyptic backdrop for headlines. The city is ailing; the residents are panicked; and the authorities are gloomy.     

Such environments are ideal for talk about emergencies.  One doing much filling on London airtime is that of knife crime.  Not that knife crime in of itself is unusual: for years, stabbing implements have made their way into broader law and order issues in the city’s policing scene, a good number featuring errant youth.  These have encouraged a wide array of myths masquerading as solid fact: London, the city of the “no-go” area; Londonistan, city of perpetual, spiralling crime.

In 2008, Britain’s public institutions – political and public – became darkly enraptured with knife crime afflicting inner city areas, with a heavy focus on London.  Stabbings were reported in lurid fashion; threats to urban safety were emphasised.  As Peter Squires noted in a fairly withering examination of the phenomenon in British Politics,

“The knife crime ‘epidemic’, as it came to be called, coincided with a series of youth justice policy measures being rolled out by the government, and significantly influenced them.”

Kevin Marsh of the BBC, writing at the same time, wondered how best a news organisation might report such crime figures.

“How much does tone and prominence distort the real picture?  Is some coverage self-fulfilling prophecy?  Does it spread fear and anxiety way beyond the rational?” 

Marsh would admit that being a victim of a knife crime was “very, very unlikely”; and that young men, in the main, did not carry knives; “most young people are not components of what some politicians are calling the ‘broken society’.”

For all that, Marsh found himself admitting that “it’s part of the purpose of our media to draw things to our attention, however crudely.”  The crude element remains the sticking point, resisting nuance, despite the hope that reporters might help “us citizens really think hard about possible solutions”.

Knife crime has become the bread and butter of lazy reportage, one hitched to the coattails of the broken society argument.  Describing a broken fence is easier fare than describing a mended one; solutions remain dull, academic matters.  The emergency narrative tends to emerge ahead each time; matters of social causes and complexity receive short shrift.  In 2017, Gary Younge turned his noise up at the panic merchants, and deemed teenage knife crime “a tabloid obsession, blamed on feral youth running riot in our cities.”  Such fears speaks to an obsession with decay and decline; youth go wrong if society does not go right. 

In 2018, knife crime became a meme of terror.  The Express shouted with “London BLOODBATH” in a June headline, and subsequently began using it as a running title for any knife-related crime.  Political parties also capitalised on the atmosphere. In the east London borough of Havering, a local Conservative leaflet, buttering up electors ahead of the March local elections, promised mayhem.  “Mayor Khan and Corbyn’s men are desperate to grab power in our Town Hall, so get ready for… A London crimewave with even less police.”  In Lewisham East, UKIP candidate David Kurten added his bit in a by-election with a leaflet featuring the words “STOP THE KARNAGE” placed across a picture of a knife.

The dreary world of knife crime figures is erratic.  Between 2008 and 2014, offences involving knives or sharp instruments fell from 36,000 recorded offences to 25,000.  Then came an increase in 2015/6 – a nudge to 28,900.  The figures on death occasioned by knife crime are even more inscrutable, prompting Spiked Online to conclude that there was “no huge upsurge in knife violence because society overall is becoming less violent, and crime in general is falling.”  This was not to say that no concern should be felt: the issue is particular in London, and its effects disproportionate on young working-class black men. A possible explanation?  Not just indigence or exclusion, but nihilism and plain susceptibility. 

Barely two months into this year, and the rounds of panic are in full swing.  As always, it’s the deceptive field of statistics dragged out to give a picture of clear, bolt-the-doors-and-hide doom.  It began with a spate of violent actions on New Year’s Eve, which saw four young men stabbed to death in London, prompting London Mayor Sadiq Khan to berate the government for its squeeze on youth services, policing and education. 

Police statistics, pounced upon by the Evening Standard just in time for the evening commute on Monday, suggest that 41 percent across London’s boroughs involve those between the green years of 15 to 19.  Eight percent range from the even greener 10 to 14.

The Standard’s Martin Bentham sliced and spliced the announcement from the police with maximum, terrifying effect, all assisted by a picture perfect grim background of law enforcement officials at a crime scene on Caledonia road. 

“The new figures came as a Scotland Yard chief warned that attacks in the capital were also becoming ‘more ferocious’ as offenders were ‘more and more young’ tried to kill or injure by ‘getting up close and stabbing someone several times’. 

Descriptions on police tactics follow, resembling those of urban battle plans keen on frustrating potential attacks.  Chief Superintendent Ade Adelekan, head of the Met’s Violent Crime Task Force is quoted as claiming that “some progress” is being made.  There was also a more frequent use of search and “other tactics” including “the deployment of ‘embedded’ plain clothes officers to work with uniformed counterparts” in acts of prevention. 

As Younge rightly notes, such realities are “more complex – and we cannot save lives if we do not understand it.”  But understanding is a term absent in times of panic. These are times rich for exploitation.  With Brexit having become the great psychodrama, all else is ripe for distraction and manipulation.

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

Featured image is from iNews

Spanish rail equipment manufacturer CAF announced, on Friday, that it had refused to participate in a tender to build a section of the railway in occupied East Jerusalem as it violates international law.

An international tender to build and operate Jerusalem’s second light rail line has many companies rejecting to participate as they are fearful of arousing political opposition, since the proposed “Green Line” runs into parts of the city occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967.

The proposed Green Line, a project that could cost as much as 5 billion shekels ($1.4 billion) and stretch along 22 kilometers, proved to be problematic as it reaches Mount Scopus and Gilo.

The company, which is one of the most important Spanish companies in the field of railways, said it

“refuses to build a section of the railway in Jerusalem because the Israeli government included in the section a Palestinian land that will be confiscated in violation of the resolutions of international legitimacy.”

Representatives of the company’s workers who objected to the company’s participation in the construction of the section explained that the problem lies in the fact that the railway will pass through Palestinian lands to serve illegal settlements in East Jerusalem.

CAF stressed,

“Any project in any city of the world, especially Jerusalem, must respect in its implementation human rights and international legitimacy.”

CAF added,

“The General Assembly of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, through various resolutions, have said that they are against the occupation of land through which will pass the section of the railway.”

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Featured image is from Ma’an News Agency

At a time when the eyes of the world are closely watching his country, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has given an exclusive interview to RT Spanish, speaking about the threats of war and of foul play in politics.

The “Lima group”, which convened in Canada on Feb. 4, 2019, represents a group of governments opposed to Venezuela’s elected government. 

More accurately, the group consists of plotters, conspirators, who are criminals under International Law.

.

Ken Stone of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War, February 4, 2019.

International criminal lawyer Christopher C. Black explains quite clearly in “The Lima Group: International Outlaws”[1] that

(t)he world can see that the Lima Gang, who like to use the phrase “the rule of law” in their diktats to others, are committing egregious crimes under international law and together these crimes are components of the supreme war crime of aggression. The Lima Group therefore is a group of international criminal conspirators and the every individual involved is a war criminal.  So when the Lima conspirators issue their press statement after the Ottawa meeting, planning aggression against Venezuela, calling for the overthrow, for the head of President Maduro and dressing it up in the usual language of the aggressor, of “human rights” and “democracy” and their fake and illegal doctrine of  “responsibility to protect” it will not be issued by nations interested in peace or who have respect for international law but by a gang of criminals, of international outlaws. (from NEO)

Not only are Lima group members conspiring to overthrow the sovereign nation of Venezuela, but the Canadian government is also pledging 53 million dollars to further this agenda.

The legitimate Venezuelan government will not have access to these funds.  In fact, Canada and its co-conspirators against Venezuela have been waging a criminal economic war against the country which has so far has cost Venezuela about 20 billion dollars, so the pledge is insulting at the very least, and again, it obviates root causes. If imperialist countries were to cease waging criminal economic warfare against Venezuela, there would be no need for “humanitarian” or any other aid in the first place.

In this short video, Doug Brown discusses the toll that economic warfare exacts on victim populations:

Doug Brown of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War 

On a more personal note, I would like to offer my opinion to Venezuelans:

If you support the “opposition” in Venezuela, you are supporting US military intervention. I have seen firsthand what “military intervention” looks like in Syria. Your country will be destroyed, looted, plundered. Your infrastructure will be destroyed. Your economy will be destroyed. Death squads and bombing raids and terrorism will plague your country for years, decades. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions will die. Russia and China have a strong legitimate presence in Venezuela, and Venezuela is a lynch pin country. Venezuela will not go gently into that good night.

Let us all hope that the rule of international law, and values of common sense and decency, will prevail.

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

Note

[1] Christopher C. Black, “The Lima Group: International Outlaws.” 4 February, 2019, New Eastern Outlook.
(https://journal-neo.org/2019/02/04/the-lima-group-international-outlaws/) Accessed 5 February, 2019.

---

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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. 

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The United States has been working with oligarchs in Venezuela to remove President Maduro since he came to office in 2013 after the death of Hugo Chavez and was re-elected that year. After he won re-election to another six-year term in 2018, the regime change planners sought new strategies to remove Maduro, including an assassination attempt last August. The coup campaign escalated recently with the self-appointment of president Juan Guaido, who President Trump and US allies have recognized. Now, the ongoing coup attempt is escalating through a strategy of humanitarian intervention.

Trump has been talking openly about war to take control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves since mid-2017. Pentagon and former administration officials, who have since been removed from office, opposed the action. Now, Trump is surrounded by neocons who share his goal of removing Maduro and taking control of the country’s natural resources. War is an option being openly considered.

The US has no excuse to legally attack Venezuela. As Defense One reports,

“International law forbids ‘the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.’”

There are two exceptions mentioned in the UN Charter: self-defense and authorization by the U.N. Security Council, neither of which have been met in Venezuela. Domestically, Trump would also need the US Congress to authorize an attack, which is unlikely with a Democratic-controlled House not because Democrats oppose war but because they oppose Trump.

The United States has also claimed a highly questionable right to use force for “humanitarian intervention.” For example, the US and NATO 1999 intervention in Kosovo was a humanitarian intervention that became a war.

After a long-term economic war that has sought to starve Venezuela of resources and has cost the country billions of dollars annually, the United States is now claiming there is a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. It is moving to use this humanitarian crisis it helped to create as a path to war with Venezuela, with the help of US proxies, Colombia and Brazil. The tactic is to proclaim a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela requiring a humanitarian intervention and then to bring troops in to provide humanitarian aid as the BBC explains. Once the foot is in the door, it is simple to manufacture an excuse for conflict.

This weekend, the humanitarian intervention began to unfold when the coup president, Juan Guaido, announced the imminent distribution of humanitarian aid. Guaido announced the aid would be gathered at three points, and Venezuela’s army would be pressured to allow it into the country. The collection centers will be in Colombia, Brazil and on an island in the Caribbean. He announced aid will begin to be distributed in the coming days. He claimed the Venezuela military will have to make a decision whether or not to let this aid in to Venezuela. Guaido said he wants the people to play a supportive role by staying in the streets with demonstrations that will be announced soon.

Also over the weekend, National Security Adviser John Bolton said the US will send “critical supplies” requested by Guaido. Previously, Bolton has openly called for a military coup and sanctions to starve millions of Venezuelans into submission. On Twitter, USAID administrator Mark Green shared images of boxes embossed with the US flag en route to Venezuela.

Answering the call of President Guaido, the U.S. is mobilizing & transporting humanitarian aid for the people of #Venezuela. I applaud the hard work of USAID, the State Department and their partners in preparing critical supplies to move forward this weekend. https://t.co/JR9poraxWl

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 3, 2019

Elliot Abrams, who has a long history of war crimes and was convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, said the US government is considering opening a “humanitarian corridor” and has maintained contacts with Brazil and Colombia on the issue. He acknowledged that Maduro’s “cooperation” would be necessary to transport the aid to the country. El Pais reported,

“The opening of this supply channel could require the participation of troops, whether Americans or from another country in the region, something that Chavism interprets as a clear threat.”

Vice President Mike Pence spoke this week about the deployment of humanitarian assistance with Carlos Vecchio, Guaidó’s ambassador to the United States, as well as Julio Borges, appointed as representative to the Lima Group. Borges will ask the Lima Group, which meets in Canada this week, for the “urgent” opening of a humanitarian corridor. Canada has played a junior role in the ongoing coup. Trudeau, who also levied economic sanctions against Venezuela, promised $53 million in humanitarian aid. Media critical of the coup have been denied access to these meetings

The United States launched this major operation in coordination with the right-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil, the most belligerent anti-Maduro allies of Guaido. The US National Security Council confirmed on Saturday that the deployment of aid has already begun.  The initial aid will contain medicines, surgical supplies, and nutritional supplements. It was scheduled to come from USAID to Bogota on Monday and then be moved for storage in a collection center in the border city of Cúcuta, the main entrance route for Venezuelans migrating to Colombia. Cúcuta has a high presence of Colombian paramilitaries and smuggling mafias and is where those who attempted to assassinate Nicolas Maduro last year were trained.

One of the goals of the humanitarian aid is to divide the Venezuela military which has refused to recognize Guaido. They seek to deepen the pressure on the military in order to break the solidarity of the Maduro government. TIME Magazine reports,

“The aid has become something of a litmus test for the military’s backing of Maduro.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), said on Twitter that,

“Military & police leaders in #Venezuela must now decide to either help food & medicine reach people, or help #Maduro instead.”

UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, who has not recognized Guaido, said the United Nations “will not be part of” distributing the aid, as it wants to maintain “credibility” in order to help “find a political solution to the crisis.”

El Pais reports that

“Diplomats from several Latin American countries and from the more moderate sectors of the opposition fear that this will serve as a pretext to drag the conflict into the military.”

President Maduro has repeatedly rejected the entry of humanitarian aid because he knew it would provide justification for foreign intervention. He knows the US seeks Venezuela’s oil and other resources, “gold, gas, iron, diamonds, other material riches.”

Maduro called on the international community to stop the US threats of war against Venezuela. He said a war would be a blood bath, a David and Goliath struggle that would “leave Trump bloodstained.” Maduro said the Venezuelan people were prepared to defend their “sacred“ land from a US military invasion, but emphasized that he “prayed to God” such a conflict will never occur. Trump’s “military aggression” must be rejected so that “peace prevails.”

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

Featured image: A protest outside the United States Consulate in Sydney on January 23 2019 to demand no US intervention in Venezuela. Photo: Peter Boyle

Anyone for world peace over endless wars, as well as supporting cooperative Russian/US relations is vulnerable to character assassination attacks.

Am I a “Russian agent”, “asset” or “troll” for explaining hard truths on major domestic and geopolitical issues, for opposing Washington’s destructive imperial agenda, for slamming the notion that might makes right, for working daily for world peace, equity and justice, for being against the US aim to rule the world, risking its destruction by endless wars of aggression against one country after another?

On February 2, Dem Rep. Tulsi Gabbard officially announced her candidacy for US president, after indicating earlier she’d run, saying the following:

“We must stand up…against powerful politicians from both parties who sit in ivory towers thinking up new wars to wage (and) new places for people to die…(treating troops) as political pawns and mercenaries for hire in wars around the world.”

“(T)he issue of war and peace” motivated her to run for president. In spring 2017, she stopped accepting political contributions from US weapons and munitions makers.

She joins a crowded field with numerous other announced Dem aspirants for the nation’s highest office – calling for “end(ing) regime change wars that have taken far too many lives and undermined our security by strengthening terrorist groups like al Qaeda.”

Like virtually all others in Washington, she’s far short of a profile in courage. A former DNC vice chair, she largely votes along party lines, including on issues demanding opposition.

She backs the US-installed putschist regime in Ukraine,  saying America can’t stand “idly by while Russia continues to degrade the territorial integrity of” the country.

No “Russian aggression” exists anywhere, or threats against other nations, or meddling in foreign elections. Yet Gabbard urged “more painful (illegal) sanctions” on Moscow.

In 2017, she supported the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), imposing illegal sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea.

She’s on the right side of opposing “counterproductive wars of regime change” – in Syria and elsewhere.

She accused “the US government (of) violating (the) law” by aiding ISIS and al-Qaeda, saying:

“The CIA has…been funneling weapons and money through Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and others who provide direct and indirect support to groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda.”

To her credit, she’s likely a voice in the wilderness in Washington, perhaps the only congressional member publicly stating what’s been going on in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

ISIS, al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot, and other terrorist groups are US creations, used as proxy troops, serving Washington’s imperial agenda.

For partially challenging longstanding establishment policies, an NBC News character assassination report accused her of serving “Russia’s propaganda machine,” calling her “a controversial Hawaii Democrat,” a “favorite” of Russian websites RT, Sputnik News, and Russia Insider, adding:

Her announcement “may be the first stirrings of an upcoming Russian campaign of support for Gabbard” – accusing her of being “a pawn for Moscow.”

“Gabbard was mentioned on the three sites about twice as often as two of the best known Democratic possibilities for 2020, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.”

She responded to NBC News, saying it “used journalistic fraud to smear any adversary of the establishment wing of the Democratic Party – whether on the left or the right – as a stooge or asset of the Kremlin,” adding:

“(T)he neocon/neolib warmongers will do anything to stop me.”

NBC News used fake news provided by New Knowledge.

It’s a company with longstanding ties to the US National Security Agency and Pentagon, part of the endless Russia bashing campaign, caught red-handed fabricating fake news for undemocratic Dems in last year’s Alabama Senate race, falsely claiming Russian meddling, not a shred of evidence suggesting the Kremlin interfered in foreign elections anywhere.

New Knowledge was involved with Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Research Project’s (COMPROP) disinformation report on alleged Russian use of social media platforms to help Trump triumph over Hillary.

Cold hard facts debunked the fake news claims. Google explained that accounts linked to Russia spent $4,700 for advertising in 2016.

Facebook said US presidential candidates spent “1000x more than any problematic ads we’ve found” – admitting virtually no evidence of Russian use of the platform for improper meddling.

Twitter found no accounts of “obvious Russian origin.” RT, RT America and RT en Espanol spent $274,100 for 1,823 US ads – none supporting one US presidential aspirant over another.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the total amount spent by candidates for all offices in US 2016 elections was around $6.5 billion, including for primary races.

The amount spent by 2016 presidential aspirants was $2.4 billion, including for primaries. In all races, Republicans and Dems each spent around 48% of the total amount (96% combined).

Trump spent $398 million compared to Hillary’s $768 million, nearly double DLT’s amount.

What possible impact could a minute fraction of these amounts connected to Russia have on their campaigns, especially when their ads supported no US candidates.

No Russian meddling occurred online or any other way, no credible evidence suggesting it, nothing connecting Gabbard to the Kremlin.

As explained above, she supported legislation imposing illegal sanctions on Russia, along with falsely accusing the country of “aggression” in Ukraine.

NBC News stands by its fake news report. Anyone opposing Washington’s imperial agenda is vulnerable to be attacked by US major media, operating as mouthpieces for wealth, power, and privilege.

As long as she remains in the race to become Dem nominee for president, Gabbard will be subjected to vilifying character assassination attacks – falsely connecting her to Russia and likely other damning accusations with no validity.

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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.

If Guaidó comes to power and privatizes PDVSA, U.S. oil companies — with Chevron and Halliburton leading the pack — stand to make record profits in the world’s most oil-rich nation, as they did in Iraq following the privatization of its national oil industry after U.S. intervention.

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For much of the past twenty years, critics of U.S. foreign policy have noted that it is often countries with sizeable oil reserves that most often find themselves the targets of U.S.-backed “humanitarian” interventions aimed at “restoring democracy.” Analysis of the nearly two-decades-long U.S. effort aimed at regime change and “democracy promotion” in Venezuela has long linked such efforts to the fact that the South American country has the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

However, the current U.S. effort to topple the government led by Chavista politician Nicolás Maduro has become notable for the openness of the “coup architects” in admitting that putting American corporations – Chevron and Halliburton chief among them — in charge of Venezuelan oil resources is the driving factor behind this aggressive policy.

Last week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) – a key player in the Trump administration’s push for regime change in Caracas – tweeted:

Biggest [American] buyers of Venezuelan oil are Valero Energy & Chevron. Refining heavy crude from Venezuela supports great jobs in Gulf Coast. For the sake of these U.S. workers I hope they will begin working with administration of President [Juan] Guaidó & cut off illegitimate Maduro regime.”

In January, the U.S. government recognized Juan Guaidó of the U.S.-funded and CIA-linked Popular Will Party as the “legitimate” president of the country.

Biggest buyers of Venezuelan oil are @ValeroEnergy & @Chevron. Refining heavy crude from #Venezuela supports great jobs in Gulf Coast.

For the sake of these U.S. workers I hope they will begin working with administration of President Guaido & cut off illegitimate Maduro regime.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 24, 2019

A few hours after Rubio’s tweet, National Security Adviser John Bolton — who actively supported the U.S.-backed failed Venezuela coup in 2002  — appeared on Fox News and told host Trish Regan the following:

“We’re looking at the oil assets. That’s the single most important income stream to the government of Venezuela. We’re looking at what to do to that.”

Though that was a stunning admission in and of itself, Bolton didn’t stop there. He continued:

We’re in conversation with major American companies now that are either in Venezuela, or in the case of Citgo here in the United States. I think we’re trying to get to the same end result here…. It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

Bolton’s statements have garnered considerable attention in the alternative media community for their boldness, since leaked cables and documents have traditionally been the means through which the actual motivations of U.S. wars have been revealed. Largely overlooked, however, is the fact that Bolton stated that the Trump administration is working closely “with major American companies now that are either in Venezuela, or in the case of Citgo, here in the United States.” Given that Citgo is largely owned by Venezuela’s state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), Bolton’s statement reveals that the corporations backing Washington’s regime-change push are those currently operating in Venezuela.

At present, there are only two American major oil and oil service companies with a significant presence in Venezuela – Chevron and Halliburton. However, Chevron is by far the leading American investor in Venezuelan oil projects, with Halliburton having written off much of its remaining business interests in the country just last year — losing hundreds of millions of dollars as a result.

These two companies have long been “historic partners” and have had a solid business relationship between them for decades. In addition, both have reaped the benefits of past U.S. interventions abroad — such as the Iraq War, where the U.S. government “opened” that country’s nationalized oil industry to American oil companies with military force.

Now with Venezuela’s nationalized oil industry in the crosshairs, Chevron and Halliburton are again set to benefit from Washington’s regime-change policies abroad. Furthermore, as Bolton’s recent statements suggest, these companies are also the top corporate sponsors of the current U.S.-backed coup to topple the government in Caracas.

Profitable but not Rockefeller-profitable

Chevron’s history in Venezuela is long and storied, as its presence in the country dates back more than a century. Over that time, Chevron’s presence in Venezuela has remained a constant despite the rule of drastically different governments, from military dictatorships to the socialist Chavista movement.

For much of its history in Venezuela, Chevron has had to deal with the Venezuelan government’s laws regarding oil production, particularly a 1943 law that held that foreign companies could not make greater profits from oil than they paid to the Venezuelan state. A few decades later in the 1960s, foreign corporations were made to manage their oil extraction projects in Venezuela by working closely with the Venezuelan Oil corporation, which later gave way to the current state oil company PDVSA, created in 1976. It was around this period that Halliburton first began work in Venezuela.

However, foreign corporations — particularly American ones — disliked having to settle for minority stakes in PDVSA projects and longed for the early days of Venezuela oil extraction when companies like Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil made wild profits off their Venezuelan oil assets.

After the “apertura petrolera” (or “oil opening” to foreign investment) in the early 1990s — and especially under the U.S.-backed government of Rafael Caldera, the president who immediately preceded Hugo Chávez — it seemed that the privatization of PDVSA was soon to become a reality and companies like Chevron, ExxonMobil and Halliburton enjoyed the “golden age” of American oil interests in Venezuela. However, Caldera’s fall from grace and the rise of Chavismo quickly shattered this decades-long dream of U.S. corporations and politicians.

Not only did Chávez end any possibility of PDVSA’s privatization, he also weakened what remaining influence transnational oil companies had over the state oil company. For instance, he appointed independent oil experts to PDVSA’s board of directors, upending years of precedent where PDVSA managers with close ties to international companies had been responsible for controlling the board’s membership.

Chávez further restricted corporate ownership on some oil projects to 49 percent and fired PDVSA’s then-president, replacing him with a political ally. These drastic changes, among others, led to a strike among many long-time PDVSA workers, a strike that immediately preceded the failed U.S.-backed coup attempt in April 2002.

Following the coup, Chávez dismantled a joint venture originally established in 1996 between PDVSA and the Venezuelan subsidiary of the U.S.-based company SAIC, known as INTESA. INTESA, per the agreement, had controlled all of PDVSA’s company data (and its secrets), which it then fed to the U.S. government and U.S. oil corporations until Chávez destroyed it. This is hardly surprising given that the managers of SAIC at the time included two former U.S. secretaries of defense and two former CIA directors. Though obviously a smart move for Chávez, it weakened an advantage of U.S. corporations who had inside information on PDVSA while INTESA was operational.

The tensions between the Chavista government and the U.S. government along with U.S. corporations only grew from there before reaching a crescendo in 2007. That year, Chávez announced a decree that would nationalize the remaining oil extraction sites under foreign company control, giving PDVSA a minimum 60 percent stake in all of those ventures. U.S. oil companies ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips left their Venezuelan operations behind as a result, losing billions in the process. The president of ExxonMobil at the time was Rex Tillerson — who would later become President Donald Trump’s first secretary of state.

Yet, during this time, Chevron, unique among American oil companies, saw an opportunity and spent the next several years cultivating close ties to the Chavista government and Chávez himself. Through the efforts of Chevron executive Ali Moshiri, Chevron blazed a new trail that would later serve as a model for foreign oil companies seeking to do business in Chavista-led Venezuela. Halliburton and another U.S.-based oil services company, Schlumberger, also decided to continue business in Venezuela.

During this time, the Venezuelan government through PDVSA and Chevron entered into several joint ventures, one of the most important of which became known as Petropiar, which blends Venezuela’s heavy crude oil with other substances to make it more easily transportable. However, Chevron — due to Chávez’s reforms of the oil sector — was forced to settle for minority stakes in all of these ventures.

Halliburton, which has historically been a main operator for Chevron-owned oil fields, again partnered with Chevron’s post-2007 ventures in Venezuela and operates the Petropiar and Petroboscan oil fields that both have minority Chevron ownership.

For years, Chevron’s bet on Chavismo paid off and the profits rolled in. Moshiri even appeared in public on several occasions with Chávez, who once even called the Chevron executive “a dear friend.” However, following Chávez’s death in 2013 and the beginning of the U.S-backed economic siege of Venezuela soon after — first through joint oil-price manipulation in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and then through sanctions — the profits of PDVSA, and thus Chevron, have fallen dramatically. During this time, Houston-based Schlumberger drastically scaled back its operations in Venezuela.

Since then, relations between the Maduro-led government and Chevron have deteriorated precipitously and now, with the current U.S. coup in motion, Chevron is poised to turn on the Chavista government with the hopes that profits will not only improve but exceed what they were during the heights of the Chevron-Chávez partnership.

Betting on regime change

As oil production has lagged and profits have continued to slide, tensions between Chevron and the Maduro government have grown dramatically since 2017, when the Maduro-led government began arresting employees of Petropiar — the joint venture between Chevron and PDVSA — during a controversial corruption probe. For Chevron, the issue exploded after the Venezuelan government last April arrested two Chevron employees working at Petropiar, who were detained for seven weeks for their alleged role in fraud. Those tensions — in combination with worries that Chevron’s Venezuela operations could become unprofitable in less than five years — resulted in a report published by the Wall Street Journalclaiming that Chevron was considering leaving Venezuela entirely.

However, despite media speculation in the U.S., Chevron denied that it was planning to leave Venezuela anytime soon, with Clay Neff, Chevron’s president for Africa and Latin America, telling Bloomberg, “we’re committed to Venezuela and we plan to be there for many years to come,” and adding that reports that Chevron would soon leave the country were “not accurate.” “We’ve been in the country for almost 100 years, we know how to operate, we’re a very experienced operator and we’re committed to our partner PDVSA,” Neff declared.

Halliburton’s activities in Venezuela have also taken a hard hit in recent years, with the company losing over $1 billion in investments since 2017. In 2017, Halliburton was forced to write off $647 million in Venezuelan investments and then was forced to sell $312 million more last year — its last remaining investments. Halliburton’s chief financial officer, Christopher Weber, told the New York Times last year that “the collapse of the Venezuelan currency and the worsening political climate,” as well as U.S. sanctions, were responsible for the decision. Halliburton later said in a statement that it planned on “maintaining its presence in Venezuela and is carefully managing its go-forward exposure.”

Since both Halliburton and Chevron announced their plans to “weather the storm” despite growing tensions, it has become more and more evident that both companies have found the U.S. government’s promise of increased control over Venezuela’s oil sector through privatization much more appealing than facing the prospect of maneuvering around recently imposed U.S. sanctions on PDVSA — which have been in the works for months — as well as the prospect of dwindling profits stemming from the continued decline of the Venezuelan economy and the degradation of its oil-sector infrastructure.

This raises the possibility that Chevron and Halliburton had decided to ride out the Venezuelan economic crisis and growing tensions with Maduro because it was betting on an aggressive regime-change policy toward the country. Indeed, some analysts have stated that planning on the current iteration of regime-change policy in Venezuela only began this past November, around the same time that Chevron decided to stick it out despite falling profits.

The fact that Chevron’s operations in Venezuela are expected to collapse in less than five years, as a result of the country’s oil sector and larger economic woes, lends further support to the possibility that Chevron sought to back a Washington-based effort to dramatically alter the Venezuelan government.

In Halliburton’s case, the fact that the company has already lost over a billion dollars in its Venezuelan investments since 2017 offers a different motive, one that involves not only recouping those losses but also gaining increased contracts in a post-coup Venezuela. Halliburton executives surely remember the $39.5 billion in profits they made following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is worth pointing out that, in media reports, Halliburton has stated its commitment “to the market in Venezuela,” signaling that it is interested in retaining a role in the country’s oil sector regardless of who governs it.

It should then come as no surprise that recent U.S. government sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sectors included exemptions for both Halliburton and Chevron. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the U.S.-backed “president” of Venezuela — Juan Guaidó — has already signaled his plans to open up Venezuela’s state oil assets to foreign corporations if he succeeds in ousting Maduro.

According to oil rating agency S&P Global Platts, Guaidó has already made “plans to introduce a new national hydrocarbons law that establishes flexible fiscal and contractual terms for projects adapted to oil prices and the oil investment cycle.” This plan would also create a “new hydrocarbons agency” that will “offer bidding rounds for projects in natural gas and conventional, heavy and extra-heavy crude” to international oil corporations.

The clear message here is that the U.S.-backed “president” of Venezuela is already signaling to his Washington backers that he will quickly privatize Venezuela’s state oil company if he succeeds in taking power, a move that has long been a key component of the platform of Venezuela’s U.S.-funded opposition, of which Guaidó is part.

Bolton’s recent statements have made it clear that Chevron and Halliburton are set to be the main benefactors of this privatization effort, as both are heavily invested in Venezuela and Chevron the only U.S. oil company still active in the country. The historically close relationship of both companies to the U.S. government, and covert coordination with the U.S. government in undermining or overthrowing governments in the recent past, also hint at their likely role in the current U.S. “meddling” in Venezuela.

Boosting profits through foreign intervention

If the U.S. succeeds in ousting Maduro and putting Guaidó in his place, it will only be the latest example of U.S. government policy that directly benefits the bottom lines of Chevron and Halliburton. In Chevron’s case, the company’s growth to become one of the largest oil companies in the world has consistently been aided by the U.S. establishment, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans held the presidency. Indeed, as Seeking Alpha noted:

Chevron’s stocks gained a combined 247% under Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush. Under President George W Bush, its shares rose by 157%. Meanwhile, Chevron’s shares picked up 222% and 112% under Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively.”

Notably, Chevron has also worked with past U.S. presidents in undermining democratically-elected governments in order to advance its business interests, with the most recent example taking place in Haiti. Cables published by WikiLeaks showed that Chevron, in 2006 and 2007, partnered with ExxonMobil and the U.S. government to undermine the presidency of former Haitian president René Préval after he forged a deal with Chávez’s PetroCaribe alliance that allowed Haiti to buy subsidized Venezuelan oil.

Furthermore, Chevron also benefited greatly from the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its representatives were among those who met with then-Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 to plan Iraq’s “postwar” — i.e., post-invasion — industry that led Chevron to acquire ownership of several Iraqi oil fields. Notably, the family of then-President George W. Bush is one of Chevron’s largest shareholders. In addition, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was a Chevron executive throughout the 1990s, and was in charge of public policy for its board of directors immediately prior to joining the Bush administration. Rice even had a Chevron oil tanker named in her honor in 1993.

Though Chevron greatly benefited from the Bush administration’s destruction of Iraq, Halliburton came away the biggest winner from the Iraq war, making $39.5 billion off the conflict and its aftermath after being awarded numerous, lucrative contracts to “rebuild” the country. This outcome is unsurprising given that Cheney served as the company’s CEO for decades and retained $34 million in company stock throughout his tenure as U.S. vice president.

Iraq had been targeted by the Bush administration soon after Bush came to power, particularly following the formation of Cheney’s 2001 Energy Task Force, which called for the privatization of Iraq’s then-nationalized oil resources and reviewed maps of Iraq’s oil fields and lists of companies seeking contracts with Baghdad years before the war officially began.

Investing in a gung-ho president

Chevron’s hopes for a continued U.S. government policy that favors its growth domestically and globally have continued under the Trump administration and have been visible for some time, as evidenced by its $500,000 donation to Trump’s inaugural committee and their top executive’s praise for the “pro-business environment” cultivated by the Trump administration. Indeed, in March 2017, then-Chevron CEO John Watson told CNBC that he had already met with White House staff on “multiple occasions” in just the first three months of the administration and had been “encouraged by those meetings.” “We’ve seen a more pro-business environment … I think the approach they’re taking toward business — toward enabling our economy to grow again — is a real positive,” Watson added.

Halliburton too has long had high hopes for Trump given that the president held between $50,000 and $100,000 in company stock up until December 2016, when he sold his personal stocks to avoid “conflicts of interest” during his presidency. However, some of Trump’s earliest policy proposals were described by the media as directly benefiting Halliburton, including his administration’s push to open more publicly-held lands in the U.S. to oil drilling.

Furthermore, the recent scandal that forced Trump’s secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, to resign involved Zinke’s alleged corrupt dealings with Halliburton chairman David Lesar, suggesting that the Trump administration’s potential for a conflict of interest with Halliburton did not magically dissipate following Trump’s sale of his personal investments.

Since the early days of the administration, both Halliburton and Chevron have benefited directly from several Trump administration policies, both foreign and domestic. For instance, Chevron and Halliburton benefited substantially from the Trump administration’s tax cuts, which were recently found to have had “no major impact” on economic growth or company hiring practices but instead enabled mega-corporations to buy back stocks en masse in order to increase their companies’ stock prices. After the passage of those tax cuts, Chevron executives urged governments around the world to implement similar legislation.

In addition, consider Trump’s 2017 decision to withdraw from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which Reuters explained as “a global standard for governments to disclose their revenues from oil, gas, and mining assets, and for companies to report payments made to obtain access to publicly owned resources, as well as other donations.” Bloomberg noted at the time that the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw had followed “a long lobbying battle waged by the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.”

The involvement of top U.S. oil corporations like Chevron in the administration’s decision to withdraw from the EITI led Corinna Gilfillan, head of the U.S. Office at NGO Global Witness, to state that it was “Exxon and Chevron’s preference for secrecy that [had] made it impossible for the U.S. to comply.” Gilfillan then told Common Dreams:

When major Russian and Chinese oil companies are disclosing more information about their deals around the world than their U.S. counterparts, you have got to ask: what are Exxon and Chevron so desperate to hide?”

However, Chevron, for its part, has not agreed with every Trump policy, as the company did lob considerable criticism at the Trump administration last June over his imposition of steel tariffs during the first phase of the ongoing “trade war” with China. Yet, that criticism disappeared a few months later, when another Trump policy – his draconian sanctions targeting Iran’s oil sector – took effect. As the Washington Examiner noted this past November, Trump’s sanction policy targeting Iranian oil “has proved a lucrative one for the shareholders who own oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron,” resulting in a jump for those companies’ third-quarter earnings “that topped Wall Street expectations by wide margins.”

The Examiner went onto note that Trump’s sanctions on Iranian oil exports led Chevron’s net income to more than double to $4.1 billion, with cash from operations reaching “the highest it has been in nearly five years.”

However, Halliburton’s reaction to Trump’s Iran policy is more mixed, given its considerable business interests in Iran and the fact that it had benefited from the Iran nuclear deal approved by the previous administration of Barack Obama. Yet, if the Trump administration’s regime-change policy targeting Iran succeeds, Halliburton will be among the top beneficiaries of that policy as well, given its already established presence in the country.

Now, with Venezuela’s massive oil resources in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, Chevron stands to gain once again from Trump’s foreign policy, which has been guided by oil politics in several instances.

Trump ready to test out his “Take the Oil” intervention policy

Though Trump has yet to make bold, Boltonesque public statements regarding the clear link between Venezuelan oil and his administration’s regime-change policy, his past statements regarding U.S. interventions in oil-rich nations elsewhere show that Trump has long backed U.S. intervention in foreign nations if it meant that the U.S. could secure that country’s natural resources, namely oil.

For instance, in 2011, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he would support U.S.-backed intervention in Libya if the U.S. could “take the oil.” In the eight years since the U.S.-backed intervention, Libya remains without a central government and is now the site of rampant terrorist activity, a massive illegal arms trade, and a booming slave trade.

Watch | Trump says he would support Libya intervention if U.S. could “take the oil”

Then, in 2016, candidate Trump again asserted that the U.S. should “take the oil” when intervening or invading foreign nations. Trump told NBC News in September 2016 that the terror group Daesh (ISIS) emerged only because the U.S. had not taken Iraq’s oil after the 2003 invasion.

Trump also stated, with regard to Iraq, that:

We go in, we spent $3 trillion. We lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then look, what happens is we get nothing. You know, it used to be the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victory. But I always said, take the oil.”

While Trump has not publicly touted his “take the oil” policy in relation to the current situation in Venezuela, he has done so privately during several White House meetings early on in his presidency. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Trump requested a briefing on Venezuela in his second day in office, often speaking to his team about the suffering of Venezuelan people and the country’s immense potential to become a rich nation through its oil reserves.”

Thus, Bolton’s as well as Senator Rubio’s frank admissions that the Trump administration’s Venezuela regime-change policy is about the oil and giving that oil to American companies, are clearly aligned with a policy that the president himself has long supported.

Washington’s gift to Big Oil: privatize PDVSA, no matter the human cost

As with Iraq, Libya and other U.S. oil-motivated interventions of the past, the destruction of Venezuela’s nationalized oil industry and its privatization to American oil companies — especially Chevron and Halliburton — is the guiding factor behind the U.S.’ current regime-change policy targeting Caracas. While past administrations attempted to obfuscate their “wars for oil” as “restoring democracy,” Trump administration officials and other “coup architects” have recently “gone off script” and overtly stated the guiding principle behind its Venezuela policy.

However, the timing of the Trump administration’s regime-change push in Venezuela is key. While companies like Chevron and Halliburton have been hemorrhaging profits in recent years, they have so far withstood the fallout due to the record high production of U.S. shale oil. Yet, the “golden age” of U.S. shale is quickly disappearing, with top industry insiders like Harold Hamm along with Halliburton’s rival company, Schlumberger, expecting shale output growth to slow by as much as 50 percent this year. Hamm is a close confidant of President Trump.

If this comes to pass, American oil companies will be in a bad way. Yet, if Guaidó comes to power and privatizes PDVSA, U.S. oil companies — with Chevron and Halliburton leading the pack — stand to make record profits in the world’s most oil rich nation, as they did in Iraq following the privatization of its national oil industry after U.S. intervention.

Worst of all, as the U.S.’ past interventions in Iraq and Libya and elsewhere have shown, Washington stands willing to kill untold thousands of innocent people in Venezuela — either through direct military intervention or a proxy war — to benefit American oil companies. Will the American people let yet another presidential administration destroy an entire nation for Chevron, Halliburton and other powerful American corporations?

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Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and has contributed to several other independent, alternative outlets. Her work has appeared on sites such as Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire among others. She also makes guest appearances to discuss politics on radio and television. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

I predicted three weeks ago that the Senate bill on the Middle East, which was rejected three times while the government was shutdown, would quickly receive cloture by a comfortable margin to end debate and proceed to a full vote in the Senate after the federal bureaucracy reopened. That has proven to be the case. Senate Bill S.1 was approved on January 29^th 76 for votes to 22 against. Every Republican voted for it, minus only Rand Paul and Jerry Moran, who did not vote. The Republicans were joined by 25 Democrats, all of whom had previous voted “no” to embarrass the White House over the shutdown. Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer, who has described himself as Israel’s protector in the Senate, switched his vote as did notoriously pro-Israel Senators Ben Cardin and Bob Menendez. The bill must now be passed by the Senate, which is certain to take place, before being sent on to the House of Representatives for its approval, where there will certainly be some limited debate. It then will go to President Donald Trump for his signature.

Readers will recall that S.1 the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019, sponsored by the singularly ambitious though demonstrably brain dead Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, included $33 billion in guaranteed aid to Israel for the next ten years, an unprecedented gesture to America’s closest ally and best friend in the whole world, as Congress might describe it.

But the legislation also incorporated measures to criminalize criticism of Israel, referred to as the Combating BDS Act of 2019. It has been correctly observed that that portion of the bill is clearly unconstitutional as it limits free speech, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and is considered to be the bedrock of American civil liberties, but there is no guarantee that the Supreme Court will agree if and when the law is contested. Once free expression is abridged for Israel there will be no end to other grievance groups exploiting the precedent to silence criticism and effectively negate the First Amendment.

The potential destruction of the Bill of Rights is only one aspect of the power that Israel has over American policymakers. The widely ballyhooed election of several Congresswomen who appear willing to challenge the Israeli orthodoxy on Capitol Hill is already being countered by the establishment within the Democratic Party, demonstrating once again how deep the corruption of America’s political class by Israel has gone.

In an early December speech before a largely Jewish audience at the Israeli-American Council gathering in South Florida, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demonstrated in no uncertain terms just how she and other Congressmen are more responsive to Israel and its supporters than they are to their own constituents. She said in response to a staged question during a “conversation” with Democratic Party top donor Israeli Haim Saban,

“I have said to people when they ask me, if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it our aid, our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”

Now “who we are” is a favorite expression used by a certain type of progressive that was made popular by the smooth talking but devious Barack Obama, meaning “I am taking the moral high ground so don’t ask me any questions or challenge what I have just said.” In Pelosi’s case she is saying precisely that, that American patronage of Israel is a moral imperative, a commitment forever that must be sustained no matter what Israel does and even if the United States itself should fall into ruin.

It is an absurd comment for someone who represents the people of her state and has taken an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, the ultimate pander to a right-wing Jewish audience that is socially progressive and consistently votes Democratic, which Pelosi celebrated, while at the same time cheering the bloody repression of the Palestinian people. And while Israel’s cheering section is doing all that, it is also dragging the American people into wars that need not be fought and stealing the taxpayers’ dollars to give to the racist Kleptocrats in charge in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Pelosi, like her partner in crime Senator Chuck Schumer, who also spoke at the conference, has a problem in paying for security along America’s southern border but she does not hesitate to send billions of dollars to Israel every year. One has to wonder at her priorities, but she knows that American Jews are more powerful and relevant to her party’s finances than doing the right thing would be, so there is no evidence of any hesitation on her part to throwing some Arabs and the outliers within her own party under the bus.

And Nancy also spoke of the dissidents in the Democratic Party, all five or so of them, saying

“Remove all doubt in your mind. It’s just a question of not paying attention to a few people who may want to go their own way…”

Apparently there is plenty of room under that bus for non-believers. And she also threw out a standard line of how “I believe that the establishment of the state of Israel was the greatest accomplishment of the twentieth century” while also unloading on the Arabs saying “We have to I think in Congress make it really clear to Palestinians that we expect them to be responsible negotiators and we haven’t seen a lot of that thus far.”

Apparently, Nancy is unaware that the “establishment” of Israel forced 700,000 people who had lived in Palestine for centuries out of their homes. And she apparently also has missed all those stories of Palestinian “terrorist” children and emergency workers being shot dead by Israeli snipers while they were “negotiating” such things as access to food, water, and medicines from the inside of the Gaza containment fence. Or maybe she’s forgotten about the towns in Israel that can legally ban Christian or Muslim residents as Israel is now officially a Jewish only state. Nancy Pelosi’s extreme efforts to demonstrate loyalty and devotion to a nation that the rest of the world views as a pariah is commendable, but only if one is a sociopath.

There is something completely dead at the heart of American politics which makes basic humanity unacceptable when confronted by a force for evil that has penetrated and manipulated both the national media and the governing political consensus. That is what Israel and its rabid band of supporters have done to the United States. First Amendment? Goodbye. If the U.S. government should crumble under the strain, don’t worry because our support for you is eternal. Kill a couple of hundred Arabs, shoot a few thousand more? No problem. It’s God’s will. And if Israel leads America into a nuclear war? Then we will do what we have to do to protect our ally.

Ask Pelosi and Schumer, “Have you been corrupted?” They will answer “No. Of course not. It is what we are.”

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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.

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The covert and overt interventions taking place against Venezuela by the United States and its allies are a form of aggression and a violation of the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter making the nations involved international outlaws.

The attempted coup against President Maduro of Venezuela may have failed so far but the jackals that instigated it have not given up their objective of forcing the majority of Venezuelans benefiting from the Bolivarian revolution begun by President Chavez, back to the misery the revolution is trying to save them from.  The United States and its allied governments and media, working with American military and civilian intelligence services, are pumping out a constant flow of propaganda about the start of affairs in Venezuela to mislead and manipulate their own peoples so that they support their aggression and to undermine Venezuelans support for their revolution.

We have seen this type of propaganda before, the fake stories about “human rights” abuses, economic conditions, the cries of “democracy,” the propaganda about an  “authoritarian” leader, a “tyrant,” “dictator”, all labels they have used before against leaders of nations that they have later murdered; President Arbenz, Allende, Torrijos, Habyarimana, Milosevic, Hussein, Ghaddafi are examples that come quickly to mind, so that the same threats against Maduro are not just propaganda but direct physical threats.

We see the same pretexts for military aggression used and same euphemisms being employed, the same cries for “humanitarian intervention,” which we now know are nothing more than modern echoes of Hitler’s pretexts for the invasion of Czechoslovakia, to “save the oppressed Germans.”

We see the same smug lies and hypocrisy about the rule of law as they openly brag about their violation of international law with every step they take and talk as if they are gods ruling the world.

The United States is the principal actor in all this but it has beside it among other flunkey nations, perhaps the worst of them all, Canada, which has been an enthusiastic partner in crime of the United States since the end of the Second World War.  We cannot forget its role in the aggression against North Korea, the Soviet Union, China, its secret role in the American aggression against Vietnam, against Iraq, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Haiti, Iran, and the past several years Venezuela.

Canada will take the lead in the aggression against Venezuela on Monday February 4^th when it hosts a meeting in Ottawa of a group of international war crime conspirators, known as The Lima Group, a group of Latin American and Caribbean lackeys of the United States, including Mexico and Canada which was set up by the United States at a meeting in Lima, Peru on August 8, 2017 with the express purpose of overthrowing President Maduro.

Canada’s harridan of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, stated to the press recently that

“Canada needs to play a leading role in the Lima Group because the crisis in Venezuela is unfolding in Canada’s global backyard. This is our neighbourhood. We have a direct interest in what happens in our hemisphere.”

“In Canada’s global backyard?”  It’s astonishing to read it. Canada regards the globe as its backyard? She manages to reveal a severe case of megalomania and insult the rest of the nations of the world at the same time.  Her statement that Venezuela “is our neighbourhood” is almost a direct adoption of the American claim to hegemony and “interventionism” in the western hemisphere as if Canada completely identifies itself with the United States, that is, in terms of foreign policy, has completely merged with the United States.

But, by doing so, the Canadian elite show themselves to be the enemies of progress and economic and social justice; shows them to be the antihuman reactionaries that they are. They also make themselves world outlaws.

Freeland claims that the Lima Group meeting will “address the political and economic crisis in Venezuela,” yet it is Canada that, along with the United States that has created the very crisis they are using as a pretext to attack President Maduro. It is they that have tried to topple both him and Chavez through assassination plots, threatened military invasion and economic warfare that has the sole purpose of disrupting the social and economic life of Venezuela, of making life as miserable as possible in order to foment unrest while conspiring with internal reactionary forces.

The Lima Group, began its dirty work in 2017 by issuing statements condemning the Bolivarian revolution, claimed that there was a break down of law and order in Venezuela and attempted to cancel the elections just held which gave President Maduro a solid majority of 68% of the votes in what all international elections observers judged free and fair.

Following the election of Maduro all of these nations withdrew their ambassadors from Venezuela. They did all this while claiming that their actions were taken “with full respect for the norms of international law and the principle of nonintervention” when they are plainly violating all norms of international law and the principle of non-intervention. They are also violating the UN Charter that prohibits any nation or group of nations from taken action outside the framework of the UN Security Council against any other nation.

The Ottawa meeting is in fact a meeting of criminal conspirators that are intent on committing acts of aggression, the supreme war crime against a sovereign nation and people.Intervention is generally prohibited under international law because it violates the concept of independent state sovereignty. All nations have the right to govern themselves as they deem fit and that no nation could rightfully interfere in the government of another.Since there can be no intervention without the presence of force or threats of its use the actions taken and threats made against Venezuela constitute the crime of aggression under international law.

The US and Canada are now threatening the use of armed force against Venezuela. John Bolton stated that all options are on the table and has even threatened Maduro with imprisonment in the US torture chambers of Guantanamo Bay. Britain has seized Venezuelan funds sitting in London banks, and the US and its flunkies are now trying to stop Venezuela and Turkey from dealing in Venezuelan gold, and, to add to their net, accuse them of sending the gold to Iran in violation of their illegal “sanctions.”

The hypocrisy hits you in the face especially when some of the same nations in the Lima Gang recognised as far bas as 1826 at the Congress of Panama the absolute prohibition of intervention by states in each other’s internal affairs. In attendance, were the states of Columbia, Central America, Mexico, and Peru. Led by Simon Bolivar, the Congress declared its determination to maintain”the sovereignty and independence of all and each of the confederated powers of America against foreign subjection.”

At the Seventh International Conference of American States held in Montevideo in 1933,The Convention on Rights and Duties of States, issued at the conclusion of the conference, to which the U.S. was a signatory, declared that”no state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.” The legal position of the doctrine of nonintervention was

solidified three years later at Buenos Aires with the adoption of the Additional Protocol Relative to Non-Intervention. This document declared “inadmissible the intervention of any of the parties to the treaty, directly or indirectly, and for whatever reason, in the internal or external affairs of any other of the Parties.” The U.S. government agreed to this treaty without reservation as well.

The United Nations has become the primary source of the rules of International behavior since World War II. The principle of nonintervention between states is everywhere implicit in the Charter of the United Nations. Article 1 of the U.N. Charter sets out the four purposes of the organization, one of which is “to maintain international peace and security,” a task which includes the suppression of “threats to the peace,” “acts of aggression” and “other breaches of the peace.” Another is “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of people.” Article 2(1) goes on to base the organization on “the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members.”Articles 2(3) and 2(4) require Member States to utilize peaceful means in the settlement of disputes and to refrain from the use of force.

Article 2(4) states:

“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

Thus, Article 2(4) prohibits the use of the economic and political pressures and the indirect subversion which is an integral part of covert action.

That covert action is forbidden under the law of the U.N. is supported

by the numerous resolutions passed by the General Assembly which assert the right to national sovereignty and the principle of nonintervention in general, while specifically condemning particular tactics used in covert action.

At the risk of tiring the reader, I think it is worthwhile to reiterate what the General Assembly of the United Nations has stated over and again beginning with Resolution 290 (iv) in 1949. Referred to as the “Essentials of Peace”

Resolution, this enactment called upon every nation to “refrain from any threats or acts, direct or indirect, aimed at impairing the freedom, independence or integrity of any State, or at fomenting civil strife and subverting the will of the people in any state.”‘

Resolution 1236 (XII) passed in 1957, declared that “peaceful and tolerant relations among States” should be based upon “respect for each other’s sovereignty, equality and territorial integrity and nonintervention in one another’s internal affairs.’

The first General Assembly resolution specifically prohibiting covert action was Resolution 213 1(XX). Entitled the “Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty,” this resolution was based on proposals made by the Soviet Union, nineteen Latin American States, and the United Arab Republic, whose draft resolution was co-sponsored by 26 other non-aligned countries. The declaration restated the aims and purposes of the U.N. and noted the importance of recognizing State sovereignty and freedom to self-determination in the current political atmosphere. The eighth preambular paragraph of Resolution stated that, “direct intervention, subversion and all forms of indirect intervention are contrary” to the principles of the U.N. and, “consequently, constitute a violation of the Charter of the United Nations.”‘  The operative portion of the declaration consists of eight paragraphs, the first of which makes clear there can be no “intervention as of right”:

“1. No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements, are condemned.’

In another paragraph the Resolution precisely defined the scope of its prohibition against intervention, demonstrating the illicit status of covert activities:

“2. No State may use or encourage the use of economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another state in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights or to secure from it advantages of any kind. Also, no state shall organize, assist, foment, finance, incite or tolerate subversive, terrorist or armed activities directed toward the violent overthrow of the regime of another State, or interfere in civil strife in another State.”

Resolution 2225 (XXI) reaffirmed the principles and rules ex-pressed in Resolution 2131 (XX), and urged “the immediate cessation of intervention, in any form whatever, in the domestic or external affairs of States,” and condemned “all forms of intervention . . . as a basic source of danger to the cause of world peace.”

Finally, the Resolution called upon all states to, “refrain from armed intervention or the promotion or organization of subversion, terrorism or other indirect forms of intervention for the purpose of changing by violence the existing system in another State or interfering in civil strife in another State.”

By Resolution 2625 (XXV), the General Assembly adopted the “Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.” The Declaration had its origins with the first meeting of the Special Committee on the Principles of International Law held in 1964 in Mexico City. This document asserted seven basic principles of international law, then elaborated how these principles were to be realized. The seven principles embodied in the Declaration were: a) the principle prohibiting the threat or use of force in international relations;b) the principle requiring the peaceful settlement of disputes; c)the duty of nonintervention; d) the duty of states to cooperate with each other; e) the principle of equal rights and self-determination of all people;f) the principle of sovereign equality of states; and g) the good faith duty of states to fulfill their obligations under the Charter.

In its discussion of the first principle – that states refrain from the threat or use of force – the Declaration emphasizes the duty of each state “to refrain from organizing or encouraging the organization of irregular forces or armed bands, including mercenaries, for incursion into the territory of another state.” In addition, the Declaration insists that every state has a duty “to refrain from organizing, instigating, assisting or participating in acts of civil strife or terrorist acts in another State or to allow such acts to be operated from its territory.”

I can go on listing other UN resolutions stating the same.  Again and again the General Assembly hammered home the importance of the principle of nonintervention as a central maxim of international law.

Resolution 34/103 addressed the inadmissibility of the policy of “hegemonism” in international relations and defined that term as the “manifestation of the policy of a State, or a group of States, to control, dominate and subjugate, politically, economically, ideologically or militarily, other States, peoples or regions of the world.”‘ The resolution,inter alia, called upon states to observe the principles of the Charter and the principle of nonintervention. By this resolution it was declared that the General Assembly, “Resolutely condemns policies of pressure and use or threat of use of force, direct or indirect aggression,occupation and the growing practice of interference and intervention,overt or covert, in the internal affairs of states.”‘

In 1981, the “Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States” was adopted by the General Assembly through Resolution 36/103. One of the duties imposed upon states by the Declaration was: “The duty of a State to refrain from armed intervention, subversion, military occupation or any other form of intervention and interference,overt or covert, directed at another State or group of States, or any act of military, political or economic interference in the internal affairs of another State, including acts of reprisal involving the use of force.’ In addition, the Declaration called upon states to refrain from any action which seeks to disrupt the unity or to undermine or subvert the political order of other States, training and equipping mercenaries or armed bands, hostile propaganda, and the use of “external economic assistance” programs or “transnational and multinational corporations under its jurisdiction and control as instruments of political pressure and control.”‘

So, there you have it; the law. The world can see that the Lima Gang, who like to use the phrase “the rule of law” in their diktats to others, are committing egregious crimes under international law and together these crimes are components of the supreme war crime of aggression. The Lima Group therefore is a group of international criminal conspirators and the every individual involved is a war criminal.  So when the Lima conspirators issue their press statement after the Ottawa meeting, planning aggression against Venezuela, calling for the overthrow, for the head of President Maduro and dressing it up in the usual language of the aggressor, of “human rights” and “democracy” and their fake and illegal doctrine of  “responsibility to protect” it will not be issued by nations interested in peace or who have respect for international law but by a gang of criminals, of international outlaws.

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

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“Copyright Zambon Editore”

Capítulo 1

O NASCIMENTO DA BOMBA

1.1.O bombardeamento atómico de Hiroshima e Nagasaki

«Há dezasseis horas, um avião americano deixou cair uma bomba sobre Hiroshima, uma base importante do exército japonês. [ ] É uma bomba atómica. É uma consolidação da energia fundamental do universo. A força da qual o Sol extrai a sua energia»: assim anuncia o Presidente dos Estados Unidos, Harry Truman, na declaração de 6 de Agosto de 1945.   Três dias depois, no discurso radiofónico de 9 de Agosto, explica que «a primeira bomba atómica foi lançada sobre Hiroshima, uma base militar, porque neste primeiro ataque queríamos evitar, o mais possível, o massacre de civis».

Na realidade, Hiroshima não é uma base militar, como também não é Nagasaki, a cidade japonesa sobre a qual os Estados Unidos lançaram a segunda bomba atómica, em 9 de Agosto, o mesmo dia em que o Presidente Truman pronuncia o discurso radiofónico.

A bomba atómica de urânio de 15 kiloton (igual à potência explosiva de 15 mil toneladas de TNT) lançada sobre Hiroshima, sarcasticamente designada de Little Boy (rapazinho), matou imediatamente e nos seis meses seguintes, cerca de 140.000 pessoas – civis, na esmagadora maioria. Mas outras pessoas morreram nos anos seguintes, depois dos efeitos das radiações, embora muitos dos sobreviventes, os hibakusha, tenham sofrido efeitos biológicos a longo prazo. O número total de vítimas da bomba de Hiroshima, nos decénios seguintes, é estimado em mais de meio milhão. A bomba  atómica de plutónio de cerca de 22 kiloton, lançada sobre Nagasaki, (humoristicamente denominada Fatman = gorducho), mata imediatamente e nos meses seguintes 75.000 pessoas, na grande maioria civis, aos quais se juntaram muitos outros nos anos seguintes, enquanto muitos dos sobreviventes, sofreram os efeitos biológicos a longo prazo.

A justificação oficial do bombardeamento atómico de Hiroshima e Nagasaki é que só assim os Estados Unidos podem forçar o Japão à rendição, sem ter de pagar um preço elevado em vidas americanas. Na realidade o Japão está no limite extremo e não há necessidade de recorrer à bomba atómica para impôr-lhe a rendição. A verdadeira razão é outra. Enquanto Truman está na Conferência de Potsdam (7 de Julho a 2 de Agosto de 1945), juntamente com Churchill e Stalin, é-lhe comunicado secretamente que, a 16 de Julho, foi detonada em New Mexico, a primeira bomba atómica. O Projecto Manhattan, conduzido no máximo segredo desde Junho de 1942, tinha alcançado a sua meta. Truman tem agora a possibilidade de acabar a guerra com o Japão da maneira mais favorável aos Estados Unidos, impedindo que a União Soviética participe na invasão do Japão, decidida em Potsdam e de expandir, desse modo, a sua influência à região do Pacífico.

Para isso, ordena secretamente que a bomba atómica seja utilizada o mais rápido possível.Em 24 de Julho, dois dias antes da Declaração de Potsdam, na qual se intima o Japão à rendição incondicional, são escolhidas secretamente, como possíveis objectivos, quatro cidades japonesas: Hiroshima (com mais de 250 mil habitantes), Nagasaki (cerca de 200 mil), Kokura e Niigata (cada uma com 150 mil). As condições meteorológicas mais favoráveis, em 6 de Agosto, fazem cair a primeira escolha em Hiroshima. Três dias depois, a escolha cai sobre Nagasaki.

«A decisão de destruir Hiroshima e Nagasaki foi uma decisão política e não, uma decisão militar» ( ou seja, não foi ditada pela necessidade de derrotar militarmente o Japão), escreve a jornalista americana, Diana Johnstone. «A posse demonstrada dessa arma dava a Truman uma sensação de poder sentir-se livre para romper a promessa feita aos russos e de pressionar Moscovo, na Europa, de maneira ameaçadora. As bombas de Hiroshima e Nagasaki não mataram, apenas e sem motivo, centenas de milhares de civis. Elas abriram o caminho à Guerra Fria».

Os Estados Unidos procuram tirar a máxima vantagem do facto de, naquele momento, serem os únicos a possuir a arma atómica. Depois de tê-la definido, «a maior conquista que a ciência organizada já tinha realizado na História»,Truman sublinha na declaração de 6 de Agosto que, «mesmo não sendo habitual este governo esconder os seus conhecimentos à comunidade científica mundial, nas actuais circunstâncias, não se pretende divulgar os processos técnicos de produção.»

Ele sublinha, em seguida, que «a energia atómica pode exercer uma influência eficaz para a manutenção da paz mundial». O sentido é claro: dado que os Estados Unidos não pretendem divulgar os processos técnicos de produção, isto significa que serão eles, uma vez terminada a Segunda Guerra Mundial, a garantir a «paz mundial» servindo-se do monopólio das armas nucleares.

Manlio Dinucci

ÍNDICE DO LIVRO

Nota sobre o Autor

Nota da Redacção

1    O nascimento da Bomba 

1.1  O bombardeamento atómico de Hiroshima e Nagasaki

1.2  Os efeitos da explosão nuclear sobre uma cidade

1.3  Os efeitos da chuva radioactiva

1.4  O inverno nuclear

2    A corrida aos armamentos nucleares 

2.1  O confronto nuclear USA-URSS

2.2  Os mísseis balísticos intercontinentais

2.3  A crise dos mísseis em Cuba e a introdução da China entre as potências nucleares

2.4  A planificação do ataque nuclear 

2.5  O Tratado do Espaço Exterior e o Tratado de Não-Proliferação deArmas Nucleares

2.6  Os mísseis balísticos com ogivas múltiplas  

2.7  A bomba N

2.8  O Tratado dos Mísseis Anti-balísticos e da limitação das armas estratégicas 

2.9  A  Bomba secreta de Israel — Parte 1 + Parte 2 + Parte 3

2.10  A introdução da África do Sul, da Índia e do Paquistão entre as potências nucleares

3    O barril de pólvora nuclear

3.1  Um milhão de Hiroshimas

3.2  A «maleta nuclear»

3.3  Os falsos alarmes de ataques nucleares

3.4  Os acidentes com armas nucleares

3.5  Poluição radioactiva dos ensaios e das instalações nucleares

3.6  A ligação entre o nuclear militar e civil

3.7  Os acidentes nas centrais nucleares 

3.8  Os movimentos anti-nucleares durante a guerra fria

4    As guerras após a guerra fria 

4.1 O mundo numa encruzilhada

4.2  Golfo: a primeira guerra após a guerra fria

4.3  As armas de urânio empobrecido

4.4  A reorientação estratégica dos Estados Unidos 

4.5  A reorientação estratégica da NATO

4.6 A intervenção da NATO na crise balcânica e aguerra contra a Jugoslávia 

4.7  Campo de teste de bombardeiros de ataque nuclear e uso maciço de armas de urânio empobrecido 

4.8  A superação do Artigo 5 e a confirmação da liderança dos EUA.

4.9  O «Novo Modelo de Defesa» da Itália

4.10  A expansão da NATO para Leste, para a Rússia

5    A encenação do desarmamento 

5.1  As armas nucleares e o “escudo anti-míssil” na reestruturação das forças dos EUA

5.2  Os tratados START sobre redução de armas estratégicas

5.3  Proibição de testes nucleares e de testes “sub-críticos”

5.4  O Tratado de Moscovo e o novo START

5.5  A introdução da Coreia do Norte nas potências nucleares

5.6  Outros países capazes de fabricar armas nucleares

5.7  As armas químicas e biológicas 

6     A nova ofensiva USA/NATO 

6.1  11 de Setembro: grande-ataque terrorista via satélite 

6.2  11 de Setembro: as falhas da versão oficial

6.3  Afeganistão: o início da «guerra global ao terrorismo» 

6.4  A segunda guerra contra o Iraque

6.5  A guerra contra a Líbia

6.6  A guerra oculta contra a Síria e aformação do ISIS

6.7  O golpe de estado na Ucrânia

6.8  As guerras secretas com um rosto humanitário 

7    A Europa na frente nuclear 

7.1  A Europa no rearmamento nuclear do Prémio Nobel da Paz

7.2  Itália: porta-aviões nuclear USA/NATO no Mediterrâneo

7.3  A B61-12, a nova bomba nuclear USA para a Itália e para a Europa 

7.4  A ‘escalation’ USA/NATO na Europa

7.5  O «escudo» USA sobre a Europa 

8     Os cenários do Apócalipse 

8.1   A ‘escalation’ qualitativa do confronto nuclear

8.2   A preparação do ‘first strike’ nuclear

8.3  Armas electro-magnéticas e laser e aviões robot espaciais para a guerra nuclear

8.4   A ameaça mortal do plutónio e o aviso não escutado de Fukushima 

8.5   A ameaça do terrorismo nuclear 

8.6   As nano-armas: potenciais detonadores potenciais da guerra nuclear

9     No dia anterior, enquanto estamos a tempo

9.1   A estratégia  do Império Americano do Ocidente

9.2   O sistema bélico planetário dos Estados Unidos da América 

9.3   A atracagem da Itália à máquina de guerra USA/NATO

9.4  A desatracagem da Itália da máquina de guerra USA/NATO, 
para uma Itália soberana e neutra, liberta de armas nucleares 

APÊNDICE

 

Tradutora: Mania Luísa de Vasconcellos

“To wrongly name things is to add to the world’s ills”.

Let us adapt this quote attributed to Albert Camus to the Venezuelan contest. It would be something like “to recognise a parallel president is to serve the interests of foreign powers”. It seems like there have not been enough wars and refugees. In truth, who authorised France or Spain to appoint Guaidó as president of Venezuela, if not the controversial Donald Trump, US president?

By recognising Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is following the same interventionist foreign policy that has yielded excellent results in Libya or Syria, as anyone can confirm. Have there not been enough wars and refugees? Let us take the example of Honduras. Edwin Espina, does the name ring a bell? This young Honduran activist has been in jail for a year in the inhuman prison cells of the Juan Orlando Hernández regime. His crime is to have denounced the electoral fraud at the end of 2017. Ten years ago, the US played a decisive role in the coup against Mel Zelaya, and since then, the situation in Honduras has gone from bad to worse. For months, thousands of Hondurans have been fleeing the country. But since Honduras hosts an important US military base, it is referred to as a “democracy”.

Leaders like Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sanchez have shamefully bowed before Trump and insulted the national sovereignty of French and Spanish peoples by announcing they would recognise Guaidó at the end of the eight day deadline they gave president Maduro. How did we get here? The United States has disregarded the United Nations principles by introducing the notion of “responsibility to protect”. In other words, legitimising intervention under the pretext that a government would attack its own people. The formula is not foolproof, but is has worked several times.

During the February 2nd rally, Guaidó announced that “humanitarian aid” would soon arrive from Cucuta, the Colombian town right on the Venezuelan border, known as a transit point for all kinds of smuggling and for the presence of paramilitaries. The goal of the US is to use Colombia, or even Brazil, to re-create the pattern of “humanitarian corridors” that was put in place during the Syrian conflict. And, under the guise of delivering aid, traffic weapons and infiltrate mercenaries. Soon after this demonstration, national security advisor John Bolton called on the leadership of the Venezuelan army to execute a coup. The US would rather not intervene to blatantly, and that is where lackeys come in handy.

Meanwhile, in Avenida Bolívar, a massive chavista march against foreign intervention and in defense of the 20 year legacy of the Bolivarian Revolution was held. At the same time, as everyone saw, the streets of France were perfectly calm, and the yellow vests have grown bored of the cold and the humane treatment by the police. Carry on, nothing to see here. The crisis is over there in Venezuela. And if reality does not match the news, then the trick is to stoke the flames from abroad. US vice-president Mike Pence knows a thing or two about this. He insisted that all options are on the table, including bombing and destroying an entire country as was done in Iraq, because “it is not the moment for dialogue, but for action”… What is that you say? That tens of thousands took to the streets in France demonstrating against repression, because they no longer support Macron after a mere year and a half in office? Nonsense.

It does not take a seasoned journalist or intellectual to understand that Venezuela is now in the stage where the future of humanity is being played out. Either a world in which imperial chaos reigns, or one with a multipolar balance that respects the United Nations.

*

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Die am 1. Februar von Außenminister Mike Pompeo angekündigte „Aussetzung“ des Washingtoner Vertrags über nukleare Mittelstreckensysteme (INF) hat den Countdown eingeleitet, der innerhalb von sechs Monaten die Vereinigten Staaten endgültig aus dem Vertrag herauszählen wird. Ab heute sehen sich die USA jedenfalls in der Lage, Waffen der im Vertrag verbotenen Kategorie – bodengestützte Mittelstreckenraketen (zwischen 500 und 5.500 km) – zu testen und einzusetzen.

Zu dieser Kategorie gehören die in den 80er Jahren in Europa aufgestellten Atomraketen – Pershing-2 ballistische Raketen, die von den Vereinigten Staaten in Westdeutschland aufgestellt wurden, und landgestützte Marschflugkörper, die von den Vereinigten Staaten in Großbritannien, Italien, Westdeutschland, Belgien und den Niederlanden aufgestellt wurden, unter dem Vorwand der Verteidigung der europäischen Verbündeten gegen die von der Sowjetunion auf deren eigenem Territorium aufgestellten ballistischen SS-20-Raketen.

Der 1987 von den Präsidenten Gorbatschow und Reagan unterzeichnete INF-Vertrag eliminierte alle Raketen dieser Kategorie, einschließlich der in Comiso (Sizilien) stationierten.

Der INF-Vertrag wurde von Washington in Frage gestellt, als die Vereinigten Staaten sahen, dass ihr strategischer Vorteil gegenüber Russland und China abnahm. Im Jahr 2014 beschuldigte die Obama-Regierung Russland ohne den geringsten Beweis, einen Marschflugkörper (Typ 9M729) getestet zu haben, der zu der vom Vertrag verbotenen Kategorie gehört. Und im Jahr 2015 gab sie bekannt, dass „die Vereinigten Staaten aufgrund der Verletzung des INF-Vertrags durch Russland den Einsatz von Bodenraketen in Europa in Betracht ziehen“. Dieser Plan wurde von der Trump-Administration bestätigt. Im Jahr 2018 genehmigte der Kongress die Finanzierung eines „Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprogramms für einen Marschflugkörper, der von einer straßenbasierten mobilen Plattform gestartet wurde“. Moskau seinerseits leugnete, dass sein Marschflugkörper gegen den Vertrag verstößt, und beschuldigten Washington im Gegenzug, in Polen und Rumänien Rampen für Abfangraketen (vom „Schild“) installiert zu haben, mit denen Marschflugkörper mit Atomsprengköpfen gestartet werden können.

In diesem Zusammenhang müssen wir uns an den geografischen Faktor erinnern – während eine in Europa stationierte US-Nuklearrakete mittlerer Reichweite Moskau treffen kann, kann eine ähnliche von Russland auf seinem eigenen Territorium stationierte Rakete die europäischen Hauptstädte erreichen, aber nicht Washington. Wenn wir das Szenario umkehren, ist es, wie wenn Russland seine nuklearen Mittelstreckenraketen in Mexiko installieren würde.

Der Plan der USA, den INF-Vertrag zu begraben, wurde von den europäischen Verbündeten der NATO voll unterstützt. Der Nordatlantikrat erklärte am 4. Dezember 2018, dass der „INF-Vertrag durch das Vorgehen Russlands“ in Gefahr sei, dem vorgeworfen wurde, „ein destabilisierendes Raketensystem“ eingesetzt zu haben. Der gleiche Rat hat gestern erklärt, dass er „die Maßnahmen der Vereinigten Staaten zur Aussetzung ihrer Verpflichtungen aus dem INF-Vertrag uneingeschränkt unterstützt“ und Russland aufgefordert, die verbleibenden sechs Monate zu nutzen, um „zu einer vollständigen Einhaltung des Vertrags zurückzukehren“.

Der Zusammenbruch des INF-Vertrags wurde auch durch den Beitrag der Europäischen Union unterstützt, die in der UN-Generalversammlung am 21. Dezember 2018 gegen die von Russland vorgelegte Resolution zur „Erhaltung und Umsetzung des INF-Vertrags“ stimmte, die mit 46 zu 43 Stimmen bei 78 Enthaltungen abgelehnt wurde. Die Europäische Union – von denen 21 ihrer 27 Mitglieder auch Mitglieder der NATO sind (das Vereinigte Königreich bleibt beim Austritt aus der EU Mitglied) – hat sich einstimmig für die Position der NATO ausgesprochen, die sich ihrerseits einstimmig für die der Vereinigten Staaten entschieden hat. Im Wesentlichen hat die Europäische Union also auch grünes Licht für den möglichen Einsatz neuer US-Atomraketen in Europa, einschließlich Italien, gegeben.

In einer Frage von dieser Bedeutung hat sich die Regierung Conte, wie auch die Vorgängerregierung, sowohl der NATO als auch der EU angeschlossen. Und über den gesamten politischen Kreis hinweg wurde keine einzige Stimme erhoben, um zu erklären, dass das Parlament darüber entscheiden sollte, wie es bei der UNO über den INF-Vertrag abstimmen soll. Und wieder wurde im Parlament keine Stimme erhoben, um zu fordern, dass Italien den Atomwaffensperrvertrag einhält und sich an die UNO bezüglich des Verbots von Kernwaffen hält, das die USA zwingt, ihre Atombomben B61 aus unserem Staatsgebiet abzuziehen und die noch gefährlicheren B61-12 nicht ab dem ersten Halbjahr 2020 zu installieren.

Da Italien mit den Muos und den Jtags in Sizilien auf seinem Territorium Atomwaffen und strategische Anlagen der USA besitzt, ist es als hochentwickelter Stützpunkt der US-Nuklearstreitkräfte und damit als Ziel russischer Streitkräfte wachsenden Gefahren ausgesetzt. Eine ballistische Mittelstrecken-Nuklearrakete benötigt zwischen 6 und 11 Minuten, um ihr Ziel zu erreichen. Ein schönes Beispiel für die Verteidigung unserer Souveränität, die in der Verfassung verankert ist, und für unsere Sicherheit, die die Regierung garantiert, indem sie den Migranten die Tür verschließt, sie aber weit öffnet, um US-Atomwaffen zuzulassen.

Manlio Dinucci

L’affossamento USA del Trattato INF e le complicità europee

il manifesto, 05. Februar 2019

Übersetzung aus dem Englischen: K.R.

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Relevant article selected from the GR archive, first published in February 2015.

Not Theory … Admitted Fact

There are many documented false flag attacks, where a government carries out a terror attack … and then falsely blames its enemy for political purposes.

In the following 42 instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admits to it, either orally or in writing:

 

(1) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”. The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found:

“Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the ‘Incident’ was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army ….” And see this.

(2) A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.

(3) Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson.

(4) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland – as a basis for launching the “Winter War” against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.

(5) The Russian Parliament, current Russian president Putin and former Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and falsely blame it on the Nazis.

(6) The British government admits that – between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust to seek safety in Palestine, set up a fake group called “Defenders of Arab Palestine”, and then had the psuedo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings (and see this, this and this).

(7) Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).

(8) The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister.

(9) The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish consulate in Greece – also damaging the nearby birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey – and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence.

(10) The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change.

(11-21) The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.

As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this) (Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred).

And watch this BBC special. They also allegedly carried out terror attacks in France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, and other countries.

False flag attacks carried out pursuant tho this program include – by way of example only – the murder of the Turkish Prime Minister (1960), bombings in Portugal (1966), the Piazza Fontana massacre in Italy (1969), terror attacks in Turkey (1971), the Peteano bombing in Italy (1972), shootings in Brescia, Italy and a bombing on an Italian train (1974), shootings in Istanbul, Turkey (1977), the Atocha massacre in Madrid, Spain (1977), the abduction and murder of the Italian Prime Minister (1978), the bombing of the Bologna railway station in Italy (1980), and shooting and killing 28 shoppers in Brabant county, Belgium (1985).

(22) In 1960, American Senator George Smathers suggested that the U.S. launch “a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro]“.

(23) Official State Department documents show that, in 1961, the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. The plans were not carried out, but they were all discussed as serious proposals.

(24) As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

(25) In 1963, the U.S. Department of Defense wrote a paper promoting attacks on nations within the Organization of American States – such as Trinidad-Tobago or Jamaica – and then falsely blaming them on Cuba.

(26) The U.S. Department of Defense even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: “The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro’s subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on Guantanamo.”

(27) The NSA admits that it lied about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 … manipulating data to make it look like North Vietnamese boats fired on a U.S. ship so as to create a false justification for the Vietnam war.

(28) A U.S. Congressional committee admitted that – as part of its “Cointelpro” campaign – the FBI had used many provocateurs in the 1950s through 1970s to carry out violent acts and falsely blame them on political activists.

(29) A top Turkish general admitted that Turkish forces burned down a mosque on Cyprus in the 1970s and blamed it on their enemy. He explained: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent’s incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example”.

(30) The German government admitted (and see this) that, in 1978, the German secret service detonated a bomb in the outer wall of a prison and planted “escape tools” on a prisoner – a member of the Red Army Faction – which the secret service wished to frame the bombing on.

(31) A Mossad agent admits that, in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddaffi’s compound in Tripoli, Libya which broadcast fake terrorist trasmissions recorded by Mossad, in order to frame Gaddaffi as a terrorist supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter.

(32) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him “to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident”, thus framing the ANC for the bombing.

(33) An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author).

(34)    The United States Army’s 1994 publication Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces – updated in 2004 – recommends employing terrorists and using false flag operations to destabilize leftist regimes in Latin America.   False flag terrorist attacks were carried out in Latin America and other regions as part of the CIA’s “Dirty Wars“. And see this.

(35) An Indonesian fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998, and determined that “elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked”.

(36) Senior Russian Senior military and intelligence officers admit that the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999 and falsely blamed it on Chechens, in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya (and see this report and this discussion).

(37) According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.

(38) The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings.

(39) As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the “war on terror”.

(40) Senior police officials in Genoa, Italy admitted that – in July 2001, at the G8 summit in Genoa – planted two Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing of a police officer, in order to justify a violent crackdown against protesters.

(41) The U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks – as shown by a memo from the defense secretary – as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq war. Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime, that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties. Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq war was really launched for oil … not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction.  Despite previous “lone wolf” claims, many U.S. government officials now say that 9/11 was state-sponsored terror; but Iraq was not the state which backed the hijackers.  (Many U.S. officials have alleged that 9/11 was a false flag operation by rogue elements of the U.S. government.).  

(42) Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the white House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country.

(43) Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.”

(44) United Press International reported in June 2005:

U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

(45) Undercover Israeli soldiers admitted in 2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on Palestinians, as an excuse to crack down on peaceful protests by the Palestinians.

(46) Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers (and see this).

(47) At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence.

(48) Egyptian politicians admitted (and see this) that government employees looted priceless museum artifacts in 2011 to try to discredit the protesters.

(49) A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat.

(50) The highly-respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar – recently admitted that the Saudi government controls “Chechen” terrorists.

(51) High-level American sources admitted that the Turkish government – a fellow NATO country – carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government; and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government.

(52) The former Ukrainian security chief admits that the sniper attacks which started the Ukrainian coup were carried out in order to frame others.

(53) Britain’s spy agency has admitted (and see this) that it carries out “digital false flag” attacks on targets, framing people by writing offensive or unlawful material … and blaming it on the target.

So Common … There’s a Name for It

The use of the bully’s trick is so common that it was given a name hundreds of years ago.

“False flag terrorism” is defined as a government attacking its own people, then blaming others in order to justify going to war against the people it blames. Or as Wikipedia defines it:

False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy’s strategy of tension.

The term comes from the old days of wooden ships, when one ship would hang the flag of its enemy before attacking another ship. Because the enemy’s flag, instead of the flag of the real country of the attacking ship, was hung, it was called a “false flag” attack.

Indeed, this concept is so well-accepted that rules of engagement for naval, air and land warfare all prohibit false flag attacks.

Leaders Throughout History Have Acknowledged False Flags

Leaders throughout history have acknowledged the danger of false flags:

“A history of false flag attacks used to manipulate the minds of the people! “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death”.
– Adolph Hitler

“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
– Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

“The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened”.
– Josef Stalin