Global Research

In a surprise order signed Dec. 27, a Philadelphia Common Pleas supervising judge has offered a new chance in 2019 for Mumia Abu-Jamal to challenge his 1982 conviction for the murder of white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Specifically, Judge Leon Tucker has ordered the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to reconsider four Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) hearings and petitions for hearings in the Abu-Jamal case that the state’s high court had summarily rejected under questionable circumstances over the years.

The world-famous prisoner, journalist and political activist Abu-Jamal, better known to both his supporters and his enemies around the globe as simply Mumia, has spent 37 years in jail, most of that time in solitary confinement and on death row. His death sentence was initially vacated on constitutional grounds by Federal District Court Judge William Yohn in December, 2001 but at the insistence of the Philadelphia DA’s office, he remained held on death row until that office’s appeals were exhausted a decade later by the decision of an appellate court.

Barring a pardon, which in Pennsylvania is not remotely likely, particularly in this politically fraught case involving a prisoner who hasn’t shied away of writing scathing reports on prison life from death row,  the only way for Abu-Jamal to avoid dying in jail at this point is for him to have his conviction overturned and a new trial ordered. This is what PCRA hearings seek to do by presenting new evidence of innocence or by challenging trial errors, witness recantations or prosecutorial misconduct in the original trial.

This can get harder and harder to do as time goes by, as normally only new information relating to innocence — for example a witness recantation or other new evidence — can lead to a new PCRA hearing.

However, after two years of a bitterly contested hearing, Judge Tucker ruled that the four Abu-Jamal PCRAs in question had all been improperly rejected by a state Supreme Court that since 1994 included, and that between 2008 and 2014 was headed by Justice Ronald Castille.

The issue is that Castille from 1986 to 1991 had been Philadelphia’s district attorney, a position that had him overseeing the Commonwealth’s legal response to the appeal efforts of Abu-Jamal, unarguably the politically hottest case facing the DA’s appellate legal team. Judge Tucker decided, based upon established court precedent, that because of those years as DA, Justice Castille should have recused himself from considering those PCRA requests. Because he for whatever reason refused to do so — joining the court majority in rejecting all four of the requests including three that never even got a hearing or heard witness testimony —now the Abu-Jamal’s defense team gets to resubmit them all to a high court that no longer includes the ethically challenged Castille, who had to retire because of age in 2014.

Image on the right: Pennsylvania Common Pleas Supervising Judge Leon Tucker

As Tucker wrote in his 37-page decision signed on Dec. 27:

“…the claim of bias, prejudice, and the refusal of former Justice Castille to recuse himself from Petitioner’s PCRA appeals is worthy of consideration as true justice must be completely just without even a hint of partiality, lack of integrity or impropriety. Regardless of the underlying guilty verdict of the first degree murder charge, and regardless if the tribunal was trial or appellate, Petitioner is entitled to an unbiased tribunal, without even the appearance of impropriety.”

Judge Tucker, in his order, was particularly critical of several memos by then-DA Castille that an intense search by current DA Larry Krasner concluded were mysteriously missing from the Abu-Jamal case file in the DA’s office. The existence of those memos is proven because memos referring to them were found in the DA’s files.

Judge Tucker wrote:

“This court finds that the Commonwealth had a duty to preserve the memo by Mr. Castille to Ms. Barthold. The Commonwealth argues that there was no duty to preserve the memo. However, the Commonwealth has been involved in post-conviction death penalty case litigation regarding his particular case since 1983. Therefore, the Commonwealth knew or should have known that litigation in this death ase matter was likely and preservation of all documents relating to this case should be preserved. It is ironic that the Commonwealth accepts no responsibility for the preservation of the memo request from Mr. Castille yet has been able to retain the responsive document from Ms. Barthold that the memo request from Mr. Castille was attached to. Likewise, this court finds that it was foreseeable that the misplacement of the death penalty case documents could be prejudicial to the Petitioner.”

Image below: Ex-Philadelphia DA (1986-91), ex-PA Supreme Court Justice (94-2008) and ex-Chief Justice (2008-2014) Ronald Castille ran for the high court touting his record tally of death sentences, but had a serious ethical problem when it came to recusals involving death penalty cases before him.

A sharp rebuke of the former Chief Justice, the Tucker order for a reconsideration of the four rejected PCRAs also represents a huge turning point in how Pennsylvania courts have handled Abu-Jamal’s tortuous and tortured journey through the state’s corrupt legal system.

His case, from the moment he was arrested, when police left him cuffed and unattended for over half an hour in a police van, bleeding internally from a chest wound caused by a police bullet that critically pierced his lung and liver, has been plagued by official abuse, bias and corruption. This includes prosecution witnesses who were coached to lie and a high-profile murder trial in which the presiding judge was overheard telling his court tip, following a day of jury selection, “…yeah, and I’m going to help them fry the nigger.” The scandalously flawed and corrupt trial  was followed by a corrupted appeals process that featured a governor, Republican Tom Ridge, secretly obtaining privileged communications between the incarcerated Abu-Jamal and his attorneys. These communications, forwarded by SCI Green prison officials to the governor and forwarded to the Philadelphia DA’s office, tipped prosecutors off to the timing of a defense appeal. Among other things, this allowed the DA and governor to have Abu-Jamal’s execution date set for a date just weeks after the PCRA hearing, enabling the presiding Judge Sabo to rush the defense and cut off witness testimony, supposedly in order not to miss the execution date.

Abu-Jamal also had several avenues of appeal of his conviction and sentence that were made available to other death row prisoners declared inapplicable in his case (a pattern of selective application of precedent that my colleague, journalist Linn Washington, has condemned as “the Mumia exception”).

As well, white Philadelphia police, in uniform and on the public payroll, have routinely been permitted to pack court hearings during Abu-Jamal’s appeals, including in the latest case in Judge Tucker’s courtroom, inevitably putting pressure on judges who have to face re-election and who know the political power of the Fraternal Order of Police in Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania in those races.

Perhaps feeling that FOP pressure, while Judge Tucker did courageously grant Abu-Jamal another shot at having his PCRAs more fairly considered by a state court, he also put limitations on those re-hearings he ordered. He said that they cannot be “re-briefed,” but must be reconsidered based only on resubmissions of the original briefs written by Abu-Jamal’s various attorneys during that period: Leonard Weinglass (now deceased) and Daniel Williams, Eliot Grossman and Marlene Kamish (the latter also deceased), and the current legal team of Widener University Law School Prof. Judith Ritter and NAACP Legal Defense Fund Director Sam Spital.

Ritter says that Abu-Jamal’s defense team can challenge that restriction and seek an opportunity to update the briefs, but there is no guarantee that would be allowed.

Ritter adds that there is no guarantee that the new state Supreme Court will even review the four PCRA requests at all. As she explains, “It’s only death penalty cases that go automatically to the State Supreme Court for consideration. And since Abu-Jamal is no longer on death row, the Supreme Court could say the PCRA petitions should be decided by a Superior Court judge” — a lower tier of the state court system.

Ritter says Abu-Jamal will argue, however, that since the four PCRA petitions denied by the Castille-tainted  Supreme Court were filed while he was still facing execution, they should be treated the way they should have been when initially filed, as though he were still facing execution, and be taken up anew directly by the state’s Supreme Court.

It remains to be seen what aspects of his four earlier rejected PCRAs Abu-Jamal will be able to appeal. The rejected PCRA filed by attorneys Weinglass and Williams addressed a number of critical issues including the integrity of prosecution witnesses, the intimidation of defense witnesses, withheld evidence and the improper removal of qualified potential black jury panelists. Any one of these issues, as well as others that were raised in 1995,  if upheld, could open the door to a new trial for Abu-Jamal. The same goes for issues raised in the other PCRAs that never got a hearing.

Ritter says Tucker’s order strictly limits any reviews of old PCRA petitions to the issues raised in the initial improperly rejected briefs. New issues, she says, cannot be raised at any of those re-hearings.

Still, while it may be a long-shot, a reconsideration of the four PCRA hearings tarnished by Chief Justice Castille’s unwillingness to recuse himself from considering and voting on them, does offer a chance for a new Supreme Court panel of judges to weigh the issues raised, and potentially to find something that sufficiently changes the evidence in the case or exposes a procedural flaw of such consequence that a new trial might be required.

There is even the possibility that, if the current Pennsylvania Supreme Court were to reject all four of the reconsidered PRCA requests, the defense could file a habeas corpus petition and obtain a new hearing in federal district court, where political pressures from groups like the Fraternal Order of Police would be less significant because federal judges, unlike Pennsylvania’s state judges, serve lifetime appointments.

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Dave Lindorff, a member of the collectively run alternative news site ThisCantBeHappening!, is author of Killing Time: An investigation into the death-penalty case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003).

President Donald Trump would do well to listen to Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s Russiagate investigation lawyers, concerning the propriety of prosecuting Julian Assange of WikiLeaks who has lived in the Ecuador embassy in London since 2012 to avoid extradition to the United States. Interviewed Sunday at the Fox News show Fox & Friends, Giuliani made it clear that he believes Assange should not be prosecuted for the publishing of US government information. Assange took part in First Amendment-protected activity, Giuliani explains, as did the New York Times and the Washington Post decades earlier when they published the US government’s Pentagon Papers containing many revelations about US activities related to the Vietnam War.

Here is Giuliani’s discussion of the matter in the interview:

It’s a First Amendment issue, right? It isn’t stolen property. I mean, it is stolen property, but it has a different nature when it’s information. So, let’s take the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers were stolen property, weren’t they? They were stolen from the Pentagon — given to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Nobody went to jail in the New York Times and the Washington Post. We’ve had revelations during the [George W.] Bush administration — Abu Ghraib, all of that. It’s stolen property, taken from the government against the law. Once it gets to a media publication, they can publish it. They can publish it for the purpose of informing people. You can’t put Assange in a different position than that. He was a guy that communicated. We may not like what he communicates, but he was a media facility, he was putting that information out. Every newspaper, station grabbed it and published it.

Watch Giuliani’s complete interview here.

Giuliani’s reasoning in the interview is similar to the reasoning New York Times Deputy General Counsel David McCraw offered when he told judges at the US Ninth Circuit’s annual judicial conference in July that he thought Assange is “sort of in a classic publisher’s position” and that “the law would have a very hard time drawing a distinction between The New York Times and WikiLeaks.”

Hopefully, the president will hear this sound, liberty-advancing reasoning, whether from Giuliani or someone else, and make a public and binding assurance that the US government will not seek the arrest, prosecution, or punishment of Assange.

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Liberal interventionists in the media want America’s wars to continue forever. Last Thursday I actually turned on “PBS Newshour” with Judy Woodruff, which I never watch, but the other offerings on television were dismal, and I was flipping channels. She had on as guests her regular commentator Mark Shields and Michael Gerson of The Washington Post. Shields is a hardcore liberal and Gerson is a neoconservative longtime critic of Donald Trump, presumably filling in for regular PBS “conservative” David Brooks. The discussion was about Syria and the resignation of Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

Woodruff had had the pathologically ambitious Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on earlier, which was a bullet I quite happily dodged. He reportedly said that Trump was “about to make a major blunder on Syria,” aligning him with fellow Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham (S.C.), who said pretty much the same thing.

Given the fact that NPR has a bobo audience that it answers to, I fully expected that there would be a lot of tap dancing about the events of the week but was somewhat surprised to hear nothing but damnation from Shields and Gerson about how the Trump move would do grave if not fatal damage to U.S. national security and how the president, unlike seasoned patriot Mattis, cannot distinguish right from wrong. Gerson said, “You know, you look at his [Mattis’s] resignation letter, which coldly and rationally said to the president, you do not understand our friends, and you do not understand our enemies.”

As America’s self-defined friends in the Middle East might best be described as “frenemies,” I was wondering if either Shields or Gerson (or Rubio) ever venture past the comics pages of their daily newspapers. As they all spend their time in Washington, that newspaper would be The Washington Post, which perhaps explains things, as the paper’s vitriol against Trump and the Syria move has been astonishing by any measure.

In other words, the PBS coverage of a major story was all pure improvisation, straight out of the establishment playbook, and Woodruff wasn’t even canny enough to push back.

Getting out of Syria and hopefully eventually Afghanistan is the best thing that Trump has done for America so far, if he has the guts to actually do it. Both are wars that were unnecessary from day one and are now unwinnable in any real way. They largely keep going fueled by the lies coming from “friends” like Saudi Arabia and Israel aided and abetted by the defense contractor community and the quislings in Congress who are willing to sell out completely to the military-industrial complex because it creates “jobs” in their constituencies.

When I could take no more, I flipped channels and “Democracy Now!” came up, another program I find nearly as loathsome for its unctuous goodliness as PBS news. Amy Goodman fortunately had history professor Andrew Bacevich on, and he explained, citing the general’s letter of resignation, how Mattis “when he talked about his four decades of engagement with these matters, is very telling. He represents the establishment’s perspective, that has evolved over the course of those four decades. And for anyone who says—who looks at U.S. policy over the past four decades, particularly in the Middle East, and says, ‘Yeah, it’s really gone well,’ then I would think that they would view Mattis’s resignation as a disappointment.

Now, when Trump ran for the presidency, he denounced our wars in the Middle East. He promised to withdraw militarily from the Middle East. Two years into his presidency, that hasn’t happened. And in many respects, Mattis has been among those who have frustrated the president’s efforts. Now, I’m in the camp who thinks that we ought to wind down these wars, that we’ve got more important things to do.”

Bacevich also pointed out that the prevailing establishment foreign policy is both morally and practically wrong and unsustainable. He hoped that Trump would prevail against the tremendous pressure that is being exerted against him to recant. I said “bravo” and turned off the TV.

Here is my problem with liberals like Shields and neocons like Gerson: They hate Trump so much that they will do anything to bring him down, even when he is doing something that is manifestly good for the country. Gerson at least is consistent in that he hates Trump and likes America’s wars, but what about Shields and Woodruff? You would think that ending a conflict in which most of the casualties are civilians would be praised by them and the broader social justice warrior community, but where are the liberals supporting Trump on this bold step to disengage from endless and pointless war in the Middle East, either in the media or among the politicians and punditry? MSNBC’s resident progressive screamer Rachel Maddow has been practically foaming at the mouth about Trump since the announcement of the withdrawal was made.

There are indeed some exceptions among genuine liberals who actually have a conscience rather than just a bunch of grievances, to include Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who tweeted, “The hysterical reaction to the decision to withdraw troops from Syria is astonishing and shows just how attached to war some are. Lindsey Graham and others want us to continue our regime change war in Syria and to go to war with Iran. That’s why they’re so upset.”

But in general, reliable leftists have become invisible regarding withdrawing from Syria, a complete reversal to what they were saying some months ago when Trump seemed prepared to stay the course. As a completely unscientific survey of liberal opinion on the issue I cruised through the names of the many friends I have on Facebook that are of progressive persuasion and could not find a single one who was supporting the president. Hypocrisy? Obama’s belligerency, including Syria, which he turned into a war and almost succeeded in escalating into something much bigger, is given a pass while anything Trump does is sheer unmitigated evil.

Trump is under intense pressure from all sides to reverse his decision on Syria and also regarding Afghanistan, which will see a 50% reduction in force. But it is up to all Americans who care about the future of this country to speak up in support of ending the wars that have bled us for the past 17 years. If liberals and neocons cannot bear the thought of supporting a president they loathe who is actually doing something right for a change, we will all regret the failure to end the cycle of war and retribution that has roiled the Middle East since the United States invaded Iraq based on lies in 2003.

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This article was originally published on American Free Press.

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Other articles by Giraldi can be found on the website of the Unz Review. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from American Free Press

London, New Year’s Eve 2018. It is a very English middle-class trait: the world will end if the price of a certain life style goes up.  Certain services will be cut.  Access to certain travel destinations might be restricted.  (The usual European haunts in France and Spain rendered dearer if not inaccessible.)  But there is no denying that the attitude to the New Year from this side of the world is one of gloom made normal.

Not a day goes by without a digest of panicked revelations about what will happen in the event of a “no-deal Brexit”.  A lack of certainty has propelled a set of speculations so thick as to be asphyxiating.  But there is always room for more, the next desperate act of a government so cadaverous it can only give vague clues that it is still alive, wincing, dodging and avoiding what faces the United Kingdom before the mandarins in Brussels and the nostalgia driven addicts in the Conservative Party.

London itself is the ground-zero of teeth-chattering panic.  Stockpiling of essentials (and various non-essentials) is taking place in a manner reminiscent of the doom that might arise from nuclear holocaust or a crippling blockade initiated by a foreign power.  These fears are not entirely irrational: no one knows what might happen to the smooth exchange of goods ands services with the EU in the absence of any clear set of guidelines.

The latest manifestations of this sense of heightened neuroses can be found in three ferry contracts that have been awarded to French, British and Danish companies.  But the means of shipping do not combat paperwork on the ground, the sort is bound to mount once Britain’s departure from the EU bloc is enforced.   Chief Executive of the UK Chamber of Shipping Bob Sanguinetti puts it bluntly:

“Government is rightly preparing for every eventuality… but it is not clear that government-chartered ships can move goods faster or more efficiently than the private sector.”

The issue of customs remains an obstacle that threatens to hove into view with disrupting menace.

That said, the eve of 2019 featured a comic affair with a bitterly ironic dimension, an episode that rapidly came to be known in Twitterland as Ferrygate, more conventionally termed the Seaborne Freight controversy.  It began with murmurs printed in the Financial Times from the May government that a no-deal Brexit could see the Dover corridor, comprising the port and tunnel, run at between 12-25 percent of normal capacity for half a year.  Given that the proportion of trade being handled through the corridor comes to an eye-popping 52 percent of value of the total trade in goods with the EU (some £422.6 billion), this is more than troubling.

This doomsday scenario was somewhat papered over by the farcical circumstances behind one of the ferry contracts – the British one no less – that was meant to be yet another emergency measure, part of a broader £107.7 million arrangement.  The purpose of the contract will be to provide substitutable capacity to handle exiting volumes of trade that would have otherwise gone through the Dover corridor.

But the jokes piled on quickly: Seaborne Freight, having won a £13.8 million contract to operate ferries on a Ramsgate to Ostend route, had never previously operated ferries and had no intention of doing so till touching distance of the scheduled departure date from the EU.

“It has no ships and no trading history,” observed Paul Messenger, Conservative county councillor for Ramsgate, “so how can due diligence be done?”

The Department of Transport finds itself in a state of pulsating anxiety, churning out the paperwork of woe.  The choice of words in its documents supplies more than a hint about what is coming, even if they genuinely cannot imagine what that might be.  Such agreements are being put in place to counter “unforeseeable” situations, which is more than mildly absurd given that those situations are precisely that: unforeseeable.

The entire Brexit reaction has been characterised by a total absence of planning, which propels the circular reasoning that you cannot plan for what you simply do not know.  This feeds the apocalyptic scenarios of empty supermarket shelves and absentee workers in industries characterised by the employ of vast numbers of EU citizens.

It has also bred a total mistrust. Plans circulate with a giddying confusion that show lack of consultation and engagement.  Major motorworks, by way of example, have focused on the port of Dover.  The plan (dare one use the word?) is to turn the M26 motorway into a holding area for hundreds of heavy vehicles to permit traffic greater freedom to move.  In October, local MP Tom Tugendhat, Conservative chair of the foreign affairs committee, was seething in the House of Commons:

“It’s come to a pretty pass when [an MP] finds out that works have begun on a motorway to turn that motorway into a parking lot without consultation either with the local community or with surrounding [MPs].”

Fittingly absurd, though not as much as awarding a ferry contract to a company without ships.

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

The world is pulsing with hundreds of millions of people desperate to flee their homes under the weight of the crisis of world capitalism. According to a recent Gallup study, a sixth of the world’s adult population—some 750 million people, not including children—want to flee their home countries to escape war, poverty, conflict and disease.

The statistics expose the devastating impact of decades of imperialist war and corporate exploitation. In the more than quarter-century since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the ruling classes of the major powers, led by the United States, have unleashed an unprecedented wave of military plunder and social counterrevolution, killing millions and laying waste to broad swaths of the world.

A third of the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa want to escape. The region, which is rich in minerals and oil coveted by French, Dutch, Belgian and American corporations, has a life expectancy of 46, while 70 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day.

In Latin America, 27 percent of people want to leave their home countries to escape the aftermath of US invasion, IMF austerity and US-backed dictatorships.

Twenty-six percent of Eastern Europeans want to flee the near-universal devastation that has followed the privatization of state industries by the Stalinist bureaucrats-turned-oligarchs.

Twenty-four percent of Middle Easterners and North Africans wish to leave in search of shelter from the storm of bombs and missiles that the US has rained down upon the region since the Persian Gulf War.

In 13 countries, nearly half or more of the adult population finds life unbearable.

In Sierra Leone, a country ravaged by the bloody fight to turn over diamonds to European jewelers, 71 percent of adults want to flee. In Haiti, 63 percent want to leave after more than a century of American invasions and occupations.

Fifty-two percent of Salvadorans and 47 percent of Hondurans want to escape the violence, poverty and corruption that dominate Central America following the civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Forty-eight percent of Nigerians want to leave their country, bled white from the extraction of crude oil by Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell.

This year, the ruling classes of Europe and North America implemented unprecedented anti-immigrant policies and inflamed xenophobic sentiment to distract from growing social inequality and strengthen far-right forces that will be used against the working class.

In June, the European Union agreed to cut migration and erect concentration camps to house immigrants in North Africa.

In August, French President Emmanuel Macron signed a law slashing asylum eligibility.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini repeated threats to deport 500,000 immigrants and the entire Roma population. In the United Kingdom, the Tory government is preparing a Brexit deal that may cut the country off to Eastern European immigrants. In Germany, the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany held anti-immigrant demonstrations this summer with the encouragement of the state.

Nowhere is the anti-immigrant scapegoating more fierce and dangerous than in the United States. In April, the Trump administration began separating children from their families at the US-Mexico border and erected tent-city internment centers to house the children.

In October, Trump deployed thousands of troops to the southern border. Thousands of participants in the Central American migrant caravan have been sleeping in the streets of Tijuana for months. When two Guatemalan children died in US custody this month, the government blamed their impoverished indigenous parents.

“Left” populist demagogues around the world play the most criminal role, justifying the anti-immigrant measures of the far-right and attempting to poison the working class with nationalism. In the United Kingdom, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn echoed United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage when he told a Scottish Labour conference in March that Britain should curb the entrance of foreign workers.

In Mexico, the new government of “left” nationalist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) made a deal this month with Trump to detain Central American refugees in Mexico and block them from exercising their right to asylum in the US.

In Greece, the government of the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) has jailed hundreds of thousands of refugees in internment camps and recently deployed police to brutally assault immigrants attempting to cross the Evros River from Turkey.

Syriza’s position on immigration is summed up in a recent report from Human Rights Watch:

Abuse [by Greek police] included beatings with hands and batons, kicking and, in one case, the use of what appeared to be a stun gun. In another case, a Moroccan man said a masked man dragged him by his hair, forced him to kneel on the ground, held a knife to his throat, and subjected him to a mock execution. Others pushed back include a pregnant 19-year-old woman from Afrin, Syria and a woman from Afghanistan who said Greek authorities took away her two young children’s shoes.

In the US, Bernie Sanders begged Trump in January to “work with us to make sure we have strong border security.”

Earlier this month, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) wrote a statement titled “Toward a Left Position on Immigration,” which includes the subsection “It’s Not About Open Borders.”

The DSA writes:

“The actual alternative to the current existing immigration policy is not ‘open borders.’ It is enforcement of existing employment laws, followed by the development of new employment and immigration laws, leading to a fair, pro-worker system of immigration.”

This is a thinly veiled, foul appeal to anti-immigrant nationalism and chauvinism, in no basic way different from that of the trade union bureaucracy, the Trump administration and neo-fascists such as Stephen Bannon.

With such actions and statements, Corbyn, Syriza, AMLO, Sanders and the DSA expose their hostility to the international working class and to socialism. They are pledging—or in the case of Syriza and AMLO have already shown—that they will use state violence against workers demanding a redress of their grievances.

In contrast to nationalist groups like the DSA that defend the existence of national boundaries, the Socialist Equality Party fights for socialist internationalism and rejects the lie that any ruling class has the right to jail desperate workers escaping imperialist war or prevent them from seeking safety and a better life in another country. Immigrant workers are not to blame for growing poverty and declining living conditions in Europe and America. The real enemies of the workers are the same imperialist governments and transnational corporations that are responsible for forcing immigrants from their homes in the first place.

The Socialist Equality Party demands the immediate release of all interned immigrants and the provision of trillions of dollars, confiscated from the banks and corporations, to provide all immigrants with decent-paying jobs, housing, social services, education and safe passage to a destination of their choosing without fear of deportation.

Capitalism has turned broad swaths of the world into a foul prison, holding workers and the poor in nation-state straitjackets from which a sixth of the world is fighting to escape. Socialist revolution will free the productive process from the control of the world’s oligarchs, abolish national boundaries and guarantee the right of all workers to travel the world in peace.

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Featured image is from Defend Democracy Press

The Israeli Supreme Court early this afternoon, Sunday, 30 December 2018, dismissed the petition filed by Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel on behalf of Knesset Members Jamal Zahalka, Hanin Zoabi, and Joumah Azbarga (Joint List) against the Knesset Presidium’s decision to reject their proposed bill Basic Law: State of all its Citizens. In doing so, the Supreme Court refused to even allow a discussion of equal rights and a state for all of its citizens in the Knesset.

The Knesset Presidium refused to allow the submission of the bill – which declares Israel a “state of all its citizens” – based on the claim that Israel is a Jewish state.  This bill was initiated by Zahalka, Zoabi, and Azbarga in response to the new Basic Law – The Nation State of the Jewish People, passed by the Knesset in mid-July 2018.

The judgment follows a hearing on the petition last week, Monday, 24 December 2018, during which the justices received an announcement of early elections, and the decision to dissolve the 20th Knesset.

Adalah General Director Hassan Jabareen (center with hat) speaks to journalists together with Arab members of Knesset on Monday, 24 December 2018, prior to the hearing on their petition at the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem. (Photo by Mati Milstein)

Chief Justice Hayut, who headed the three-justice panel hearing the case, hinted then that the court would consider the MKs’ petition, filed six months ago and not heard to date, as theoretical. Today, the petition was indeed dismissed for these reasons.

As the petition also attacks the constitutionality of the very bylaws used to disqualify the bill, there is no justification for the court’s decision to consider the petition as purely theoretical in nature, in Adalah’s view.

The court today chose to uphold the Knesset Presidium’s decision to prevent its own Palestinian Arab minority members from initiating a bill and a debate to promote democratic values on the basis of equality for all.

Adalah responded immediately to the court’s decision:

“This decision violates the basic right to full equality for Palestinian Arab citizens of the state. This judgment is the second in six years that the Israeli Supreme Court has decided to uphold the Knesset Presidium’s authority to prevent Arab MKs from submitting bills and initiating debate that challenges Israel’s character as a state of the Jewish people only. In both of these cases, the court exploited the announcement of early elections as a justification to dismiss these cases.

“This petition confronts a matter of principle – the right to equality and a state for all its citizens – that will certainly remain in the public discourse and as a key political platform of Arab MKs, and it is not expected to change.”

Adalah’s General Director Hassan Jabareen and Adalah Attorney Fady Khoury represented the Arab MKs in this case.

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The Washington Post reminds us how the Saudi coalition war on Yemen helps Al Qaeda:

Last year, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on a powerful Yemeni Islamist warlord, accusing him of being a “prominent military instructor” and fundraiser for al-Qaeda who had also at one point “served with” the Islamic State and financed its forces.

But Abu al-Abbas is not on the run. He is not even in hiding.

By his own admission, Abbas continues to receive millions of dollars in weapons and financial support for his fighters from one of Washington’s closest Middle East allies, the United Arab Emirates, undermining U.S. counterterrorism goals in Yemen.

The Saudi coalition’s cooperation with and support for members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been an open secret for many years. Back in August, the Associated Press published one of the most detailed reports on the coalition’s practice of buying off and recruiting AQAP members as part of their war against the Houthis. Members of the coalition have been working with and supporting known terrorists for years, and they continue to do so even now. Meanwhile, U.S. officials keep justifying U.S. support for the coalition’s war on Yemen by claiming that Saudi and Emirati cooperation on counterterrorism is so very important. The war on Yemen has strengthened jihadist groups both directly and indirectly, and this is just one more example of that. The U.S. continues to support a war that not only benefits jihadists by sowing chaos, but it also backs the governments that directly finance and arm those same terrorists.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the Saudi coalition also includes the war criminals of Sudan. This is also not news, but it is good that it is getting more attention. Mark Perry previously reported on the coalition’s use of Sudanese Janjaweed militia in Yemen in a story for TAC earlier this year. Here is a New York Times report saying much the same thing over the weekend:

Almost all the Sudanese fighters appear to come from the battle-scarred and impoverished region of Darfur, where some 300,000 people were killed and 1.2 million displaced during a dozen years of conflict over diminishing arable land and other scarce resources.

Most belong to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, a tribal militia previously known as the Janjaweed. They were blamed for the systematic rape of women and girls, indiscriminate killing and other war crimes during Darfur’s conflict, and veterans involved in those horrors are now leading their deployment to Yemen — albeit in a more formal and structured campaign.

The Saudi coalition uses the foot soldiers of Sudanese genocide to aid in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Yemen, and they have been doing so for years. The U.S. continues to assist a coalition of governments that includes one that has already committed genocide and also includes several more that are in the process of committing the crime of mass starvation against the people of Yemen. There are many ugly chapters in the history of U.S. foreign policy, but our government’s ongoing support for this war is one of the most reprehensible and despicable.

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Fahed Zuhud was shot in the thigh by Israeli soldiers in February 2018 but because of superbug infections the wound hasn’t healed and he may still lose his leg.

Doctors in Gaza and the West Bank warn they are battling an epidemic of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, a growing problem in the world’s conflict zones and one that risks spilling over borders and diminishing the global medical arsenal against serious illness.

The rise and spread of these virulent infections adds to the devastation of war, increasing medical costs, blocking hospital beds because patients need longer care and leaving people whose injuries might once have been healed with life-changing disabilities.

Gaza is a particularly fertile breeding ground for superbugs because its health system has been crippled by years of blockade and antibiotics are in short supply. Even though doctors know the protocols to prevent the rise of drug resistant bacteria, they do not have supplies to follow them.

Shortages of water, power and fuel for generators mean doctors often cannot meet even basic hygiene standards. Staff sometimes can’t even wash their hands, sterilising machines are unreliable, and there are shortages of gloves, gowns and chlorine tablets for sanitising the hospitals, medical professionals say.

Whether Pentagon forces stay or leave Syria, whether some stay, others redeployed cross-border to Iraq or elsewhere, Washington’s regional and overall imperial agenda remains unchanged

In its 18th year, the AfPak war rages endlessly, a forever war, an unwinnable one with no prospect for resolving it any time in the foreseeable future. US strategy is all about waging it endlessly, not winning.

Syria is following the same pattern, war in its 8th year with no end in sight – despite Syrian forces regaining control over most of the country.

The Pentagon has a reported 18 bases in Syria, at least one more being constructed. Its commanders are highly unlikely to abandon them or leave key bases established in neighboring Iraq, including two new ones, an al-Rutbah base around 60 miles from the Syrian border.

US regional bases are used as platforms for warmaking. Pentagon troops are in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries as hostile invaders.

No US plans exist to turn a page for peace in the region or anywhere else. Washington’s agenda features endless wars of aggression, part of its longstanding plan for global hegemony, ignoring the rule of law, mindless of the human toll.

Most of what’s going on is unreported or misreported in the mainstream. Millions of post-9/11 casualties are of no consequences to militarists in charge of Washington’s geopolitical agenda – peace and stability considered abhorrent notions.

Trump is captive to dark forces controlling him, a businessman/TV personality – ignorant about affairs of state.

Nothing he says is credible, time and again saying one thing, then doing something entirely different. Will he U-turn on announced troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan?

Regime hardliners, congressional leaders, and Pentagon commanders strongly oppose the idea. According to Bloomberg News, neocon Senator Lindsey Graham said the following after meeting with Trump privately:

“I feel better about Syria than I felt before (we met). I think the president is taking (his announced troop pullout) seriously, and the trip to Iraq was well timed.”

He spoke to Joint Chiefs chairman General Joseph Dunford. He’s “reconsidering how we do this” – referring to withdrawing US forces from Syria.

Graham, Trump, and everyone else claiming US forces are in Syria and Iraq to combat ISIS have things upside down. Washington created and supports the scourge of ISIS it claims to oppose.

The same goes for al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot in Syria, and other terrorist groups – used as US proxy forces, supported by Pentagon terror-bombing in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere.

The cold, hard reality of US warmaking is polar opposite how it’s publicly reported – including by major media, operating as press agents for Washington’s imperial and neoliberal agendas, supporting what demands condemnation.

According to Bloomberg News,

“(t)he White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Trump is considering reversing the decision” on Syria.

He “already has backed away from the notion of an immediate withdrawal, saying a week ago that the pullout of US troops from the area would be “slow & highly coordinated” – after speaking to Turkey’s Erdogan before Christmas.

On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Graham said Trump “promised to destroy ISIS. He’s going to keep that promise. We’re not there yet.”

The Big Lie persists. Trump’s knowledge about ISIS consists of rubbish fed him by his handlers, along with Fox News misinformation and disinformation, his favorite TV channel.

Despite being president and commander-in-chief of America’s military, he may not know the truth about ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups – created and used by the Pentagon and CIA as imperial foot soldiers in US war theaters.

Based on Graham’s comments after meeting with Trump, perhaps he’ll U-turn on withdrawing US forces from Syria and Afghanistan – what’s most likely entirely or partially.

The alternative would be to replace US forces with others from NATO countries, France most likely, perhaps Britain as well – and/or agreeing to deploy paramilitary mercenaries in place of Pentagon troops.

What’s coming will likely be clear early in the new year. Whatever unfolds ahead, Washington’s war on humanity remains unchanged.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The onslaught of extreme weather and the increasingly stark scientific assessment leave no doubt that we face an ecological and civilizational emergency. But in the year since the 23rd annual Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, a constant stream of headlines and reports have confirmed that governments are not on track to meet their climate commitments.

The market-focused approach to climate protection has failed spectacularly. Using “sticks and carrots” policies aimed at the private sector, governments anticipated a surge of new “green growth” investment that would create millions of good jobs. This did not happen. It is now absolutely clear that climate policy must shift in a radically different direction, and unions can help ensure that such a shift occurs as soon as possible.

Growing numbers of unions are already calling for a decisive shift away from policies that push privatization – including predatory “public private partnerships” (P3s) – and that are designed to please private investors who deliver too little and take too much.

Unions are increasingly rallying behind the idea of a needs-based, “public goods” approach to climate protection – one that is grounded in extending public ownership and democratic control. Such an approach will give us a real chance to reach the Paris targets, and to advance the struggle for political and economic democracy, equality and decent work. This is the only way to achieve a just transition for all.

Unions in Katowice, Poland (COP24) have an opportunity to send a number of clear messages:

• The world is not “moving away from fossil fuels” – far from it.
• Emissions will not peak in 2020 as is needed. They are expected to increase until 2030 and perhaps beyond.
• Levels of investment are far too low to drive the transition to a low-carbon future. This is not going to change as long as achieving “satisfactory returns” (making money) continues to be the primary consideration.
• There is no effective “price on carbon” – and there isn’t going to be one any time soon.
• The market-focused approach to climate protection has failed spectacularly.
• An immediate shift toward a “public goods” approach is necessary. Privatizations must be stopped, and what has been privatized must be reclaimed.
• Energy systems must be restructured and reconfigured in a way that can serve social and ecological needs. Planning must replace the “enforced chaos” of the market.
• A stable climate is a human right. Approaches that prevent us from achieving climate stability when alternative policies and methods can generate better results are therefore human rights violations.

The Latest Science and the Need for “Unprecedented Changes”

The distance between what the science says needs to happen and what is actually happening in terms of energy and emissions trends becomes wider with every passing day. This was made crystal clear by the recently released IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C. According to the report’s authors, meeting the Paris Agreement’s pledge to limit warming to 1.5 degrees “would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” including “transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities.” The report reinforces the consensus among trade unions about the need for major changes. As ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow recently expressed it, “We understand that the sectorial and economic transformation that faces us [is] the fastest and deepest we have faced at any time in our history and with a faster time frame.”

Many have described the IPCC’s Special Report as a “wake up call” to governments. But governments cannot claim to need another warning from the scientific community. In late 2007 – now 11 years ago – IPCC scientists said reductions in greenhouse gases needed to start falling immediately in order to avert a global climate disaster. Then-IPCC Chair Dr. Rajendra Pachauri was clear: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late… What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” But the defining moment passed, as have others since. In 2014 the IPCC has stated that, on current trends, global mean temperatures could increase by between 3.7 and 4.8 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels by 2100.

Posturing in Paris

In early 2016, Achim Steiner, then the Executive Director of the UN’s Environment Program (UNEP), declared that the Paris Agreement signified “the triumph of science over politics.” But the economics of profit-driven energy generation and use continue to trump science at every turn. Today, the use of all forms of energy is rising: gas, coal, oil, nuclear and renewables (wind, solar, bioenergy, and hydropower). This is because the global demand for energy continues to grow at around 2% annually, and for electricity in particular at more than 3% annually.

The IPCC has concluded that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is currently still technically possible. Given the risk involved in exceeding that target, climate policy should be in line with what the IPCC says is required. This will entail immediately reversing the privatization and marketization that were advanced during the neoliberal period, and reclaiming key economic sectors to public ownership and democratic control. Public control over energy is essential to decarbonize electricity supply while at the same time curtailing demand through efficiency and conservation. Achieving these goals will require needs-based planning and a solid commitment on the part of governments to immediately cease trying to guarantee profits for private investors. They must direct their attention to rebuilding the capacity of public institutions at all levels to mobilize people and resources in order to deliver the “unprecedented changes” considered necessary by the IPCC.

Of course, it will be very difficult to bring about these changes. But the experience of the last 20 years tells us that, as a movement, we have no other option but to work alongside others who understand that the prerogatives of private profit cannot be allowed to determine our collective future.

Just Transition Needs a Transition

A public goods approach is also essential if we are to achieve a Just Transition for workers. Following its inclusion in the Preface to the Paris Agreement, unions have made Just Transition a priority, urging governments to include the principle in any measures taken with regard to the implementation of their respective National Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted to the UNFCCC. Employers, too, have been encouraged to adopt Just Transition as a guiding principle. In the three years since Paris, there have been some notable successes, such as the case of Canada’s Just Transition Task Force as well as promising developments in Australia the UK (particularly in Scotland) and Spain. Just Transition has also informed proposed legislation in the U.S. at both state and federal levels.

The political momentum around Just Transition is encouraging. But there is no avoiding the fact that the actual transition to a low carbon economy is not on track. The IPCC’s Special Report concluded that, in order to stay within 1.5 degrees, human-caused CO2 will need to fall by about 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching “net zero” around 2050. To have any chance of the 2030 target being met, emissions will need to peak soon after 2020. Currently, there is not the slightest prospect of this happening, absent a major economic slump or depression. Emissions are rising, not peaking – and certainly not falling. Globally, emissions from fossil fuels rose a staggering 60% between 1990 and 2013, and CO2 emissions from the power sector alone have increased by more than 45% just since the year 2000. CO₂ emissions from all sources leveled off from 2014 to 2016, but they rose again in 2017 – by 2% – and are almost certainly going to rise further this year.

Renewables are Growing, But There Is No “Energy Revolution”

It is true that renewable energy has grown impressively in recent years. In 2016, a record-breaking 161 GW in new renewables-based generating capacity was installed around the world. But the growth of renewables has not stopped the rise in fossil fuel use. Global energy demand is currently rising at around 2% per year, fossil fuels and renewables are growing alongside each other, and energy demand is projected to increase by 28-30% by 2040. Wind and solar have established a significant foothold in the electricity sector, providing just over 5% of total electricity generation at the end of 2016. Yet in other economic sectors – industry, transport, food and agriculture – as well as in the heating and cooling of buildings, the role of modern renewable energy is miniscule.

Reviewing the trends in electricity generation earlier this year, BP’s group chief economist, Spencer Dale, stated, “[D]espite the extraordinary growth in renewables in recent years, and the huge policy efforts to encourage a shift away from coal into cleaner, lower carbon fuels, there has been almost no improvement in the power sector fuel mix over the past 20 years… I had no idea that so little progress had been made until I looked at these data.”

The world is not “moving away from fossil fuels,” as many have claimed and many more believe. The opposite is true. Those who try to reassure us that the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon future is “inevitable” or even “well under way” need to face this reality. Current energy and emissions trends are simply not compatible with the Paris targets – not even close. On the contrary, current trends point to more climate disruption, more pollution, and more struggles on the part of people for land and water, and for democratic freedoms and human rights.

Why Calling for “More Political Will” and “More Ambition” Isn’t Enough

Immediately following COP21 in Paris, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) rightly noted how the “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs) submitted by governments, while overall a good first step, needed to be more ambitious. Even if fully implemented, the NDCs would lead to a continuing rise in emissions until 2030, and would likely produce an overall average temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius or more by 2100. In the three years since the Paris talks, there are clear signs that the major industrialized countries are failing to meet even those inadequate pledges.

At COP24, many voices will again demand that governments show “more ambition” in order to make their NDCs consistent with the IPCC’s proposed actions. While unions stand in solidarity with those making such demands, we also need to recognize that calling for governments to show more ambition is not enough. What we are witnessing is not a problem of “political will.” Governments from 195 countries have already accepted the need for decisive action in order to limit average global warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius” (compared to pre-industrial levels) and to try to limit that warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius. What we are witnessing instead is the widening gap between ambition and action, and the incapacity of governments to deliver on their own already weak commitments. This is because they refuse to consider solutions that take profits out of the equation.

“Green Growth” – What Went Wrong?

The gap between ambition and action points to an enormous policy failure. In 2006 Nicholas Stern – one of the founding fathers of the “green growth” idea and a former World Bank Chief Economist – released a landmark report titled The Economics of Climate Change (known as “The Stern Review”). According to Stern, “The science tells us that GHG [i.e., greenhouse gas] emissions are an externality; in other words, our emissions affect the lives of others. When people do not pay for the consequences of their actions we have market failure. This is the greatest market failure the world has seen.”

The “Stern Review” proposed that a global price on carbon was necessary, in accordance with the “polluter pays” principle. The carbon price would need to be increased over time, steadily driving the transition to renewable energy sources and the proliferation of “low carbon solutions.” The role of governments was to “send signals” to the markets (i.e., to developers, private corporations and investors) in order to reassure them that governments were committed to addressing climate change and would back that commitment with “long term policy support” (which normally means incentives and subsidies). As one liberal policy group expressed it, “Our policy agenda must ultimately be effective in mobilizing clean energy investments by private business owners. There is no other way.”

It was a big gamble – one that did not pay off. First, the effort to introduce a global price on carbon has been a disaster. In 2017, the World Bank reported that just 15% of global GHGs were subjected to a price; in three-quarters of cases where a price on carbon exists, it was no more than $10 per ton – far too low to have any meaningful impact on investment decisions. Indeed, attempts to establish a meaningful price have been obstructed by the same corporations that had advocated for it in the first place. The chances of an effective global price on carbon emerging in the next decade are today virtually non-existent.

Second, despite the many pledges and commitments made by representatives of the investor class, the private sector has not only failed to deliver, but has held the entire process of pursuing an energy transition captive to their demands for guaranteed profits. According to the International Energy Agency, “Globally, clean energy investment is not yet consistent with the transition to a low-carbon energy system envisaged in the Paris Climate Agreement.” This is not going to change. The annual investment deficit is already estimated to be $600-billion annually. According to the Climate Policy Initiative, “The cumulative gap between finance needed and finance delivered is growing, putting globally agreed temperature goals at risk, and increasing the likelihood of costly climate impacts.” The reason for the lack of investment is obvious: There is simply not enough guaranteed profit in “low carbon solutions” like clean energy to attract the levels of capital needed.

The Illusion Lingers

These basic facts have done nothing to deter green growth enthusiasts. According to the latest report by the Stern-led Global Commission on Economy and Climate, Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century: “The evidence today shows that climate action is even more attractive than we imagined then [in 2006 when the Stern Review was published]. This remarkable new growth opportunity is now hiding in plain sight.” The report acknowledges that carbon prices “are still too low to have meaningful impact” and that a carbon price of $40-$80 (US) per tonne by 2020 is needed, rising to $50-$100 by 2030. The report also notes that the “biggest opportunity and challenge is to mobilize the large pools of private capital, especially those held by institutional investors.” Despite this challenge, the report argues, “The train is fast leaving the station. Leaders are already seizing the exciting economic and market opportunities of the new growth approach… Over $26-trillion and a more sustainable planet are on offer, if we all get on board. The time to do so is now.”

Stern’s basic error is that he assumed the investor class would immediately grasp the offer to commit its resources toward creating a “path of development and growth that is very attractive in its own right: cleaner, quieter, more efficient, less congested, less polluted, more bio-diverse and so on. And in addition, and fundamentally, it carries much less climate risk… But it seems a very sound and attractive strategy.” The idea that money should be invested for the public good – and the reduce climate risk – is simply not part of the mindset. Private investors seek returns. And with the prospect of making returns compromised by risk, high borrowing costs, and dependent on a (yet to appear) carbon price and government subsidies, the investment the world needs will not materialize. If saving the planet won’t deliver “value for shareholders,” the “smart money” will go elsewhere.

Privatization: The Climate Impacts of Legalized Theft of Public Resources

Meanwhile, the majority of investment that has thus far materialized has been driven by public funds. Because competitive markets have not delivered the returns investors demand, governments have opted to guarantee investor profits through subsidies (“risk mitigation”) and favorable financing (“concessionary lending”). This is most obvious in the renewables sector. The development of wind and solar power today relies almost entirely on government guarantees and incentives – in the form of “power purchase agreements” (PPAs), privileged access to grids, etc. – rather than on revenues from market-based prices. This means public money has been used to make profitable what would otherwise not be profitable. As the International Energy Agency bluntly remarks, “Market-based, unsubsidised low-carbon investments have been negligible.”

The “green growth” policy failure is the latest chapter in the now decades-long story of neoliberal restructuring: a process that has systematically and savagely targeted the public sector and public services, reaping a vast windfall for private interests and enriching the “One Percent.” Climate policy has been no different. Although packaged as “green,” “job-friendly” and “inclusive,” the “green growth” framework was designed by the same corporate, financial and corporate elites that, along with the IMF and the World Bank, made sure that public assets were transferred over to private companies. Many of these companies then became subsidized at further public expense in order to ensure “satisfactory returns.”

The IMF and the World Bank continue to show an unswerving commitment to economy-wide privatization, “public private partnerships,” financialization, and marketization. This is hardly surprising, since “green growth” policy approaches explicitly connect emissions reductions to further privatization and liberalization. Public energy systems remain a primary target, and many have already been broken up and sold off, often in the name of efficiency, flexibility, modernization, and “decarbonization.” As with the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and 1990s, development loans have been made conditional on “market reforms” that advance the commodification of energy. In doing so, they undermine possibilities for providing energy as a public service and a human right, in recognition of its role in meeting basic human needs.

Sticking with Neoliberal Climate Policy is an Attack on Human Rights

Neoliberal policies, which amount to legalized plundering of public wealth, have created a more unequal and politically unstable world. These policies have also undermined basic rights, as detailed in a recent reportfrom the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. Anti-public policies have led to large sections of the working class losing access to adequate health, education, transport and other services. In 2017, an estimated 82% of the wealth created globally went to the top 1% of the world’s population.

Neoliberal climate policy is also an attack on human rights. The IPCC says that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is technically possible. But current policies are impeding the energy transition, because the deployment of renewable energy and other climate solutions depend on their capacity to generate profit for private interests. This approach has made it impossible to reach climate goals, and therefore threatens human rights by making the climate increasingly unstable – with the most severe impacts being felt by vulnerable populations in the global South.

A Public Goods Approach – And the Need to Extend Public Ownership

In one way or another, rising emissions hurt everyone, and reducing emissions benefits everyone. Since most emissions come from how we generate and use energy, energy generation and use must be radically reshaped by pro-public policies. This shift toward a “public goods” approach can liberate climate and energy policy from the chains of the current investor-focused neoliberal dogma, which holds that “the private sector must lead.”

The pursuit of energy democracy and the adoption of a public-goods approach will entail an extension of public ownership and social control across key economic sectors. This can allow for energy systems to be restructured and reconfigured in a way that can serve social and ecological needs. As long as large energy interests remain in private hands, or function as profit-driven commercial enterprises even when they are formally “public” entities, the energy system will continue to revolve around increasing energy use and maximizing profits, rather than protecting people and planet.

COP24, Katowice: We Can Start from Here

It should now be clear that, as we continue to fight for Just Transition, we must do so while fully aware that the dominant profit-based approach to climate protection cannot deliver a transition to a low-carbon future consistent with the Paris targets – whether that transition is “just” or unjust. No worker, no community, no region should be left behind – but at the moment we are not even moving in the right direction, so everyoneis being “left behind.” And for every worker whose job and quality of life are threatened by climate policy, hundreds if not thousands of others will feel the negative impacts of “extractivism as usual” and the impacts of climate change on their lives and livelihoods. This is not a scenario that unions can accept. Only a coordinated, public-goods approach allows us to escape the contradictions of commodified energy systems that pit some workers against others. Time is running out, and failure should not be considered an option.

• Emissions reductions and climate adaptation benefit everyone.
• Governments must be allowed to invest in the future of their people, within a framework of international cooperation and sharing.
• Returns on investment should be measured in better health, cleaner water, enhanced public mobility, and quality public services that can deal with climate instability.
• Everyone should have access to electricity that is reliable, affordable and “climate friendly.”
• Policies that are designed to prevent the development of a pro-public needs-based approach, and attempt to legally impose privatization and liberalization, must be immediately rescinded.

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Dear Comrades and Friends Across the Globe:

On December 27, 2018, in a historic action, Court of Common Pleas Judge Leon Tucker granted Mumia’s petition for new appeal rights, over the opposition of “progressive DA” Larry Krasner.

This is the first Pennsylvania state court decision in Mumia’s favor since he was arrested on December 9, 1981.  The new appeals ordered by Judge Tucker open the door to Mumia Abu-Jamal’s freedom. The legal claims and supporting evidence, previously denied in the PA Supreme Court with Justice Ronald Castille’s participation, warrant a dismissal of the frame-up charges that have kept Mumia imprisoned for 37 years, or, at the very least, a new trial.

It is critical that Mumia can go forward immediately with these appeals. However, DA Larry Krasner has the authority to appeal Judge Tucker’s decision. Krasner’s position, to the surprise of many who had described him as the “new kind” of district attorney, more bent toward justice than mere conviction, with a history of defending dissident activists, been adamant in his opposition to Mumia’ petition.  His legal filings, court arguments, and his statements on public radio have all argued that there is no evidence of Justice Castille’s bias or the appearance of impropriety when he refused to recuse himself in Mumia’s PA Supreme Court appeals from 1998-2012 (!).

If the prosecution appeals, there will follow years of legal proceedings on the validity of Judge Tucker’s order before Mumia can begin the new appeal process challenging his conviction. .Mumia is now 64 years old. He has cirrhosis of the liver from the years of untreated hepatitis C. He still suffers from continuing itching from the skin ailment which is a secondary symptom of the hep-C. Mumia now has glaucoma and is receiving treatment. He has been imprisoned for almost four decades.  An extended appeals process coming at the age of 64 to a person whose health had already been seriously compromised is the equivalent of a death sentence by continued incarceration.

We are asking you to join us in demanding that Larry Krasner stop acting in league with the Fraternal Order of Police.

Mumia should be freed from prison, now!  We are asking you to call, email or tweet DA Larry Krasner TODAY and tell him:

DO NOT Appeal Judge Tucker’s Decision Granting New Rights of Appeal to Mumia Abu-Jamal.

In his decision, Judge Tucker ruled that former PA Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille, who was the District Attorney during Mumia’s first appeal of his frame-up conviction and death sentence, had “created the appearance of bias and impropriety” in the appeal process when he didn’t recuse himself from participating in Mumia’s appeals. Judge Tucker relied heavily on Ronald Castille’s public statements bragging that he would be a “law and order” judge, that he was responsible for putting 45 men on death row, that he had the political and financial support of the Fraternal Order of Police, and in recently discovered new evidence that Castille had particularly campaigned for immediate death warrants of convicted “police killers”.  Judge Tucker states unequivocally that the appearance of bias and lack of “judicial neutrality” exhibited by Castille warranted his recusal.

Judge Tucker’s order throws out the PA Supreme Court decisions from 1998-2012 that rubber-stamped Mumia’s racially-biased, politically-motivated murder conviction on frame-up charges of the shooting death of police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Judge Tucker’s decision means that Mumia Abu-Jamal’s post-conviction appeals of his 1982 conviction must be reheard in the PA appeals court. In those appeals Mumia’s lawyers proved that Mumia was framed by police and prosecution who manufactured evidence of guilt and suppressed the proof of his innocence. And, he was tried by a racist, pro-prosecution trial judge, Albert Sabo, who declared to another judge, “I’m gonna help them fry the n—-r” and denied Mumia his due process trial rights.

We can win Mumia’s freedom!

We have a legal opening.

It is our opportunity to push forward to see Mumia walk out of prison! The international campaign for Mumia Abu-Jamal’s freedom has launched a new offensive.

At the top of its actions is this call for letters and phone calls to DA Larry Krasner demanding he not appeal Judge Tucker’s order granting new appeal rights to Mumia Abu-Jamal.  Please take this action today.  Please send us back your name so we can compile a list of international signers.  Also, no matter how many letters for Mumia you have signed in the past year or two, please sign this one as well.  The moment is different, and the demand of Krasner is different.  We want all possible supporters included.

In solidarity and toward Mumia’s freedom,

(Initiated by all the US based Mumia support organizations)

International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; The MOVE Organization; Educators for Mumia; International Action Center; Mobilization for Mumia; Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC); Campaign to Bring Mumia Home; Committee to Save Mumia; Prison Radio, Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Oakland; Oakland Teachers for Mumia; Workers World/Mundo Obrero

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Between 3 February and 9 August 1945 during the second world war, an area of 461 square kilometres in 69 Japanese cities was burned by US bombing raids. This included the nuclear bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The resulting fires saw plumes of thick, dark smoke rise high into the atmosphere. Much like the cloud and ash thrown into the air by volcanic eruptions, this soot had the potential to block out incoming sunlight, cooling the Earth’s surface.

In a recent paper, published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, we investigate whether the smoke from these fires was enough to change global temperatures.

Nuclear winter

I’ve been working on the threat of nuclear winter for 35 years now. In the 1980s, using simple climate models, we discovered that global nuclear arsenals, if used on cities and industrial areas, could produce a nuclear winter and lead to global famine.

Smoke from the fires would last for years in the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight, and making it cold, dark and dry at the Earth’s surface. It would also destroy ozone, enhancing ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface.

While the immediate effects of nuclear strikes might kill hundreds of thousands, the numbers that would die from starvation in the years that followed could run into billions.

Normally scientists test their theories in a laboratory or with real world observations.  Fortunately, we do not have a global nuclear war to examine. So how can we test nuclear winter theory?

One option is to look at the impact of forest fires. Large wildfires have been observed to pump smoke into the upper atmosphere – the stratosphere – above where rain can wash it out, and then be further lofted by solar heating. Such was the case with a massive fire in British Columbia in August 2017.

We also have many examples of cities that have burned in the past. Accidental fires burned numerous cities, such as London in 1666, Chicago in 1871 and San Francisco in 1906.

But while we don’t have a global nuclear war to study, we do have two cases where nuclear weapons were deployed – Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the second world war.

Photo of Main Street, Hiroshima. Taken on 13 July 1946 in Hiroshima. Credit: National Archives, RG-342-FH-60579AC, from www.japanairaids.org

Temperature drop

While the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively – have gone down in history as the first use of nuclear weapons in warfare, what is less well known is that they were part of a larger bombing campaign by US B-29 Superfortress bombers.

Between 3 February and 9 August 1945, an area of 461sq kilometers in 69 Japanese cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was burned during these air raids – killing 800,000 civilians. The smoke produced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki made up less than 5% of the total.

Part of Shizuoka after it was bombed on 19 June 1945. Credit: National Archives, RG-342-FH-59080AC, from www.japanairaids.org

In our study, we calculated how much smoke was emitted based on estimates for the area burned by fires, the amount of fuel, how much soot was emitted into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, and how much was washed out by rain.

We then estimated the impact on the climate using observed records of solar irradiance – i.e. the amount of the sun’s energy that reaches the Earth’s surface – and land surface temperature. Fortunately, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory maintained two long-term records for solar irradiance – at Mount Montezuma in Chile and on Table Mountain in California, US – so there are data available.

The solar irradiance observatory at Mt. Montezuma, Chile. Credit: Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7005, Box 187, Folder: 9, Image #2003-19480.

For global land surface temperature records, we used GISTEMP from NASA and CRUTEM from the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

The chart below shows the land temperatures during the 1940s and 1950s for CRUTEM (yellow) and GISTEMP (green) as anomalies from the 1940-44 average. Both temperature records show a drop in global temperature (left-hand chart) in 1945 of around 0.1C and in northern hemisphere (right) temperature of 0.2C.

Global (left) and northern hemisphere (right) annual average land surface air temperature anomaly (K) with respect to 1940-1944 average. Data are from CRUTEM and GISTEMP. The green whisker (plotted at 1948 in (a)) is the uncertainty of the GISTEMP observations (95% confidence limit) accounting only for incomplete spatial sampling. Source: Robock & Zambri (2018)

However, we know that there were other factors in play. For example, seasonal temperatures show that cooling in 1945 started at the beginning of the year, before the air raids on Japan. This suggests that natural variability was also playing a role.

Yet there were no significant volcanic eruptions in 1945, nor any El Niño or La Niña event in 1945 or 1946. (In fact, you can see the cooling effect of La Niñas later in the data series – two of the largest La Niñas on record occurred in 1950 and 1956.)

Therefore, despite a detectable amount of cooling in 1945, the multiple uncertainties mean we cannot say for sure that it was caused by this period of bombings in the second world war.

Arsenal

Although our results could not formally detect a cooling signal from second world war smoke, it does not invalidate the nuclear winter theory that much more massive smoke emissions from nuclear war would cause large climate change and impacts on agriculture.

There are many analogues that support parts of nuclear winter theory – not least the way in which major volcanic eruptions create long-lasting clouds in the stratosphere, cooling the Earth and reducing rainfall. The 1815 Tambora eruption in Indonesia, for example, caused the “Year Without a Summer” in 1816, bringing crop failures and food shortages across the northern hemisphere.

Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the global nuclear arsenal has been reduced by a factor of four. The world currently possesses about 14,000 nuclear weapons, distributed among nine nations – the US, Russia, France, the UK, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

Yet our climate model simulations show that these would still be enough to produce nuclear winter – and that even 1% of them could cause climate change unprecedented in recorded human history.

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Prof Alan Robock is a distinguished professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.

As 2018 concludes there is much to be learned from developments on the African continent where the nation-states and masses of people are continuing their quest for authentic national liberation and unity. This is a first in a series of articles which highlight aspects of events on the continent which point to the necessity of building an independent existence for working class, peasantry and youth that can guarantee a prosperous future free of the legacy of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism.

Voting, Stabilization and the Economics of International Relations: The Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola

A much anticipated national presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was postponed for one week to December 30.

This mineral-rich state in the “heart of Africa” has been the focus of a concerted destabilization campaign by the imperialist nations since it gained independence in June 1960. First Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was a Pan-Africanist and anti-imperialist fighter who sought to unite the former Belgian Congo internally for the benefit of the majority of its people.

Lumumba wanted to become a leading force in the struggle for African unity along with Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea-Conakry, Modibo Keita of Mali and other progressive elements leading the freedom movements of the 1950s and 1960s. After attaining power through electoral means, Lumumba was targeted for destabilization, a politico-military coup, house arrest and eventual assassination within the course of seven months.

Since Lumumba’s death in January 1961, there have been recurrent crises stemming from the legacy of colonialism. Over the last two decades the eastern region of the DRC has been a source for rebel activity much of which has been sponsored by Washington-allied regional governments as well as multi-national corporations involved in the exploitation of mineral resources.

President Joseph Kabila has been in power since 2001 when his father, Laurent Kabila, was assassinated. His organization, the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), has its own candidate for the highest office, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. Opposition parties backed by the imperialists with economic interests in the extractive industry are creating an atmosphere where anything less than an outright victory for them will be denounced as fraud placing blame on the current administration.

In recent years there appears to have been a lessening of tensions between Kinshasha and the neighboring states of Uganda and Rwanda. This represents an apparent shift since the late 1990s when in the aftermath of assisting the elder Kabila to take power from longtime U.S.-backed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, Kigali and Kampala in 1998 invaded the DRC in a failed attempt to remove this same leader. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) deployed tens of thousands of troops to halt the putsch resulting in a withdrawal agreement for both sides and the stationing of 12,500 United Nations peacekeeping troops who are still inside the country.

The southwest Kasai region of DRC has been the scene since 2016 of clashes involving militias which support and oppose the Kabila administration. Hundreds of thousands of displaced persons have subsequently fled to neighboring Republic of Angola where many worked in the informal mining sector.

During October, the Angolan government ordered the deportation of up to 300,000 Congolese back across the border. This situation has created yet another series of problems of resettlement into areas where violence compelled their exodus.

Angola is undergoing a rectification process where the recently-elected President Joao Lourenco has sought to address the allegations of corruption from the previous administration of Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Lourenco is traveling to various states seeking partnerships and assistance in sustaining and rebuilding the national economy and infrastructure.

Both the DRC and Angola are rich in national wealth. It is undeniable that these central and southern African states have much more to gain through cooperation rather than divisions.

An Elusive Social Stability and Development: Burundi, Rwanda and the Republic of Sudan

President Pierre Nkurunziza has maintained his position as head-of-state over the last few years in a landlocked agricultural-based country which has a turbulent history of ethnic conflict and displacement. Opposition political parties argued three years ago that the president had no right to run for a third term of office under the 2005 peace agreement which ended more than a decade of civil war.

Mass demonstrations failed to dislodge the administration while fears of a wave of repression and possible renewed civil war, prompted hundreds of thousands of people to flee the country into the neighboring nations of Rwanda and Tanzania. The Burundi government led by the party of Nkurunziza, the National Council for Defense and Democracy (CNDD-FDD), has warned regional states about what they perceived as subversive activity on the part of exiles aimed at fomenting unrest inside the country.

Rwanda and Burundi share a similar history of colonization by Germany and Belgium. The ethnic makeup of the countries where the dominant groups of Tutsis and Hutus, with a small minority of Twa, was a mechanism utilized by imperialism to divide, conquer and control.

Rwanda President Paul Kagame at AfCFTA Summit in Kigali, March 20-21, 2018

In recent months Kigali and Bujumbura have faced-off diplomatically in a manner which has drawn the attention of regional governments. Rwandan President Paul Kagame was highly critical of the decision by Nkurunziza to remain in power despite a Burundian Constitutional Court decision in favor of the CNDD-FDD. Kagame emphasized that events in Burundi risked the resumption of a major ethnically-laced civil war. While Rwanda itself has come under criticism for extending the tenure of Kagame for another possible decade or more, both leaders view each other as adversaries.

According to an article written by Selina Diaby and Patrick Hajayandi on the situation between Rwanda and Burundi:

“In recent decades the Great Lakes region has been marred by civil wars and suffered from consequences of sponsored violence and large-scale abuses of human rights that left millions of people dead and others displaced, raped, mutilated, traumatized and hopeless. It is therefore necessary for the EAC (East African Community) leadership, the African Union (AU) and possibly the United Nations to take seriously the conflict and escalating tensions between Burundi and Rwanda and the fact that they pose a threat to regional and continental stability.” (News24, Dec. 16)

Meanwhile the Republic of Sudan has experienced demonstrations centering on the economic crisis inside this oil producing state. The partitioning of what was once Africa’s largest geographic country after 2013 and the precipitous decline in oil prices on the international market triggered by the deliberate increase in domestic production by the U.S. under the previous administration of President Barack Obama, has plunged Khartoum into a desperate situation.

Over the last three years, the government has moved closer politically to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through their participation in the U.S.-engineered war against the people of Yemen. However, over twenty people have been killed in the month of December as the government attempts to suppress protests centered in the capital affirming in reality that partnerships with the junior partners of imperialism provide no way out of the perils of neo-colonialism in the 21^stcentury.

Image on the right: Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir visits Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, Dec. 2018

Nonetheless, the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir appears to be dissatisfied with its attempts to “normalize” relations with Washington and its allies in the Gulf region. The president traveled to the Russian Federation earlier in the year where he expressed dismay at the current arrangements with the regime of Donald Trump. During December, the Sudanese leader made a surprise visit to Syria for discussions with President Bashar al-Assad.

The Arab League, in which Sudan is a member, had attempted to isolate Syria from the outset of the imperialist war aimed at overthrowing the government in Damascus. Now the governments of Bahrain and the UAE are reestablishing relations with Syria as all indications suggests the Washington-backed rebels have been defeated with the assistance of Moscow, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah of Lebanon.

These developments in Burundi, Rwanda and Sudan illustrate the precarious character of the post-colonial African states leading into the conclusion of the second decade of the 21^stcentury. Alliances with imperialism provide no benefits beyond a possible short term false “rehabilitation” politically with the centers of the world capitalist system.

Conclusion: Economic Resources and the Quest for Sovereignty

Although all of the above-mentioned states have strategic significance as it relates to mineral wealth, geographical positioning and the imperatives of African unity, the historical process of neo-colonialism is designed to halt genuine development and the perpetuation of the dominance of the U.S., its European allies and client nations on the continent along with the so-called Middle East. Africa and its resources both material and human could if liberated place the region as a leading force in the world system.

Yet after a process of over six decades of national liberation movements and various Pan-African projects, there is the constant threat of recolonization. The declaration of an African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in March of 2018 in Rwanda can be viewed as a positive manifestation. Nonetheless, until the class contradictions inherited by centuries of enslavement and colonization are overturned the character of growth and development cannot provide the total liberation of the majority of workers, farmers and youth on the continent.

Just a cursory view of several important African nations can provide a perspective on what needs to be done. Africa must become more conscious of itself as an important harbinger of international affairs in the mode of the outlook of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah from the 1950s to the early 1970s. When this level of self-realization and projection is achieved the prospects for transformation can become even more of a material and ideological force on a global scale.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

Featured image: Democratic Republic of Congo election machines for December 30, 2018 poll

Canadians are being victimized by criminal war propaganda. War with Syria, (Russia, China etc.) IS NOT serving our interests. Politicians who demonize these countries, and support “regime change” wars of aggression, do not represent our interests. Nor do they represent Canada’s national interests, though the politicians seem to think that supporting al Qaeda is in our national interests. None of the countries that we are destroying or preparing to destroy is a threat to us. They are fabricated “threats” ultimately for the benefit of myopic special interests who are impoverishing us all[1].

Obliterated from colonial media messaging is the fact that the legitimate Syrian government — the same government that Canada and its allies are trying to destroy — is and has always been the only polity that protects religious pluralism in Syria. The West’s sectarian terrorist proxies, for instance, have always targeted Christians for murder, and Christian churches, shrines, icons etc. for destruction.[2]

Mark Taliano, September 2016.  Terrorist-damage (FSA, al Nusra Front) to the Shrine of Saint Takla, Maaloula, Syria.

Mark Taliano, September 2016.  Terrorist-inflicted destruction of religious icons, Shrine of Saint Takla, Maaloula, Syria.

Whereas Syrians, regardless of their religious affiliations, celebrate Christmas, such longstanding Syrian traditions are, and always have been, rejected and annihilated by Western-supported terrorists.

The interests of Canadians are not being served when our government and its allies falsely represent Syria, and when they continue to engage in criminal Regime Change operations against Syria.

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

Notes

[1] Mark Taliano. “Socialism for the Rich.” Global Research, 17 August, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/socialism-for-the-rich/5650876) Accessed 30 December, 2018

[2] Mark Taliano. “America Seeks to Destroy Syrian Civilization, Replace it With Terrorism and Ignorance.” Global Research. 22 March, 2017. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-seeks-to-destroy-syrian-civilization-replace-it-with-terrorism-and-ignorance/5581148) Accessed 30 December, 2018.

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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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The partial shutdown of the US federal government entered its second week on Saturday, with thousands of workers receiving short paychecks December 28 and 800,000 set to receive no pay at all when the next paycheck is due on January 11, 2019.

Both the Trump White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress are completely indifferent to the consequences for federal employees and workers at myriad government subcontractors, as well as the public at large, as the impact of the shutdown is felt more widely following the Christmas holiday.

Wednesday, December 26, was the first regular work day after the shutdown began at 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning, December 22. Workers with weekend work schedules including that Saturday were not paid for those hours in the checks they received Friday. A total of 800,000 workers in nine federal departments and numerous agencies will receive no pay January 11 if the shutdown continues—an outcome that is now widely predicted.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent out draft letters Thursday to federal workers who have either been furloughed or designated as “essential employees” and ordered to work without pay. The letters urged workers to call their landlords if they are renters, or mortgage companies if they are buying a home, as well as other major creditors, and attempt to get their payment obligations deferred during the shutdown.

“Speaking with your creditors will enable you to work out the details of any payment plan that you can later confirm with your letter,” the memo says.

The text of one sample letter to be sent to a creditor begins:

“I am a Federal employee who has recently been furloughed due to a lack of funding of my agency. Because of this, my income has been severely cut and I am unable to pay the entire cost of my monthly payments, along with my other expenses.”

The OPM communication emphasizes that the federal agency, which oversees personnel matters for all government departments, will not take any action to influence creditors or provide legal assistance, instead advising workers to “consult with your personal attorney or contact your state or county bar association, many of which maintain lawyer referral services.”

In other words, you’re on your own.

Nor will the federal employee unions take any action, other than issuing statements supporting the Democratic Party in the ongoing confrontation over the federal budget and President Trump’s demand for $5 billion in funding for construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border.

National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon told the Washington Post he was disappointed that Congress was not in session working on a budget resolution, noting that members have told the union they are returning Christmas presents and taking other emergency steps to pay their rent.

The nine federal departments include six that are virtually shut down—Agriculture, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Transportation and Treasury—and three whose operations are largely unaffected because they are engaged in functions critical to the operations of American imperialism both at home and abroad—Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice and the State Department.

Many other independent agencies are partly or wholly shut down, including the Environmental Protection Agency, which has exhausted reserve funds that allowed it to continue operations through Friday, and the Smithsonian Institution and National Zoo, which will close their doors January 2.

Within the DHS, which includes Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Transportation Security Administration, another unit, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, stopped issuing new policies under the National Flood Insurance Program. This will delay or force the cancellation of thousands of home sales for residences in flood zones.

Both the House of Representatives and the US Senate convened Thursday for brief sessions—less than five minutes each—at which one or two Republican members pounded the gavel to open business, listened to an invocation, then ended the proceedings without any discussion or action. Similar pro formasessions are set for Monday, December 31, after which both houses will adjourn for the year.

Congressional leaders of both parties and the White House all agreed that there would be no action to resolve the shutdown until after the new Congress is convened on January 3, with a newly elected Democratic majority in the House and a slightly expanded Republican majority in the Senate.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi is expected be elected House speaker on January 3 and has pledged that the first action of the new Democratic majority will be passage of a continuing resolution along the lines of one approved by the Senate unanimously last week—but then blocked by Trump—which would fund the affected federal departments through February 8.

Press reports said that the congressional Democrats are considering two other options: a resolution continuing funding for the affected agencies through the end of the fiscal year next September 30, or a full-year appropriation for all federal agencies except the Department of Homeland Security, which would operate under a continuing resolution while the border wall issue was negotiated.

All of these actions would be for political effect only, since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will block action on any continuing resolution or appropriation unless it is agreed on by the White House.

Trump forced the shutdown after his initial agreement to sign the continuing resolution, which does not include money for the border wall, was vociferously attacked by Fox News pundits and right-wing radio talk show hosts. He has since escalated the confrontation in an effort to mobilize his fascistic base through appeals to anti-immigrant racism.

The president pursued this track even on his overnight trip for a photo op appearance with US troops at Al Asad Air Base in western Iraq, where he denounced the Democratic Party in front of the soldiers, claiming that while the troops were defending “another country’s borders,” the Democrats were unwilling to defend the borders of the United States.

There was virtually no response from either the Democrats or the corporate media to this brazen attempt to politicize the military and use it as a club against Trump’s critics at home.

On Friday, Trump continued with this theme, threatening to close the US-Mexico border entirely if the Democrats did not “give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with.” He concluded with, “We build a wall or close the southern border.”

Such an action would be both illegal—the president has no authority to close the border except in a genuine national security emergency, which hardly exists today—and economically disastrous for both countries. Cross-border trade between the United States and Mexico is approaching $2 billion a day, and any interruption would have a particularly dire impact on states like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Trump also threatened to cut off all US aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador if the governments of these countries did not take action to halt the exodus of working people fleeing political repression, gang violence and extreme poverty.

While the corporate media portrays the conflict over funding for the border wall as a titanic battle of principle, the Democrats previously agreed to fund the wall as part of a bipartisan deal reached last February that included limited protection against deportation for young immigrants previously covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which Trump unilaterally terminated. That deal collapsed only after Trump demanded additional concessions—again to appease ultra-right supporters—to reduce legal immigration.

The pro-Democratic Party Washington Post published an editorial Friday in which it urged the revival of the February “wall for ‘dreamers’” deal. “Mr. Trump wants money for his pet border-wall project so badly that he’s willing to stage a partial government shutdown,” the Post editors wrote. “Democrats should let him have funding for the wall in return for a permanent fix to the immigration status of the ‘dreamers,’” they continued, concluding that “there’s no real issue of principle preventing a bipartisan deal, just the politics of base-pleasing polarization.”

The editorial warned Pelosi not to take too adamant a stand—no danger there!—because court orders that have temporarily blocked Trump’s decision to rescind DACA are “by no means permanent, however, especially now that conservatives enjoy a solid 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court.”

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Featured image is from Flipboard

President Donald Trump’s announcement of an imminent withdrawal of US troops from northeastern Syria summoned a predictable paroxysm of outrage from Washington’s foreign policy establishment. Former secretary of state and self-described “hair icon” Hillary Clinton perfectly distilled the bipartisan freakout into a single tweet, accusing Trump of “isolationism” and “playing into Russia and Iran’s hands.”

Michelle Flournoy, the DC apparatchik who would have been Hillary’s secretary of defense, slammed the pull-out as “foreign policy malpractice,” while Hillary’s successor at the State Department, John Kerry, threw bits of red meat to the Russiagate-crazed Democratic base by branding Trump’s decision “a Christmas gift to Putin.” From the halls of Congress to the K Street corridors of Gulf-funded think tanks, a chorus of protest proclaimed that removing U.S. troops from Syria would simultaneously abet Iran and bring ISIS back from the grave.

Yet few of those thundering condemnations of the president’s move seemed able to explain just why a few thousand U.S. troops had been deployed to the Syrian hinterlands in the first place. If the mission was to destroy ISIS, then why did ISIS rise in the first place? And why was the jihadist organization still festering right in the midst of the U.S. military occupation?

Too many critics of withdrawal had played central roles in the Syrian crisis to answer these questions honestly. They had either served as media cheerleaders for intervention, or crafted the policies aimed at collapsing Syria’s government that fueled the rise of ISIS. The Syrian catastrophe was their legacy, and they were out to defend it at any cost.

Birthing ISIS From the Womb of Regime Change

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Clinton, Kerry, and the rest of the Beltway blob lined up reflexively behind George W. Bush. The insurgency that followed the violent removal of Iraq’s Ba’athist government set the stage for the declaration of the first Islamic State by Abu Musab Zarqawi in 2006.

Five years later, with near-total consent from Congress, Hillary enthusiastically presided over NATO’s assault on Libya, cackling with glee when she learned that the country’s longtime leader, Moammar Gaddafi, had been sodomized with a bayonet and shot to death by Islamist insurgents — “We came, we saw, he died!” It was not long before an Islamist Emirate was established in Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, while 31 flavors of jihadi militias festered in Tripoli and Benghazi.

While still defending her vote on Iraq, Hillary made the case for arming the anti-Assad opposition in Syria.

“In a conflict like this,” she said, “the hard men with the guns are going to be the more likely actors in any political transition than those on the outside just talking.”

In 2012, the CIA initiated a one billion dollar arm-and-equip operation to fund the so-called “moderate rebels” united under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). A classified Defense Intelligence Agency memo distributed across Obama administration channels in August of that year warned that jihadist forces emanating from Iraq aimed to exploit the security vacuum opened up by the US-backed proxy war to establish a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria” — an “Islamic State,” in the exact words of the memo.

Referring to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s Syrian affiliate by its name, Jabhat al-Nusra, before Western media ever had, the DIA emphasized the close ties the group had fostered with Syria’s “moderate rebels”:

“AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media. AQI declared its opposition to Assad’s regime from the beginning because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis.”

The memo was authored under the watch of then-Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was convicted this year of failing to register as a foreign agent of Turkey — an extremely ironic development considering Turkey’s role in fueling the Syrian insurgency. Predictably, the document was ignored across the board by the Obama administration. Meanwhile, heavy weapons were flowing out of the U.S. Incirlik air base in Turkey and into the hands of anyone who could grab them across the Syrian border.

As early as February 2013, a United Nations independent inquiry report concluded, “The FSA has remained a brand name only.” The UN further issued a damning assessment of the role of the United States, UK and their Gulf allies in fueling extremism across Syria.

“The intervention of external sponsors has contributed to the radicalization of the insurgency as it has favoured Salafi armed groups such as the al-Nusra Front, and even encouraged mainstream insurgents to join them owing to their superior logistical and operational capabilities,” the report stated.

US Arms, ISIS Caliphate

How ISIS overran large swaths of territory in northeastern Syria and established its de facto capital Raqqa is scarcely understood, let alone discussed by Western media. That is partly because the real story is so inconvenient to the established narrative of the Syrian conflict, which blames Assad for every atrocity that has ever occurred in his country, and for some horrors that may not have ever taken place. Echoing the Bush administration’s discredited attempts to link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda, some neoconservative pundits hatched a conspiracy theory that accused Assad of covertly orchestrating the rise of ISIS in order to curry support from the West. But the documented evidence firmly established the success of ISIS as a byproduct of the semi-covert American program to arm Assad’s supposedly moderate opposition.

Opposition activists fly flag of the US-backed Free Syrian Army with ISIS flag in center of Raqqa, Dec. 2013.  (Raqqa Media Center)

Back in March 2013, a coalition of Syrian rebel forces representing the CIA-backed FSA, the Turkish and Qatari proxy, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Al Qaeda affiliate, al-Nusra, overwhelmed the Syrian army in Raqqa. Opposition activists declared the city the “icon of the revolution”and celebrated in Raqqa’s town center, waving the tricolor flags of the FSA alongside the black banners of ISIS and al-Nusra, which set up its headquarters in the city’s town hall.

But disorder quickly spread throughout the city as its residents attempted to order their affairs through local councils. Meanwhile, the US-backed FSA had ceded the city to al-Nusra, taking the fight to the front lines against government forces further afield. The chaos stirred by the insurgents and their foreign backers had created the perfect petri dish for jihadism to fester.

A month after Raqqa was taken, the Iraqi zealot and ISIS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi revealed that al-Nusra had been a Trojan horse for his organization, referring to its commander, Mohammed Jolani, as “our son.” Jolani, in turn, admitted that he had entered Syria from Iraq as a soldier of the Islamic State, declaring,

“We accompanied the jihad in Iraq as military escorts from its beginning until our return [to Syria] after the Syrian revolution.”

By August, Baghdadi completed his coup, announcing control over the city. According to the anti-Assad website, Syria Untold, the U.S.-backed FSA had “balked in the face of ISIS and avoided any military confrontation with it.” Many of its fighters quickly jumped ship to either the Islamic State or al-Nusra.

“The [FSA] battalions are scared to become the weakest link, that they will be swallowed by ISIS,” a media activist named Ahmed al-Asmeh told the journalist Alison Meuse. “A number joined ISIS, and those who were with the people joined Jabhat al-Nusra.”

Backing “Territorial ISIS”

As the insurgency advanced towards Syria’s coast, leaving piles of corpses in its wake and propelling a refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions, the U.S. stepped up its arm-and-equip program. By 2015, the CIA was pouring anti-tank missiles into the ranks of Nourredine Al-Zinki, an extremist militia thateventually forged a coalition with bands of fanatics that made no attempt to disguise their ideology. Among the new opposition umbrella group was one outfit called, “The Bin Laden Front.”

Despite all its war on terror bluster, the U.S. was treating ISIS as an asset in its bid to topple Assad. Then Secretary of State Kerry copped to the strategy in a leaked private meeting with Syrian opposition activists in Sept. 2016:

“We were watching,” Kerry revealed. “We saw that Daesh [ISIS] was growing in strength and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought, however, we could probably manage, you know, that Assad might negotiate and instead of negotiating, you got Assad, ah, you got Putin supporting him.”

When Russia directly intervened in Syria in 2015, the Obama administration’s most outspoken interventionists railed against its campaign to roll back the presence of Al Qaeda and its allies, comparing it to the Rwandan genocide. These same officials were curiously quiet, however, when Russia combined forces with the Syrian military to drive ISIS from the city of Palmyra, to save the home of the world’s most treasured antiquities from destruction.

At a March 24, 2016, press briefing, a reporter asked U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner, “Do you want to see the [Syrian] regime retake Palmyra, or would you prefer that it stays in Daesh’s [ISIS] hands?”

Toner strung together empty platitudes for a full minute.

“You’re not answering my question,” the reporter protested.

Toner emitted a nervous laugh and conceded, “I know I’m not.”

About a year later, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman openly called for the U.S. to use ISIS as a strategic tool, reiterating the cynical logic for the strategy that was already in place.

“We could simply back off fighting territorial ISIS in Syria and make it entirely a problem for Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and Assad,” Friedman proposed. “After all, they’re the ones overextended in Syria, not us. Make them fight a two-front war—the moderate rebels on one side and ISIS on the other.”

Giving ISIS ‘Breathing Space’

When the U.S. finally decided to make a move against ISIS in 2017, it was gripped with anxiety about the Syrian government restoring control over the oil-rich areas ISIS controlled across the northeast.

Palmyra saved twice from ISIS. (Wikimedia Commons)

With help from Russia, and against opposition from the U.S., Syria had already liberated the city of Deir Ezzor from a years-long siege by the Islamic State. Fearing that ISIS-occupied Raqqa could be next to be returned to government hands, the U.S. unleashed a brutal bombing campaign while its allies in the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (a rebranded offshoot of the People’s Protection Units or YPG) assaulted the city by ground.

The U.S.-led campaign reduced much of Raqqa to rubble. In contrast to Aleppo, where rebuilding was underway and refugees were returning, Raqqa and outlying towns under U.S. control were cut off from basic government services and plunged into darkness.

The U.S. proceeded to occupy the city and its outlying areas, insisting that the Syrian government and its allies were too weak to prevent the resurgence of ISIS on their own. But almost as soon as U.S. boots hit the ground, ISIS began to gather strength. In fact, a report this August by the UN Security Council’s Sanctions Monitoring Team found that in areas under direct American control, ISIS had suddenly found “breathing space to prepare for the next phase of its evolution into a global covert network.”

This October, when Iran launched missile strikes against ISIS, nearly killing the ISIS emir, Baghdadi, the Pentagon complained that the missiles had struck only three kilometers from U.S. positions. The protest raised uncomfortable questions about what the top honchos of the Islamic State were doing in such close proximity to the American military, and why the U.S. was unwilling to do what Iran just had done and attack them. No answers from the Pentagon have arrived so far.

Target: Iran

With the appointment this August of James Jeffrey, a self-described “Never Trumper” from the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as Trump’s special representative for Syria engagement, it became clear that the mission to eradicate ISIS was of secondary importance. In testimony before Congress this December, Jeffrey laid out an agenda that focused heavily on what he called “Iran’s malign influence in the region,” “countering Iran in Syria,” and “remov[ing] all Iranian-commanded forces and proxy forces from the entirety of Syria.” In all, Jeffrey made 30 mentions of Iran, all of them hostile, while referring only 23 times to ISIS. It was clear he had regime change in Tehran on the brain.

Trump, for his part, had been mulling a removal of U.S. forces from northern Syria since at least last Spring, when he put forward a vision for an all-Arab military force funded by Saudi Arabia to replace them. But when Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was sawed apart inside his country’s embassy in Istanbul this October, Trump’s plan went to pieces as well. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan exploited the Khashoggi saga to perfection, helping to transform Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman from the darling of America’s elite into persona non grata in Washington. As a result, he arranged a front line position for Turkey in the wake of any U.S. withdrawal.

There are now real reasons to fear that a Turkish advance will ignite a resurgence of ISIS. Turkey was not only a source of aid and oil sales to the jihadist group, it currently oversees a mercenary force of Salafi militiamen that includes droves of former Islamic State fighters. If the Turkish onslaught proves destabilizing, Iran and its allied Shia militias could ramp up their deployment in Syria, which would trigger a harsh reaction from Israel and its Beltway cut-outs.

Then again, the Kurdish YPG is in high level negotiations with Damascus and may team up with the Syrian military to fill the void. From an anti-ISIS standpoint, this is clearly the best option. It is  therefore the least popular one in Washington.

Whatever happens in Syria, those who presided over U.S. policy towards the country over the past seven years are in no position to criticize. They set the stage for the entire crisis, propelling the rise of ISIS in a bid to decapitate another insufficiently pliant state. And though they may never face the accountability they deserve, the impending withdrawal of American troops is a long overdue and richly satisfying rebuke.

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Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, The Fifty One Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza, and the forthcoming The Management of Savagery, which will be published by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie and the newly released Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded the GrayzoneProject.com in 2015 and serves as its editor.

If there was a Fake News of the Year Award, This New York Times article would be in the Top 5 category for running one of the worst stories and may I add, a conspiracy theory for 2018. On December 17th, The New York Times published an article titled ‘Russian 2016 Influence Operation Targeted African-Americans on Social Media’ has to be one of the most absurd pieces I’ve read this year.  Newsflash, you don’t need Russians or the Chinese or anyone else who is not on America’s good side to tell African-Americans what are the true colors of the Democratic party. Throughout their history, the Democratic party’s relationship with the African-American community even under America’s first African-American President, Barack Obama, (his mother Ann Dunham was white) has been catastrophic. The policies put forth by the Democratic Party (the Republicans can also share the blame as they have continued those same policies) has destroyed the African-American community.

Screengrab from The New York Times

It is also a fact that the U.S. holds the title for having one of the largest prison populations on the planet filled with mostly young African-American and Latino men. Former U.S. President and a life-long Democrat Bill Clinton imposed tough drug laws that effected young black men at unprecedented levels. Michelle Alexander’s ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness’ wrote about Bill Clinton’s federal “Three Strikes and you’re Out” law’ and the impact it had on the African-American community:

To the contrary, in 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton vowed that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime than he. True to his word, just weeks before the critical New Hampshire primary, Clinton chose to fl y home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired black man who had so little conception of what was about to happen to him that he asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved for him until the morning. After the execution, Clinton remarked, “I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I’m soft on crime.” 

Once elected, Clinton endorsed the idea of a federal “three strikes and you’re out” law, which he advocated in his 1994 State of the Union address to enthusiastic applause on both sides of the aisle. The $30 billion crime bill sent to President Clinton in August 1994 was hailed as a victory for the Democrats, who “were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it their own.” The bill created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and expansion of state and local police forces. Far from resisting the emergence of the new caste system, Clinton escalated the drug war beyond what conservatives had imagined possible a decade earlier. As the Justice Policy Institute has observed, “the Clinton Administration’s ‘tough on crime’ policies resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history.”

Did President Obama’s Economic Model Help the African-American Community?

In a 2015 article written by Lauren Victoria Burke published by Black Press USA ‘Is Black America Better Off Under Obama?’ quoted what Obama said on December 19th, 2014 to Urban Radio Networks White House Correspondent April Ryan “Like the rest of America, Black America, in the aggregate, is better off now than it was when I came into office,” Burke response was “What planet African Americans are doing “better off” on is unknown. What is known is that President Obama is about to leave office with African Americans in their worst economic situation since Ronald Reagan. A look at every key stat as President Obama starts his sixth year in office illustrates that.” Burke described what some of the facts were in regards to the African-American community under Obama:

Unemployment. The average Black unemployment under President Bush was 10 percent. The average under President Obama after six years is 14 percent. Black unemployment, “has always been double” [that of Whites] but it hasn’t always been 14 percent. The administration was silent when Black unemployment hit 16 percent – a 27-year high – in late 2011. 

Poverty. The percentage of Blacks in poverty in 2009 was 25 percent; it is now 27 percent. The issue of poverty is rarely mentioned by the president or any members of his cabinet. Currently, more than 45 million people – 1 in 7 Americans – live below the poverty line. 

The Black/White Wealth Gap. The wealth gap between Blacks and Whites in America is at a 24-year high. A December study by PEW Research Center revealed the average White household is worth $141,900, and the average Black household is worth $11,000. From 2010 to 2013, the median income for Black households plunged 9 percent

Adding to Burke’s analysis is the study of the black child poverty rate in the U.S. compared to other groups. The Pew Research study released on July 14th, 2015 ‘Black child poverty rate holds steady, even as other groups see declines’suggested that children living in poverty across the U.S. declined as the economy improved. However, the poverty rate for black children did not change that much:

The share of American children living in poverty has declined slightly since 2010 as the nation’s economy has improved. But the poverty rate has changed little for black children, the group most likely to be living in poverty, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data 

The study said that the child poverty rate for all other groups decreased while black children poverty rate did not change at all:

Overall, 20% of children in the U.S., or 14.7 million, lived in poverty in 2013 – down from 22%, or 16.3 million, in 2010. (Poverty in 2013 was defined as living in a household with an annual income below $23,624 for a family of four with two related children.) During this period, the poverty rate declined for Hispanic, white and Asian children. Among black children, however, the rate held steady at about 38%. Black children were almost four times as likely as white or Asian children to be living in poverty in 2013, and significantly more likely than Hispanic children

These are some of the facts that faced the African-American community under Obama. The majority of African-Americans I personally know in New York City don’t like the Republicans and I can assure you, they don’t like the Democrats that much either. With an increase of poverty and unemployment rates plus police shootings of young black men (many were unarmed individuals) across the United States under Obama, maybe that’s’ why many black people did not vote in the 2016 election for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

In another report by Pew Research ‘Black Voter Turnout fell in 2016, even as a record number of Americans cast ballots’ said that although more than 137 million people voted in the 2016 elections, Black voter turnout decreased according to the report:

The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012. The 7-percentage-point decline from the previous presidential election is the largest on record for blacks. (It’s also the largest percentage-point decline among any racial or ethnic group since white voter turnout dropped from 70.2% in 1992 to 60.7% in 1996.) The number of black voters also declined, falling by about 765,000 to 16.4 million in 2016, representing a sharp reversal from 2012. With Barack Obama on the ballot that year, the black voter turnout rate surpassed that of whites for the first time. Among whites, the 65.3% turnout rate in 2016 represented a slight increase from 64.1% in 2012

So the low black voter turnout rate in the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections should not surprise anyone given the fact that their living standards have either remained the same or have gotten worst under the Obama administration. But The New York Times claims that the Russians influenced African-Americans through Instagram according to a joint investigation with New Knowledge, a Texas based cybersecurity company along with researchers from Columbia University and Canfield Research LLC:

“The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of activity on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its posts on Facebook, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee”

The report adds new details to the portrait that has emerged over the last two years of the energy and imagination of the Russian effort to sway American opinion and divide the country, which the authors said continues to this day.

“Active and ongoing interference operations remain on several platforms,” says the report, produced by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Tex., along with researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research LLC. One continuing Russian campaign, for instance, seeks to influence opinion on Syria by promoting Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and a Russian ally in the brutal conflict there

The report suggests that the Russians took advantage of African-Americans who had an interest regarding “black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X”:

But the New Knowledge report gives particular attention to the Russians’ focus on African-Americans, which is evident to anyone who examines collections of their memes and messages.

“The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,” the report says. Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.

The report says that while “other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively with dozens.” In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X

Well there are many historical facts on what the Democratic party has done systematically to destroy the African-American community and many African-Americans understand this fact. Malcolm X understood what the Democratic Party was really about, read ‘What Did Malcolm X Really Think about the Democratic Party?’ which I wrote back in 2017. Let’s also take the history of abortions in the African-American community. For example, Eugenicist, a hero of the Democratic party (especially for Hillary Clinton) and founder of American Birth Control League which later would be renamed ‘Planned Parenthood’ Margaret Sanger (a Democratic Socialist) wrote a letter on December 10, 1939 to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble which she said “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…” Former Secretary of State and two time Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton accepted Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award back in 2009 and praised the Eugenicist:

Now, I have to tell you that it was a great privilege when I was told that I would receive this award. I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision … And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her

This is just one part of Black history that adds insult to injury. An article by Walter B. Hoye III published on The Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) titled ‘Abortion is the Single Negative Force on Black American Growth’explains how abortions have affected the African-American community:

Considering that the total current Black American population is about 42,000,000, the 20,350,000 Black American abortions are equal to 48.45% of the total Black American population. If not for abortion, the total Black American population would be approximately 62,350,000, or 48% greater than it is today.

This is based on an analysis of data from the U.S. Statistical Abstract for 2013 and the National Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 64, No. 1 dated January 15, 2015. This analysis was done recently by Dennis Howard, President of the Movement for a Better America who has written extensively on abortion demographics.

In 2015, there were an estimated 9,168,000 Black American women in their childbearing years between age 15 and 44 which make up around 14% of all women in that age group in the United States of America.

These women experienced:

Births: 621,679

Abortions: 423,000

Pregnancies: 1,044,679

Resulting in:

Abortions as a % of all pregnancies: 40.5%

Abortion rate per 1,000 women: 46.3

The high-rate of abortions among African-Americans introduced by the Democratic party is just another historical fact, but The New York Times says it’s Russian propaganda or what they call “Soviet Propaganda” that influenced African-Americans in the 2016 Presidential elections:

The report does not seek to explain the heavy focus on African-Americans. But the Internet Research Agency’s tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States, as well as recent Russian influence operations in other countries that sought to stir ethnic strife

The New York Times claims that the report by the Senate Intelligence community not only targets the Trump-Russia collusion theory, they also take a jab at Senator Bernie Sanders and the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein:

“While the right-wing pages promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy, the left-wing pages scorned Mrs. Clinton while promoting Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. The voter suppression effort was focused particularly on Sanders supporters and African-Americans, urging them to shun Mrs. Clinton in the general election and either vote for Ms. Stein or stay home.

Whether such efforts had a significant effect is difficult to judge. Black voter turnout declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, but it is impossible to determine whether that was the result of the Russian campaign”

The New York Times and the mainstream-media who work for the establishment in Washington, D.C. are becoming more ridicules, more conspiratorial by the day. Let’s be clear, the Democrats (and the Republican party in many cases) do not care about African-Americans or any other minority group including poor white communities. They just want your votes to stay in power.

Besides, according to people in the Democratic Party like Hillary Clinton who happened to praise former Ku Klux Klan leader Robert Byrd when he died in 2010 by saying “Today our country has lost a true American original, my friend and mentor Robert C. Byrd” she went on to say that “Senator Byrd was a man of surpassing eloquence and nobility. And I will remember him for many things, but most of all, for a heartfelt comment he made to me in the dark days following the attack on our country on 9/11.” Byrd’s legacy definitely rubbed off on Hillary Clinton because to her, all African-American’s look alike:

Hillary Clinton was trying to be funny by mocking the interviewer,  however, saying something like that is insulting to African-Americans even if it was only meant to be funny.  It is not.

The New York Times along with other mainstream-media outlets and the Democratic party are desperate to remove Trump from office and they are using any lie to do so.  Therefore, blaming Russia for everything is a joke, especially for those of us who know what the truth is.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Silent Crow News.

Featured image is from SCN

2018 was marked by notable and sometimes alarming political, military and security developments around the world.  The Middle East, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and East Asia once again became the scenes of global and intra-regional standoffs. A characteristic feature of the past year was the fact that almost all cross-border regions as well as regions which directly concern the economic and security interests of the USA, the EU, the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation have been drawn into the confrontation between global forces. This leads to the conclusion that there are no more “safe havens” in today’s world.

In the first half of the year, the world was balancing on the brink of a new and wider cycle of violence in the Middle East conflict.  Many believed that exactly this could finally destroy the fragile world security order based on the Post Cold-War system of international relations. However, by the end of the year, the situation had changed and confrontation between the key powers has now shifted to Eastern Europe and Asia.

This development is the result of the following factors:

• The situation in Syria has stabilized, as a result of a series of successful military operations by the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance and diplomatic measures undertaken in the framework of the Astana format.
• The US and key EU states concentrated their main attention on different regions in various corners of the world. This was conditioned by the interests of the Euro-Atlantic elite and new economic and by the new diplomatic approach of the Trump administration.
• The US changed the focus of its foreign policy towards the active deterrence of China, instead of a possible cooperation. For this reason, the US employed measures to contain the economic expansion of China in the US market as well as in those foreign regions where the interests of US and Chinese corporations competed.
• Germany, the most powerful European economic center, sent strong signals that its interests did not correspond with Euro-Atlantic interests.
• The regime of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and its backers employed active measures to fuel tensions in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region during the last two months of the year.

Throughout the year, the United States, which remains the only world superpower, successfully alienated some of its key partners and sharpened tensions with its competitors. It appeared to be engaged in an economic war with China, an economic and diplomatic conflict with the EU and, a diplomatic conflict with Turkey – over the Kurdish issue and Ankara’s military and economic cooperation with Russia. The US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal as well as intensified the conflict with the Middle Eastern country in diplomatic, economic and even military spheres.

The Trump administration spent a notable amount of time threatening North Korea with an invasion and promising not to do this if a denuclearization deal were to be reached. However, it appeared that despite showing a readiness to negotiate, the North Korean elites decided that they were not prepared to sell their national interests, as they see them, for the remote chance of being accepted as a junior partner of the US-dominated “international community”. After this and in the second part of the year Trump suddenly lost interest in the Korean peace process which could signals that Korean issues were needed and used mainly to support Trump’s personal domestic political agenda.

In its turn, US-Russia relations have been further damaged. Washington increased sanction pressure on Moscow and officially declared its readiness to withdraw from key US-Russian arms reduction deals.

Top US officials, including military, often name Russia and China among the key challenges faced by the country. However, there is a difference in the approach employed towards these two powers.

Speaking to cadets at Virginia Military Institute on September 25, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis stressed that Russia and “the nuclear threat” are now key challenges for the US.

“There’s also other challenges out there as well, but in terms of urgency, I’d say North Korea. In terms of power right now, it is probably Russia and the nuclear threat. And in terms of long-term political will, it’s China.

But China does not have to be a threat. We can find a way to work together with China. We’re two nuclear-armed superpowers and we’re going to have to learn how to manage our relationship, and I do believe we can do that,” Mattis stated.

Russia is mostly seen as a military threat in the event of a large regional or global conflict while in the case of China, the Washington establishment is mostly concerned with its economic and diplomatic influence around the world. This US stance could shift in the future with the further growth of the Chinese Armed Forces’ military capabilities.

There is a logical explanation why the current Washington establishment pays so much attention to Russia. The US has long been facing a crisis in its social economic development model. If the US wants to maintain the living standards of its domestic population, it has to keep up the current level of consumption, which is impossible in the modern world without further expansion and colonial-style exploitation of “overseas” territories. Therefore, Russia could be considered as the only appropriate target of these efforts, because China is already incorporated into the system of international trading and finances and its internal political situation is much more stable.

This complex yearlong trip of the US administration was in many cases fueled by the populist attitude of Donald Trump personally. The US President was actively exploiting various types of foreign enemy – the Assad government, the Chinese, the Russians, Iran and North Korea, which his administration was “defeating” in twitter and mainstream media to solve its own domestic political problems and to justify its course.

Being an experienced showman, the US President was shuffling these foreign enemies hiding failures and showcasing the successes of his administration. For example, despite the obvious failure of the regime-change and anti-Iranian efforts in Syria, the US found time to show its supreme military power by launching another missile strike on the war-torn country. The economic war with China was justified as necessary measures to defend US domestic industry. The expanding anti-Russia sanctions, which since 2014 have failed to deliver a devastating blow to Russia’s economy, were used as an example of Trump’s firm policy towards Vladimir Putin, who is undertaking hostile actions against Western democracy. The anti-Iranian campaign in support of Israeli regional expansion appeared to be described as anti-terror efforts and was even used to turn a blind eye to the unprecedented murder of a journalist in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul. All the abovementioned was deftly packaged by Trump into his concise statement on the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi: “The world is a very dangerous place!”.

In 2019, Trump will likely continue juggling with enemies, threats and challenges, which he and his team will be confronting via twitter and other tools of US foreign policy. Meanwhile, the main threat to international peace and security will remain the US desire to withdraw from the INF Treaty and to not deal with the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. In particular, these possible developments could lead to direct threats to European homeland security.

Another threat to European security is a possible hot regional war in Eastern Europe, which may start in Ukraine.

On November 25, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Border Service opened fire on and damaged Ukrainian warships, which were advancing in Russian territorial waters in the Black Sea off Crimea. After the short close-quarter firefight, two Ukrainian ships were towed and one ship escorted by Russian forces to the Russian port of Kerch. The data available from both sides, Ukrainian and Russian, demonstrates that the Ukrainian warships intentionally entered Russian territorial waters and were moving more deeply into them. Such a military action with the to be expected intense political coverage is not possible without a direct order from the Ukrainian top military-political leadership.

Exploiting the incident, Ukraine imposed martial law and heightened its propaganda campaign claiming that Russia was about to invade Ukraine. At the same time, military tensions increased in the east of the country as the Ukrainian Army deployed additional troops and heavy weapons in the region of Donbass.

The Ukrainian leadership was fueling military tensions in order to create the appearance of a direct military threat to national security thus justifying political persecutions and censorship. Ukraine is set to hold a presidential election in early 2019 and, according to polls, incumbent president Poroshenko has little chance of staying in power unless the election is delayed or the situation changed dramatically, for example because of war. The West is also concerned about the situation. If the current Ukrainian foreign policy were to change, the Washington and Brussels establishment could lose 5 years’ worth of hacking out a foothold in the political life or even in the economic landscape of Ukraine.

The wars in Syria and Yemen, the Israeli-Arab tensions in Palestine as well as the conflict between the US-Israeli-Saudi bloc and the Iran-Hezbollah bloc remained the main hot points in the Middle East.

The smoldering conflict in Syria is one of the key hot points in the Middle East. In 2018, the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance achieved a series of important victories against militants in the countryside of Damascus and in southern Syria establishing a full control of these important areas. The US-led coalition and Israel attempted to prevent these advances by indirect and even direct military actions, including the US-led missile strike on government targets in April. However, all these attempts failed to change the situation at the strategic level.

The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) accompanied by Turkish-backed militant groups captured Afrin in northern Syria from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). US-led forces used most of the year to consolidate their control of the desert areas on the eastern bank of the Euphrates and to show that they are fighting ISIS in the Euphrates Valley.

The military situation in Syria as of December 2018:

• Turkey and its proxies, usually referred as the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA), control the area of Afrin and the al-Bab-Azaz-Jarabulus triangle.
• The US-led coalition and its proxies, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), control the northeastern part of Syria.
• Various militant groups, first of all Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, are in control of the most of Idlib -province and nearby areas.
• ISIS cells still operate on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River and in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert.
• The southern and central parts of the country, including the most populated areas, are in the hands of the Damascus government.

Northern Syria is a big knot of contradictions, with every party (Syria, Turkey, Iran, Russia, and of course the US) seeking to implement their own plans.

The Assad government is still viewed as illegitimate by Ankara, though Erdogan prefers not to mention it officially if this is possible. Turkish authorities have also repeatedly claimed that Ankara is fulfilling its obligations under the de-escalation zones agreement. However, no practical steps have been made by Ankara to separate Turkish-backed “moderate” factions from the terrorist groups in Idlib or to combat the terrorists there.

Turkey considered ISIS and Kurdish armed groups to be terrorists. After ISIS suffered defeat, Kurdish armed groups remained the only point in that category. Some Kurdish leaders hoped that Erdogan may lose the presidential election and thus the Turkish stance on the Kurdish issue in northern Syria will soften. However, this has never happened.

On June 4, 2018, Ankara and Washington approved the “road map” for the town of Manbij in northern Aleppo, which is currently controlled by the Kurdish-dominated SDF. According to Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, the first phase of the “road map” would see a withdrawal of Kurdish units from the town, which would come under joint patrols of Turkish and US troops. Turkish top officials also claimed that the agreement implied creating a town administration out of local inhabitants after the Kurdish armed groups’ departure. Turkey also insisted that all Kurdish armed groups within the SDF have to be disarmed or even disbanded in the framework of the roadmap.

Nonetheless, the turn of events appeared to be at odds with Ankara’s desires. The YPG once again claimed that it had withdrawn its members from Manbij. US and Turkish forces started patrols north of the town, on the contact line between the SDF/YPG and Turkish-held areas. No Turkish troops entered Manbij. The political and military control over the town remained in the hands of the YPG-affiliated bodies. Furthermore, the US continued providing Kurdish fighters with various military supplies, including weapons and armoured vehicles, and training. No further joint US-Turkish steps to settle the Manbij issue in favor of the Erdogan government were made.

Moreover, the problem is also that for Erdogan, Afrin, Al-Bab, and Manbij are not enough. He has repeatedly vowed to completely clear Kurish armed groups from the area from Manbij to Sinjar, which means operations in Qamishli, Kobani and Haskah, the main YPG strongholds in Syria. Thus, in order to achieve own goals the Erdogan government is balancing between the US-led bloc and the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance.

From Russia’s point of view, the strategic priority is Syria’s territorial integrity and the prevention of radical islamists from coming to power. Russia is open to dialogue with a moderate part of the Syrian opposition and is ready to participate in the talks. The leadership likely understands that Turkey is a temporary ally of Russia in Syria, where the two countries together with Iran are guaranteeing the ceasefire in de-escalation zones.

Thus, some Russian experts claim that Turkey is allied with the US against Russia, which does have some basis. Turkey is in NATO, Ankara has supported and is still supporting the opposition, especially radical armed groups in Idlib, which are not willing to negotiate with Assad. The conflict of objectives between Turkey and the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance has become obvious when the SAA started preparing for a possible military operation in Idlib.

However, Turkey’s, Syria’s, and therefore also Russia’s interests coincide on the question of Syrian Kurdistan. After Russian forces were dispatched to Syria and particularly after the liberation of Aleppo in 2017, Moscow tried to act as an intermediary between the Kurds and Damascus, trying to convince the latter to create Kurdish autonomy. But the Kurdish leaders rejected talks with Damascus and instead placed their hopes in an alliance with the US. It does not matter whether they picked that option because they felt Washington was the best hope to gain quick independence for Rojava or because of a cash stimulus from US emissaries. Most likely both factors played a role. The prospect of a pro-US Kurdish “independent” state formation was extremely worrisome to Ankara, Damascus, and Tehran, prompting them to close ranks.

Thus, the Kurds have lost their chance to get a wide autonomy within Syria and become a bargaining chip in the negotiations between major players involved in the conflict.

The Astana process format also deserves a few words. In the framework of this formant, Russia, Turkey, and Iran have affirmed their determination to fight terrorism and also those organizations which are considered terrorist by the UNSC, oppose separatism aimed at undermining territorial integrity and the sovereignty of Syria and the security of neighboring countries, continue joint efforts to promote political reconciliation among the Syrians themselves in order to facilitate the earliest possible launch of the Constitutional Committee in Geneva.

But the actual situation is radically different. Ankara de-facto controls part of Syria, with the fight against Kurdish armed groups and the expansion of own influence in the war-torn country being the motives. Turkey also lacks a UNSC mandate or a permission from Damascus to deploy forces in the country. These are undoubtedly violations of Ankara’s commitments to the Astana agreements and of Syria’s sovereignty. The participation of the Syrian opposition in the negotiations is also a problem. Many factions just sabotage the talks.  Moreover, there are no significant results in the realm of political decisions on the country’s future, even though they sides continue to affirm their unity in this effort. One could draw the conclusion that the Astana format is not effective and is only a platform for meetings among heads of states, since each country and Turkey in particular is pursuing its own interests.

If one examines Russian participation in the conflict, there is still no evidence that Russia plans to impose a solution for a future Syria by force. Troops and equipment are being withdrawn from Hmeimim, which indicates a gradual drawdown of the military operation and a shift towards diplomatic means. However, while it’s possible to observe the successful implementation of this approach in some separate regions of the country, it has faced significant difficulties on the regional level.

The September 17 announcement of the demilitarized zone in northwestern Syria by President Putin and his Turkish counterpart are a part of the wider strategy aimed at reaching a kind of peaceful settlement to the conflict and to de-escalate the situation. The success of this effort depends on the ability and willingness of the sides to employ the agreement on the ground and to force radical militants to demilitarize at least the 15-20km deep area.

There are many potential clashes of interests between Turkey and Syria, including the Kurdish issue, mutual territorial claims, and ideological and political incompatibility. Since the very start of the protests in Syria, Turkey has rendered and continues to render help to the armed groups and political opposition. Moreover, the bilateral relations are made more complicated by the Euphrates river (nearly half the water is taken by Turkey which deprives countries downstream of water), the looting of industrial enterprises of the manufacturing center of Syria – Aleppo (equipment from nearly 1,000 factories were transported to Turkey). Ankara still believes Assad ought to leave his post, although in the last year its rhetoric concerning Assad’s legitimacy has softened. This was due to the growth of Russian influence on the theater of operations, military defeat suffered by several groups backed by Turkey, and also by the political and economic pressure exerted by Moscow after the Su-24 incident. This shaped Turkish policy toward Syria.

In the best outcome scenario for Syria, Iran, and Russia, Turkey would not plan to annex the Syrian territory it controls in the north of the country in order to avoid a negative reaction from these three states. These territories may be used as bargaining chips in order to gain preferential treatment for work in post-war Syria, thus expanding and strengthening its sphere of influence in that country and strengthening Turkey as a regional power. It’s possible that the Syrian border territories will see something akin to a trans-border protectorate, without redrawing national boundaries. Turkey has already transformed the agglomeration of its proxies into something like a unified opposition, with whom Ankara imagines Assad will discuss the future of Syria, thus giving it a place in the war-destroyed country and thus ensuring Turkey’s interests are safeguarded.

In the contemporary military and diplomatic reality surrounding the Syrian crisis, Ankara is pursuing the following tactical goals:

• To eliminate or at least disarm and limit influence of US-backed Kurdish armed groups in northern Syria;
• To strengthen a united pro-Turkish opposition Idlib and to eliminate any resistance to it, including in some scenarios the elimination of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies;
• To facilitate return of refugees from Turkey to Syrian areas under its own control;

If these goals are achieved, Ankara will significantly increase its influence on the diplomatic settlement of the crisis and on the future of the post-war Syria. The returned refugees and supporters of militant groups in the Turkish-controlled part of Syria will become an electoral base of pro-Turkish political figures and parties in case of the implementation of the peaceful scenario. If no wide-scale diplomatic deal on the conflict is reached, one must consider the possibility of a pro-Turkish quasi-state in northern Syria, confirming the thesis that Erdogan is seeking to build a neo-Ottoman empire.

However, military and diplomatic successes were partially undermined by the economic crisis faced by the country in the middle of the year. The security situation in the southern and eastern parts of Turkey also remains complicated. According to the Turkish Internal Ministry, security forces are carrying out over 2,000 operations and neutralize dozens of terrorists every week in order to keep the situation under control.

From its turn, the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance continue to pursue the following goals in Syria:

• To eliminate the remaining ISIS cells operating in the central Syria desert;
• To increase pressure on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the provinces of Idlib, Latakia and Aleppo in the framework of the de-escalation agreement reached during the Astana talks.

The Russian Special Operations Forces and the Aerospace Forces will continue providing support to government forces in their key operations against terrorists. Nonetheless, the direct involvement of Russian forces will decrease, while negotiators on the ground and on a higher diplomatic level, will play an increasingly important role. The defeat of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the province of Idlib will require at least a limited coordination with Turkey and a large-scale humanitarian operation to evacuate civilians from the area controlled by the terrorist group.

In turn, the US will continue working on establishing independent governing bodies that will aim to manage the areas held by the coalition and the SDF and that will be hostile to the Assad government. This effort is obstructed by a complicated situation in the coalition-occupied areas, because of the tensions between the Kurdish-dominated SDF and the local Arab population. Indeed, Kurdish SDF units have already complicated relations with US-backed Arab armed groups, which are also a part of the SDF.

At the same time, US-Turkish relations will continue to experience friction over US military support to Kurdish armed groups, which are the core of the SDF. Ankara describes these groups as terrorist organizations. Continued US support for armed Kurdish groups may further increase the likelihood of improved Russian-Turkish relations and greater cooperation between Ankara and Moscow in how deal with resolving the Syrian conflict. Ankara will continue to pressure Washington to abandon its Kurdish proxies at every turn, and every US attempt to avoid this reality faces will be met with another Turkish move to boost economic and military cooperation with Russia.

Furthermore, Russian-Turkish relations are being strengthened by major joint economic and military deals, including the TurkStream gas pipeline, the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant and the S-400 air defense system deal. These cooperative economic and military arrangements will continue to increase tensions between Washington and Ankara.

The successful military operation in Syria has undoubtedly boosted the Russian role in the Middle East region in general, allowing it to act as a mediator in conflicts between nations. Moscow actively cooperates with Teheran supporting the Assad government and combating terrorism in Syria. At the same time; however, Russia has been able to leverage its reputation as the global power that is willing and capable of working with other regional players, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in order to settle the conflict in Syria, thus avoiding a large-scale escalation or even a wider war in the region. Through its campaign in Syria, Moscow promoted its economic interests. President Bashar al-Assad and other officials have repeatedly stated that Syria is going to grant all the contracts on restoration of the country’s infrastructure to its allies – i.e. Iran and Russia. Russian companies are already participating in the energy projects, both oil and natural gas, in the country and are preparing to expand their presence in the country. Syria will be able to rebuild after a devastating war and Russia will increase its economic and political power in the region, while further securing economic benefits for its citizens at home.

The operation also contributed to Russia’s national security. As it was noted in the start of this video, Russia has always been a target of terrorist activity of various radical groups, including ISIS and al-Qaeda. Some Western state actors have endorsed at least a part of this activity. It is notable that no major terrorist attacks have been carried out inside Russia since 2015. Russian forces eliminated a large number of militants in Syria who were members of terrorist groups originating in its Southern Caucasus regions created in the post-USSR era. This is already proving to be a major blow to the remaining cells of these groups hiding in Russia, because they have lost their most experienced and ideologically motivated members in Syria. The expansion of Russian military infrastructure, including naval and air bases in Syria, shows that Moscow is not going to withdraw from the country in the near future. Russia will continue its efforts to defeat terrorism and to settle the conflict using a variety of military and diplomatic measures.

On the other hand, considering the current situation in the country, it does not seem possible for the Damascus government to restore control of the entire country in the immediate future.

In December 2018, the Trump administration announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria. In 2019, the US will likely focus on promoting its interests in the region mainly through its allies and local forces under its control.

The stabilization of the situation in Syria also contributed to the growth of Iranian influence in the entire region.

The key to the success of Iranian foreign missions is Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Eslami, the “Corps of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution,” often mistranslated in the West as the “Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.”  The Sepah is the voluntary army created and dedicated to the defense of the revolutionary order founded by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.  Headed by Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the 120,000-strong force consists of land, air, sea and aerospace branches dedicated to the territorial defense of the Islamic Republic and to preventing the subversion of it society by outside influences considered harmful by the leadership.  As opposed to the conventional Iranian Armed Forces, the Sepah train to carry out irregular warfare.  Due to the subversive and irregular style of combat in which the Syrian rebels and Daesh engage, it was quite natural for the Iraqi and Syrian Governments to petition the Iranians to send Sepah units to advise their conventional militaries and to found units patterned after the Sepah in organization and tactics.

In Iraq the Popular Mobilization Units are largely Shiite and a large component of these have pledged allegiance to Ayatollah Khamenei.  In Syria, the Sepah helped to reorganize and train local militias already formed by the Syrian Arab Army and, as the need for manpower increased, transported units of their Iraqi militias to fight in Syria.  The Syrians formed an umbrella group for all of these militias called the National Defense Forces, specifically modelled after the Basij militia in Iran, a voluntary paramilitary formation dedicated to civil defense and the prevention of foreign infiltration into Iranian society.  The NDF now numbers anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 members and has recently volunteered to fight the Turkish Army in Afrin.

As can be seen from the examples given, the Iranian foreign missions in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria have been highly successful due mainly to the expertise of the Sepah personnel sent and their intimate knowledge of irregular warfare.

All of these developments have been met with displeasure by Israel, Iran’s main regional antagonist. Due to the precarious beginnings of their state and the continued occupation of foreign land in contravention to international law, the Israelis have had to rely upon the United States as a diplomatic guarantor at the United Nations as a military supplier.  The enmity between the Zionist State and the Islamic Republic is ideological, each state possessing a religious identity and existing with a purpose beyond the abundance of material goods and individual rights prized by the West.

Despite the recurring slogan of ‘Down with Israel’ (a closer translation of the famous Marg bar Israel than the usual ‘Death to Israel’ which appears in the Western press), the Iranians do not actively seek the destruction of the State of Israel but rather the cancellation of its provocative and unjust behaviors, such as: the occupation of most of the West Bank, of the Golan Heights and of East Jerusalem/Al-Quds, and permitting religiously-motivated settlers to continue to build compounds in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

Conversely, Israel wants Iran to stop its armament program to Hezbollah and has made it a practice to cross into foreign airspace, usually that of Syria, to attack what it believes to be convoys laden with military hardware destined for Lebanon.  The mutual suspicion between Israel and Iran takes shape locally at Israel’s northern border, across which Hezbollah with the permission of the Lebanese Government has created a multi-layered defensive network consisting of anti-tank and anti-infantry obstacles along with an interconnected bunker system.  Behind these ground defenses lies the missile arsenal, kept up to date by Iran and the cause of grave anxiety in Israel.  Iranian-Lebanese relations are more friendly than not, although the old fault lines from the Lebanese Civil War still exist with nearly all Shia Muslims supporting Iran and most Sunni Muslims and Christians opposing it.  Despite this state of opinion, Lebanon has welcomed Iranian overtures to come to its aid but keeps at a respectful distance due to fear of the US.  Be that as it may, it is widely accepted that Hezbollah can protect Lebanon from another Israeli invasion whereas the Lebanese Army cannot, and so the relationship between Hezbollah and Iran continues.

The overall estimation of Iran’s position in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region depends upon its domestic strength and the success of its regional foreign policy. Regionally, the invitation given by its allies Syria, Iraq and (in a passive manner) Lebanon have allowed Iran to greatly expand its soft-power influence against the US/Israel bloc, thus giving what it perceives to be a needed security buffer against the continual efforts of its enemies to overtly or covertly force regime change; this soft-power influence also protects Shia populations, which it considers vulnerable to Western attack or bad influence.  The ties of political, civil and religious culture have allowed the Iranians to advance strong ties with the Iraqis and Syrians, and the brotherhood forged in the fight against ISIS and other militant groups continues to mean an advancement of Iranian interests regionally. While the defense budget of Iran is dwarfed by those of the United States and Israel, its expertise in asymmetrical warfare combined with its tactical use of advisors and diplomacy have seen Iran advance its regional standing since 2003 to the great consternation of its archenemy Israel and its patron the United States.

In 2018, Iran faced increasing sanction and military pressure from the US, which appeared to be ready to do whatever it takes to support Tel Aviv. In November, the White House announced “the toughest sanctions regime ever imposed on Iran”. The sanctions targeted “critical sectors of Iran’s economy, such as its energy, shipping, shipbuilding, and financial sectors”. In fact, the US re-imposed all pre-nuclear deal sanctions and introduced fresh ones. The new sanction list included over 700 entities and individuals, including 300 new names. Trump and members of his administration concentrated special attention on threatening Iran’s oil export.

In 2019, Iran will face further pressure from the US-Israeli-Saudi bloc on economic, diplomatic and even military fronts. Teheran will likely attempt to contain the US-led bloc by employing its asymmetric capabilities in the region and around the world as well as by strengthening its ties with the US geopolitical competitors – China and Russia. The EU will attempt to act as a neutral side in the US-Iranian conflict and will work to develop ways allowing it to continue economic cooperation with Iran at least in some fields.

Throughout 2018, Israel employed a wide range of military and diplomatic measures in order to pursue and promote its interests in the Middle East. A major part of Israeli military efforts was focused on Syria and the Gaza Strip. Tel Aviv also played the role of Washington’s key ally in the region receiving multiple advantages from this.

Despite this, the US-Israeli bloc has not been able to achieve their goals in the war torn region. These goals were to replace the Assad government with a loyal regime and to limit the influence of its adversaries – Hezbollah and Iran. In fact, the conflict has led to a significant growth of Iranian influence and of the activity of Hezbollah.

The US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Israeli state and the attempts of the Trump administration to intervene in any case where Israeli interests are allegedly under-respected have already led to a further escalation regarding the Palestinian and Israeli transborder issues. Moreover, the US withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal forced Teheran to take a toughter stance on regional issues, including its ballistic and military programs and investments in the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The situation in and near the Gaza Strip is especially tense. Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces have resulted in hundreds of killed and thousands of injured Gazians. The number of Israeli strikes on various Palestinian targets has grown while Palestinian armed groups have also expanded mortar and rocket shelling of southern Israel.

Israel also adopted a basic law declaring itself the nation-state of the Jewish people. The law set Hebrew as the official state language, removing Arabic and declared Jerusalem the Israeli capital. The law further established “developing Jewish settlement as a national interest and will take steps to encourage, advance, and implement this interest.” This move became another factor fueling Arab-Israeli tensions in the region.

In view of this, Russia has for a long time been working to remain ready to cooperate with all sides in order to defeat terrorism and to put an end to the Syrian conflict. The Russian military established de-confliction lines with the US-led coalition and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Efforts from the Russian side allowed the situation near the Golan Heights to be de-escalated and prevented further confrontation between Israeli forces and Iranian-backed units in southern Syria. Furthermore, Moscow has avoided engaging in the smoldering Syrian-Israeli conflict and took no direct steps to repel any of the Israeli strikes on Syria.

However, the situation changed on September 18 when a Russian IL-20 reconnaissance plane was shot down in the eastern Mediterranean during an Israeli air raid on Syria. Russia said that the situation was caused by the “hostile actions” of Israel and responded by supplying S-300 air defense systems to the Syrian Air Defense Force, contributing additional efforts to modernize and expand the air defense network of the Syrian military as well as increased EW activity and an increased number of live fire naval drills in the eastern Mediterranean.

While it is unlikely that the Russian military will be publicly involved in the repelling of Israeli strikes on Syria, it will take some steps under the Syrian flag. These steps may include:

• providing the SADF with additional intelligence as well as means and measures to repel Israeli aggression;
• further supplies of modern air defense systems to Syria;
• coordination of the SADF efforts to repel Israeli strikes through their military advisers embedded with the crews of the Russia-supplied air defense systems.

Since late September, in consequence of these developments the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had significantly decreased their military activity in Syria. Instead, the country’s political and military leadership was focusing on attempts to restore “working relations” with Russia, which would allow the IDF to restore their lost freedom of operations against Iranian and Hezbollah targets. Nonetheless, this is unlikely to work in the near future if Tel Aviv offers no concessions to Moscow.

The current level of media and political hysteria in Israel and the US, which is worsened by the complicated situation in the region, could once again put the Middle East on the verge of a hot regional war.

The war in Yemen is also a source of instability in the region. In 2018, the Saudi-led coalition was unable to deliver a devastating blow to the Houthis and thus achieve a decisive victory in the conflict. Saudi Arabia and its allies had to establish a naval and ground siege of the Houthi-held area causing a deep humanitarian crisis in this part of the country. Houthi-led forces were responding with cross-border raids and missile strikes on Saudi targets creating a zone of instability right on the Saudi-Yemeni border and in southern Saudi Arabia itself.

This as well as a complicated diplomatic and media situation in which, the kingdom found itself after an ill-conceived decision to assassinate an opposition Saudi journalist in its own consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul, forced the Saudi leadership to take some open steps in the direction of settlement of the Yemeni conflict. In mid December, the warring sides reached a shaky ceasefire agreement. However, no comprehensive diplomatic solution was reached and the violence continued. It’s hard to expect that in 2019 the Saudi-led coalition will be able to stabilize its southern border.

Additionally, Saudi foreign policy suffered painful blows in Syria and Iraq where Iran, the main Saudi regional competitor, is successfully expanding its influence. The diplomatic economic conflict with Qatar also resulted in no achievements for the Saudi leadership.

The foreign policy failures of the ruling members of the House of Saud remained one of the key risk factors in the destabilization of Saudi Arabia as a nation-state. The invasion in Yemen was draining state finances and fueling the social and political tensions in the kingdom.

Other already “traditional” sore points remained the high level of corruption, interconfessional conflicts, drug abuse as well as tensions within the royal family. In economic terms, the kingdom was neither able to launch nor join any global projects or initiatives, which would tug its economy, consolidate elites or at least draw society’s attention away from current issues. The aforementioned factors will remain the main security and economic challenges for Saudi Arabia in 2019.

In 2018, a new crisis erupted in Armenia, a state in the South Caucasus. The balance of power, self-perception of local ethnic groups, and the influence of socio-economic and cultural ideological groups on public policy have significantly changed in the country. These changes are multidirectional, increasing the risk of a new armed conflict with Azerbaijan.

As a result of an acute internal crisis and a series of street protests Nikol Pashinyan, an opposition leader and a leader of the neoliberal, formally pro-US political party “Way Out Alliance”, seized power in the parliamentary republic.

Despite the formally pro-western position of his party, Pashinyan changed his public foreign policy rhetoric after the situation had entered into a revolutionary phase of the race for power. In addition, there is an acute regional issue – an unresolved territorial dispute over the Nagorno Karabakh region and some nearby areas between Armenia and its Turkic neighbor Azerbaijan, also a post-USSR state. Pro-Armenian forces captured Nagorno Karabakh in the early 90s triggering an armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Further development of this conflict and the expected offensive by pro-Azerbajian forces was stopped by a Russian intervention in May 1994. By end of 2018, Nagorno Karabakh and the nearby areas are still under the control of Armenian forces, de-facto making it an unrecognized Armenian state – Arts’akhi Hanrapetut’yun (Arts’akh).

From all the aforementioned regional players, Russia is the only power, which has been a strategic ally and a military defender of Armenia and its interests. Armenia is a member state of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Customs Union (ECU).

Meanwhile, the importance of the Armenian foothold in the South Caucasus for Russia has decreased. The importance of the Russian military base in Armenia has decreased because of the expansion of Russian military infrastructure in the Middle East, including naval and air bases in Syria. The political importance of Armenia has also decreased because of improved Russian-Turkish relations, which are strengthened by major joint economic projects, including the TurkStream gas pipeline and the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant. At the same time, Armenian has little economic value for the Russian state or private companies. Its only value is found in the nostalgic memories of a part of the Armenian diaspora with Russian citizenship. Additionally to the aforementioned factors, the Russian political leadership seems to be more cautious in forecasting and assessing the course of Armenian foreign policy, analyzing in depth actions and rhetoric of representatives of the Armenian elites. This shift was expected. For a long time, Armenia has pursued a foreign policy that was significantly at odds with the foreign policy position of its formal strategic ally. Furthermore, while enjoying Russian military protection, Armenia has declined to support Russia over key issues on the international agenda.

All these are objective factors, limiting the maneuverability of the relatively pro-Washington establishment in Armenia. Therefore, it decided to implement a double standard policy, de-facto providing a pro-Western course, but maintaining a relatively pro-Russian public rhetoric and standing on ceremony. If this situation develops further, in 2019, Moscow may use this as a formal pretext to reshape its presence, first of all military, in the region as well as the format of diplomatic relations with Armenia. In the worst case scenario, the current Armenian leadership would find itself without direct Russian support in a possible conflict with Azerbaijan for the Nagorno Karabakh region.

The instable political situation in Georgia is also contributing to the instability in the Southern Caucasus.

In Central Asia, Afghanistan was the main point of instability. In 2018, the US-led bloc once again appeared to be unable to defeat the Taliban. In turn, the Afghan movement only expanded its influence across the country, controlling or contesting at least a half of it. In 2019, the situation will likely become even worse for the US and its allies if they reach no agreement with the Taliban or undertake no decisive steps such as the deployment of additional troops to turn the tide in its favor. Another way out is a complete US withdrawal from the country which would be answering Taliban demands and could lead to or be a part of a US-Taliban agreement. Meanwhile there is little hope of the actual implementation of such a peace agreement because it would concede that thousands of American soldiers’ lives had been wasted and 18 years of US policy towards Afghanistan had failed. It would be a major blow to the image of the United States as the leading world power.

Tajikistan is another point, which could negatively affect regional security. Cells of the Taliban and ISIS expanded their presence within the country in 2018. The main reasons are the complicated social and economic situation in Tajikistan, which is a result of the approaches being employed by the current government as well as the common economic doldrums in the region. If the situation develops further in the same direction in 2019, this country could become a new hot spot in the region.

Another important factor influencing the situation in the Central Asia, the Asia-Pacific and even Africa is the US-Chinese standoff. Tensions between the two states are rising in the economic, diplomatic and military spheres. Since the start of 2018, the US has imposed a series of tariffs on a wide range of Chinese goods and, according to President Trump, is ready to take further steps to defend US national interests. According to the Trump administration the tariffs are needed to protect US businesses, especially industry and intellectual property, and to reduce the trade deficit with China. Since the start of the “trade war”, US and Chinese top officials have held a series of meetings but have found no options to resolve the existing differences.

Furthermore, on September 20, the US sanctioned a Chinese defense agency and its director for purchasing Russian combat aircraft and S-400 surface-to-air missiles. The State Department claimed that its actions weren’t intended to undermine the military capabilities or combat readiness of any country, but rather to punish Russia in response to its alleged interference in the US election process. In response, China’s Foreign Ministry said the action was unjustifiable and demanded the US withdraw the penalties or “bear the consequences.”

The conflict expanded into the military and political field. Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on September 26, President Trump accused China of “attempting to interfere” against his administration in the upcoming 2018 election in the US. However, the US president provided no evidence for his claims. Additionally, the Trump administration approved the sale of $330 million of military equipment to Taiwan. This move caused another round of tensions with China.

The balance of power in the Asia Pacific region in general and particularly in the South China Sea and East China Sea are also a hot point in US-China relations. The US is actively working military and diplomatic levels to deter the growing Chinese influence. The US Armed Forces send warships and jets close to Chinese military facilities built on artificial islands, and hold drills near the contested area. The Chinese side is not going to abandon its South China Strategy and responds in a similar manner.

The Washington leadership is concerned by the further increase of Chinese military capabilities, including power projection capabilities, as well as its diplomatic and economic influence around the world. In 2019, this trend will develop further.

The Chinese deep ties with North Korea and the deepening ties with Russia are another focus of tensions between Beijing and Washington.

As to North Korea, in the first half of the year the US presented itself as the defeater of the Kim regime who had forced Pyongyang to denuclearize, abandon the missile program and accept a peace talk. However, in the second half of the year, it appeared that the peace process between the North and the South was developing on an equal basis and far beyond the model desired by the Trump administration. Such mutual give-and-take developments make it difficult to take further steps towards changing the North Korean regime and spreading American influence to the north of the peninsula. At the end of 2018 the White House started to throw sand in the wheels of peace building in the Korean Peninsula. The framework of the ongoing peace process does not satisfy Trump.  This is not price which he is willing to pay to lose a bogeyman as Kim, who was exploited as such to justify a good part of current foreign policy and defense spending.

Washington sees Chinese and Russian activity in Africa as one more threat to its global influence. China has already been widely acknowledged on the continent as an important player in economic and even political areas. In 2018 Beijing strengthened its position in the region.

Moscow was resuming its influence in Africa. The growing Russian military, diplomatic and economic activity in central Africa, especially in the Central African Republic and Chad, became a target of mainstream media speculations in the second half of 2018. In fact, Beijing and Moscow are steadily regaining ground from the US-led bloc in the region.

A complex diplomatic, military and economic cooperation with China is a part of Russia’s “turn to the East” strategy. In January-November 2018, the trade between the countries grew by 27.8% in comparison to the same period in 2017. Russian exports to China in this period were valued at 53,782,900,000 USD while Chinese exports to Russia were 43,452,700,000 USD. The total commodity circulation by the end of the year was about 100 Billion USD. The commodity circulation grew significantly between Russia and other Asian states, in particular Singapore and Thailand. In 2019, Moscow will continue to adapt its economic and diplomatic policy in response to US attempts to isolate it.

Meanwhile, the European partners of the US have suffered significant economic losses from the sanction regime imposed on Russia. According to experts, European business losses can be estimated in hundreds of billions USD.

In Latin America, 2018 brought notable changes in the political landscape both at intraregional and transregional levels. Over the past decades, the United States has pursued a de-facto colonization policy towards its southern neighbors, exploiting all available resources from natural to human. At the same time, the US leadership lavishly supported the establishment cronies of its allies in the region. However, in 2018, the rhetoric and actions of the US towards Latin America changed significantly. The Trump administration made a series of harsh statements about Latin American countries and undertook some unfriendly acts. This applies to both traditional allies and traditional opponents.

As for the latter, the US President declared the so-called “axis of evil in Latin America” as being Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. Then Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton branded Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny”. However, in practice this US posture only strengthened cooperation between the aforementioned states and united their policiesy towards the US leadership.

US-Mexican relations also deteriorated. One of the main reasons was the issue of illegal migration from Mexico, which concerned especially the border states of the US. Trump actively used this topic for a domestic ideological struggle with his opponents inside the country. In the second half of the year, the Trump administration even sent regular army troops to the border, threatening that they, in some cases, will have the right to use live fire against migrants. At the same time, Trump continued to push his project of a border wall on the southern US border.

Venezuela faced an acute round of internal struggle for political power between different factions. The struggle was further worsened by a complicated economic situation. Washington attempted to use both these factors to change the regime in the country, but was not able to do so.

The 2018 G20 summit hosted by Brazil was the most notable international relations event in the region. Some in the US administration believe that Brazil may shape its foreign policy course toward a more pro-US stance with its new elected president. However, despite the fact that Jair Bolsonaro is considered to be a “friend of the United States,” he is in fact only a friend of Trump’s “conservative concept” and nothing more. The new president of Brazil will certainly be a sincere ally of the US, but only until the time when or if supporters of the three new “-ism”s: neoliberalism, globalism, transhumanism or, putting all together, neo-colonialism come back to full power in the United States.

Despite some disagreements the Columbian regime remained the main American ally in the region.

As to Cuba, by the end of the year, Trump had lost a window of opportunity for drawing the country into the US sphere of influence. The main reason for this being the shortsighted policy of his administration.

Intolerance for other points of view, lack of foresight, credibility gaps, double standards, hostility, irrationality, devaluation of democratic procedures, and the resulting dismantlement of the existing system of international relations – all of these definitions can be applied to describe the policy of the global players in 2018. More and more symptoms of a systemic crisis can be distinctly observed. The depth of the divisions between the sides reached an unprecedented level when they almost could not be resolved via negotiations and mutual concessions, at least within the framework of the existing system of international affairs.

Furthermore, the ruling establishment of the world’s sole superpower, the U.S., has shown that it is not going to lower itself to equitable negotiation with other powers.

There are no signs that this situation will improve in 2019. The standoff between the leading powers, including sanctions, arms race, direct and indirect military confrontation, will not decrease. There is a high threat of the resumption or even the launching of new armed conflicts primarily in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. These conflicts may be larger in scale than all of the previous conflicts of the 21th century. Social, ethnic and ideological disputes in Europe, Russia and the U.S. may lead to the destruction of state institutions, and thus civil disorder and conflicts. Terrorist organizations will continue to pose a significant threat.

Global economic issues and the state of international affairs will contribute to the further fragmentation of the world and the growth of isolationist tendencies. 2019 could prove the pivotal year in marking the final breakdown of the existing model of international relations and the intensification of the conflict between global powers, as they seek to shape the new world order. Regardless, it is safe to assume that in 2019 the world will remain a “very dangerous place”.

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Sardana Avksentyeva is now winning admirers nationwide, as she bans lavish town hall parties and sells off plush official cars. 

Ruffling political feathers she certainly is, but the 48 year old mayor took time out from her war on waste to use The Siberian Times to invite the world to visit one of the planet’s most extraordinary cities. 

If even once in your life you want to feel real, epic cold – just for just a day or two perhaps – then Yakutsk, capital of Yakutia region also known as the Sakha Republic, is the place to come.

Within a few weeks now, as it does annually, the city is likely to experience severe winter  temperatures of around minus 60C and it is increasingly attracting foreign visitors from many countries who have her city on their bucket lists because they want to taste such cold.

How do people survive in these temperatures, in a city of 282,000 people literally built on permafrost?

Come here – a six hour flight east from Moscow, or a three hour journey north from Vladivostok – and discover ultimate cold, and a genuinely warm welcome.

WELCOME TO YAKUTSK!

Sardana Avksentyeva, the Mayor of Yakutsk. Picture, video: The Siberian Times

As Avksentyeva says in a new video aimed at visitors and released today by The Siberian Times: ‘Everyone who considers themselves a traveller, who knows the world, who is fascinated by all the most unusual and interesting phenomena on our planet – must visit Yakutia.’

Wearing the national dress of her republic, she stresses: ‘Those who never came to Yakutia, you did not see the whole world.’

Not that it’s just the cold: this is the place to come for the best-value diamonds and silver jewellery anywhere, superb culinary surprises, sights you will see nowhere else – and above all the rich and vibrant culture of the Yakut peoples.

Diamonds at the Treasury of Yakutia. Pictures: The Siberian Times

Read full article here.

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Back during the early days of the Bush-Cheney administration, countless articles and even official statements by the International Energy Agency and various governments proclaimed the onset of what was termed Peak Oil. This was a time when former Halliburton CEO, Vice President Dick Cheney, was named to head the White House Energy Task Force. In the run up to the March 2003 war on Iraq, peak oil or absolute decline in world oil reserves seemed a plausible explanation, if not justification, for the G.W. Bush invasion of Iraq. This author was also for a time persuaded that could explain the oil war. Yet, today we hear little about peak oil. Why, is interesting.

Peak Oil was and is an invention of certain financial circles along with Big Oil to justify among other things ultra-high prices for their oil. The peak oil theory they promoted to justify the high prices, hearkened back to the 1950’s and an eccentric oil geologist with Shell Oil in Houston named King Hubbard.

Bell Curves and such

While working for Shell Oil in Texas, Marion King Hubbert, or King, as he preferred to be known, was asked to deliver a paper to the annual meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in 1956, an event that would become one of the most fateful examples of scientific fabrication in the modern era.

Hubbert posited all of his 1956 conclusions, including that the US would reach oil peak in 1970, on the unproven assumption that oil was a fossil fuel, a biological compound produced from dead dinosaur detritus, algae or other life forms originating some 500 million years back. Hubbert accepted the fossil theory without question, and made no evident attempts to scientifically validate such an essential and fundamental part of his argument. He merely asserted ‘fossil origins of oil’ as Gospel Truth and began to build a new ideology around it, a neo-Malthusian ideology of austerity in the face of looming oil scarcity. He claimed oil fields obeyed the Gaussian bell curve, itself an arbitrary heurism.

For the giant British and American oil companies and the major banks backing them, the myth of scarcity was necessary if they were to be able to control the availability and price of petroleum as the lifeline of the world economy. The scarcity myth was to be a key element of Anglo-American geopolitical power for more than a century.

King Hubbert admitted in a frank interview in 1989 shortly before his death that the method he used to calculate total recoverable US oil reserves was anything but scientific. It might be compared with wetting one’s finger and holding it up to see how strong the wind is blowing.

Hubbert told his interviewer,

What was required there was that I need to know or have an estimate of the ultimate amount that could be produced…I know the ultimate and I know, I can only tailor that curve within a very narrow range of uncertainty. So that’s what was done. Those curves were drawn. I simply, by cut and dry, I mean, you drew the curve, calculated the squares, and if it was a little too much you trimmed it down or too little, you upped it a little. But there was no mathematics involved, other than the integral area under the curve, the integral pd dq by, at times, et, for accumulated production up to a given time…So with the best estimates I could get on the ultimate amount of oil in the United States, my own figure at the time was about 150 billion barrels.

If Hubbert’s description of his methodology doesn’t sound like rigorous scientific procedure, that’s because it wasn’t.

Hubbert, in effect, transformed an unproven and inaccurate assertion — that oil derives from fossilized biological remains – into grounds for claiming its inherent scarcity and inevitable decline: “This knowledge provides us with a powerful geological basis against unbridled speculations as to the occurrence of oil and gas. The initial supply is finite; the rate of renewal is negligible; and the occurrence is limited to those areas of the earth where the basement rocks are covered by thick sedimentary deposits.” Once that was accepted wisdom in the world of geology, a world whose textbooks were written mainly in America where Big Oil dominated, it was a matter of controlling those oil-rich areas politically or, if necessary, militarily.

Barely a tiny fraction of the earth had even been touched by oil drills when he made his dire forecast of ‘finite’ and ‘limited’ supplies in 1956.

Michael T. Halbouty, a respected oil geologist and petroleum engineer from Texas, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 1980:

[There are] approximately 600 prospective petroleum basins in the world. Of these 160 are commercially productive, 240 are partially or moderately explored and the remaining 200 are essentially unexplored… 73 percent were drilled in the United States. Yet the prospective basin areas of this country…comprise only 10.7 percent of the world’s total…The majority of the world’s basins have not been adequately explored or drilled. 

Hubbert proceeded to predict that, based on his estimates of total US oil reserves of 150 to 200 billion barrels, the United States output of petroleum would peak in the late 1970s and an accelerating bell curve decline in oil would begin. It was an alarming picture, to put it mildly. It was also false.

Major New Oil Discovery

I won’t go here into the Russian scientific demonstrations going back to the 1950s which empirically demonstrated that oil is constantly being created deep in the Earth mantle through extreme high temperatures and pressure, and is anything but running out. I deal with the subject in detail in my book, Myths, Lies and Oil Wars. Here I want to cite a recent bulletin from the US Geological Survey.

On November 28 the US Department of the Interior announced a dramatic new confirmation of huge oil and gas in the region of West Texas into Arizona. The U.S. Department of the Interior via its US Geological Survey announced the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation in the Delaware Basin portion of Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin province contain “an estimated mean of 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids,” according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This estimate is for continuous unconventional oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources. Dr. Jim Reilly, USGS Director called the region, “our largest continuous oil and gas assessments ever released.” In brief it is major news for American energy supply.

The report went on to state that oil and gas companies are currently producing oil here using both traditional vertical well technology and horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to extract the shale oil and gas. The USGS added that the Delaware Basin assessment of the Wolfcamp Shale and Bone Spring Formation is more than two times larger than that of the Midland Basin.

Even before this major new discovery of shale oil and gas in the Texas-Arizona region around the Permian Basin, the US, including estimated shale oil, was estimated the world’s largest oil reserve. According to a July 2018 study by Rystad Energy, a Norwegian consultancy, the U.S. holds 264 billion barrels of oil, more than half of which is located in shale. That total exceeds the 256 billion barrels found in Russia, and the 212 billion barrels located in Saudi Arabia.

If the new USGS estimates are included, the US total oil reserves would be well over 310 billion barrels. King Hubbert’s prediction of USA peak oil in 1970 turns out to have been nonsense. What happened in 1970 was that Big Oil manipulated a shift to the ultra-cheap oil of the Middle East and away from domestic USA oil drilling. For them the peak oil argument was a useful political foil that had huge geopolitical consequences for US Middle East policies after 1970. The new discoveries in Texas and Arizona insure that the more rapid depletion of shale oil deposits compared with conventional ones will not spell an early exhaustion of US oil production.

This all has significant geopolitical implications as the US today has emerged in recent years to become the world’s largest producer of oil, ahead of both Russia and Saudi Arabia. This could also explain why the US President recently felt able to order a US troop withdrawal from Syria. There is a vast geopolitical shift underway in the last few years.

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Over the last twelve months events on the African continent have reinforced the centuries-long relationship with the imperialist nations through the process of economic exploitation of human and natural resources, fueling the profitability of the dominant forces within the world system. Although there are subtle and profound variations manifesting this reality in the 55 designated countries making up the African Union (AU), the similarities across the continent far outweigh the differences.

This second installment assessing events in the contemporary period can only be properly understood by placing the continuing crisis inside a historical context. Whilst these AU member-states are all nominally independent with the exception of the Western Sahara still under Moroccan occupation, almost every policy consideration taken by governments throughout the various geo-political regions cannot be enacted without a calculated reasoning related to the response of international financial institutions and the developed capitalist regimes of the West.

Instability in North Africa: The Cases of Egypt and Libya

The third largest-populated country of the AU is Egypt which has been undergoing profound political upheaval since 2011. The resignation of former President Hosni Mubarak after mass protests commonly characterized as the “Arab Spring” created the conditions for the ascendancy of the current military leader turned President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in 2013.

An elected Muslim Brotherhood administration in 2012 under the banner of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) only lasted for one year when the military retook power claiming it had a popular mandate to “restore order” and return the nation to “secularism.” Thousands of FPJ supporters were either killed or arrested in the aftermath of the coup.

Ousted President Mohamed Morsi remains imprisoned and during December appeared in the same courtroom with Mubarak in a trial that is seeking to place culpability on the FJP leader for unrest which struck Egypt in 2011-2012. Yet it was not the Muslim Brotherhood which initiated the mass demonstrations against Mubarak in February 2011. Instead it was broad discontent emanating from the subordinate position of the economy to imperialism facilitated by the funding of the Egyptian military and security apparatus as an adjunct to the strategic interests of Washington related to the continued existence of the State of Israel and its role throughout North Africa and West Asia.

A bomb attack on a tourist bus in Cairo near the thousands years-old pyramids killed three people from Vietnam. The following day it was announced by the Egyptian authorities that 40 “militants” had been eliminated in an anti-terrorist operation by the military.

These incidents of targeted retaliatory violence aimed at weakening and then fortifying the Egyptian economy and political system may appear to be law-enforcement issues. However, the origins of the quagmire are to be found in the legacy of British and French colonialism spanning from the 18^th to the 20^th centuries. Other factors in the Egyptian crisis stem from the encroachment of Tel Aviv and its backing by Washington which controls both pro-western outposts through economic and military means.

Egypt tourists bus bombing on Dec. 28, 2018

An Egyptian-born prolific and renowned scholar Dr. Samir Amin passed away on August 12 in a Paris hospital at the age of 86. Amin, the co-founding executive secretary of the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in 1973 was one of the most prominent Marxist researchers in the field of what became known in the 1970s as dependency theory.

Amin noted that Africa could not gain sustainable independence without “delinking” from world imperialism. This analysis is applicable to other states throughout the northern region of the continent.

The imperative of Amin’s thesis can best be illustrated as well in neighboring Libya where a Pentagon and NATO war of genocide was launched in early 2011 after being falsely labelled as a pro-democracy movement. Utilizing counter-revolutionary rebels on the ground, the seven month air campaign from March through October overthrew the Jamahiriya system under Col. Muammar Gaddafi, creating a vacuous situation which remains through the conclusion of 2018.

Despite several attempts to remake the post-Gaddafi Libya in the image of imperialism, factional violence and ongoing military interference from NATO states and its allies has left the country in perpetual disarray. Libya has gained a reputation in the last three years as a major hub for human trafficking where Africans are routinely abused and sold as cheap labor and sex slaves.

Almost daily hundreds if not thousands are being transported illegally across the Mediterranean Sea to southern Europe. Many are dying in and outside of rickety transport vessels while the debate over the level of migration has created the political basis for the rise of right-wing neo-fascist parties which have gained significant support across the European continent.

Balkanization in West Africa: The Fracturing of Nigeria and Cameroon

President Muhammadu Buhari of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has declared his candidacy on behalf of the All-Progressives Congress (APC) for reelection in 2019. When Buhari first came into office in 2015 he declared that the Boko Haram Islamist grouping would be defeated within six months.  Nonetheless, the violence in the northeast has continued throughout the tenure of his presidency. An anti-terrorism joint task force headquarters at Baga in Borno state was overrun by armed fighters in late December.

Even though Boko Haram has split into two identifiable factions where one is allied with the Islamic State of West Africa, the group’s capacity to use lethal force has remained a destabilizing factor in the northeast, one of the most underdeveloped regions within this oil-rich African state which has the largest population on the continent. The issue of internal security will be a major question raised by opposition parties seeking to defeat Buhari in the national elections.

The drastic decline in oil prices and the collapse of petroleum exports to the United States had a devastating impact on the national economy beginning in 2015. After the assumption of office by current President Donald Trump, relations between Abuja and Washington have improved where the resumption of the sales of military equipment to Nigeria has been done under the rationale of strengthening the country’s capacity to defeat Boko Haram.

What is often neglected on an international level is the repression against the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), a Shiite-based grouping. IMN leader Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky and his wife remain imprisoned in Nigeria despite a court order mandating their release. The IMN says that hundreds and perhaps thousands of its members have been killed and imprisoned by the Nigerian authorities. Demonstrations demanding the release of their leadership and followers are often met with gunfire and further arrests.

Nigeria is still largely dependent upon foreign exchange revenues generated through the sale of oil on the international market which has shifted in recent years to Asian nations such as China and India. Through the production of oil and natural gas there has been a growth in the trade union movement which is putting forward calls for the increase in minimum wage and better working conditions.

Unfortunately, Nigeria remains a capitalist state where the interests of workers, farmers and youth are not a priority for the national bourgeoisie. Women have made strides in the professional and business fields. Nevertheless, there is much to be desired in regard to creating a genuinely democratic society poised to take its rightful place in the efforts to transform Africa into an industrial power to be reckoned with internationally.

In neighboring Cameroon, the former German, British and French colony, is not only plagued by the insurgency of Boko Haram. The unresolved issues between French and English speaking regions have become politicized to the point of armed insurrection.

Cameroon demonstration in support of separation of Angolphone regions

An Anglophone guerrilla movement calling for the independence of Ambazonia, a carved out non-recognized nation in the southwest and northwest regions of the country (referred to as South Cameroon), has resulted in high profile attacks on civilians and the kidnapping of students. The reelection of longtime President Paul Biya has generated tensions since the urgency of a potential break-up of this oil-producing state is not being adequately addressed by the national leadership.

This type of divisions within Cameroon raises the specter of even deeper Pentagon and NATO intervention under the rubric of anti-terrorism and the purported stabilization of the West Africa region. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) is heavily involved in West Africa conducting annual military exercises in conjunction with members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Legacies of Colonialism Must Be Overcome to Foster Regional Development

West Africa is a strategic geo-political area vital to the world economic system due to its vast energy resources, agricultural potential and close proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. As in North Africa, the U.S., Britain and other European Union (EU) governments are seeking to enhance their military and economic presence throughout the region.

The dependency on the West for its determination of commodity prices and preferences related to trade with African states poses a major impediment to the actual sovereignty and unification of the continent. Until these challenges are tackled on a continental basis there can be no real security against threats emerging from both internal and external elements.

There is no historical basis for the reliance upon AFRICOM and NATO in regard to the supplying of military hardware, troops training and the stationing of western soldiers in Africa. Examples abound through the recent experiences of Libya, Ivory Coast, Egypt and Somalia which refute any positive outcomes to imperialist militarism on the continent.

The creation of an All-African High Command of integrated national military forces and popular militias is the only solution to the crises of security which is inextricably linked to people-centered development paradigms. For such an armed Pan-African military to come into existence the AU member-states must break their dependency on capitalism and turn towards the resolving of internal contradictions which are a reflection of the ongoing exploitation and oppression engendered by the post-colonial construct only benefiting the ruling classes in Washington, New York, Paris, London, Brussels and other imperialist outposts.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

In a return to the bad old days of McCarthyism, Bahia Amawi, a US citizen of Palestinian descent, lost her Texas elementary school job after refusing to pledge in writing that she would not participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Earlier this month, Amawi sued the school district that fired her.

The BDS movement against Israel has become a hot button issue in the closing month of 2018. A bipartisan group of senators tried to attach the Israel Anti-Boycott Act to the unanimous spending bill that Trump almost signed to avoid the current government shutdown. Meanwhile, Donorbox, a US software company, blocked the BDS fundraising account at the behest of a pro-Israel group.

“The language of the affirmation Amawi was told she must sign reads like Orwellian – or McCarthyite – self-parody, the classic political loyalty oath that every American should instinctively shudder upon reading,” Glenn Greenwald wrote at The Intercept.

On December 12, the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit on Amawi’s behalf in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas against Pflugerville Independent School District, alleging that Texas’ law requiring the oath violates the First Amendment. Amawi’s complaint says the law constitutes an impermissible attempt “to impose an ideological litmus test or compel speech related to government contractors’ political beliefs, associations, and expressions.”

Amawi had contracted with the school district for nine years to work with students with autism and developmental disabilities in Austin. This fall, for the first time, Amawi was required to sign an oath that she would not boycott Israel. When she refused to sign it, she was fired.

“The point of boycotting any product that supports Israel is to put pressure on the Israeli government to change its treatment, the inhumane treatment, of the Palestinian people,” Amawi explained. “Having grown up as a Palestinian, I know firsthand the oppression and the struggle that Palestinians face on a daily basis.”

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement

The BDS movement was launched by representatives of Palestinian civil society in 2005, calling upon “international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era … [including] embargoes and sanctions against Israel.”

This call specified that “these non-violent punitive measures” should last until Israel fully complies with international law by (1) ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the barrier wall; (2) recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and (3) respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their land as stipulated in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.

Even though it is a nonviolent movement, Israel sees BDS as a threat to its hegemony over the Palestinians. Israel illegally occupies Palestinian territories, maintaining effective control over Gaza’s land, airspace, seaport, electricity, water, telecommunications and population registry. Israel deprives Gazans of food, medicine, fuel and basic services, and continues to build illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.

“There will not be progress toward a just peace without pressure on Israel to respect Palestinian rights,” said Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace. “Bringing about that pressure, through a global grassroots mobilization, is exactly what BDS is about.”

After Amawi’s firing, The New York Times editorial board wrote,

It’s not just Israel’s adversaries who find the [BDS] movement appealing. Many devoted supporters of Israel, including many American Jews, oppose the occupation of the West Bank and refuse to buy products of the settlements in occupied territories. Their right to protest in this way must be vigorously defended.

Omar Barghouti, co-founder of BDS, said in an email to The New York Times,

“Having lost many battles for hearts and minds at the grass-roots level, Israel has adopted since 2014 a new strategy to criminalize support for BDS from the top” in order to “shield Israel from accountability.”

Barghouti called Shurat HaDin, the group behind the Donorbox action blocking the BDS account, a “repressive organization with clear connections to the far-right Israeli government” that is “engaging in McCarthyite … tactics … in a desperate attempt to undermine our ability to challenge Israel’s regime of apartheid and oppression.”

Twenty-six US states have anti-BDS laws and 13 others are pending. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which would have to be reintroduced when the new Congress convenes in January, was supported by Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California) opposed the bill.

Boycotts Are Protected by the First Amendment

The law that triggered Amawi’s firing prohibits the State of Texas from entering into government contracts with companies, including sole proprietorships, that boycott Israel. It defines “boycott Israel” to include “refusing to deal with, terminating business activities with, or otherwise taking any action that is intended to penalize, inflict harm on, or limit commercial relations specifically with Israel, or with a person or entity doing business in Israel or in an Israeli-controlled territory.”

Boycotts are a constitutionally protected form of speech, assembly and association. They have long been used to oppose injustice and urge political change. The Supreme Court has held that “speech on public issues occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, and is entitled to special protection.” The high court ruled that advocating and supporting boycotts “to bring about political, social, and economic change” – like boycotts of Israel – are indisputably protected by the First Amendment.

The National Lawyers Guild, Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights wrote in a legal memorandum challenging anti-BDS legislation in New York that such laws “harken back to the McCarthy era when the state sought to deny the right to earn a livelihood to those who express controversial political views.” The memo says,

“The courts long ago found such McCarthy-era legislation to be at war with the First Amendment,” as they “unconstitutionally target core political speech activities and infringe on the freedom to express political beliefs.”

Even staff members at the right-wing Anti-Defamation League (ADL) opposed anti-BDS laws and admitted they are unconstitutional. Although the leadership officially favors outlawing BDS, ADL staff wrote in an internal 2016 memo that anti-BDS laws divert “community resources to an ineffective, unworkable, and unconstitutional endeavor.”

Greenwald cited the grave danger anti-BDS laws pose to freedom of speech, tweeting,

“The proliferation of these laws – where US citizens are barred from work or contracts unless they vow not to boycott Israel – is the single greatest free speech threat in the US.”

Demonstrating the incongruity of allowing Amawi to boycott any entity but Israel, Greenwald noted,

“In order to continue to work, Amawi would be perfectly free to engage in any political activism against her own country, participate in an economic boycott of any state or city within the US, or work against the policies of any other government in the world — except Israel.”

The US government remains Israel’s lap dog on the world stage. On December 5 the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. The United States opposed the resolution.

Meanwhile, the BDS movement continues to achieve victories. After more than 24,000 people complained to HSBC, the banking giant pulled out its investments in Israeli arms company Elbit Systems. Elbit sells military equipment, including drones, aircraft, artillery and weapon control systems to the Israeli army, US Air Force and British Royal Air Force. It also provides surveillance equipment to the US Customs and Border Protection agency.

On the legal front, the ACLU has mounted successful court challenges to anti-BDS laws in Kansas and Arizona and has filed litigation in Arkansas and Texas.

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

Featured image is from The Times of Israel

As research reveals of late, “counter-terrorism” operations led by the United States over many years have wrought increasing devastation. Not to mention, continuing and worsening repercussions.

A rough estimate of four million Muslims have died as a result of US-led wars in the Middle East – dating to the early 1990s Gulf War against Iraq. The Gulf War was waged by the US, with France, Britain and Saudi Arabia providing welcome support.

It was in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in early August 1990 – the Iraqi dictator having unwisely disobeyed orders from his Western masters. However, it was the Iraqi civilian population who would pay the real price, and not for the last time.

For 42 successive days and nights, US-led coalition forces subjected Iraq to one of the most destructive aerial assaults in military history. Over 88,000 tons of bombs were unloaded on Iraqi soil from mid-January 1991 to the end of February. Much of the bombing fell upon civilian areas.

Hussein’s attack on Kuwait the previous year had drawn “international condemnation”. The above bombardments, infinitely greater in destruction, were met with approval in some quarters and silence in others. By this point, Western governments had already placed “genocidal” sanctions on Iraq – an immediate response to Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait.

The sanctions lasted a staggering 13 years (1990-2003) and brought unaccountable suffering. The lack of basic needs particularly affected Iraqi children, with those aged under 14 comprising 45% of Iraq’s population. Such measures were still “worth it”, as declared infamously in 1996 by Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State.

In the early 21st century, the September 11 atrocities were used as a pretext to resume military operations in the Middle East. Afghanistan, Iraq, and to a lesser extent (nuclear-armed) Pakistan came under Western bombardment or invasion. Indeed, today’s civilian death toll could be as high as six to eight million, when taking into account “higher avoidable death estimates” in Afghanistan.

A few weeks after September 11, the US unleashed its aerial campaign on Afghanistan. Abdul Haq, a respected anti-Taliban figure, described president George W. Bush’s air raids as “a big setback” in their fight to topple the Taliban from inside.

Informed beforehand that any assault on Afghan territory was illegal, president Bush responded, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass”.

Aid organisations working in Afghanistan insisted any bombings would result in a humanitarian catastrophe. Again, such warnings appeared of no consequence to the Pentagon. Haq, the Taliban opposition leader, further said:

“They [US] don’t care about the suffering of the Afghans, or how many people we will lose”.

The British investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed wrote in June 2017,

“Due to severe lack of data in Iraq, almost complete non-existence of records in Afghanistan, and the indifference of Western governments to civilian deaths, it is literally impossible to determine the true extent of loss of life”.

The mainstream press also bears responsibility for the “lack of data” and “non-existence” of reliable death counts. Few Western reporters are ever on the ground to witness the reality unfolding before the eyes, let alone to report on it accurately.

Middle Eastern citizens have long come under the Orwellian heading of “unpeople”. Their existence is barely acknowledged even after they are killed. By contrast, mass shootings in the US receive enormous attention despite the minuscule death tolls in comparison.

In recent years, the destruction wrought by Barack Obama’s “surgical” drone terror campaign shines a brief light on the devastation. In late 2014, the “targeted killing” of his drones in attempting to eliminate 41 suspected terrorists, also killed 1,147 others. Bearing in mind, this is one documented example.

Those who are “targeted” are deemed a potential threat some day to the US, while the rest are mere “collateral damage”. Such policies tear up the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Meanwhile, the Free Press have directed unprecedented attention toward cases like that of Madeleine McCann (widely covered in Britain and the US). Remarkably, the McCann story is regularly reported to the present day.

McCann’s disappearance in May 2007 constituted a terrible tragedy for her family. Yet how much press coverage did the vanishing of a single child warrant afterwards? Far more than the deaths of millions in the Middle East and elsewhere. Ten years after McCann’s disappearance, major media outlets throughout Britain and the US devoted further blanket coverage to her disappearance. The 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion received no such attention.

Just months before the McCann media explosion, it was revealed the US had repeatedly violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – more than any other nuclear state by far. The US, along with other nuclear powers, have a legal obligation reinforced by the World Court to adhere to article 6 of the NPT. That being, to finally eliminate Nuclear Weapons, thereby ensuring the future survival of the human race.

The US further entered into a nuclear agreement with India, which was endorsed by Congress, that grossly undermined the foundations of the NPT. India themselves began developing Nuclear Weapons on their own in the 1960s, and are in constant stand-off with their old enemy and neighbour Pakistan, another nuclear nation.

Following the American lead, China subsequently approached India and Pakistan with similar nuclear deals – such policies making it very difficult to eliminate nuclear weapons. Virtually none of these NPT violations were reported in the mainstream, despite its potentially apocalyptic consequences. There is now an increasing chance of nuclear conflict in the South China Sea or along Russia’s borders, as NATO continues relentlessly advancing, and huge US military forces surround China “in a noose”.

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An earlier version of this article was published on The Duran in November 2017.

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

It is perhaps a cruel irony that, on the same day the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a landmark call for urgent action, Jair Bolsonaro surged to victory in the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections. Although the leader of the far-right Partido Social Liberal did not achieve the 50% of the popular vote required to win outright, and will now have a run-off against Fernando Haddad of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party), his rise has posed some painful and divisive questions both within Brazil and beyond.

Bolsonaro has openly spoken of the need for a military coup and has a record of racist, misogynistic and homophobic views. He is often compared to Donald Trump in the US, and such parallels can also be seen in the protectionist economic doctrine Bolsonaro has adopted in this election, for instance a promise to end the banana trade with Ecuador to protect Brazilian producers.

The electoral success of this divisive figure leaves Brazil at a crucial turning point. There have already been numerous analyses of what this could mean for Brazilian politics – but what could it mean for the environment?

Tchau, Paris?

Despite Bolsonaro’s campaign being based on personality as much as policy, it is possible to find some relevant promises – and they aren’t good news.

For a start, Bolsonaro has previously said that, if elected, he would withdraw Brazil from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, arguing that global warming is nothing more than “greenhouse fables”. Ultimately, his power to reverse the decision is limited, however. This is because the Paris deal was approved via the Brazilian congress, which is currently divided between 30 parties, and Bolsonaro would face the tricky task of convincing a broad church of conservatives.

Although Bolsonaro may be unable to withdraw from the Paris framework, his election would still be a direct threat to the regime of environmental protection in Brazil.

Ruralistas for Bolsonaro?

Bolsonaro’s rise is a symptom of a wider political shift that has seen an alignment between the environmental views of the far right and those of powerful political factions in Brazil.

Although never directly linked, Bolsonaro’s environmental policies would likely be welcomed by the so-called “ruralistas” – a powerful alliance of agribusiness and big landowners within the country’s Senate and Chamber of Deputies. The ruralista faction previously supported the outgoing president Michel Temer and is infamous for its regressive environmental agenda, which seeks to further deforest the Amazon to make way for cattle farms, soy plantations and the mining industry.

Bolsonaro has called for the neutering of both Brazil’s environment agency (IBAMA), which monitors deforestation and environmental degradation, and its Chico Mendes Institute which issues fines to negligent parties. This would eliminate any form of oversight of actions that lead to deforestation.

Bolsonaro has also threatened to do away with the legislative protections afforded to environmental reserves and indigenous communities. He has previously argued that what he describes as an “indigenous land demarcation industry” must be restricted and reversed, allowing for farms and industry to encroach into previously protected lands.

By removing these protective organs from the equation, the message that Bolsonaro is sending is clear: vast swathes of Brazil’s biologically diverse and ecologically important landscape will be opened up for development and extraction. With the Brazilian soy industry profiting from the current trade war between the US and China, it is highly likely that promises of this potential expansion would be well received.

In the run up to this election, figures were released which showed the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is continuing to climb. In August 2018, 545km² of forest were cleared – three times more than the area deforested the previous August. The world’s largest rainforest is integral to climate change mitigation, so cutting back on deforestation is an urgent global issue. Brazil, however, is heading in the opposite direction.

Any collective relief at the far right not winning the first round outright may be short-lived. While the previous government of Temer rolled backenvironmental protections, a Bolsonaro government will likely adopt a brazen anti-environmental strategy. The second round of the election is soon to take place. In light of the IPCC’s recent report, there is more riding on it than ever.

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Ed Atkins is a teaching Fellow, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.

Featured image is from Antonio Scorza / Shutterstock

It would be naive to believe that Jair Bolsonaro’s assault on Cuban doctors, forcing their departure from Brazil, is not part of a larger plan, details of which are coming to light, even though he has yet to assume the Presidency.

It is already clear how far he is willing to go with his intrigues against the island that saved the lives of thousands of his compatriots, serving millions with meticulous professionalism.

Bolsonaro has his eyes on Washington and the Trump administration, which is looking to the Jair-Eduardo pair, father and son, to facilitate its campaigns Cuba and Venezuela.

Every day a new link appears, including the effusive meeting of Jair with National Security Adviser John Bolton, where the main theme was Venezuela and Cuba – and not precisely to recognize the achievements of both nations in health, education, labor, and other areas with direct impact on the population, or their proven solidarity.

In Miami, the new President’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, held a friendly meeting with Orlando Gutierrez, one of the most rabid representatives of the Cuban-American mafia, linked to terrorists and salaried employees of the USAID. He is the central leader of efforts to oppose even the slightest move to improve relations between Cuba and the United States, as occurred during the Obama administration.

To leave a graphic record of his position during this visit, Eduardo Bolsonaro posed before the cameras with this Cuban-born terrorist.

In a tweet, the President-elect’s son emphasized:

“The left united and created a bloody dictatorship in Cuba. It’s time to unite to get rid of the beast they produced. “

To show precisely who he is, Bolsonaro Jr. wore a t-shirt bearing this advice:

“Be nice, don’t be communist”.

In the case of the host, in the name of the so-called Assembly of Cuban Resistance, Gutiérrez has recently led campaigns opposing cruise lines making trips to the island, and calling on the “exile” community to take action to create a new Republic.

This “new Republic” is not explained, but I imagine the plan is to become one more star on the U.S. flag.

Gutiérrez, and other losers who make a living off the miserable business of counterrevolution, sent the Trump administration a message offering thanks for measures taken against Cuba.

This gentleman and other Latin Americans of his lineage have been summoned by the ultra-right deputy, son of the President, Eduardo Bolsonaro, to what they call a “Conservative Summit of the Americas,” that took place this December 8, in Foz de Iguazú, located on the triple border between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Among the confirmed participants were José Antonio Kast, the right-winger who won 8% of the votes in Chile’s Presidential elections; Orlando Gutiérrez, on behalf of the Cuban-American Miami mafia; Jorge Jérez Cuéllar, Colombian reserve general; and Venezuelan opposition leader, Miguel Ángel Martín. Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe was also invited.

If Jair Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo have fostered alliances with people like Orlando Gutiérrez and other terrorists in the United States, how can we believe that the campaign against Cuban doctors in Brazil was solely an initiative of that country’s President-elect and not part of Washington’s plans to attack Cuba and Venezuela?

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Featured image: Eduardo Bolsonaro in Miami with Cuban-born terrorist Orlando Gutiérrez. Photo: Twitter

Well, another year stumbles out the door and a new one is pushed in. This procedure is emulated by the consistency of this lie we call democracy.

Everybody participates in it.

The politicians who need the lie to get them into office.. and keep them there;

The embedded in empire media, especially the electronic mainstream  ‘so called’ news shows (with models, actors and actresses making millions posing as journalists);

The stalwarts of these two ‘servants of empire’ Republican and Democratic parties; and last but surely not least many of my friends and neighbors who still buy into the lie.

Let me be as clear as a  rare smog less big city day: So long as we continue to allow private money into electoral politics, there will never be the foundation for a true democracy… Period!

Just imagine if wealthy interests could not openly bribe politicians with campaign donations. Perhaps maybe then we could see some semblance of economic justice and a healthier public.

Big Oil and Big Auto have made sure, since the inception of the motor car, that the Congress need not legislate that cars get substantial higher fuel efficiency. Ralph Nader had to push for decades just to get the miniscule fuel standards we now have- nothing from what these cars and trucks should be getting in miles per gallon.

Then we have Big Pharma who ‘legally bribe’ our political system to allow unsafe drugs on the market. The Opioid crisis, for example, has revealed to those who really care to know, that many of those types of  drugs should never have been allowed on the market… Period!  How many Americans, skimming to the subject of anti depressant and anti hyperactive drugs, have committed suicide because of them? Check it out for yourself.

Big Insurance has taken over the health care of Americans.. or shall I say the ‘Lack of’? As a baby boomer on Medicare, they don’t even ask to see my Medicare card when I go to any doctor. All they require is my private (so called supplemental) insurance card. Twice my private insurer has ruled out my ENT doc’s request for a deviated septum surgery. Twice! My wife, 10 years younger than me, has NO major medical coverage, only hospitalization. We can barely afford that cost.

To have the same coverage as myself, no way could we afford even a decent plan. As far as other people under 65 that I know, maybe those with private insurance coverage should check out what their deductible is. Guaranteed it is over a couple of thousand dollars before their coverage kicks in.

One must ask those charming hacks who are supposed to represent us as to what their coverage is- you know the coverage that our tax dollars are paying for! So, when even the so called ‘Green Dems’ are demanding a ‘Medicare for All Americans’ plan, don’t they understand that all it would do is allow 50 million or more of our fellow citizens to be held hostage? Margret Flowers and Kevin Zeese are part of a campaign to put pressure on to see that a viable ‘National Health Care For All becomes a reality. Check out their work at Popular Resistance. Org.

We all can see, each time we watch any major sporting event on the boob tube, just how powerful this Military Industrial Empire is. Before every event they drape the giant US flag over the entire field or court, bring out the ‘honor guard’ and everyone bows their heads for the anthem. Everybody knows that we are ‘At war’ and must honor our brave troops etc.

Well, if they really want to honor our troops, get them the hell out of where they never should have been sent to in the first place! Send the children and grandchildren of our political, media and military leaders to those desert outposts in full gear. Don’t forget to send the young ‘fighting age’ relatives of all those movers and shakers of the War industries out there as well. Bottom line: For every dollar of your hard earned federal tax money you send to Uncle Sam, over half goes for military related spending.

Over half! Trump made a concocted, strictly political decision to pull a few thousand military out of Syria and Afghanistan (places we illegally are in). Meanwhile, he won’t shut down the myriad of bases we have in Afghanistan and the near thousand we maintain in perhaps 100 countries (I did not know there were even 100 countries in the world). We need them there, and all of Trump’s recent predecessors have echoed Groucho Marx from the film Duck Soup that “This means war!”

There can be NO democracy so long as my fellow citizens keep relying on the Two Party system to operate, and money is allowed to flow into campaigns.

Even good and decent politicians get tarnished. The late Senator Paul Simon of Illinois, a stalwart for cutting out the influence of money in politics, admitted the following anecdote. He said he was out there on the campaign trail for re-election, and returned to his hotel room one evening. He noticed there were quite a few messages for him. “I went through them, and honestly the first call I returned was to a man I recognized as a campaign donor of mine. That is the reality of how things work now.” He said that almost 20 years ago.

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

Featured image is from Vox

Brazil’s President-elect Jair Bolsonaro and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to deepen ties during a meeting Friday. However, Bolsonaro did not confirm whether his government will move the Brazilian Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the occupied city of Jerusalem.

Netanyahu, a right-wing politician and the first Israeli prime minister to visit Brazil, visited Rio de Janeiro to meet with Bolsonaro, who will assume the presidency on Jan. 1.

“Israel is the promised land. Brazil is the land of promise,”  Netanyahu said, adding that Israel could assist Brazil with economics, security, agriculture, and technology.

In response, Bolsonaro said he would visit Israel by March as a gesture of gratitude to Netanyahu.

“We will be starting a difficult government from January, but Brazil has potential,” Bolsonaro said. “(To) overcome obstacles we need good allies, good friends, good brothers, like Benjamin Netanyahu.”

The two men visited a synagogue where Netanyahu emphasized aspirations for a future in which both countries work together in a more aligned and friendly way, expressing his optimism amid the backdrop of snipers on roofs.

Bolsonaro and his top aides have repeatedly stated that he would move Brazil’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a sharp shift in Brazilian foreign policy which has traditionally supported a two-state solution.

The move, which could very well be announced at a later date as political observers have anticipated, would mimic United States President Donald Trump’s decision to do so last December.

“We also welcome President-elect Bolsonaro’s comments regarding moving the Brazilian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in support of Israel’s sovereign right to have its capital of Jerusalem recognized by nations around the world. We look forward to welcoming many more of our friends and allies in Jerusalem,” a senior U.S. State Department official said Friday.

The Arab League warned in a letter to Bolsonaro that moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be a setback for relations with Arab countries, Reuters reported.

Since the presidential election, powerful backers in the agricultural sector have also pressured Bolsonaro to give up the idea as they fear the decision would harm halal meat sales in Arab countries.

Brazil is the top meat exporter to Muslim-majority countries. According to Salaam Gateway, a Dubai-based online magazine for Islamic culture and lifestyle, halal-certified food and beverage industry was estimated to be worth US$415 billion in 2015.

The US presidential plane landed in the darkness of the Iraqi military base of Ayn al-Assad in west Anbar with Donald Trump onboard. But by the time his plane took off three hours later, Trump left behind a protocol-political-parliamentary storm in Mesopotamia as Iraqi members of parliament requested the departure of the 5200 US forces from the country. None of the three Iraqi leaders (Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, Speaker Mohammad al-Halbusi, President Barham Salih) came to receive Trump as all three rejected US conditions for such a meeting. Trump seems determined to leave Syria without interfering with who will control the territory behind him: this morning the Syrian Army entered the outskirt of the city of Manbij following a deal between Kurdish leaders and the government of Damascus. Will he also end up leaving Iraq before the end of his term in January 2021?

In preparation for Trump’s visit, Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi was asked to meet the US president. He agreed to meet Trump either in Baghdad, on Iraqi soil, or at the Ayn al-Assad military base, on the Iraqi side of the base; Iraqi national security forces and army units are present at the same base where US forces are deployed, in a separate part of the base. To have met on the US-controlled part of the Iraqi-US base would have made Abdel Mahdi appear as an invited guest in his own country.

A few hours before Trump’s arrival, US Ambassador Douglas Silliman told Abdel Mahdi that Trump would receive him in the US part of the base. Trump refused to visit Baghdad for a quick reception; neither would he even cross over to the Iraqi side of Ayn al-Assad, for security reasons. Abdel Mahdi refused the US invitation, as did the Iraqi president and speaker. All three politicians have risen in public esteem for having refused the US invitation.

Trump’s disregard for protocol when landing in a sovereign foreign country has infuriated local politicians, heads of organisations and members of parliament. They felt insulted and have called for the withdrawal of US forces from the country. Others threatened to force US troops out of the country.

Qais al-Khaz’ali, the head of a parliamentary coalition and leader of “Asaeb Ahl al-haq” (responsible for killing US soldiers during their occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2011), said “Iraq will respond (to the Trump insult) through a parliamentary demand that you pull out your troops and if you don’t leave, we have the (warfare) experience to force you out”.

Tension was increased by Trump’s announcement that he plans to keep his forces in Iraq and may return to Syria from the Iraqi base. “Hezbollah Iraq” responded immediately by pledging to “cut the hand that will hit Syria from Iraqi bases”.

The US president seems prepared to keep his promise to withdraw from Syria, at least in the case of Manbij. The US announced an “organised exit”, meaning withdrawal in coordination with Turkey so that Ankara’s forces could replace withdrawing US troops. Turkey has been preparing to enter Manbij and Tal Abiad by gathering thousands of forces and proxies standing at the borders of the Syrian province. Nevertheless, the deal reached on Thursday night between the Syrian government and the YPG Kurds gave the green light to the 1^stand 5^thdivisions of the Syrian army to take back Manbij (still on the outskirt) and raise Russian and Syrian flags over the city. This development is blocking the road for Turkey and its proxies to move into the province. The decision was communicated to Turkey via Russia.

Moscow is standing in the way of any change of power on the ground, refusing Turkey control of more Syrian territory not already included in the “Astana deal”, which conceded Turkey temporary jurisdiction in the region of Idlib. Russia believes there should be a natural handover of the Kurdish-controlled areas to the Syrian Army following US withdrawal. Damascus and Tehran are adamant in this case: only Syrian forces should replace US troops in al-Hasaka province.

Moreover, Damascus forces are still based in Qamishli and can easily take over control of all positions when the US withdraw its occupation forces from northeastern Syria. Already there are observation points (villages) under the control of the Syrian Army, some with Russian observers, in different villages around Manbij. These represent a clear message to Ankara that no troops can cross without Russian agreement, otherwise they will be bombed and attacked. The control of Manbij is a game changer and a clear indication that the government of Damascus will take control of al-Hasaka province to concentrate later on Idlib, after the US withdrawal, with the help of Moscow.

Russia has called for an important meeting between presidential envoys, Foreign and Defence ministers and heads of intelligence services of both Russia and Turkey this Saturday in Moscow to talk about the US withdrawal and the role of each side. Another meeting (not yet final) is scheduled between Turkey, Russia and Iran in Moscow in a few weeks. The aim is to prevent any split between these leaders that could be triggered by the US withdrawal from occupied Syria. Damascus rejected the presence of the local Kurdish administration on its side and agreed to disarm the Kurds, a Turkish and Syrian request, after defeating ISIS.Indeed, the Kurds will help the Syrian army fight ISIS along the Euphrates river where a battle is expected to begin soon to end ISIS control of the area. As ISIS no longer enjoys US protection, the end of its occupation of a part of Syrian territory is near.

During negotiations with Russia, Turkey argued that the US might not allow the Syrian forces to move in. Turkey claimed that any changes to the deal established between Trump and Erdogan might alter the US decision to withdraw. Damascus and Tehran are indeed eager to see US troops gone from Syria, but not to deliver the area to Turkey. Russia supported Damascus on this position.

Ankara was indeed afraid that its unilateral decision to move into the Kurdish controlled area might trigger Russian intervention against its proxies (Euphrates Sheild, Jaish al-Islam, al-Hamza brigade, Ahrar al-Sharqiya and others), and might also lead Iranians to arm the Kurds and the Arab tribes in the province to prevent any further annexation of Syrian territory. The Turkish forces and their proxies currently occupying Jarablus, al-Bab, Afrin and Idlib, are unwilling to engage in a doomed war against the Syrian army, supported by Russia and Iran.

Turkey seems willing to accommodate Russia and Iran – the Turkish army and its Syrian proxies will never be able to cross the 500 kilometres from Manbij to Deir-ezzour where the richest area of oil and gas is. This area is only tens of kilometres distant from the closest Syrian Army position on the other side of the Euphrates river.

Russia asked Damascus and Tehran to lay down a strategy and coordinate with the Russian military to put forward a plan of action and a road map after US withdrawal, with the first priority of eliminating ISIS and avoiding any clash with Turkey if possible. The situation was very sensitive and complicated between these allies. With the return of Manbij, the situation seems to favour Syrian unity, marking the end of its partition or of any possible buffer zone.

Tehran believes the US won’t permanently leave the Levant and Mesopotamia without leaving unrest behind. This gives its officials an additional motivation to lobby the Iraqi parliament for a US withdrawal from Iraq.

There is no doubt that Iraq is a close ally of Iran and not a fanatic supporter of the US. The Iraqi parliament can exert pressure over the government of Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi to ask President Trump to pull out US troops before the end of his mandate in 2020. The US establishment and the “Axis of the Resistance” can both connive and plan, but the last word will belong to the people of Iraq and to those who reject US hegemony in the Middle East, those who can accept losses and nurse their wounds in hopes of a better future.

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Featured image is from Elijah J. Magnier

It should be a sign for this Indian giant, a company that has done much to illustrate the ethical and moral bankruptcy in Australia’s political classes.  Despite support stretching from Canberra to rural Queensland, lifted by the fantasy of job creation, Adani is yet to dig the earth of what would have been one of the largest mining complexes on the planet.   

For one thing, a downsizing was announced suggesting a more compact operation that would supposedly fly under the radar of detractors.  From its initial, lofty ambitions of a $16.5 billion investment, Adani Mining chief executive Lucas Dow now suggests a less extravagant $2 billion reliant on existing rail infrastructure.  Even here, the mission to establish a new coal mine seems grotesque given the dire warnings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  While Adani mines, the world cooks.

There is more than a sense that Adani is a poisoned chalice best avoided by all concerned – unless you are an Australian energy or resources minister incapable of evaluating history or the future prospects of fossil fuels.  This point is particularly problematic given the admission by Indian officials that coal is going off the books at such a rate that the Carmichael project is destined to become the most muddle headed of white elephants.  Indeed, existing thermal coal power in India costs twice what renewable generation does. 

The outlook for such analysts as the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis is glum for the coal romantics and fossil fuel adorers.

“Exports have declined since 2015,” goes its report last month, “and more contraction is expected.  High export revenues entirely reflect current high prices which are themselves partially a result of declining investment in thermal coal mining.” 

Banks have refused to grant a line of finance.  Insurance and reinsurance companies have resisted supplying cover for the coal mine – among them, AXA, SCOR, FM Global, QBE and Suncorp.  Some insurance companies – Allianz, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Zurich and Generali – have environmental policies that preclude engagement with the project. 

The hope for Adani is that various ditherers and the morally lax might still be in the market to cover this enterprise of pure environmental buccaneering: US re-insurer giants such as AIG, AXIS Capital and Berkshire Hathaway have yet to make their stance on this clear.

Such reluctance was prompted, in no small part, by the efforts of 73 environmental organisations, topped by a letter to 30 global insurance and reinsurance companies sent earlier this month.  Such groups have been unrelenting in emphasising the dangers posed by the Carmichael project.  These do not only entail the mining operations themselves but the rail line linked to the export terminal that would threaten the Great Barrier Reef.  Biodiversity and a World Heritage Site remain vulnerable targets before a company renowned for its rapacity towards worker and environment.

Other animals have also become talismans of resistance to the project, assuming titanic proportions for opponents.  The Black-throated finch has become something of an activists’ cult, marked by the Black-throated Finch Recovery Team’s insistence that Adani’s reassurances in their protection and preservation are, at best, woeful.  A promise to conduct surveys twice a year hardly counted, and the experts were being given the cold shoulder in what was deemed a “closed book consultation”.  Adani insists on those who sing appropriate tunes.

The company’s response has been that of a diligent, agonised box ticker keen on following process.

“The claims that the process has not been ‘followed on a number of different levels,’” went a rebuking spokesperson for the company last year, “is without basis as Adani has followed the legislation and conditions set in close consultation with the Federal and Queensland governments.”

Then there is a sticking point that refuses to go away: Adani’s promised, seemingly unquenchable thirst.  Up to 12.5 billion litres of water drawn from the Suttor River in central Queensland is being sought to aid the open-cut coal effort.  The misnamed Environment Minister’s portfolio, inhabited by the near invisible Melissa Price, did not feel any pressing concerns for conducting an assessment on how damaging such a move would be.

Again, Adani is there with qualifiers and dismissive counters, which are hard things to pull off, given the persistent trouble of drought in Queensland: the issue of the mandatory water trigger, which comes into play in such significant projects, should only apply to water used in the coal extraction process, rather than its overall plan of water usage which it has conveniently softened as a water strategy.  As the Australian Department of the Environment and Energy explains, “stand-alone proposals which involve only associated infrastructure, such as pipelines, are not captured by the water trigger because they do not directly involve the extraction of coal”. Such bureaucratic riddling does well in Canberra.

The Australian Conservation Foundation is not impressed, and is taking the matter to the Federal Court.  By not considering the issue of how broad the water trigger was, Price had erred in a matter of law.  As things stand, Price and her colleagues, in connivance with Adani, are erring on a lot more besides, making the campaign against the mine a fundamental counter against permissible and ultimately scandalous environmental vandalism.

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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]

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was one of the most prescient philosophers, whose influence is felt even today. It could be said about him that he is read wherever printed literature or optical fiber has reached. But what does Marx mean to us today? How do we interpret Marx for our changed times? I remember that by 2005-2006, most people would mockingly remind me that Marx had become outdated and therefore his proper place was his London cemetery. But then, out of the blue came the 2008-2012 economic meltdown. Global capitalism fell like a pack of cards. The result, as we all know, was devastating. The worst-hit countries, like the United States, implemented bailout packages for big corporations and so-called austerity measures for the poor and middle class. The economic terrorism of the World Bank and IMF was brought in full swing to control the man-made tragedy

The entire tragedy culminated in the famous slogan, “we are the 99 percent and they are the 1 percent.” Despite the predictions of neoconservatives, Marx was once again speaking, albeit from his grave. It was Marx, alongside Engels, who after all had developed the most comprehensive critique of neoliberal concepts. Marx’s greatest contribution was to show that, when all was said and done, poverty was not a natural phenomenon of the world. Capitalism no doubt produced wealth. But it also generated poverty on a massive scale. This disparity finds its expression in routine struggles that the poor are forced to fight against the super-rich. With Marx, a certain culture, a certain way of being, at least in Europe to begin with, came to an end. Marx no doubt could not give a perfect blueprint of how future societies could be built. But his writing, what I call magical boxes, should be read as an obituary of the bourgeoisie that organizes itself into family, church, factory, army, religion and psychiatric clinics in a perfect pyramidal model. Marx was not first to have raised the siren. He should be seen as a great heir to the 1789 Revolution. It was the original French Revolution that taught Marx, and it was other French revolutionaries of the failed La Commune (Paris 1871) whom he was teaching and mentoring by arguing both for and against.

The French Revolution, for the first time in the history of Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, raised the most vital question related to man and man’s relationship with land, i.e. who owns the land and who does not. And why and how has it happened that the peasants who toil own nothing while the landlords own all the land. It was the revolutionaries who insisted on a complete separation of church and state. The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), in fact, goes as far as imposing taxes on offerings of religious prayers. Even issues related to women and the sexual minorities were raised. With Marx and the French revolutionaries, not just the factory space but all other spaces and institutions were sought to be democratized. It was land and private capital that were the sources of the bourgeoisie’s wealth and laughter; it was land and capital that were sought to be socialized.

Marx, alongside Engels, Bakunin, Herzen, Marquis de Sade and others had developed a highly organized body of anti-capitalist knowledge. In light of the conclusions they had reached, they believed that capitalism would sooner than later come to an end. They were optimistic about the ability of the proletariat to turn the tide and rise against all odds. In retrospect, it would be fair to say that Marx’s prediction of a world revolution has not come true. Today with the sole exceptions of Vietnam, China, Cuba, parts of Europe, and pockets in India the leftist movements have not been able to muster public opinion against the most murderous economic system. And even where it had succeeded, as in large swathes of Eastern Europe and Russia, the revolution failed to consolidate itself beyond a certain point. In the Soviet case, as this is now widely recognized even by historians like Professor Irfan Habib, in the post-revolutionary society a new bureaucratic class emerged that thought less about people and more about itself. One finds the same message emerging from Victor Kravchenko’s celebrated memoir, I Chose Freedom (1946). In other words, class distinctions did not dissolve. Where the old ones died, newer ones emerged.

The world would be a beautiful and non-alienated home for us, the inheritors of Marx, if we had not inherited these complex and seemingly insoluble problems. To a large extent, Cuba alone among the countries in Latin America has been successful at combating this problem by implementing honestly the mass line. Our problem is further compounded by the serious threat of climate change. Capitalism and vulgar forms of socialism have no doubt raised mankind’s productive capacity by leaps and bounds. But they have more or less failed to recognize the climatic consequences of this growth for growth’s sake

It would be futile here to look into Marx or Engels for solutions to this problem. Both spoke in a language devoid of any serious concern for this factory and tree debate. This to me constitutes what I would call the black hole of their theory. And so, the gigantic task of repairing this falls on our shoulders.

Source: Gilbert Mercier

The melting of the ice-caps has resulted in rising sea levels. And in our case, in India, the Sundarbans will be the worst-hit area. And I imagine Kolkata and Mumbai, as well as other port cities of the world, would not remain unaffected. Human civilization today faces problems that in the past 10,000 years it did not. The rampant use of plastic and its improper disposal by burning adds to the enormity of the problem. We build industries but forget conveniently about their effluents. I would admit that when one talks about such issues one is inevitably called an ‘endist’ – a philosopher whose sensibilities are deeply affected by the Biblical stories of the world coming to an end. I hope that the world does not come to an end, that this Titanic in which we are traveling does not sink. But magical thinking can only console us. It can hardly replace the need for instituting deep-rooted changes. Given the mass of scientific evidence that we have, like the UN’s 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mitigation report, one would have to be either an Ambani or a lunatic to look the other way.

Both capitalism and vulgar forms of socialism tend to believe naively that nature is infinite. That the resources nature gives us have no end. They tend to forget that nature, like man, is finite. What we need is not just a certain deconsumerization of society as whole, but perhaps people will have to learn to respect all things that are non-human. This is something that the far-Right, as represented by Trump, Modi, or Bolsonaro, will not do. This task falls on the shoulders of the Left. Global capitalism cannot be expected to solve the problems that it has given us. At such a crucial juncture, what we need is a surcharged Left that is committed to a green earth.

In India and more particularly in Bengal, the Left should push for heavy taxation of industrial houses whose profit generating activity is destroying the ecology beyond repair. The money so generated should be used to institutionalize green technologies. We should also push for a Sikkim-like ban on plastic and segregation of the garbage that the poor, middle class, rich, and super-rich generate. Recycling itself could not only lead to generation of employment but also help us to extend the deadline for our demise by many years.

Marx was a genius of his time. He had the courage to defend the defenseless. Climate change once again presents us with this opportunity. We know that the effect of such a change will be disproportionate. It will affect the poor more than the rich. It is here that Marx’s legacy ought to be invoked. We have to protect and educate the poor. We have to re-establish the amicable relationship between humans and trees that capitalism has historically annihilated. To accomplish such a task we have to be, not just theoreticians, but also poets who are profoundly in love with all things non-human.

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This article was originally published on News Junkie Post.

Imtiaz Akhtar is the author of Kafka Sutra.

Featured image is from Jason Hardgrove via News Junkie Post

The UK government-financed Integrity Initiative, managed by the Institute for Statecraft, is ostensibly a “counter disinformation” programme to challenge Russian information operations. However, it has been revealed that the Integrity Initiative twitter handle and some individuals associated with this programme have also been tweeting messages attacking Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. [i]  This takes on special meaning in light of the numerous UK military and intelligence personnel associated with the programme, documented in an important briefing by academics in Working Group on Syria Propaganda and Media. [ii]

Several journalists have been named as associated with the Integrity Initiative, either in programme “clusters” or having been invited to an Integrity Initiative event, in the documents that have been posted online. [iii]  Analysis of 11 of these individuals has been undertaken to assess to what extent their tweets have linked Corbyn unfairly (for a definition see below) to Russia. The results show two things:

• first, the smearing of Corbyn about Russia is more extensive than has been revealed so far;
• second, many of the same individuals have also been attacking a second target – Julian Assange, trying to also falsely link him to the Kremlin.

Many of these 11 individuals are associated with The Times and the Guardian in the UK and the Atlantic Council in the US. The research does not show, however, that these tweets are associated with the Integrity Initiative (see further below).

Linking Corbyn to Russia

The Integrity Initiative twitter page states that “we are not ‘anti-Russian’ and do not ‘target’ Mr Corbyn”.[iv] However, before issuing this statement, it has tweeted:

• “Skripal poisoning: It’s time for the Putin left to confront its Putin problem”.[v]
• “An alleged British Corbyn supporter wants to vote for Putin”.[vi]
• “’Mr Corbyn was a ‘useful idiot’, in the phrase apocryphally attributed to Lenin. His visceral anti-Westernism helped the Kremlin cause, as surely as if he had been secretly peddling Westminster tittle-tattle for money’”. [vii]This tweet was a quote from an article by Edward Lucas (see below) in the Times, entitled: “Corbyn’s sickening support of Soviet Empire”.[viii]

Here are examples of tweets from the 11 individuals.

Times columnist Edward Lucas has published an article on the Integrity Initiative website and been quoted as saying that his work with the Initiative has not been paid or involved anything improper.[ix] On twitter, he has accused Corbyn of “his blind spot on Putin’s plutocracy”[x] and for his “blind spot for Kremlin imperialism”[xi]. He has also tweeted:

• “Why does Corbyn not see that Russia is imperialist and Ukrainians are victims?”[xii], and:
• “It’s not just Corbyn. Here’s Swedish leftie @AsaLinderborg explaining why Nato not Putin is the real threat to peace” – linking to the latter’s article in a Swedish newspaper[xiii].

Lucas has also tweeted:

• “German hard-leftist GDR-loving wall-defending @SWagenknecht congratulates Corbyn on win” [in the Labour leadership contest][xiv]
• “More excellent stuff on Corbyn’s love of plutocrats so long as they are Russian”[xv].

Lucas has also written of Corbyn “playing into Russia’s hands on the Skripal poisoning”.[xvi]

Deborah Haynes[xvii], until recently Defence Editor of The Times and now foreign affairs editor at Sky News, has tweeted:

• “Talking tough, v quick to demand end to UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi death in stark contrast to his feeble response towards Russia over Skripal attack”[xviii], and
• “Displaying staggering naivety and a complete failure to understand this state-sponsored attack by Russia on the UK. Appalling. Is he for real?”[xix]

Haynes has also tweeted: “Incredible that @jeremycorbyn is attempting to score party-political points in wake of hugely significant statement by @theresa_may on Skripal attack by Russia”.[xx]

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum has tweeted that Corbyn is a “useful idiot” of Russia[xxi], of a “precise echo of Kremlin propaganda from Corbyn”[xxii], that “Surprise! Russia sides with Corbyn against Cameron”[xxiii] and that “Jeremy Corbyn isn’t anti-war. He’s just anti-West”[xxiv].

David Clark, a former adviser to Robin Cook, has tweeted that Corbyn is an “apologist” for Putin[xxv] and that “It is an article of ideological faith for Corbyn and people like him that everything wrong with the world is the fault of the capitalist West.”[xxvi]

Anders Aslund of the Atlantic Council in the US, has tweeted, referring to Corbyn: “Once a communist always so.”[xxvii] His colleague at the Atlantic Council, Ben Nimmo, sent four tweets on Corbyn’s candidacy for the Labour leadership in August 2015:

• “Why Russia loves Corbyn, in one headline”[xxviii]
• “Russia’s certainly pushing Corbyn’s candidacy”[xxix]
• “From Russia with coverage – how RT is campaigning for Jeremy Corbyn”[xxx], and
• “How Putin’s @RT_com is backing Jeremy Corbyn – my piece in @dailybeast”[xxxi].

Natalie Nougayrede, Guardian columnist and on its editorial board, has tweeted on a “Guardian editorial on shameful Corbyn & Co reaction to Russia behaviour & chemical weapon use”[xxxii] and retweeted a Nick Cohen article: “Corbyn. Supposedly anti-war, but in fact anti-West.”[xxxiii]

Three Guardian/Observer-linked journalists were invited to speak at an Integrity Initiative event in London in November 2018, which title was “Tackling Tools of Malign Influence – Supporting 21st Century Journalism” – Carole Cadwalladr , Nick Cohen and James Ball.[xxxiv]

Carole Cadwalladr has tweeted that “Labour has a Russia problem”, that Corbyn adviser Seumas Milne is “pro-Putin”[xxxv] and that “Milne’s support for Putin has made him a Russian propaganda tool”[xxxvi]. One of Cadwalladr’s tweets noted:

• “Here’s Corbyn’s principal advisor Seamus Milne on RT explaining why it was the fault of NATO aggression that Russia invaded Ukraine.”[xxxvii]

Another tweet by Cadwalladr noted:

• “’What he has done, wittingly or unwittingly, is to work with the Kremlin’s agenda’. Extraordinary quote from MP & expert on Russian active measures @IoWBobSeely in this incredible in-depth profile on Seamus Milne”.[xxxviii]

Nick Cohen has tweeted that “Labour is led by Putin fans”[xxxix] and: “What is worse? Farage and Corbyn and twitter trolls divert attention from Russia’s political assassinations because they believe Putin is innocent or because they are morally corrupt?”[xl]. He has also retweeted an Observer article of his claiming that Labour leaders have promoted “endorsements of Russian imperialism” and that Corbyn’s policy has given Russia “a free pass” in Syria.[xli]

James Ball has tweeted a link to his own article in the New Statesman saying that Corbyn is “playing into Russia’s hands on the Skripal poisoning”[xlii] and accusing Corbyn to the effect that he “took money from Russia Today”[xliii].

Linking Assange to the Kremlin

Many of the same individuals have also been tweeting false statements about Julian Assange and Russia.

The Integrity Initiative twitter site itself retweeted a Guardian smear article, stating “US lobbyist for Russian oligarch visited Julian Assange nine times last year”[xliv] – referring to a lawyer, Adam Waldman, visiting the Wikileaks founder.  It also tweeted: “If you still believe Assange is some kind of hero, you deserve pity at best”.[xlv]

Anders Aslund has tweeted that Assange “represents certain Russian agencies”[xlvi], that “Wikileaks, Assange & Snowden are nothing but highly successful Russian special operations”[xlvii] and “Kremlin agents”[xlviii], and that “Assange is collaborating w[ith] Russia Today as program host. Would be strange if not full-fledged agent”.[xlix]

Carole Cadwalladr has also sought to overtly link Assange to the Kremlin.  She has tweeted that “Assange & Milne… are both Russian propaganda tools”[l], that Assange is a “special friend” of Russian intelligence[li] and that Wikileaks has “colluded with…the Kremlin”[lii]. In addition, Cadwalladr has tweeted several times that “Assange was in direct communication with Russian intelligence in 2016”[liii] and that “Wikileaks sought assistance from Russian intelligence officers to disrupt the US presidential election”[liv].

Cadwalladr is here claiming that Wikileaks knowingly colluded with Russian intelligence by releasing the files on the Democratic Party in 2016: in fact, this is not known or proven at all, while numerous media outlets also published or had contacts with Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks in 2016 – though do not figure as targets in her attacks.

Nick Cohen has also made many smears against Julian Assange, variously calling him a “Russian stooge” [lv], a “Putin agent” [lvi], “pro-Putin”[lvii], a “Russian toady”[lviii], that he “works for Russia propaganda machine”[lix]while “Wikileaks will think whatever Putin tells it to think”.[lx]

David Leask, chief reporter of The Herald (Scotland), has described Assange as a “Kremlin proxy”[lxi] while Anne Applebaum tweeted: “’Wikileaks is a front for Russian intelligence’”, linking to an article of the same headline[lxii]. Edward Lucas retweeted his Times article suggesting that Assange and Wikileaks are part of the “Kremlin-loving camp”[lxiii] while David Clark has tweeted that “Assange is an active accomplice” of autocrats such as Putin.[lxiv]

Need for further research

There are some key points to be made about this analysis.

First, some of the tweets made by these individuals on Corbyn and Assange, not all of which are included here, are fair comment, even if, in my view, they are usually wrong. But others go beyond this, inferring that Corbyn (and Assange) are in effect agents of Russia and/or are willingly and knowingly amplifying Russia’s agenda, as little more than “tools” – with no evidence provided (understandably, since there is none). There is also sometimes the association of Corbyn with former communists. These areas are held to constitute smearing.

Second, it is not known and certainly not proven that these tweets are associated with the Integrity Initiative. Little is known of the internal workings of the Initiative. It is possible that some of the individuals may have been chosen by the Integrity Initiative to be associated with it precisely because of their pre-existing criticism of Russia or their willingness to accuse figures such as Corbyn with association with Russia. While I am not suggesting that these individuals’ tweets are necessarily linked to their role in the Integrity Initiative, there does appear to be something of a pattern among these people of smearing both Corbyn and Assange.

Third, and equally important, this is not a full analysis of these individuals’ outputs: it is limited to their tweets. Neither is it a full analysis of the false linking to Russia by individuals associated with the Integrity Initiative: several other journalists and figures named in the documents are not analysed here. Again, further research is needed.

Mark Curtis is and award-winning author and frequent contributor to Global Research

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Notes

[i] https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2018/12/14/emily-thornberry-turns-up-the-heat-on-tory-minister-in-row-over-jeremy-corbyn-smears/

[ii] http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative

[iii] Analysis here focuses on individuals named at: section 7.1 of http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative; the ‘UK’ section of the ‘Xcountry’ document: https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation-integrity-initiative-british-informational-war-against-all-parts-1-3-combined-docs/; and journalists invited to speak at an Integrity Initiative event in London in November 2018, https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/12/13/skillsharingdraft-nov12/skillsharingdraft-nov12.pdf

[iv] https://twitter.com/InitIntegrity/status/1073245787595919360

[v] https://twitter.com/InitIntegrity/status/1042774920529358851

[vi] https://twitter.com/InitIntegrity/status/984160286625222657

[vii] https://twitter.com/InitIntegrity/status/966965852892467200

[viii] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/corbyn-s-sickening-support-of-soviet-empire-qcpgs70gg

[ix] See section 7.1.3 : http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative

[x] https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/636632548358135809

[xi] https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/649197808814280704

[xii] https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/636798147608625152

[xiii] https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/688842086200819712

[xiv] https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/642673874870665217

[xv] https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/633328339978186752

[xvi] https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/982872506750193666

[xvii] See section 7.14 of http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative

[xviii] https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1054401547440926725

[xix] https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/973905466794364928

[xx] https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/973246686305931265

[xxi]https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/630387753499422720

[xxii] https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/637891042335956992

[xxiii] https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/643830083602530304

[xxiv] https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/667299182907011072

[xxv] https://twitter.com/David_K_Clark/status/983412923652591616

[xxvi] https://twitter.com/David_K_Clark/status/1037612764913721345

[xxvii] https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/748303161341812737

[xxviii] https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/637206541276418048

[xxix] https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/636647505241870336

[xxx] https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/633512911017766912

[xxxi] https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/633381715243888640

[xxxii] https://twitter.com/nnougayrede/status/974276865698467840

[xxxiii] https://twitter.com/nnougayrede/status/673195744019521537

[xxxiv] https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/12/13/skillsharingdraft-nov12/skillsharingdraft-nov12.pdf

[xxxv] https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1071343451881521152

[xxxvi] https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1071703570112745473

[xxxvii] https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1071409975602360326

[xxxviii] https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1066687690203193346

[xxxix] https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/951441197989494784

[xl] https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/1001711386169397248

[xli] https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/787356358114967552

[xlii] https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1037621632829927424

[xliii] https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1076498117908983809

[xliv] https://twitter.com/InitIntegrity/status/1009441100703125505

[xlv] https://twitter.com/InitIntegrity/status/982009101625561090

[xlvi] https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/816694651583397889

[xlvii] https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/787396852475760640

[xlviii] https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/771167286166028288

[xlix] https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/761944206516457472

[l] https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1071729534737752064

[li] https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1017829249951195137

[lii] https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1074357508511125505

[liii] https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1072606264327311363. https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1018078119826280448. https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1017829249951195137

[liv] https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1072609473074745346

[lv] https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/994185358270189568

[lvi] https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/860776646546247680

[lvii] https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/828313768660725761

[lviii] https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/1009404409690951681

[lix] https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/237091644745330688

[lx] https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/786118773661106176

[lxi] https://twitter.com/LeaskyHT/status/930771403028168704

[lxii] https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/638705555637424128

[lxiii] https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/979617875869790208

[lxiv] https://twitter.com/David_K_Clark/status/1009478640608972801

Trends affecting humanitarian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory

Today, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) released a summary of data collected during 2018. Further breakdowns and statistics from previous years are available through the links below.

Record numbers of Palestinian deaths and injuries

A total of 295 Palestinians were killed and over 29,000 were injured in 2018 by Israeli forces. This is the highest death toll in a single year since the Gaza conflict of 2014 and the highest number of injuries recorded since OCHA began documenting casualties in the oPt in 2005.

About 61 per cent of the fatalities (180 people) and 79 per cent of the injuries (over 23,000) were in the context of Gaza’s ‘Great March of Return’ demonstrations by the fence. Across the oPt, 57 of the Palestinian fatalities and about 7,000 of the injuries were under 18 years of age. At least 28 of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in 2018 were members of armed groups in Gaza and another 15 were perpetrators or alleged perpetrators of attacks against Israelis in the West Bank.

A total of 14 Israelis were killed during the year by Palestinians and at least 137 others were injured. While the number of fatalities is nearly the same as in 2017 (15 people), the proportion of civilians among these fatalities (50 per cent) increased compared to the previous year (27 per cent).

Uptrend in attacks by settlers

In 2018, OCHA recorded 265 incidents where Israeli settlers killed or injured Palestinians or damaged Palestinian property, marking a 69 per cent increase compared with 2017; as a result, one Palestinian woman was killed, and another 115 Palestinians were injured (another two Palestinian suspected perpetrators of attacks were killed by Israeli settlers). Palestinian property vandalized by settlers includes some 7,900 trees and about 540 vehicles.

There were at least 181 incidents where Palestinians killed or injured settlers and other Israeli civilians in the West Bank or damaged Israeli property, a 28 per cent decline compared with the previous year. However, the number of Israelis killed in these incidents in 2018 (seven), increased compared to 2017 (four).

West Bank demolitions continue, but fewer Palestinians are displaced

In 2018, the Israeli authorities demolished or seized 459 Palestinian structures across the West Bank, mostly in Area C and East Jerusalem, overwhelmingly on the grounds of a lack of Israeli-issued building permits, which are almost impossible to obtain, slightly more than in 2017. Such incidents displaced 472 Palestinians, including 216 children and 127 women, the lowest such figure since OCHA began systematically recording demolitions in 2009. In Area C alone, there are over 13,000 pending demolition orders, including 40 issued against schools.

The blockade on Gaza still extremely restrictive

The land, sea and air blockade on the Gaza Strip, imposed by Israel citing security concerns, continued, with people being able to exit on an exceptional basis only. On a monthly average, in 2018 (Jan-Nov) there were some 9,200 exits from Gaza by permit holders through the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing, a 33 per cent increase compared to 2017, but 35 per cent less than the 2015-2016 average. The Egyptian-controlled Rafah Crossing has opened on a regular basis since May, recording about 56,800 exits in all of 2018, up from a yearly average of less than 19,000 in 2015-2017.

The rate of approval of permit applications for UN national staff to leave Gaza stood at 59 per cent during 2018, up from 47 per cent in 2017. However, the total number of applications submitted in 2018 dropped by 24 per cent, primarily due to the larger number of staff that were denied for security reasons and banned for reapplying for 12 months, currently 131 compared to 41 staff by the end of 2017.

Kerem Shalom, controlled by Israel, remained the almost exclusive crossing for the movement of commodities to and from Gaza, with limited imports also allowed via the Salah Ad Din Gate on the border with Egypt. On a monthly average, about 8,300 truckloads of goods entered Gaza via both crossings in 2018, 17 per cent below the equivalent average in the previous two years, while 209 trucks exited Gaza on average, mostly to West Bank markets, nearly the same as in 2016-2017. Access to fishing areas and to farming lands near the fence inside Gaza remained restricted.

More people in Gaza food insecure

About 1.3 million people in Gaza, or 68 per cent of the population, were identified as food insecure in 2018, primarily due to poverty, up from 59 per cent in 2014, when a similar survey was conducted. The unemployment rate in Gaza reached an average of almost 53 per cent in the first three quarters of 2018, an all-time record, with youth unemployment at 69 per cent. By contrast, in the West Bank, 12 per cent of the Palestinians are food insecure, down from 15 per cent in 2014, while unemployment stood at an average of 18 per cent.

Record-low in humanitarian funding

While humanitarian needs across the oPt rose during 2018, funding levels for humanitarian interventions declined significantly: only US$221 million had been received, against the $540 million requested in the 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan

Note: Data on casualties and demolitions is as of 26 December 2018 and is subject to caveats and definitions available in these links. Israeli fatalities exclude a baby delivered prematurely after the injury of his mother. Data on exits via Erez crossing is up to 30 November 2018, and data on imports and exports, as well as on the Rafah crossing are as of 15 December 2018.

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We are witnessing the withdrawal from Syria of the American military contingent, protests in France, the prospect of a British hard Brexit, the political decline of Angela Merkel in Germany, Netanyahu in crisis, and Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia suddenly becoming an international pariah. The contemporary crisis of leadership in Europe, the United States and among their main allies has thrown the West into chaos, leading it to one of its most critical junctures in recent decades. It is a situation brought on by the United States and its contradictory politics, which results in diminishing the sovereignty and decision-making power of Washington’s allies.

Well before the election of Donald Trump, European Union leaders Merkel, Cameron and Hollande were already faltering and evidencing signs of failure.

Hollande fell in the polls because of policies favoring the interests of the elites at the expense of the increasingly poor and indebted French population. Cameron, to stave off a Labour victory under Jeremy Corbyn, promised a vote on Brexit, a decision that would eventually end up costing him his political career. Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, the undisputed master of the German political scene, suffered for the first time in fifteen years heavy electoral defeats stemming from recent migration policies. The Chancellor, harshly criticized for these results, resigned from the position of president of the party, leaving the CDU split into two factions. The situation worsened in the UK and France over the next twelve months, with Cameron resigning following the Brexit vote and Hollande forced to give up on the the idea of ​​running for reelection given his unpopularity.

Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron then replaced Cameron and Hollande. Macron immediately committed to revolutionizing French politics, promising a French renaissance. May (with a view to sabotaging it) promised to negotiate vigorously with the EU to obtain the best possible conditions for the UK’s Brexit, scheduled for March 2019. Both have acted contrary to their promises, sealing their political fates.

Meanwhile in the United States there has been strong jostling between the political-financial-war elites for the dominance of Trump’s foreign policy. The President, either out of inexperience, ineptitude or intentionally, soon succumbed to the foreign-policy establishment, with its usual offerings of neoliberalism and brutal imperialism. Trump’s weaponized use of the dollar thereby ended up in an unintended blue-on-blue attack, with Trump’s money bags, Saudi Arabia and Israel, receiving some friendly fire in addition to the intended targets, Iran, Russia and China. An understanding between Trump and the foreign-policy establishment has therefore been reached, sealed with the appointments of Bolton and Pompeo, establishing a modus vivendi between competing interests.

This dogma of neoliberalism and brutal imperialism espoused by the foreign-policy establishment is at the heart of the problems between the United States and the rest of the world, Europe especially, only serving to accelerate the transition to a multipolar world order, about which I wrote the day after Trump’s victory. Neoliberalism and American exceptionalism are now entrenched in an “America First” policy, combining the worst elements of US imperialism and the interests of the financier oligarchy.

Washington’s adoption of aggressive economic policies, aimed at draining resources from allies while simultaneously isolating its enemies, has further accentuated the differences between Europe and the US. The use of tariffs and customs duties, combined with sanctions against Moscow and Tehran, have ended up distancing Macron from Trump, placing the French president firmly in the liberal-globalist camp, standing shoulder to shoulder with Merkel. May is isolated, criticized by virtually everyone — Brussels, Trump, Merkel — and especially by Corbyn in Parliament.

May finds herself managing a situation beyond her, with a total failure of the British negotiating position with the EU. The closer we get to March 29, the more the British media like the BBC will holler about the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit, the prospect of which is very likely given that May has done everything possible to sabotage the negotiation process with the EU. The aim is to convince the population that it is not only legitimate but above all else necessary to revoke the request for implementation of Article 50 of the EU in order to avoid the catastrophe of a hard Brexit. It is a perfect example of how the elite create a problem (intentionally failing the negotiations for Brexit) to justify acting in a certain direction, contrary to what the population has voted for.

Macron, in addition to a repeated series of internal political disasters, further demonstrated his abiding fidelity to the financier globalist elites by conceiving a new tax on petrol in the interests of greater environmental sustainability, a heedless provocation to the French people, already weighed down by taxes and an incommensurate lack of government services. This move was enough to unleash major protests in France, the biggest in over twenty years, which will not stop until the resignation of the puppet Macron.

In Germany, Angela Merkel’s migrant policies over the last few years have ended up consuming her credit in terms of popularity. She was recently replaced by her protégé, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, as head of the CDU. Merkel has already affirmed that she will withdraw from political life at the end of her term as chancellor. With Merkel as with May and Macron, dancing to the tune of the globalist elites ends up being politically costly.

What has fueled the erosion of the political consensus amongst European leaders has much to do with their countries bearing the costs of being mere executors of US interests. The ripping up of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran created significant frictions between Washington and EU countries. The sanctions on Russia, the tariffs on the European countries and the trade war with Beijing have done the rest, pushing Macron, and even May, to positions directly in opposition to Donald Trump, the latter increasingly attempting a rapprochement with Angela Merkel as her position progressively worsens. May, Macron and Merkel are hanging on by a thinning thread. The attempt to divert attention to other countries like Russia, in the case of the British (the Skripal affair), or Syria, in the case of the French (bombing the country), only widens the rift between Europeans and the likes of Russia and Iran, hurting EU companies and workers in the process.

The risk is that the precarious situation in which European leaders find themselves could lead them into an open provocation against Iran or Russia in Syria (a false-flag chemical attack in Idlib?) or in Ukraine (a false-flag attack in Mariupol?). This is a very real danger. The elites in Kiev seem to be willing to offer their country as a staging area from which to launch a final provocation against Moscow. Yet neither Merkel, May nor Macron seem to be particularly attracted to the prospect of turning Europe into a pile of rubble just to please the Euro-American financial and military elites. Besides, none of them (fortunately) has the political capital that would allow them to engage in such demented moves.

In this generalized chaos characterizing the West, Trump has perhaps made the first sensible move of his presidency in announcing the withdrawal of American troops from Syria, in the face of howls of protests from the globalist imperialists. Washington is being ushered out of the Middle East as a result of its repeated failures. Moscow is the new destination for all negotiations concerning the Middle East and beyond. Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar and Turkey seem to have already got the message, with various levels of negotiations launched directly or indirectly with Moscow to salvage the little influence still held in Syria by Doha, Tel Aviv and Riyadh. The case is a little different with Ankara, which, through Idlib, still maintains some influence in Syria.

Meanwhile, the US Congress has voted to condemn Saudi actions in Yemen and withdraw US support for Riyadh’s war effort. This is motivated less by a concern for the plight of Yemeni civilians, suffering under the onslaught of American-supplied bombs, than it is by the desire by the deep state to further lay into Trump by undermining his ally Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who has been pronounced anathema by the Euro-American political and financial elites.

In Israel, Netanyahu finds himself in tricky situation, with his wife being investigated for corruption and his majority in government becoming increasingly precarious. Israel’s recent capitulation in Gaza, that precipitated the resignation of Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, together with the recent incident with the Russians in Syria as well as the unrealistic prospect of a war with Hezbollah, has reduced Bibi to a joke within Israel. His time is almost up.

As if the situation for Western leaders were not compromised enough, their few joint actions are decided in Washington and aimed at antagonizing China, Russia and Iran. After 24 months of the Trump presidency, European countries have ended up giving up even whatever little semblance of autonomy and sovereignty they retained. Trump demands absolute loyalty, without giving anything in return.

Blind obedience to a neoliberal globalist ideology, combined with Trump’s damage to friends and enemies alike, has led to European leaders and Middle Eastern allies finding themselves in a precarious situation that risks throwing Europe into chaos in the coming years or even months, with a financial debt crisis also looming more than ever.

Macron, May, Merkel, Netanyahu and MBS will continue to offer resistance and try to hang on; but the writing is evidently on the wall.

We close, ironically by throwing back at the Western imperialists, like a boomerang, the mantra that they frequently levelled at the likes of Bashar al Assad: May, Merkel, Macron, MBS and Netanyahu must go!

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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

Walls are about exclusion, not inclusion, often falling way short of security they’re built to provide.

The Great Wall of China fortifications is best known, construction begun over 2,000 years ago, most of it dating from the Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644), built to protect against Mongols and other hostile invaders.

Nearly 1,000 miles in length, its deterrence was spotty, often failing to keep enemies out as intended. Today the Great Wall is an artifact of history.

According to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), border walls were built or are being built by numerous countries – including Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Hungary, Israel, Kenya, Norway, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and elsewhere.

Aside from the Great Wall of China and Berlin Wall (1961 – 1989), border walls, fences and barriers are “a recent historical trend, arising in response to the growth in spontaneous international migration,” said MPI.

According to Geography Professor Elisabeth Vallet, there were fewer than five border walls in the world when WW II ended. Nearly 70 exist today, a disturbing trend.

Walls are no deterrents to military forces. France’s heavily fortified Maginot Line failed to deter Nazi aggression, its forces circumventing the fortifications, conquering France in six weeks, emboldening Hitler to believe he was invincible, soon enough to learn otherwise.

According to MPI, the ability of walls to keep out unwanted migrants, refugees and asylum seekers is mixed at best.

When short in length and heavily guarded, they work. Longer walls and fences are vulnerable to penetration in remote, less well guarded areas.

The entire near-2,000 mile-long US Mexican border is too lengthy to be guarded well enough to keep out unwanted aliens.

When land routes were closed to refugees in Europe, they went by sea to desired locations, risking their lives to get there.

MPI explained that when “easier routes are closed, (aliens) choose ever more dangerous paths to reach their destination.”

Along the US border with Mexico, aliens cross hazardous desert terrain to reach America, hundreds perishing annually, thousands unsuccessfully able to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe each year.

Despite the dangers, migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers continue to seek ways to cross borders for safety, well-being, and opportunities absent in their homelands.

The US/Mexican border has fencing covering around one-third of its route. Walls covering large distances are more symbolic than deterrents to aliens seeking new destinations.

According to MPI, “despite the expense and questionable effectiveness, it seems likely that in the short term there will be many more walls going up around the world.”

“What remains to be seen, however, is how long they will stay up” – and whether their cost will eventually outweigh their ineffectiveness.

In December, Russia completed construction of a 37-mile fence, separating Crimea from Ukraine, according to the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) Border Service for Russia’s Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol.

Construction cost 200 million rubles, less that $3 million at the current exchange rate. At an equivalent cost-per-mile along the near-2,000 mile US/Mexico border, a similar barrier could be built for about $150 million – including “an intricate system of (visible and hidden) alarm sensors,” according to Russia’s Border Service, along with visual surveillance along its entirety.

Russian efficiency and effectiveness are notable compared to notorious US waste, fraud and abuse, countless trillions of dollars wasted at the expense of vital homeland needs.

Russia’s Crimea structure along the Ukrainian border includes several types of barricades. Vibration sensors go off when anyone approaches the barrier, security personnel alerted to the intruder’s location.

Radioray sensors activate night-vision security cameras, a video feed, and an alarm when anyone approaches a detection zone – followed by an audible warning.

Russia’s system aims to deter Ukrainian saboteurs from infiltrating Crimean territory, along with wanting to prevent illegal trafficking of weapons, munitions, illicit drugs and other goods authorities want kept out.

A similar system is used in Russia’s Far East, as well as other areas along its borders. It’s believed the barrier and sophisticated equipment can withstand harsh climate conditions for at least 10 years.

No system is foolproof. Ways are usually found to breach barriers. The fulness of time will tell if Russian technology performs as intended.

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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.

They’re strange bedfellows – Putin-led democratic Russia v. fantasy democracy Turkey under tinpot despot/wannabe sultan Erdogan.

The aims of both countries in Syria are world’s apart, squaring the circle between them no simple task.

Last September, Putin let Erdogan deceive him into delaying the liberation of Idlib province Syria – the last US-supported terrorist stronghold in the country.

Delay left their residents remaining hostages to US imperial aims, controlled and terrorized by al-Nusra and other jihadists.

Putin and Erdogan agreed on establishing a 15 – 20 km-wide demilitarized zone in Idlib along the Turkish border – Russian and Turkish forces to control it.

Things haven’t worked out as planned. For over three months heading into the new year, jihadists regrouped, more heavily armed, and increased their ranks – aided by the Trump regime and its imperial partners.

They’re now a more formidable force than last summer – because of Erdogan’s deception and Putin’s willingness to go along with what he should have rejected.

All the while, entrenched terrorists use Idlib, including the failed demilitarized zone, as a platform for continuing attacks on Syrian forces and civilians.

The only solution is Idlib’s liberation, ending delay, a campaign launched by Syrian forces, greatly aided by Russian airpower yet to begin in earnest.

On Saturday, senior Russian and Turkish officials met in Moscow on Syria. Sergey Lavrov, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, military chief General Valery Gerasimov, Kremlin envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentiev, and Putin aide Yury Ushakov met with Turkish Foreign Minister Melvut Cavusoglu, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, and Erdogan aide Ibrahim Kalin.

Following discussions, Lavrov said

“(i)n the development of the agreements that were reached between our presidents, we considered further steps to implement the tasks that were set in the Astana format, primarily in the context of combating terrorism, resolving humanitarian issues, and creating conditions for the return of refugees.”

“Both sides stressed that all this work would be carried out in strict compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254 (calling for ceasefire and diplomatic conflict resolution), including unconditional respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria.”

Cavusoglu said Ankara “will continue close cooperation with Russia and Iran on Syria and regional issues…We confirmed our readiness and determination to continue this struggle in order to finally clear the territory of Syria from (the) evil” of jihadists – ones Turkey supported throughout most of the war, perhaps now as well while pretending otherwise.

Last September, Erdogan promised Putin he’d remove al-Nusra and other terrorists from the Idlib demilitarized zone both leaders agreed on.

They remain in place, more entrenched than months earlier, Erdogan failing to fulfill his promise, more evidence he can never be trusted.

He aims to annex oil-rich northern Syrian and Iraqi areas, wanting a greater Turkey, including the territories of both countries.

His war on Syrian YPG fighters continues on and off, perhaps to heat up again with heavily armed Turkish forces mobilized along Syria’s border, poised to invade on Erdogan’s order – if Kurdish fighters remain in the area.

His earlier aggression in northern Syria included Operations Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch, creating a buffer zone in territory populated by Kurds, likely part of his plan to annex areas he seeks to incorporate into a greater Turkey.

Following a December 19 phone call with Trump, after DLT’s announced troop pullout from Syria, Erdogan agreed to delay his planned offensive.

On Saturday, Russian and Turkish officials didn’t publicly comment on the situation in Manbij, Syria. Government forces reclaimed the city without occupying it so far.

Turkish and Russian troops are deployed there. Officials of both countries perhaps failed to agree in Moscow on withdrawing them to let Syrian forces control the city and surrounding areas.

Kremlin officials strongly support Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity, along with the right of its people to choose the country’s leadership and governance, free from foreign interference.

These objectives aren’t attainable as long as Washington wants endless war and regime change – its objective whether US forces stay in the country or leave.

Diplomatic conflict resolution efforts in Geneva, Astana, and Sochi failed to achieve significant diplomatic breakthroughs.

Prospects for Syrian peace in the new year are grim. The same goes for all US war theaters, including endless charnel house conditions in Libya and unsuccessful efforts for conflict resolution in Yemen.

All US post-9/11 wars continue. Washington didn’t launch them to quit – part of its forever war strategy against all sovereign independent states.

Russia, China, and Iran are on its target list – the ominous threat of possible nuclear war ahead able to kill us all if launched by accident or design.

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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.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Note: 7 years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, we bring to the attention of our readers this piece originally published in October 2013. The situation today is far more serious that what is described in this article.

The map below comes from the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center.  It shows that radiation levels at radiation monitoring stations all over the country are elevated.  As you will notice, this is particularly true along the west coast of the United States.  Every single day, 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima enters the Pacific Ocean.  That means that the total amouont of radioactive material released from Fukushima is constantly increasing, and it is steadily building up in our food chain. 

Ultimately, all of this nuclear radiation will outlive all of us by a very wide margin.  They are saying that it could take up to 40 years to clean up the Fukushima disaster, and meanwhile countless innocent people will develop cancer and other health problems as a result of exposure to high levels of nuclear radiation.  We are talking about a nuclear disaster that is absolutely unprecedented, and it is constantly getting worse.  The following are 28 signs that the west coast of North America is being absolutely fried with nuclear radiation from Fukushima…

1. Polar bears, seals and walruses along the Alaska coastline are suffering from fur loss and open sores…

Wildlife experts are studying whether fur loss and open sores detected in nine polar bears in recent weeks is widespread and related to similar incidents among seals and walruses.

The bears were among 33 spotted near Barrow, Alaska, during routine survey work along the Arctic coastline. Tests showed they had “alopecia, or loss of fur, and other skin lesions,” the U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement.

2. There is an epidemic of sea lion deaths along the California coastline…

At island rookeries off the Southern California coast, 45 percent of the pups born in June have died, said Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service based in Seattle. Normally, less than one-third of the pups would die.   It’s gotten so bad in the past two weeks that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared an “unusual mortality event.”

3. Along the Pacific coast of Canada and the Alaska coastline, the population of sockeye salmon is at a historic low.  Many are blaming Fukushima.

4. Something is causing fish all along the west coast of Canada to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.

5. A vast field of radioactive debris from Fukushima that is approximately the size of California has crossed the Pacific Ocean and is starting to collide with the west coast.

6. It is being projected that the radioactivity of coastal waters off the U.S. west coast could double over the next five to six years.

7. Experts have found very high levels of cesium-137 in plankton living in the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast.

8. One test in California found that 15 out of 15 bluefin tuna were contaminated with radiation from Fukushima.

9. Back in 2012, the Vancouver Sun reported that cesium-137 was being found in a very high percentage of the fish that Japan was selling to Canada…

• 73 percent of mackerel tested

• 91 percent of the halibut

• 92 percent of the sardines

• 93 percent of the tuna and eel

• 94 percent of the cod and anchovies

• 100 percent of the carp, seaweed, shark and monkfish

10. Canadian authorities are finding extremely high levels of nuclear radiation in certain fish samples…

Some fish samples tested to date have had very high levels of radiation: one sea bass sample collected in July, for example, had 1,000 becquerels per kilogram of cesium.

11. Some experts believe that we could see very high levels of cancer along the west coast just from people eating contaminated fish…

“Look at what’s going on now: They’re dumping huge amounts of radioactivity into the ocean — no one expected that in 2011,” Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear policy lecturer at the University of California-Santa Cruz, told Global Security Newswire. “We could have large numbers of cancer from ingestion of fish.”

12. BBC News recently reported that radiation levels around Fukushima are “18 times higher” than previously believed.

13. An EU-funded study concluded that Fukushima released up to 210 quadrillion becquerels of cesium-137 into the atmosphere.

14. Atmospheric radiation from Fukushima reached the west coast of the United States within a few days back in 2011.

15. At this point, 300 tons of contaminated water is pouring into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima every single day.

16. A senior researcher of marine chemistry at the Japan Meteorological Agency’s Meteorological Research Institute says that “30 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium and 30 billion becquerels of radioactive strontium” are being released into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima every single day.

17. According to Tepco, a total of somewhere between 20 trillion and 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium have gotten into the Pacific Ocean since the Fukushima disaster first began.

18. According to a professor at Tokyo University, 3 gigabecquerels of cesium-137 are flowing into the port at Fukushima Daiichi every single day.

19. It has been estimated that up to 100 times as much nuclear radiation has been released into the ocean from Fukushima than was released during the entire Chernobyl disaster.

20. One recent study concluded that a very large plume of cesium-137 from the Fukushima disaster will start flowing into U.S. coastal waters early next year…

Ocean simulations showed that the plume of radioactive cesium-137 released by the Fukushima disaster in 2011 could begin flowing into U.S. coastal waters starting in early 2014 and peak in 2016.

21. It is being projected that significant levels of cesium-137 will reach every corner of the Pacific Ocean by the year 2020.

22. It is being projected that the entire Pacific Ocean will soon “have cesium levels 5 to 10 times higher” than what we witnessed during the era of heavy atomic bomb testing in the Pacific many decades ago.

23. The immense amounts of nuclear radiation getting into the water in the Pacific Ocean has caused environmental activist Joe Martino to issue the following warning…

“Your days of eating Pacific Ocean fish are over.”

24. The Iodine-131, Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 that are constantly coming from Fukushima are going to affect the health of those living the the northern hemisphere for a very, very long time.  Just consider what Harvey Wasserman had to say about this…

Iodine-131, for example, can be ingested into the thyroid, where it emits beta particles (electrons) that damage tissue. A plague of damaged thyroids has already been reported among as many as 40 percent of the children in the Fukushima area. That percentage can only go higher. In developing youngsters, it can stunt both physical and mental growth. Among adults it causes a very wide range of ancillary ailments, including cancer.

Cesium-137 from Fukushima has been found in fish caught as far away as California. It spreads throughout the body, but tends to accumulate in the muscles.

Strontium-90’s half-life is around 29 years. It mimics calcium and goes to our bones.

25. According to a recent Planet Infowars report, the California coastline is being transformed into “a dead zone”…

The California coastline is becoming like a dead zone.

If you haven’t been to a California beach lately, you probably don’t know that the rocks are unnaturally CLEAN – there’s hardly any kelp, barnacles, sea urchins, etc. anymore and the tide pools are similarly eerily devoid of crabs, snails and other scurrying signs of life… and especially as compared to 10 – 15 years ago when one was wise to wear tennis shoes on a trip to the beach in order to avoid cutting one’s feet on all the STUFF of life – broken shells, bones, glass, driftwood, etc.

There are also days when I am hard-pressed to find even a half dozen seagulls and/or terns on the county beach.

You can still find a few gulls trolling the picnic areas and some of the restaurants (with outdoor seating areas) for food, of course, but, when I think back to 10 – 15 years ago, the skies and ALL the beaches were literally filled with seagulls and the haunting sound of their cries both day and night…

NOW it’s unnaturally quiet.

26. A study conducted last year came to the conclusion that radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster could negatively affect human life along the west coast of North America from Mexico to Alaska “for decades”.

27. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is being projected that the cleanup of Fukushima could take up to 40 years to complete.

28. Yale Professor Charles Perrow is warning that if the cleanup of Fukushima is not handled with 100% precision that humanity could be threatened “for thousands of years“…

“Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years.”

Are you starting to understand why so many people are so deeply concerned about what is going on at Fukushima?

About the author: Michael T. Snyder is a former Washington D.C. attorney who now publishes The Truth. His new thriller entitled “The Beginning Of The End” is now available on Amazon.com.

French surgeon Christophe Oberlin has spent 17 years travelling to Gaza. He tells MEMO about the evolution of wounds throughout the years as a result of the changes in weaponry

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He is nicknamed the “surgeon of Gaza”. It was in 2001 that Dr Christophe Oberlin began to travel to Gaza regularly. He operates on disabled people and patients with war wounds and also teaches Palestinian surgeons microsurgery and reconstructive surgery. He was against the support given by French President Francois Hollande to the Israeli offensive in Gaza in July 2014, and was a candidate in the European elections in June 2004, running for a party called the Euro-Palestine.

For this doctor, providing care involves teaching and witnessing, hence quite often he ends up going on missions outside France. From sub-Saharan Africa where he performs surgery on patients with leprosy, to the Maghreb countries where he practiced and trained doctors for decades.

“I’m an expert in microsurgery and hand surgery, known as neuro-orthopaedics, i.e. paralysis surgery, and I have taught in Paris, Algiers and Gaza,” Oberlin explains. His work has advanced limb surgery techniques. The surgeries include those on injuries which result in the destruction of tissue. One operation is named after him, “La Technique Oberlin” (the Oberlin procedure).

Since 2001, he has been going to Gaza at least three times a year: “Gazan surgeons perform the operations alongside me and this is how they are being trained. You can’t imagine how we are welcomed there.”

According to Oberlin, NGOs and the UN are increasingly worried about the medical situation in the besieged Gaza Strip. Cancer remains the primary health problem in the area.

“Doctors are always missing the medication needed to offer complete chemotherapy treatment; radiation therapy is prohibited by Israel. Dialysis also becomes, in the context of the blockade, a real tragedy, because people die silently. It raises the issue of drinking water.”

Once, I brought up this issue of water quality for dialysis to a minister of health who replied: ‘I don’t even dare thinking about it’.

Water is rare and unfit for consumption in Gaza. The population has access to it for only 12 hours a week, in addition, they experience never-ending power cuts. Only five per cent of Gaza’s water is drinkable and the polluted groundwater is drying up.

In 17 years, Oberlin has observed the evolution of wounds that say something about the evolution of the weapons used against Gaza’s population. “In 2001, a gunshot wound resulted in an entry and exit wound, a projectile that cuts the tissue clean. These are conventional weapon injuries. Since then new weapons have been developed with unstable trajectory bullets. These bullets do more damage to the tissue.”

“There is also the use of explosive bullets. Before they were used every so often, but they have been widely used during the Great March of Return protests. I’ve seen these new wounds on the patients in Gaza that I have operated on. These bullets are only allowed for hunting large animals, and they are prohibited in military practice.”

The time he has spent in Gaza has stirred controversy, Oberlin says. “I am accused of taking sides and told to stick to practising surgery only. But when you’ve seen young people coming in maimed since the age of 17, you can’t just provide care without talking about the reasons behind these injuries. The need to testify, to report becomes vital,” he says.

A need that almost cost him his career, or at least his professional reputation. A Professor of Medicine at the Denis Diderot University in Paris, Oberlin taught anatomy and hand surgery for 30 years. In 2012, as part of his courses in humanitarian medicine, he gave his students a real case: “You are at the Rafah hospital in the Gaza Strip during the 2008-2009 winter war. Ambulances bring you 22 bodies, all with the name Al Daya. Paramedics and surviving family members tell you that this was a classic bombing. Each of them was found dead. How do you qualify the crimes perpetrated: war crime, crime against humanity or genocide. Argue your position based on the definitions of the different crimes.”

Detailing the legal mayhem he found himself in as a result of the case study, Oberlin says: “I have respect for people who resist and don’t let themselves be crushed. I am also in favour of total freedom of expression.”

He won the case.

Under siege

Oberlin doesn’t see Gaza as an isolated territory, he sees it in view of the wider global geopolitical context.

“To get out of Gaza from Egypt, the fees required can amount to €3,000 [$3,383]. Until recently, there were nearly 30,000 people on the waiting list to get out of Gaza. Those who really have to go out and have the means to do so, pay. A whole system has been put in place at the Rafah crossing.”

The fall of Mubarak meant a little break and oxygen for Gaza. But now the crossings are closed, and that’s catastrophic. Egypt is now a very violent dictatorship, even worse than Mubarak’s.

He is even more critical of the Palestinian Authority (PA) which “is participating in the siege of Gaza; when cutting the salaries of civil servants, for example, by reducing electricity supplies or not paying electricity taxes.”

“Why does the PA want to get a hold of Gaza’s weapons if not to give them to the Israelis? They are completely not in touch with Palestinian realities.”

“Mahmoud Abbas is old and has never set foot in prison. How can he govern a nation where 700,000 people have been imprisoned in the last 15 years? I have respect for those who govern in Gaza right now. For instance, the number one spent 23 years in prison, the Minister of Interior 21 years. These are people who have paid for their beliefs and educated themselves in prison.”

This age gap and the price officials have paid for their cause is of great importance Oberlin. While Abbas is surrounded by the old guard, “I’ve noticed that in Gaza, the renewal of executives is taking place, on average they are 45 years old, very well trained and speak perfect English. But in the West Bank, Abbas is 81, those around him are all over 60.”

The changes in Hamas’ political stance brought about change to its charter in 2017. “Hamas realised the need to communicate in a language understood by Westerners. It also realised that the International Criminal Court is not only a Western organisation but can be very useful. Hamas now knows that there is something that can be done in terms of criminal law.”

“What Hamas is asking for is a single state where everyone has the same rights, it is the only solution. As for Hamas’ inclusion on the European list of terrorist organisations, whereas it has never been on the UN list, it is a measure of the West that fully participates in the siege of Gaza.”

The Great March of Return protests, have also given him food for thought. “I am shocked to see these young people being killed. I thought it would stop at the Nakba’s anniversary, yet it continues. I see how hard Gazans struggle, how hard they work; health workers are not paid but they come to work.”

“Gaza has been under siege for more than ten years, few talk about it. But with the Great March of Return, Gaza is making itself heard.”

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Featured image: French surgeon Christophe Oberlin [Youtube]

Five geopolitically seismic events forever changed the world back in 1979, and it’s worth reminding everyone about them 40 years after the fact.

2019 will mark exactly four decades since one of the most geopolitically seismic years of the 20^th century, and it’s worth reminding everyone what happened back then. Each of the forthcoming enumerated events is now well known and requires no further explanation, but simply listing them out in chronological order can hopefully imbue the reader with a sense of appreciation for how dramatically the world can change in the span of just a single year. For those who are either eager to take a trip down memory lane or just want to learn about what happened before they were born, here’s what unfolded 40 years ago in 1979:

• 11 February: The Iranian Revolution Topples The Shah And Paves The Way For The Islamic Republic
• 17 February: China Invades Vietnam During The Height Of Vietnam’s Invasion Of Cambodia
• 26 March: “Israel” And Egypt Sign The First-Ever Peace Treaty Between The “Jewish State” And Arabs
• 17 July: Pro-American Nicaraguan Leader Somoza Resigns After The Sandinista Revolution Succeeds
• 24 December: The USSR Commences Its Anti-Terrorist Intervention In Afghanistan

No one can say for certain whether 2019 will see as many geopolitically seismic events occurring as what happened back in 1979, and the prevailing trends indicate that the world is in for a rude awakening if it expects that the previous year’s developments won’t continue to powerfully shape International Relations in the coming 12 months. 2019 might not bring about as much dramatic change in Latin America, the Mideast, South Asia, and Southeast Asia as 1979 did, but it’ll probably still be a year to remember when considering that the many paradigm changes that picked up pace in 2018 will probably continue to influence the New Cold War for years to come.

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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 The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

The mainstream media has attacked President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as impulsive, blindsiding his own national security team. But detailed, published accounts of the policy process over the course of the year tell a very different story. They show that senior national security officials and self-interested institutions have been playing a complicated political game for months aimed at keeping Trump from wavering on our indefinite presence on the ground in Syria.

The entire episode thus represents a new variant of a familiar pattern dating back to Vietnam in which national security advisors put pressure on reluctant presidents to go along with existing or proposed military deployments in a war zone. The difference here is that Trump, by publicly choosing a different policy, has blown up their transparent schemes and offered the country a new course, one that does not involve a permanent war state.

The relationship between Trump and his national security team has been tense since the beginning of his administration. By mid-summer 2017, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford had become so alarmed at Trump’s negative responses to their briefings justifying global U.S. military deployments that they decided to do a formal briefing in “the tank,” used by the Joint Chiefs for meetings at the Pentagon.

But when Mattis and Dunford sang the praises of the “rules-based, international democratic order” that has “kept the peace for 70 years,” Trump simply shook his head in disbelief.

By the end of that year, however, Mattis, Dunford, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo believed they’d succeeded in getting Trump to use U.S. troops not only to defeat Islamic State but to “stabilize” the entire northeast sector of Syria and balance Russian and Iranian-sponsored forces. Yet they ignored warning signs of Trump’s continuing displeasure with their vision of a more or less permanent American military presence in Syria.

In a March rally in Ohio ostensibly about health care reform, Trump suddenly blurted out, “We’re coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon—very soon we’re coming out.”

Then in early April 2018, Trump’s impatience with his advisors on Syria boiled over into a major confrontation at a National Security Council meeting, where he ordered them unequivocally to accept a fundamentally different Syria deployment policy.

Trump opened the meeting with his public stance that the United States must end its intervention in Syria and the Middle East more broadly. He argued repeatedly that the U.S. had gotten “nothing” for its efforts, according to an account published by the Associated Press based on interviews with administration officials who had been briefed on the meeting. When Dunford asked him to state exactly what he wanted, Trump answered that he favored an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces and an end to the “stabilization” program in Syria.

Mattis responded that an immediate withdrawal from Syria was impossible to carry out responsibly, would risk the return of Islamic State, and would play into the hands of Russia, Iran, and Turkey, whose interests ran counter to those of the United States.

Trump reportedly then relented and said they have could five or six months to destroy the Islamic State. But he also made it clear that he did not want them to come back to him in October and say that they had been unable to defeat ISIS and had to remain in Syria. When his advisors reiterated that they didn’t think America could withdraw responsibly, Trump told them to “just get it done.”

Trump’s national security team had prepared carefully for the meeting in order to steer him away from an explicit timetable for withdrawal. They had brought papers that omitted any specific options for withdrawal timetables. Instead, as the detailed AP account shows, they framed the options as a binary choice—either an immediate pullout or an indefinite presence in order to ensure the complete and permanent defeat of Islamic State. The leave option was described as risking a return of ISIS and leaving a power vacuum for Russia and Iran to fill.

Such a binary strategy had worked in the past, according to administration sources. That would account for Trump’s long public silence on Syria during the early months of 2018 while then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson and Mattis were articulating detailed arguments for a long-term military commitment.

Another reason the approach had been so successful, however, was that Trump had made such a big issue out of Barack Obama giving the Pentagon a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. As a result, he was hesitant to go public with a similar request for a Syria timetable. As CNN reported, a DoD official who had been briefed on the meeting “rejected that any sort of timeline was discussed.” Furthermore the official asserted that Mattis “was not asked to draw up withdrawal options….” Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, the director of the Joint Chiefs, also told reporters, “the president has actually been very good in not giving us a specific timeline.”

Nevertheless, without referring to a timeline, the White House issued a short statement saying that the U.S. role in Syria was coming to a “rapid end.”

Mattis and Dunford were consciously exploiting Trump’s defensiveness about a timeline to press ahead with their own strategy unless and until Trump publicly called them on it. That is what finally happened some weeks after Trump’s six month deadline had passed. The claim by Trump advisors that they were taken by surprise was indeed disingenuous. What happened last week was that Trump followed up on the clear policy he had laid down in April.

The Syria withdrawal affair is a dramatic illustration of the fundamental quandary of the Trump presidency in regard to ending the state of permanent war that previous administrations created. Although a solid majority of Americans want to rein in U.S. military deployments in the Middle East and Africa, Trump’s national security team is committed to doing the opposite.

Trump is now well aware that it is virtually impossible to carry out the foreign policy that he wants without advisors who are committed to the same objective. That means that he must find people who have remained outside the system during the permanent war years while being highly critical of its whole ideology and culture. If he can fill key positions with truly dissident figures, the last two years of this term in office could decisively clip the wings of the bureaucrats and generals who have created the permanent war state we find ourselves in today.

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Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to The American Conservative. He is also the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

Featured image: President Donald Trump walks with U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Michael Howard, commander of Joint Force Headquarters, at Arlington National Cemetery, May 29, 2017. Behind them are Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and U.S. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Flickr/CreativeCommons/DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Brigitte N. Brantley)

2018 was in many ways a turning point for the position of Israel in the system of Western, liberal, capitalist democracies. It had long sat uneasily among France, Britain, and the United States, inasmuch as it was founded on a formal racial supremacist principle that Jews must rule the state. Racism is important in the other democracies, as well, but it is not typically enshrined in the constitution. The French Rights of Man mentioned nothing about race.

After 1967, Israel acquired substantial colonial possessions in the form of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, in which its leaders began implementing a classic settler colonial regime reminiscent of Apartheid South Africa. The Israeli leadership egregiously violated international law by flooding their own citizens into a militarily occupied territory, and by extensively altering the lifeways of the occupied population. I would argue that the occupation has now lasted so long and witnessed so many severe violations of the Geneva Convention of 1949 that the occupation itself is now illegal. Palestinians living under the Israeli jackboot do not have secure rights of property or control over their natural resources and, being kept stateless, lack even the right to have rights.

Somewhat astonishingly, the assemblage of far-right Israeli parties that rules Israel has managed to worsen its wretched human rights record in 2018 and to depart from liberal capitalist democracy almost entirely. Not only is Israel not the only democracy in the Middle East (that distinction now belongs to Tunisia), it isn’t a democracy at all in the sense of a state of equal citizens able to vote for the government that rules them.

Informed Comment reported that on July 19, the Likud-led government passed a new Nationality Law formally vesting “sovereignty” solely in the hands of the 75-80% of the population of Israel that is Jewish. (About 21% of Israelis are of Arab Palestinian heritage and another 300,000 or so persons are not recognized as Jews by the Grand Rabbi and so would not participate in sovereignty; these are mostly immigrants whose mothers were not Jewish).

I wrote at the time, “It would be as though the US passed a law designating America as a state for white Christians, excluding African-Americans and Latinos, and making English the only official language.” I also pointed out that Apartheid is considered a crime against humanity in the Rome Statute signed by most countries in the world, which governs the judgments of the International Criminal Court.

Having formally turned non-Jews into second-class citizens inside Israel, the Likud government accelerated its colonization program in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. The pace of building squatter settlements on stolen Palestinian land has doubled under the Trump administration in 2018.

You may say it can’t get any worse. It got worse.

The Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have been cut off from their traditional markets and are being boycotted by the Israeli state, which denies them an airport or seaport. (The Likud is only against boycotts that it isn’t leading). Many key materials are not allowed into Gaza by the Israelis, and although food isn’t interdicted, in fact medical treatment is being denied to most of those patients who can’t be treated at Gaza’s own rundown and relatively primitive medical facilities.

Some 70% of the people in Gaza are refugees violently displaced there by militant Zionist militias from their homes in what is now Israel. Most of them are still living close enough to their old homes that they could walk to them if they were allowed to. Again, Israel is in violation of international law in having expelled people from Israel and made them refugees, and then refused to allow them ever to return. Now it has placed them under blockade in their place of exile on the grounds that they haven’t meekly accepted the loss of their property and lives at the hands of Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, French and Germans.

The horrible conditions of civilian siege under which people in Gaza labor (and half the residents of the strip are children) has become intolerable, and this year they began conducting marches demanding the right to return.

These marches could have been a public relations disaster for Israel if the Western press actually did its job when it comes to Israel and Palestine (it does not, viewing the situation through a racialized and colonial lens rather as it used to view South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s).

I do not believe any of the US news networks so much as mentioned the weekly protests in Gaza after the initial two or three.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his officer corps decided to deal with these marches by shooting the demonstrators down in cold blood on the Gaza side of the border. The American press, which despises the Palestinians with a passion for the crime of having been victimized by an American ally, invented entirely imaginary headlines claiming that the Palestinians had been killed or injured in “clashes.” But there were no clashes. They with perhaps one exception never reached the Israeli border or actually encountered Israeli soldiers. They were shot down well inside Gaza even though they posed no danger to any Israeli military personnel.

They were sniped at by professional snipers. They were murdered. It is a measure of how ineffective and pusillanimous the mechanisms of international law and order are that no Israelis have been indicted for these murders.

The US Senate passed a resolution naming Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman as the murderer of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

It did not pass a resolution about Netanyahu and his generals murdering unarmed, peaceful Palestinian demonstrators (not to mention journalists, medical personnel, and random children.

As of October, Amnesty International reported that 150 Palestinians had been killed, 10,000 had been injured, “including 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedics and 115 journalists. Of those injured, 5,814 were hit by live ammunition.” The death toll rose by early December to 175 and by the end of the year to an alleged 220, and those shot in the legs are by now at least 6,392.

One Israeli soldier has been killed and one injured.

The rallies are still being held every Friday and almost no one reports on them despite the creepy casualty tolls. The Israeli snipers appear to have deliberately aimed to cripple the Palestinians they shot in the lower limbs.

Source: The National

I haven’t even gone into the rising tide of violence and sabotage conducted by Israeli squatters on Palestinian land against the Palestinians from whom they stole. There is of course some Palestinian violence against the squatters, as well, but the Palestinians are so penetrated by Israeli intelligence and so regimented by the Israeli military and the armed settlers that there isn’t as much of that sort of violence as one might expect given what is being done to the Palestinians.

The Israeli police have recommended that Netanyahu be indicted for blackmailing and bribing the Israeli press to cover him positively. That is another way in which it is no longer possible to speak of Israeli democracy. American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson started a free newspaper to praise Netanyahu, which was hurting the business of the real newspapers, and Netanyahu offered them lower Adelson print runs if they would make nice with him in their stories on the prime minister. Press freedom under Netanyahu in Israel has been significantly eroded.

So to avoid being indicted, Netanyahu has announced early elections for April. He put the attorney general in a difficult position. If he indicts Netanyahu now, he could be accused of forestalling a decision that should belong to the voters. If Netanyahu wins the election, he will argue he should not be indicted because the people have spoken.

Israel rules over about 5 million stateless Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. They will not have the right to vote in this election, even though the next Prime Minister of Israel will decide their long term fate.

So there you have it. Israel at the end of 2018 is now unambiguously an Apartheid state, admired only in the US Deep South among those who are nostalgic for their own Jim Crow Apartheid. Its leaders deprived nearly a quarter of Israeli citizens of any share in national sovereignty. They sped up the colonization program in the Palestinian West Bank and coddled armed, violent squatters (who are often secretly subsidized by the Israeli state).

But worst of all, the Israeli elite decided just to shoot down unarmed protesters in the thousands, a clear war crime.

A systematic pattern of war crimes amounts to crimes against humanity, which Israel is certainly guilty of this year, even if the international institutions are too cowardly to indict the Netanyahus and the Liebermans, and even if the even more cowardly (or just frankly neocolonial) American press has been largely afraid to say these things out loud. (There are significant exceptions here, and the print press has been better than TV for the most part).

2018 was the year Israel finally went completely rogue and ensured that it can no longer be considered to be in the club of liberal capitalist democracies. It is now formally an Apartheid state even inside the Green Line. It is also the year when the Israeli elite consciously decided to shoot down with live ammunition unarmed, peaceful demonstrators in the thousands. These authoritarian policing methods most resemble those of fascist states of the interwar period.

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Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment and Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires. Follow him at @jricole.

Featured image is from Informed Comment

A New York Times investigative report on President Donald Trump‘s nearly two-year environmental record and how his industry-friendly policies are impacting communities nationwide, published in the Thursday paper, “reminds us that the Trump soap opera has dire real-world consequences.”

That’s according to 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, who added on Twitter that “futures are foreclosed because he’s a tool of dirty energy.”

Good solid journalism reminds us that the Trump soap opera has dire real-world consequences. Futures are foreclosed because he's a tool of dirty energy https://t.co/4Orohw97eM

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) December 27, 2018

The “must-read” report focuses on examples from California, North Dakota, Texas, and West Virginia, with special attention paid to policy changes at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Interior Department—which have both seen Trump-appointed agency heads resign amid numerous ethics probes.

Acknowledging a previous Times analysis of the 78 environmental rules—including many implemented under former President Barack Obama—that the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress have worked to eliminate, the report details how the EPA, at the behest of industry lobbyists, quashed a ban on the toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos, which has “sickened substantial numbers of farmworkers” in rural California, where more than a third of U.S. produce is grown.

While that move is being contested in federal court, it exemplifies how the administration has often defied scientific findings and warnings in favor of demands from pesticide producers, fossil fuel developers, and other polluting industries. As the Times put it:

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has consistently sided with powerful economic constituencies in setting policy toward the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the presence of chemicals in our communities.

In the process, he has frequently rejected or given short shrift to science, an instinct that has played out most visibly in his disdain for efforts to curb global warming but has also permeated federal policy in other ways.

The Times also examines Trump’s rollbacks—and the subsequent public health consequences—of air quality regulations that aimed to reduce dangerous levels of sulfur dioxide pollution from coal-burning power plants in Texas; policies crafted to clean up West Virginia waterways polluted with arsenic, mercury, and selenium by the coal industry in West Virginia; and limits targeting flaring and leaks of methane on federal or tribal lands, including the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota.

Considering the Interior Department’s September 2018 reversal of such limits after complaints from Big Oil, Walter DeVille, who lives on the reservation and whose wife has been diagnosed with a respiratory condition common among oil field workers, told the Times, “We are sort of powerless… This is our reality now.”

A Times summary highlighting five key takeaways from the report—which pointed out that while the consequences of Trump’s polluter-friendly policies “are starting to play out in noticeable ways in communities across the United States,” the full impact “of the Trump-era policies may not be fully apparent until years after Mr. Trump leaves office”—emphasized:

1. Trump has quickly undercut Obama’s legacy;
2. Environmental impacts span the country;
3. The rollbacks touch air, water, chemicals, and climate;
4. The decline of coal has not been stopped; and
5. Progress is slowing—but there’s still progress.

Although the “incredible” and “devastating” report—produced by Eric Lipton, Steve Eder, and John Branch—garnered significant praise, some more cautious language choices also elicited criticism. For example, the Times reads, “Beyond the glare of Washington, President Trump’s retreat on the environment is unfolding in consequential ways for the health and safety of Americans.”

While characterizing the report as “a great package on the real-world, human costs of Trump’s gutting of pollution regulations,” author and climate activist Alex Steffen noted, “Trump is not ‘retreating’ from environmental responsibility, he’s overtly attacking it.”

This is a great package on the real-world, human costs of Trump's gutting of pollution regulations.

Important language point, though: Trump is not "retreating" from environmental responsibility, he's overtly attacking it.https://t.co/xTzMP2va35

— Alex Steffen (@AlexSteffen) December 26, 2018

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Featured image is from Becker1999/Flickr/cc

Like the shopkeeper in the Monty Python dead parrot sketch who insists a deceased bird is actually alive, imperialist aggression against Venezuela is turned into promotion of the “international rules-based order”.

At the opening of the UN assembly in September Justin Trudeau said the International Criminal Court is a “useful and important way of promoting an international rules-based order.” Simultaneously, Canada announced it (with five South American nations) would ask the ICC to investigate the Venezuelan government, which is the first time a government has been formally brought before the tribunal by another member.

Liberal officials and the sycophantic media portrayed Canada’s move to bring Caracas before the ICC as a challenge to the US. Evan Dyer reported, “Government sources told CBC that Canada’s decision to refer Venezuela is also meant as a show of support for the ICC, an institution this country believes in that is under attack” from the Trump administration. In other words, Ottawa will challenge Washington by showing Trump how the “international rules-based” ICC can undermine a government the US and Canada are seeking to overthrow through unilateral sanctions, support for the opposition and threatening an invasion, which all contravene the UN Charter.

Unfortunately, some people are willing to buy a dead bird for a pet, the proof of which is that the “international rules-based” ICC Trudeau is promoting has previously been employed to enable violations of international law. In 2011 ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo helped set the stage for NATO’s war on Libya, which contravened UN resolutions 1970 and 1973. (Ottawa defied the UN Security Council resolutions authorizing a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians by dispatching ground forces, delivering weaponry to the opposition and bombing in service of regime change.) Moreno-Ocampo’s immediate condemnation of Gaddafi helped justify NATO violence. Amidst NATO’s violation of UN Security Council resolution 1973, Ocampo issued arrest warrants  for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi. These charges for crimes against humanity were used to justify  regime change efforts. At the time Moreno-Ocampo echoed the outlandish claim that Gaddafi distributed Viagra to his troops “to enhance  the possibility to rape”. Three months into the bombing campaign, Moreno-Ocampo told a press conference: “we have information that there was a policy to rape in Libya those who were against the government. Apparently he [Gaddafi] used it to punish people.”(Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser Donatella Rovera, who was in Libya for three months after the start of the uprising and Liesel Gerntholtz, head of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch, were unable to find any basis for the mass rape claims.)

A 2017 Der Spiegel English investigation titled “The Ocampo Affair A Former ICC Chief’s Dubious Links” notes, “Ocampo’s correspondence shows that he made agreements with the French and the British, and behaved as part of the anti-Gadhafi coalition.”

A forerunner to the ICC, the Canadian-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) helped justify NATO’s illegal 78-day bombing of Serbia. While the worst atrocities of the Yugoslav wars took place in the early 1990s, ICTY Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour hastily prepared to prosecute  President Slobodan Milosevic for rights violations at the start of 1999. Just prior to the NATO bombing Arbour brought along the international media for a stunt where she claimed Milosevic was blocking her from investigating a massacre in the Kosovar village of Racak. Subsequent investigations into what happened at Racak were inconclusive despite widespread reporting of a Serbian massacre, which was used to justify NATO’s illegal bombing.

Amidst NATO’s military intervention without UN approval — the “supreme international crime”— the future Canadian Supreme Court Justice indicted Milosevic and four associates for war crimes. In a 2000 article titled “Louise Arbour: Unindicted War Criminal” Christopher Black and Edward Herman write, “Arbour and the Tribunal thus present us with the amazing spectacle of an institution supposedly organized to contain, prevent, and prosecute for war crimes actually knowingly facilitating them.”

The idea that bringing Venezuela to the ICC will strengthen the “international rules-based order” would be funny if it wasn’t an escalation in a dangerous campaign to oust an elected government.

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Washington’s hegemonic aims represent the greatest threat to world peace and humanity’s survival.

At his annual marathon Q & A news conference last week, Vladimir Putin warned about possible nuclear war, a growing threat because of Washington’s reckless geopolitical agenda, including withdrawal from the Iran (JCPOA) nuclear deal and INF Treaty, as well as its reluctance to negotiate extending New Start (April 2010) on reducing and limiting strategic weapons, expiring in February 2021 if not renewed.

Based on bad advice from regime hardliners, Trump falsely called New Start a bad deal favoring Russia. It’s nothing of the kind. It’s even-handed, shifting things to less war and more peace globally.

Last October, John Bolton called for withdrawing from New Start. He convinced Trump to abandon the JCPOA and INF Treaty. He advocates greater US toughness against all sovereign independent countries.

Before becoming Trump’s national security advisor, he urged terror-bombing Iran and North Korea, sanctions not enough, he said, diplomacy “a waste of time.”

He claimed

“Iran will not negotiate its (nonexistent) nuclear (weapons) program.” He urged “military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq…”

He said

“(t)he way to end (North Korea’s nuclear program) is to end the North.”

New Start calls for reducing the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers by half. It limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,500.

It also limits the number of ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers, and nuclear capable heavy warplanes.

It calls for satellite and other monitoring, as well as annual on-site inspections to assure both sides comply with terms agreed on.

Bolton, Pompeo, and other Trump regime hardliners want restraints on its weapons development and deployments eliminated, part of Washington’s permanent war agenda.

They want all nations worldwide colonized and controlled, Russia, China, and Iran transformed into US vassal states their main objective, eliminating the only challenges to Washington’s aim for global hegemony.

Its geopolitical agenda “could lead to the destruction of civilization as a whole and maybe even our planet,” Putin warned, adding:

“We are witnessing the breakup of the arms control system,” heightening the threat of possible nuclear war by accident or design.

Putin stressed that Moscow has no intention of

“gaining unilateral advantages. We aren’t seeking advantages. We are trying to preserve the balance and ensure our security.”

“[The US] needs an [invented] external threat to cement NATO unity…As for ruling the world, we know where the headquarters trying to do that is located, and the place isn’t Moscow.”

Trump was co-opted straightaway in office by dark forces controlling him – preventing any chance for improved US relations with Russia, things increasingly moving ominously in the opposite direction.

As for US reluctance to extend New Start, Putin called it “very bad for the whole of humankind, because it would take us to a very dangerous area.”

Last October, Putin stressed that Russia wants world peace. He has no intention of ordering a preemptive attack on another country with nuclear or any other weapons.

It’s prepared to retaliate strongly against an aggressor state, saying

“(o)ur concept is a response to a preemptive strike. For those who know, there’s no need to explain what it is, but for the uninitiated I will say it again.”

“(W)e are ready and will use nuclear weapons only when we make sure that someone, a potential aggressor, strikes at Russia, at our territory.”

“The aggressor must know that retribution is inevitable, that it will be destroyed. And we, the victims of aggression, will go to heaven as martyrs, while they will simply die, because they will not even have time to repent.”

Putin understands that no matter how much Trump may favor normalizing US/Russia relations, his hands are tied by Russophobic regime hardliners and nearly the entire US Congress.

If the US deploys short and intermediate-range, nuclear warhead capable missiles near Russia’s border, they’ll be targeted by the country’s military, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained, saying:

Putin “meant what he had already explained many times. The thing is that the withdrawal from the INF Treaty may potentially entail the deployment of short and medium-range missiles in Europe…”

“The deployment of those missiles there and the possibility of them being aimed at Russia would lead to a situation in which Russia will have to target its missile arsenal at them to create parity.”

Trump regime hardliners seem hellbent on an arms race, Russia, China and Iran their primary targets, including enormous amounts of money spent on upgrading and deploying the Pentagon’s nuclear capabilities.

Russia is preparing to effectively counter the enormous threat Washington poses to its security – at a small fraction of the Pentagon’s budget.

Its super-weapons exceed America’s best, including its Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, capable of traveling at over 19,000 miles per hour, able to carry multiple nuclear warheads aimed at separate targets, capable of trajectory changes in flight.

The US has nothing able to intercept it, rendering its missile defense systems useless.

Pursuing world peace is the only sensible course. The alternative risks destruction of all life forms on earth.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from The Transnational

The fast-moving and full-spectrum paradigm changes catalyzed by the emerging Multipolar World Order accelerated in 2018 and are poised to continue dramatically reshaping Afro-Eurasian geopolitics across the next year.

The Significance Of End-Of-The-Year Strategic Forecasting

2018 was the year when the New Cold War – which had been percolating since the Soviet dissolution in 1991 but began to seriously pick up in 2014 – finally became official, seeing as how Vice President Pence openly threatened China with an “all-out cold war” if it didn’t back down in the face of Trump’s so-called “trade war”. That event was a direct result of the fast-moving and full-spectrum paradigm changes catalyzed by the emerging Multipolar World Order, which will continue to accelerate into 2019 and are poised to continue dramatically reshaping Afro-Eurasian geopolitics. It’s a ritual of sorts for most analysts to publish forecasts about the coming year, so it’s with this spirit that the present exercise is being commenced.

It’s beyond the scope of this publication to point out each and every event of the past year that will influence what unfolds in the coming one, just like it’s unrealistic to comprehensively list everything that might happen across the next 12 months. Rather, the purpose of this exercise is to draw attention to some of the more prominent, but also lesser-known and/or scarcely followed, trends that have the highest chance of tangibly affecting geopolitical developments in 2019. Even if they don’t tangibly manifest themselves next year, they might nevertheless continue to affect the course of events in the future and ultimately reveal themselves in 2020 or sometime thereafter, but a lot can still be learned should that not happen at all.

Year-end forecasting is so insightful for many because it inspires them to creatively think about the coming year, as well as to reflect upon the events of the previous one that might make the predictions possible. This enhanced sense of geostrategic awareness could translate into a newfound passion to pursue related research, or at the very least imbue the reader with the feeling that they’re more informed than before. That’s why yearly forecasting exercises are so beneficial because everyone can derive something of significance from them even in the event that some of the predictions don’t play out as expected. That being said, the rest of the analysis will describe the two geostrategic constants and then proceed to the forecasts themselves.

Geostrategic Constants

In an increasingly uncertain world beset by all manner of unpredictability brought about by the consequences of the emerging Multipolar World Order, it helps to remember that there are two primary constants that can be relied upon going forward. These are Trump’s tendency towards chaos and Russia’s resolve to restore stability to whatever he disrupts. Instead of explaining the ins and outs of these two trends at length and the interplay between their dynamics, the reader is strongly recommended to peruse the following three pieces at their leisure and skim the hyperlinks therein in order to obtain a better understanding of these geostrategic constants:

• “’The Kraken’ Killed The Liberal-Globalist ‘New World Order’ At The UN”
• “Russia’s Grand Strategy In Afro-Eurasia (And What Could Go Wrong)”
• “What The US Really Wants From Russia”

Another one of the author’s previous works that could be useful for framing the following forecasts for the reader is his piece about “Top Trends: Hybrid War Balkanization, Trumpism vs. Globalism, Renaissance 2.0”, which goes beyond the three aforementioned constants and attempts to identify the prevailing megatrends affecting International Relations. All of this is pertinent because the forthcoming forecasts won’t elaborate too much on the reasons behind each prediction but will instead provide handy hyperlinks to guide readers to the author’s previous works on each topic (whenever possible), and having this background information in one’s mind will make it easier to understand everything.

Africa

Algeria Up In The Air, Libya Back On Land:

There’s a chance that Algeria and Libya could reverse regional roles if the passing of elderly President Bouteflika in 2019 unleashes a round of uncontrollable unrest in parallel with the former Jamahiriya slowly moving towards a “political solution” to its long-running conflict. That’s not to say that either of these will certainly happen, of course, but just that observers should keep a cautious eye on Algeria while lauding the progressive gains that have been made in Libya lately. Ultimately, the determining factor in both scenarios might be the outcome of the Turkish-Arab rivalry for influence over the western reaches of the “Ummah”.

Burkina Faso Becomes The Next Terrorist Base In West Africa:

The outbreak of “territorial terrorism” (i.e. terrorists who control defined areas of territory) in Mali following the disastrous NATO War on Libya has expectedly spread throughout the region and begun to seriously destabilize the pivot state of Burkina Faso, which is rapidly turning into the next terrorist base in West Africa. Boko Haram is still a force to be reckoned with, but it appears to have been mostly contained to northeastern Nigeria and is being fought against by a coalition of five regional states, whereas the groups entrenching themselves in Burkina Faso could threaten the much less powerful countries of Togo, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire.

The De-Facto Civil War In Cameroon Might Lead To The Unravelling Of Nigeria:

The rising African Great Power of Nigeria might soon face an existential crisis if the de-facto civil war that’s raging in neighboring Cameroon catalyzes a return to militancy from its own southern separatist groups. It’ll still take much more than that to unravel Nigeria, however, but the point to pay attention to is that Africa’s most populous country is already coming apart at the seams after communal clashes in the “Middle Belt” threaten to provoke further identity/”civilizational” discord between the majority-Muslim north and the majority-Christian south, the latter of which could be emboldened by the “Ambazonian” separatists. That said, February’s general election might see Nigerians give Buhari the boot and replace him with someone more competent, so the situation isn’t yet hopeless.

The Central African Republic Stabilizes And Russia Exports Its “Mercenary”-Security Model Elsewhere:

It’s been a long time coming, but the war-torn Central African Republic (CAR) might finally see some semblance of stabilization after the success of the UNSC-approved Russian “mercenary” mission to the country. Russia’s been working very hard to improve the security situation there without getting bogged down in “mission creep” or committing too many financial resources, and to its credit, it’s been able to restore a sense of “normalcy” to the capital and initiate a fledgling peace process with CAR’s many rebel groups. If Russia can expand its tangible military-diplomatic gains on the ground next year, then its “mercenary”-security model might then be exported to other conflict-prone African states.

The Destabilization Of Sudan Picks Up Speed:

Seemingly out of the blue, Sudan all of a sudden became destabilized after synchronized protests broke out in the country following an unexpected increase in food and fuel prices. This fragile state is at risk of fragmentation after losing its oil-rich southern half in 2011 following a decades-long civil war, and the worst-case scenario is that it “Balkanizes” into several pieces like its leader warned could happen when he visited Moscow in late 2017. The geostrategic consequences of that dismal development could be that Russia loses its pivotal position as the country’s transregional rail partner and China’s plans for a Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road are scuttled.

Ethiopian Stability Once Again Becomes Endangered:

Nobody could have thought in early 2015 that the War on Yemen would eventually lead to the UAE brokering peace in the Horn of Africa, but that’s exactly what happened last year, though the transregional power’s gains in Ethiopia are now endangered by the risk that some Oromo rebel factions and former members of the ruling Tigray elite might resort to armed militancy against the state, albeit for different reasons and not in coordination with one another. Prime Minister Abiy has his work cut out for him as he seeks to strike a balance between the country’s competing nationalisms, but time is running out and he needs to act fast.

Congolese Uncertainty Is Finally Resolved, But With What Result?:

The Democratic Republic of the Congo goes to the polls on Sunday in what’s supposed to be the cobalt-rich country’s first-ever democratic transfer of power since its 1960 independence, thereby ending years of speculation about who will finally succeed Joseph Kabila. Regardless of the how this uncertainty is resolved, the question will ultimately boil down to whether the outcome is sustainable or not. The victory of Kabila’s hand-picked successor would undoubtedly lead to his domestic opponents and the West alleging that the vote was rigged, while the Congolese “deep state” might work behind the scenes to undermine an opposition premier, with both outcomes carrying with them enormous risks to stability.

Tanzania And Mozambique Become The Scenes Of A New International Terrorist Conflict:

Tanzanian President John Magufuli is being painted by the Western Mainstream Media and their government backers as a “tyrant” for his pro-sovereignty and family-supporting policies, while neighboring LNG-rich Mozambique has recently befallen the fate of being targeted by terrorists. It’s this second-mentioned issue that poses a direct threat for Tanzania because of the chances that the terrorist unrest in northern Mozambique could spill over the border. While it’s unclear exactly who or what is driving the violence in that part of the country, the porous Tanzanian-Mozambican frontier could open the floodgates for these groups to spread throughout the region and trigger another international hybrid conflict.

The “Scramble For Africa” Picks Up Pace:

It’s unquestionable at this point in time that a modern-day “Scramble for Africa” is taking place, and this development will assuredly continue to unfold across the next year and beyond. Russia’s “balancing” role will be crucial for maintaining a peaceful equilibrium between each of the two extra-regional “blocs” that are converging in this space, though Moscow still needs to demonstrate that its “mercenary”-security model can succeed in the Central African Republic and then leverage this gain in order to differentiate itself from the other many players who are competing in the continent. Only then can it serve as a bridge between them, otherwise the “scramble” will be destabilizing for everyone.

Europe

Populism Remains A Potent Force:

Far from the “spent force” that the Mainstream Media attempted to portray it as in 2017 following Le Pen’s loss in the French election, populism is as potent as ever as proven by the left-wing and right-wing populist coalition government that took power in Italy earlier this year. Populism isn’t going away anytime soon, even if it changes form depending on the national conditions in which it’s prevalent, which means that it could pose a serious threat to the ruling EuroLiberals in 2019. France and Germany already experienced differing intensities of unrest over economic and migrant issues, respectively, and pronounced grassroots pressure might eventually influence some of their policies.

France And Germany Could Compete For Leadership In The EU:

In the aftermath of the “hard” or “soft” Brexit that’s pretty much bound to happen in March 2019, the ruling EuroLiberal elite in France and Germany might enter into a “friendly competition” with one another for leadership over the bloc but could inadvertently create the conditions by which Polish-led EuroRealism begins to spread further throughout the union than ever before. The pivot state in this respect is Italy, since its support one way or the other could decide whether the EU will largely remain as it is or if it’ll be heavily pressured to progressively undertake “decentralizing” reforms in order to return it back to a collection of sovereign nation-states.

The “Three Seas Initiative” Will Continue To Strengthen:

The Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative”, while having yet to achieve much in terms of substantial geopolitical gains (e.g. stopping Nord Stream II), will continue to strengthen its integrational competencies between the states of Central & Eastern Europe as it begins to fulfill its long-term strategic purpose of functioning as the US’ “cordon sanitaire” between Russia and Germany. NATO’s presence in this transregional space will deepen, though so too will China’s economic one as Beijing pairs this platform with its own “16+1” to spread its influence throughout the EU via its “backdoor”. Whether this results in competition or accommodation, it nevertheless makes the “Three Seas Initiative” more important than ever before.

The Balkans Are Rumbling But Will Likely Remain Under Control:

The last year saw Macedonia’s Color Revolutionary government agree to a controversial “name deal” with Greece, the NATO-occupied Serbian Province of Kosovo violating its own self-professed “constitution” by decreeing the creation of a national “army”, and NATO taking steps to bring Bosnia closer to the alliance. All three of these developments portend very negatively for Balkan stability, but the ever-louder rumblings coming out of this region don’t necessarily mean that an outbreak of conventional war is imminent. The situation will probably remain under a degree of “manageable control” because all governments involved are either actively or passively going along with these changes, but as always, there might still be some surprises in store.

Armenia’s “Defection” From Russia Might Be Followed By Belarus’:

The success of Armenia’s Color Revolution last spring saw a vehemently pro-Western activist-“politician” catapulted into power, though Pashinyan has since attempted to “balance” between Russia and his new patrons. Even so, this in and of itself has complicated Armenian-Russian relations and can be regarded as a “defection” of sorts because his country is no longer the reliable CSTO and EAU ally that it’s institutionally obligated to be, and the lack of any punitive consequences from Russia for this audacious move seems to have emboldened Belarus to follow suit in recent weeks. It therefore wouldn’t be unexpected if Minsk breaks ranks with Moscow like Yerevan did and pursues a more pro-Western path in 2019.

Mideast

The Competition Between Turkey & Qatar and the GCC & “Israel” Really Takes Off:

One of the most defining trends of the coming year might be that the Muslim Brotherhood vision backed by Turkey and Qatar enters into heated geopolitical conflict with the pro-monarchist model protected by the GCC and “Israel”. Truth be told, these two ideologies/systems have been kinetically clashing since the 2011 “Arab Spring” theater-wide Color Revolutions, but the stakes are still very high and the form of this competition is changing as Turkey vies with Saudi Arabia for leadership over the western (African and West Asian/Mideast) reaches of the “Ummah”. In fact, it’s this struggle which is largely responsible for the breakthrough developments that just recently occurred in Syria.

Syria Finally Sees Stability:

Damascus is in the midst of a rapid rapprochement with the GCC following the reopening of the Emirati Embassy to the country, spurred along as it was by that bloc’s dual security dilemmas with both Iran and also recently Turkey. “Israel’s” resumption of bombing missions against the Arab Republic could combine with its target’s GCC rapprochement to pave the way for a dignified but “phased withdrawal” of Iranian forces facilitated by Russia. Concerning the Kurdish-controlled Northeast, it’s a welcome sign that the PYD-YPG invited the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) into Manbij, which might eventually lead to the SAA regaining control the frontier while the PYD “autonomously” administers the trans-Euphrates’ resource-rich interior.

The End Of Netanyahu?:

“Israel’s” longest-serving premier since Ben-Gurion is fighting for his political lifeahead of snap elections that will be held in April 2019, meaning that he might finally be ousted from power once and for all. The concern, however, is that Netanyahu could stage high-profile military stunts in Palestine, Lebanon, and/or Syria to distract the masses from his corruption probe and win over the right-wing “defectors” from his coalition before the vote. If he fails with these possible ploys, then there’s a very high chance that he might be replaced by an even more right-wing leader who could prove to be even more disastrous for the region.

“Weapons Of Mass Migration” Might Push Lebanon To The Brink:

The chronically dysfunctional country of Lebanon might be pushed to the brink by what Ivy League researcher Kelly M. Greenhill previously described as “Weapons of Mass Migration” (WMM) in the event that the large-scale refugee influx from neighboring Syria doesn’t thin out before it causes political consequences in the host state. Hezbollah’s enemies couldn’t defeat it on the battlefield in neighboring Syria, but its domestic political rivals and even “Israel” itself might seek to manipulate WMM in order to cause unforeseen problems for the “Resistance” vanguard back in its homeland, meaning that this is a serious issue that mustn’t be neglected by the organization’s leadership.

South Yemen Regains International Recognition (Sort Of):

The incipient peace process that began in late-2018 could see Yemen’s warring sides agreeing to recognize the autonomy of South Yemen as part of a “compromise” political solution for ending the war, bearing in mind that it’s already practically“independent” of the previous domain of “North Yemen” even if it survives under Emirati tutelage (at least for now). The “international community” would therefore recognize it as an autonomous region if the Yemenis themselves agreed to this first, which appears to be inevitable considering that this state of affairs is already a fait accompli and that neither the Houthis nor Hadi have any real hope of reasserting their control over South Yemen.

“Little Sparta” Upstages Its “Big Brother”:

2019 will probably be the year when the world finally recognizes that the UAE is much more powerful than its Saudi “big brother”. After all, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed (MBZ) is his Saudi counterpart Mohammed Bin Salman’s (MBS) mentor, and the Emirates has succeeded in building a worldwide airport and seaport empire that even includes a constellation of naval bases in the strategic Red Sea and Gulf of Aden regions. Although they failed to accomplish their goal in Yemen, they nevertheless obtained invaluable experience and learned how to manage mercenary forces and coordinate airstrikes. Most importantly, the UAE also lacks Saudi Arabia’s intense domestic political fault lines.

Saudi Arabia Will Continue To Diversify Its Foreign Policy:

The end of 2018 saw MBS defy his former Western patrons by being warmly embraced by none other than President Putin at the G20 in the aftermath of Khashoggi’s killing, which was natural seeing as how Russia stands to gain the most from that crisis. Saudi Arabia was already shifting its grand strategy even before then, but it’ll expectedly be more pronounced in the coming year after President Putin’s upcoming trip to the Kingdom sometime in early 2019, especially if the two countries sign a deal for the S-400s. In parallel with its outreaches to Russia, Saudi Arabia will also rely on its partnership with China to help implement the Crown Prince’s ambitious “Vision 2030”.

Iran Could Reorient Itself Towards The Golden Ring:

Facing heavy Hybrid War pressure inside of its borders through the multipronged threats of foreign-backed terrorist insurgencies and a debilitating sanctions regime, Iran might reorient its strategic focus away from the “Mashriq” after concluding that it’s reached the climax of its influence there (particularly if Russia facilitates its dignified but “phased withdrawal” from Syria) and towards the Golden Ring of Multipolar Great Powers instead. Russia, being the Islamic Republic’s primary “pressure valve” during this time of intense international pressure upon it, could “encourage” the country to move in this direction, though Iran’s “deep state” divisions between the “principalist” and “reformist” factions might hinder the implementation of this policy.

South Asia

China Could Be Compelled To Bankroll BRI-Aid:

China’s global Belt & Road (BRI) vision of New Silk Road connectivity focuses too much on hard infrastructure and not enough on its soft counterpart. This oversight is the worldwide project’s Achilles’ heel because it creates space for socio-economic issues at the local level to fester into Hybrid War threats that could be manipulated by hostile third-party actors. Seeing as how the success of CPEC will either make or break the rest of BRI, it’s to China’s supreme strategic interests to roll out an international aid program tentatively titled “BRI-Aid” in order to help Pakistan devise sustainable solutions in this respect, with this initiative subsequently being exported all along the Silk Roads upon perfection.

The Hybrid War On CPEC Could Go Either Way:

The Indo-American Hybrid War on CPEC succeeded in causing chaos in Karachi and Chabahar but might have been brought to an abrupt end after the assassination of Baloch terrorist leader Aslam Achu in Afghanistan. It’s still too early to say, and India could always double down on this asymmetrical warfare campaign, but it can’t be ruled out that New Delhi might try to enter into a grand bargain with Beijing as part of a so-called “détente” between the two rising Asian Great Powers that could see it agreeing to downscale and ultimately cease its support of the kinetic manifestation of the Hybrid War on CPEC in exchange for a strategic partnership that India believes might eventually “marginalize” Pakistan.

Could A Chinese-Indian Rapprochement Really Be In The Cards?:

Building off of the above, India might be wagering that China’s grand strategic dependence on CPEC could be reduced in the event that a political breakthrough can be achieved in Indian-Chinese relations whereby the “China-India-Plus-One” format that Beijing unveiled over the summer could be put to use in Nepal and Myanmar for diversifying the People’s Republic’s future trade reliance away from CPEC. India might also seek to revive the stalled BCIM trade corridor too in that case, though all of this is conditional on New Delhi generating enough “credible” goodwill with China to convince it to allow India to exert influence over its future trade routes, which is questionable at this moment.

Modi Might Be On His Way Out:

It’s way too early to say, but Modi might be on his way out if the BJP can’t manipulate communal tensions to the point of “inspiring” the increasingly radicalized Hindu majority to come out to the polls in his support. The upcoming spring election will be a defining moment for Indian history, the region, and Eurasian geopolitics as a whole because of the profound policy shifts that could occur if he loses. Not only that, but the aforementioned interlinked scenarios about a possible Chinese-Indian rapprochement might be proven to have been nothing more than campaign posturing by Modi if he backstabs his partners right after winning reelection by (re-)pivoting towards the US.

It’s High Time To Pay More Attention To Regional Hot Spots:

Moving into the realm of “dark scenarios”, the US’ plans for a military drawdown in Afghanistan might just be a ruse to divide the Taliban into “moderates” and “hardliners” prior to blaming Pakistan for the failure of any talks, after which America might sanction CPEC under trumped-up “anti-terrorist” pretenses. This isn’t the only regional hot spot, however, since the Maldives and Sri Lanka might be jolted from the relative “normalcy” that’s recently set in with both if the Chinese-Indian competition re-erupts sometime next year. Far from being a bridge between them along a potential “Himalayan Silk Road”, Nepal might even turn into a proxy battleground between them too, as could Bangladesh after its contentious elections this Sunday.

East And Southeast Asia

Russia And Japan Make Progress On A Peace Deal But Success Remains Elusive:

Both Great Powers are serious about putting their World War II-era problems behind them and moving forward with their promising strategic partnership, but success might prove elusive unless a breakthrough proposal such as the “Northern Islands Socio-Economic Condominium” (NISEC) is seen as an acceptable “compromise” by each of them. It’s uncertain whether they can “meet in the middle” on this highly emotional issue, however, seeing as how it’s festered for so long. In addition, the US has an obvious interest in keeping these two countries apart as long as possible. That said, Japan’s 21^st-century grand strategy is incomplete without finalizing its rapprochement with Russia, so Tokyo might come around sooner than later.

The “New Washington Consensus” Stumbles In North Korea:

Trump is trying to advance a “New Washington Consensus” through his country’s incipient rapprochement with North Korea, but this ambitious vision of positioning the US as a “trusted” developmental partner for “Global South” states might stumble if Pyongyang doesn’t make adequate progress on implementing its vague denuclearization promises. Any perceived backsliding on its previous commitments could trigger Trump into reinitiating verbal and diplomatic hostilities against North Korea, which could in turn be capitalized upon by his domestic political foes and international rivals in order to portray his much-touted peacemaking success of 2018 as a failure.

The Greater Mekong Subregion Experiences A Renaissance:

The unilateral ceasefire that the Myanmarese Tatmadaw decreed with the country’s numerous rebel groups bodes well for national stability in one of the last economic frontiers in Asia, as does the upcoming election in Thailand in February, both of which could combine to enable the Greater Mekong Subregion to experience a renaissance if everything proceeds according to plan. Should that happen (and it’s far from certain in the case of Myanmar at least), then that scenario could make those two neighboring countries more attractive destinations for infrastructural investment from both the Indo-Japanese “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” and China’s BRI, with the outcome being that their “competitive connectivity” there might eventually lead to a strategic convergence.

Indonesia’s Geopolitical “Balancing” Act Is Put To The Test:

Indonesia has thus far attempted to “balance” between China and the “Quad” but its strategy will probably be put to the test in 2019 as the US pushes it to choose one side over the other after its April elections. Despite the naturally occurring Hybrid War tensions that are re-erupting in West Papua and which could be manipulated by the US to pressure Indonesia into aligning with it, the country would do well to learn from the examples spearheaded by its ASEAN allies in the Philippines and Vietnam who have skillfully resisted American coercion by seeking out Russia’s “balancing” role via the so-called “Neo-NAM” that it’s unofficially pioneering through “military diplomacy”.

Australia Returns To Being A South Pacific Power:

Although regarded as part of Oceania and not Asia, it’s worthwhile to mention how Australia will probably regain its status as the South Pacific’s hegemon. Its regional authority has declined in recent years as it came up against stiff competition from China, but the US’ curious co-opting of Fiji into its anti-Daesh coalition and Canberra’s decision to build a naval base in Papua New Guinea’s northern island of Manus could make it more difficult for China to exert its Silk Road leadership in this space, especially when weaponized fake news about “secret agents” and Beijing’s supposed plans to build its own base in Vanuatu was used as the basis for the Australian-American axis to actively counter it.

Concluding Thoughts

End-of-the-year scenario forecasting can be a very difficult and almost intimidating exercise to commence, but it’s a worthwhile venture because of the insight that it could reveal to readers about how certain developments of the past year might be poised to shape future ones in the next. As was mentioned at the beginning, this work is far from comprehensive but aimed to pinpoint some of the main drivers of forthcoming events, after which an attempt was made to boldly predict the geopolitical outcome of these influences if they continued to remain relevant in 2019. Some of the scenarios presented in this work were admittedly provocative, but that was partially to inspire others to constructively criticize them and carry out their own research if they were so inclined.

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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 Russophile.org

Calls for a Universal Basic Income have been increasing, most recently as part of the Green New Deal introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and supported in the last month by at least 40 members of Congress. A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a monthly payment to all adults with no strings attached, similar to Social Security. Critics say the Green New Deal asks too much of the rich and upper-middle-class taxpayers who will have to pay for it, but taxing the rich is not what the resolution proposes. It says funding would primarily come from the federal government, “using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks,” and other vehicles.

The Federal Reserve alone could do the job. It could buy “Green” federal bonds with money created on its balance sheet, just as the Fed funded the purchase of $3.7 trillion in bonds in its “quantitative easing” program to save the banks. The Treasury could also do it. The Treasury has the constitutional power to issue coins in any denomination, even trillion dollar coins. What prevents legislators from pursuing those options is the fear of hyperinflation from excess “demand” (spendable income) driving prices up. But in fact the consumer economy is chronically short of spendable income, due to the way money enters the consumer economy. We actually needregular injections of money to avoid a “balance sheet recession” and allow for growth, and a UBI is one way to do it.

The pros and cons of a UBI are hotly debated and have been discussed elsewhere. The point here is to show that it could actually be funded year after year without driving up taxes or prices. New money is continually being added to the money supply, but it is added as debt created privately by banks. (How banks rather than the government create most of the money supply today is explained on the Bank of England website here.) A UBI would replace money-created-as-debt with debt-free money – a “debt jubilee” for consumers – while leaving the money supply for the most part unchanged; and to the extent that new money was added, it could help create the demand needed to fill the gap between actual and potential productivity.

The Debt Overhang Crippling Economies

The “bank money” composing most of the money in circulation is created only when someone borrows, and today businesses and consumers are burdened with debts that are higher than ever before. In 2018, credit card debt alone exceeded $1 trillion, student debt exceeded $1.5 trillion, auto loan debt exceeded $1.1 trillion, and non-financial corporate debt hit $5.7 trillion. When businesses and individuals pay down old loans rather than taking out new loans, the money supply shrinks, causing a “balance sheet recession.” In that situation, the central bank, rather than removing money from the economy (as the Fed is doing now), needs to add money to fill the gap between debt and the spendable income available to repay it.

Debt always grows faster than the money available to repay it. One problem is the interest, which is not created along with the principal, so more money is always owed back than was created in the original loan. Beyond that, some of the money created as debt isheld off the consumer market by “savers” and investors who place it elsewhere, making it unavailable to companies selling their wares and the wage-earners they employ. The result is a debt bubble that continues to grow until it is not sustainable and the system collapses, in the familiar death spiral euphemistically called the “business cycle.” As economist Michael Hudson shows in his 2018 book And Forgive Them Their Debts, this inevitable debt overhang was corrected historically with periodic “debt jubilees” – debt forgiveness – something he argues we need to do again today.

For governments, a debt jubilee could be effected by allowing the central bank to buy government securities and hold them on its books. For individuals, one way to do it fairly across the board would be with a UBI.

Why a UBI Need Not Be Inflationary

In a 2018 book called The Road to Debt Bondage: How Banks Create Unpayable Debt, political economist Derryl Hermanutz proposes a central-bank-issued UBI of one thousand dollars per month, credited directly to people’s bank accounts. Assuming this payment went to all US residents over 18, or about 241 million people, the outlay would be close to $3 trillion annually. For people with overdue debt, Hermanutz proposes that it automatically go to pay down those debts. Since money is created as loans and extinguished when they are repaid, that portion of a UBI disbursement would be extinguished along with the debt.

People who were current on their debts could choose whether or not to pay them down, but many would also no doubt go for that option. Hermanutz estimates that roughly half of a UBI payout could be extinguished in this way through mandatory and voluntary loan repayments. That money would not increase the money supply or demand. It would just allow debtors to spend on necessities with debt-free money rather than hocking their futures with unrepayable debt.

He estimates that another third of a UBI disbursement would go to “savers” who did not need the money for expenditures. This money, too, would not be likely to drive up consumer prices, since it would go into investment and savings vehicles rather than circulating in the consumer economy. That leaves only about one-sixth of payouts, or $500 billion, that would actually be competing for goods and services; and that sum could easily be absorbed by the “output gap” between actual and forecasted productivity.

According to a July 2017 paper from the Roosevelt Institute called “What Recovery? The Case for Continued Expansionary Policy at the Fed”:

GDP remains well below both the long-run trend and the level predicted by forecasters a decade ago. In 2016, real per capita GDP was 10% below the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) 2006 forecast, and shows no signs of returning to the predicted level.

The report showed that the most likely explanation for this lackluster growth was inadequate demand. Wages have remained stagnant; and before producers will produce, they need customers knocking on their doors.

In 2017, the US Gross Domestic Product was $19.4 trillion. If the economy is running at 10% below full capacity, $2 trillion could be injected into the economy every yearwithout creating price inflation. It would just generate the demand needed to stimulate an additional $2 trillion in GDP. In fact a UBI might pay for itself, just as the G.I. Bill produced a sevenfold return from increased productivity after World War II.

The Evidence of China

That new money can be injected year after year without triggering price inflation is evident from a look at China. In the last 20 years, its M2 money supply has grown from just over 10 trillion yuan to 80 trillion yuan ($11.6T), a nearly 800% increase. Yet the inflation rate of its Consumer Price Index (CPI) remains a modest 2.2%.

Why has all that excess money not driven prices up? The answer is that China’s Gross Domestic Product has grown at the same fast clip as its money supply. When supply (GDP) and demand (money) increase together, prices remain stable.

Whether or not the Chinese government would approve of a UBI, it does recognize that to stimulate productivity, the money must get out there first; and since the government owns 80% of China’s banks, it is in a position to borrow money into existence as needed. For “self-funding” loans – those that generate income (fees for rail travel and electricity, rents for real estate) – repayment extinguishes the debt along with the money it created, leaving the net money supply unchanged. When loans are not repaid, the money they created is not extinguished; but if it goes to consumers and businesses that then buy goods and services with it, demand will still stimulate the production of supply, so that supply and demand rise together and prices remain stable.

Without demand, producers will not produce and workers will not get hired, leaving them without the funds to generate supply, in a vicious cycle that leads to recession and depression. And that cycle is what our own central bank is triggering now.

The Fed Tightens the Screws

Rather than stimulating the economy with new demand, the Fed has been engaging in “quantitative tightening.” On December 19, 2018, it raised the fed funds rate for the ninth time in 3 years, despite a “brutal” stock market in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average had already lost 3,000 points in 2-½ months. The Fed is still struggling to reach even its modest 2% inflation target, and GDP growth is trending down, with estimates at only 2-2.7% for 2019. So why did it again raise rates, over the protests of commentators including the president himself?

For its barometer, the Fed looks at whether the economy has hit “full employment,” which it considers to be 4.7% unemployment, taking into account the “natural rate of unemployment” of people between jobs or voluntarily out of work. At full employment, workers are expected to demand more wages, causing prices to rise. But unemployment is now officially at 3.7% – beyondtechnical full employment – and neither wages nor consumer prices have shot up. There is obviously something wrong with the theory, as is evident from a look at Japan, where prices have long refused to rise despite a serious lack of workers.

The official unemployment figures are actually misleading. Including short-term discouraged workers, the rate of US unemployed or underemployed workers as of May 2018 was 7.6%, double the widely reported rate. When long-term discouraged workers are included, the real unemployment figure was 21.5%. Beyond that large untapped pool of workers, there is the seemingly endless supply of cheap labor from abroad and the expanding labor potential of robots, computers and machines.In fact the economy’s ability to generate supply in response to demand is far from reaching full capacity today.

Our central bank is driving us into another recession based on bad economic theory. Adding money to the economy for productive, non-speculative purposes will not drive up prices so long as materials and workers (human or mechanical) are available to create the supply necessary to meet demand; and they are available now. There will always be price increases in particular markets when there are shortages, bottlenecks, monopolies or patents limiting competition, but these increases are not due to an economy awash with money. Housing, healthcare, education and gas have all gone up, but it is not because people have too much money to spend. In fact it is those necessary expenses that are driving people into unrepayable debt, and it is this massive debt overhang that is preventing economic growth.

Without some form of debt jubilee, the debt bubble will continue to grow until it can again no longer be sustained. A UBI can help correct that problem without fear of “overheating” the economy, so long as the new money is limited to filling the gap between real and potential productivity and goes into generating jobs, building infrastructure and providing for the needs of the people, rather than being diverted into the speculative, parasitic economy that feeds off them.

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This article was first published on Truthdig.com.

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

Victoria Grant focusses on extreme corruption in the banking system.

The death of children in the Middle East.

Power and Profit instead of people.

The banking structure is the cause of poverty.

Corruption prevails in the banking system, with the complicity of national governments.

Major reforms in the structure of international banking are required.

The democratization of monetary policy.

How to eradicate extreme poverty.

As we approach 2019 the global economy teeters on the brink of yet another recession which will plunge geo-political relations into a period of great upheaval and rapid change. In 2019 global stock markets will continue to face unprecedented volatility and gigantic losses as the Ponzi scheme pumped up by the cartel of central banks comes crashing down.

The central bank cartel of the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England together with the Bank of China have flooded their national economies with astronomical sums of money since 2008 in an attempt to stave off collapse of the global financial system.

Their money printing experiment has driven global debt from $177 trillion to over $277 trillion today while interest rates have been artificially suppressed enabling a wealth transfer to the 1% of historic proportions. This massive expansion of central bank balance sheets is illustrated below.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the global economy slows down and the central bank cartel tries to end their money printing colloquially known as Quantitative Tightening.

The withdrawal of this financial heroin is behind the collapse of global stock markets during 2018 that has wiped trillions off the values of a range of inflated assets.

There is a very clear correlation between the shrinking balance sheets of global central banks and the continuing crash of stock markets. The collapse of the stock values of globally systemic banks poses great dangers to the global economy.

The central bank cartel policies of quantitative tightening, as they attempt to wean financial markets off their monetary heroin, are taking us towards a period of stagflation, reminiscent of the 1970s, which will usher in a period of depressed economic growth and rising inflation. Geo-political relations, as in the 1970s period of stagflation, will become even more unstable and volatile intensifying many current conflicts and threatening new wars between nations and military blocs.

The next world recession will pose severe challenges for the great powers as they jostle to maintain control over strategic raw materials, trade relationships and economic resources. Meanwhile,

The great powers will struggle to cope with the devastating consequences of the collapse of inflated assets from bank failures to the return of mass unemployment. They will all face unprecedented social and political upheaval from their own citizens suffering from the effects of economic collapse.

One thing we can be sure of is that 2019 will be very different to 2018 and the years that have gone before as nations struggle to redefine their political and economic relations with one another.

First published by Global Research on November 26, 2018

Over the past three decades, the US government has engaged in over a dozen wars, none of which have evoked popular celebrations either before, during or after.  Nor did the government succeed in securing popular support in its efforts to confront the economic crises of 2008 – 2009.

This paper will begin by discussing the major wars of our time, namely the two US invasions of Iraq. We will proceed to analyze the nature of the popular response and the political consequences.

In the second section we will discuss the economic crises of 2008 -2009, the government bailout and popular response. We will conclude by focusing on  the potential powerful changes inherent in mass popular movements.

The Iraq War and the US Public

In the run-up to the two US wars against Iraq, (1990 – 01 and 2003 – 20011) there was no mass war fever, nor did the public celebrate the outcome. On the contrary both wars were preceded by massive protests in the US and among EU allies.  The first Iraqi invasion was opposed by the vast-majority of the US public despite a major mass media and regime propaganda campaign backed by President George H. W. Bush.  Subsequently, President Clinton launched a bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998 with virtually no public support or approval.

March 20, 2003, President George W. Bush launched the second major war against Iraq despite massive protests in all major US cities.  The war was officially concluded by President Obama in December 2011. President Obama’s declaration of a successful conclusion failed to elicit popular agreement.

Several questions arise: Why mass opposition at the start of the Iraq wars and why did they fail to continue?

Why did the public refuse to celebrate President Obama’s ending of the war in 2011?

Why did mass protests of the Iraq wars fail to produce durable political vehicles to secure the peace?

The Anti-Iraq War Syndrome

The massive popular movements which actively opposed the Iraq wars had their roots in several historical sources.  The success of the movements that ended the Viet Nam war, the ideas that mass activity could resist and winwas solidly embedded in large segments of the progressive public.  Moreover, they strongly held the idea that the mass media and Congress could not be trusted; this reinforced the idea that mass direct actionwas essential to reverse Presidential and Pentagon war policies.

The second factor encouraging US mass protest was the fact that the US was internationally isolated. Presidents George H. W. Bush, Sr. and George W. Bush, Jr. launched wars that faced hostile regime and mass opposition in Europe, the Middle East and in the UN General Assembly. US activists felt that they were part of a global movement which could succeed.

Thirdly the advent of Democratic President Clinton did not reverse the mass anti-war movements. The terror bombing of Iraq in December 1998 was destructive  and Clinton’s war against Serbia kept the movements alive and active  To the extent that Clinton avoided large scale long-term wars, he avoided provoking mass movements from re-emerging during the latter part of the 1990’s.

The last big wave of mass anti-war protest occurred from 2003 to 2008.  Mass anti-war protest to war exploded soon after the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11. White House exploited the events to proclaim a global ‘war on terror’, yet the mass popular movements interpreted the same events as a call to oppose new wars in the Middle East.

Anti-war leaders drew activists of the entire decade, envisioning a ‘build-up’ which could prevent the Bush regime from launching a series of wars without end.  Moreover, the vast-majority of the public was not convinced by officials claims that Iraq, weakened and encircled, was stocking ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to attack the US.

Large scale popular protests challenged the mass media, the so called respectable press and ignored the Israeli lobby and other Pentagon warlords demanding an invasion of Iraq.  The vast-majority of American, did not believe they were threatened by Saddam Hussain they felt a greater threat from the White House’s resort to severe repressive legislation like the Patriot Act. Washington’s rapid military defeat of Iraqi forces and its occupation of the Iraqi state led to a decline in the size and scope of the anti-war movement but not to its potential mass base.

Two events led to the demise of the anti-war movements.  The anti-war leaders turned from independent direct action to electoral politics and secondly, they embraced and channeled their followers to support Democratic presidential candidate Obama.  In large part the movement leaders and activists believed that direct action had failed to prevent or end the previous two Iraq wars. Secondly, Obama made a direct demagogic appeal to the peace movement – he promised to end wars and  pursue social justice at home.

With the advent of Obama, many peace leaders and followers joined the Obama political machine .Those who were not coopted were quickly disillusioned on all counts.  Obama continued the ongoing wars and added new ones—Libya, Honduras, Syria. The US occupation in Iraq led to new extremist militia armies, which proceeded to defeat US-trained vassal armies up to the gates of Baghdad. In short time Obama launched a flotilla of warships and warplanes to the South China Sea and dispatched added troops to Afghanistan.

The mass popular movements of the previous two decades were totally disillusioned, betrayed and disoriented.  While most opposed Obama’s ‘new’ and ‘old wars’ they struggled to find new outlets for their anti-war beliefs.  Lacking alternative anti-war movements, they were vulnerable to the war propaganda of the media and the new demagogue of the right. Donald Trump attracted many who opposed the warmonger Hilary Clinton.

The Bank Bailout: Mass Protest Denied

In 2008, at the end of his presidency, President George W. Bush signed off on a massive federal bailout of the biggest Wall Street banks facing faced bankruptcy from their wild speculative profiteering.

In 2009 President Obama endorsed the bailout and urged rapid Congressional approval.  Congress complied to a $700-billion- dollar handout, which according to Forbes(July 14, 2015) rose to $7.77 trillion.  Overnight hundreds of thousands of American demanded Congress rescind the vote. Under immense popular protest, Congress capitulated. However President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership insisted: the bill was slightly modified and approved.  The ‘popular will’ was denied.  The protests were neutralized and dissipated.  The bailout of the banks proceeded, while several million households watched while their homes were foreclosed, despite some local protests.  Among the anti-bank movement, radical proposals flourished, ranging from calls to nationalize them, to demands to let the big banks go bankrupt and provide federal financing for co-operatives and community banks.

Clearly the vast majority of the American people were aware and acted to resist corporate-collusion to plunder taxpayers.

Conclusion: What is to be Done?

Mass popular mobilizations are a reality in the United States.  The problem is that they have not been sustained and the reasons are clear: they lacked political organization which would go beyond protests and reject lesser evil policies.

The anti-war movement which started in opposition to the Iraq war was marginalized by the two dominant parties.  The result was the multiplication of new wars.  By the second year of Obama’s presidency the US was engaged in seven wars.

By the second year of Trump’s Presidency the US was threatening nuclear wars against Russia, Iran and other ‘enemies’ of the empire.  While public opinion was decidedly opposed, the ‘opinion’ barely rippled in the mid-term elections.

Where have the anti-war and anti-bank masses gone? I would argue they are still with us but they cannot turn their voices into action and organization if they remain in the Democratic Party.  Before the movements can turn direct action into effective political and economic transformations, they need to build struggles at every level from the local to the national.

The international conditions are ripening. Washington has alienated countries around the world; it is challenged by allies and faces formidable rivals.  The domestic economy is polarized and the elites are divided.

Mobilizations, as in France today, are self-organized through the internet; the mass media are discredited. The time of liberal and rightwing demagogues is passing; the bombast of Trump arouses the same disgust as ended the Obama regime.

There are optimal conditions for a new comprehensive movement going beyond piecemeal reforms.  The question is whether it is now or in future years or decades?

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Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image: U.S. Army (USA) M1A1 Abrams MBT (Main Battle Tank), and personnel from A Company (CO), Task Force 1st Battalion, 35th Armor Regiment (1-35 Armor), 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 1st Armored Division (AD), pose for a photo under the “Hands of Victory” in Ceremony Square, Baghdad, Iraq during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.  (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

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

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The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) requires that all unaccompanied alien children (UAC) be vaccinated while in ORR custody in accordance with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) catch-up schedule (see this).  The potentially lethal schedule mandated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) ACIP or ages 7 – 18 are acknowledged by the CDC.  

Many of these vaccines have the neurotoxic metallic adjuvant aluminum in the injected solution and some have live viruses in them, (If influenza vaccinations occur, these children will be intra-muscularly injected with the neurotoxic mercury, the second-most poisonous substance (behind plutonium) on the planet.)

An unknowable number of the vaccines can be expected to be contaminated with dangerous extraneous substances, depending on the country of origin and the sloppiness with which the vaccine batch is manufactured.

If all these vaccines are injected at one sitting (as can be expected at the ORR), some of the children will likely develop some sort of (acute and/or chronic) vaccine-induced illness, and some will certainly be so seriously poisoned that they will die.

Given the bureaucratic “efficiency” (and total lack of informed consent or adherence with the Precautionary Principle) with which most children in the US (not just immigrants) are dealt with by American Academy of Pediatrics (APP) pediatricians in their offices, none of the “despised” non-white immigrants kids will have their immunization histories checked prior to the inoculation cocktails being given.

Thus unknown percentages of children who have already been fully vaccinated in their homelands will be at risk of having anaphylactic reactions from the second or third dose of a inoculum to which they had developed a mild allergic reaction (which sets them up for a more serious anaphylactic reaction when the next shot is administered).

Also none of the victims will be even partially informed (much less fully informed in a language that the child victims don’t understand) about the risks or benefits of having so many potentially toxic vaccines intramuscularly injected all at once.

Of course the bureaucratic para-professionals from ORR that are doing the injecting don’t know the risks themselves – nor, as a matter of fact, do the pediatricians in charge, since no safety studies have ever been done on cocktails of vaccines given simultaneously, even in the rat lab!

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Dr Gary G. Kohls is a retired family physician from Duluth, MN, USA. Since his retirement from his holistic mental health practice he has been writing his weekly Duty to Warn column for the Duluth Reader, northeast Minnesota’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns, which are re-published around the world, deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s over-drugging and Big Vaccine’s over-vaccination agendas, as well as other movements that threaten human health, the environment, democracy, civility and the sustainability of all life on earth.  Dr Kohls is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

GR Editor’s Note

The following text by Ambassador Chas Freeman provides a critical viewpoint on Sino-US relations by a prominent foreign policy analyst who was part of the 1972 Nixon-Kissinger mission to China which led to the signing of the Shanghai Communique and the normalization of US-China relations.

While Global Research does not endorse Ambassador Freeman’s assessment of US foreign policy and Chinese history, his analysis constitutes a contribution towards resolving the strained US-China relations under the Trump administration. The Sino-US conflict is not limited to trade and advanced technology, at this juncture in our history, the US is planning  to wage war against both China and Russia.

It is worth noting that while the Chinese media has acknowledged Ambassador Freeman’s Remarks, his incisive and timely presentation to the National Committee for U.S.-China Relations has not been reported by the US media.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 27, 2018

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Three days ago, we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of Jimmy Carter’s and Deng Xiaoping’s politically courageous decision to normalize relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.  I have been involved in our relations with China in one way or another for fifty years.  Thinking about how China and the world as well as U.S. relations with both have changed over that period, I am struck by many ironies. 

The United States sought to change China’s geopolitical position, not China’s socioeconomic system.  Yet our opening to China informed and enabled major changes in its domestic political economy.

When Washington first reached out to the People’s Republic, it saw China as isolated, vulnerable, and unstable.  We now confront a globally connected and relatively wealthy China with very strong capitalist characteristics.  Our concerns about Chinese weakness have given way to worries that China may have become a formidable – perhaps overwhelming – geoeconomic competitor and that it might displace our influence not just in its region but on the Eurasian landmass and adjacent areas.

When we Americans rediscovered China after decades of enmity and ostracism, we easily reverted to an updated version of the paternalistic missionary mentality we had exhibited in the pre-Communist era, implicitly positioning ourselves as the guardians and tutors of the Chinese.  Now that they have graduated from our tutelage and are themselves becoming a teacher to the world, we are uncertain how to deal with them.  Our opening to China helped it to study, adopt, and adapt the world’s best practices, strengthen itself, and enter a long period of political-economic stability.  The world is more prosperous and stable for that.  But both American hegemony and confidence in our ability to compete are receding.

We sought to counter the Soviet Union by enlisting China in containing it.  But, with China as our partner, we ended up not just containing but bankrupting and destroying the USSR.  (We had quite forgotten that the premise of containment was that, left to itself, the Soviet system would collapse of its own defects.  Four decades later, when – as George Kennan had predicted in arguing for containment– the Soviet system finally succumbed to its infirmities, we were astonished.)  Our attempt to use China to rebalance global geopolitics had vastly exceeded our expectations and altered them fundamentally.

In the 20^th century, we wanted China to be able to defend itself against its aggressive neighbors, first Japan, then the USSR.  But, when it became able to do so, it also became able to defend itself against us.  We are not coping well with China’s contributions to the inevitable loss of our seven-decade-long military primacy in East Asia and the Pacific. Instead of finding ways to enlist Chinese power as much as possible in support of our own, we are treating Beijing as a malicious peer competitor and ramping up military confrontation with it in support of a crumbling and likely unsustainable status quo.

Americans never imagined that our outreach to China could transform the world’s ideological dynamics as well as its geopolitical geometry.  The architects of our China policy were not moral crusaders.  Nixon and Kissinger sought to change China’s foreign policy, not its regime or its political system.  With the sole exception of the first year of the Clinton administration, the impulse to reengineer China’s domestic order was a popular hope born of ideological conviction that never became policy.  And when it briefly did become policy, it failed decisively. Americans’ concern for human rights did not disappear but the policy of aggressively bargaining for them was abandoned, leaving only lofty talk and castigation behind it.

The Clinton policy was driven by critics who had consistently argued that the U.S. government should seek China’s democratization as the price of cooperation with it.  With the Cold War over, they thought it high time to insist that China change its politics.  Now the very same critics and their intellectual kin proclaim U.S. engagement with China to have failed because it did not achieve the policy objectives they espoused but were unable to impose on successive American governments.

It is true that we did not Americanize China. [In 1940, Senator Kenneth Wherry famously declared that “with God’s help, we will lift Shanghai up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City.”]  Shanghai is not yet “just like Kansas City.”  And it is true that Chinese realities have not followed the course predicted by liberal political theory.  (One wonders whether it is the theory, not our relationship with China, that needs reconsideration.)  As a result of internal changes in China as well as in the international environment, democracy may no longer seem destined to triumph over all other political dispensations.  Still, for the first time, it now faces no global ideological challenge.  We are in a great power competition that will be decided by socioeconomic performance, not political pretense or presumed ideological virtue. The question is not whether our system is right but whether it enables us to compete with the very competitive variant China has evolved.

Some Americans nostalgic for the simplicities of the Cold War suffer from enemy deprivation syndrome.  They are in earnest search of a hostile ideology against which to orient themselves and see China as the answer to their distress.  After all, when we opened ourselves to China, Beijing advocated the worldwide overthrow of capitalism, the destruction of global multilateral institutions, and the replacement of the American-sponsored liberal world order with Marxist-Leninist hegemony.  But it has been more than four decades since China offered such a challenge. Our policies toward China have played a major role in creating a world that prefers muddling through to anti-American ideological evangelism.  That’s better for us, even if some are not happy about it.

Once President Clinton’s effort to compel China to adopt Western standards of human rights had definitively failed, his administration turned to an effort to incorporate China fully into the American-led world order.  That effort succeeded.  China is now a valued member of the international community and an active participant in its established systems of governance, including all the Bretton Woods legacy institutions.  It has expanded the world order Americans created, not contracted or eroded it, by adding institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Bank, and other development funds.  These organizations and their capital parallel, supplement, complement, and cooperate with the World Bank and regional development banks.  They do not compete with them.

From the founding of our republic two hundred and more years ago, we Americans have seen China as a huge potential export market for our goods and services.  It is now finally on the way to becoming the world’s largest consumer society.  And as it has prospered, China has become our fastest growing export market.  But facts and long-term considerations be damned! It is too late to head off the populist goon squad.

We began our relationship with the People’s Republic with a trade surplus.  That unexpectedly evolved into a massive trade deficit as our companies came to see China as an economical source of manufactures for export to both the United States and other countries.  This has kept consumer prices low and mitigated the increasing inequality of income distribution in ourcountry.

We are now in a trade war that imperils American consumers and both Chinese and American manufacturers.  As our president is fond of saying, we will see how that works out.  My guess is that we will regret replacing globalization with mercantilism and orderly dispute resolution with winner-take-all bilateral bullying.

Mercantilism consists of protectionist policies that aim at government management of trade to maximize exports and minimize imports through high tariffs and import quotas.  Mercantilism seeks self-sufficiency and domestic production at the expense of interdependence and comparative advantage.  This was China’s policy under Mao Zedong.  It is now America’s policy under Donald Trump.  It did not work for China under Mao.  Will it work for America under Trump?  I see no reason to believe it will.

Global supply chains achieve efficiencies by using comparative advantage to create transnational assembly lines.  Washington is now employing tariffs  to disrupt and destroy these.  As the U.S. closes its market, China is reaffirming its commitment to an expanded role in its economy for imports.

China has allowed itself to become dependent on America for a significant part of its food, the top concern of all Chinese governments throughout history.  It relies on high tech U.S. inputs for its most advanced industries.  China has been by far the largest market for U.S.microchips.  It is the only large market outside North America where U.S. car companies have gained significant market share.  And so forth.

The Trump trade war, far from promoting further market opening by China and greater exports from the United States, is providing the Chinese with compelling arguments to eliminate their dependence on American agricultural and industrial products. Can services – in which we have enjoyed a rising surplus – be far behind?

Seven decades ago, the “greatest generation” of Americans led the way in creating the multilateral institutions that regulate the liberal world order in which we and China have since prospered.    Perhaps the oddest thing in this long recitation of ironies is that it is the United States, not China, that is now attempting to withdraw from that order, sabotaging it as we do so.

It is the United States, not China, that is attempting to overthrow multilateralism internationally and replace it with unilateralism.  It is the United States, not China, that is refusing to ratify international agreements and withdrawing from or abrogating those it finds inconvenient or burdensome.  It is the United States, not China, that exhibits open contempt for the sovereignty of other nations by invading, occupying, employing covert action, and making economic war on them to engineer regime change.  It is the United States, not China, that is a cobelligerent in an expanding list of horrifyingly destructive foreign wars.

Our independence began with a robust statement of our ideals and a commitment, as John Quincy Adams later put it, to be “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all … [but] the champion and vindicator only of [our] own.”  One key objective of the liberal order we Americans created was to make the world safe for continuing national self-determination rather than for power politics or ideological homogenization.  How ironic that it is the Chinese, not Americans, who now posit that the consent of the governed, not foreign approval based on ideological criteria, is the source of political legitimacy!  And it is the Chinese, not we Americans, who now go out of their way to show respect for the sovereign diversity of nations!  

We have differences with China and some entirely legitimate complaints about its trade and investment practices.  Experience shows that, with intelligent diplomacy, such disputes with China can be resolved by negotiation.  They do not – indeed must not – constitute a casus belli.  Treating them as such will not just cost us dearly.  It could be fatal.

We have changed China in more ways than we appear to recognize.  We have changed too.  In some ways, internationally, under our 45^th president, it seems we have met the enemy and he is who we used to be.

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Ambassador Freeman chairs Projects International, Inc. He is a retired U.S. defense official, diplomat, and interpreter, the recipient of numerous high honors and awards, a popular public speaker, and the author of five books.

On December 28, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) released an official statement inviting the Damascus government to assert control of the areas, from which YPG units had allegedly withdrawn, in particular Manbij. The YPG added that the decision is caused by the Turkish threat and that the group will concentrate its efforts on combating ISIS.

Syrian troops reportedly started entering the town of Manbij in the morning of the same day.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) have continued concentrating troops and military equipment near the Syrian border. According to fresh reports, the TAF has deployed at least 10 M60T battle tanks and several armored vehicles in the province of Kilis.

On December 27, the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation announced the reopening of the country’s embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Abdul Hakim al-Nuaimi was appointed as the UAE’s charge d’affaires in Damascus.

The reopening of the UAE embassy in Syria is another important step in the framework of the broader efforts of the Damascus government to restore its role in the region. Furthermore, this confirms that the UAE sees the Assad government as a legitimate government of Syria. This is something what the UAE’s key ally, the US, has repeatedly challenged by its statements and actions.

Russian companies are reportedly planning to construct an airport in the city of Tartus, as well as joint Syrian-Russian plant to produce vaccines within a framework of agreements signed during the 11th session of the Syrian-Russian Intergovernmental Commission held on December 14th in Damascus. Other notable bilateral projects include rebuilding the car tires’ factory and construction of a new cement plant.

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When historians examine the first few decades of the so-called post-Cold War era, they are likely to marvel at the clumsy and provocative policies that the United States and its NATO allies pursued toward Russia. Perceptive historians will conclude that a multitude of insensitive actions by those governments poisoned relations with Moscow, and by the latter years of the Obama administration, led to the onset of a new cold war. During the Trump administration, matters grew even worse, and that cold war threatened to turn hot.

Since the history of our era is still being written, we have an opportunity to avoid such a cataclysmic outcome. However, the behavior of America’s political, policy, and media elites in response to the latest parochial quarrel between Russia and Ukraine regarding the Kerch Strait suggests that they learned nothing from their previous blunders. Worse, they seem determined to intensify an already counterproductive, hardline policy toward Moscow.

U.S. leaders managed to get relations with Russia wrong just a few years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. One of the few officials to capture the nature of the West’s bungling and how it fomented tensions was Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense during the final years of George W. Bush’s administration and the first years of Barack Obama’s. In his surprisingly candid memoirs, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, Gates recalls his report to Bush following the 2007 Munich Security Council, at which Russian President Vladimir Putin vented about Western security transgressions, including the planned deployment of a missile defense system in Central Europe.

“When I reported to the president my take on the Munich conference, I shared my belief that from 1993 onward, the West, and particularly the United States, had badly underestimated the magnitude of the Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War . . . .” Yet even that blunt assessment given to Bush did not fully capture Gates’s views on the issue. “What I didn’t tell the president was that I believed the relationship with Russia had been badly mismanaged after [George H. W.] Bush left office in 1993. Getting Gorbachev to acquiesce to a unified Germany as a member of NATO had been a huge accomplishment. But moving so quickly after the collapse of the Soviet Union to incorporate so many of its formerly subjugated states into NATO was a mistake.”

Specific U.S. actions were ill-considered as well, in Gates’s view. “U.S. agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocation.”

His list of foolish or arrogant Western actions went on. Citing NATO’s military interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo during Bill Clinton’s administration, Gates noted that “the Russians had long historical ties with Serbia, which we largely ignored.” And in an implicit rebuke to his current boss, Gates asserted that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.” That move was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.” Indeed, events regarding Ukraine after Gates completed his memoirs illustrated that U.S. arrogance and meddling knew few bounds. U.S. officials openly sided with demonstrators who overthrew Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russian government, and then reacted with shock and anger when Russia retaliated by seizing and annexing Crimea.

Gates’s overall assessment of Western, especially U.S., policy toward Russia during the post-Cold War era was unsparingly harsh—and devastatingly accurate: “When Russia was weak in the 1990s and beyond, we did not take Russian interests seriously. We did a poor job of seeing the world from their point of view and managing the relationship for the long term.” Unfortunately, Gates was one of the rare anomalies in the American foreign policy community regarding policy toward Russia.

His criticism, trenchant as it is, still understates the folly of the policies that the United States and its NATO allies have pursued toward Moscow. The treatment that three successive U.S. administrations meted out to a newly capitalist, democratic Russia was appalling myopic. Even before Vladimir Putin came to power—and long before Russia descended into being an illiberal democracy and then an outright authoritarian state—the Western powers treated the country as a de facto enemy. The NATO nations engaged in a series of provocations even though Moscow had engaged in no aggressive conduct that even arguably justified such actions.

The determination to confront Russia has only grown over the years, as the current tensions involving the Kerch Strait illustrate. When Russian security forces fired on three Ukrainian naval vessels that attempted to force a transit of the Kerch Strait (a narrow waterway between Russia’s Taman Peninsula and Russian-annexed Crimea that connects the Black Sea and Sea of Azov), the United States and its NATO allies reacted furiously. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley branded Russia’s conduct “outlaw actions.”

An array of U.S. lawmakers and pundits advocate highly provocative steps in response. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged an increase in U.S. arms sales to Ukraine, asserting, “If Putin starts seeing Russian soldier fatalities, that changes his equation.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-OK) threatened new sanctions on Russia and called for a coordinated response between the United States and its European allies. “If Putin continues his Black Sea bullying,” Inhofe stated, “the United States and Europe must consider imposing additional sanctions on Russia, inserting a greater U.S. and NATO presence in the Black Sea region and increasing military assistance for Ukraine.”

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) echoed those views. Menendez called for tougher sanctions, additional NATO exercises on the Black Sea and more U.S. security aid to Ukraine, “including lethal maritime equipment and weapons.” Some hawks even seem receptive to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s call on NATO to station warships in the Sea of Azov, even though such a step would likely lead to a shooting war between the West and Russia.

Far too many Western (especially American) analyses explicitly or implicitly act as though the United States and its NATO allies worked assiduously to establish cordial relations with Russia but were compelled to adopt hardline policies solely because of Russia’s perversely aggressive conduct. That is a distorted, self-serving portrayal on the part of NATO partisans. It falsely portrays the West as purely a reactive player—that NATO initiatives were never insensitive, provocative, or aggressive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, the opposite is closer to the mark; Russia’s actions, both in terms of timing and virulence, tended to be responses to aggressive Western initiatives. Unfortunately, avid NATO supporters seem determined to double down, insisting that the Trump administration adopt even more uncompromising policies.

Contending that Moscow is to blame for the deterioration of East-West relations because of its military actions in Georgia and Ukraine, as U.S. opinion leaders tend to do, is especially inaccurate. The problems began much earlier than the events in 2008 and 2014. The West humiliated a defeated adversary that showed every sign of wanting to become part of a broader Western community. Expanding NATO and trampling on Russian interests in the Balkans were momentous early measures that torpedoed friendly relations.

Such policy myopia was reminiscent of how the victorious Allies inflicted harsh treatment on a defeated, newly democratic Weimar Germany after World War I. The NATO powers are treating Russia as an enemy, and there is now a serious danger that the country is turning into one. That development would be an especially tragic case of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more than 750 articles on international affairs.  His latest book is Gullible Superpower: U.S. Support for Bogus Foreign Democratic Movements (forthcoming, February 2019).

Featured image is from Free Wind 2014/Shutterstock

Afghanistan has always been of particular interest to world powers and they would most certainly try to conquer it. But not for the sake of earning bragging rights, but to secure control over a bridgehead connecting the countries of Central and South Asia. It is for this reason that over the past few decades, Afghanistan has been the scene of bitter hostilities between major Western powers and local resistance groups unwilling to surrender their sovereignty so that Washington could pursue its own national interests. But this rivalry did nothing to improve living conditions of the local population or ensure peace and security in Afghanistan, instead we witness this proud country being transformed into a brewing pot for instability and chaos. Almost two decades after the initial invasion of this country American servicemen are almost universally perceived as an illegal occupation force here.

As it’s been pointed out by the Stars and Stripes with a special reference to the US Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT) special report, between the start of the year and the end of October, US dropped 5,982 munitions on Afghanistan. Even though this report doesn’t study the whole year, the number stated surpasses the previous annual record of about 5,400 recorded in 2011 at the height of the US troop surge.

Unsurprisingly, the same AFCENT report states that the number of civilian casualties over the same period of time reached an all time high. This results in the Taliban increasing the number of its operations, inflicting one crushing blow on pro-Western security forces after another. So it’s only logical that we see reports stating that Afghan ground forces have suffered heavy casualties in recent months. This brings the total of Afghan soldiers and local policemen who perished since 2015, when local troops took over combat operations from the US and NATO, to a rather grave death toll of 30,000 men.

Just recently, the Brown University released its own evaluation of the Afghan war casualties, stating that at least 140 thousand men lost their lives in direct hostilities. Over the period of seventeen years, at least 6 thousand American servicemen sacrificed their lives defending Washington’s grand designs in Afghanistan, together with eleven hundred servicemen from the countries of the so-called US-led coalition. The authors behind the study showed their exceptional integrity by stating that those the lowest possible number of casualties, as nobody has precise numbers on his hands. To make the matters worse, we don’t have any reports on the number of American men and women who were broken mentally or physically by this brutal war and were sent home in order not to skew the numbers. To make the matters worse, if unofficial sources are to be believed, the total number of casualties of the Afghan war, including those that perished because of the total destruction of the Afghan civil infrastructure, leaves us with a mind-numbing number of one million human lives lost. Additionally, 2,6 million Afghan citizens were displaced in the course of the hostilities and had to flee the country.

That is why the lingering US and NATO military presence in Afghanistan can hardly be described in any other way than a complete and total mess. It seems that local citizens share pretty much the same evaluation of the situation on the ground, as there’s reports of an ever increasing number of protests against the actions of the US Air Force being held all across Afghanistan.

Unsurprisingly, the Weekly Standard would feature an article with a very telling title that goes: The “Afghanistan War Is Over. We Lost”. The article itself states that the Trump administration has been voicing its plans to withdraw American troops, but it never fulfill those due to the nature of American foreign policy.

As it’s been pointed on Zero Hedge, a peaceful Afghanistan led by a single central government is highly unlikely to go in the wake of Washington’s global designs. Yet, Washington loves to brag that the US is playing an instrumental part in bringing peace to Afghanistan, while as a matter of fact it is the only obstacle standing in the way of peaceful negotiations.

Meanwhile, the US-backed Afghan government is rapidly losing ground to the Taliban and other rebel groups. Last year’s report by the Special Inspector General for Reconstruction of Afghanistan states that the government controls or has influence over no more than 57% of the territory of Afghanistan. According to a recent BBC study, Taliban militants are freely operating across 70% of Afghanistan’s lands. According to Pentagon’s evaluation, there was no more than 15 thousand militants operating in Afghanistan a decade ago. Today this figure is believed to exceed 60 thousand men.

It’s been pointed out that it is not the incumbent Afghan government but the United States which is really calling the shots in Afghanistan. Indeed, the US has a number of strategic interests in this region. These interests compel it to stay in Afghanistan. Therefore, the US will naturally be more interested in preserving its broader strategic interests than bring peace to this war-ravaged country. At present, there is a sort of deadlock in the dialogue process between the US-backed Afghan government and the Taliban as both are trying to reach a negotiated settlement on their own terms.

According to the Nation, the US and its allies should seriously evolve a comprehensive exit strategy to completely pull their troops out of Afghanistan. In fact, the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from this conflict is also a major precondition by the Taliban and other insurgent groups to make peace in Afghanistan.

However, NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg would still insist that the price of withdrawal from Afghanistan both in financial expenditures and human lives is going to be much higher that NATO is paying now for staying. This was stated on December 5 at Stoltenberg’s meeting with heads of foreign ministers of the alliance. In his comments on the results of this meeting, the spokesperson for the Afghan high peace council, Sayed Ihsan Taheri stated that NATO and its partners told the Afhgan government that they were prepared to withdraw their troops should the people of Afghanistan explicitly express their will on this matter.

Yet, the Indian Punchline would reveal that the recent Moscow conference on Afghanistan brought to light that the peace talks will get a big fillip if the US and Russia work in tandem. It would also add that everything depends on the Trump administration reversing course and accepting a Russian role. But this will have to be a political decision at the highest level in the White House. So far, the sitting US president has left it to the Pentagon commanders to pursue his Afghan strategy. But the strategy to weaken the Taliban to the point they would sue for peace is simply unworkable and is counterproductive.

Stabilization of Afghanistan is, perhaps, where US-Russia cooperation is “doable”. There is no real backlog of bitterness or contradictions. The US cannot say Russia is responsible for its defeat in Afghanistan. In the interests of regional security and stability in Central Asia, Moscow helped out wherever, whenever the US wanted help. Simply put, what is needed is a reset of the American mindset.

Yet, it’s been added that the US has now started realizing two important things in Afghanistan. Firstly, it looks convinced that it can’t control or stabilize Afghanistan through military means alone. Secondly, it has started considering the Taliban an important reality on the ground without engaging whom through a meaningful dialogue, there can hardly be peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Last month, one could come across numerous reports about Donald Trump evaluating the possibility of visiting Afghanistan before the end of the year. However, it seems unlikely that he will be able to make visit in the last couple days of the year, which means that the White House hasn’t fully grasped the ground realities of Afghanistan. Yet, one can only hope that sooner or later the Trump administration will realize that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is just as imminent as withdrawal from Syria was.

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Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”  

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“Reformed” captain Jair Bolsonaro already committed to the “market” the handover of all decisions in the economic area to large capital, under the hegemony of financial capital and foreign corporations (as personified in Paulo Guedes and his Chicago Boys, including Levy in the Brazilian Development Bank-BNDES). As per the President’s statements, his will be a government directly headed by businessmen committed to the reduction of the “Brazil cost,” that is, to the increase of private profit. A government with such profile would not only give continuity but also radicalize Michel Temer’s agenda with the aim of implementing the following measures:

1. A brutal reduction in compensation costs for the workforce (that is, a reduction of the minimum wage and the end of various labour rights, combined with a deterioration of working conditions, through the generalization of intermittent work, subcontracting, and the dismantling of labour justice);

2. The private appropriation of all possible natural resources (oil, mined minerals, land, water, and biodiversity), eliminating any bureaucratic or legal obstacles, trampling over traditional populations and environmental concerns. See statements made on reviewing the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve, given that there are 90 (Ninety!!!) corporations presenting requests to exploit its mineral wealth. See Pre-Sal’s wealth, estimated by the FUP (an oil workers’ federation) to be a patrimony of a trillion dollars, already handed over in the bidding processes carried out until now, and which should continue further. In order to eliminate any environmental barrier, he appointed a truculent minister, with no experience, and completely aligned with agribusiness and large capital, who financed him;

3. The privatization of 149 State enterprises of which only part of Petrobras would remain. They foresee that they can gain 850 billion reals for the public coffers, which would contribute to massacring the public deficit, given that this represents only two years of interest that the government pays banks, and included in that servile process, is the approval of the handover of EMBRAER to Boeing, already in the final sales process, awaiting the government’s approval as contemplated in the reserve clause;

4. The privatization of Social Security where the problem is neither the deficit nor the privileges, especially those of judges and the military, which will not be modified. What banks want is the right to implement a private social security plan, dreaming of large pension funds, with a no-cost access to national savings, as is already taking place with the social security of the BB, Caixa, and Petrobras, which turned into large operators in the speculative investment markets;

5. The dismantling and privatizing public education through the chronic resources and investments in schools and universities; the mass implementation of long-distance training via private corporations; the substitution of public hiring process for technicians and professors by subcontracting; the drastic reduction of academic scholarships, research and support for remaining in the university; the imposition of university presidents by the Education Ministry to the detriment of democratic elections by the academic community; and ideological persecution against the freedom of teaching and research;

6. The scrapping and privatization of public health through defunding of the SUS, the weak regulation of private healthcare providers, the generalization of public-private partnerships as a management model, and the substitution of public contests by temporary subcontracting);

7. The privatization of the public financial system – Banco do Brasil, BNB and Caixa – and a subcontracting and privatization process of public services in general. Anything that can provide profit will be transferred to capitalist corporations to benefit;

8. The favoring of the arms industry (both national and foreign), through the liberation of permits and the budget priorities demanded by police and military forces, including agreements with Israel for the provision of equipment;

9. A public security model that is even more bellicose, less responsible to society and legally less accountable, with the liberation of arms sales, the lowering of the legal age to be tried as a criminal to 16, and a punitive process that is going to fill our prisons even more that they already are;

10. Brazil’s foreign alignment and subordination to the economic interests of the USA and also the political alignment with right-wing governments such as Italy, Israel, and Taiwan, creating a militarist agenda that counters its diplomatic tradition and places peace at risk.

Conclusion

Implementing an agenda like this (free market for those on top and “the law of the jungle” for those below) can only be done through intimidation, persecution, and violence. From a personal viewpoint, the President is an idiot: he is coarse, lacks culture, and was never taken seriously, not even in the armed forces. He is only reliable for the “market” (the bourgeoisie, as we said) because he will outsource all strategic decisions of his eventual government, maintaining control for himself only secondary issues to rage about and launch factoids at public opinion. That is the reading of the relevant economic actors paying the bill for his campaign. The problem (for them) is that Bolsonaro is unprepared to even understand all this, which presents a forecast of unpredictability and uncertainty for the “investors” (the capitalists).

Furthermore, the subject has no organized social and party base that is capable of providing mass sustainability (the so-called PSL is a conjunctural phenomenon, without programmatic consistency). On the other hand, Bolsonaro presents an authoritarian manner that constitutes his public figure that he cannot give up without negating himself. It is this grudge that generates an opposite reaction to what has been social plurality and international consensus until now.

In all, this buffoon is actually plausible only to the fanatics that follow him. The capitalists are using him now, but they have already put a price on him, and placed, as an expiration date, the execution of neoliberal reforms (the package of evils against the people and against the national patrimony, in a shock therapy style – for a year or two, at the most). After that, this character will be dispensable.

He will also use “spectacle” as a combat strategy, and he will be selective in dealing with corruption, Sérgio Moro being his minister, reinforcing “carwash” style prosecution – a selective and political use of the law, combined with the violation of constitutional rights, always calibrated according to the conjuncture. The Law of Borges will return: “Everything for our friends, the Law for our enemies!”

The uncertainty (for all) consists of the fact that, once Pandora’s Box is open, the demons will not easily return to it. As stated by Murphy’s Law, nothing is so bad that it cannot get worse.

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Following the second death of a child in U.S. Border Patrol custody in recent weeks, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) urgently calls for the immediate release of all detained children to community-based settings, access to independent medical providers for all detained children, and an independent investigation into the deaths. An eight-year-old boy from Guatemala, identified as Felipe Alonzo-Gomez, died on Christmas Eve in New Mexico, just two and a half weeks after seven-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin died in Texas.

Kathryn Hampton, PHR’s Asylum Network program officer, said,

“The death of this eight-year-old is a damning indictment of U.S.immigration policy. The Trump administration’s policy of mass detention of children and families is endangering the lives of children and has contributed to an environment that has now led to the deaths of two children in recent weeks. These fatalities are not isolated incidents, but rather represent an institutional failure, both to provide adequate conditions for migrants being held in U.S. custody and also to conduct transparent, timely investigations into repeated failures. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are responsible for all those in their custody and must be held accountable when policies are implemented that increase the risk that children will die, or face inadequate conditions that could have long-lasting effects on their development.”

A CBP statement indicates that the boy had been detained at a highway checkpoint since December 18, which would violate CBP guidelines that cap short-term detention at 72 hours due to inadequate conditions for longer detention, including a lack of beds and sanitation facilities. While CBP has not yet disclosed the cause of death, the cells are known as “hieleras” (ice boxes) and “perreras” (dog kennels), due to the extremely cold conditions and chain link fencing at detention facilities.

 “The 72-hour guideline is not followed or enforced, as Felipe Alonzo-Gomez’s case clearly shows,” Hampton added. “The DHS Office of the Inspector General has recorded the detention of children by CBP for as long as 25 days. Notably, DHS’s medical experts, Drs. Scott Allen and Pamela McPherson, warned of a significant risk of harm to children from an escalation of family detention. These risks are materializing, resulting in flagrant violations of human rights, including child deaths, which can only be expected to increase. PHR and medical professionals have repeatedly called out the health risks of child detention, particularly under the inhumane conditions implemented by the Trump administration as part of its ‘zero-tolerance’immigration enforcement policy. The health risks of detention only increase as the duration of detention and number of children detained increase, particularly in light of DHS’s inability to enforce even its own inadequate safeguards. We know from media reports that the El Paso sector Border Patrol,which had custody of both children who died, had 700 children in its custody as of December 25, despite not having adequate measures in place for caring for children,” added Hampton.

PHR calls for the immediate implementation of the following measures, consistent with U.S.obligations under international human rights law and best practices for child welfare:

1. A transparent, impartial, and independent investigation into the deaths of these children which must involve medical professionals, including pediatric specialists, with access to all medical information related to the case. The proposed internal review by the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility is insufficient and the DHS Office of the Inspector General must investigate overall conditions in CBP short-term holding facilities and all other DHS facilities holding children.
2. DHS must transfer all children held in Border Patrol custody to developmentally appropriate settings, allow independent experts to evaluate conditions of confinement, and must pursue community-based alternatives to detention.
3. Congress must prioritize oversight of DHS operational agencies, including the introduction of legally-binding standards related to medical screening and medical care for all detainees and financial support for alternatives to detention, especially for children and families.
4. CBP must ensure thorough medical screening by qualified health professionals for all those in its custody without delay, with adequate provision for language interpretation.
5. CBP must provide safe channels for asylum seekers and ensure capacity at ports of entry to process those who come to the border with a credible fear of persecution in a safe, timely, and humane manner.

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Six decades have passed since the gathering of the First All-African People’s Conference (AAPC) in Accra, Ghana during December 8-13, 1958.

At this time Ghana was the fountainhead of Pan-Africanism where the previous year the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and its founder Dr. Kwame Nkrumah won independence from British colonialism.

Immediately after the declaration of liberation, Nkrumah proclaimed in his inaugural speech on March 6, 1957 that the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total independence of the African continent. Later in mid-April 1958 the First Conference of Independent African States (CIAS) was held in Accra with eight liberated governments in attendance.

Kwame Nkrumah at the All African People’s Conference, Dec. 1958

Nonetheless, the AAPC was much different in character than the CIAS. There were approximately 300 delegates in attendance representing 65 different national liberation movements, trade unions and mass organizations from 28 countries.

At the time there were nine independent African states and all of them sent representatives to the AAPC with the exception of Sudan which had just undergone a military coup on November 17. Leading members of the anti-racist movement in apartheid Union of South Africa were not present either since many were ensnarled in the racist legal system which had indicted over 150 Congress movement organizers for treason in 1956.

The African National Congress (ANC) had three official delegates at the conference, one of whom was from the United States. Writers Ezekiel Mphahlele and Alfred Hutchinson were the other ANC representatives while Rev. Guthrie Michael Scott was there from Southwest Africa (later Namibia).

These delegates even from independent states came to Accra not as envoys of their governments. They were present representing their political parties, labor organizations and mass struggles.

Delegations traveled to Ghana for the AAPC from Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, which was in the throes of an armed struggle against French imperialism led by the National Liberation Front (FLN). There were also leaders from Somalia, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar.  The British colonies of Nyasaland (later Malawi), Northern and Southern Rhodesia (today Zambia and Zimbabwe), had significant representation.

Africans Demand Liberation (1958) (Source: British Pathé)

Others from the Cameroons, divided between French and British colonialists, along with Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Togoland were present in large numbers. The language barriers between French and British outposts seemed to be overcome through translations and bi-lingual delegates illustrating the genuine pan-African character of the conference.

George Padmore, a longtime Communist and Pan-Africanist writer and organizer from the Caribbean nation of Trinidad, served as the principle convener of the AAPC. During this period Padmore was Nkrumah’s chief advisor on African affairs while he resided in Ghana.

Kenyan trade union organizer Tom Mboya chaired the five day conference. Other notables were Patrice Lumumba of the newly-created Congolese National Movement (MNC) and Frantz Fanon of Martinique representing the Algerian FLN.

Official observers attended from the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) where messages of solidarity were sent by leaders Chou en-Lai and Nikita Khrushchev. The official position of the AAPC was non-alignment and positive neutrality in regard to international affairs. However, the U.S. and other western states were severely criticized for their colonialist and imperialist policies.

The AAPC had a large multi-racial observer-delegation from the U.S. which included Congressman Charles Diggs, Jr. of Detroit; Mary-Louise Hooper, a wealthy heiress and campaigner for civil rights and the struggle against apartheid, who represented the ANC in Accra; Dr. Marguerite Cartwright, a prominent African American sociologist and journalist whose columns appeared regularly in various publications including the Pittsburgh Courier and Amsterdam News of New York; Claude A. Barnett, the founder of the Associated Negro Press (ANP) which publicized events in colonial and post-colonial Africa for decades; Etta Moten-Barnett, a well-known actress-artist and the wife of Claude A. Barnett; Eslanda Robeson, an anthropologist and writer who was a co-founder of the Council on African Affairs (CAA) and the wife of African American artist and actor Paul Robeson; Shirley Graham-Du Bois, a composer, writer and leading member of the U.S. Communist Party, who read an extensive address penned by her husband; among others.

All African People’s Conference American Committee on Africa (ACOA) delegation, Dec. 1958

This gathering was a milestone in the Pan-African struggle being the first international gathering on the continent which brought together various parties and non-governmental forces to map out a strategy for the total liberation of Africa. Nkrumah in his concluding address called for the formation of a United States of Africa.

Pan-Africanism and National Liberation

Of course the movement towards liberation and equality among African people was accelerating by the late 1950s in various parts of the continent and the Diaspora. The AAPC would hold two additional summits: in Tunis in January 1960 and Cairo in March 1961.

On June 4, 1962, Nkrumah and the CPP hosted the Nationalist Conference of African Freedom Fighters in Accra. The Ghanaian leader’s address to the 1962 meeting identified imperialism as the main enemy of African people fighting for their liberation.

By early 1963 there were over 30 independent African states on the continent. On the 25^th of May the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was formed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which established a Liberation Committee designed to provide material aid to those still fighting to overthrow colonialism.

However, Nkrumah at the founding OAU Summit distributed his classic work entitled “Africa Must Unite” where he dedicated an entire chapter to the political economy of neo-colonialism, the mechanism utilized to continue western imperialist domination over the land, resources, waterways and people of the continent.

Just two years later (1965), Nkrumah published “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism,” where the U.S. capitalist system was exposed for its role as being the major impediment to genuine African liberation and unity. Nkrumah and the CPP were committed to building a socialist Ghana and Africa, noting this was a prerequisite to the unity which is necessary for the region to move beyond neo-colonialism.

Nevertheless, the anti-imperialist states in Africa constituted a minority surrounded by pro-western client governments which were weak and fragile. The internal class and political contradictions in Ghana during the mid-1960s opened the way for the U.S. administration of the-then President Lyndon B. Johnson to engineer the overthrow of Nkrumah while he was out of the country on a mission to end the Vietnam War. When Nkrumah arrived in Peking, People’s Republic of China on February 24, 1966, he was informed by Premier Chou en-Lai that the CPP had been toppled by lower-ranking military officers and police.

Nkrumah soon resettled in Guinea-Conakry where the-then President Ahmed Sekou Toure declared the Ghanaian leader as co-president. Nkrumah remained in Guinea where he wrote prolifically on the emerging armed phase of the African Revolution and the burgeoning class struggle. By 1971 he was sent to Romania for medical treatment where he died on April 27, 1972.

Revolutionary Pan-African Renewal Needed for the 21^st Century

Even with the transformation of the OAU to the African Union (AU) in 2002, the continent remains underdeveloped and fragmented. Many of the programs advocated by Nkrumah at the AAPC and the first three summits of the OAU (1963-1965) have been adopted, the most recent of which is the creation of an African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) on March 21, 2018 in Rwanda. However, these measures absent of a coordinated socialist revolutionary program for the strengthening of the working class, farmers and youth will not result in a United Africa based upon the interests of the majority.

Military intervention by the U.S. and other NATO countries is continuing to render the continent defenseless in the face of growing imperialist intrigue designed to facilitate the exploitation of the natural wealth and labor of the people. The coup against Nkrumah was part and parcel of a series of maneuvers to prevent the economic and consequent politically independent existence of Africa.

The destruction of Libya by the Pentagon and NATO in 2011 illustrates the mortal dangers of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). Libya, the most advanced country in Africa under the former martyred leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi, in 2018 is continuing as a major source of instability and reaction where Africans are sold into human bondage, often facing death in the Mediterranean while seeking an elusive “better life” in Europe, further institutionalizing the theft of national sovereign wealth which has rendered the North African state destitute.

Pentagon bombs are being dropped on a weekly basis in the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia while AFRICOM military bases are utilized as spring boards to carry out the genocidal war against neighboring Yemen, a Washington-led war which utilizes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to carry out the imperialist biddings of Wall Street and the White House.

Pan-Africanism in the 21^st century must be built from the ranks of the proletariat and the popular stratums of the continent. The stability and defense of Africa will be secured when the masses take control of the resources and labor of the people, guaranteeing socialism on a regional scale.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

One of the most enduring popular movements of 2018 has been the ongoing Great March of Return in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Since 30 March, thousands of Palestinians in the small coastal territory have demonstrated along the boundary with Israel, demanding the implementation of Palestinian refugees’ right of return and an end to the crippling 11-year siege of Gaza.

But such high-scale mobilisation has come at a high cost: according to Middle East Eye’s calculations, 190 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces within the scope of the demonstrations between 30 March and 30 November – equivalent to one Palestinian killed every 31 hours in eight months.

The numbers exclude more than 50 victims of air strikes or other Israeli military actions when demonstrations were not taking place.

The death toll peaked on 14 May – the day the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem – when 68 people were killed.

During that same time frame, more than 25,000 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. One Israeli soldier was also killed within the context of the March.

The Gaza Ministry of Health has identified and released the names, ages, and towns of Palestinians killed: from these, MEE has narrowed the list down to those killed during the protests.

While Israel has claimed that the protests have been orchestrated by Hamas, the de facto ruling party in Gaza that is deemed a terrorist organisation by Israel and the US, the organisers of the March have rejected these claims. For its part Hamas has not formally recognised any of the slain Palestinians as belonging to its organisation.

Among the dead are members of other Palestinian resistance groups – such as Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – as well as journalists, paramedics, farmers, people with disabilities and children. The UN General Assembly denounced Israel’s use of force against the demonstrators as “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate”, while many rights groups slammed it as illegal, “horrifying” and “calculated”.

The extent of the fatalities may be daunting, but behind each number is an individual. Through the list below MEE has tried, as much as possible, to put a name, face and a story to the casualties of a protest movement that continues to this day.

March: The protest begins

The Great March of Return began on 30 March, when Palestinians commemorate Land Day, a day to denounce Israeli expropriation of Palestinian lands.

The demonstration drew thousands of people to tent encampments along the boundary between Gaza and Israel – but during that one day, Israeli forces fatally shot 19 Palestinians, five of whom succumbed to their wounds days later.

Ahmed al-Ayidi, 17, died four months and one week after being shot in the head, marking the longest gap between injury and death during the March.

1. Jihad Zuhair Abu Gamous, 30, from the Khan Younis governorate, was the first casualty of the Great March of Return. The father of four was shot in the head on 30 March and died in hospital shortly afterwards.

2. Mohammed Kamal al-Najjar, 25, from the North Gaza governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the abdomen east of Jabaliya.

3. Ibrahim Salah Abu Shaar, 25, from the Rafah governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the neck in Rafah.

4. Amin Mansour Abu Muammar, 22, from the Rafah governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the head in Rafah.

5. Naji Abdullah Abu Hjeir, 25, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was killed on 30 March during protests near al-Bureij.

6. Abd al-Qader Mardy al-Hawajri, 42, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was killed on 30 March near the border east of the village of Juhr al-Deek.

7. Mahmoud Saadi Rahmi, 33, from the Gaza City governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the chest east of Gaza City.

8. Mohammed Naim Abu Amro, 27, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the stomach and killed on 30 March near Jabaliya. At the time he was assisting an injured protester who had fallen to the ground. Abu Amro was a well-known artist in Gaza.

9. Ahmed Ibrahim Ashour Odeh, 19, from the Gaza City governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the head east of Gaza City.

10. Jihad Ahmed Farina, 35, from the Gaza City governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the head east of Gaza City.

11. Bader Fayeq al-Sabbagh, 22, from the North Gaza governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the head east of Jabaliya. He was 300 metres from the boundary fence as he and his brother observed protests from a distance.

12. Abd al-Fattah Bahjat Abd al-Nabi, 18, from the North Gaza governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the back. He was running away from the Gaza-Israel boundary east of Jabaliya, northern Gaza.

13. Sari Walid Abu Odeh, 27, a farmer from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 30 March by artillery shells northeast of Beit Hanoun. He had tried to rescue injured protesters running towards the fields where he was working, 300 metres from the boundary fence.

14. Hamdan Ismail Abu Amsha, 23, another farmer from the North Gaza governorate, died on 30 March. He was killed by Israeli shelling alongside his colleague Sari Abu Odeh (above).

15. Faris Mahmoud Mohammed al-Raqab, 26, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the stomach on 30 March east of Khan Younis. He succumbed to his injuries on 2 April.

16. Shadi Hamdan al-Kashef, 34, from the Rafah governorate, was shot in the head on 30 March and succumbed to his injuries six days later on 5 April.

17. Thaer Mohammed Rabaa, 30, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 30 March and succumbed to his wounds a week later on 6 April.

18. Marwan Awad Qudeih, 45, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot with expanding bullets in the legs on 30 March near Khuzaa east of Khan Younis, fracturing bones and severing arteries. The father of seven succumbed to his wounds nine days later on 8 April.

19. Ahmed Jihad al-Ayidi, 17, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot in the head on 30 March in central Gaza. The teen was eventually transferred to a Palestinian hospital in the occupied West Bank on 24 April, but remained in critical condition until his death on 5 August, four months and a week later.

April: First full month of marches

Demonstrators tear away barbed wire along the fence separating Gaza from Israel (M Hajjar/MEE)

In the first full month of the March, demonstrators gathered at tent encampments on a daily basis.

Israeli forces fatally shot 25 Palestinians: among the dead were journalists Yasser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein.

20. Ahmed Omar Arafa, 25, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died on 3 April after being shot in the back and arm east of al-Bureij.

21. Mujahid Nabil al-Khudari, 23, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 5 April by an Israeli drone during protests near the Erez border crossing.

22. Mohammed Sayid Moussa al-Hajj Saleh, 33, from the Rafah governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the abdomen and chest east of Gaza City.

23. Alaa Yahya al-Zamili, 14, from the Rafah governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the neck east of Rafah.

24. Sedqi Faraj Abu Etaiwi, 45, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the neck east of al-Bureij.

25. Ibrahim Ziyad Salama al-Aur, 20, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the head east of al-Bureij.

26. Hussein Mohammed Adnan Madi, 13, from the Gaza City governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the stomach east of Gaza City. A day before his death, MEE photographer Mohammed al-Hajjar had taken a picture of the teenager.

27. Osama Khamis Qudeih, 39, from the Khan Younis governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the head east of Khan Younis.

28. Majdi Ramadan Shabat, 38, from the North Gaza governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the neck east of Gaza City.

29. Yasser Murtaja, 31, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the abdomen on 6 April. A photojournalist at Ain Media Production company, he was wearing a vest marked “Press” when he was shot. He succumbed to his wounds the following morning on 7 April in hospital, leaving behind a wife and a two-year-old son.

30. Hamza Abd al-Aal, 22, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot in the head on 6 April east of al-Bureij. He died the next day in hospital.

31. Abdullah Mohammed al-Shahri, 28, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed by Israeli forces on 12 April.

32. Islam Mahmoud Haraz Allah, 28, from the North Gaza governorate, died on 13 April after being shot in the abdomen east of Gaza City.

33. Ahmed Mohammed Ashraf Abu Hussein, 26, a freelance photographer and journalist from the North Gaza governorate, was shot in the abdomen with an expanding bullet on 13 April east of Jabaliya while covering the protests. He was transferred to the West Bank then Israel for treatment but died on 24 May, 42 days after being shot.

34. Ahmed Rashad al-Athamna, 24, from the North Gaza governorate, died after being shot in the neck on 20 April east of Jabaliya.

35. Ahmed Nabil Abu Aql, 24, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 20 April with a bullet to the back of the head as he stood 150 metres from the boundary fence, according to witnesses. Abu Aql had been on crutches since December 2017, when he was shot in the leg during another demonstration.

36. Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub, 14, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 20 April after being shot in the head with an expanding bullet east of Jabaliya.

37. Saad Abd al-Majid Abu Taha, 23, from the Khan Younis governorate, died on 20 April after being shot in the neck during protests east of Khan Younis.

38. Abdullah Mohammed Jibril al-Shamali, 20, from the Rafah governorate, was shot on 20 April while standing some 700 metres away from the boundary fence, succumbing to his wounds two days later on 22 April.

39. Tahrir Mahmoud Wahbah, 18, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head on 20 April east of Khan Younis. Wahbah, who was deaf, was reportedly caught on camerawhen he was shot with his back turned to Israeli soldiers. He died from his wounds three days later on 23 April.

40. Abd al-Salam Eid Zuhdi Bakr, 33, from the Khan Younis governorate, was killed on 27 April after being shot in the stomach east of Khuzaa.

41. Mohammed Amin al-Maqid, 21 from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 27 April during protests east of Khan Younis.

42. Khalil Naim Mustafa Atallah, 22, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 27 April east of Gaza City.

43. Azzam Hilal Uweida, 15, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head on 27 April near Khuzaa. He succumbed to his injuries the following morning on 28 April.

44. Anas Shawqi Abu Assar, 19, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot on 27 April and succumbed to his wounds a week later on 3 May.

May: Scores killed in one day

The Great March of Return was initially intended to end on 15 May, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba. But 14 May – the same day that the United States inaugurated its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem – turned out to be the be deadliest day of the March so far, accounting for more than one-third of casualties during the eight-month period.

In total, 73 Palestinians were fatally shot by Israeli forces during that month – 68 of them on 14 May. The bloodshed garnered international condemnation, and galvanised protesters to continue demonstrating for their rights.

45. Jabr Salem Abu Mustafa, 40, from the Khan Younis governorate, died on 11 May after being shot in the chest east of Khan Younis.

46. Jamal Abd al-Rahman Afana, 15, from the Rafah governorate, was shot by Israeli forces on 11 May and succumbed to his wounds a day later on 12 May.

47. Izz al-Din Moussa Mohammed al-Samak, 14, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was killed on 14 May by a bullet to the abdomen in central Gaza.

48. Wassal Fadel Izzat al-Sheikh Khalil, 15, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was killed on 14 May by a bullet to the head in central Gaza. She was the first of two Palestinian women to be killed by Israeli forces during the Great March of Return.

49. Ahmed Adel Moussa al-Shaer, 16, from the Khan Younis governorate, was killed on 14 May by a bullet to the chest east of Khan Younis. Islamic Jihad later announced that Shaer had been one of its members.

50. Sayid Mohammed Abu al-Kheir, 16, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May.

51. Imad Ali Sadeq al-Sheikh, 19, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May.

52. Zayed Mohammed Hassan Omar, 19, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the chest on 14 May east of Gaza City.

53. Mutasem Fawzi Mohammed Abu Luli, 20, from the Rafah governorate, was shot in the head on 14 May east of Rafah.

54. Anas Hamdan Salem Qudeih, 21, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the chest and killed on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

55. Mohammed Abd al-Salam Harraz, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May.

56. Yahya Ismail Rajab al-Dakour, 22, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May.

57. Mustafa Mohammed Samir al-Masri, 22, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May east of Gaza City.

58. Izz al-Din Nahed Salman al-Uweiti, 23, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head and killed on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

59. Mahmoud Mustafa Ahmed Assaf, 23, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 14 May.

60. Ahmed Fayez Harb Shehada, 23, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May.

61. Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansour, 25, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May.

62. Mohammed Ashraf Abu Sitta, 26, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot in the chest and killed on 14 May in northern Gaza.

63. Bilal Ahmed Saleh Abu Daqqa, 26, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head and killed on 14 May east Khan Younis.

64. Ahmed Majed Qassem Attallah, 27, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the thigh, severing a main artery, on 14 May east of Gaza City. He died later that day.

65. Mahmoud Rabah Elayyan Abu Muammar, 28, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head and killed on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

66. Musab Yousef Ibrahim Abu Leila, 28, from the Gaza City governorate, was hit by shrapnel in the back that penetrated his body below the heart on 14 May in the northern Gaza Strip. He died from his wounds on the same day.

67. Ahmed Fawzi Kamel al-Tater, 28, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the shoulder and back on 14 May east of Rafah.

68. Ubeida Salem Abd Rabbo Farhan, 30, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May. Islamic Jihad later announced that Farhan had been a member of its al-Quds Brigades.

69. Jihad Mufid Abd al-Monim al-Farra, 30, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

70. Fadi Hassan Salman Abu Salmi, 30, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May east of Khan Younis. Fadi had been using a wheelchair after his legs were amputated following an Israeli air strike in 2008. Islamic Jihad later announced that Farhan had been one of its members.

71. Motaz Bassam Kamel al-Nuno, 31, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May. He was reportedly a member of the Internal Security Department of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.

72. Mohammed Riyad Abd al-Rahman al-Amoudi, 31, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May.

73. Jihad Mohammed Osman Moussa, 31, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 14 May. He was reportedly a member of the Internal Security Department of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.

74. Shaher Mahmoud Mohammed al-Madhoun, 32, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May.

75. Moussa Jabr Abd al-Salam Abu Hassanin, 35, a paramedic from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May while working for the Palestinian Authority Civil Defence Department treating wounded demonstrators.

76. Mohammed Mahmoud Abd al-Moti Abd al-Aal, 39, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May.

77. Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Hamdan, 27, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

78. Ismail Khalil Ramadan al-Dahouk, 30, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May.

79. Ahmed Mahmoud Mohammed Rantisi, 27, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May.

80. Mahmoud Yahya Abd al-Wahab Hussein, 24, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 14 May in the central Gaza Strip.

81. Ahmed Abdullah Abdullah al-Adini, 30, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 14 May in central Gaza.

82. Saadi Sayid Fahmi Abu Salah, 16, from the North Gaza governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 14 May in northern Gaza.

83. Ahmed Zuheir Hamed al-Shawa, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May east of Gaza City.

84. Mohammed Hani Husni al-Najjar, 33, from the North Gaza governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May in northern Gaza.

85. Fadel Mohammed Atta Habashi, 34, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the neck on 14 May east of Gaza City.

86. Mahmoud Suleiman Ibrahim Aql, 32, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the knee and thigh on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

87. Mohammed Hassan Mustafa al-Abbadleh, 25, from the Khan Younis governorate, was killed on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

88. Mokhtar Kamel Abu Khamash, 23, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May in central Gaza.

89. Abd al-Salam Yousef Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Wahab, 39, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

90. Ali Mohammed Ahmed Khafaja, 21, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Rafah.

91. Mahmoud Hamad Saber Abu Touaima, 23, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

92. Kamel Jihad Kamel Muhanna, 19, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

93. Ahmed Salem Elayyan al-Jurf, 24, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the pelvis on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

94. Abd al-Rahman Sami Abu Matar, 18, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Gaza City.

95. Mohammed Abd al-Rahman Ali Meqdad, 28, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

96. Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundiya, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May east of Gaza City.

97. Mohammed Samir Mohammed Idweidar, 27, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 14 May in central Gaza.

98. Samer Nael Awni al-Shawa, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 14 May east of Gaza City.

99. Yazan Ibrahim Mohammed Tubasi, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the eye on 14 May east of Gaza City.

100. Imad Mohammed Khalil al-Nafar, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being hit by shrapnel in the shoulder, neck and back on 14 May east of Gaza City.

101. Amr Jumaa Abu Foul, 32, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot on 14 May east of Gaza City and succumbed to his wounds the following day on 15 May.

102. Ahmed Abed Abu Samra, 21, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 14 May east of Jabaliya and died five days later on 19 May.

103. Mouin Abd al-Hamid al-Saie, 58, from the Gaza City governorate, was injured on 14 May and succumbed to his wounds five days later on 19 May.

104. Mohammed Mazen Elayyan, 20, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot in the head on 14 May east of al-Bureij and died five days later on 19 May.

105. Mohannad Bakr Abu Tahoun, 20, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot in the head on 14 May, and died in a West Bank hospital 10 days later on 24 May.

106. Yasser Sami Saad al-Din Habib, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot on 14 May and died in a Jerusalem hospital 11 days later on 25 May.

107. Hussein Salem Abu Uwaida, 41, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the spine on 14 May as he was selling ice cream and water to demonstrators east of Gaza City, reportedly hundreds of metres away from the boundary fence. He succumbed to his wounds 12 days later on 26 May.

108. Nasser Aref Abd al-Raouf al-Areini, 28, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 14 May east of Jabaliya. He died from his wounds two weeks later on 28 May.

109. Naji Maysara Abdullah Ghneim, 22, from the Rafah governorate, was injured on 14 May east of Rafah. He succumbed to his wounds in a Jerusalem hospital 16 days later on 30 May.

110. Mohammed Naim Hamada, 30, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 14 May east of Gaza City. He died three weeks later on 3 June.

111. Mohammed Ghassan Abu Daqqa, 22, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot on 14 May east of Khuzaa town, and succumbed to his wounds in a Jerusalem hospital one month and one week later on 20 June.

112. Sari Dahoud al-Shobaki, 22, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the neck on 14 May, damaging his spinal cord and leaving him quadriplegic. His father, a doctor, accompanied him to Jerusalem where he was transferred for treatment, but Shobaki eventually died two months and five days later on 18 July.

113. Majd Suheil Mohammed Uqail, 26, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 14 May in northern Gaza, and succumbed to his wounds two months and 11 days later on 24 July.

114. Wissam Yousef Hijazi, 30, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head on 14 May east of Khan Younis. He was referred to an Egyptian hospital for treatment, but died from his wounds three months later while waiting to cross at the Rafah Border Terminal between Gaza and Egypt on 12 August.

115. Talal Adel Ibrahim Matar, 16, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the head on 15 May east of Gaza City.

116. Nasser Ahmed Mahmoud Ghurab, 52, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 15 May.

117. Bilal Bdeir Hussein al-Ashram, 18, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest and leg on 15 May.

June: Medic among the dead

Israeli forces killed 13 Palestinians during protests, three of whom succumbed to their wounds later. The killing in particular of volunteer paramedic Razan al-Najjar sparked condemnation.

Meanwhile, some Palestinian demonstrators began flying incendiary kites and balloons into Israel, sparking fires during the dry season and dominating Israeli media coverage throughout the summer.

118. Razan Ashraf al-Najjar, 21, from the Khan Younis governorate, a volunteer paramedic, was shot in the chest on 1 June east of Khan Younis while helping wounded demonstrators. She was the second woman and second paramedic to be killed by Israeli forces.

119. Imad Nabil Abu Darabeh, 20, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 8 June east of Jabaliya.

120. Ziyad Jadallah Abd al-Qader al-Brim, 28, from the Khan Younis governorate, was killed on 8 June east of Khan Younis.

121. Haitham Khalil Mohammed al-Jamal, 15, from the Rafah governorate, was killed on 8 June east of Khan Younis.

122. Yousef Salim al-Fasih, 29, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 8 June east of Gaza City.

123. Ahmed Ziyad Tawfiq al-Assi, 21, from the Khan Younis governorate was shot in the head on 8 June east of Khan Younis and succumbed to his wounds six days later, on 14 June.

124. Karam Ibrahim Arafat, 26, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head on 8 June east of Khan Younis, dying from his wounds one month and 16 days later on 23 July.

125. Zakariya Hussein Bashbash, 13, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot on 15 June east of al-Bureij. He died from his wounds three days later on 18 June.

126. Sabri Ahmed Abu Khader, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 18 June east of Gaza City, only five months after getting married.

127. Osama Khalil Abu Khater, 29, from the Khan Younis governorate died after being shot in the stomach on 24 June east of Khan Younis.

128. Abd al-Fattah Mustafa Abu Azoum, 17, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the head by Israeli tank fire while seeking to cross the boundary fence on 28 June near Rafah.

129. Mohammed Fawzi al-Hamayda, 24, from the Rafah governorate, was killed on 29 June east of al-Bureij.

130. Yasser Amjad Abu al-Naja, 12, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 29 June east of Khuzaa.

July: Israeli law further drives protests

The protests increasingly took place on Fridays, as the summer heat and exhaustion took their toll on daily demonstrations.

Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians during protests in July while Aviv Levy, a 21-year-old Israeli soldier from Petah Tikva, was killed by a Palestinian sniper.

In an alleged bid to fight incendiary kites, Israel temporarily halted fuel deliveries to Gaza. It also launched several air strikes, which kill at least 11 people (their names are not included here).

On 19 July, the Knesset passes the nation-state law, which cemented in Israel’s Basic Law the country’s status as a Jewish state. This is denounced as further enshrining discrimination against Palestinians into Israeli legislation.

131. Mohammed Jamal Abu Halima, 22, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being hit by shrapnel in the chest on 6 July east of Gaza City.

132. Othman Rami Heles, 14, from the Gaza City governorate was shot and killed on 13 July east of Gaza City.

133. Ahmed Yahya Atallah Yaghi, 26, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 13 July east of Gaza City.

134. Mohammed Nasser Shurrab, 20, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot on 13 July east of Khan Younis, succumbing to his wounds the next day, on 14 July.

135. Amjad Fayez Hamduna, 19, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 14 July east of Jabaliya, dying 25 days later, on 7 August

136. Mohammed Sharif Badwan, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest east of Gaza City.

137. Majdi Ramzi al-Satari, 12, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the head on 27 July east of Rafah.

138. Ghazi Mohammed Abu Mustafa, 44, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 27 July east of Khan Younis. He had also been injured in protests the previous month.

139. Moamin Fathi al-Hams, 17, from the Rafah governorate, was shot in the chest on 27 July east of Rafah. He died from his wounds the following day on 28 July.

August: The truce that never was

Seven Palestinians died during August, including medic Abdullah al-Qutati, and Ali al-Aloul, who at 65 was the oldest fatal casualty of the March.

Meanwhile, the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas intensified, with deadly air strikesand rocket fire. Egypt attempted to mediate a long-lasting truce between the two parties – much to the Palestinian Authority’s displeasure. In the end the much-discussed ceasefire amounted to nothing.

140. Moath Zayid al-Suri, 15, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot in the stomach on 3 August east of al-Bureij, succumbing to his wounds the following day on 4 August.

141. Suheib Abd al-Salam al-Kashif, 16, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot on 3 August east of Khan Younis. He died one month and 13 days later on 15 September.

142. Abdullah Sabri al-Qutati, 22, a volunteer paramedic from the Rafah governorate, was shot and killed on 10 August while providing medical care to a demonstrator, Ali al-Aloul (below), who had just been hit by live ammunition and also died that same day.

143. Ali Sayid al-Aloul, 65, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot on 10 August east of Rafah. In addition to being the oldest Palestinian killed by Israeli forces during the March, paramedic Abdullah al-Qutati (above), was fatally shot while attempting to save Aloul’s life.

144. Ahmed Jamal Salim Abu Luli, 41, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 11 August east of Rafah.

145. Saadi Akram Muammar, 27, from the Rafah governorate, was shot and killed on 17 August near Rafah. His wife was seven months pregnant at the time with their third child.

146. Karim Abu Fatayer, 28, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head – with a bullet that went through his eye – on 25 August east of al-Bureij.

September: Casualties rise again

After a slow-down in deaths during the summer, fatalities related to the Great March rose again as Egyptian efforts for a Hamas-Israel deal seemingly collapsed.

Israeli forces fatally shot 20 Palestinians in September, including 11-year-old Shadi Abd al-Aal, the youngest fatality of the March.

Meanwhile, the United States announced that it was cutting all its funding to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, sparking employee strikes.

Palestinians in Gaza also marked with bitterness the 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords.

147. Bilal Mustafa Khafaja, 17, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 7 September east of Rafah.

148. Ahmed Musbah Abu Tuyur, 16, from the Rafah governorate, was shot on 7 September east of Rafah city, succumbing to his wounds a day later on 8 September. A video shared on social media – whose authenticity could not be confirmed by MEE – purported to show the teen’s death.

149. Mohammed Bassam Mohammed Shakhsa, 25, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the head on 13 September east of Gaza City.

150. Shadi Abd al-Aziz Abd al-Aal, 11, from the North Gaza governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 September east of Jabaliya as he was reportedly throwing stones some 70 metres from the boundary – too far to reach soldiers stationed behind the fence. He is the youngest Palestinian killed by Israeli forces during the March of Return so far.

151. Hani Ramzi Afana, 21, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 September east of Rafah.

152. Mohammed Khalil Ghazi Shaqura, 21, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 September east of al-Bureij.

153. Naji Jamil Abu Assi, 17, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being hit by an Israeli missile on 18 September east of Khan Younis, alongside his cousin Alaa Abu Assi (below).

154. Alaa Ziyad Abu Assi, 20, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being hit by an Israeli missile on 18 September east of Khan Younis, alongside his cousin Naji Abu Assi (above).

155. Mohammed Ahmed Abu Naji, 33, from the North Gaza governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 18 September near Beit Hanoun.

156. Ahmed Mohammed Muhsin Omar, 23, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 18 September near Beit Hanoun, only one day before his birthday.

157. Moamin Ibrahim Abu Eyada, 15, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the head on 19 September east of Rafah.

158. Karim Mohammed Ali Kollab, 25, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot on 21 September east of Gaza City.

159. Imad Woud Ishteiwi, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the head on 23 September east of Gaza City.

160. Mohammed Fayez Salim Abu al-Sadaq, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 24 September in northern Gaza.

161. Mohammed Nayef al-Houm, 14, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the lower back on 28 September east of al-Bureij.

162. Mohammed Ashraf al-Awawdeh, 23, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 28 September near al-Bureij.

163. Iyad Khalil Ahmed al-Shaer, 18, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 28 September east of Gaza City.

164. Mohammed Walid Mustafa Haniyeh, 32, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the face on 28 September east of Gaza City.

165. Nasser Azmi Mohammed Musbeh, 12, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 28 September east of Khan Yunis.

166. Mohammed Ali Mohammed al-Anshasi, 19, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the stomach on 28 September near al-Bureij.

October: Calls for Gaza crackdown

Gaza’s ministry of health recorded 22 Palestinian fatalities relating to the Great March in October, as far-right Israeli politicians called for a stronger crackdown on the protests and a “strong blow” against Hamas – up to and including the possibility of all-out war.

The Israeli army launched nearly 90 air strikes on 27 October alone in the highest-intensity offensive on Gaza since the summer, with Palestinian factions firing some 35 rockets.

Meanwhile Qatar stepped in financially to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza with Israel’s approval, paying for fuel imports and civil servant salaries.

167. Ahmed Samir Abu Habil, 15, from the north Gaza governorate, died after he was hit by a high-velocity tear gas canister that lodged itself in his head on 3 October near Beit Hanoun.

168. Mahmoud Akram Mohammed Abu Samaan, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 5 October east of Gaza City.

169. Fares Hafez al-Sirsawi, 13, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 5 October east of Gaza City.

170. Hussein Fathi al-Raqab, 19, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 6 October near Khan Younis.

171. Abdullah Barham Suleiman al-Daghmeh, 24, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

172. Ahmed Abdullah Abu Naim, 17, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

173. Ahmed Ibrahim Zaki al-Tawil, 27, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

174. Mohammed Abd al-Hafez Yousef Ismail, 29, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

175. Tamer Iyad Abu Ermana, 21, from the Rafah governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

176. Mohammed Ashraf Mohammed al-Awada, 21, from the Rafah governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian (PFLP) announced after his death that he had been a member.

177. Afifi Mahmoud Atta Afifi, 18, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

178. Mohammed Issam Abbas, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

179. Saddam al-Abed Mohammed Abu Shalash, 27, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 15 October near Beit Lahiya, succumbing to his wounds a day later on 16 October.

180. Muntaser Mohammed Ismail al-Baz, 17, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the head on 23 October near al-Bureij.

181. Mohammed Khaled Mahmoud Abd al-Nabi, 27, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 26 October east of Jabaliya.

182. Nassar Iyad Abu Tim, 19, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed on 26 October east of Khan Younis.

183. Ahmed Sayid Abu Lubda, 22, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed on 26 October east of Khan Younis.

184. Ayesh Ghassan Shaat, 23, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed on 26 October east of Khan Younis.

185. Mujahid Ziyad Zaki Aql, 23, from the Deir al-Balah governorate was shot on 26 October and succumbed to his wounds a day later on 27 October.

186. Yahya Bader Mohammed al-Hassanat, 37, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the head on 26 October east of al-Bureij. He died from his wounds two days later on 28 October.

187. Ahmed Khaled al-Najjar, 21, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the stomach with an expanding bullet on 26 October east of Khan Younis, succumbing to his wounds 13 days later in a hospital in the West Bank, on 7 November.

188. Mohammed Abd al-Hay Abu Ubada, 27, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 30 October near Beit Lahiya. Abu Ubada had been injured three times since the beginning of the March of Return.

November: Israeli raid

The expectation might be that the situation in Gaza was relatively calm in November, given that there were only two fatalities related to the Great March.

Far from it. On 11 November, an undercover Israeli squad was discovered deep inside Gaza, sparking a deadly exchange of fire and the subsequent resignation of Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman in protest at a ceasefire agreement. Meanwhile, Hollywood stars collected $60m for the Israeli army in a highly criticised fundraising gala.

189. Mohammed Alaa Mahmoud Abu Shabin, 20, from the Rafah governorate, was shot and killed on 8 November east of al-Maghazi refugee camp.

190. Rami Wael Ishaq Qahman, 28, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the neck on 9 November east of Rafah.

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Photo sources

March: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 1-3, 5, 6, 10-15, 18, 19; International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC): 7-9, 16.

April: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 23, 25, 26, 28, 31, 34, 37, 42; IMEMC: 20, 21, 29, 32, 35, 38, 41, 43, 44; Middle East Eye: 33; Ma’an News Agency: 39; social media: 40.

May: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 45, 48- 50, 53-57, 60-62, 69, 70-76, 78-80, 83, 84, 90, 101, 108, 113; IMEMC: 46, 47, 103-107, 109-112, 114, 115.

June: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 122, 130; IMEMC: 119-121, 123, 124, 127, 128; Middle East Eye: 118; Defense for Children Palestine: 125.

July: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 131, 137, 138; IMEMC: 134, 135, 136, 139.

August: IMEMC: 140, 141, 143, 144, 146; Middle East Eye: 142.

September: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 151-156; IMEMC: 147, 149, 157-166.

October: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 168-175, 177, 183-186, 188; IMEMC: 167, 178, 180.

November: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 189, 190.

Featured image is from Maan News Agency