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Russia would have obviously preferred that the Kerch Strait Crisis with Ukraine never happened, but since it did, Moscow’s wasting no time in taking advantage of the highly publicized defense of its maritime borders in the Black Sea to promote a similar policy towards its sovereign waters in the Arctic Ocean, though the US might contest some of Russia’s claims there in the future under the pretext of promoting the so-called “freedom of navigation” principle.

Sputnik reported on Friday that Russia will implement a policy from 2019 onwards requiring all foreign military vessels to seek its approval before transiting through its territorial waters when utilizing the Northern Sea Route between Western and Eastern Eurasia. This is a sensible strategy for safeguarding the country’s sovereignty, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Kerch Strait Crisis with Ukraine, which can be seen in hindsight as having spurred the Kremlin to make this announcement. In fact, while Russia would have obviously preferred for the Black Sea incident to have never happened, it’s wasting no time in using it as the reason for rolling out a more robust policy for unambiguously defending its maritime interests in the Arctic Ocean, which are set to become more important than ever in the coming years as the gradual melting of sea ice there opens up access to what has historically been called the Northeast Passage.

Looking at the map, it may not seem like that big of a deal for Russia to declare that foreign military vessels can’t transit through its territorial waters without receiving prior approval since the shortest geographic route from the American-shared Bering Strait to the European gateway of the Norwegian Sea goes directly through the North Pole, but it must be remembered that this part of the Arctic Ocean will probably still remain frozen for years to come.

source: Wikipedia

This means that all vessels traversing this route will more than likely have to pass through Russia’s internationally recognized maritime territory at some point or another in order to continue their voyage across the northern reaches of the Eastern Hemisphere, hence the applicability of the promulgated policy in having Moscow act as the geopolitical gatekeeper of this connectivity corridor. It’s within Russia’s sovereign right to do so, and after the Kerch Crisis, there aren’t any questions about its commitment to defending its territorial interests.

Accepting this, the US and its allies are highly unlikely to attempt to test Russia’s fortitude in this respect, although the scenario of course can’t ever be precluded. Nevertheless, it’s much more likely that Russia will grant the privilege of military passage to warships from its Chinese and Indian partners, seeking to strike a “balance” between both of them as it facilitates their use of the Northern Sea Route, especially in the event that they’re traversing it en route to ports of call in Europe. Even if they aren’t, each of them are investing in different energy extraction projects in the region, so it might serve domestic political purposes in both Great Powers to occasionally dispatch their ships on friendly visits to their Russian partner’s Arctic ports. While the US would probably welcome India’s presence there, its allied Mainstream Media outlets across the world will probably fearmonger about China’s.

Moving out of the infowar realm and into the sphere of tangible geopolitics, however, the US might actually be cooking up a scheme to challenge Russia’s Arctic claims, albeit those which aren’t yet internationally recognized by the UN. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Russia claims a broad swath of the Arctic Ocean by virtue of the Siberian-originating underwater Lomonosov Ridge that extends all the way up to the North Pole, which Moscow believes makes the surrounding waters its sovereign territory per the clauses contained in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It’s already submitted an application to the global body to hear its case and eventually rule on whether to recognize it, which could then possibly put this massive stretch of the sea under Russia’s military protection per its recently promulgated policy of requiring advance notification from foreign warships before they traverse through its territory.

As Arctic ice melts ever more with the passing of time, it’ll inevitably get to the point where the waters beyond Russia’s present maritime territory there become navigable during at least some months of the year, thereby opening up the theoretical possibility of foreign warships sailing through them. Thus, it’s important for Russia to assert control over as much of this waterway as possible in order to prevent hostile forces from encroaching too close to its coast, to say nothing of the economic incentive that it and its competitors have to mine this resource-rich region and correspondingly protect their investments there. The problem, however, is that the US isn’t a party to UNCLOS, and while de-facto recognizing most of its authority, still “officially” doesn’t abide by this framework and believes that it has the “exceptional” right to sail its warships wherever it pleases, hence one of the publicly stated reasons why it’s provoking China in the South China Sea.

It therefore wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to predict that the US might one day militarily challenge Russia’s UNCLOS claim to large parts of the Arctic Ocean, doing so on the basis that it doesn’t regard those waters as being under Moscow’s control and wanting to promote the so-called “freedom of navigation” principle there as its “plausible” pretext for “justifying” this provocative move. The reader should keep in mind that this scenario is still years away from possibly transpiring because those maritime areas are still largely frozen and will probably remain so for a while to come, meaning that it wouldn’t be realistic for the US to even seriously contemplate this until then. Nevertheless, if there’s any “silver lining” to emerge from the Kerch Crisis, it’s that Russia proved that it will resolutely defend its sovereign maritime interests, so explicitly expanding this policy to the Arctic Ocean might give the US cause to consider whether it’s worth poking the Russian Bear there.

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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 teleSUR

In an astounding case of media negligence, U.S. news media are failing to tell Americans that Congress is about to enact legislation for the largest military aid package to a foreign country in U.S. history.

This aid package would likely be of interest to Americans, many of whom are cutting back their own personal spending.

Ontario’s recently elected Tory government, headed by right wing populist, Doug Ford, did not wait very long to incorporate into its reactionary agenda, an attack on the province’s social assistance system and those living in poverty. Though their election platform had been astoundingly sparse when it came to details and no warning was given of an intended war on the poor, in July, Ford’s Social Services Minister, Lisa MacLeod, announced that a hundred day review of the province’s social assistance system would be undertaken. To set the stamp on the Tory brand of ‘welfare reform’ MacLeod informed us that a scheduled increase of 3% in social assistance rates would be cut in half, that a series of modest improvements in the delivery system would be jettisoned and that 4,000 people who had been accepted onto the basic income pilot would now be cut adrift as the experiment was cancelled.

On November 22, MacLeod announced the results of the review process. Generally speaking, while some voices of serious concern have been raised, the brutal nature of the Tory measures has not yet been widely appreciated. One comment on the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) Facebook page suggested that “Harris did far worse.” Actually, the reference to the attack on the poor that was carried by the Tory government of Mike Harris in 1995 puts things into clear focus. Harris, exploiting the fact that the Liberal and New Democratic Party (NDP) governments that preceded his regime had been happy to leave a system of social assistance in place that imposed legislated poverty, had three major objectives when it came to degrading income support in Ontario.

Firstly, he wanted to drastically reduce the adequacy of social assistance rates. This he did by implementing a 21.6% cut and by freezing benefits for the next eight years. The Liberals who followed him provided increases below the rate of inflation and so, more than 20 years after Harris slashed them, benefits levels are so low that a major reduction is hardly necessary.

Harris also eliminated the relatively secure and more adequate benefit system for single parent families. After 1995, they were treated as job seekers on the lowest benefit levels. This measure, along with the 21.6% cut, was highly successful in terms of the key Tory objective or forcing people to scramble for the lowest paying jobs on offer. Finally, however, the architects of the Harris measures also hoped to reconfigure the system so as to establish a regime of precise coercion when it came to driving people into the low wage sector.

The tools available in the 1990s were more limited than today and Harris was not as successful as he and his co-thinkers would have hoped. His efforts to establish a system of workfare forced labour were not spectacularly rewarded and pointed to the need for an alternative approach to coercing the poor into the worst forms of employment. Harris did create an Ontario Works (OW) benefit system that included a requirement for recipients to sign a “participation agreement.” This can certainly be intrusive and punitive but there is room to develop far more refined tools that can be used to supply the most unscrupulous employers. Doug Ford’s new Poor Laws are focused on opening up just such a pathway to super exploitation of the lowest paid and most vulnerable workers.

Doug Ford Poor Laws

MacLeod’s announcement of the results of the Tory review failed to set off enough alarm bells for several reasons. Firstly, as previously stated, the present round of Tory regression does not have to involve the driving down of benefit levels because that job has already been taken care of. Hence, the kind of shock that the deep cut Harris made in 1995 has been avoided. Secondly, many of the details of the plan have yet to be revealed as the process of implementation unfolds over the next year and a half. The backgrounder that MacLeod’s Ministry issued is hardly a voluminous document. Finally, she was careful to talk the language of “compassion” and to speak of “wrap around services” that would provide poor people with “dignity.” However, there are some important clues that enable us to discern what is really going on here.

MacLeod is fond of throwing out that old right wing cliché that ‘the best social program is a job.’ With this remark, she points us to an understanding of how the Doug Ford Poor Laws relate to the basic agenda of the Tory government. They are all fond of telling us that ‘Ontario is Open for Business.’ Their whole agenda of austerity and social cutbacks speaks to just what they mean by this. Their cancellation of a planned increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour and the revoking of a series of substantial improvements in the rights of low paid workers drives it home. Their elimination of proactive workplace inspections to detect wage theft and other abuses could not make it more clear. The Tories intend to open Ontario for business by ensuring that exploiters have an entirely free hand. In this regard, the adequacy or otherwise of the province’s income support system is a decisive question for them. Put bluntly, they are working to create a cheap labour army and their social assistance system must provide a supply of conscripts.

The work of degrading income support systems has gone much further on an international scale than it had when Harris was doing his work. The cutting edge austerity measures in the UK, including the infamous work capability assessment that has been used to declare even profoundly disabled people ‘fit to work,’ have caused huge hardship and vast injustices and the rolling out of the Universal Credit system there is taking things further than ever in this regard.

Taking their cue from the UK war on the poor and disabled people, the Ontario Tories are focusing on two fronts of attack. Firstly, they will redefine disability to bring it in line with federal standards. This will mean that a standard will apply that requires someone to show they have profound and long-term impairments and almost no chance of working. This would exclude many who might today be eligible for the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). It is a horribly regressive move that will mean that peoples’ disabilities will be disregarded on a huge scale. The Tories say that those presently on ODSP will be ‘grandparented’ and will not be subject to the new definition. However, as the review process that many are subjected to performs its work, there is reason to fear that this pledge may not be worth much.

The second major attack and the one that has not really been widely appreciated, is how much further the Ford system will go in dragooning people into the worst jobs. Their pretence at proving a ‘helping hand’ is quite without credibility. Even their pledge to improve the situation with regard to allowing people to retain a portion of their earned incomes collapses under scrutiny, as the data prepared by Jennefer Laidley from the Income Support Advocacy Centre shows.

Given the nature of this government, what should we make of “placing a greater focus on outcomes?” The backgrounder makes clear that “People receiving Ontario Works will complete individual action plans” that will require them to seek low wage employment with sufficient zeal on pain of loss of benefits. The intention is very clearly to intensify the coercive element. “Locally responsive outcome driven service delivery models” will be developed, and “Municipalities will be held accountable for helping people achieve their goals” (provided those goals include working for low pay with no rights and few supports).

Perhaps most chillingly of all, the process of “Incentivizing people on Ontario Works to find jobs” will include “Launching a website, Ontario.ca/openforbusiness to make matching job seekers with businesses easier.” The most vile employers will know where to go for a supply of vulnerable workers who must accept employment on their terms or face loss of benefits and outright destitution.

A Workers’ Issue

Ford’s efforts to supply the low wage precarious work sector with powerless workers, taken to the level of forcing many more disabled people to participate in the scramble for highly exploitative jobs, are, indeed, appalling and disgraceful. However, the social benefits system, along with the minimum wage, constitute a base on which the whole wage structure rests. The war on the poor is only a component part of an attack on the broader working class. Ontario can’t be opened for business on such terms. We must be ready to mount a united fight back against the Ford Government and its agenda of greed and exploitation.

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John Clarke is a writer and leading organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

Featured image is from The Bullet

At a time when apprehensions about low-quality food entering the country post Brexit are rising, the Times reports that Michael Gove, the environment secretary has announced that “Britain will lead an agricultural revolution with the use of gene editing”.

In July, after hearing scientific evidence that gene editing “causes many profound mutations and DNA damage”, the European Court of Justice ruled that food resulting from genome editing would be regarded as genetically modified, which is outlawed in Europe.

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) is underwhelmed

Disregarding this science-based evidence, Gove pledged, at yesterday’s CLA meeting in Westminster, that scientists and farmers would be freed from this European court ruling. The first report seen however, makes no reference to this exciting prospect, whatsoever.

Genome editing, or genome engineering is a type of genetic engineering in which DNA is inserted, deleted, modified or replaced in a specific location in the genome (genetic material) of a living organism, unlike early genetic engineering techniques that randomly insert genetic material into a host genome.

Support from vested interests

Scientists in the industry, like the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, funded by the government’s Department of Business believe that the technique will lead to crops and animals with higher yields, resistance to disease and the ability to cope with the effects of climate change.

Emma Hockridge, head of policy at the Soil Association, urged the government to keep the UK aligned with the European court:

“Scientific research has long shown that these new gene-editing technologies give rise to similar uncertainties and risks as GM always has. We have always been clear that these new plant breeding techniques are GMOs [genetically modified organisms] and therefore are banned in organic farming and food”.

Bloomberg reports that under the Trump administration, gene-edited foods don’t need to be labelled or regulated and that Zach Luttrell, a principal at industry consultant StraightRow LLC, sees gene-editing as a way to continue lowering costs.

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In the mid 1950’s I was a teen, the cold war was at its peak and I subscribed to Pravda, The Russian newspaper to learn about propaganda. That turned out to be good training for understanding the news today. As the western media increasingly demonize Putin, this biography is timely.

The New Tsar is by Steven Lee Myers, a New York Times journalist with a master’s degree from the University of Reading who spent more than 7 years in Russia as a correspondent. He was there to see the emergence of Putin as he was becoming arguably the most powerful man on earth. The biggest surprise from the book, is that Putin does not emerge as the villain he’s being increasingly characterized as in the west today.

He doesn’t emerge as perfect either! He comes across as petulant, aloof, cool and distant as a person, as a husband and as a father but he comes across more often as normal. The book follows Putin from his boyhood and school years through university, his law degree, starting his career and up to 2016.

He was born in Leningrad in 1952, his parents were working class, dad had been wounded in the second war, mom was a factory worker. Meyer doesn’t elaborate on the horror of the Stalin years (1941-1953) when literally millions of Russians were killed. He provides a few details from World War II like how a grenade almost killed Putin’s father but at the same time saved his life. Because of his injuries he was not sent back to the front lines and thus escaped the almost certain death of his fellow soldiers. Nor does Meyer mention the fact that the Soviet Union, not the west, paid the larger price to defeat the Germans. They lost over eight million people (the US lost just over four hundred thousand, Canada forty two thousand). After the war millions of dollars in compensation were paid by Germany to the Soviet Union and nothing to the western nations. This fact confirms how everyone at that time saw who had paid the higher price to defeat Germany. This was the world in which Putin was raised.

As a child, and he was a small one, he was not doing well in school until he was enrolled in martial arts. Then his marks went up, his disdain for drinking and smoking increased and he started to succeed.

When he was twenty (1972) his mother won a new car in a lottery and like many a doting mother gave it to her son. This is the type of normalcy that Meyers writes about, like the fact he’s a dog lover and married an airline stewardess. Putin graduated with a degree in law in 1975 and went to work for the KGB, a dream that he had had since he was a teenager. (The letters KGB are for the Russian Committee for State Security, Russia’s equivalent to the CIA.)

Putin began as a junior KGB officer during the Brezhnev era when life was improving for the people; the gross domestic product was expanding and people were living better. However good times were followed in the later seventies by a ten-year decline in manufacturing and an era of stagnation.

In 1991 the nation of the Soviet Union collapsed and was replaced by the Russian Federation of Independent States. In the same years, neo-liberal economic ideas were dominating the west and the new country, with no experience with free market economics, fell victim to them. They were convinced by Wall Street brokers and the International Monetary fund that they should embrace the trendy shock therapy of austerity to put their economy on a sound footing. Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine explains what happened; in 1989, before shock therapy 2 million Russians lived in poverty. By the mid-nineties 74 million were living below the poverty line. By the late nineties 80% of farms had gone bankrupt, seventy thousand state factories had closed and a new wealthy class of millionaires was emerging.

Advice from global capitalists on what the new Russian Federation should do was used to rape the newly emerging naïve nation. Today, the speed at which new Russian millionaires emerge is slowing down. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs remain as the nations major deal makers.

In 2000 Putin was elected President. He was 48 and new to international political economics and had a political and economic mess to deal with. If he had known that the IMF and global brokers served only the wealthy, he would have been better prepared.

The simple fact that 96 billionaires (billionaires, not millionaires) emerged in the 18 years since the new nation emerged, signifies something was very wrong! That’s hardly enough time to honestly earn a million much less a billion. It was apparently enough time to swindle it.

Meyer’s does not even hint that Putin has benefited financially as President. Nor was there evidence in the ‘panama papers’ account that he benefited as was bandied about a few years ago. The New York Times sums up Meyers view of Putin; ‘Putin simply feels that he’s the last one standing between order and chaos.’ The New York Times assessment sounds more like that for a patriot than an oligarch. Putin’s own people give him an 80% approval rating.

So, the question that follows as the reader of old Russian propaganda is, if Putin is not evil personified what is the reason that image has been created and promoted here?

Qui bono? Who Benefits?

Certainly, western arms manufacturers who milk every chance to create arms spending, they benefit. A new cold war would suite them well. Since it’s creation in 1949 NATO has continued the cold war as it has encircled Russia moving closer and closer with nuclear armed missiles. Without the Russian enemy, NATO has no purpose. As Eisenhower pointed out decades ago, it is the military/industrial estate that benefits, and to that we can now also add the western stock markets. Today I believe Putin has a better grasp of this.

Meyers has written an excellent readable, detailed picture of Vladimir Putin that contrasts with the current efforts to demonize him. The book is worth a read.

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In late November 2018, students, led by the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) at the University of Leeds, immediately mobilized to demonstrate as soon as they found out that Zionist war propagandist, Mark Regev, was visiting campus to speak. Regev has had an illustrious career in advocacy for Israeli escalation of ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, and ‘Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) murderous wars against the Palestinians, especially in Gaza in recent years.

There were a sizable number of students, there was potency of our loud vocal chords disruptively shouting incessantly, and of our specific chants, speeches, and indictments or Zionist terror and racism that Regev embodies. The amalgamation of our chants, stories by dispossessed Palestinians, drumming and dance of unshakeable resistance of our peaceful, non-violent protest – all figuratively rocked the building where Mark Regev was speaking, and haunted him throughout his visit, and throughout whatever settler-colonial genocidal rhetoric he was vomiting anyways.

But it is pivotal to understand why Regev was suddenly parachuted to the University of Leeds. Just days before his visit, the University of Leeds became the first university in the UK to divest from Israeli apartheid: an undoubtedly huge victory to celebrate.

What has been happening with regard to global Palestinian solidarity is not insignificant by any stretch of the imagination. Now global in scope and impact, the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel has generated an awareness of the ‘wretched of the earth’ conditions of Palestinians under Zionist occupation. In short, for the first time, our side, the side of justice and liberation from settler colonialism – with its effective BDS campaign – can no longer be silenced by the global Zionist machinery of propaganda.

A sober, even cautiously optimistic, analysis of the current situation does not in any way demonstrate indifference to the fact that Israeli terror has continued unabated for more than a decade against Palestinians, Lebanese, and other Arabs. But there are several factors why Israel’s legitimacy is increasingly only limited to Washington, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Cairo.

BDS and the international Palestine solidarity campaign have been consistently highlighting the sheer inhumane conditions that Palestinians undergo under Zionist occupation, and the gratuitous wars Israel launches whenever it fancies. This campaign, similar to that waged as part of the international solidarity movement against the white minority Apartheid regime in South Africa, compelled international actors, businesses, and ultimately states to halt all forms of engagement with such a racist regime – though, as expected the US and Israel remained the last steadfast supporters of the Apartheid regime.

However, it’s important to remember that the African National Congress (ANC) and the United Democratic Front (UDF), as well as other broad layers of the South African anti-apartheid struggle, did have one significant advantage: their oppressors, the small minority of white South Africans, never really had any intention of exterminating the local black population. Even if they wanted to, it would have been tough considering the black population’s absolute majority.

Rather, the intention was to ruthlessly exploit them, keep them ghettoized in bantustans, and maintain them in conditions of enslavement and subordination to service a life of privilege for South African whites.

South Africa was one form of settler colonialism, by first the Dutch, and then the British. The Zionist one in Palestine unfolds a bit differently. Israeli Jews never recognized even the presence of any indigenous Palestinian Arabs in the land they were coming to conquer, and if some were inconveniently there – they were to be ‘transferred,’ i.e., ethnically cleansed. Zionists who emigrated to Palestine have had every intention to seize all of its land and to live completely separate from what Israeli officials have called ‘vermin’ and ‘cockroaches,’ i.e. Palestinian Arabs.

It is precisely for this reason that Israel feels no compunction in criminally pounding Gaza repeatedly over the past few years, or Lebanon in 2006. Zionist settlers, unlike South African whites, have absolutely no need for Palestinians to exist as human beings – and therefore would relish the idea of total ethnic cleansing or even genocide – as of course other settler-colonial states (such as the US) have done.

In such abysmal conditions on the ground in occupied Palestine, how can we continue to dream and give hope to our Palestinian sisters and brothers? The first factor is that the global Palestine solidarity movement has never been stronger, including its central component of BDS. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Western liberals who for many years have had a soft spot for ‘democratic, civilized’ Israel to ignore how fanatically rightwing both the Israeli government and society have become. Hence, the morality of blindly supporting such a state in whatever murderous campaign it unleashes has finally shaken the conscience of many who were unflinching supporters of Israel in the past. This includes an increasing number of global Jewry. Norman Finkelstein documents this significant shift in his, “This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences in the Invasion of Gaza.”

But there’s a second reason why Zionist paranoia-schizophrenia is reaching new levels. It began in 2006 when Israel invaded Lebanon, thinking the IDF would just ravage the place and eliminate Hezbullah as if it’s some little isolated ant colony. The notion that Hezbullah is some alien, separate entity that can be isolated from the wider population of Southern Lebanon was shown to be demonstrably false, and very painful for the Zionist invaders. The impact on Israelis was not just a military one, but, more importantly, a deeply psychological one. Despite inflicting horrendous levels of civilian and infrastructural damage to Lebanon, Lebanese resistance fighters made Israeli soldiers flee in desperation for their lives, retreating back toward the Israeli side of the border.

This was unprecedented. The Arabs had been led to believe just one story, based on the indoctrination they had been subject to by their respective cowardly autocrats who, post-1967, always out-competed each other in servility to Zionism and Western hegemony: the Zionist entity was invincible, and had crushed our multiple armies in every war – hence, resistance is futile.

Source: Occupy Pal TV

Well, a people’s resistance movement in Lebanon just proved the opposite in 2006. And despite the blockade and bombardment of Gaza, Gazans have demonstrated what can only be called a prophetic heroism: their resistance remains as steadfast as ever, despite unspeakable suffering.

It is, nevertheless, important to take stock of wider geopolitical shifts, dangers, and realignments taking place that will certainly impact the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

Hence, how can we evaluate the ongoing repression and resistance in Palestine in light of broader transformations taking place regionally and globally. These larger issues will necessarily confront those striving against the cruelties and barbarism against Palestinians, Kashmiris, the Rohingyas, blacks and immigrants in the US – the list goes on and on.

At the heart of this discussion is ascertaining whether we truly carry the capacity to break through the rigid parameters of the hegemonic social and political imaginaries that have sustained a world order marked by savage coloniality – even as the West is confronting a welcome development for the rest of the world: the Wests’ ‘de-centering.’ In brief, can we dispel with impoverished discourses of the ‘geo-culture’ of the last few barbaric Eurocentric centuries, the ones that have been responsible for the current oppressive impasse from Palestine to Brazil, and broaden our imaginary potential to conceive of meaningful decolonial alternatives.

The Palestine solidarity movement, and the global justice and anti-war movement generally, need not shy away from beginning to map out the coordinates of what counter-hegemonic tendencies and forces deserve our unconditional solidarity, our not uncritical, but certainly comradely, support. How can our struggles forge an innovative non-Eurocentric grammar of politics, which renders both the essential geopolitical analysis, but more fundamentally, interrogates the epistemological foundations of recurring patterns of violent hierarchies and power relations that mark ongoing global coloniality.

Returning to Palestine and the Middle East, how can we obtain a serious geopolitical assessment, so that there is greater clarity for a trajectory of ongoing and future resistance?

What can we conclude from what we have been observing in Palestine and the region? Two essential points stand out. One is that the conventional Westphalian-colonial state system has seen its most disastrous results in the Middle East. The maddeningly constructed colonial boundaries, the erection of pliant Arab autocracies, and most catastrophically of all, the planting of the settler-colonial state of Israel to be the linchpin of Western hegemony in the region – is the artificial political landscape that was established in the region in the early 20th century, intended for the sole purpose to service Western hegemony. Western interventions and wars, particularly by Washington, have turned a horrible situation into an ongoing nightmare of suffering, from Gaza to the Yemen.

The second point may be the most analytically instructive to understand the current political predicament we confront. Three pivotal moments of the new century, i.e., the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, and the Saudi war against the Yemen in 2015, epitomize, despite the enormous human toll that these wars of unadulterated aggression have taken, the growing weakness of Imperial-Zionist control over the Middle East, not its strength.

These are not the decisions of sober ‘adults in the room’ enacting realpolitik, as bad enough as that has been in the past. We have now entered the phase where the emperor can see clearly that he has no clothes, and he and his minions (Israel, the House of Saud, the UAE, Egypt) will go to any length to reverse their declining fortunes. There is no other way possible to explain how in our ‘modern, civilized, human rights’ age, that the routine daily slaughter of Yemenis and Gazans have become normalized and the ‘international community’ can’t lift a finger to stop it – and of course several Western countries are directly complicit in these festivals of slaughter relished by the House of Saud and its Zionist soulmates.

What these bringing of ‘hell on earth’ policies of these reactionary regimes really signify are their last gasps to maintain control, someway, somehow, even by annihilation. They are all ‘wounded tigers’ whose heyday of domination is now long past.

This ‘wounded tiger’ syndrome afflicts the US, the House of Saud, and the Zionist state. They all know that they have lost any moral legitimacy they might have deceived some sections of global opinion to grant them in the past. For the US, it’s the multiple invasions, drone attacks, torture camps and Guantanomo and Abu Ghraib imprisonment photos – culminating in an openly racist authoritarian psychopath elected as leader of the ‘free world’. For Israel, it’s the repeated pounding of a defenseless, starving population of Gaza. The world is witnessing Israel – its mouthpiece being the murderous charlatan, Bibi Netanyahu – displaying absolute indifference to any attempt to call out is brazen and continuous violation of virtually every tenet of international humanitarian law, not to mention war crimes that by now have been normalized. And for Saudi Arabia, it has been the fact that the wealthiest country in the Arab world has now been pulverizing the poorest one, i.e. Yemen, causing one of the most grotesque human tragedies of our time. The result is an epidemic of cholera outbreak and mass starvation. Nevertheless, though the US-supported UAE-Saudi butchery of the Yemenis has been continuing for three years, it has taken the reckless behavior of Clown Prince ‘Bone Saw’ Salman (or MBS) to finally raise some eyebrows. MBS propagandists in love with the ‘reformer’ have shifting gears to seeing him as unreasonably lashing out at his royal competitors and even mild critics, in gruesome ways that are now raising serious doubts in Washington about his reliability, stability, predictability.

At this point in time, it is so patently obvious which forces of reaction want to hinder the possibility of any decolonial and counterhegemonic possibilities of resistance and liberation. On the one hand, global Zionism is ludicrously centering campaigns of social justice everywhere within the framework of their pernicious Islamophobia. This is why Iran/Muslims/Middle Easterners can be connected to Central American immigrants, collaboration with ‘rogue’ states like Venezuela, etc.

But his Islamophobia has now become the central plank of American permanent war doctrine. Parting from more quotidian definitions and explanations of the term, Islamophobia is fundamentally about restricting the sovereignty, autonomy, and political agency of the larger ‘Islamicate’: Muslim-influenced areas stretching from Java to Mindanao, Southern Thailand, Java, Tashkent, Palermo, Timbuktu, Granada, to Chicago, Toronto, Leeds, and so on. Islamophobia at the present juncture is the intolerance for how transnational Muslims really are and always have been. There is no ‘West’ – a permanently shifting social construction over time and space – that has ever been without Islam.

Such Islamophobia only accepts ‘good Muslims,’ kept on permanent probation, who demonstrate a ‘moderation’ that enables and facilitates all of the contours of ongoing global imperial penetration of Islamicate societies and the Global South. .

In the past, ‘peripheral’ (peripheral to the Middle East) nations like Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey were useful imperial satraps for this hegemonic project that kept Empire and Zionism on top, with its petro-Arab quislings at their service.

But Iran stopped playing that game since its Islamic Revolution of 1979, and Turkey and Pakistan find themselves in very different geopolitical alignments, though still unclear, from the very clearly defined ones of the Cold War.

Not just in Palestine or in Kashmir, but throughout Muslimistan, there is undoubtedly a central question that haunts the Islamicate every minute of our lives: how can one of the one of most venal, satanic even, regimes on the planet be the ‘Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,’ and what does this say about the ‘state of the ummah (community of global Muslims),’ and more importantly, the planetary colonial political economy whose ‘great powers’ prop up this dismal state of affairs.

It must be stated emphatically: colonialism, Zionism, and the House of Saud – all working in tandem of course – have been the biggest plagues unto Islamicate societies in the modern period. All of them remain. Any decolonial possibilities, any genuine pluriversality, and any response from Muslim and the social majorities of all faiths under conditions of neo-colonialism, must begin with the demand for autonomy and sovereignty for their societies. Muslims must recognize that no significant rupture in the political grammar of their tripartite gang of oppressors will occur without completely annihilating all three.

Coming back to our powerful protest against the bloodthirsty Mark Regev (image on the left) at the University of Leeds, we insisted to remind everyone that Palestine remains a symbol of resistance of the oppressed for liberation everywhere. We rejected the common infantile refrain of Zionists that the Palestine solidarity movement is ‘singling out Israel’ – since, roughly, a hundred percent of us also firmly believe the tyranny of the House of Saud and other Arab autocracies who have enabled Zionist occupation, along with Empire – should also be targeted for their support for Zionist occupation and slaughter, as well as their own crimes and wars.

We had no confusion in making these linkages between movements of the oppressed (for some reason, only Zionists get confused by it – and then ask us why we are confused by it!). Within the domain of Islamicate, it is becoming abundantly clear that the majority of the global ummah (community of Believers) is making the connections, and is enraged about the very obvious political degeneration and violence in front of their very eyes. The issue of Zionist brutality against the Palestinians was fairly well understood. But only recently has much of the Muslim world discovered the extent to which the House of Saud (we especially have MBS to thank for this), along with its friends in Abu Dhabi and Cairo (and the battalions of Blackwater-style private mercenaries they’ve hired) – have collaborated to ensure Imperial-Zionist supremacy over the region.

There is no doubt that the ‘masters of the universe’ and their comprador elites in the Muslim world are taking cognizance of this mass righteous rage by ordinary Muslims as well as by the social majorities of the Global South. That is precisely why regimes like the Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt are becoming more ruthless in their repression and atrocities – in order to crush the rumblings of resistance to tyranny emerging everywhere.

The purpose of these client petro-monarchies of the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, has always been to sustain the fundamentally exploitative, dictatorial, and neo-colonial relationship under which ordinary Muslims and others from the Global South are coerced to live, somehow survive, or most likely, suffer painful deaths.

Such an assessment would make any decent human be averse to being anywhere near the House of Saud or the House of Zionism. If I was not a Muslim, I know that I would certainly not think twice about ever stepping foot inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabi unless it was to assist a movement likely to succeed in its overthrow! We can – and should – address the important question of the mandatory pilgrimage for Muslims, the Hajj, and what possibilities exist to boycott, occupy, internationalize the Holy sites, etc. – somehow avoiding a penny going to the coffers of the dungeon chambers of the House of Saud. More important and immediately, how do we devise strategies to protect and preserve its sanctity from the pharaohs that run the place!

Of course, the Transcendent rarely has good endings for pharaohs anyways! That should infuse some hope in our ongoing struggles and resistance to the aforementioned pillars of violent domination in the Middle East.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Junaid S. Ahmad is Co-Founder of SUSTAIN – Stop US Tax-Funded Aid to Israel Now; Co-Founder of Al-Awda Virginia – The Palestine Right of Return Committee; Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) Member and PhD Candidate in Decolonial Thought, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds; Secretary-General, International Movement for a Just World (JUST) – Kuala Lumpur; Research Fellow, Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) – Istanbul; Director of the Center for Global Studies and Faculty of Advanced Studies; University of Management and Technology (UMT), Lahore, Pakistan.

Featured image is from Leeds Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Why do Donald Trump and the CIA disagree about the recent killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Turkey?

The CIA concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, personally ordered the murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi. In an extraordinary statement for a U.S. president, Trump disputed the CIA findings. He saids it didn’t matter if MBS—as the Saudi ruler is known—was or was not involved in the Khashoggi killing, and that U.S.-Saudi relations are “spectacular.”

Trump’s statement reflects his narrow cultivation of business relations with MBS, while the CIA’s announcement reflects the view that that MBS has become a liability for the U.S. ruling class as a whole. The spy agency, which has deep ties to Saudi intelligence, fears that bin Salman’s reckless and impulsive actions could jeopardize the security of the whole Saudi ruling clique, endangering U.S. ruling class interests in Saudi Arabia and the entire Middle East.

For decades, Saudi Arabia has been one of the most strategic and valuable U.S. client states, and the CIA wants to keep it that way. Support for Saudi Arabia is completely bi-partisan. This partnership is drenched in blood, oil and deceit.

A review of U.S.-Saudi ties shows that Saudi Arabia anchors the U.S. empire in the Middle East. The kingdom, with the greatest oil reserves in the world, is a source of fabulous wealth for U.S. oil companies. The Saudis use their oil capacity to raise and lower world prices to further U.S. foreign policy aims. In the 1980s, for example, Ronald Reagan, got the Saudis to flood the market with oil to reduce the world price as part of an economic war against the Soviet Union.

The kingdom willingly uses religion as a cover for imperialism’s aims, exporting thousands of schools, mosques, and other centers that preach intolerance and recruit jihadists for U.S. wars. It allows the U.S. to invade other Arab countries from its territory and has funded covert CIA actions on three continents. It is treated like a cash cow for U.S. corporations and banks. It uses its vast stash of petrodollars to buy billions of dollars in Pentagon weapons at inflated prices, as well as other high-price U.S. products and services.

The country is ruled as the personal fiefdom of one family, the al-Sauds. The government is one of the most repressive and misogynistic in the world. There is no parliament or legislature. The first elections, and then only on a municipal level, took place in 2005, 73 years after the country was formed. Women were only allowed to vote in 2015. These incontestable facts go unmentioned by U.S. officials, Democrats and Republican alike.

While Washington claims to be a protector of human rights abroad, the Pentagon has pledged to send in troops if a mass movement tries to overthrow the Saudi regime.

A country birthed by imperialism

Britain and France emerged victorious after World War I. They carved Western Asia into more than 20 countries, drawing borders to weaken and dismember Arab and other indigenous national groups, and to facilitate imperialist domination.

That’s when Saudi Arabia was created. Its rulers, the al Saud and the Wahhabi families and followers merged into a political-religious alliance. The Saudi Arabia we know was established 1932, when the Saudis agreed to stop harassing other British protectorates, and to accept Britain’s definition of their borders.

Saudi Arabia’s rulers were among the first far-right Islamists assisted by imperialism. They set up an absolute monarchy and theocracy. The only constitution was the Koran as interpreted by the royal family. Slavery was legal until 1962.

Wahhabism, a form of Islam aggressively intolerant of other currents of that faith, and in opposition to secular governments, bwecame the state religion. Saudi Arabia’s control of the most important sites in Islam—Mecca and Medina– gave it prestige it had not earned in the Muslim world.

Enter U.S. oil companies and the Pentagon

In 1933, the kingdom granted Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) exclusive oil drilling rights. Huge oil reserves were discovered in 1938, promoting the formation of ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company) by Standard Oil and 3 other U.S. partners that later became Texaco, Exxon, and Mobil.

Image on the right: Exxon’s own research in the 1980s indicated that without major reductions in fossil fuel combustion, “[t]here are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered.” (Photo: Luc B / Flickr)

Saudi Arabia would soon be the country with the world’s largest known oil reserves. It would be the greatest oil producer in the world. And U.S. companies were pumping it.

Diplomatic recognition soon followed. In 1943, President Roosevelt declared the security of Saudi Arabia a “vital interest” of the United States. The U.S. opened an embassy in the country the next year.

The Pentagon soon arrived to secure the oil. In 1950, the U.S. established the Sixth Naval Fleet as a permanent military presence in the Mediterranean. In 1951, after signing the Mutual Defense Agreement, the U.S. began arming the Saudi government and training its military.

Since World War II, the U.S. empire has been built on controlling the oil flowing from the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia was the linchpin of this control.

Waging holy war for Washington: ‘Our faith and your iron’

Following World War II, a wave of militancy and nationalism swept the Arab world. Mass secular movements in Algeria and Iraq overthrew colonial puppets. South Yemen declared itself socialist. The Egyptian and Syrian people deposed imperialist client rule. Many of the new progressive regimes and liberation struggles were aided by the Soviet Union

The thinking of U.S. policymakers was, as Rachel Bronson puts it,

“that religion could be a tool to staunch the expansion of godless communism.”

Saudi rulers happily complied. The founder of modern Saudi Arabia told U.S. Minister to Saudi Arabia, Colonel William A. Eddy, “Our faith and your iron.”

Arab anti-imperialism was especially inflamed by the 1948 destruction of Palestine and the creation of Israel. To undercut this, the Eisenhower administration set out to increase the renown of King Saud, making him ‘the senior partner of the Arab team.”

A State Department memo documents expectations that the Saudis would redirect Arab anger from Israel to the Soviet Union:

“The President said he thought we should do everything possible to stress the “holy war” aspect. [Secretary of State] Dulles commented that if the Arabs have a “holy war” they would want it to be against Israel. The President recalled, however, that Saud, after his visit here, had called on all Arabs to oppose Communism.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Saudis gave shelter to extremists seeking to topple nationalist governments. The kingdom started funding a network of schools and mosques that recruited jihadists for the CIA in Soviet republics with Muslim populations, and in poor Muslim countries in Asia and Africa. This included “facilitating contacts between the CIA and religious pilgrims visiting Mecca.”

The oil weapon

Some members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have advocated using oil as a weapon to force Israel to give up Palestinian land. Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer of OPEC, has staunchly opposed this. While calling for “separating oil from politics,” the kingdom has repeatedly raised and lowered world oil prices to advance U.S. foreign policy.

There have been exceptions. To maintain credibility among the Arab world, Saudi Arabia joined the OPEC oil embargos against the U.S. and other governments supporting Israel in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973. The 1967 embargo lacked OPEC consensus and was not effective. Saudi Arabia agreed to join the 1973 embargo only after the U.S. promised $2.2 billion in emergency military aid to Israel, giving it an advantage in the fighting.

The 1973 oil embargo did not cause international shortages, as many oil producers didn’t honor it. However, U.S. companies used the embargo to hold back oil supplies, raise prices, and increase profits. Occidental Petroleum’s 1973 earnings were 665 percent higher than those the year before. By the end of 1974, Exxon Corporation moved to the top of the Fortune 500 list. Four other oil companies—Texaco, Mobil, Standard Oil of California and Gulf—joined Exxon in the top seven rankings.

In 1970, the Saudis organized the “Safari Club,” a coalition of governments that conducted covert operations in Africa after the U.S. Congress restrained CIA actions. It sent arms to Somalia and helped coordinate attacks on Ethiopia, which was then aligned with the Soviet Union. It funded UNITA, a proxy of the South African apartheid government fighting in Angola.

More recently, the Saudi government likely drove down oil prices in 2014 in order to weaken the Russian and Iranian economies as punishment for supporting the Syrian government.

However, the U.S. ruling class has had it both ways with Saudi Arabia several times. While the country is a key client state of the U.S., the Saudis have also served as convenience scapegoats. When energy costs spike, causing considerable hardship among U.S. working-class families, for instance, the U.S. rulers hypocritically and suddenly start talking about the Saudi royal family, its thousands of princes, their gold bathtubs, and other extremes paid for by petrodollars.

Manufacturing a Sunni-Shia rift

In 1979, a mass revolutionary upsurge in Iran overthrew the Shah, a hated U.S.-backed dictator, establishing the Islamic Republic of Iran. The new government nationalized Iran’s huge oil reserves. That same year, an armed band of Sunni fundamentalists denounced the Saudi royal family and seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, taking tens of thousands of religious pilgrims hostage. Hundreds of hostages were killed in the retaking of the mosque. Both events shook the Saudi rulers to their core. They responded by diverting attention to Iran. They began a religious campaign against Shia Iran, claiming they were enemies of Sunni Islam. They upped funding for Sunni jihadists worldwide, encouraging them to hate other strains of Islam, other religions, and secularism.

There was no significant conflict between Sunnis and Shias in the modern era. Saudi rulers fomented it in an attempt to turn Sunnis against the Iranian revolution. Since then, all national liberation struggles or groups fighting for some degree of independence that have Shia members have been falsely labeled as agents of Iran. These include Hezbollah–viewed by Arab progressives as the central force in the national liberation movement of Lebanon–the amalgam of forces fighting Saudi domination in Yemen, and oppressed Shia minorities in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis bought out the ARAMCO oil company in 1980. But this did not make Saudi Arabia independent. The oil was still controlled by U.S. companies, especially ExxonMobil, through their ownership of oil pumping and other technology, oil tanker fleets, storage facilities, etc.

Funding the Mujahideen and the Contras

In 1978, the Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan took control of the country in a coup. It promoted land distribution and built hospitals, road, and schools in one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world. It did this with the help of the Soviet Union. The new government banned forced marriages and gave women the right to right to vote. Revolutionary Council member Anahita Ratebzad gave the new government’s view in a New Kabul Times editorial (May 28, 1978).

“Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country … Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention.”

Seeking to overthrow the Soviet-aligned government, the U.S. covertly supported rural tribes that were opposed to the recent social changes, especially women’s rights and secularism. The groups attacked the new rural schools and killed women teachers. In 1979, the Soviet Union sent in troops to support the government.

From 1979-89 the Saudi kingdom recruited reactionary mujahideen forces and financed them to the tune of $3 billion. The CIA formally matched the Saudi funding.

In 1984, when the Reagan administration sought help with its secret plan to fund Contra militias and death squads in Nicaragua, the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. pledged $1 million a month. Saudi Arabia spent a total of $32 million supporting the Contras. The contributions continued even after Congress cut off funding to the them.

U.S. would stop an internal revolution

In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said that the U.S. would not let the Saudi government be overthrown, and that it would send troops to defend the Saudi regime if necessary:

“We would not stand by, in the event of Saudi requests, as we did before with Iran, and allow a government that had been totally unfriendly to the United States and to the Free World to take over.” The U.S. would intervene “if there should be anything that resembled an internal revolution in Saudi Arabia, and we think that’s very remote.”

This is a regime that allows no human rights or freedom of speech; where virtually all the work was done by migrants who are super-exploited and have no chance of becoming citizens; where all women are considered legal minors and require an appointed male ‘guardian’ to supervise them and give permission for getting married, obtaining a passport, traveling, enrolling in a school; where in some court cases, a women’s testimony is worth half as much as man’s.

Saudi Arabia, 9/11, and extremism

Decades of funding extremist centers to recruit shock troops for CIA wars helped create radical Islamist groupings and individuals. Al-Qaeda’s founder, Osama Bin Laden, is a prime example. He was a Saudi citizen and a key recruiter of Saudi fighters to Afghanistan.

Fifteen out of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 1, 2001 were Saudi nationals. One might think that if the Pentagon were to retaliate against any country for the 9/11attack, it would be Saudi Arabia. Not so. While it took a few months to sort things out, the upshot was tighter security ties between Washington and Riyadh.

Instead, Washington sent troops to Afghanistan ostensibly to force the Taliban government to turn over Bin Laden, who was seeking shelter there (even though the Taliban offered to surrender Bin Laden). Ironically, another reason cited was to protect Afghani women from the Taliban that Washington installed. Many believe, however, that a more pressing reason for Wall Street and the Pentagon was that the Taliban government would not permit the U.S. to build gas and oil pipelines through Afghanistan to bring oil from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea.

In 2010,Wikileaks published secret Saudi diplomatic cables revealing that the Saudis had the dubious distinction of being the ”most significant” source of funding for Sunni terrorist groups (like al Qaeda) worldwide.

Other published cables confirm how the the Saudis cynically use religious shrines in their control. Jihadists soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims. They then set up front companies to launder and receive money from government-sanctioned charities.

In 2013, under operation Timber Sycamore, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. partnered to fund, arm, and train jihadists in Syria.

The wars on Iraq

As the Soviet Union neared collapse, the Pentagon took aim at governments in the Middle East that weren’t fully under its thumb. Iraq was the first target. When Kuwait waged economic war against Iraq, including the use of slant drilling technology to penetrate the border and steal Iraqi oil, the Iraqi government sent troops into Kuwait. This was the pretext for the U.S. to form an imperialist coalition to invade Iraq. The Saudis officially requested the U.S to send in troops. The Pentagon stationed 500,000 soldiers in the kingdom, and used Saudi soil as a base to invade Iraq, and later to enforce sanctions and a no-fly zone.

The Sept. 11 attack served as a pretext to invade Iraq in 2003. The corporate media whipped up a hysteria that Saddam Hussein bore responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, even though the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda were on opposite ends of the Middle East political spectrum, had no relations, and did not cooperate. U.S. and British leaders fabricated “evidence” that Iraq had developed nuclear weapons and posed an imminent threat to the world.

Once again, Saudi Arabia proved essential. U.S. coordinated attacks on Iraq out of the Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, where some 10,000 troops were stationed. U.S. Special Operations Forces operated out of the country, which tapped into oil reserves to stabilize oil prices.

Subsidizing the U.S. arms industry

For decades, the Saudis have bought large amounts of U.S. weaponry at inflated prices. These purchases peaked under the Obama administration when Saudi Arabia agreed to spend over $110 billion on U.S. weapons, aircraft, helicopters, and air-defense missiles. This made it the largest purchase of U.S. arms in history. These weapons are not for defense. The purchases are far more than is needed for any purpose for a country with 22 million people. In effect, the Saudis are subsidizing the U.S. arms industry. Most of the military equipment sits in the desert.

Of course, the arms are used when needed. When the people of neighboring Bahrain rose up against a backward and repressive regime and Saudi ally in 2011, the Saudi military rode across sovereign borders on U.S. tanks and crushed the uprising. There was no outcry from Washington.

Waging genocide in Yemen

Additionally, in 2015 Saudi Arabia started a war to dominate Yemen. The war is currently at a stalemate, with the Saudi bombings and blockade responsible for a cholera epidemic, indiscriminate civilian deaths, and starvation, in what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Tens of thousands of children have died from disease and starvation. The war is waged with U.S. arms. U.S. advisers provide intelligence and training on the ground. Until this month, U.S. planes were refueling the Saudi planes bombing Yemen.

The U.S. has also been conducting its own operations within Yemen as part of the so-called “war on terror.” These operations include drone warfare, raids, and assassinations.

The Saudi rulers clam that the conflict in Yemen in a Sunni-Shia one. But Saudi Arabia didn’t think twice in the 1960s about backing Shiite royalist rebels in Yemen–the grandparents of today’s Houthis–against Sunni troops from Egypt supporting a progressive Yemini government.

A cash cow for U.S. corporations

Saudi Arabia continues to be a cash cow milked by U.S. businesses. The kingdom bought $20 billion in U.S. products last year, from Boeing planes to Ford cars. It recently signed a $15 billion deal with General Electric for goods and services, and put $20 billion into an investment fund run by the Blackstone Group.

U.S. banks love Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has paid $1.1 billion to western banks in fees since 2010. And truly giant bank fees are in the offing for JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, who are working with ARAMCO to take that company public.

U.S. universities and corporations grease the wheels for these giant business deals by training the kingdom’s managers and politicians, and promoting mutual interests. Many Saudi rulers begin their careers working for U.S. banks and businesses. Fahad al-Mubarak, who governed the central bank from 2011-2016 was previously chairman of Morgan Stanley in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Ministers, include those of finance and petroleum, got their degrees in the U.S.

The kingmakers in this oil-rich country have always been the princes of Wall Street. And the only god worshiped by the U.S.-Saudi unholy alliance is the almighty dollar.

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This article was originally published on Liberation School.

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

That time of the year.  Student evaluations are being gathered by the data crunchers.  Participation rates are being noted.  Attitudes and responses are mapped.  The vulnerable, insecure instructor, fearing an execution squad via email, looks apprehensively at comments in the attached folder that will, in all likelihood, devastate rather than reward.  “Too much teaching matter”; “Too heavy in content”; “Too many books.”  Then come the other comments from those who seem challenged rather than worn down; excited rather than dulled.  These are few and far between: the modern student is estranged from instructor and teaching.  Not a brave new world, this, but an ignorant, cowardly one.  

The student evaluation, ostensibly designed to gather opinions of students about a taught course, is a surprisingly old device.  Some specialists in the field of education, rather bravely, identify instances of this in Antioch during the time of Socrates and instances during the medieval period. But it took modern mass education to transform the exercise into a feast of administrative joy.

As Beatrice Tucker explains in Higher Education (Sep, 2014),

“the establishment of external quality assurance bodies (particularly in the UK and in Australia), and the ever-increasing requirement for quality assurance and public accountability, has seen a shift in the use of evaluation systems including their use for performance funding, evidencing promotions and teaching awards”.

Student evaluations, the non-teaching bureaucrat’s response to teaching and learning, create a mutually complicit distortion.  A false economy of expectations is generated even as they degrade the institution of learning, which should not be confused with the learning institution.  (Institutions actually have no interest, as such, in teaching, merely happy customers.)  It turns the student into commodity and paying consumer, units of measurement rather than sentient beings interested in learning.  The instructor is also given the impression that these matter, adjusting method, approach and content. Decline is assured. 

Both instructor and pupil are left with an impression by the vast, bloated bureaucracies of universities that such evaluation forms are indispensable to tailor appropriate courses for student needs.  But universities remain backward in this regard, having limited tools in educational analytics and text mining.  Student comments, in other words, are hard to synthesise in a meaningful way.

This leads to something of a paradox. In this illusory world, corruption proves inevitable. Impressions are everything, and in the evaluation process, the instructor and student have an uncomfortable face off.  The student must be satisfied that the product delivered is up to snuff. The instructor, desperate to stay in the good books of brute management and brown nose the appropriate promotion committees, puts on a good show of pampering and coddling.  Appropriate behaviour, not talent, is the order of the day. 

The most pernicious element of this outcome is, by far, grade inflation. 

“Students,” asserts Nancy Bunge in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “give better evaluations to people who grade them more generously.” 

Absurd spectacles are thereby generated, including twin tower sets of academic performances that eschew anything to do with failure (students as consumers cannot fail, as such); everybody finds themselves in the distinction or high distinction band, a statistical improbability. Be wary, go the ingratiating types at course evaluation committees, of “bell curves” – they apparently do not exist as an accurate reflection of a student’s skill set.

The result is a mutually enforcing process of mediocrity and decline.  The instructor tries to please, and in so doing, insists that the student does less.  Students feel more estranged and engage less.  Participation rates fall. 

The untaxed mind is a dangerous thing, and students, unaware of this process, insist on possessing a level of prowess and learning that is the equal of the instructor.  This is not discouraged by the administrative apparatchiks of various committees who make it their business to soil decent syllabi with dumbed down efforts such as “workshops” and “group work”.  (The modern student supposedly has a limited, social media concentration span.)  To them, the individual thinker – student or instructor – is a sworn enemy and must be stomped into an oblivion of faecal drudgery.

There is ample evidence, diligently ignored by university management, suggesting how the introduction of such surveys has been, not merely corrupting but disastrous for the groves of academe.  Take, for instance, gender bias, which has a marked way of intruding into the exercise.  Clayton N. Tatro found in a 1995 analysis of 537 male and female student questionnaires that both the gender of the instructor and the relevant grade “were significant predictors of evaluations”.  Broadly speaking, the female students gave higher rating evaluations that their male counterparts. Female instructors did better in the evaluation scores than their male peers.  Female instructors also did better in their scores with female respondents.     

Learning is a process of perennial discomfort, not constant reassurance.  The pinprick of awareness is far better than the smothering pillow.  Genuine learning is meant to shatter models and presumptions, propelling the mind into enlightened, new domains.  The student evaluation form is the enemy of the process, a stifling effect that disempowers all even as it claims to enhance quality.

Where to, then, with evaluating teaching?  There is something to be said about the element of risk: there will always be good and bad teachers, and that very experience of being taught by individuals as varying as the pedestrian reader of lecture notes or the charming raconteur of learned anecdotes should be part of the pedagogical quest.  From such variety grows resilience, something that customer satisfaction cannot tolerate.

Education specialists, administrators and those who staff that fairly meaningless body known as Learning and Teaching, cannot leave the instructing process alone.  For them, some form of evaluation exercise must exist to placate the gods of funding and quality assurance pen pushers. 

What then, to be done?  Geoff Schneider, in a study considering the links between student evaluations, grade inflation and teaching, puts it this way, though he does so with a kind of blinkered optimism. 

“In order to improve the quality of teaching, it is important for universities to develop a system for evaluating teaching that emphasizes (and rewards) the degree of challenge and learning that occurs in courses.” 

Snow balls suffering an unenviable fate in hell comes to mind.

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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]

Ukrainian military ships have violated Russian restrictions in the Sea of Azov and Articles 19 and 21 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.  The Ukrainian Navy crossed the Russian sea border and entered a closed area of Russian territorial waters.  Clearly, Washington was behind this as Ukraine would not undertake such a provocation on its own. Here is an accurate explanation of the event.

The Russian Navy detained the Ukrainian ships.  Of course, the Western media will blame “Russian aggression.”  Washington and its presstitutes are doing everything they can to make impossible Trump’s expressed goal of normal relations with Russia.  NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu quickly aligned NATO with Ukraine:

“NATO fully supports Ukraine’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity, including its navigation rights in its territorial waters.”

#NATO is closely monitoring developments in the #AzovSea & #KerchStrait, & we are in contact with the #Ukrainian authorities. We call for restraint & de-escalation. Read my full statement: pic.twitter.com/DDtfvNLa4K

— Oana Lungescu (@NATOpress) November 25, 2018

The US military/security complex prefers the risk of nuclear war to any diminution of its $1,000 billion annual budget, a completely unnecessary sum that is destined to grow as the media, in line with the military/security complex, continue to demonize both Russia and Putin and to never question the obvious orchestrations that are used to portray Russia as a threat.

The Russian government’s response to Ukraine’s provocation and violation of law was to call an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, as if anything would come off this. Washington pays such a large percentage of the UN budget, that few countries will side against Washington.  As President Trump’s crazed UN ambassador Nikki Haley said, “we take names.”

From all evidence, the Russian government still, despite all indications to the contrary, believes that presenting a non-threatening posture to the West, which appeals to law and not to arms, is effective in discrediting Western charges of aggression against Russia.  If only it were true, but no sooner than a high Russian official announced that, despite the overwhelming elections for independence from Kiev in the breakway Russian provinces of Ukraine, Russia would not recognize the independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk than “the Ukrainian army opened massive artillery fire on Sunday, shelling residential areas of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.” See this.

By trusting that there is a rule of law in the West, the Russian government is digging Russia’s grave while it allows Washington’s Ukrainian Nazis to murder Russian people. The Russian government is discrediting itself by trusting US vassals, such as Germany, to enforce the Minsk agreement and, despite all evidence to the contrary, believing that there is a rule of law in the West. Russia continues, year after year, to appeal to this non-existent entity called the Western Rule of Law.

This policy reassures the Zionist Neoconservatives who rule Washington’s foreign policy that Russia is incapable of defending its interests. 

The Putin government seems to think that in order to prove that it is democratic, it must tolerate every Russian traitor in the name of free speech. See this.

This makes Russia an easy mark for Washington to destabilize.  We see it already in Putin’s falling approval ratings in Russia.  The Russian government permits US-financed Russian newspapers and NGO organizations to beat up the Russian government on a daily basis. Decades of American propaganda have convinced many in the world that Washington’s friendship is the key to success. The Russian Atlanticist Integrationists believe that Putin stands in the way of this friendship.

China is also an easy mark.  The Chinese government permits Chinese students to study in the US from whence they return brainwashed by US propaganda and become Washington’s Fifth Column in China.

It sometimes seems that Russia and China are more focused on gaining wealth than they are on national survival.  It is extraordinary that these two governments are still constrained in their independence and remain dependent on the US dollar and Western financial systems for clearances of their international trade.

As Washington controls the explanations, surviving Washington’s hegemony is proving to be a challenge for both countries.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

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

A recent Telegraph investigation (paywall) revealed that senior MPs and peers, including many ministers, have given access to Parliament to spouses involved in lobbying for companies and campaign groups. Karen Bradley, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and Sir Kevin Barron, the chairman of the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee (Telegraph, ‘sleaze watchdog’), are among 900 parliamentarians whose partners hold “spouse passes” entitling them to around-the-clock access to the Palace of Westminster despite their work for organisations that lobby MPs and ministers over policies and funding.

Transparency International UK (UKTI) has published a policy paper on politics and report on the Revolving Door.

They note that in recent years politics in the UK has been plagued by corruption scandals and public trust in politicians is plunging.

These scandals have exposed serious fault lines in the UK political system, and have raised particular concerns over the following:

• The regime for parliamentary expenses
• Lobbying of politicians by those who can apparently buy access that influences legislation spending priorities or policy decisions;
• The revolving door between government and resources-resources-business;
• Political party funding; and
• Oversight regimes.

They explain that the problem lies when it happens behind closed doors and away from public scrutiny. It can lead politicians in office to steer away from good government. Their decisions can benefit those who fund them. The public interest comes second. Special interests, backed by money, may sway decision-making and undermine democracy.

Opaque lobbying practices backed up by extensive funds at the disposal of interest groups can lead to undue, unfair influence in policies – creating risks for political corruption and undermining public trust in decision-making institutions. We can attribute this factor, in part, to the crisis of confidence in politics we have seen unravel in the UK in recent years, resulting in apathy and low voter turnouts.

TI-UK believes regulation needs to address both those who seek to influence inappropriately and those who are being lobbied:

• Money should not be a distorting factor in forming policy or gaining access to decision makers.
• Lobbying on any particular issue or decision should be visible and have an audit trail.

Such information should be presented in a manner that is accessible and comparable for the public, media and civil society to scrutinise.

The report on UK corruption by TI-UK revealed that the British public perceive political parties to be the most corrupt sector in the UK and parliament to be the third most corrupt. It concludes there is a danger that the public will cease to regard decisions made by government and parliament as legitimate and fair; this represents a serious threat to British democracy and ultimately, to the rule of law.

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It is widely rumored that, with sealed indictments pending in the US, Wikileaks founder and publisher Julian Assange may be imminently forced to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy which has provided him safe refuge since 2012.

However, after a recent visit to Ecuador, US vice president Mike Pence (representing the Cabal) reached an agreement with the Moreno government acknowledging that forcibly expelling Assange was politically untenable.  One can only imagine that if such an expulsion comes to pass, it would likely result in a riot in the streets of London or that drugging Assange and smuggling him out in the middle of the night, under cover of a dark moon would equally result in forceful public demonstrations as well as worldwide condemnation.   The Ecuadorians informed Pence they would rather make life inside the Embassy difficult and unsustainable, thereby encouraging Assange to voluntarily vacate the premises. Lots of Luck with that!

There is no way to know if an indictment will be personally served on Assange.  For Assange to simply walk out the door and into the arms of a waiting extradition order to the US is indefensible as Assange is facing specious charges of “espionage” for daring to protect free-thinking whistleblowers by publishing their documents that exposed crimes and corruption at the highest levels of the US Government and political system. The distinction is crucial in that Assange did not steal documents but published documents provided to him just as the New York Times and other national newspapers have done for decades.  It will be positively riveting to watch the Trump Administration attempt to indict the NYT, the Washington Post and/or the LA Times for publishing what Wikileaks published.

Enter The Cabal: that deeply embedded, nameless/faceless unelected entity which dictates public policy although they have no public support whatsoever.  In agreeing with Moreno, the Cabal has already blinked in the tacit admission that Assange controls the narrative.  They are cowardly perpetrators of a simulated reality of war, devastation and poverty and highly vulnerable to an aroused, angry public.  It is the Cabal that had the most to lose if Assange was allowed to continue documenting the corrupt, unscrupulous behavior of its toadies.

Not to be confused with the Deep State, although we cannot be certain of where the overlap between these synonymous bastions of criminal malevolence begin and end; yet it is apparent that both control enormous factions of the US government from a dark sinister pit of wickedness; owing their existence to and total dependence on an unworthy claque of self-identified MSM “journalists” who willingly dance on the Empire’s thin ice of righteousness.

It is that collapsing Empire and political structure that have been most accurately depicted in many of the Wikileaks exposes that has stirred the Establishment to vociferously pursue prosecution of Assange.  The Democratic party is especially incensed that the Podesta/DNC emails were part of a treasure trove perhaps provided by DNC staffer Seth Rich who was murdered twelve days before the Wikileaks release.

Some Wikileaks contributions that provided the public with unclassified information that should have already been public include:

• Clinton Foundation received Millions of dollars from the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, both major funders of Islamic terrorists;
• Secretary of State HRC then approved an $80 billion weapon sale to the Saudis with which they began the war in Yemen in earnest;
• Goldman Sachs paid HRC $675,000 for one speech;
• Secretary of State HRC was the architect for the disastrous war in Libya leading to chaos in Europe;
• Vault 7 revelations that the CIA had developed a program to metadata a hack by adding ‘fingerprints’ to ‘prove’ that some other foreign agency had committed the hack.

Ergo, you can see the need to hoodwink the public into believing that Assange is a threat to democracy, an unconstitutional criminal responsible for the 2016 loss of HRC in cahoots with the equally criminal Russian president, Vladimir Putin.  It is the work of a poorly contrived fabrication that does not stand up to serious scrutiny – at question is whether the American public, well known for its political apathy and one dimensional thinking, will recognize truth even if they have to gag on it.

There is, however, an undeniable paradigm shift at play here dissolving whatever form, structure or institution no longer represents the public’s best interest.  The scandals at the FBI and Department of Justice are but one example of “Deep State” corruption as its very existence remained in the shadows until the 2016 election.  It has now been publicly outed as more than speculation and can be viewed as an active appendage of the Cabal.   It is difficult to know how deeply buried the Deep State layers go or how far out of reach the country’s make-believe electeds are, many of whom function as consigliere to the Cabal.

Despite the current strategy of denying Assange access to necessary medical care and his legal team, contact with his family and friends as well as removal of all outside world contact through the web and regular daily meals, my money is on Assange to stay the course.  Through the integrity he has established himself to be a truth seeker and man of peace who, to his credit,  has attracted the same enemies as JFK.  His continued resistance, although it appears ‘the resistance’ is absent from an opportunity to truly resist, will do much to encourage another wiseass heroic individual who dares to expose the details of American war crimes.   Despite best efforts by the Cabal, my guess is that against overwhelming odds, he will prevail and he will persevere, he will dig deep and find the inner grit as he has done since 2012 to defy the all powerful who inhabit dark places.

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

Featured image is from Snopes.com

The United Nations Universal Children’s Day– 20 November – has come and gone – and nothing has changed. No action that would now protect children any more than before, no move even by the UN to call on nations at war to take special care to protect children – if for nothing else but the fact that children are our planets future. They are the standard bearer of human generations to come – and of our civilization as a whole, if we don’t run it into the ground. Yet, children are among the most vulnerable, discriminated and abjectly exploited and abused species within human kind.

The culture of greed and instant profit has no space for children, for their rights, for their up-bringing within a frame of human rights, fair education, access to shelter and health services everywhere. For much of our western society, children are a nuisance, at best, a tool for cheap labor, especially when the west outsources its production processes to poor developing countries, mostly in Asia and Central America, so poor that they cannot enforce laws against child labor – all to maximize corporate profits.

Otherwise the western driven killing and war machine indiscriminately slaughters children, by famine, by drones, by bombs, by disease – by abuse. Collateral damage? I doubt it. Children could be protected, even in illegal wars. But eradicating by death and poverty entire generations in nations the west intends to subdue has a purpose: rebuilding of these nations will not take place under the watch of educated children, grown adults, who would most likely oppose their ‘hangmen’, those that have destroyed their homes and families, their villages and towns, their schools and hospital, their drinking water supply systems – leaving them to the plight of cholera and other diseases brought about by lack of hygiene and sanitation. So, in the interest of the empire and its puppet allies, children’s calamities and crimes on them are at best under reported – in most cases nobody even cares.

Look at Syria. The poison gas attacks instigated by US and NATO forces, carried out by their proxies ISIS and Saudi Arabia, to blame them on President Bashar al Assad, were directed at children for greater public relations impact – further helped by the fake heroes, the White Helmets. Can you imagine! (I’m sure you can) – children have to be poisoned and killed by western forces who want to topple the Syrian Assad regime to put their puppet in Assad’s place, so that they can control the country and eventually the region. Yes, children are sacrificed – a huge crime against humanity – to commit another horrendous international crime – forcefully change a democratically elected regime. That’s what the west does and is – and probably always was for the last 2000 years.

Take the situation of Yemen, where for the last 3 ½ years the network of the world’s biggest mafia killer scheme, led by Saudi Arabia, as the patsy and foreign money funnel aiding the United States and her allies in crime, the UK, France, Spain, several of the Gulf States, until recently also Germany, and many more – has killed by bombs, starvation and cholera induced by willingly destroyed water supply and sanitation systems, maybe hundreds of thousands of children.

According to Safe the Children, some 85,000 children below 5 years of age may have already died from famine; mind you, a purposefully induced famine, as Saudi and Gulf forces destroyed and blocked the port of Hodeida, where about 80% – 90% of imported food enters the country. The most vulnerable ones, as with every man-made disaster, are children and women.

Already a year ago, the UN warned that the cholera outbreak in Yemen is the fasted spreading cholera epidemic since records began and that it will affect at least a million people, including at least 600,000 children. A year later – how many of them have died? Extreme food shortages, destroyed shelters and hospitals, lack of medication, as medicine is also blocked at the points of import, have reduced children’s natural immune systems even further.

Imagine the suffering caused not just to the children, but to their parents, families, communities – what the west is doing is beyond words. Its beyond crime; and all those ‘leaders’ (sic) responsible will most likely never face a criminal court, as they are controlling all the major justice systems in the world. Though, no justice could make good for the killing and misery, but at least it could demonstrate that universal crime – as is the war on Yemen and many others fought for greed and power – is not tolerated with impunity.

UNHCR – the UN refugee agency reports that worldwide some 70 million refugees are on the move or in refugee camps. This figure does not include a large number of unreported cases, perhaps up to a third more. Most of the refugees are generated in the Middle East by western initiated wars; wars for greed, for natural resources, for controlling a geopolitically and strategically important region – on the seemingly ‘unstoppable’ way to full power world dominance.

At least two thirds of the refugees are children – no health care, no education, no suitable shelter, or none at all, malnourished-to-starving, raped, abused, enslaved – you name it.

Where do all these children go? What is their future? – There will be societies – Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan – missing a full generation. The countries are suffering a gap in educated people. This wanton gap will likely prevent rebuilding and developing their nations according to their sovereign rights. These countries are easier to control, subdue and enslave.

Just imagine, many of the lost children pass under the radar of human statistics, ignored, many of them are totally abandoned, no parents, no family, nobody to care for them, nobody to love them – they may quietly die – die in the gutters, unknown, anonymous. We – the brutal west – let them.

And the UN-declared Children’s Day has come and gone – and nothing has changed, Nothing will change as long as the west is devastating indiscriminately countries, cities, villages for sheer greed. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan — never were threatening the United States, nor Israel, of course. But they have resources the west covets, or they are geopolitically of strategic importance – for step by bloody step advancing towards world hegemony.

According to the UN, about 300 million children around the world do not go to school. Again, the unreported figure is possibly double or higher, especially including those that attend school only sporadically. Many of the children are abducted, sold into slavery, prostitution, imprisoned for medical testing – and for use in orgies of blood thirsty secret societies, their organs harvested and traded by mafia type organizations. Organ trading allegations are levied against Israel’s armed forces killing thousands of children in Israel’s open prison and extermination camp, called Gaza; and against Ukraine’s Kiev Nazi Government.

Did you know, 60% of all children in Gaza are mutilated and amputated as a result of Israel’s war against the Palestine population? And the world looks on, not daring to protest and stand up against this criminal nation – God’s chosen people.

In the UK, 1 of 4 children live in poverty. In the US, 60million children go to bed hungry – every night. As I write these lines, at the US-Mexican border refugee children and their mothers are being shot at with teargas canons by US police and military forces, to prevent them from entering Mr. Trump’s Holy Land, the Great United States of America.

The former UN Secretary General, Koffi Annan, winner of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, referring to the horrific siege on Aleppo and calling for international action to stop the war, he said, “The assault on Aleppo is an assault on the whole world. When hospitals, schools and homes are bombed indiscriminately, killing and maiming hundreds of innocent children, these are acts that constitute an attack on our shared, fundamental human values. Our collective cry for action must be heard, and acted upon, by all those engaged in this dreadful war.”

But, how could the world of today be described better than by Caitlin Johnstone in her recent poem “Welcome to Planet Earth”, where she says, “Welcome to Planet Earth…… where children who do not know how to live, teach their children how to live; where children pray for miracles, using minds that are made of miracles; with clasped hands that are made of miracles; where children wander in search of God, upon feet that are made of God, looking with eyes that are made of God.”

Where have all the children gone?

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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

Featured image is from Hugh Macleod / IRIN/Creative Commons

It is welcome that finally there has been a little pushback, including from leading journalists, to the Guardian’s long-running vilification of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks.

Reporter Luke Harding’s latest article, claiming that Donald Trump’s disgraced former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly visited Assange in Ecuador’s embassy in London on three occasions, is so full of holes that even hardened opponents of Assange in the corporate media are struggling to stand by it.

Faced with the backlash, the Guardian quickly – and very quietly – rowed back its initial certainty that its story was based on verified facts. Instead, it amended the text, without acknowledging it had done so, to attribute the claims to unnamed, and uncheckable, “sources”.

The propaganda function of the piece is patent. It is intended to provide evidence for long-standing allegations that Assange conspired with Trump, and Trump’s supposed backers in the Kremlin, to damage Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.

The Guardian’s latest story provides a supposedly stronger foundation for an existing narrative: that Assange and Wikileaks knowingly published emails hacked by Russia from the Democratic party’s servers. In truth, there is no public evidence that the emails were hacked, or that Russia was involved. Central actors have suggested instead that the emails were leaked from within the Democratic party.

Nonetheless, this unverified allegation has been aggressively exploited by the Democratic leadership because it shifts attention away both from its failure to mount an effective electoral challenge to Trump and from the damaging contents of the emails. These show that party bureaucrats sought to rig the primaries to make sure Clinton’s challenger for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, lost.

To underscore the intended effect of the Guardian’s new claims, Harding even throws in a casual and unsubstantiated reference to “Russians” joining Manafort in supposedly meeting Assange.

Manafort has denied the Guardian’s claims, while Assange has threatened to sue the Guardian for libel.

‘Responsible for Trump’

The emotional impact of the Guardian story is to suggest that Assange is responsible for four years or more of Trump rule. But more significantly, it bolsters the otherwise risible claim that Assange is not a publisher – and thereby entitled to the protections of a free press, as enjoyed by the Guardian or the New York Times – but the head of an organisation engaged in espionage for a foreign power.

The intention is to deeply discredit Assange, and by extension the Wikileaks organisation, in the eyes of right-thinking liberals. That, in turn, will make it much easier to silence Assange and the vital cause he represents: the use of new media to hold to account the old, corporate media and political elites through the imposition of far greater transparency.

The Guardian story will prepare public opinion for the moment when Ecuador’s rightwing government under President Lenin Moreno forces Assange out of the embassy, having already withdrawn most of his rights to use digital media.

It will soften opposition when the UK moves to arrest Assange on self-serving bail violation charges and extradites him to the US. And it will pave the way for the US legal system to lock Assange up for a very long time.

For the best part of a decade, any claims by Assange’s supporters that avoiding this fate was the reason Assange originally sought asylum in the embassy was ridiculed by corporate journalists, not least at the Guardian.

Even when a United Nations panel of experts in international law ruled in 2016 that Assange was being arbitrarily – and unlawfully – detained by the UK, Guardian writers led efforts to discredit the UN report. See here and here.

Now Assange and his supporters have been proved right once again. An administrative error this month revealed that the US justice department had secretly filed criminal charges against Assange.

Heavy surveillance

The problem for the Guardian, which should have been obvious to its editors from the outset, is that any visits by Manafort would be easily verifiable without relying on unnamed “sources”.

Glenn Greenwald is far from alone in noting that London is possibly the most surveilled city in the world, with CCTV cameras everywhere. The environs of the Ecuadorian embassy are monitored especially heavily, with continuous filming by the UK and Ecuadorian authorities and most likely by the US and other actors with an interest in Assange’s fate.

The idea that Manafort or “Russians” could have wandered into the embassy to meet Assange even once without their trail, entry and meeting being intimately scrutinised and recorded is simply preposterous.

According to Greenwald:

“If Paul Manafort … visited Assange at the Embassy, there would be ample amounts of video and other photographic proof demonstrating that this happened. The Guardian provides none of that.”

Former British ambassador Craig Murray also points out the extensive security checks insisted on by the embassy to which any visitor to Assange must submit. Any visits by Manafort would have been logged.

In fact, the Guardian obtained the embassy’s logs in May, and has never made any mention of either Manafort or “Russians” being identified in them. It did not refer to the logs in its latest story.

Murray:

“The problem with this latest fabrication is that [Ecuador’s President] Moreno had already released the visitor logs to the Mueller inquiry. Neither Manafort nor these ‘Russians’ are in the visitor logs … What possible motive would the Ecuadorean government have for facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort? Furthermore it is impossible that the intelligence agency – who were in charge of the security – would not know the identity of these alleged ‘Russians’.”

No fact-checking

It is worth noting it should be vitally important for a serious publication like the Guardian to ensure its claims are unassailably true – both because Assange’s personal fate rests on their veracity, and because, even more importantly, a fundamental right, the freedom of the press, is at stake.

Given this, one would have expected the Guardian’s editors to have insisted on the most stringent checks imaginable before going to press with Harding’s story. At a very minimum, they should have sought out a response from Assange and Manafort before publication. Neither precaution was taken.

I worked for the Guardian for a number of years, and know well the layers of checks that any highly sensitive story has to go through before publication. In that lengthy process, a variety of commissioning editors, lawyers, backbench editors and the editor herself, Kath Viner, would normally insist on cuts to anything that could not be rigorously defended and corroborated.

And yet this piece seems to have been casually waved through, given a green light even though its profound shortcomings were evident to a range of well-placed analysts and journalists from the outset.

That at the very least hints that the Guardian thought they had “insurance” on this story. And the only people who could have promised that kind of insurance are the security and intelligence services – presumably of Britain, the United States and / or Ecuador.

It appears the Guardian has simply taken this story, provided by spooks, at face value. Even if it later turns out that Manafort did visit Assange, the Guardian clearly had no compelling evidence for its claims when it published them. That is profoundly irresponsible journalism – fake news – that should be of the gravest concern to readers.

A pattern, not an aberration

Despite all this, even analysts critical of the Guardian’s behaviour have shown a glaring failure to understand that its latest coverage represents not an aberration by the paper but decisively fits with a pattern.

Glenn Greenwald, who once had an influential column in the Guardian until an apparent, though unacknowledged, falling out with his employer over the Edward Snowden revelations, wrote a series of baffling observations about the Guardian’s latest story.

First, he suggested it was simply evidence of the Guardian’s long-standing (and well-documented) hostility towards Assange.

“The Guardian, an otherwise solid and reliable paper, has such a pervasive and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards in order to malign him.”

It was also apparently evidence of the paper’s clickbait tendencies:

“They [Guardian editors] knew that publishing this story would cause partisan warriors to excitedly spread the story, and that cable news outlets would hyperventilate over it, and that they’d reap the rewards regardless of whether the story turned out to be true or false.”

And finally, in a bizarre tweet, Greenwald opined, “I hope the story [maligning Assange] turns out true” – apparently because maintenance of the Guardian’s reputation is more important than Assange’s fate and the right of journalists to dig up embarrassing secrets without fear of being imprisoned.

I think the Guardian is an important paper with great journalists. I hope the story turns out true. But the skepticism over this story is very widespread, including among Assange's most devoted haters, because it's so sketchy. If Manafort went there, there's video. Let's see it.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 28, 2018

Deeper malaise

What this misses is that the Guardian’s attacks on Assange are not exceptional or motivated solely by personal animosity. They are entirely predictable and systematic. Rather than being the reason for the Guardian violating basic journalistic standards and ethics, the paper’s hatred of Assange is a symptom of a deeper malaise in the Guardian and the wider corporate media.

Even aside from its decade-long campaign against Assange, the Guardian is far from “solid and reliable”, as Greenwald claims. It has been at the forefront of the relentless, and unhinged, attacks on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for prioritising the rights of Palestinians over Israel’s right to continue its belligerent occupation. Over the past three years, the Guardian has injected credibility into the Israel lobby’s desperate efforts to tar Corbyn as an anti-semite. See here, here and here.

Similarly, the Guardian worked tirelessly to promote Clinton and undermine Sanders in the 2016 Democratic nomination process – another reason the paper has been so assiduous in promoting the idea that Assange, aided by Russia, was determined to promote Trump over Clinton for the presidency.

The Guardian’s coverage of Latin America, especially of populist leftwing governments that have rebelled against traditional and oppressive US hegemony in the region, has long grated with analysts and experts. Its especial venom has been reserved for leftwing figures like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, democratically elected but official enemies of the US, rather than the region’s rightwing authoritarians beloved of Washington.

The Guardian has been vocal in the so-called “fake news” hysteria, decrying the influence of social media, the only place where leftwing dissidents have managed to find a small foothold to promote their politics and counter the corporate media narrative.

The Guardian has painted social media chiefly as a platform overrun by Russian trolls, arguing that this should justify ever-tighter restrictions that have so far curbed critical voices of the dissident left more than the right.

Heroes of the neoliberal order

Equally, the Guardian has made clear who its true heroes are. Certainly not Corbyn or Assange, who threaten to disrupt the entrenched neoliberal order that is hurtling us towards climate breakdown and economic collapse.

Its pages, however, are readily available to the latest effort to prop up the status quo from Tony Blair, the man who led Britain, on false pretences, into the largest crime against humanity in living memory – the attack on Iraq.

That “humanitarian intervention” cost the lives of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and created a vacuum that destabilised much of the Middle East, sucked in Islamic jihadists like al-Qaeda and ISIS, and contributed to the migrant crisis in Europe that has fuelled the resurgence of the far-right. None of that is discussed in the Guardian or considered grounds for disqualifying Blair as an arbiter of what is good for Britain and the world’s future.

The Guardian also has an especial soft spot for blogger Elliot Higgins, who, aided by the Guardian, has shot to unlikely prominence as a self-styled “weapons expert”. Like Luke Harding, Higgins invariably seems ready to echo whatever the British and American security services need verifying “independently”.

Higgins and his well-staffed website Bellingcat have taken on for themselves the role of arbiters of truth on many foreign affairs issues, taking a prominent role in advocating for narratives that promote US and NATO hegemony while demonising Russia, especially in highly contested arenas such as Syria.

That clear partisanship should be no surprise, given that Higgins now enjoys an “academic” position at, and funding from, the Atlantic Council, a high-level, Washington-based think-tank founded to drum up support for NATO and justify its imperialist agenda.

Improbably, the Guardian has adopted Higgins as the poster-boy for a supposed citizen journalism it has sought to undermine as “fake news” whenever it occurs on social media without the endorsement of state-backed organisations.

The truth is that the Guardian has not erred in this latest story attacking Assange, or in its much longer-running campaign to vilify him. With this story, it has done what it regularly does when supposedly vital western foreign policy interests are at stake – it simply regurgitates an elite-serving, western narrative.

Its job is to shore up a consensus on the left for attacks on leading threats to the existing, neoliberal order: whether they are a platform like Wikileaks promoting whistle-blowing against a corrupt western elite; or a politician like Jeremy Corbyn seeking to break apart the status quo on the rapacious financial industries or Israel-Palestine; or a radical leader like Hugo Chavez who threatened to overturn a damaging and exploitative US dominance of “America’s backyard”; or social media dissidents who have started to chip away at the elite-friendly narratives of corporate media, including the Guardian.

The Guardian did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a shred of evidence. It did what it is designed to do.

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

For last ten months, the world has been watching at times with hope, sometimes with doubt and often even fear. There have been three inter-Korea summits and one US-North Korea summit. But we see no peace on the Land of Morning Calm.

The Pyong-chang Olympics was marked by the warm and passionate embrace between the same people separated for seventy years. The icy ideological differences melted away.

 In Pyongyang, in April, the world sang with North Korean and South Korean singers: “The Spring of peace has come; let us meet, in Seoul, in the Autumn and harvest the peace”. 

The Autumn had gone and the Winter has arrived. Yet, there is no peace!  Why? 

The answer to this question lies in different objectives pursued by those who are directly involved in and affected by the peace process. By and large, there are two groups, one for peace and the other against it. The former includes South Korea’s Moon government and its supporters, North Korea and Trump, while the latter is comprised of the conservative pro-Japanese South Korean elites, the Japanese conservatives represented by Abe and Washington hawkish oligarchy composed of military-security- intelligence-defence industries, MSID oligarchy (the oligarchy).

Proponents of peace

Let us begin with North Korea. It is true that, Pyongyang is not easy to dialogue with it partly because of its seven decades of isolation, constant military threats and terrible economic sanctions which had made it to mistrust others. But, one thing is certain; Kim Jong-un wants peace and decent living standard so that he can give his 25 million a decent life.

Many tend to think that he is ruthless dictator just like his father and grand-father. But he is different; his mother was wise enough to make him to spend childhood as an ordinary child and receive education in Europe. He was sincere when he abandoned his “Byung-jin” policy (parallel development of military might and economic development)  and adopted “economy first” policy.

He knows that he cannot develop the economy without peace and to have peace he has to end the relation of hostility with the U.S. He is ready to abandon his nuclear arsenal in exchange of a peace treaty,  end of economic sanctions and normal diplomatic relations like any other normal countries.

In fact, the North thinks that it has done enough to show its sincere desire for peace. It has destroyed five nuclear test tunnels; it decommissioned major missile launch sites; it has returned the remains of US soldiers killed or missing during the Korean War; it has collaborated with Moon Jae-in for the removal of guard posts and disarming of guards at the DMZ; it has signed with South Korea for the creation of wide buffer zones of no military exercises along the border line.

Moon Jae-in government of South Korea wants peace for its own reasons.

Image on the right: South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un embrace each other after releasing a joint statement at the truce village of Panmunjeom, Friday. / Korea Summit Press Pool

First, the Korean people had been, for last five thousand years, one single ethnic group with one culture and one language. As Moon Jae-in said in front of 150,000 North Koreans in September: “We have been united for five thousand years, but separated for 70 years.” There is a strong nationalistic feeling among the majority of Koreans for becoming once again one nation, one people and one culture.

Second, Korea finds itself once again as small “shrimp” that can be caught between and crushed by big powers (whales) in war. The current China-US Thucydides trap is conceived by many South Korean opinion leaders as a real threat to the Korean peninsula. Korea reunited would have a population of 80 million inhabitants, much greater military might and much larger economy so that it would be able to minimize, if not avoid,  the collateral damage of the Thucydides trap.

Third, the sustained economic cooperation with North Korea could be perhaps the only way out of the current economic challenge which Moon must overcome. For years, the South’s GDP has grown at less than 3%; the rate of increase in the value of exports has been declining ever since 2011.

In July of 2018, the value of export of ships fell, compared to the same period of 2017, by 60%, while that of cars, by more than 7%. These two groups of products represent more than a third of the value of Seoul’s export of goods. For the time being, the export of semi-conductors and other electronic products is doing reasonably well, but in the medium run, it may face serious challenge by Chinese products.

The crux of the matter is the loss of the Chaebols’ international competitiveness combined with the powerlessness of SMEs; thus there is big hole in which the Korean economy is trapped

Such poor performance of the Korean economy is largely attributable to decades of pro-Chaebol policy, business-politics collusion and wide spread corruption of the conservative establishment.

In the mean time, the small-and medium-enterprises (SMEs) which represent 99.9% of the total number of firms generating 85% of jobs have not been able to perform as the center of the South Korean economy. To put it bluntly, the danger of the Korean economy is its long-run stagnation.

The only way out is economic cooperation with North Korea. The combination of the South’s technology, capital and vast trade network  with well educated, low cost and well disciplined labour and 9 trillion dollar worth of natural resources of the North could be the best bet, perhaps only way, for South Korean economy to keep growing.

The highly effective and lucrative North-South cooperation has shown its virtue for years in the Gaesung Industrial Complex (GIC) where more than one hundred South Korea firms have been producing labour-intensive and capital intensive products by working with several thousand North Korean workers whose wage rate was one-tenth of South Korean wage rate.

Unfortunately, Park Geun-hye, now serving 33 year prison term, closed it three years ago, perhaps to please Washington, even though Washington did not ask for it. Now, Moon’s government is trying hard to reopen it.

To sum up, South Korea’s desire to unite two Koreans is motivated by healthy nationalism, the survival from the Sino-American conflict and economic survival.

It appears, at times, that Trump seems to be sincere in pursuing peace on the Korean peninsula. But why? What are his real goals?

We can think of three goals. One is his search for glory of having done something that Obama or George W. Bush could not do. The second is the use of North Korean issue for his political agenda. The third goal is, may be, his strategy of converting North Korea into the utmost forefront defence line against Chinese domination in the region.

What is then the relative importance of these goals? It is more than possible that his political agenda come first followed by the glory seeking. As for the third goal, being a rare breed of businessman, he may not be keen on playing with empire building foreign policy.

If these assumptions are true, then the peace process will go at least two more years. It is quite possible that he will give what Kim Jong-un wants, at least a part of it, a few months before the next presidential election. If he wins, he may get four more years of power and, at the same time, the glory of the Nobel Prize.

Here we are; we see the motivation of peace-seeking of two Koreas and Trump’s Washington. But nagging question is:”Are they good and strong enough to win over the anti-peace group?”

Anti-peace groups

The anti-peace groups include the South Korean conservative military-security-intelligence-defence industry (MSID) oligarchy, the American MSID oligarchy, and the Japanese conservatives led by Shinzo Abe.

The desire of the Korean oligarchy to maintain tension and hostility in the Korean peninsula is as strong, if not more so, as that of the American counterpart. One thing sure is that they have ruled South Korea for last 60 years by six presidents including Park Geun-hye. Of the six presidents, one was chased out by students, one was assassinated by his CIA director, while the remaining four were or are condemned for imprisonment because of corruption and abuse of power.

One may wonder how come they have been ruling the country so long and maximize the oligarchy’s interest at the expense of public interests.

They have been able to stay in power by brutally oppressing voices of opposition in the name of national security against threat by the North.

As for the Washington oligarchy, it has been able to increase the defence budget and boost the sale of military equipments to Seoul.

Thus, both oligarchies across the Pacific Ocean have been benefitting from the manufactured tension and they have been doing their best to kill the peace process.

Image below is from Black Agenda Report

The strategy of the oligarchies rests on two manufactured truths: “North Korea is threat to South Korea and the United States”, and hence, “it cannot be trusted”. The whole scheme of demonizing North Korea is based on these two “truths”.

It may be true that North Korea could threat South Korea with its nuclear bombs, but South Korea could be also a threat to the North with its nuclear umbrella coverage and superior conventional fire power.

To be frank, as for the North’s threat to the U.S. I wonder how many people with least common sense believe this. North Korea has been consistent all these years in that it has nuclear weapons only for defensive reasons.

Nevertheless, suppose that Kim Jong-un is stupid enough to attack the U.S territory. But the obvious fact is that the Kim’s nuclear ICBM cannot go through the US air defence net. If the American air defence net cannot find and destroy the missiles in advance, it could be an incredible waste of $700 billion of the US defence dollars. We must not forget that the defence budget of North Korea is far less than $10 billion.

At any rate, the assumption of the North’s being threat provides a logical justification of mistrust. Since North Korea is a threat and cannot be trusted, it must be punished. There are three ways of punishing North Korea: war, military exercises, and sanctions.

What the oligarchies want is the creation of the climate of tension, danger and fear facilitating the rule of conservative political regime and sales of arms. By virtue of these methods of punishing North Korea, the South Korean oligarchy has been able to rule for sixty years and enrich themselves through weapon trades and resulting dark money.

Now, we come to the question of guessing which of the pro-peace and anti-peace groups will win. The combined effort of the Moon’s liberal government, the North’s need for economic development and, especially, Trump’s strong positioning for peace might suggest that sooner or later, the peace will be smiling in the Korean peninsula, sanctions will no more seen and the whole of the peninsula will be able to enjoy peaceful and decent living.

But being realistic, we must not underestimate the strength of the anti-peace oligarchy supported by well funded think-tank establishments. In South Korea, the oligarchy has been relatively quiet for last year and half since the liberal Moon regime took over the power. But the deep-rooted and well funded conservative force is striking back to destabilize Moon’s regime.

The South Korean oligarchy has been forced to lay low after their leader Park Geun-hye was impeached and put into 33year prison life. But, the oligarchy led by big corporations is not dead; on the contrary, it is suspected to have unlimited money hidden away and it can fund anti-Moon and anti-peace campaign.

The oligarchy is deploying the following tactics. First, the main opposition party, Han-gook-dang, main benefactor of the corrupted government of Park Geun-hye, is doing every possible thing to discredit Moon’s government.

Second, there are groups of conservative elements led by a doubtful Christian church who are manufacturing every day tons of fake news to warn against fabricated threats from the North.

Third, some of the right-wing intellectuals including university professors are frightening the people by telling that North Korea still plan to unify the peninsula under the Red Flag.

Fourth, it is possible that the slump of the Korea economy is due to deliberate cut in investments by some large corporations so that    Moon’s government be blamed for it.

Fifth, main stream media led by the three powerful traditional newspapers, Chosen, Joong-ang and Dong-ah (Cho-Joong-Dong) publish, often without proof, events and stories designed to convince the people that North Korea is not trust worthy.

Finally, the opposition party which is surely very close to the oligarchy does not hide disappointment with Trump’s peace gesture. In fact, its former leader did not conceal his harsh criticism of Trump.

What the anti-peace Korean conservatives are trying now is to get back the power in two years by discrediting the liberal government and restore the tension which has been beneficial to them.

It is hard to predict the outcome of oligarchy’s anti-peace tactics, but one should not underestimate the force of anti-peace funds.

Money talks! Money is persuasive!

There is another variable that seems to affect the peace process. The victory of the Democrats in the U.S. Congress may affect whole dynamics of the peace dialogue.

It may have double effects. On the one hand, it could speed up the process; Trump might speed up the dialogue before the Democrats organize themselves to launch effective anti-Trump movement. The Pompeo-Kim Yong-chul meeting may take place soon.

On the other hand, one may have to wait two more years until the next presidential election before trump offers some “rewards” to Kim Jong-un.

There is another event which has something to do with Democrats’ victory. A few weeks ago, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a satellite image of 13 missile test sites. This report has raised a storm of controversy.

The hidden purpose of the report seems to show once again that North Korea is a still a threat and cannot be trusted. The 13 missile test sites appeared to be active suggesting that North Korea has not stopped its missile program. In other words, Pyongyang has betrayed the Singapore agreement and, hence, it is futile to continue negotiations with Kim Jong-un.

This was the message which the report tried to convey to the world’s public. The New York Times and CNN went beyond what the report intended to accomplish; these two media went as far as saying that Trump was cheated by Kim Jong-un; Trump was played by Kim. On the basis of this media report, General Barry McCaffrey would have told NBC:

“In the sort term, North Korea is the most consequential threat to the US national security…They have nuclear weapons, they have delivery system, they are not going to denuclearize”. (NBC: November 12, 2018)

Senator Edward Markey (Democrat) of Massachusetts is quoted to have said that Trump is played by Kim Jong-un and, hence, the second Trump-Kim Summit should not take place. (The Nation:November 16, 2018)

It is rather difficult to understand such emotional reactions, for what the satellite image has sown has little to do with the Singapore agreement.

As Professor Viping Narang of MIT is quoted to have said (The Nation: November 16, 2018) that Kim Jong-un has never offered to stop producing ballistic missiles. Similarly Leon Sigal, former member of the Times Boar is quoted to have said in 38 Norththat there was no agreement prohibiting the deployment of missiles by Pyongyang. There are many other experts who make similar observations.

There are many other North Korea watchers who are puzzled by what David E. Sager has written in the Times (November 12). There are several things which make CSIS’s report questionable.

For one thing, the 13 sites are for short-range or medium-range missiles; these missiles were not the target of the Singapore agreement.

Second, the report warns that the sites were concealed. The Blue House and the White House have known about these sites for long time.

Third, the image was taken in March this year, eight months before the Singapore Summit.

What bothers me is this. Why the report, now, in the first place? Why such offensive interpretation of the report by the Times? I am sure that the chief author of the report, Victor Cha knew that what the image has shown was not the violation of the Singapore agreement; after all, he is one of the well known Korea watchers.

What worries Cha appears to b the possibility that Trump is going to accept a bad deal. He would have said: “North Korea gives a single test site and dismantle a few other things in exchange of a peace agreement”. (The Nation:November 16, 2018) This seems to be a severe underestimation of Trump’s ability to negotiate.

In South Korea where he came from, Cha is known to be most notorious anti-North Korea and anti-peace person. But, to understand Cha, we must know the nature of his employer, the CSIS. This Center is perhaps one of the most amply funded think tank establishments. Funds come from Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, L-3, Rockwell, General Atomics, Booz Allen, Hamilton, Japanese Mitsubishi heavy Industries, South Korean Samsung Electronics, Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd. (The Nation: November 16, 2018)

These are the major players in the production of arms and they have major stake in the peace process in Korea. South Korea has been for decades the most lucrative market for these big players. The global integration of Korean firms is so complete that the Korea-US military cooperation has become a big business.

In 2016, the CSIS organized a meeting. At the opening speech, John Hamre, CEO of CSIS said : “We’ve been military partners for 70 years, we are now going to be business partners in a very new way”. (The Nation: November 16, 2018)

These firms are the core of the oligarchy, which might gain nothing by denuclearization, end of the Korean War and peace on the Korean peninsula. On the contrary, they will lose greatly by the peace process for two reasons. They will lose by selling less military equipment to Seoul; they will get less of illegal and immoral money related to arms transactions.

It is not necessarily by chance that the CSIS came out with the report right after the return of the Democrats to the Congress. It is more than possible that the oligarchy and the Democrats ganged up to destroy Trump and his Korea policy. The CSIS report, the Times’ interpretation of the report and various media voices may be first salvo of fight against the peace efforts on the Korean peninsula.

There are already some pessimistic voices about the denuclearization and the peace treaty on the Korean peninsula; it is indeed possible that the peace may not come this time.

But I like to say this.

First, the North-South tension is no longer possible because of the inter-Korea summits agreements and their swift implementation. The oligarchies should accept this and look for other means of exploiting the Korean peninsula; for example, making profit by joining the North’s economic development.

Second, it is about the time that the few rich and powerful stop destroying the poor people in North Korea; they have suffered enough from the 70 years of threats, sanctions, hunger and despair.

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

Last night, the Syrian Air Defense Forces (SADF) shot down several unidentified aerial objects over the district of al-Kiswah south of Damascus, according to the state-run media.

Local sources told SouthFront that the SADF had also engaged targets over Damascus and Quneitra. The recently supplied S-300 air defense system was not employed.

Pro-Israeli and pro-militant sources claimed that the Israeli Air Force had successfully destroyed multiple “Iranian” targets near Damascus.

The Israeli military has not commented on the incident itself, but said that reports regarding an Israeli aircraft or an airborne Israeli target having been hit by the SADF are false.

The situation is developing.

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Now that November 11 and the official “remembering” of our “heroes”, their “bravery” and “greatness” is over, it is a good time to take a deeper, more critical look at Canada’s participation in wars.

While on Remembrance Day we are told to  “thank a soldier for your freedoms” and the commemorations talk about “defending democracy”, the reality of wars’ connections to colonialism, imperialism, and oppression are ignored.

A Global News story about Nova Scotia university students visiting Canadian World War II soldiers’ graves in West Africa highlights the matter. The report ignored that The Gambia, where the Canadians were buried, was a British colony at the time and that Canadian forces legitimated European rule in Africa during the country’s only ‘morally justifiable’ war.

(Nazi expansionism’s threat to British interests, not opposition to fascism or anti-Semitism, led Ottawa to battle but WWII was ultimately justifiable.)

During the Second World War Canadians fought by land, sea and air in colonial Africa. Describing a support mission in 1943 a Hamilton Spectator headline noted: “Canada Supplied 29 Ships and 3000 of Her Sailors for North African Action”. Many Canadian fighter pilots also operated over the continent. “During the Second World War,” notes Canadian African studies scholar Douglas Anglin, “considerable numbers of Canadian airmen served in R.A.F. [Royal Air Force] squadrons in various parts of the continent, particularly North Africa.” More than a half-dozen Canadian pilots defended the important Royal Air Force base at Takoradi, Ghana, and others traveled there to follow the West African Reinforcement Route, which delivered thousands of fighter planes to the Middle East and North African theatre of the war.

After Germany invaded France part of the French government relocated to the south. The Vichy regime continued to control France’s colonies during WWII. In a bid to prod Philippe Pétain’s regime to re-enter the war alongside the Allies, Canadian diplomat Pierre Dupuy visited on three occasions between 1940 and 1941. Describing Dupuy’s mission and the thinking in Ottawa at the time, Robin Gendron notes, “for the Canadian government as for the Allies in general, the colonies had no separate existence outside of France. In practical terms, the colonies were France.” Later in the war Prime Minister Mackenzie King expressed a similar opinion regarding Britain’s colonies. “In December 1942,” Gendron reports, “King informed the British Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs that colonial policy must remain the responsibility of the colonial powers, and he reiterated this position in late 1944 when the British government asked for Canada’s input on the latest proposals for the postwar settlement of colonial issues.”

Without Canada’s major contribution to WWII Britain and France may not have held their African colonies. And during World War I, which is the origin of Remembrance Day, Canadians helped the British, French and Belgians expand their colonial possessions in Africa. As I detail in Canada and Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation, Canada was modestly involved in two African theatres of WWI.

In the lead-up to the Great War hundreds of Canadians, usually trained at Kingston’s Royal Military College, fought to help Britain (and the Belgian King) conquer various parts of the continent. Canadians led military expeditions, built rail lines and surveyed colonial borders across the continent in the late 1800s and early 1900s. More significantly, four hundred Canadians traveled halfway across the world to beat back anti-colonial resistance in the Sudan in 1884-85 while a decade and a half later thousands more fought in defence of British imperial interests in the southern part of the continent.

If we are going to learn anything from history, Remembrance Day commemorations should include discussion of Canadian military support for European colonialism in Africa and elsewhere. To really understand war and its causes, we must take a look at its victims as well as its victors.

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In 2016, Presidential candidate Donald Trump said “Wikileaks, I love Wikileaks” as U.S. President, Trump recently said “I don’t know anything about him. Really. I don’t know much about him. I really don’t.” It’s clear that the Trump administration with its CIA Director Mike Pompeo leading the charge want to prosecute or even murder WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. On April 13, 2017, Pompeo spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) based in Washington, D.C. and said the following:

WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service and has encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations. It’s time to call our WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year our intelligence community determined that Russian military intelligence, the GRU, had used WikiLeaks to release data of U.S. victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks

Both Democrats and Republicans along with the American mainstream media want Wikileaks founder Julian Assange either behind bars or dead as Fox News contributor Bob Beckel expressed during a Fox News panel discussion several years ago on what should be done to Julian Assange when he said to “illegally shoot the son of a bitch.”According to The Associated Press (AP) earlier this month:

In a divided Washington, few causes have as much bipartisan support as prosecuting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.  Many Democrats seethed when the radical transparency activist humiliated Hillary Clinton by publishing the content of her campaign chairman’s inbox. Most Republicans haven’t forgiven Assange for his publication of U.S. military and intelligence secrets. Much of the American media establishment holds him in contempt as well 

However, the article did mention the concerns about free speech in the U.S. regarding certain activist groups:

But academics, civil rights lawyers and journalism groups worry that an attempt to put Assange behind bars could damage constitutional free speech protections, with repercussions for newsrooms covering national security across the United States.

“This isn’t about Julian Assange, this is about the First Amendment and press freedom,” said Elizabeth Goitein, who co-directs the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center in New York. “You can’t support First Amendment freedoms and still support the government chipping away at those freedoms of people you don’t like”

The Republicans have a score to settle with Assange for releasing close to 400,000 classified Iraq war documents which was the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history. The Iraq war documents exposed torture, rape and numerous murders by the U.S. backed Iraqi police, soldiers and even death squads. Whistleblower and U.S. Army veteran Chelsea Manning also gave documents to WikiLeaks which included videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike titled Collateral Murder that involved the murder of a number of innocent civilians including two Iraqi war correspondents who worked for Reuters Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. Iraqi children were also wounded in the attack. Another batch of documents mentioned the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan killing between 86 to 147 Afghan civilians by a U.S. airstrike on May 4, 2009, in the village of Granai in Farah Province, south of Herat, Afghanistan. Manning’s documents became to be known as the ‘Iraq War Logs’ and ‘Afghan War Diary.’

The Democrats have a hatred towards Julian Assange as well for releasing numerous cables regarding Hillary Clinton from her involvement in the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi and the destruction of Libya to prevent a Gold-Backed Currency in Africa proposed by Gaddafi to the Democratic National Convention undermining the Bernie Sanders campaign so that Clinton can win the nomination for the Democratic Party in 2016.

In 2012, the Obama administration declared WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange an enemy of the state, forcing Assange to seek asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid arrest and the extradition to the U.S. The bottom line is that Julian Assange is a wanted man by the establishment in Washington and they will do whatever it takes to get him in their custody. Would he get a fair trial? No. because Julian Assange can expose a lot more on Washington if he were to have a fair trial.

Meet Ecuador’s President, Lenin Moreno

Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno turned out to be another U.S. puppet in the making. Moreno was a member of Raphael Correa’s government for several years and as Vice President for six years. Moreno then became a UN Special Envoy for Disabilities. Correa’s political party, Alianza Pais nominated Moreno as its candidate in the 2017 presidential elections. Moreno even called Correa the best president Ecuador ever had during his campaign trail. However, once elected, Moreno became another Latin American puppet President for Washington.

In 2017, Venezuela’s Telesur reported that the Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa criticized his former Vice-President Lenin Moreno calling him a “traitor.” According to the Telesur “Former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, denounced his Alianza Pais successor Lenin Moreno as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Correa supported Vice President Jorge Glas who was accused of corruption at the time. Moreno suspended Glas as his Vice President and in December of 2017, Glas was sentenced to six years in prison by a Criminal Tribunal of the National Court of Justice for allegedly receiving over $13.5 million in bribes in the Odebrecht scandal known as Operation Car Wash, a Brazilian money laundering investigation at the state-controlled oil company Petrobras in Brazil. Executives from Petrobas allegedly accepted bribes in return for awarding contracts to construction firms. Glas was accused of receiving bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in return for government contracts. According to Telesur:

In an interview with CNN Español following President Moreno’s decision to place Vice President Jorge Glas in pre-trial detention to face corruption accusations, Correa called the charges against Glas “a vulgar political persecution” that is the same thing “they used in Brazil against Dilma,” referring to the ousting of Brazil’s elected president, Dilma Rousseff on the basis of corruption charges in a move many called an “institutional coup.”

He defended the Vice President, saying that the accusations are without evidence. “Glas is a person that does not steal or allow theft, but for this one makes enemies,” he said 

With that said, not only Moreno targeted Correa’s political allies, he went after Correa himself. The Telesur report stated that “Underscoring the abrupt shift that Moreno took after assuming office, Correa said “I went from being the ‘eternal president’ to the ‘corrupt,’” referring to Lenin’s praising words at the inauguration dubbing Correa Ecuador’s “eternal president.” and that “Correa also criticized Moreno’s upcoming consultation, which he said had the ultimate aim of preventing Correa from returning to power by eliminating indefinite presidential reelections through constitutional changes.”

On July 27th, in regards to Assange, Reuters reported when Moreno was in Madrid, Spain, where he clearly stated what he thought about Assange:

Moreno said any eviction of Assange from the embassy had to be carried out correctly and through dialogue, but he displayed no sympathy for Assange’s political agenda as a leaker of confidential documents.

“I have never been in favor of Mr Assange’s activity,” Moreno said at an event in Madrid

What Moreno said is a Code Phrase for “I am with you America!” Moreno is also removing officials who opposed handing over Assange to U.S. authorities such as Ecuador’s London ambassador Carlos Abad Ortiz according to rt.com:

“WikiLeaks tweeted that Abad, appointed to the office under President Rafael Correa, was the last diplomat the long-term self-exiled editor knew in the embassy. “All diplomats known to Assange have now been transferred away from the embassy,” the whistleblowing site claimed. 

This new and sudden twist in the Assange saga has been met with concern by his supporters, with some suggesting that Moreno is doing Washington’s bidding by removing people who might have stood by Assange and opposed his potential handover to the British police – which is expected to bring about a swift extradition to the US. The dismissal has been called “a silent pro-US coup”

What is also disappointing regarding Moreno’s betrayal of truth and justice is his support for the private media in Ecuador. According to a Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) article by Joe Emersberger ‘Western Media Hail Ecuador’s Cynical President Moreno’ wrote:

How can Moreno get away (so far) with his post-election about face? By quickly turning on Correa, he immediately won over Ecuador’s big private media, and quickly made changes to public media so that it provided negligible opposition to his right turn. For example, Moreno promptly put a former editor of the right-wing newspaper El Comercio in charge of the government-run El Telegrafo. The results were obvious during a January 21 TV interview broadcast across the country, in which journalists from two right-wing networks and a third from public media interviewed Moreno

Another article written by Joe Emersberger for Counterpunch.org explained how Correa battled the opposition and the oligarchs when it came to the media wars:

Correa correctly identified the private media as his most formidable enemy and he battled it openly and relentlessly. In any capitalist country, but especially one ravaged by centuries of extreme inequality like Ecuador, if you aren’t battling the private media then you aren’t battling oligarchs, corruption or injustice. It really is that simple. Much has been made by his critics of media regulations passed by his government, and some of them can be validly criticized on free speech grounds. However, the tactic his rivals in Ecuador most despised was his weekly TV show. It was one of the ways Correa expanded government media to counterbalance the corporate media. Contrary to what some people have claimed or disingenuously implied, Correa’s show was never broadcast on every TV station and anyone who didn’t want to watch it simply had to change the channel. The more viewers his show attracted over time, the crazier the objections against it became – including claims that the show was a financial burden on the country

Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno is another patsy who is following in the footsteps of other Latin American leaders who maintain America’s backyard.

Wow! Another Fake Story: Trump’s Former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort met with Assange in 2013, 2015 and 2016

The Guardian published a story based on Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort meeting Assange on separate occasions titled ‘Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy, sources say.’  The article began with:

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told.  Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House

Of course, CNN jumped on the Guardian’s bandwagon with their own report just published on November 27th titled ‘Guardian: Manafort met with Julian Assange around the time he joined Trump Campaign’ about Paul Manafort’s alleged meeting with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy:

Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, secretly met several times with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, including around the time he was made a top figure in the Trump campaign, The Guardian reported Tuesday. 

Citing a “well-placed source,” The Guardian reported that Manafort met with Assange around March 2016, just months before WikiLeaks released Democratic emails believed to be stolen by Russian intelligence officers

Wow! It’s amazing how CNN and the U.K.’s own The Guardian still push the Russian hacking hoax without providing any evidence that Russia steered the election in favor of candidate Donald Trump. At the same time, The Guardianmade itself a contender for producing one of the top fake news stories of 2018 (although I am pretty certain that they and others such as CNN will publish a handful of fake stories before the year’s end!). You just got to love the way CNN and The Guardian cite a “well-placed source” for this information on Paul Manafort’s alleged meeting with Assange. According to the CNN article:

“WikiLeaks denied the report shortly after it was published. 

“Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper’s reputation. ⁦‪@wikileaks⁩ is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor’s head that Manafort never met Assange”

Paul Manafort also denied the accusations when he said that “This story is totally false and deliberately libelous,” Manafort said “I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him.”

It is most likely that The Guardian won’t accept that million dollar challenge from WikiLeaks because it’s a lie. Another fabricated story. Where was this information when the DNC and the mainstream media was investigating the Russian collusion hoax for the past 2 years? Now out of the blue sky, an unnamed source has this information. The mainstream media including The Guardian is sinking faster than ever before and for good reason.

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“Russian missiles are a danger” – the alarm was sounded by the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, in an interview with Maurizio Caprara published in the Corriere della Sera*, three days before the “incident” in the Sea of Azov which added fuel to the already incandescent tension with Russia. “There are no new missiles in Europe. But there are Russian missiles, yes”, began Stoltenberg, ignoring two facts.

First: as from March 2020, the United States will begin to deploy in Italy, Germany, Belgium, and Holland (where B-61 nuclear bombs are already based), and probably also in other European countries, the first nuclear bomb with precision guidance in their arsenal, the B61-12. Its function is primarily anti-Russian. This new bomb is designed with penetrating capacity, enabling it to explode underground in order to destroy the central command bunkers with its first strike. How would the United States react if Russia deployed nuclear bombs in Mexico, right next to their territory? Since Italy and the other countries, violating the non-proliferation Treaty, are allowing the USA to use its bases, as well as its pilots and planes, for the deployment of nuclear weapons, Europe will be exposed to a greater risk as the first line of the growing confrontation with Russia.

Second: a new US missile system was installed in Romania in 2016, and another similar system is currently being built in Poland. The same missile system is installed on four warships which, based by the US Navy in the Spanish port of Rota, sail the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea close to Russian territory. The land-based installations, like the ships, are equipped with Lockheed Martin Mk41 vertical launchers, which – as specified by the manufacturer himself – are able to launch “missiles for all missions: either SM-3’s as defence against ballistic missiles, or long-range Tomahawks to attack land-based objective”. The latter can also be loaded with a nuclear warhead. Since it is unable to check which missiles are actually loaded into the launchers parked at the frontier with Russia, Moscow supposes that there are also nuclear attack missiles, in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which forbids the installation of intermediate- and short-range missiles on land bases.

On the contrary, Stoltenberg accuses Russia of violating the INF Treaty, and sends out a warning:

“We can not allow the Treaties to be violated without punishment”.

In 2014, the Obama administration accused Russia, without providing the slightest proof, of having tested a Cruise missile (SSC-8) from a category forbidden by the Treaty, announcing that “the United States are considering the deployment of land-based missiles in Europe”, in other words, the abandon of the INF Treaty. This plan, supported by the European allies of NATO, was confirmed by the Trump administration: in the fiscal year of 2018, Congress authorised the financing of a programme of research and development for a Cruise missile to be launched from a mobile platform.

Nuclear missiles of the Euromissile type, deployed by the USA in Europe during the 1980’s and eliminated by the INF Treaty, are capable of hitting Russia, while similar nuclear missiles deployed in Russia can hit Europe but not the USA. Stoltenberg himself, referring to the SSC-8’s that Russia had deployed on its own territory, declared that they are capable of reaching most of Europe, but not the United States. This is how the United States defends Europe.

And in this grotesque affirmation by Stoltenberg, who attributes to Russia “the highly perilous idea of limited nuclear conflict”, he warns:

“All atomic weapons are dangerous, but those which can lower the threshold for use are especially so”.

This is exactly the warning sounded by US military and scientific experts about the B61-12’s which are on the verge of being deployed in Europe:

“Low-powered, more accurate nuclear weapons increase the temptation of using them, even to using them first instead of as a retaliation”.

Why is the Corriere della Sera not going to interview them?

Source: PandoraTV

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by Pete Kimberley

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Note

*The Corriere della Sera is a historical Italian daily newspaper, founded in Milan in 1876. Published by RCS MediaGroup, it is the most important Italian daily in terms of distribution and the number of readers.

Last week, I came across something I didn’t think I would ever see. But in hindsight, it shouldn’t have surprised me: one of the country’s leading left publications, The Nation, rebuking New York art museums and galleries for showcasing critical perspectives on official narratives of major events — or what we’ve come to know as “conspiracy theories” ever since the media’s embrace of the CIA campaign in the 1960s to discredit critics of the Warren Commission.

The article, “Conspiracy Theories Are Not Entertainment,” takes aim mainly at two exhibitions that opened in September: “Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy,” on display at the Met Breuer until January 6, 2019, and Fredric Riskin’s “9/11: The Collapse of Conscience,” which ran from September 11 to October 13 at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in Soho.

Zachary Small, a young “arts journalist” and “theatremaker,” purports to be writing art criticism, but his overarching point is a purely political one: Art institutions should not legitimize, intentionally or unintentionally, anything considered by the mainstream to be “conspiracy theory.” Doing so, he argues, “mutes the destabilizing and degrading effects of conspiracy on democracy.”

Small is not entirely opposed to the idea of “Everything Is Connected.” His complaint, rather, is against the show’s combining of pieces that “take an investigative approach,” documenting things like “the very real existence of government-sanctioned torture and money laundering,” with works of “artistic interpretation” that “revel in the passion of discontent” or that “glorify the notion that the September 11 attacks were an inside job.” (The latter are the paintings of Sue Williams, one of which shows the Twin Towers with the word “nano-thermite,” somewhat smudged out, hovering almost playfully above them.) Small insists that this mix “helps mollify the viewer toward conspiracy.”

But who decides what is “very real” versus “conspiracy” toward which the viewer must not be mollified? Perhaps that line is not so sharply defined for curators Douglas Eklund and Ian Alteveer, who apparently want to nudge viewers to be more skeptical of official narratives. In the final moment of the show’s video preview, Eklund affirms: “I would like to bring back the idea of art as a way of jolting people to get rid of their preconceived notions and to hopefully question more.”

Instead of probing his own preconceived notions about the topics explored in the art, Small berates Eklund and Alteveer for believing “there is value in scavenging through the most contested chapters of American history to find plausible alternatives to today’s hard truths.” In Small’s view of the world, it seems, everything he believes is “hard truth.” Everything he doesn’t believe is “conspiracy theory.”

The blinding effect and harsh consequences of Small’s immovable boundary between truth and falsehood are on full display in the second part of his piece for The Nation, which turns into a diatribe against Fredric Riskin and his installation “9/11: The Collapse of Conscience.” The primary target of Small’s attack is Riskin’s contention that the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and Building 7 collapsed not because of the airplane crashes, but from controlled demolition.

Partway into his assault, Small lays bare his extreme lack of knowledge about the science of the World Trade Center’s destruction when he alleges that Riskin “baldly ignores the available evidence, produced by MIT’s Civil Engineering Department less than a month after the attack.” Small goes on to call the omission of this evidence “purposefully irresponsible.”

In fact, the article by MIT professor Thomas Eagar and his research assistant, Christopher Musso, was positing a theory of the Twin Towers’ collapse that was in vogue in the first year after 9/11 but that official investigators would rule out by 2004. Eagar was hypothesizing that the “weak points . . . were the angle clips that held the floor joists between the columns on the perimeter wall and the core structure.” “As the joists . . . gave way and the outer box columns began to bow outward,” Eagar speculated, “the floors above them also fell.”

The government’s present-day explanation, though just as devoid of evidentiary support, is diametrically contrary to Eagar’s scenario. Today, the story goes that the angle clips connecting the floors and columns did not fail. Consequently, the floor trusses, sagging from the heat of the fires, pulled the perimeter columns inward — not outward — until they buckled. The failure of one wall of columns then caused the other columns to fail. The top section of each tower then fell straight down and completely destroyed the lower 60 and 90 stories of intact structure, respectively. (Never mind that the South Tower’s top section actually tips away from the rest of the structure before spontaneously disintegrating into a midair fireworks display of pulverized concrete and steel projectiles.)

Besides providing an outdated theory and a few corrections to some common misconceptions — indeed, jet fuel fires cannot burn hot enough to melt steel and steel doesn’t need to melt in order for structural failures to occur — Eagar’s article offers little substance compared with today’s large body of literature about the World Trade Center’s destruction. If Small had done any meaningful research on the subject, he surely would not have presented Eagar’s article as the totality of “available evidence.” Nor would he have implied that all of the available evidence, or even a sufficient amount of evidence to draw any conclusions, could be produced less than a month after the event. This notion flies in the face of forensic investigation principles.

Nevertheless, Small is unrestrained in his criticism of Riskin, accusing him of “pseudo-scientific observations” that devolve into “vengeful incoherence.” On the evidence of his scant research, Small is probably unaware (or he chooses to omit) that each of the statements included in Riskin’s three panels on the World Trade Center’s destruction — while delivered in Riskin’s own idiosyncratic, poetic style — echoes the arguments made by thousands of architects, engineers, and scientists.

“Building 7 . . . goes limp in a free-fall descent with pyroclastic flows of dust. Free-fall is impossible for a naturally collapsing building. It becomes the only steel structured skyscraper in the world to ever collapse due to fire.” Support for Riskin’s claims, most of which are undisputed factual observations, can be found in 9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out, World Trade Center 7, Part 5, and in several peer-reviewed papers, including “The collapse of WTC 7: A re-examination of the ‘simple analysis’ approach” in the Challenge Journal of Structural Mechanics. (Fredric Riskin, 9/11 The Collapse of Conscience, 20″ X 27”, Panel 24 of 43, Printed on kozo-backed Gampi using pigment inks. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY.)

“A structure collapsing upon itself, floor by floor, is not the path of least resistance. How is it the towers didn’t simply snap and fall like a tree struck by lightening? Instead, they pulverized.” Support for Riskin’s claims can be found in 9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out, World Trade Center Twin Towers, Part 3 and Part 5, and in several peer-reviewed papers, including “Some Misunderstandings Related to WTC Collapse Analysis” in the International Journal of Protective Structures. (Fredric Riskin, 9/11 The Collapse of Conscience, 20″ X 27”, Panel 23 of 43, Printed on kozo-backed Gampi using pigment inks. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY.)

“9/11 dust is different. It contains nano-engineered explosives. Sometimes the smallest possible element tips the scales into reveal.” Support for Riskin’s claims can be found in 9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out, Ground Zero, Part 3, and in several peer-reviewed papers, including “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” in The Open Chemical Physics Journal. (Fredric Riskin, 9/11 The Collapse of Conscience, 20″ X 27”, Panel 16 of 43, Printed on kozo-backed Gampi using pigment inks. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY.)

When Small is not ineptly attempting to impugn the scientific validity of Riskin’s exposition, he is leveling gratuitous insults at so-called “conspiracy theorists,” a pejorative meant to degrade and dehumanize its target. As if artwork about 9/11 should not be shown on 9/11, Small blasts the Feldman Gallery for launching its show on the September 11^th anniversary, likening the day to “Christmas for conspiracy theorists.” I would like to know what is Christmas-like about a father or a brother calling out for justice on the anniversary of their loved one’s murder.

Sadly for the state of our understanding of what actually took place on 9/11 — a day that almost any Nation reader will agree was used to launch a series of unjustified and disastrous wars that continue to this day — Small is not The Nation’s first writer to spew such vitriol at those who question the official narrative of that seminal event. In a 2006 diatribe, “The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts,” the late Alexander Cockburn made several remarkable statements wholly negating “the available evidence.” The most notable of those was his certain declaration that “People inside who survived the collapse didn’t hear a series of explosions.”

Cockburn posed as being well-versed on the claims of the 9/11 Truth Movement. But evidently he did not read, or he chose to ignore, the paper published two weeks earlier by Graeme MacQueen, a retired professor of Religious Studies and Peace Studies at McMaster University in Canada, titled “118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers.”

Based on his methodical analysis of transcribed testimonies from 503 members of the New York Fire Department (FDNY), which were made public in 2005 after The New York Times sued the City of New York for their release (no, not all of the evidence could be produced in less than a month), MacQueen found that 118 out of the 503 FDNY personnel interviewed “perceived, or thought they perceived, explosions that brought down the Towers.” Still, it’s not difficult to imagine Cockburn reading these oral histories and proceeding to lecture first responders like Captain Karin DeShore on how the phenomena she witnessed were not explosions taking down the World Trade Center. DeShore recounted in her interview:

“Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building.”

The irony is that Cockburn and now Small are guilty of the very thing they seem to be crusading against: people drawing conclusions about world-changing events based more on their biases than on careful evaluation of evidence — what amounts to the ultimate act of hypocrisy for journalists.

Of course, Cockburn and Small are far from the only journalists guilty of this ultimate act of hypocrisy. The New York Times published its review of “Everything Is Connected” one day after The Nation’s review was published. More measured and positive in his assessment, Timeswriter Jason Farago reserves his only stridently negative criticism for the aforementioned piece by Sue Williams. It comes as no surprise that he brandishes the same demeaning contempt:

“And sometimes the artists here edge too close to the nutcases’ side for comfort. Sue Williams has recently painted churning, color-saturated works evoking the destruction of the World Trade Center; I bridled at one canvas’s inclusion of the word ‘nanothermite,’ an explosive often mentioned by conspiracy theorists who doubt that planes felled the twin towers.”

It is telling that of all the topics covered in the exhibition, the word “nano-thermite” —  an incendiary found in large quantities in the World Trade Center dust, as documented in a 2008 peer-reviewed academic paper and corroborated by the presence of previously molten iron spheres, by “Swiss cheese” steel members, by numerous eyewitness accounts of molten metal, and by liquid metal seen pouring out of the South Tower — is what causes Farago to bridle and resort to epithets like “nutcase” and “conspiracy theorist.” I would wager that Farago has not bothered to investigate why so-called “conspiracy theorists” believe that nano-thermite was used in the World Trade Center’s destruction.

To their immense credit, curators Douglas Eklund and Ian Alteveer refrain almost entirely from using the terms “conspiracy theorist” and even “conspiracy theory” throughout their exhibit. And herein lies the fundamental source of Small’s and Farago’s disgust: Sue Williams’ pieces about 9/11 are featured in a show whose subtitle is “Art and Conspiracy,” not “Art and Conspiracy Theory.” The exhibit’s introductory placard eschews the term “conspiracy theory” in favor of praiseful commentary. The curators write that even the “fantastical works” on display “unearth uncomfortable truths” and that “the exhibition reveals, not coincidentally, conspiracies that turned out not to be theories at all, but truths.”

Zachary Small asserts that the Met Breuer and the Feldman Gallery are “whetting their audience’s appetite for distrust, disdain, and disaffection,” thus feeding “conspiracy theories” that destabilize and degrade our democracy. I assert these developments that Small is concerned about are fed not by the actions of the Met Breuer and the Feldman Gallery, but by the cataclysmic political crimes of the past half century and the refusal of news outlets like The Nation to help expose them.

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This article was originally published on ae911truth.org

Ted Walter is the director of strategy and development for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth). He is the author of AE911Truth’s 2015 publication Beyond Misinformation: What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7 and its 2016 publication World Trade Center Physics: Why Constant Acceleration Disproves Progressive Collapse and co-author of AE911Truth’s 2017 preliminary assessment of the Plasco Building collapse in Tehran. Ted moved to New York City two weeks before 9/11 and has lived there for most of the past 17 years. He holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Featured image: Fredric Riskin, 9/11 The Collapse of Conscience, Installation view. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY.

Übersetzung
K. R.

VIDEO (PandoraTV) :

It is a distant dream to achieve the peace in Afghanistan. Despite the world media and Afghan government have repeatedly claimed about the imminence of peace with the Taliban, there is no beacon of peace in sight for at least a decade ahead. Even if there is an olive branch, it doesn’t necessarily culminate in the prosperity of the people and would rather offer half of Afghanistan’s soil or half of power in the government to militants. In reality, the peace is nothing but a tool under the shadows of which a litany of evil plans is being implemented.

According to Afghanpaper.com and Afghanistan’s latest back-to-back events, the US has handed a kill/arrest list to its recently appointed special representative Zalmay Khalilzad (image right), an Afghan-American. He embarked on a number of trips and unexpectedly met with several regional and Afghan leaders involved in Afghanistan’s peace within one month.

Khalilzad commenced on his trip on October 5 to five countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Although, Washington had announced that Khalilzad’s mission is to lead peace efforts and bring Taliban to negotiating table, less than two months later now, a glimpse at the consecutive events over this period of time unveils a frightening truth behind the proclaimed effort.

The first harrowing incident as of Khalilzad’s appointment was the assassination of Kandahar’s powerful Police Chief Abdul Raziq Achakzai. He was famous for his tenacious anti-Taliban combat and survived several IEDs and suicide attacks plotted by the group. He was installed as police chief in 2011 and carried strong public support not only from Kandahar province, but the entire population of Afghanistan. He was murdered in a planned press conference event attended by the top US commander in Afghanistan General Scott Miller. The media, government and the US blamed Pakistan for the assault, but chilling truths surfaced later on social media that it was an inside job to remove the most powerful anti-insurgents face in Afghanistan.

In the press conference, both Afghan and foreign forces agreed to disarm members and guards, except one Afghan service member authorized by foreign forces who opened fire at commander Raziq in the wake of the conference. The people took to social media to blast at the US for the assassination. It also led to anti-American resentment within the Afghan army and resulted in at least two fatal assaults on US forces. Just two days before Raziq’s killing, another prominent tribal elder and MP Jabar Qahraman was also killed in a suicide explosion.

Within days of Raziq’s assassination, a Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was released from a prison in Pakistan. Later, five Taliban inmates were freed from the Guantanamo prison and placed in the Taliban office in Qatar under the pretext of expediting the peace process. These developments, of course, constitute part of the agenda launched by Khalilzad.

According to Afghanpaper.com, a source familiar to the Taliban in Qatar said that the issue of assassination or detention of certain influential figures designated by the US had been raised and discussed in the latest meeting of Khalilzad with Taliban leaders in Doha. The Taliban members have urged the US to add other names in the list too. Refusing to disclose the names of target persons, the source further added that the list included 14 people, of which 1 or 2 were killed and three are held in custody and the rest of the 10 people are to be killed or detained over the coming six months.

Reports expose that almost all enlisted persons are anti-Taliban or anti-ISIS heavyweights in Afghanistan and have caused headache for the US in the country. In the office as police chief, Raziq wiped out thousands of militants without the coordination of or consultation with the US or Afghan government, because he believed “they are not serious in the combat”.

On the other hand, the commander of NATO’s resolute support mission General Scott Miller (left) unexpectedly went on visits to central Ghazni and western Farah provinces this month in a bid to, according to unofficial reports, disarm armed personnel of local groups. One of Khalilzad’s to-do tasks is to demilitarize the armed personnel of several parties and groups that fight militants or fill the combat vacuum of government in the fight against rebels. The US seems not intended to fight Taliban anymore as the release of inmates and the assassination of anti-Taliban figures manifest a backward movement in the war on terror in Afghanistan.

In the latest act of detention, a Hazara local uprising commander Alipur had been arrested by Afghanistan’s intelligence agency on some alleged charges including illegal armed activities and attacks on Afghan security forces.

This is the official narrative and the broad public opinion differs. He is said to be a local uprising commander who fought back Taliban and other militants in his home province. Widespread protests had been staged in Kabul for two days to demand the unconditional release of Commander Alipur. If we cast a look at the recent moves by the Afghan government from the perspective of Khalilzad’s list issue, it becomes clear that the detainee is one of several anti-Taliban warriors subject to be killed or incarcerated. The same day, a US spokesperson in Kabul refused involvement in the detention of Alipur.

Commander Alipur was fortunate among those in the list. He was released on bail on Monday night on the condition of abiding by certain commitments. Alipur was made to read out his commitments in a video circulated on social media that he will, among other, surrender his arms to government, fight as a soldier under government orders and stay in Kabul as long as required.  In all, we can conclude that he was “silenced” and banned from taking up arms again and fighting in his region against whatever the militant group is called.

Others believe that Alipur and other Hazara commanders are supported and armed by Iran via Hazara leaders in Kabul and the protests have also been organized at the behest of the Islamic regime to weaken the influence of militants posing threats to Iran and challenge the Afghan government for siding with the West.

According to Afghanpaper.com, some of the enlisted individuals are powerful anti-US commanders and avowed true enemies of the Taliban in the army and national police and the rest of them are local armed warriors who have publicly waged war against the Taliban and ISIS in their respective regions.

Throughout Afghanistan, dozens of uprisings have been organized since the US invasion in 2001 by local people against the oppression and massacres of the Taliban and then ISIS, but none of them have received a scrap of support from former and present governments in Afghanistan. Many of the uprisings’ leaders and members have suffered causalities in cold-blooded ambushes and attacks, left stranded without arms or technical support from government.

Khalilzad’s agenda also included postponement of the upcoming presidential election that was scheduled for April 2019, which he did so by announcing it to the people of Afghanistan. For the US, Ashraf Ghani is still a trusted and fit person to lead the country, so the deferral of presidential elections to an uncertain date under one reason constitutes a guarantee to the US, that a pro-US president will remain in office.

In July 2018, Nizamuddin Qaisaria local commander from northern Faryab province that shares a border with Turkmenistan was arrested by Afghan commandos on unknown charges. He was a commander of the ex-warlord and the de-facto first vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum, who took a stance against the influx of ISIS terrorists in his home district of Qaisar.

And Abdul Rashid Dostum himself during his early days in office had headed to the north of Afghanistan with a long fleet of vehicles to take lead of operations against the belligerent groups which the government “failed” to annihilate.

His home province was set to be stormed by ISIS loyalists and, therefore, he moved into action without the consultation and agreement of the Ashraf Ghani  government.

And now Abdul Rashid Dostum is paying for his deeds. The US has their eyes upon him. He was forced into exile to Turkey and banned from entering Afghanistan last year. Disqualified from his government post, he is now living under severe restrictions in Afghanistan.

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Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

It took place as the blades were being sharpened for a palace coup in August.  On Radio National’s breakfast program, Deputy Leader of Labor, Tanya Plibersek was tight lipped to her interlocutor.  The issue posed to her party was the eligibility of the then recently resigned Home Affairs minister, Peter Dutton, chief knife wielder and executioner against Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.  Plibersek, it transpired, had received advice earlier in the year that might leave Dutton without his seat.  But what also surfaced was a certain, carefree irresponsibility: instead of making use of that material, Labor had a useful weapon to keep in storage.   

When necessary, the strategists in opposition could refer Dutton to the Australian High Court, claiming his ineligibility under section 44 of the Australian Constitution.  While other sitting members have fallen on the sword of dual-nationality and owing allegiance to a foreign power (s. 44(i)), the case with Dutton is pecuniary in nature, posing a potential conflict of interest (s. 44(v)).

That limb of the provision states that any person who “has any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth” is disqualified from sitting in the chambers of parliament.  As he is a beneficiary of a discretionary family trust which, through its trustee, owns two childcare centres in Queensland which have been in receipt of childcare subsidies, the issue of a “pecuniary interest” might arise.

The undergrowth of legal argument over this is suffocatingly dense.  One of Australia’s foremost constitutional authorities, Anne Twomey, suggests that Dutton might have an out: that the childcare centres in question “merely receive the subsidy on behalf of the parents and do not have an agreement with the public service.” But if an agreement is, in fact, found, an indirect pecuniary interest might be identified.   

To date, the Solicitor-General has given the most inadequate of band aids to the government. (As he knows, never second guess the judicial heads on the bench.)  Stephan Donaghue, back in August, was scrupulous in covering all his exits, lest egg find its way to his unsuspecting face: Dutton was “not incapable” of sitting as a member of parliament, but there was “some risk” that the High Court might see the “substantial size of the payments” arising from subsidies as a problem. “However, for a variety of reasons, I have been briefed with very little factual information.”  Yet again, darkness descends where light should enlighten.  

The High Court has given some clue about its brutal and merciless reading of s. 44(v).  Family First senator Bob Day was one such individual to fall foul of that section, another instance of the High Court’s enthusiastic policing of the constitution’s invalidating procedures.  Chief Justice Kiefel and Justices Bell and Edelman noted an exemption: there would be “no relevant interest if the agreement in question is one ordinarily made between government and citizen.”  The senator was not so lucky. 

The conditions have shifted again, tickling Labor into action.  The Coalition government has received yet another blow directed from within the party room: MP Julia Banks has joined the ranks of those “three female independent representatives” who sport “sensible, centre, liberal values”.  The Liberals are now another representative short, accused of falling into the arms of woman-hating “reactionaries”.  The recently elected independent member for Wentworth, Kerry Phelps, has also put the feelers out for a prospective referral. 

True to parliamentary form, Christopher Pyne, the leader of the House, has retaliated with his own variant of political poison gas: should Labor and Phelps wish to push the issue of referring Dutton to the High Court, the Coalition would seek to refer Phelps, and Labor MPs Mike Freelander and Tony Zappia.   

The trio offer another bag of legal delights for the constitutional vultures: Phelps because of her being both a city of Sydney councillor and medical practitioner; Freelander because he was, like Phelps, a GP in receipt of Medicare subsidies; and Zappia for an alleged interest in his wife’s fitness centre.

“My original position, of course,” claimed Pyne on Radio National, “is that we don’t have a constitutional issue but if they decide that he does and they want to send him there, they’ll have to send the other three as well.”

How utterly sporting of him. 

Far from being a matter of public duty, integrity and issue of good governance, section 44 and its eligibility requirements are weapons of choice for opponents.  Even after the disastrous strafing of Parliament by a range of High Court decisions declaring certain sitting members to be ineligible (dual nationality can be a tricky, thorny thing), doubts louse the locks of certainty.  Self-confidence on the part of politicians that their position is secure should be treated with hearty contempt, even more so than economic forecasts. 

There is a logistical, and bureaucratic cock-up in waiting as well.  Were Dutton actually found to be invalidly vested with power, his decisions under the Migration Act, it would follow, would be void. Legal eagles are also swooping upon the prospect that 1,600 decisions made by the minister to cancel visas of those convicted of a crime are null.  Lawyers for a man designated FQM18 currently argue that, due to the breaches incurred under s. 44, Dutton is was “not constitutionally permitted to act as a minister” when he made a decision of non-revocation on February 6, 2018. 

As the claim goes, in full,

“At the time of the non-revocation decision, Mr. Dutton was incapable of sitting as a member of the House of Representatives of the commonwealth of Australia because he had a pecuniary interest in an agreement with the public service of the commonwealth in breach of s. 44(v) of the constitution.” 

The Labor opposition has little reason to bear itself up as a proud example of parliamentary conduct.  For them, as, for that matter, other political parties, Australia’s constitution has been an inconvenience and a godsend.  It invalidating provisions for members of parliament lie in cold storage, only to be thawed and deployed when the winds blow favourably.   

Section 44 has been used to eliminate enemies, unseat opponents and destroy the credibility of sitting members.  It has added doubt to voters who no doubt wonder whether candidates and members can read basic paperwork.  High Court fundamentalism, laced with opaque reasoning, has done the rest, leaving little room for error for anybody wishing to stand for the highest elected chambers in the country. Run for elected office at your peril.

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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]

On the heels of another alleged chemical attack in Syria – the Western media has responded with skepticism – even silence. This acutely different response to its regular “chemical weapons” hysteria is because unlike previous incidents, it appears this most recent attack was blatantly carried out by Western-backed militants operating in Idlib, Syria.

While evidence of this most recent alleged attack must still be collected and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has yet to arrive and carry out its investigation, it should be remembered that none of this was previously required by either the Western media to create a storm of hysteria accusing perpetrators – mainly Damascus – and demanding a Western military response, or by Western leaders who would promptly carry out such military responses.

Compare and Contrast

With no actual evidence in hand, the United States along with the UK and France would carry out military strikes on Syria in April of this year after an alleged chemical attack the West claimed was carried out by Syrian forces in Douma, just six miles northeast of Damascus.

British state media – the BBC – would unquestioningly repeat claims by dubious organizations like the “White Helmets”  that chemical weapons were used and killed scores of civilians. In one BBC article titled, “Syria war: At least 70 killed in suspected chemical attack in Douma,” it was claimed:

The pro-opposition Ghouta Media Center tweeted that more than 75 people had “suffocated”, while a further 1,000 people had suffered the effects of the alleged attack.

It blamed a barrel bomb allegedly dropped by a helicopter which it said contained Sarin, a toxic nerve agent.

The Union of Medical Relief Organizations, a US-based charity that works with Syrian hospitals, told the BBC the Damascus Rural Specialty Hospital had confirmed 70 deaths.

Buried deeper in the article – past rhetoric aimed at preparing the public for a Western military strike – the BBC would eventually admit that the Syrian government had taken most of the surrounding territory through years of fighting – assumably through the use of conventional weapons – and that the remaining opposition-held territory was occupied by Jaish al-Islam – one of several US-NATO backed Al Qaeda affiliates operating in Syria.

The article, and many like it, would begin by claiming:

At least 70 people have died in a suspected chemical attack in Douma, the last rebel-held town in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta, rescuers and medics say.

Compare that with the BBC’s  article regarding the most recent chemical attack on Aleppo titled, “Syria war: Aleppo ‘gas attack’ sparks Russia strikes,” which begins by claiming:

Russia has carried out air strikes against Syrian rebels it accuses of launching a chemical attack on the government-held city of Aleppo.

The BBC would immediately provide denials made by militants operating in Idlib and frame the entire incident as a likely fabrication to justify Russian air strikes on militant positions.

The article fails to point out that even if the mortar rounds allegedly containing chemical weapons were instead conventional – the militants would still be in violation of a provisional buffer zone created between Syrian forces and Idlib-based militants – and would still be viable targets for Russian military aviation as well as Syrian military retaliation.

The sudden skepticism and incredibly ironic “whataboutism” displayed by other appendages of Western war propaganda, including human rights fronts like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as NATO’s “Nonresident Senior Fellow, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Future Europe Initiative” Eliot Higgins, also highlights the disingenuous, cynical abuse of human rights and “open source investigations” as war propaganda by the West.

Kenneth Roth – executive director of Human Rights Watch would declare in his only post on social media regarding the attack that:

Syria asks the UN Security Council to condemn an alleged rebel chlorine attack–the same Security Council where Syria’s ally Russia vetoed extension of an investigation that could identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks.

Absent from Roth’s timeline is the same sort of hysteria, repetitive demands for justice, and calls for immediate action against the perpetrators following other alleged chemical attacks – the only difference being who the accused perpetrators are/were.

The Atlantic Council’s Eliot Higgins would spend the day after the attack posting pictures of alleged munitions used in the attack on Aleppo – an admission that an attack and thus a violation of the agreed upon buffer zone had indeed taken place – claiming that none of them could have contained chemicals despite not being any sort of weapons expert and having never set foot inside of Syria, let alone having investigated that actual scene of this particular attack.

Chemical Weapons or Not, Militants Violated Idlib Buffer Zone

It would be premature to conclude what sort of munitions were used in the recent attack on Aleppo. However it is indisputable – even among the West’s various propaganda organs – that militants in Idlib carried out some sort of armed attack.

The attack was – regardless and undoubtedly – a violation of agreements made to deescalate fighting between Syrian government forces and their allies and the remnants of the West’s mercenary forces in Idlib – and required a military response.

When the OPCW investigators arrive, and as time passes, evidence can be collected and the true nature of the attack can be ascertained with further measures taken against Idlib-based militants if necessary.

And regardless of the outcome of these investigations – the West has suffered yet another tactical, strategic, and now political defeat as another loop of the long rope given to it by its opponents wraps around their collective necks, strangling the remnants of their credibility.

For organizations like British state media – the BBC – its transparent bias and politically-motivated inconsistency has so fully permeated its reporting that side-by-side comparisons of its headlines serve as the greatest indictment against – and parody of – of its legitimacy as a news organization.

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Tony Cartalucci is Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

War in Yemen was planned, orchestrated, and launched by Bush/Cheney in October 2001 – weeks after 9/11 and naked aggression in Afghanistan.

NATO member states, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other nations are US  junior partners, directed by Washington, serving its interests and their own.

The Saudis have been intermittently involved in Washington’s Yemen war since initiated, most heavily since March 2015.

Along with US drone, other aerial, and special forces ground operations in Yemen, as well as support for jihadist foot soldiers in the country, all of the above ignored by Congress and major media, Saudi and UAE warplanes have been terror-bombing Yemeni sites.

Civilians and non-military-related targets are repeatedly struck, egregious crimes of war, against humanity, and genocide ongoing – with full US support and encouragement, the way all US wars are waged, by its own rules, no others.

Image to the right is from Massoud Nayeri

Make no mistake. Washington provides arms, munitions, intelligence, logistics support, mid-air refueling, target selection, and overall direction for endless war in Yemen, including its genocidal blockade – naked aggression launched and continued by Republican and anti-democratic Dems for strategic US interests.

A previous article explained what the war is all about – suppressed by Western media, ignored by Congress earlier and in yesterday’s Senate debate. More on its vote below.

For Riyadh, war in Yemen is all about gaining full control of the Arabian peninsula, along with Yemeni oil and gas resources, modest in size but adding to kingdom wealth if seized.

This endless war is all about Yemen’s strategic location.

It’s near the Horn of Africa on Saudi Arabia’s southern border, the Red Sea, its Bab el-Mandeb strait (a key chokepoint separating Yemen from Eritrea through which millions barrels of oil pass daily), and the Gulf of Aden connection to the Indian Ocean.

The Iranian factor is also key. Washington allied with the Saudis, Israel, and other regional partners against the Islamic Republic want the country isolated, pro-Western puppet rule replacing its sovereign independence.

It’s an objective the Trump regime is hellbent to achieve, what tough illegal sanctions and orchestrated internal instability are all about – aided by falsely labeling Iran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, a dubious distinction applying to the US globally, key NATO allies, and Israel regionally, along with the Saudis and UAE.

The Trump regime’s call for resolving war in Yemen diplomatically belies its rage for wanting it continued endlessly.

Majority bipartisan Senate members are at odds with Trump regime hardliners over Yemen. On Wednesday, a resolution to end US support for Riyadh in the conflict was advanced overwhelmingly by a 63 – 37 vote, clearing its first hurdle, approving a floor vote on SJ Resolution 54.

The joint resolution calls for “removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.”

If adopted by a veto-proof margin, the Trump regime would be congressionally ordered to end support for the so-called Saudi coalition in Yemen.

Senate floor debate and voting will follow on this issue, a resolution virtually certain to pass – despite heavy Trump regime pressure against it.

In closed-door Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony, Mike Pompeo lied about what US war in Yemen is all about, his key remarks published in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, saying:

“The kingdom is a powerful force for Mideast stability.”

“Degrading US-Saudi ties would be a grave mistake for the national security of the US and its allies.”

Ending US support for Riyadh would cause “immense damage to US national security interests and those of our Middle Eastern allies and partners.”

“Saudi Arabia contributed millions of dollars to the US-led effort to fight Islamic State and other terrorist organizations.”

[The Trump administration] “has taken many steps to mitigate Yemen’s suffering from war, disease and famine…exert(ingn) effort to improve Saudi targeting to minimize civilian casualties, and we have galvanized humanitarian assistance through our own generous example.”

“Without US US help, the death toll in Yemen would be far higher. There would be no honest broker to manage disagreements between Saudi Arabia and its Gulf coalition partners, whose forces are essential to the war effort.”

All of Pompeo’s above remarks are polar opposite of hard reality. In Senate testimony, he willfully committed perjury by turning truth on its head about US and Saudi involvement in Yemen.

If congressional action to end US support for the Saudis and UAE in Yemen is enacted over Trump’s virtually certain veto, what’s coming remains uncertain.

Will he circumvent Congress by continuing US involvement in Yemen largely or entirely unchanged?

Will regime hardliners act much like how Reagan/GHW Bush counterparts ignored the 1980s Boland Amendment prohibition against supporting Contra terrorists in Nicaragua to topple the Sandinista government?

Lawlessness reflects longstanding US policy. All post-9/11 Republican and undemocratic Dem wars of aggression continue endlessly.

Yemen is strategically important for Washington. It’s highly unlikely that Trump regime hardliners will let Congress stand in the way of pursuing their agenda in Yemen and elsewhere.

The vast majority of congressional members are on board with it all until the current debate on Yemen for political reasons because of the international furor over Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, ordered by Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman.

The bottom line is that both right wings of US one-party-state rule support the same imperial agenda – featuring endless wars of aggression, seeking unchallenged global dominance.

Post-WW II, congressional and executive branch officials have been on the same page.

Nothing congressionally or otherwise is likely to change longstanding US policy – not war in Yemen or elsewhere.

Washington wants control over all nations, their resources and populations. That’s what endless wars are all about, along with serving the bottom line interests of America’s military, industrial, security, media complex.

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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 Stop the War Coalition

Alessandro Bianchi: Let’s start from today’s crisis in the Sea of Azov. The European Union and NATO have given full support to Ukraine after the violation of Russian sovereignty by two Ukrainian vessels. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gave his full support to Poroshenko, who declared martial law. What does a country like Italy risk in continuing its accession to NATO?

Andre Vltchek: Russia intercepted three Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait. The ships had, even according to Ukrainian authorities, several intelligence officers on board, as well as a number of light arms and machine guns. It was clear provocation, as the ships refused to inform Russian authorities about their intentions, and behaved in an aggressive manner. They were passing through Russian territorial waters. Ukrainian intelligence officers were obviously in charge of the entire operation. So, what is really so ‘alarming’ for the West? The ships were stopped, some crew members detained, and there is a serious investigation underway.

The ‘incident’ took place just days before the G20 meeting in Argentina, where Presidents Trump and Putin were supposed to meet. Also, it is only 4 months before the Ukrainian Presidential elections (March 2019), and Poroshenko is trailing behind the two leading candidates with only 8% of support. Ukraine under his leadership is so messed up that many flats in the capital city of Kiev will not be heated during this winter. Logically, Poroshenko provoked the crises, so he could pose as a strongman, hoping to at least gain some popularity. He has imposed martial law, for 30 days, although originally, he wanted it to last for 2 months. What does it mean? The press will be censored and criticism of the government, limited. Good for the grotesquely unpopular president? Definitely.

Also, it is obvious that the West, particularly the EU and NATO, are behind this new wave of dangerous madness.

Italy is part of both EU and NATO. As I am writing in my new essay, it is a nonsense to believe that “Europeans are brainwashed; that they do not know what the West is doing all over the world”. They know, or they at least suspect – most of them. But they pretend that they don’t know. In Europe, there is a shadowy deal between the government, corporations and the people. People want more benefits, and they do not care that the benefits come from plundering the world. If they get their benefits, they shut up. If they think they are getting too little, they protest, like recently in Paris. But do they care if tens of millions of ‘un-people’ die for those benefits? Of course not!

The same when it comes to Russia, China or Iran. Europeans in general and Italians in particular, know that there is some sort of vicious propaganda against those countries that refuse to yield to the Western diktat. But they will do nothing to stop it. It is sweet, isn’t it, to feel superior, ‘democratic’, and ‘free’. And it is horrible to admit that one lives in a place that is spreading terror to all corners of the world, robbing even the poor of all they have. These six weeks vacations could turn sour, if Italians were to decide to see who is really paying for them. So, they shut up, and will shut up, until it is ‘too late’.

Remember, countries like Russia and China have their own ‘democracies’ (rule of the people). It is not the Western system. Rulers and the masses communicate and interact in a direct way, in a very distinctive manner. And in both Russia and China, the people have ‘had enough’ of being bullied and brutalized by the West, for decades and centuries. Just a little bit more, and things will explode. If pushed further, Russia and China will respond. If provoked militarily, they will defend themselves. The same goes for Iran. Being part of the grouping that is terrorizing the world, Italy will have to pay the price, too.

AB: Russian Minister Sergei Lavrov asked the Western allies in Kiev to “intervene” and “calm down” the Ukrainian authorities, warning about the potential crossing of a “point of no return” between Russia and the West. Is the risk of war real even in light of the great gathering of NATO troops at the border?

AV: Yes of course it is real. Just turn the tables around: if Iran or China or Russia or Venezuela or Syria or Cuba did to the West what West is doing to them, would there be real risk of war?

This impunity and racist belief in total superiority, which is so prevalent in the West, has to stop. And soon it will stop. As they say in Chile: ‘By reason or by force’.

AB: You were recently in Syria, a country that thanks to the Russian intervention and the resistance of the Syrian people supported by the regional allies – Iran and Hezbollah above all – is slowly trying to return to normal. What country did you find?

AV: I found a beautiful, confident and proud country. I am also writing a long report about my visit there.

I met many victims, common people, but also a General, and a Minister of Education, who is also an accomplished novelist. His motto is: “Ministry of Education is like Ministry of Defense”. Correct: education without ideology and passion is just a waste of time.

Syria won. And there, the entire Arab world won together with it. Arabs were, for decades, thoroughly humiliated – by the West, by Israel, by their own leaders who were put on the throne by London, Paris and Washington.

As I have written many times, Aleppo is the Stalingrad of the Middle East. The losses were terrible, all over Syria. But the victory is tremendous, too. Pan-Arabism will blossom again. People in all countries of the region are watching and now they know: it is possible to defeat Western imperialism and its spooks, its terrorist implants.

Russia stood by its Arab sister with determination, but also very wisely. It used diplomacy whenever it could, and it used force only when there was no other way. In Syria, the Russians won people’s hearts. ‘Thank you, Russia!’, is everywhere, even engraved on traditional wooden boxes. The Russian language being my native tongue, opened so many doors, as it opened thousands of doors to me in Afghanistan (I never expected it there).

Syria has to finalize its victory, soon. And I will be back, to cover events there. At the front if needed.

It is tremendously optimistic and beautiful to be in a country which did not prostitute itself; a country that stood tall, fought hard, for its own people and for the entire region. There is great confidence and kindness on the faces of people. Celebration is not loud, because, after all, so many people died. But people are out, till the morning, men and women, boys and girls. Cafes are packed; the streets of Damascus are bustling. But even in Homs and the destroyed suburbs of Damascus, life is defiantly returning to normal.

What a nation! Yes, they say ‘Thank you Russia!”. As an internationalist, I say: “Thank you Syria!”

AB: The chemical attack by the “rebels” in Aleppo yesterday unmasks the lies in the mainstream of these years. What role did the media play in allowing the terrorist gangs supported and funded by the West and Gulf allies to destroy Syria?

AV: A tremendous role. In Syria, the Western mass media finally ceased to exist. It became a prostitution force for the Empire, nothing else. But we all know that both the media and education are basically used for indoctrinating people, at least in the West and in its ‘client’ states.

There was so much provocation. The Gulf and the Western broadcasting companies were literally igniting the conflict, spreading lies, pushing people into rebellion against the government. They have blood on their hands, the same as Pashtun Service of the BBC has blood on their hands, as the VOA, Radio Free Europe and ‘free whatever’ have blood up to their armpits.

AB: Before Syria you did two important reports in Argentina and Mexico telling about the mutations under way in Latin America. Bolsonaro has won in Brazil, while in the next few days Lopez Obrador is preparing to settle in a Mexico that has turned left. At what stage is the dispute in Latin America, and what are the prospects for the left in the continent?

AV: Well, I worked for three weeks all over Mexico, before going to Syria. My big work in both Argentina and Brazil, had been done earlier.

Look, Ale, you and I know; are very well familiar with Latin America. I used to live in Mexico, Chile, Peru (during the so-called Dirty War) and Costa Rica. I have worked all over the continent.

What happened in Mexico is great, although one could say ‘overdue’. Now let us hope that President-Elect Obrador will be able to turn his magnificent country around, towards socialism. It will not be easy. There is plenty of terrible inertia. There are horrible ‘elites’ of European stock. And there is the United States, right next door, always ready to ‘intervene’. But I think he can do it. I trust him. I travelled all over this huge country, I spoke to people. It was all summarized by a gangster in Tijuana, a man who became a criminal out of desperation. He said, and I paraphrase: “I think it is close to impossible for Obrador to change things, but if he will do what he is promising, I will drop everything, and support him. This is the last chance for Mexico to change things peacefully. If he fails, we will take up the arms.”

Brazil, this is so difficult to explain. But essentially, there, in Latin America, more than anywhere else, the mass media which is in the hands of the right-wing, played an extremely significant and thoroughly destructive role. When I visited Amazonia, around Manaus and Belem, or Salvador Bahia, people would tell me: “Our life improved significantly. Now we have this and this and that. But Dilma has to go!” My God, I thought, am I dreaming? No, I was not. Basically, somehow, the elites hammered into people’s brains that if they are better off now, then it is because of their own personal success. But if some things are not going too well, it is the fault of the government.

“Corruption” is always used in the combat against left-wing governments in Latin America. Microscopes are used, to encounter any wrongdoing. It was used against Kristina Kirschner, against Lula, even against poor Dilma who was not corrupt at all, but suffered from the right-wing and West-backed ‘constitutional’ coup. But just imagine that stupidity, that absurdity: right-wing dictatorships in the Southern Cone but also in Brazil used dogs to rape women; they tortured prisoners, killed, ‘disappeared’ people, robbing everything they could put their hands on. And that is not ‘corruption’, right? Then some company offers to renovate an apartment of Lula’s, and he is in prison! Suddenly those fascists are playing the moral card. Do you know what Bolsonaro will do now? He will screw the entire Amazonia; do it almost ‘Indonesia-style’. He will allow that horrid deal with the Western corporations, the privatization of the aquifer shared with Paraguay, to go through. The third biggest passenger airplane manufacturer on earth – Embraer – will be sold to Boeing, for petty cash. Brazil will lose its rainforest, its industry, and its poor will lose their lifeline – government support. And this is not called corruption! Argentina under Macri is allowing the US to operate in Tierra de Fuego. The entire country is screaming from pain: electricity prices have gone up, the famous film industry is losing support, and the middle class is again going down the drain.

But I am optimistic. Latin American people have a great desire for socialist, in some places, communist societies. Whenever they are left alone, they fight for it, or vote for it. Then they get smashed. The West has overthrown, basically, all the truly left-wing governments of the continent, from the Dominican Republic, to Chile. But the process never stops. It begins all over again.

I only hope that one thing changes: you know, the West was very successful in implanting the idea in the heads of Latin Americans, that after all that has happened, Europe and even the US are somehow superior nations. And so, people look down on the truly great nations like China and Russia, in places like Brazil. It appalls me. I speak the language, and I clearly see what is happening. In Argentina, there is not much of a real left: the intellectuals there are connected to those defunct theories in Europe and North America, like ‘anarcho-syndicalism’. And there is nothing really revolutionary about those ideas. There are too many Westerners influencing Latin American revolutionary movements. They lost at home, became irrelevant, but still they insist on judging the world from a Western perspective. Still, somehow, many of them are admired in Latin America. And it always backfires: Westerners dilute revolutionary spirit. They also kidnap the South-South narrative. I would love to see Russian, Chinese, Venezuelan, Cuban, Syrian, Iranian or South African comrades running the state media in countries where the true left is winning. It would make a great difference!

AB: Argentina continues to sink under the weight of Mauricio Macri’s neoliberal austerity but the mainstream media are silent. Meanwhile, Evo Morales’ Bolivia continues, to the contrary, to record the highest growth rates in the region in a climate of stability. So, socialism works contrary to what they try to make us believe?

AV: Yes of course socialism works, Ale. If left alone, if it is not bathed in pus and blood, it prospers. Unfortunately, so far, whenever any country decides to go socialist, the West unleashes its campaign of terror, lies and economic banditry. Socialism is not some extreme utopia, but the most logical goal. The majority of people want to live in an egalitarian society, where they feel secure and safe, and where when sick they get treated, when they are thirsty for knowledge, they get educated for free. They want the state to work for them, not against them. They want their government to control companies, instead of companies controlling their governments.

AB: Meanwhile, in Venezuela, the economic, psychological and media war goes on. Will the Bolivarian government succeed in resisting this unprecedented attack?

AV: Yes, it will. But again, look how fragmented Latin America has become. People in Chile or Argentina watch CNN and FOX and they know much more about Miami or Paris, than about Caracas. The Brazilian President-Elect said that he would murder Maduro – still, people voted for him.

Latin America is mostly run by European elites. They robbed the continent, turned it into the part of the world with the greatest disparities. For any revolution to succeed here, it has to be radical and decisive. Democracy should be direct, not that multi-party idiotism implanted from the West – that is so easy to pervert and divert from outside, or with the use of social and mass media. Latin America cannot try to ape Europe and hope that it will prosper. Europe is based on the plunder of other parts of the world. Latin American countries do not have colonies, and the plunder is internal – the rich of European stock are plundering both the land and the native people.

AB: In one of his last articles Fidel wrote how “The alliance between Russia and China is a powerful peace shield able to guarantee the survival of the human race”. What is the legacy of Fidel Castro today two years after his death?

AV: Just tremendous! Even when the entire Latin America betrayed Cuba, Fidel and his people never surrendered. This is the spirit I admire. Cuba has a big heart – it fought for the independence of several African nations, it helps so many places on earth with their doctors, teachers, and rescue teams during natural disasters. Cuban art is some of the greatest on the planet. That is why, Cuba has had a tremendous impact on me personally, and on my work as well. I proudly call myself a ‘Cuban-style internationalist’. I am endlessly grateful to Fidel, to the Cuban revolution and to Cuban people. In many ways, it is perhaps the greatest country in the world. A country I would never hesitate to fight for, or even to die for.

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Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

As Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman tours friendly Arab nations in advance of the Group of 20 (G-20) industrialized nations summit in Argentina, Saudi diplomacy aims to achieve two goals: put the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi behind it and thwart Qatari efforts to benefit from the kingdom’s predicament.

The Saudi campaign is producing predictably mixed results. It is proving successful with nations willing to back it for political, financial or economic gain, such as Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, and Palestine or nations like the United Arab Emirates, Russia and China that share Saudi Arabia’s illiberal, authoritarian values.

Prince Mohammed and the kingdom’s ties to Western nations, even those like the United States that have opted for maintaining close ties in the face of mounting criticism in their national legislatures, hang in the balance despite having survived the storm so far.

With the US Congress gearing up for potential action against Saudi Arabia, not only because of the October 2 killing of Mr. Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate but also the humanitarian crisis sparked by Saudi military intervention in Yemen, President Donald J. Trump has no plans to meet Prince Mohammed one on one at this weekend’s G-20 gathering.

Much like Mr. Trump’s decision may be perceived as a public slap, it does not suggest that Mr. Trump has backed away from his determination to shield US-Saudi relations and the crown prince from the potential fallout of the Khashoggi killing.

Similarly, Britain this week went ahead with joint exercises of the British and Saudi air forces although the United Kingdom has left open the possibility of imposing sanctions if the killing proves to have been government-sanctioned rather than an operation by rogue elements.

One key focus of the Saudi campaign appears to be Palestine and Iraq, countries not on Prince Mohammed’s travel schedule but where Qatar, that has been resisting an 18-month old Saudi-UAE-led economic and diplomatic boycott, stands to benefit from the Khashoggi crisis and that figure prominently in Mr. Trump’s designs for the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia this month said that it had transferred US$60 million to President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine Authority, financially strapped as a result of the Trump administration cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in funding of the authority as well as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unwra) that supports Palestinian refugees.

Saudi Arabia’s resumption of funding followed several Palestinian statements in the last two months supporting the kingdom’s assertion that it had not sanctioned the killing of Mr. Khashoggi and expressing confidence in the Saudi judiciary’s ability to mete out justice to the culprits.

Saudi Arabia, ostensibly at Prince Mohammed’s behest, had in the past year withheld payments to the Palestine Authority because of its refusal to engage with the United States following Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the authority’s support for Turkey’s leadership in rallying Muslim opposition to US policy.

The resumption of funding is also in line with King Salman’s intervention in the last year insisting that the kingdom was committed to Palestinian rights, including declaring East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state.

It also coincided with Israeli acquiescence in the flow of US$150 million from Qatar to Gaza, controlled by Islamist Hamas, in a bid to alleviate the crippling impact of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the region and prevent tension between Israel and the group spinning out of control.

Beyond countering expanding Qatari influence, the Saudi move is likely to increase the kingdom’s leverage in pressuring the Palestine Authority to back off its refusal to entertain a mooted US Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that has yet to be made public but would be stillborn without Palestinian participation.

Similarly, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are competing for influence in Iraq, another battleground that is important to both the United States and the kingdom because of the close ties between Iraq and Iran.

Senior Saudi and Qatari officials have frequented Baghdad in recent weeks as Iraq’s new prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, puts his cabinet together and pushes and ambitious economic development plan that is dependent on foreign investment.

Even though Iraq is likely to balance relations between the two Gulf rivals, it is also not going to trouble its burgeoning relationship with the kingdom by speaking out on the Khashoggi issue.

Prince Mohammed, despite protests in Tunisia, the only country on the crown prince’s itinerary that has not brutally suppressed freedom of expression, and a legal challenge in Argentina, which could curtail his future travel plans even if it does not stop him from attending the G-20 summit, has proven in recent days that he is not universally persona non grata.

Nonetheless, his reception in Argentina by world leaders is likely to be a litmus test of the degree of reputational damage that he and the kingdom have suffered. Mr. Trump’s apparent hesitancy to meet separately with the crown prince could set the tone if indeed the president sticks by his initial decision.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa and just published China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom. He is. a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Chlorine packed rockets rained down on central Aleppo.  The barrage of deadly gas hit the residential neighborhoods of the most populated city in Syria.

Over 100 residents sought treatment at the Ar-Razi and University hospitals after rockets struck the Al-Khalidiye and Al Zahraa neighborhoods. Live coverage of the chaos at the hospitals was shown on Syrian TV, while children and adults were being treated mainly with oxygen. Patients vomiting were part of the horrific scene, as their bodies attempted to rid themselves of the toxic gas.

Chief of Police Major General Issam al-Shilli said that terrorist group last night had used explosive rocket shells harboring toxic gases.

Ziad Haj Taha, Director of the Health Department in Aleppo, indicated that the number of civilian casualties in the attack was expected to rise, adding that the gas used by terrorists was most likely chlorine gas.

Terrorists, or Opposition?

According to the Washington Post, those who are accused of the attack are termed “Syrian rebels” or “opposition”.

However, according to the friends of Raed Fares, a prominent Syrian anti-government activist, recently assassinated in Idlib, they are Jihadists linked to Al Qaeda.  The mainstream media ridicules the Syrian government for using the term “terrorists”, but the Los Angeles Times reports that the Syrian opposition calls them terrorists in Idlib.

Which Side is to Blame?

The western media assumes all chemical attacks to be carried out by the Syrian government, yet the evidence of that is lacking.

Carla del Ponte was a senior UN official, and former war crimes prosecutor, looking into human rights abuses in Syria.  In May 2013 she stunned the international community when she said that testimony gathered in Syria from casualties and medical staff indicated that the nerve agent sarin was used by rebel fighters.

The world was captivated by a gas attack video in April 2018, yet when the British veteran journalist, Robert Fisk, arrived at the actual hospital in Douma which was the scene of the video, he found that the events had been carefully stage-managed by the award winning video troupe: White Helmets.  His reporting concluded there was no gas used.

The UN envoy on Syria, De Mistura, warned in Sept. 2018 not to bomb Idlib, because he believed the “rebels” might have access to chlorine-based weapons.

The French Connection

Sources on the ground in Idlib revealed last month, that the White Helmets entered Idlib, from Turkey bringing toxic gas to be used in weapons. Terrorists from the Turkistan Islamic Party delivered the chlorine gas canisters to French chemical warfare experts who are working under the Nusra Front, an internationally recognized terrorist group who are occupying Idlib.

The Syrian and Russian military intelligence have long benefited from having cultivated an extensive network of field agents imbedded in the terrorist controlled areas.  This paid off in the battles of East Aleppo and East Ghouta.  They effectively know what the terrorists are doing, what they have, and where they are.

The White Helmets have been exposed and are now known to be a video making group which is responsible for churning out propaganda used to keep the western audience firmly against the Syrian government. They do not save people, and they are not Emergency Medical Technicians.  They are terrorists, and their support group, who pose as heroes. Vanessa Beeley has devoted years of on the ground research in Syria, interviewing victims, and even talking with a White Helmet.

The French government has consistently supported the White Helmets. In July 2018 France participated in the evacuation of hundreds of the group and their families leaving Syria via Israel.  France was among several NATO members who pledged to welcome them as refugees.

In March 2018 the US government sanctioned the Frenchman Joe Asperman, described as “a senior chemical weapons expert”, working for Nusra Front in Idlib.  According to local sources (unconfirmed), there is a network of French chemical experts in Idlib currently.

The Russian Defence Ministry announced they had carried out airstrikes today against the terrorists who were responsible for the chlorine gas attack on Aleppo last night.  Major-General Igor Konashenkov said they informed the Turkish military prior to the mission.  There had been an Idlib cease-fire deal signed in September between Turkey and Russia. Idlib is the last terrorist controlled region, and is home to millions of unarmed civilians under the brutal occupation of a Jihadist group, who refuse to allow them to escape.  All eyes are on Idlib now, as the situation appears to herald the beginning of the last major battle in Syria.

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Just after midnight on 16 August, I was called by LBC in London for a comment on a breaking story on the front page of The Daily Telegraph about British spies hacking the EU. A radio interview is always too short to do justice to such a convoluted tale. Here are some longer thoughts.

For those who cannot get past the Telegraph paywall, the gist is that that the EU has accused the British intelligence agencies of hacking the EU’s side of the negotiations. Apparently, some highly sensitive and negative slides about the British Prime Minister’s plan for Brexit, the Chequers Plan, had landed in the lap of the British government, which then lobbied the EU to suppress publication.

Of course, this could be a genuine leak from the Brussels sieve, as British sources are claiming (well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?). However, it is plausible that this is the work of the spies, either by recruiting a paid-up agent well-placed within the Brussels bureaucracy or through electronic surveillance.

Before dismissing the latter option as a conspiracy theory, the British spies do have form. In the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003, the USA and UK were desperate to get a UN Security Council resolution to invade Iraq, thus providing a fig leaf of apparent legitimacy to the illegal war. However, some countries within the UN had their doubts and the USA asked Britain’s listening post, GCHQ, to step up its surveillance game. Forewarned is forearmed in delicate international negotiations.

How do we know this? A brave GCHQ whistleblower called Katherine Gun leaked the information to The Observer. For her pains, she was threatened with prosecution under the draconian terms of the UK’s 1989 Official Secrets Act and faced two years in prison. The case was only dropped three weeks before her trial was due to begin, partly because of the feared public outcry, but mainly because her lawyers threatened to use the legal defence of “necessity” – a defence won only three years before during the case of the MI5 whistleblower, David Shayler. Tangentially, a film is this year being made about Gun’s story.

We also have confirmation from one of the early 2013 Edward Snowden disclosures that GCHQ had hacked its way into the Belgacom network – the national telecommunications supplier in Belgium. Even back then there was an outcry from the EU bodies, worried that the UK (and by extension its closest intelligence buddy the USA), would gain leverage with stolen knowledge.

So, yes, it is perfectly feasible that the UK could have done this, even though it was illegal back in the day. GCHQ’s incestuous relationship with America’s NSA gives it massively greater capabilities than other European intelligence agencies, and the EU knows this well, which is why it is concerned to retain access to the UK’s defence and security powers post-Brexit, and also why it has jumped to these conclusions about hacking.

But that was then and this is now. On 1^st January 2017 the UK government finally signed a law called the Investigatory Powers Act, governing the legal framework for GCHQ to snoop.

The IPA gave GCHQ the most draconian and invasive powers of any western democracy. Otherwise known in the British media as the “snoopers’ charter”, it had been defeated in Parliament for years, but Theresa May, then Home Secretary, pushed it through in the teeth of legal and civil society opposition.

This year the High Court ordered the UK government to redraft the IPA as it is incompatible with European law.

The IPA legalised what GCHQ had previously been doing illegally post-9/11, including bulk metadata collection, bulk data hacking, and bulk hacking of electronic devices.

It also notionally gave the government greater oversight of the spies’ actions, but these measures remain weak and offer no protection if the spies choose to keep quiet about what they are doing. So if GCHQ did indeed hack the EU, it is feasible that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister remained ignorant of what was going on, despite being legally required to sign off on such operations. In which case the spies would be running amok.

It is also feasible that they were indeed fully briefed and an argument could be made that they would be correct to do so. GCHQ and the other spy agencies are required to protect “national security and the economic well-being” of Great Britain, and I can certainly see a strong argument could be made that they were doing precisely that, provided they had prior written permission for such a sensitive operation, if they tried to get advance intelligence about the EU’s Brexit strategy.

This argument becomes even more powerful when you consider the problems around the fraught issue of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, an issue about which the EU is being particularly intransigent. If a deal is not made then the 1998 Good Friday Agreement could be under threat and civil war might again break out in Northern Ireland. You cannot get much more “national security” than that and GCHQ would be justified in this work, provided it has acquired the necessary legal sign-offs from its political masters.

However, these arguments will do nothing to appease the enraged EU officials. No doubt the UK government will continue to state that this was a leak from a Brussels insider and oil will, publicly at least, be seen to have been poured on troubled diplomatic waters.

However, behind the scenes this will multiply the mutual suspicion,and will no doubt unleash a witch hunt through the corridors of EU power, with top civil servant Martin Selmayr (aka The Monster) cast as Witchfinder General. With him on your heels, you would have to be a very brave leaker, whistleblower, or even paid-up agent working for the Brits to take such a risk.

So, perhaps this is indeed a GCHQ hack. However justifiable this might be under the legally nebulous concept of “national security”, this will poison further the already toxic Brexit negotiations.

As Angela Merkel famously if disingenuously said after the Snowden revelation that the USA had hacked her mobile phone: “no spying among friends”. But perhaps this is an outdated concept – nor has the EU exactly been entirely friendly to Brexit Britain.

I am just waiting for the first hysterical claim that it was the Russians instead or, failing them, former Trump strategist-in-chief, Steve Bannon, reportedly currently on a mission to build a divisive Alt-Right Movement across Europe…..

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Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer for MI5, the UK Security Service, who resigned in 1996 to blow the whistle on the spies’ incompetence and crimes. Drawing on her varied experiences, she is now a media pundit, author, journalist, political campaigner, and PR consultant.

Featured image is from TruePublica

Trouble has been brewing in the Sea of Azov all year. It started with Ukraine’s seizing a Russian fishing boat and detaining its crew in March. The Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko canceled the Friendship Treaty with Russia. After that he has accepted surplus US naval vessels to prop up a navy that exists in name only.

This is all in response to Russia’s completing the Kerch Strait bridge which Russia can use to block access to the Sea of Azov.  The Kerch strait is Russian territory and, by international law, Russia can limit access to the Sea of Azov.

So, this weekend’s incident in which a tug was rammed, ships fired upon and seized by Russia, ultimately was a proper and legal response to a clear provocation because the Ukrainian military ships refused to announce their intentions.

Let’s not beat around the bush here. This incident is meant to justify further antagonism between the West and Russia on the eve of the G-20 and the planned meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin.

It also was meant to enflame Ukrainian nationalism and drum up support for Poroshenko who is trailing badly in the polls as we approach March elections. Declaring martial law so as to potentially suspend those election, the US satrap is raising the stakes on Russia to it finally responding to these repeated provocations.

At the same time the Ukrainian Army unleashed the heaviest shelling of the Donbass contact line near Gorlovka in years.

There are a number of different angles on this incident and how it will be used to increase tensions between the West and Russia.

Russia is officially taking the position that Poroshenko is doing this to keep his Western backers happy who have dumped billions into him and his government to keep Ukraine a festering wound on Russia’s border.

It is also a desperate attempt to prop up this failing government and potentially suspend March’s elections.

While I am certainly sympathetic to that position, it is also the least interesting part of it because it is so blatantly obvious. I think the deeper gambit here has to do with Poroshenko ending the Friendship Treaty.

According to Rostislav Ishchenko ending the treaty works only in Russia’s favor as it removes the permanence of the boundary between Russia and Ukraine. In effect, it opens up the path to Russia to recognize the breakaway republics of Lugansk and Donetsk.

But, it’s more than that because it also opens up the argument that the Sea of Azov is now International Waters since the border is in dispute. This allows for legal maneuvering by Europe and the US through the UN to find Russia in violation of Ukrainian vessels’ right of passage. I’m not saying this is the case, being no legal scholar on this, but this looks the most likely tack to take to sell the world further on the evil, expansionist Russia narrative.

And that argument can hold weight because no one recognizes Crimea as part of Russia, officially.

The UN Security Council’s usual suspects – Europe and the US – backing Ukraine on this issue was wholly predictable. And the question now will be whether the US got its casus belli to try and force NATO ships into the Sea of Azov under the pretext of keeping the peace in International Waters.

Former British MP George Galloway, writing for RT, suspects this may simply be a ‘Wag the Dog’ moment for not only May but French Poodle Emmanuel Macron and Trump with his Mueller ‘troubles.’ Invoking Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade Galloway muses.

A dangerous constellation of weak, collapsing Western governments and leaders suddenly find their interests coinciding with the tin-pot tyrant Poroshenko. And into the Valley of Death they might just be ready to send their people charging. If they do they will find a resolute Russia far stronger than at Balaclava.

I would go even further at least as it regards Theresa May. This provocation occurred in concert the announcement of British forces being sent to Ukraine next year.

With the May government betraying the British people over Brexit with her awful deal, continuing the distraction of evil Russia is one way to keep support from failing further.

Because, deal or no deal, May is finished once we’re past this and like her accomplishing her mission to betray Brexit, setting NATO on a collision course with Russia is more possible by having British forces on the ground. All manner of false flags can be ginned up to saddle any incoming Labour government with.

Going back to the transition period between the outgoing Barack Obama and the incoming Trump everything imaginable was done to poison Trump’s early days as President. The idea that Trump and Putin could establish normal relations was anathema.

He’s been bogged down ever since.

And who was behind that? British and American Intelligence along with the judiciary who today are slowly being pulled into the limelight of their corruption. This is all part of a carefully stage-managed plan.

Those who cling to power do so out of desperation and will use every trick and point of leverage they have to remain where they are. In that respect Poroshenko is no different than anyone else. He knows if he loses power he will be expendable, to be thrown to the wolves while the US and Europe move to back the next quisling presiding over Kiev.

There doesn’t seem to be much on hope on the horizon regardless of the elections.

The big question at this point is whether Ukraine as a neocon project to destroy Russia is still worth the trouble. That’s what Poroshenko and those behind him hope is the case. I’m not convinced they have enough support to keep this up, given the tepid response from Europe.

If no sanctions are added to Russia over this incident and NATO is not dispatched to ‘calm things down’ in the Sea of Azov then this was nothing more than an attempt by Poroshenko to derail elections and rally Ukrainian nationals. The Verkovna Rada cut his martial law demand down to 3o days from 60 to ensure elections happen on time.

But looking ahead to the G-20, Trump will be saddled with this incident precluding finding any common ground with Putin over anything important. The two need to work out a plan for Syria, Korea, Japan and Iran and now we’re talking about Ukraine.

So, the days pass and nothing of substance changes. Putin knows time is on his side while those arrayed against Russia become increasingly desperate to justify its destruction to a tired and skeptical world.

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Tom Luongo is an independent political and economic analyst based in North Florida, USA.

Featured image is from SCF

Two myths, that Japan does not have an aircraft carrier and that China is sticking with two, have just been torpedoed.

Chinese authorities confirmed on Tuesday that they were building the country’s third aircraft carrier. But it was hardly an iron-clad secret.

In June, the image on a publicity picture in the boardroom of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, the ship’s builders, in Wuhan City, showed three aircraft carriers, whereas Beijing only has two. The third was an artist’s impression of the one the corporation was building in Shanghai.

The two are the Liaoning, the country’s first aircraft carrier, refurbished from the hulk of a Ukranian vessel and the still-to-be-named Type 001A, undergoing sea trials since 2017 before coming into service in 2019. It is the country’s first domestically developed carrier.

Both have ski-jump decks, but the new warship will have a flat-top deck, suggesting a catapult aircraft launch system.

A large command center on the deck could indicate that the warship will be a conventionally-powered carrier rather than rely on nuclear-power.

Xinhua News Agency’s announcement of the project came in an article commemorating China’s first successful landing of a fighter on the Liaoning just after its launch in November, 2012.

China plans to have four aircraft carrier battle groups in service by 2030

Japan too is reinforcing its military capability. In November, China and Japan agreed to boost trade between the countries in response to Washington’s protectionist lurch. But both countries have a sizeable and vociferous military lobby. Japan is preparing to order another 100 F-35 stealth fighter jets from the U.S. to replace some of its aging F-15s.

China’s military build-up played a role in the decision as did pandering to U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for Tokyo to buy more defence equipment. Japan had intended to buy 42 new fighters but is now set to more than double its order. A single F-35 costs over $88 million.

This also means that one of the most ridiculous pretences of modern times will be sunk. The Tokyo government intends to revamp the Maritime Self-Defence Force’s JS Izumo helicopter carrier to host the fighters.

The Izumo (image on the right, CC BY 4.0), a 250-meter-long “flat-topped destroyer’’, was named after a cruiser that was sunk by the U.S. in 1945. The warship is in reality an aircraft carrier by any other name. However, aircraft carriers imply a force projection well beyond Japan’s shores, therefore it had to be described as a destroyer or a helicopter carrier.

That pretence will be dropped once some of the new vertical take-off F-35 jets in the 100-fighter batch purchased by Tokyo are deployed on the carrier.

Japan’s government plans to approve the purchase when it adopts new National Defence Program Guidelines at a cabinet meeting in mid-December.

The 42 fighters Japan originally planned to buy are all F-35As, a conventional takeoff and landing variant. The additional 100 planes would include both the F-35A and F-35B, which is capable of short takeoffs and vertical landings.

Perfect for the former helicopter carrier.

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Tom Clifford is an Irish journalist based in China. 

Earlier this year, with little publicity, the official position of Israel on terrorism was explained by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon

“I would like to see ISIS rule all of Syria (by inference, the whole region – RG); ISIS and its offshoots do not pose a threat to the Israeli State. Iran remains the main enemy!”

Ya’alon was being disingenuous, but the thinking behind his words is actually clear enough from the words themselves.  Put simply, Israel’s relentless emphasis on the supposed threat from Iran is simply a diversionary tactic intended to conceal the continuing realisation of the ‘Greater Israel’ Project.

Ya’alon added

“Iran is a rogue regime with designs on a regional hegemony. Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy, with the ability to declare war. Iran currently has terror infrastructure in place in five continents: Asia, Africa, Europe and both in South and North America.”

Ya’alon’s last comment refers to Iran as a rogue regime.  However experienced Middle East observers will no doubt hesitate after reading the totality of his comments, and will wonder whether in light of them it is actually Israel and the US which should be considered the rogue regimes rather than Iran or indeed anyone else,  other than obviously Israel’s and the US’s staunch ally,  the odious Saudi regime.

Many similar comments of this nature  have been made by senior Israeli officials, but one in particular stands out.  This is a speech made at the Herzliya Conference by Israel’s military intelligence chief, Major General Herzi Halevy.  He took Israel’s long-standing position that it “prefers ISIS” over the Syrian government to a whole new level, declaring openly that Israel does not want to see ISIS defeated in any war.  As quoted in the Hebrew language NRG site, owned by the Maariv Newspaper conglomerate, Major Gen. Halevy actually expressed worry about the recent offensives against ISIS, expressing concern that military offensives in the last three months had placed ISIS in the “most difficult” situation it has known since its inception or at least since its declaration of a caliphate.

Needless to say most people are not aware that Major Gen. Halevy has in effect become a  spokesperson for ISIS.

So what is going on? 

The short answer is that the real ‘game’ in the region is being played out by and an on behalf of Israeli interests.   An indirect but nonetheless highly revealing clue has just been provided by the recently developing relationship between Israel and Chad.  Chad, located south of Libya in the Sahara, faces a mountain of difficulties which Israel can help it deal with.  These range from extreme water scarcity to Chad finding itself on the front line in Africa’s fight against Islamist terrorism, be it in the form ISIS, al-Qaeda or Boko Haram.  This supplies the reason for Chadian President Idriss Déby recent visit to Israel, which has taken place 46 years after Libya’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi pressured Chad into breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel in 1972,  a step which Chad took even before the big wave of African countries severing diplomatic ties with Israel took place, which happened after the 1973 Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War.

Chad broke off diplomatic relations with Israel in 1972 because it believed that it would gain more by forging close ties with Gaddafi’s Libya than by retaining ties with Israel. Obviously since the fall of Gaddafi that calculation has changed.

However another – obviously unacknowledged – reason is almost certainly Chad’s worry that it might find itself facing the same sort of Islamist terrorism in Chad that Syria has recently experienced.  After all if Israeli officials can publicly admit to Israel’s de facto support for Islamist terrorism in Syria why should it be any different in Chad?

So the bottom line is that Chad – and no doubt plenty of other countries in the region – find themselves needing Israel’s help to protect themselves from the Frankenstein’s monster of worldwide Islamist terrorism which Israeli and US policies have conjured up.  It amounts to the classic protection racket, with countries like Chad looking to Israel to ‘protect’ them from the very Islamist threat Israeli and US policies are themselves creating.

Given that this is so, and given the extent to which the spread of Islamist terrorist groups across the Middle East and North Africa actually serves Israeli and US interests, there is simply no point looking to Israel and the US for a ‘solution’ to the problem caused by them.  Certainly no such solution is going to be found in Palermo, site of the latest Libya peace talks.  No such solution is going to be found whilst the ‘protection racket’ serves Israel’s regional interests so well.  Indeed Déby’s visit to Jerusalem, as does the rush of other African countries restoring relations with Israel, shows the spectacular success of the ’protection racket’.

In view of this it should come as no surprise that all attempts to change it are furiously resisted.  Thus in the US “The Stop Arming Terrorists Act” proposed in early 2017 by Representative Tulsi Gabbard and Senator Rand Paul, which sought to prohibit use of US government funds from providing assistance to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, ISIS, and the rest, and to those countries which support these organizations, predictably ran into a wall of opposition. As of November 2017 only 14 out of 435 members of the US House of Representatives were prepared to co-sponsor the bill with Gabbard,  whilst in the Senate Rand Paul could find no co-sponsors at all. 

Given the extremely close ties between the US and Israel, there is in fact no possibility of the bill – at least in the form proposed by Gabbard and Rand Paul – being passed.

Given the strong feelings many in the US have about Islamist terrorism – with memories of 9/11 still fresh – one might suppose that this would be an enormous scandal.  However – predictably enough – neither the US media nor the global media seem at all interested in it.

Authors note: many of the sources and quotes, details etc, contained herein came from Israeli media.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Featured image is from The Duran

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Russia Deploys S-400 Missiles to Crimea in Military Showdown with Ukraine

By Zero Hedge, November 29, 2018

Predictably the crisis that began on Sunday between Russia and Ukraine in the Kerch Strait is quickly worsening as Russia has announced plans to deploy more of its advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile systems to Crimea.

Video: British Special Forces in Ukraine. Alleged Chemical Weapons and Black Ops Against Donbass?

By Vesti News, November 28, 2018

On November 21, 2018,  a few days prior to the Kerch Strait Incident, the British Ministry of Defense confirmed that a new contingent of UK special forces were slated to be sent to Ukraine.

Drama in the Kerch Strait: Teasing the Russian Bear

By Pepe Escobar, November 28, 2018

The Kerch Strait connects the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea. To reach Mariupol, a key city in the Sea of Azov very close to the dangerous dividing line between Ukraine’s army and the pro-Russian militias in Donbass, the Ukrainian navy needs to go through the Kerch.

Video: Russia-Ukraine Black Sea Military Crisis: On the Brink of War?

By South Front, November 27, 2018

The existence or absence of the Ukrainian request to the Russians is irrelevant. The fact is that the Ukrainian warships violated Russian territorial waters threatening navigation in the area and provoking the Russian side.

Ukraine Provokes Russia to What End?

By Tony Cartalucci, November 27, 2018

Russia has seized three Ukrainian military vessels violating its territory near Russia’s newly completed Crimean Bridge. The incident is a clear provocation carried out by Kiev and possibly engineered by Kiev’s Western sponsors – particularly those in Washington and London.

Strategic Waterways and “The Kerch Strait Incident”: Towards Military Escalation?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 26, 2018

Will the Kerch Straits Incident lead to a process of military escalation? In recent developments (November 26), Russia has reopened the Kerch Strait to maritime navigation.

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Beekeepers in and around Cape Town, South Africa are facing significant losses of their pollinators in recent weeks.

The mass deaths have been linked to an insecticide called fipronil that was likely incorrectly used by the area’s wine farmers, according to media reports.

Brendan Ashley-Cooper, the vice-chairperson of Western Cape Bee Industry Association, told the BBC about 100 of his hives were affected and between 1 million and 1.5 million bees died.

“A week ago we started getting calls that beekeepers were finding dead bees in front of their hives. I came to inspect my bee site and found similar results and found thousands upon thousands of dead bees in front of a lot of my bee hives,” the commercial farmer told South African broadcaster eNCA.

The beekeepers suspected that the area’s wine farmers were spraying their vineyards with a mix of ant poison and molasses, the Weekend Argus reported last week.

Ashley-Cooper sent a sample of the mixture to a laboratory in Cape Town, which determined that fipronil was the main ingredient in the sample, the West Argus reported over the weekend. The wine farmers have since stopped using the pesticide.

Other area beekeepers lost hives, including Lawrence Woollam, who told the West Argus his business will be severely impacted after losing between 90 percent and 100 percent of his bees.

Fipronil is a broad-spectrum insecticide used to control ants, beetles, cockroaches, fleas, ticks, termites and other insects. It works by disrupting the central nervous system of invertebrates.

Source: Mark Helm / Flickr / CC BY 2.0

As the South African explained, the bees were likely attracted to the sweetness of the molasses. After ingesting the potent mixture, they brought it back to their hives and infected the rest of their colony.

Both wild and managed bee hives in Cape Town’s southern areas were affected, Ashley-Cooper told the BBC.

Honey bees and wild bees are vital for crop pollination and are a critical part of our food system. One out of every three bites of food we eat is dependent on bees for pollination, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. However, bee populations are crashing around the world due to factors such as neonicotinoids, habitat loss and disease.

The Cape Town beekeepers, wine farmers and the government are now working together to find a solution to the problem. Further tests will be conducted to confirm whether the pesticide is to blame.

“The farmers have been very concerned about the bee die-off. We’re having meetings with the farmers in the next couple of days to have a look if they have caused this problem and to see if we can find solutions,” Ashley-Cooper told eNCA.

10 Things You Always Wanted to Know About #Neonics https://t.co/uRzBC3NlVx @NRDC @bpncamp @pesticideaction

— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) November 12, 2018

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The right wing Ecuadorean government of President Moreno continues to churn out its production line of fake documents regarding Julian Assange, and channel them straight to MI6 mouthpiece Luke Harding of the Guardian.

Amazingly, more Ecuadorean Government documents have just been discovered for the Guardian, this time spy agency reports detailing visits of Paul Manafort and unspecified “Russians” to the Embassy. By a wonderful coincidence of timing, this is the day after Mueller announced that Manafort’s plea deal was over.

The problem with this latest fabrication is that Moreno had already released the visitor logs to the Mueller inquiry. Neither Manafort nor these “Russians” are in the visitor logs.

Screengrab from The Guardian

This is impossible. The visitor logs were not kept by Wikileaks, but by the very strict Ecuadorean security. Nobody was ever admitted without being entered in the logs. The procedure was very thorough. To go in, you had to submit your passport (no other type of document was accepted). A copy of your passport was taken and the passport details entered into the log. Your passport, along with your mobile phone and any other electronic equipment, was retained until you left, along with your bag and coat. I feature in the logs every time I visited.

There were no exceptions. For an exception to be made for Manafort and the “Russians” would have had to be a decision of the Government of Ecuador, not of Wikileaks, and that would be so exceptional the reason for it would surely have been noted in the now leaked supposed Ecuadorean “intelligence report” of the visits. What possible motive would the Ecuadorean government have for facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort? Furthermore it is impossible that the intelligence agency – who were in charge of the security – would not know the identity of these alleged “Russians”.

Previously Harding and the Guardian have published documents faked by the Moreno government regarding a diplomatic appointment to Russia for Assange of which he had no knowledge. Now they follow this up with more documents aimed to provide fictitious evidence to bolster Mueller’s pathetically failed attempt to substantiate the story that Russia deprived Hillary of the Presidency.

My friend William Binney, probably the world’s greatest expert on electronic surveillance, former Technical Director of the NSA, has stated that it is impossible the DNC servers were hacked, the technical evidence shows it was a download to a directly connected memory stick. I knew the US security services were conducting a fake investigation the moment it became clear that the FBI did not even themselves look at the DNC servers, instead accepting a report from the Clinton linked DNC “security consultants” Crowdstrike.

I would love to believe that the fact Julian has never met Manafort is bound to be established. But I fear that state control of propaganda may be such that this massive “Big Lie” will come to enter public consciousness in the same way as the non-existent Russian hack of the DNC servers.

Assange never met Manafort. The DNC emails were downloaded by an insider. Assange never even considered fleeing to Russia. Those are the facts, and I am in a position to give you a personal assurance of them.

I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services.

I am not a fan of Donald Trump. But to see the partisans of the defeated candidate (and a particularly obnoxious defeated candidate) manipulate the security services and the media to create an entirely false public perception, in order to attempt to overturn the result of the US Presidential election, is the most astonishing thing I have witnessed in my lifetime.

Plainly the government of Ecuador is releasing lies about Assange to curry favour with the security establishment of the USA and UK, and to damage Assange’s support prior to expelling him from the Embassy. He will then be extradited from London to the USA on charges of espionage.

Assange is not a whistleblower or a spy – he is the greatest publisher of his age, and has done more to bring the crimes of governments to light than the mainstream media will ever be motivated to achieve. That supposedly great newspaper titles like the Guardian, New York Times and Washington Post are involved in the spreading of lies to damage Assange, and are seeking his imprisonment for publishing state secrets, is clear evidence that the idea of the “liberal media” no longer exists in the new plutocratic age. The press are not on the side of the people, they are an instrument of elite control.

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Morocco’s parliament, at this moment, is deciding the nation’s Decentralisation Charter. Since its working draft is not currently made public, we can only hope that every parliamentarian realises that the human development course of the nation and the relationships between public, civil and private institutions depend upon the creation of a meaningful charter. Its conception and implementation will also determine the extent to which Morocco can inspire its neighbours towards a hopeful, modern and yet historic approach to empowering people to achieve their best life’s course.

With the benefit of hindsight, one may fairly consider that in 2008, Morocco’s public commitment to decentralise decision-making, especially with regards to people’s development, was a forward-thinking and strategic position to take. The declaration of King Mohammed VI that Morocco would commence the restructuring of public administrations, was the culmination of a series of other actions and preceded several others. These served to demonstrate a consistency of participatory principles that guide and accelerate sustainable development.

Considering that the decentralisation of management is best achieved in contexts that also promote the participation of communities in project planning, Morocco had already incorporated this concept in its National Initiative for Human Development in 2005. The building of decentralisation is also enabled by an active civil society and the full inclusion of women in all aspects of social development, the frameworks of which were expanded upon in laws that were brought into operation in 2002 and 2004 respectively. Morocco then in 2010 reaffirmed these statutes in its Municipal Charter, delegating responsibilities to locally elected leaders, to facilitate people-centered development utilising the participatory method.

Furthermore, and once again with hindsight, one could conclude that Morocco’s experience in the Arab Spring was made more calm and united, as a result of the intentions of these formative guiding pillars of social evolution, in combination with its new Constitution, which had been ratified in 2011.

With all this said however, we find ourselves at this moment in 2018, with different national conditions, expectations and even urgencies.

Rural poverty remains painfully entrenched in many areas of the Moroccan countryside. Girls’ participation in education drops precipitously from primary to secondary, while clean drinking water remains a key driver of illness and a stunting factor in girls’ attendance at school. Despite some fine examples of cooperatives gaining traction and bringing increased opportunities for its members, the vast majority of them remain ineffectual and without the means to deliver their products beyond most local markets. Adding a dimension that is extremely hard to bear is the people’s awareness that all of these harsh difficulties are essentially avoidable; opportunities and solutions to their problems are known and viable. Nevertheless, these remain unachieved year after year, decade after decade.

Decentralisation is fundamentally the idea that people who experience the everyday challenges of life in their communities are in the best positions to design and manage the initiatives that directly address their needs and bring them the benefits that they seek. Inherent also in decentralisation is an understanding of the opposite: in centrally-controlled societies, localities distant from decision-making capitals will hardly ever obtain sustainability. This is because central planners will most likely fail to select the contextually appropriate actions which promote the varied interests of the people.

As the members of Morocco’s parliament work toward ratification of the Decentralisation Charter, they would be diligent to embrace the synergistic elements of the King of Morocco’s aforementioned principles from 2008. They should closely consider the lessons from other nations that embarked on this worthy and humanistic manner of organising society. They would strategically embody the monarchy’s unique position and vitally needed contribution toward overcoming fundamental challenges to decentralise. Finally, they should remember that their actions will serve as a guide for other countries on the African continent and the Middle East.

With these considerations in mind, the following recommendations may prove useful moving forward:

Firstly, Morocco’s initial integration of three pathways to decentralise–devolution, deconcentration and delegation–essentially harnesses the national government’s capacities and sub-national cross-sectoral partnerships to achieve the projects that local communities decide. Not only does this incorporate the key tenet for sustainable development, which is people’s participation, but it acknowledges what people have identified to be most important for themselves. The result is the generation of goodwill between social groups and sectors, solidarity and diversity.

Secondly, Morocco’s decentralisation has been referred to as “regionalisation”, meaning that its emphasis is on the devolution of power to its twelve regions. Nevertheless, regional public administrative centres in Morocco remain too distant from the dispersed communities of their jurisdictions. This causes considerable delays of basic authorisations needed to carry development initiatives forward. Even provincialisation, which is the breakdown of regions into their provinces, resembles an unnecessary limitation on reasonable actions for sustainable change and growth.

Instead, Morocco should opt for “communalisation”, which targets municipalities as the primary drivers of development, with the understanding that recentralising to the provincial or regional level remains an open possibility, should administrative difficulties arise. Understandably, Morocco is hesitant to diffuse authority related to development to the municipal tier. After all, social stratifications between classes, genders, economic and political groups are as real and formidable at this level as they are on national and global scales.

However, the conditions to avoid entrenching existing power structures could be achieved, with the satisfactory implementation of the National Initiative for Human Development, in complete conjunction with the Municipal Charter. This would require the creation of participatory plans and their fulfilment, to be driven by communities.

This moment of reckoning pivots on this issue more than any other. If the municipal level first experienced sustainable development through the participatory method, then empowering tiers above those that are closest to the people, i.e. the regional and provincial, will most likely prove unsatisfactory, rife with the pathological remnants and processes of centralisation.

Third, there is a critical lesson that public administrators and observers alike have learned in the ten ensuing years from when Morocco first announced its intention to decentralise, until today, when its final charter is being debated. It is exceedingly difficult to imagine that Morocco’s thoroughly centralised government system can decentralise itself without a third party facilitator to forge the productive linkages between the administrative tiers and sectors of society. The necessary arbitrator should also have discretionary ability to influence the access and allocation of financial resources in order to achieve municipal and regional balance of development opportunities. To be realistic, if Moroccan decentralisation will know its full measure, either one or both of the following may need to transpire: His Majesty the King will perform this arbitrating role, or a Ministry of Decentralisation operating on all tiers will need to be established.The challenge is too vast and the implications are too existential for anything less than major engagement.

Morocco is an early champion of decentralisation and its thoughtful and progressive road map that it established for itself at the outset, ten years ago, remains vital to implement. Nevertheless, the questions remain: will it transfer power to people in a way that they can actually interact with and gain access to? Will the nation create a participatory environment to enable the benefits of decentralisation to form productive, mutually affirming relationships? Will the country just pass yet another charter, an inspiring programme or policy, or will it actually complete its journey into the real and daily experiences of the people?

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This article was originally published on High Atlas Foundation.

Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is a sociologist and president of the High Atlas Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustainable development in Morocco.

The crowds arrived at the box store many hours before opening, or nowadays even on Thanksgiving night. They wait outside (sometimes in frigid Northern areas) for the opportunity to get ‘Once in a lifetime’ deals. Many of these shoppers are low income folks who really need those deals… many don’t really need them. The rhetorical question no one seems to ask  is why those ‘barely above water’ don’t earn enough to avoid having to compete for bargains? The inevitable answer of course is that this is laissez-faire free enterprise Amerika where Charles Darwin would be so proud. You know the drill, everyone has an equal opportunity to sink or swim on their own. Besides, old Ben Franklin said it best: “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Hear that all you Wal-Mart shoppers?

Sadly, because of the diabolically successful tweaking of our public education system begun decades ago, many of my fellow Amerikans have been ‘dumbed down’. The boob tube from the19 70s right up until present has completed its assignment of ridding the public of any real historical or counter mainstream political discourse or debate. Everything has to suit the will of those corporate sponsors and of course our powerful Military Industrial Empire. They got the majority of us, the suckers and bottom feeders that they call us, into actually believing that the dream of becoming super rich is within reach for anyone. The media celebrates great wealth and corporate success. It is the working stiff who has no one to blame but himself for not earning more. This is why we don’t see thousands of street corner demonstrations throughout this nation on a regular basis. Why stand on a street corner with a sign when you can be saving money by shopping?

It is already a given to more of us working stiffs that the overwhelming majority of politicians are full of shit. The propaganda machine has literally brainwashed so many Amerikans that their only recourse is to simply vote, and not to something more relevant like just getting out and demonstrating on key issues. Anecdotally, when we relocated to Central Florida 21 years ago, we found a nice local seafood store selling lots of fresh caught fish. The store was located, along with a few other small businesses, on a narrow street alongside  the railroad tracks off of a tremendous curve on the busiest road in town.

To exit that store meant attempting to enter that road with little visibility beyond that dangerous curve. Thus, the best way to exit the street was to go out the back way and down an adjoining residential street. Fine…until the residents of that street complained that too many big delivery trucks were using their street to deliver to the boat manufacturer near the fish store. So, the city council decided, unanimously, to put a blockade by that street, thus closing it off to all traffic. This caused the seafood store owner to lose lots of customers, especially the many seniors who shopped there. Just too damn dangerous. Well, a few customers and merchants on that street put together a petition, and 15 of us showed up at the next council meeting to speak out. We did, and guess what? The blockade came down, and a new one was installed that only stopped trucks. Folks, concerted activism can work.

There are countless key issues for we working stiffs to concentrate our attention on. If even one key issue is taken and given full energy and attention…. folks, the Vietnam debacle was phased out because of mass citizen action. When the parents of GIs and draft age young men got pissed off and spoke out, the empire had to back off. When demonstrators replaced shoppers…..

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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 Mancunian Matters

It is impossible to see peace prize or freedom awards as anything other than fragments of an industry.  In time, ideals become marketable and matters of commodity. Those who go against this market rationale face the fires of moral outrage.  The business of promoting peace in the wrapping of human rights protections is its own market, with false advertising.  It is merely, in many instances, the flipside of conflict.   

A point often forgotten in this indulgence is that most recipients tend to be not merely the advocates of peace but previous advocates of conflict.  Bloodied swords preceded ploughshares; the terrorist became, in time, a peace maker.  Realising this tense, and central reality, should put any committee responsible for peace prizes or humanitarian awards out of business.

The speed at which a previously celebrated Aung San Suu Kyi has been stripped of such awards shows the frustration and rage of peace bureaucrats and the cocktail set who suddenly deigned their choice a counterfeit.  Like an original hanging in a gallery, the award had to be removed, its bestowing reconsidered.

So many removals and revocations have taken place that Suu Kyi’s record now reads like a veritable Who’s Who of award deprivation.  Each has been accompanied with necessary doses of hurt and cant in the face of a sanctified figure who has rusted. Stripping Suu Kyi of the Freedom of City awards figures prominently in these grand moral gestures: Edinburgh, Oxford, Glasgow and Newcastle, to name but a few examples.  A good deal of this suggests an inflated brand gone wrong: the saint sinned in taking the steroids of pragmatism, and to that end, city councillors are left in search of other appropriate products and recipients.   

When she was in fashion, Suu Kyi could rely on such remarks as those of the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, who described her in 2005 as “a symbol of peaceful resistance in the face of oppression.”  Comparisons were made to another figure rendered pure by a lengthy prison stint: Nelson Mandela.  Last November, the Lord Provost started getting nervous.  Use your “immeasurable courage and influence,” urged Frank Ross, to ensure the safe return of the Rohingya Muslims to Rakhine. 

With total radio silence following, Ross tabled a council motion calling for her freedom of city to be stripped.  Suu Kyi found herself in curious company: the last, and previously only time Edinburgh had revoked a freedom of city award was in 1890, when the giddily nationalistic Charles Parnell was accused of conducting an adulterous affair with Katharine O’Shea.  Then, as now, the moralists were in charge of both tradition and award. 

Much is also being made about her silence on matters that are, less the bread and butter of human rights than its publicity.  To air them is to incite a miracle.  The atrocities against the Rohingya by the Burmese military is marked out as a significant inkblot on previously unblemished paper.  In October, Canadian lawmakers, in an unprecedented move revoking Suu Kyi’s honorary Canadian citizenship granted in 2007, cited her inaction on calling out “genocide” against the Rohingyas as a determining factor. Senator Ratna Omidvar was almost aggrieved at a symbol fallen from imposed grace.

“The world pinned its hope on her as the shining light and hope for a democratic and peaceful Myanmar.” 

Suu Kyi’s ambitions were evidently more modest and less global. 

Amnesty International followed in November. 

“Our expectation,” came an enraged letter from its Secretary General Kumi Naidoo this month, “was that you would continue to use your moral authority to speak out against injustice whenever you saw it, not least within Myanmar itself.” 

The organisation thereby announced it revocation of the Ambassador of Conscience award.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has also been pressed to reconsider their award.  Olav Njølstad, secretary of the committee, tiptoed around the matter with a ballerina’s ease, finding relief in the certainty that the prize was not a presently relevant issue. 

“It’s important to remember that a Nobel Prize, whether in physics, literature or peace, is awarded for some prize-worthy effort or achievement in the past.” 

Using the past as apologia, escape and salvation for his organisation’s decision, Njølstad could argue that Suu Kyi’s award was based on “her fight for democracy and freedom up until 1991, the year she was awarded the prize.” 

Committees often exhibit such pedantic, book-keeping tendencies.  Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, eschewed any prospective policing role by her organisation’s members in 2017. 

“It’s not our task to oversee or censor what a laureate does after the prize has been won.”

Once awarded, never to be revoked.

For Myanmar gazers, peace is a complex commodity, bought through complicity, acquiescence and the dictates of stability.  The National Coalition of Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), a composite of exiled pro-democracy figures elected to the national parliament in 1990, left a specific tripartite rationale in place: unchallenged, near-divine respect for Suu Kyi; a reluctance to directly criticise the military (notable here is Suu Kyi’s own bloodline, tied to a father considered one of the founders of the Tatmadaw, or Myanmar military); and a chronic inability to confront ethnic problems within the country. 

In the words of J.J. Rose,

“The military controls all significant political action in Myanmar, despite its political wing winning less than 7 percent of the popular vote in the country’s major parliamentary house in 2015.”

Under conditions of house arrest, the activist becomes a symbol externally venerated rather than a practitioner able to exert meaningful action.  In time, Suu Kyi became a cipher for democratic impulses and sentiments, but hardly a genuine, substantive figure of effective leadership.

The sentiments of veneration and subsequent despair seem cute to bricks and mortar pragmatists who see the obsession with her refusal to use microphone and rostrum as complicit in culpability.  Abhijit Dutta, writing in the Hindustan Times, gives the leader far more time and consideration. 

“Today, she has a job to do: remake a country that has systematically hollowed out its institutions over the past 50 years and ensure that it stays the course on its democratic transition.”

The vocal stance, or in this case its absence, has been elevated to the level of mystical influence.  To not speak is tantamount to the gravest of sins in the epoch of emoting, where the decibel range of outrage is taken as a measure of an activist’s worth.  Even a concession by a UN independent international fact-finding mission that “the constitutional powers of the civilian authorities afford little scope for controlling the actions of the Tatmadaw” does not sway proponents of necessary, and public condemnation. The present condemns the past.

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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]

Predictably the crisis that began on Sunday between Russia and Ukraine in the Kerch Strait is quickly worsening as Russia has announced plans to deploy more of its advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile systems to Crimea. 

Adding to tensions, Reuters has further reported that a Russian warship has been dispatched to the Sea of Azov — waters used by both countries and near where the Russian Navy seized Ukrainian vessels and crew for what Moscow condemned as “maneuvering dangerously” and illegal entry into Russian territory.

The warship was seen departing a Crimean port by a Reuters correspondent on Wednesday and was described as the Russian navy minesweeper ship, the Vice-Admiral Zakharin, going in the direction of the Sea of Azov.

This comes a day after Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko issued provocative statements during a televised interview on Tuesday that his country is “under threat of full-scale war with Russia” while seeking to justify martial law.

The Ukrainian president added that “the number of units that have been deployed along our border – what’s more, along its full length – has grown dramatically.” He referenced unspecified intelligence reports pointing to Moscow tripling its forces along the border since Crimea joined Russia in 2014.

Though likely the plans were already in motion, the timing of the S-400 deployment announcement is designed to send a strong message to the West, which is also building up its forces as both the UK and US are reportedly injecting more military hardware and troops into Ukraine.

According to TASS:

A division set of Russia’s S-400 Triumph air defense system has undergone tests and will soon be put on combat duty in Crimea, the Southern Military District’s press service said on Wednesday.

The personnel of the air defense missile unit of the 4th army of the Air Force and the Southern Military District deployed to Crimea has started preparing the equipment to be transported by rail to a permanent base. “In the near future, the new system will enter combat duty to defend Russia’s airspace, replacing the previous air defense system,” the spokesman explained.

The other deeply interesting aspect to the timing of the entire crisis, made more alarming for the Ukrainian population in particular after Poroshenko’s announcing the implementation of martial law until at least January to combat “growing aggression” from Russia, is that it’s occurring just days ahead the planned meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at the G20 in Argentina later this week.

This is 2014/15 redux. Back then, the Kiev authorities, and their media supporters, used to claim almost every week that a full-scale Russian invasion was imminent. It never came. Now, a few months out from an election he’s poised to lose, Poroshenko is at it again. https://t.co/A1jpfyMlaf

— Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) November 28, 2018

Even Reuters can’t help but observe the following crucial timing of this week’s crisis in the Kerch Strait:

The episode risks derailing a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 in Argentina later this week. Trump said on Tuesday that he might cancel the meeting due to the incident, but the Kremlin said on Wednesday it thought it was still on.

And there’s further this likely more than just rumor: “Citing sources in Ukraine’s ruling circles, Russia’s Izvestia newspaper reported that Kiev had been trying to persuade Washington – so far unsuccessfully – to open a military base in Ukraine“, according to Reuters, which noted could not be independently confirmed.

Much about the question of whether more dramatic escalation is to follow, or if tensions will calm will likely be determined by the question of if the Trump-Putin meeting will proceed.

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If the Democrats were a true political party Nancy Pelosi’s failures would have taken her out of the running for any leadership position.

“We must say no to the false dichotomy of Trumpian fascism or the pretend Democratic Party variety.”

Black Agenda Report was first published in October 2006, just as the Democratic Party was poised to take control of the House of Representatives with Nancy Pelosi as leader. Twelve years later they will be in the majority for the first time since 2010, and again with Pelosi at the helm.

In those early issues of BAR, our team pondered the meaning of a Democratic majority that didn’t represent the interests of the black constituency that brought it to power. In 2006 John Conyers was the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. He had publicly stated his goal of holding impeachment hearings to investigate George W. Bush. But Pelosi made it clear that impeachment was “off the table,” and indeed it was.

“Pelosi’s ‘pay as you go’ federal spending may as well have been written by the Koch brothers.”

Fast forward to 2018. Despite the supposed Democratic Party outrage over charges of collusion against Donald Trump, Pelosi again says there will be no impeachment. What she does offer are right wing talking points about “pay as you go” federal spending, a guarantee of more austerity that may as well have been written by the Koch brothers.

Nancy Pelosi may have raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates, but the money did little to help as four election cycles went by without a victory. If the Democrats were a true political party her failures would have taken her out of the running for any leadership position. Instead her fealty to the rotten system makes her an untouchable.

In 2006 the BAR rallying cry was “Let Black Democrats Be Black!” Our demand referred to the Democratic Party beat down of the progressive policies that the constituents of Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members want to see enacted. It appears that 2018 is a repeat of 2006.

“Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership have silenced and side lined what remains of any left wing tendency.”

Nancy Pelosi is only good at two things. She raises lots of money, which isn’t really hard for someone with an estimated net worth of $120 million. Pelosi gets credit for asking her rich friends to contribute to her favorite cause, something that every lady who lunches knows how to do.

Her other talent is shooting down any and all progressive policy proposals. She and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership have silenced and side lined what remains of any left wing tendency.The phony left, represented by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, mouth the right words but then sign on to Pelosi and the rest of the discredited gang.

Nancy Pelosi won’t face a serious challenge because she does what Democratic Party funders want her to do. They determine the policy agenda. They don’t want Medicare for All. So there will be no Medicare for All. They want austerity and permanent war and that is all we will be offered.

“Democratic Party funders want austerity and permanent war and that is all we will be offered.”

The trap of the duopoly for black Americans only gets harder to escape. Donald Trump is the living embodiment of all our fears, a president who speaks directly and openly to white nationalists. The danger is real but the opposition is fake. The fake opposition will tell Democrats to protest the firing of segregationist Attorney General Jeff Sessions because his replacement may sabotage Robert Mueller’s investigation.

They do not point out that the now Democratic controlled House of Representatives can subpoena witnesses, hold hearings and impeach, whether the new Attorney General approves or not. If they want Trump investigated they should have demanded that Pelosi put impeachment back on the agenda. The thousands of people who succumbed to this foolishness no doubt thought of themselves as defenders of the resistance against fascism. But they were merely pawns in a silly propaganda game.

“If they want Trump investigated they should have demanded that Pelosi put impeachment back on the agenda.”

In 2006 BAR said, “Republicans out does not mean progressives in.” Those words are just as true in 2018. Black people suffer politically more than any other group for a very simple reason. We sabotage our own political desires in order to keep Republicans out of office.That goal subverts everything else and makes us the losers even when the party we support manages to get back into power.

The Democrats we ride and die for are fakes. They won’t say that all Mexicans are rapists and they won’t refer to African countries as “shit holes.” They put palatable black faces in high places. But they don’t end mass incarceration or cut the military budget. CBC members actually joined in giving Trump a bigger military budget than he requested while also claiming to support human needs paid for by government.

This charade will go on until the people reject Pelosi, the rest of the Democratic Party leadership, their funders, and their quislings in the black misleadership class. We must say no to the false dichotomy of Trumpian fascism or the pretend Democratic Party variety. If not, we may have the same headline in another twelve years. The BAR team would rather write about how this deadly dynamic finally came to an end.

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Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com . Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Featured image is from BAR

Results from the Mississippi Senatorial runoff elections where Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith defeated Democratic candidate Mike Espy by an 11 percentage points margin illustrates the formidable obstacles placed before the opposition party within the United States body politic.

Hyde-Smith was captured on videotape making a macabre joke about being invited to a public hanging. Mississippi is one of the most dreaded states in the country as it relates to racial violence and terror.

Untold numbers of lynchings and other pseudo-legal forms of torture and execution have been carried out in the state since the conclusion of the Civil War over 150 years ago. During the period of Reconstruction after the war, southern planters resisted vehemently the empowerment of African Americans.

Other factors involved in the Hyde-Smith and Espy race was the revelation that the Republican candidate had attended an all-white segregationist academy during the 1970s. These schools were established as private institutions to avoid the federally-mandated desegregation of public education in the aftermath of the Brown v. Topeka Supreme Court ruling of 1954 and subsequent decisions by lower courts and state administrative structures.

Yet this was clearly not enough to convince the majority of whites in Mississippi that such a politician would be bad for the state. The notions of a “new south” seemed to have faded into oblivion of past decades in the aftermath of the turbulent 1960s.

Adding insult to injury was the appearance of nooses on trees outside the capitol building in Jackson on November 26, just one day prior to the runoff election. There were also hand written signs posted which said that things have not changed in Mississippi since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Mississippi nooses found hanging outside state capitol building in Jackson

There were numerous false statements made by the corporate media saying that if Espy won he would be the first African American senator to represent Mississippi in history. In fact there were two African American senators in Mississippi during the 1870s and early 1880s during Reconstruction.

Hiram Rhodes Revels, a former African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister and Civil War regiment leader for the Union army, was elected to the Mississippi state legislature and eventually selected by the state senate to serve as its senator as a Republican  during 1870-71 in Washington. Later Blanche Kelso Bruce, a politician and successful commercial farmer, was elected by the Republican-dominated state house to the U.S. Senate where he served from 1875-1881.

During this post-Civil War period in U.S. history, the Republican Party sought the support of African Americans in their quest to disempower the white former slave-owning planters who were Democrats. By 1880, with the 1876 end of Federal Reconstruction, Senator Bruce lost his political base in Mississippi and was forced out of the Senate. He remained in Washington, D.C. until his death in 1898 where he was appointed to several federal positions such as the Register of the Treasury and the Register of Deeds.

The election of Hyde-Smith sends an ominous message to African Americans and their allies in Mississippi along with the entire country. President Donald Trump campaigned for Hyde-Smith in line with his alignment with the most conservative and racist political forces in the U.S.

Stolen Statewide Elections in Georgia and Florida

Two major gubernatorial elections in the southern states of Georgia and Florida provided opportunities for African Americans Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum to break the glass ceiling of the political structures of these areas. There was overwhelmingly documented proof of voter suppression in the state of Georgia which drew national and international press coverage.

Georgia candidates Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp 

Abrams, a state legislator, refused to concede the race for over a week after the controversial November 6 ballot. Initially she demanded that all votes be counted saying there was enough support for her candidacy to force a runoff election against Republican former Secretary of State Brian Kemp.

Nonetheless, on November 16, Abrams said she was ending her campaign for Governor. This was the announcement even after her supporters had won a favorable court ruling on the necessity of counting all votes just three days earlier.

In response to the national uproar over the suppression of African American voters in Georgia, people across the country were contemplating ways to strike back against the racist power structure in the state. However, there was never a call from the Democratic Party of Georgia to engage in any type of national mobilizations in defense of the basic political rights of the African American people.

After the ending of the campaign by Abrams, some leading figures in the film entertainment industry such as Alyssa Milano, Bradley Whitford, Ron Perlman and Frank Rich called for a boycott of the state of Georgia. It is estimated that $4.6 billion in revenues are generated annually through filming in the state and such a withdrawal of these movie production firms would send a solid message to the racists who control the political apparatus of Georgia.

These methods have been successfully utilized dating back to the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s and the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s. Yet Abrams came out against a boycott saying that people in Georgia needed the jobs generated by the film industry. She claimed that the problem of voter suppression would be fought in the courts.

Nonetheless, when has federal court litigation achieved any advancement for African Americans absent of mass mobilizations such as demonstrations, boycotts, divestment, sanctions and other measures? There were many court rulings against voter suppression and segregation from the 1940s through the 1970s. However, it was the advent of picket lines, civil disobedience, marches, strikes, boycotts and rebellions which brought even minimal reforms to the institutionally racist system.

In Florida, Andrew Gillum, the Mayor Tallahassee, conceded the elections to former Republican Congressman Ron DeSantis on November 17. The situation of voter suppression in Florida has been well known for decades and was highlighted in the 2000 presidential race where the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court decided the outcome of the vote in favor of former President George W. Bush.

Although a referendum overturning the exclusion of former felons from the electorate passed by a wide margin, restoring the right to vote to over one million people in the state, this still excluded these same people from participating in the November 6 poll. As was the case in Georgia, there has been no call for any type of national protest activity in response to the irregularities in Florida.

Who Will Lead the Democrats and Who Will Lead the Masses?

These developments in the electoral arena during the midterms illustrate again the political failures of the Democratic Party leadership to address important issues impacting the African American people. On a national level there are efforts to reinstall California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House in January despite the election of dozens of new Democratic representatives, many of whom are much younger African Americans and women of color.

Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker of the House from 2007 to 2011 was disastrous. Even after former President Barack Obama won the White House with a comfortable majority in 2008, no fundamental reforms were initiated by the Democratic Senate, House and executive branch.

The Pentagon continued to wage unjust genocidal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti. Later the war against the Libyan people beginning in 2011 destroyed the most prosperous state in Africa and spread destabilization and dislocation throughout the Northern and Western regions of the continent.

In 2011, as well, the U.S.-engineered a war against Syria which has brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the forced removals of millions. Today the world is facing the largest number of refugees and internally displaced persons since the conclusion of World War II.

Racism and state repression is on the incline in the U.S. This is compounded by a worsening economic situation as exemplified by the proliferation of sub-standard wage labor; a widening gap between the rich and poor; a burgeoning federal budget deficit due to the corporate tax cuts imposed by the Republican-dominated Senate and House at the aegis of President Trump; the levelling of tariffs against foreign states creating havoc in the agricultural and industrial sectors of the economy; as well as the recently-announced plant closings by General Motors leaving tens of thousands of workers to a future of joblessness and uncertainty.

What is needed is an independent political party of the workers and oppressed in the U.S. which can speak in its own name based upon proletarian economic interests. A party of the workers and oppressed being brought into existence would end imperialist wars abroad and the super-exploitation of workers and the oppressed inside the country.

The Democrats cannot effectively represent the masses in this period of heightening international tensions since the leadership is pro-war and follows the dictates of Wall Street. Only a socialist-oriented party can put forward a program of struggle aimed at seizing the commanding levers of the political structures and national economy, to institute the monumental changes needed to liberate the people from the imperatives of capitalism and imperialism in the U.S. and worldwide.

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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

On November 10, a 5,290-ton Norwegian warship sank into one of the country’s inner fiords after colliding with a 62,557-ton tanker carrying almost 100 million liters of oil. CNN reported, “Now all that remains above the waterline is the frigate’s top, antennas and radar, leading local media to speculate how a ship designed for war failed to avoid a slow-moving, 62,557-ton tanker.”

Good question, and it will cost Norwegians an estimated $100 million to recover and repair its warship, but that’s minor compared to the damage that could be done by more military mistakes within its borders. In 1949, Norway joined NATO, and NATO nations have since enjoyed its “nuclear sharing” largesse, by which member nations without nuclear weapons of their own participate in nuclear force planning, train their armed forces to use nuclear weapons, and store nuclear weapons in their territories. United States Air Force (USAF) personnel guard the nuclear weapons “shared” with NATO nations, and the codes for deploying and firing them also remain under US control.

In October 2016, Norway voted against a UN nuclear disarmament resolution, saying that it “will not support proposals that would weaken NATO’s role as a defence alliance.” A month later, a Russian official warned that Norway, which shares a border with Russia, had become a nuclear target due to the deployment of 330 US Marines in its territory.

Exercise Trident Juncture prepares for Russian invasion of Scandinavia

Norway’s ill-fated frigate sank at the end of the war-games phase of Trident Juncture, NATO’s massive military exercise on Russia’s Scandinavian and Arctic borders. The first phase of Trident Juncture was deployment, from August to October. The second phase, war games, lasted from October 25 to November 7, and was based on the premise that Russia had invaded Scandinavia by ground, by air, and by sea. The third phase was a command post exercise to rehearse control of a real military operation from within Norway and Italy. The exercise included 50,000 participants from 31 NATO and partner countries, 250 aircraft, 65 naval vessels, and up to 10,000 tanks and other ground vehicles. Its “modular combined petroleum unit” provided 25,000 gallons of jet fuel and 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel.

In his most recent podcast with Russian History professor Stephen F. Cohen, New York City radio host John Batchelor said,

“Five or six years ago, this would have been science fiction. Nobody would have accepted this was possible, but it is entirely logical. This is the escalatory cycle of Cold War thinking. We are in the New Cold War, and each time these exercises will grow larger. The thinking in the original Cold War was that the scale of the exercise was a way of intimidating and in some fashion backing off the enemy. So the Russians conducted most recently a Vostok exercise in easternmost Siberia with the scenario of an invasion of Korea by an unnamed foe, meaning the United States. Now that was an exercise combining Chinese troops and Russian troops to fight this unnamed foe. Now the American troops and 30 other countries conduct an exercise to fend off an unnamed foe named Russia. These are very serious people.

These exercises are not minor. The planning that goes into this and the money that’s spent means that both sides are preparing for conflict, or as Steve says, war with Russia. One more detail: within these last days, the Commission on National Defense Strategy organized by Congress, choosing senior officers retired from all militaries, Republican and Democrat, came together to issue a report to the Pentagon to say that, as of right now, the US military is not prepared to fight straight up with Russia.”

Curious claim—that the US is not prepared to fight Russia—given that the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute ranks Russia’s military budget as the fourth greatest in the world, after those of the US, China, and Saudi Arabia, and one-tenth the size of the US military budget. Are Americans being conned by the Pentagon and the military industrial complex? Of course we are, and that’s among the greatest understatements of the 20th and 21st centuries. Weapons manufacturers who profited from Trident Juncture and all the rest of the US-financed NATO operations are no doubt laughing all the way to the bank, while Russia remains determined not to bankrupt its people in an arms race with the US, as the Soviet Union did.

Stephen F. Cohen, author of the new book “War with Russia,” said that Russia is the most resource-rich nation on earth, and that the attempt to isolate it with sanctions and vilification has failed. Instead, Russia’s global diplomatic status has increased, and it has become more economically self-sufficient because it was compelled to develop agricultural and industrial import substitutions in response to sanctions. As George Szamuely, Senior Research Fellow at the Global Policy Institute, says,

“It’s ridiculous for the US to imagine that it could isolate Russia. It’s not Iraq.”

Indeed. It’s a major world power, a nuclear power, and a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power. And it continues to build alliances with other powerful nations, most importantly China and Iran.

The US is by contrast an empire declining beneath the weight of its grotesque military budgets and wars, even if it’s not sinking as fast as Norway’s frigate in NATO’s latest war games. Question is, will its handlers take the rest of the world down with it, either by accident or on purpose?

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Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected]. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

What do Argentinian protesters have in common with French protesters? – They both strongly dislike their governments, and their leaders (sic).

The protests in Argentina against the upcoming G20 meeting and around the IMF are just a pretext for an overall malaise – which is an understatement – vis-à-vis President Mauricio Macri and his debt-driven austerity program, that has left hundreds of thousands jobless. People who had decent jobs under the Kirchner governments have now joined the ranks of the unemployed and are begging for survival. Macri has driven the poverty rate from about 14%, where it was in November 2015, a months before the Presidential elections, to more than 35% in September 2018 – and all the while increasing tariffs for transportation and basic services such as electricity, gas, water – health care, education – in fact, privatizing such vital public services to the point where only higher middle class and elite can afford them.

That of course, will leave a vast majority of the people uneducated and without basic health care – precisely what neoliberalism wants. Decimating the number of poor people to a minimum needed for useful slavehood and leaving those who vegetate along, struggling for one meal at the time without education, without a job, so they don’t have the time, energy and political savvy to protest against the ruling class.

Greece is an outstanding example. Within less than ten years the once cheerful, happy and economically relatively well-off country was destroyed into misery by foreign imposed debt and austerity programs. – By now, almost all public assets were sold or privatized to pay for the horrendous debt service. Public health services are on a drip, there is a lack of special medication, like for cancer – schools are closed or privatized – pensions cut to unlivable levels, unemployment rampant – all leading to extreme poverty and skyrocketing suicide rates, about which nobody dares speaking.

That’s the making of the west. In the case of Greece even worse. Their European brother and sister countries went along with the loot. In fact, they pushed Greece into her demise, especially Germany, France, the European Central Bank (ECB), and, of course, the entire European Brussels apparatus, led by the unelected European Commission (EC) and, and eventually with the ‘official’ outside hammer, the IMF. Greece had to go.

Is Argentina going to become under Macri the Latin American Greece? Could well be. By now the country is encircled by neoliberal and fascist neighbors, Brazil, Chile Paraguay, Uruguay. Bolivia is a laudable exception. All the others will do what Washington mandates; whatever it takes to support Macri and his IMF-imposed economic killer policies, that – in the end – will sell out the resource-rich country to foreign oligarchs and corporations, to the US and NATO. Yes NATO, unbelievable, but true. NATO is officially in south America, as Colombia by her own choice has become a NATO country.

From Colombia to Argentina and actually to all of Latin America is like a walk in the park, with all the borders of the partly newly installed neoliberal / neofascist governments wide open – for NATO forces, that is. Macri has already invited the US to establish several US military bases. In July 2018 Sputnik reported that President Macri has given green light to establish “at least three US bases in the provinces of Neuquén, Misiones and Tierra del Fuego. Their creation would be financed by the US Southern Command.”

And now, in the midst of this man-made – Macri-made – socioeconomic calamity, he invites the G20 (30 November to 1 December 2018) to feast on Argentina’s goodies, to see for themselves what can be made of an otherwise prosperous country – so that prosperity is ‘shared’ and outsourced to foreign oligarchs, banks and corporations. Wonderful. For that G20 event, Macri mobilized some 22,000 military forces to guarantee the security of the chiefs of state.

Surely, after the G20 summit, new austerities will be imposed, because everybody sees there is more to be milked from Argentina. They see what they were able to do to Greece.  When common sense would dictate – stop, that’s it, that’s all we can take – there is an opening for even more to be squeezed out of the country. In Argentina there is still a lot of milking to be done. It has just started. If nothing else, the newly Washingtonshoed-in president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, will teach Macri how to do even better for the western money sharks.

Fuel tax protestors in France (Source: WSWS)

In France, the Yellow Vests protests against higher fuel prices and labor reform laws is just a pretext for something much bigger – a growing awakening of the French people, a steadily increasing recognition of how the slippery soft-speaker Emmanuel Macron is stripping France’s populace of most of their civil and social rights, of their labor rights – and ultimately, still to come, of their jobs. A number of ‘false flags’ from Charlie Hebdo to Bataclan to the Nice’s 14^thJuly terror attacks, have helped Macron to put a permanent State of Emergency – basically Martial Law – into the French Constitution. By doing so, he has created a kind of French “Patriot Act”, slice by slice reducing long acquired social rights, transforming them into increased profits for foreign and French corporations and banking giants. Big wonder, Macron is a Rothschild child. He has been put into his position to uphold and expand the Rothschild clan’s banking empire, expanding it way beyond the French borders.

Who are the Yellow Vests – or ‘gilets jaunes’in French? The name refers to the yellow phosphorescent vests that each and every French driver needs to carry in his vehicle for visibility and protection in case of an incident on the highway. The movement started on 10 October, propagated through facebook against the Macron imposed increase of fuel taxes. It then expanded rapidly into a movement of discontent with the continuous loss of purchasing power of the common people through budget cuts and soft but steadily increasing austerity imposed on the French citizenry. That, plus the decay of public services, especially in urban peripheries, has transformed the Yellow Vests movement into a vivid protest against Macron, an outright call for Macron’s resignation.

Hundreds of thousands – cumulatively several millions – of Yellow Vests have demonstrated and blocked at times most of Paris during the past two weeks, to reverse the fuel tax increase and to basically regain their social rights and financial purchasing power, increase salaries to at least keep pace with inflation. Diesel prices have already increased in 2018 alone by 23% and gasoline prices by 15%. These prices should increase further by 2019 according to a Macron imposed law.

Can protests in the street remove a President? – A President, who came to power with less than 27% of the French eligible voters, a President, who built his power on a movement, called “En Marche” (something like ‘moving on’) which hardly even existed a year before Macron’s ‘election’ in May 2017, an election based on false propaganda, selling heaven to desperate people, who after socialist President François Hollande deceived his country bitterly, leaving his presidency with a popularity rate of less than 10% – these people were ready to accept any ‘populist’ lie in the hope that life would become better.

Well, as usual, the ruling class – almost always the financial elite – took advantage of the desperate situation – and bingo. Macron is legally in office for 5 years, until 2022. Removing him the ‘democratic way’, through a Parliamentary vote of confidence, is a slim chance, as he has an absolute majority in Parliament, also called the French National Assembly.

So far Macron has been able to impose his ‘austerity’ without the open help of the IMF. But, be sure, with Christine Lagarde at the helm of the IMF, a former French Finance Minister, with close ties to Macron, he most certainly get IMF ‘advice’ on how to continue softly squeezing the juices out of the French people, of their, since the end of WWII, accumulated and hard fought-for social benefits. Maybe also Greek style?

Curiously, the European Commission and the ECB are much more generous with France than with Italy, when it comes to adhering to the arbitrary 3% deficit limit. Italy was scolded, called to order and to submit a revised budget, when deputy PM, Matteo Salvini, presented Italy’s 2019 budget with a 2.9% deficit. France, on the other hand, has been running a deficit above 3% for years, but is gently reminded to please look into their finances a bit more carefully. In other words, the EU is treating brothers and sisters with different yard sticks, thus, helping Macron to do whatever he sees fit to push austerity down the French citizens’ throats. And if they protest, well, we see what’s happening now. There is the State of Emergency that allows the most brutal police crack-down, if needed. And Macron may well need it, if he wants his presidency to survive.

The French people, are, however, special. They prompted the French Revolution in 1789, the legacy of which still reverberates in legal systems around the world. French students started 40 years ago, the 1968 student and workers revolt. It began on the premises of “equal rights and liberty” between men and women. It led to strengthening workers unions and eventually to many workers rights and benefits, precisely those that already former President Sarkozy attempted to dismantle and for which Macron was installed to finish the job.

There is a direct relation between what happened in 1968 and what is occurring now. Will the people prevail? – Will France set an example for the rest of Europe? –  Mind you – Europe is in the plans to be derailed and robbed similarly and through different means, one of which is a massively increasing influx of so-called refugees or migrants from poor countries bordering Europe. Absorbing millions of homeless souls from western destroyed countries, is a challenge, Europe may not survive. Macron may just be a convenient intermediary.

So, what do the people of Argentina and the people of France have in common? – They both want to get rid of a despotic president, implanted by the western financial elite to steal the socioeconomic coffers of their heritage, and which, if not stopped, may continue a movement throughout the Americas and Europe.

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

The Power of the Documentary is an unusual film festival, because its aim is to break a silence that extends across much of film-making, the arts and journalism.

By silence I mean the exclusion of ideas that might change the way we see our world, or help us make sense of it.

There are 26 films in this festival and each one pushes back a screen of propaganda – not just the propaganda of governments but of a powerful groupthink of special interests designed to distract and intimidate us and which often takes its cue from social media and is the enemy of the arts and political freedom.

Documentary films that challenge this are an endangered species. Many of the films in the festival are rare. Several have never been seen in this country. Why?

There’s no official censorship in Australia, but there is a fear of ideas. Ideas of real politics. Ideas of dissent. Ideas of satire. Ideas that go against the groupthink. Ideas that reject the demands of corporatism. Ideas that reach back to the riches of Australia’s hidden history.

It’s as if our political memory has been hi-jacked, and we’ve become so immersed in a self-regarding me-ism that we’ve forgotten how to act together and challenge rapacious power that is now rampant in our own country and across the world.

The term “documentary” was coined by the Scottish director John Grierson.

“The drama of film,” he said, “is on your doorstep. It is wherever there is exploitation and cruelty.”

I like those words: “on your doorstep”.

What they say is that it’s the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people that has given us the documentary film at best. That’s the difference.

A documentary is not reality TV. Political documentary is not the consensual game played by politicians and journalists called “current affairs”.

Great documentaries frighten the powerful, unnerve the compliant, expose the hypocritical.

Great documentaries make us think, and think again, and speak out, and even take action.

Tomorrow at the MCA, we’ll show a documentary called Harvest of Shame directed by Susan Steinberg and Fred Friendly and featuring the great American journalist Edward R. Murrow.

Made in 1960, this film helped pave the way to the first Civil Rights laws that finally ended slavery in the United States, though not the oppression borne of slavery. It has great relevance in the Age of Donald Trump, and Theresa May and Scott Morrison.

On 9th December, we’ll show a remarkable film entitled I am Not Your Negro, in which the writer James Baldwin speaks not only for African-Americans but for those who are cast aside everywhere, and these include the First Nations people of Australia, still invisible in the country that is unique only because of them.

Next week, at the Riverside, we’ll show The War Game.

The War Game was made for the BBC in 1965 by Peter Watkins, a brilliant young film-maker then in his early 20s.

Watkins achieved the impossible — he re-created the aftermath of a nuclear attack on a town in southern England. It’s true reality; it’s surreal; it’s truth.

No one has ever matched Peter Watkins’ achievement, or the direct challenge of his art to the insanity of nuclear war.

What he did was so authentic it terrified the BBC, which banned The War Game from television for 23 years.

In one sense, this was the highest compliment. His grainy 48-minute film had scared the powerful out of their wits.

They knew this film would change minds and cause people to question Cold War policies. They knew it would even turn people away from war itself, and save lives.

Today, not a frame of The War Game has been altered — yet it’s right up to date.

Not since the 1960s have we been as close to the risks and provocations and mistakes that beckon nuclear war. The news won’t tell you that. The incessant alerts on your smart phone won’t tell you that. That’s what I mean by ‘silence’.

Governments in Australia – a country with no enemies – seem determined to make an enemy out of China, a nuclear armed power, because that’s what America wants.

The propaganda is like a drumbeat. Our TV and newspapers have joined a chorus of American admirals and self-appointed experts and spooks in demanding we take the final steps to a confrontation with China and Russia.

Donald Trump’s vice president, a religious fanatic called Mike Pence, destroyed this month’s APEC conference with his demands for conflict with China.

Not a single voice in Australia’s privileged, deferential elite spoke out against this madness.

Well paid journalists have become gormless cyphers of the propaganda of war: lies known these days as fake news and spread by the intelligence agencies.

How shaming for my craft.

The aim of this festival is to break that collusive silence – not only with The War Game but with documentaries like The War You don’t See and The Coming War on China.

And the festival is proud to feature Australian documentaries that have broken silences: Dennis O’Rourke‘s haunting Half Life, and Curtis Levy‘s The President Versus David Hicks — and Salute, Matt Norman‘s film about his uncle, Peter Norman, the most courageous and least known of our sporting heroes.

Mark Davis‘s film, Journey into Hell, was one of the first to report the persecution of the Rohingya in Thailand and Burma.

I shall be in conversation with Mark at the MCA next Wednesday. I urge you to come and hear this distinguished Australian journalist and film-maker.

This coming Friday, the 30th, the festival will welcome Alec Morgan, who will introduce his historic film, Lousy Little Sixpence. This landmark documentary revealed the secrets and suffering of the Stolen Generation of Indigenous Australia.

We owe a debt to Alec Morgan, who made his film in the early 1980s, around the time Henry Reynolds published his epic history of Indigenous resistance, The Other Side of the Frontier. Together, they turned on a light in Australia.

Alec’s film has never been more relevant. Last week the NSW parliament passed a law which, for many Aboriginal people, brings back the whole nightmare of the Stolen Generation. It allows the adoption of their children. It allows Pru Goward’s troopers to turn up at dawn and take babies from birth tables. It was barely news, and it’s a disgrace.

I have made 61 documentaries. My first, The Quiet Mutiny, will be shown immediately after this talk. Filmed in 1970 when I was a young war reporter, The Quiet Mutiny revealed a rebellion sweeping the US military in Vietnam. The greatest army was crumbling. Young soldiers were refusing to fight and even shooting their officers.

When The Quiet Mutiny was first broadcast in Britain, the American ambassador, Walter Annenberg, a close friend of President Nixon, was apoplectic. He complained bitterly to the TV authorities and demanded that something be done about me. I was described as a “dangerous subversive”.

This is certainly the highest honour I have ever received, and tonight I bestow it on all the film makers in this festival. They, too, are dangerous subversives, as all documentary film-makers ought to be.

One of them is the Mexican director Diego Quemada-Diez whose film, The Golden Dream, will be shown at the MCA on 2nd December.

This wonderful film takes us on a perilous journey through Central America to the US border. It could not be more relevant.

The heroes are children: the kind of children Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison and Donald Trump would call “illegal migrants”.

I urge you to come and see this film and to reflect on the crimes our own society commits against children and adults sent to our Pacific concentration camps: Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island: places of shame.

Of course, many of us are bothered by the outrages of Nauru and Manus. We write to the newspapers and hold vigils. But then what?

One film in the festival attempts to answer this question.

On 6th December, we’ll show Death of a Nation: the Timor Conspiracy, which the late David Munro and I made 25 years ago.

David and I filmed undercover in East Timor when that nation was in the grip of the Indonesian military. We were witnesses to the destruction of whole communities while the Australian government colluded with the dictatorship in Jakarta.

This documentary became part of one the most effective and inspiring public movements we’ve known in Australia. The aim was to help rescue East Timor.

There is a famous sequence in Death of a Nation in which Gareth Evans, foreign minister in the Labor governments of the 80s and 90s, gleefully raises a glass of champagne to toast his Indonesian counterpart, Ali Alatas, as they fly in an RAAF plane over the Timor Sea.

The pair of them had just agreed to carve up the oil and gas riches of East Timor.

They were celebrating an act of piracy.

Earlier this year, two principled Australians were charged under the draconian Intelligence Services Act. They are whistleblowers.

Bernard Collaery is a lawyer, a former distinguished member of the ACT government and a tireless champion of refugees and justice. Collaery’s crime was to have represented an intelligence officer in ASIO, known as Witness K, a man of conscience.

They revealed that the government of John Howard had spied on East Timor so that Australia could defraud a tiny, impoverished nation of the proceeds of its natural resources.

Today, the Australian government is trying to punish these truth tellers no doubt as an example to us all — just as it tried to suppress the truth about Australia’s role in the genocide in East Timor, and in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, just as it has colluded with Washington to silence the courageous Australian publisher Julian Assange.

Why do we allow governments, our governments, to commit great crimes, and why do so many of us remain silent?

This is a question for those of us privileged to be allowed into people’s lives and to be their voice and seek their support. It’s a question for film-makers, journalists, artists, arts administrators, editors, publishers.

We can no longer claim to be bystanders. Our responsibility is urgent, and as Tom Paine famously wrote: “The time is now.”

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Sumantra Bose‘s new book Secular States, Religious Politics: India, Turkey and the Future of Secularism (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is a fascinating comparison of the rise of religious parties in the non-Western world’s two major attempts to establish a post-colonial secular state.

The secular experiments in Turkey and India were considered success stories for the longest period of time but that has changed with the rise of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party in Turkey and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in India and the capture of state power by political forces with an anti-secular vision of nationhood.

In his ground-breaking book, Bose attributes the rise of secularism to the fact that non-Western states like Turkey and India never adopted the Western principle of separation of state and church and instead based their secularism on the principle of state intervention and regulation of the religious sphere. In doing so, Bose distinguishes between the embedding of secularism in Turkey in authoritarianism entrenched in the carving out of the modern Turkish state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and the fact that secularism in India is rooted in culture and a democratic form of government.

With the anti-secular trend in Turkey and India fitting into a global trend in which cultural and religious identity is gaining traction, Bose’s study constitutes a significant contribution to the study of the future of secularism and the of the complex relationship between religious parties and the secular state.

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Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa and just published China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom. He is. a frequent contributor to Global Research.

What does President Trump’s recent nomination of retired Army General John Abizaid to become the next U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia signify? Next to nothing — and arguably quite a lot.

Abizaid’s proposed appointment is both a non-event and an opportunity not to be wasted. It means next to nothing in this sense: while once upon a time, American diplomats abroad wielded real clout — Benjamin Franklin and John Quincy Adams offer prominent examples — that time is long past. Should he receive Senate confirmation, Ambassador Abizaid will not actually shape U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia. At most, he will convey policy, while keeping officials back in Washington apprised regarding conditions in the Kingdom. “Conditions” in this context will mean the opinions, attitudes, whims, and mood of one particular individual: Mohammed bin Salman. MBS, as he is known, is the Saudi crown prince and the Kingdom’s de facto absolute ruler. By no means incidentally, he is also that country’s assassin-in-chief as well as the perpetrator of atrocities in a vicious war that he launched in neighboring Yemen in 2015.

Implicit in Abizaid’s job description will be a requirement to cozy up to MBS. “Cozy up” in this context implies finding ways to befriend, influence, and seduce; that is, seeking to replicate in Riyadh the achievements in Washington of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who from 1983 to 2005 served as Saudi ambassador to the United States.

With plenty of money to spread around, Bandar charmed — which in this context means suborned — the Washington establishment, while ingratiating himself with successive presidents and various other power brokers. With his fondness for nicknames, George W. Bush dubbed him “Bandar Bush,” informally designating the Saudi prince a member of his own dynastic clan.

After 9/11, the Saudi envoy made the most of those connections, deflecting attention away from the role Saudis had played in the events of that day while fingering Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as the true font of Islamist terrorism. Bush came around to endorsing Bandar’s view — although he may not have needed much urging. So while Bandar may not rank alongside the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz among the architects of the ensuing Iraq War, he certainly deserves honorable mention.

That Abizaid will come anywhere close to replicating Bandar’s notable (or nefarious) achievements seems unlikely. For starters, at age 67, he may not want to spend the next 20 years or so in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, sucking up to the Kingdom’s royals. At least as significantly, he lacks Bandar’s bankroll. However much dough Abizaid may have raked in via his consulting firm since leaving the Army a decade ago, it doesn’t qualify as real money in Saudi circles, where a billion dollars is a mere rounding error. The mega-rich do not sell themselves cheaply, unless perhaps your surname is Trump.

So the substantive implications of Abizaid’s appointment for U.S.-Saudi relations will likely be negligible. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will undoubtedly continue to wield greater influence over MBS than Ambassador Abizaid — or at least will fancy that he is doing so.

Long (and Wrong) War

In another sense, however, Abizaid’s appointment to this post (vacant since Donald Trump became president) could mean quite a lot. It offers an ideal opportunity to take stock of the “Long War.”

Now that phrase “Long War” is one that presidents, national security advisors, defense secretaries, and their minions assiduously avoid. Yet, in military circles, it long ago superseded the Global War on Terrorism as an umbrella term describing what U.S. forces have been doing across the Greater Middle East all these many years.

Already by 2005, for example, hawkish analysts employed by a conservative Washington think tank were marketing their recipe for Winning the Long War. And that was just for starters. For more than a decade now, the Long War Journal has been offering authoritative analysis of U.S. military operations across the Greater Middle East and Africa. In the meantime, West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center churns out monographs with titles like Fighting the Long War. Always quick to recognize another golden goose of government contracts, the RAND Corporation weighed in with Unfolding the Future of the Long War. After publishing a lengthy essay in the New York Times Magazine called “My Long War,” correspondent Dexter Filkins went a step further and titled his book The Forever War. (And for creative types, Voices from the Long War invites Iraq and Afghan War vets to reflect on their experiences before a theatrical audience.)

But where, you might wonder, did that dour phrase originate? As it happens, General Abizaid himself coined it back in 2004 when he was still an active duty four-star and head of U.S. Central Command, the regional headquarters principally charged with waging that conflict. In other words, just a year after the U.S. invaded Iraq and President George W. Bush posed under a White House-produced “Mission Accomplished” banner, with administration officials and their neoconservative boosters looking forward to many more “Iraqi Freedom”-style victories to come, the senior officer presiding over that war went on record to indicate that victory wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Oops.

And so it has come to pass. The Long War has now lasted twice as long as the average length of marriages in the United States, with no end in sight. Whether intuitively or after careful study, General Abizaid had divined something important indeed.

Crucially, however, his critique went beyond the question of duration. Abizaid also departed from the administration’s line in describing the actual nature of the problem at hand. “Terrorists” per se were not the enemy, he insisted at the time. The issue was much bigger than any one organization such as al-Qaeda. The real threat facing the United States came from what he called “Salafist jihadists,” radicalized Sunni Muslims committed by whatever means necessary to propagating a strict and puritanical form of Islam around the world. To promote their cause, Salafists eagerly embraced violence.

Back in 2004, when Abizaid was venturing heretical thoughts, the United States had gotten itself all tangled up in a nasty scuffle in Iraq. A year earlier, the U.S. had invaded that country to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Now the Iraqi dictator was indubitably a bad actor. At least some of the charges that George W. Bush and his subordinates, amplified by a neoconservative chorus, lodged against him were true. Yet Saddam was the inverse of a Salafist.

Indeed, even before plunging into Iraq, looking beyond an expected easy win over Saddam, George W. Bush had identified Iran as a key member of an “Axis of Evil” and implicitly next in line for liberation. Sixteen years later, members of the Trump administration still hanker to have it out with the ayatollahs governing Shiite-majority Iran. Yet, as was the case with Saddam, those ayatollahs are anything but Salafists.

Now, it’s worth noting that Abizaid was not some dime-a-dozen four-star. He speaks Arabic, won a fellowship to study in Jordan, and earned a graduate degree in Middle East Studies at Harvard. If the post-9/11 American officer corps had in its ranks an equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia, he was it, even if without T.E. Lawrence’s (or Peter O’Toole’s) charisma and flair for self-promotion. Nonetheless, with Abizaid suggesting, in effect, that the Iraq War was “the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time against the wrong enemy,” just about no one in Washington was willing to listen.

That once-familiar quotation dates from 1951, when General Omar Bradley warned against extending the then-ongoing Korean War into China. Bradley’s counsel carried considerable weight — and limiting the scope of the Korean War made it possible to end that conflict in 1953.

Abizaid’s counsel turned out to carry next to no weight at all. So the Long War just keeps getting longer, even as its strategic rationale becomes ever more difficult to discern.

The Real Enemy

Posit, for the sake of discussion, that back in 2004 Abizaid was onto something — as indeed he was. Who then, in this Long War of ours, is our adversary? Who is in league with those Salafi jihadists? Who underwrites their cause?

The answer to those questions is not exactly a mystery. It’s the Saudi royal family. Were it not for Saudi Arabia’s role in promoting militant Salafism over the course of several decades, it would pose no bigger problem than Cliven Bundy’s bickering with the Bureau of Land Management.

To put it another way, while the Long War has found U.S. troops fighting the wrong enemy for years on end in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the nexus of the problem remains Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have provided billions to fund madrassas and mosques, spreading Salafism to the far reaches of the Islamic world. Next to oil, violent jihadism is Saudi Arabia’s principal export. Indeed, the former funds the latter.

Those Saudi efforts have borne fruit of a poisonous character. Recall that Osama bin Laden was a Saudi. So, too, were 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001. These facts are not incidental, even if — to expand on Donald Rumsfeld’s famous typology of known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns — Washington treats them as knowns we prefer to pretend we don’t know.

So from the outset, in the conflict that the United States dates from September 2001, our ostensible ally has been the principal source of the problem. In the Long War, Saudi Arabia represents what military theorists like to call the center of gravity, defined as “the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act” to the enemy. When it comes to Salafist jihadism, Saudi Arabia fits that definition to a T.

So there is more than a little poetic justice — or is it irony? — in General Abizaid’s proposed posting to Riyadh. The one senior military officer who early on demonstrated an inkling of understanding of the Long War’s true nature now prepares to take up an assignment in what is, in essence, the very center of the enemy’s camp. It’s as if President Lincoln had dispatched Ulysses S. Grant to Richmond, Virginia, in 1864 as his liaison to Jefferson Davis.

Which brings us to the opportunity referred to at the outset of this essay.  The opportunity is not Abizaid’s. He can look forward to a frustrating and probably pointless assignment. Yet Trump’s nomination of Abizaid presents an opportunity to the U.S. senators charged with approving his appointment. While we can take it for granted that Abizaid will be confirmed, the processof confirmation offers the Senate, and especially members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a chance to take stock of this Long War of ours and, in particular, to assess how Saudi Arabia fits into the struggle.

Who better to reflect on these matters than John Abizaid? Imagine the questions:

General, can you describe this Long War of ours? What is its nature? What is it all about?

Are we winning? How can we tell?

How much longer should Americans expect it to last?

What are we up against? Give us a sense of the enemy’s intentions, capabilities, and prospects.

With MBS in charge, is Saudi Arabia part of the solution or part of the problem?

Take all the time you need, sir. Be candid. We’re interested in your opinion.

After the embarrassment of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the Senate is badly in need of refurbishing its reputation. The Abizaid nomination provides a ready-made chance to do just that. Let’s see if the “world’s greatest deliberative body” rises to the occasion. Just don’t hold your breath.

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Andrew Bacevich is a regular contributor to TomDispatch. His new book is Twilight of the American Century, published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

Featured image is from Military Times

The first study to investigate microplastics around Ascension Island and the Falkland Islands — two of the most remote locations in the South Atlantic Ocean — has found levels of contamination comparable with the waters around the UK.

On November 28, Russian air-defense forces deployed intercepted and destroyed an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) near the Russian Hmeimim airbase in the province of Lattakia, according to local sources.

The intercepted UAV was probably an armed UAV launched by militants in a fresh attempt to attack Russian personnel and aircraft deployed at Hmeimim. The resumption of UAV attacks on Russian facilities in Syria is another sign of the wanng influence of the de-militarization agreement on Idlib province. It’s highly unlikely that radical militants are going to abandon their hostile approach anytime soon if a military operation to punish them is not launched.

Cells of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) continue their successful attacks on Turkey-led forces in the area of Afrin. On November 26, 4 members of the Hamza Division militant group were killed and 2 others were injured in an explosion of a YPG-planted IED on the road between the city of Afrin and the town of Basuta.

On the same day near the village of Gubele, the YPG destroyed a vehicle of another militant group, the Levant Front with an anti-tank guided missile.

On November 24, YPG members killed 2 Sham Legion fighters and destroyed their vehicle near the village of Birj Heyder.

Successful YPG operations in Afrin show a significant gap in the security system established by the Turkish Armed Forces and Turkish-backed militants in the area.

On November 28, the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the US had started establishing the first of its observation posts along the Syrian-Turksih border. The first post is reportedly located near Bir Ashiq in northern Raqqah.

With this move, which was announced by Secretary of Defense James Mattis last week, the US is in fact seeking to prevent a possible Turkish military operation against US-backed Kurdish factions in northern Syria.

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The Anglophone Israel Lobby benefits from its ability to mold the media narrative while at the same time using financial incentives to corrupt the political class. For those who do not succumb to the corruption, there is always the option of direct pressure, which in the United States and Britain consists of targeted interference in the political system to remove critics either through promotion of scandal or by supporting well-funded alternative candidates in the following election. In the United States, this has led to the removal of a number of congressmen who had dared to criticize the Jewish state, terrifying the remainder into silence. All of this goes on with little or no debate in the media or in congress itself.

There are signs, however, that the general tolerance of Israeli misbehavior might be ending. The election of at least three Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who might be willing to discuss Israel in something less than worshipful ways is a miniscule shift in the alignment of the Democratic party, where Jewish money dominates, but it reflects the views of the party’s grass roots where a recent poll demonstrates that surveyed Democrats favor Israel over Palestine by a margin of only 2%, twenty-seven per cent versus twenty-five per cent with the remainder of responders favoring neither side.

Much more significant is last week’s announcement by Senator Rand Paul that he intends to place a “hold” on the current package of $38 billion in military aid to Israel, which means he can filibuster the issue in the Senate to delay its passage. Paul, who, like his father, is a skeptic regarding foreign aid in general, did not cite any specific issues connected to the aid package, but critics have long noted that Israel is in fact ineligible for any foreign aid from the United States because it has an undeclared nuclear arsenal consisting of at least 200 weapons. For that reason, providing aid to Israel is illegal under the Symington Amendment of 1961 as well as due to the fact that Tel Aviv has rejected signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT.

Paul’s action is extremely courageous as he is the first Senator since William Fulbright to dare to say anything negative about the Jewish state. Fulbright was, of course, punished by the Israel Lobby, which committed major resources to defeating him when he next came up for reelection. Another U.S. Senator Charles Percy was so bold as to maintain that Palestinian Arabs might actually have “rights” also found himself confronted by an extremely well-funded opponent who defeated him for reelection, so Paul’s action is far from risk free. In fact, the Israel Lobby is already reacting hysterically to the “hold,” as is the Israeli government, and one can be sure that all their massive resources will be used to punish the senator.

Another area where one might have expected more pushback from Americans is the lack of any serious resistance from Christian groups to the process whereby the conservative Likud dominated Netanyahu government is seeking to turn Israel into a purely Jewish state. That too is changing due to Israeli behavior. Even though Israel boasts that it provides a safe haven for Christians to practice their religion, reports occasionally surface suggesting something quite different. Jewish Zealots spit on Christian clergy and curse them out in the streets without any fear of repercussions. Some clergy have been harassed and even assaulted by Jewish extremists. Churches and religious foundations are frequently vandalized or defaced with obscene graffiti and the Israeli government has also confiscated or destroyed church property.

America’s Presbyterian Church has led the charge in criticizing Israeli brutality. At its June General Assembly it passed a resolution condemning Israeli apartheid. Its Office of Public Witness has been in the forefront in calling on Israel to cease and desist. An Action Alert issued this summer entitled “Tell Congress: 70 years of suffering is enough! Stop the killing, hold Israel accountable, and support human rights for all” denounced the slaughter of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza by the Israeli Army.”

Now it is the turn of the Quakers in Britain, who have banned any investment by the church in companies that exploit the “military occupation of Palestinian territories by the Israeli government”, prompting a furious response from Jewish leaders. It is the first British Church to do so and leaders of the group have compared their action to taking steps against apartheid and the slave trade.

It is certainly a turnabout to see anyone taking on Israel and its all too often invincible lobby. What is significant is that Christian churches and even some congressmen have begun to speak out in spite of the knowledge that immense Jewish power in the United States and Britain will make them pay a price for doing so. May the realization that Israel’s interference in friendly countries damages their democracy finally reach a point where some people in Congress, the media and even in the White House will begin to listen.

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

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739 ISIS members have been killed by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the province of Deir Ezzor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) claimed. 452 members of the SDF were killed during the same period, according to the SOHR.

The SOHR number of ISIS casualties is close to what the SDF claims itself in its time-to-time reports on the supposed ISIS casualties in the Euphrates Valley clashes.

The problem is that according to the numbers provided by US military officials there was a total of 1,000-2,000 ISIS members in the area. So, if the SOHR and SDF claims are true, at least a half of the ISIS force in the area was eliminated. However, the SDF progress on the ground does not look like the US-backed group and coalition airpower had done so. The SDF was not able to capture the small ISIS-held town of Hajin and nearby villages and even lost some positions during the past few weeks.

Therefore there are two main options:

• The number of ISIS members in this small pocket is much higher than 1,000-2,000;
• The SOHR and SDF claims on ISIS casualties do not correspond with the reality.

Mainstream media outlets continue to ignore intentionally the November 24 chemical attack carried out by militants on the city of Aleppo. Furthermore, the attack, which targeted at least 107 civilians, once again uncovered the pre-designed media narrative, which surrounds the conflict.

Over the past few months, military and diplomatic representatives of Russia and Syria had repeatedly warned that Idlib militant groups with assistance from the so-called White Helmets were preparing to stage chemical attacks in the Idlib demilitarized zone in order to accuse the Damascus government of using chemical weapons and trigger another US-led military action against Syria. The Russian Defense Ministry also provided intelligence data about the movement of chemical substances across the militant-held area in northwestern Syria.

This media and diplomatic campaign undermined a possible effectiveness of such staged attack. However, at least a part of the militant factions, which obtained chemical weapons, appeared to be ready to use them even without propaganda purpose and attacked Aleppo city.

Following the attack, mainstream media organizations as well as Syrian media outlets and speakers linked to militant groups started speculating that it was the evil Assad regime, that attacked itself in Aleppo city with chemical weapons.

This version claims that the attack was a part of Assad’s skilful plan to blame the so-called “moderate opposition” in chemical weapons usage and to undermine the peaceful settlement in Idlib province.

Thus, the mainstream narrative is clear:

• If an alleged chemical attack takes place within the militant-held area, the Assad regime is guilty it because it cannot defeat “moderate rebels” in a conventional fight;
• If an alleged chemical attack takes place within the government-held area, the Assad regime is guilty because it wants to undermine a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

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The idea of creating a common army for the countries of the European Union has been repeatedly proposed by numerous advocates of the globalist elite for at least a decade. The latest example came from French President Macron, who took the opportunity during commemorations of the end of WWI in Paris to revive an idea that represents more a fantasy than a real possibility.

First the good news. Richard Shirreff, a retired senior British Army officer, stated:

“I think we have got to be very careful about loose talk of a European army. An army is a legally constituted armed force operating under the authority of a sovereign Government. So, if you accept that definition, the notion of a European army is impossible until and unless there is a sovereign European Government, which is obviously not in existence. And I think it is some way off.”

The question then arises as to why Macron and Merkel are so interested in talking about something that seems unrealistic at the moment? The answer is simple and obvious. It is a strategy aimed at striking at Trump directly, as evidenced by the words of Merkel, who also voiced her support for the creation of a European army. The Chancellor has indeed stated that

“[t]he times when we could rely on others are over”.

By “others” she is clearly referring to the United States. Also, putting to one side the tense personal relationship between Macron and Trump, the Frenchman, like Merkel, is an exponent of globalism. The agreement between Berlin and Paris is intended to move Europe in a direction more agreeable to them, focussing on the need to attract more investment in European weapons, coupled with a desire to decrease dependence on US weapon systems. As Macron stated:

“Europe must increase military spending, but the money should go to European, not American companies.”

The main issue, therefore, revolves around the economics of the import and export of arms in Europe and around the world, a business worth tens of billions of dollars a year. As SIPRI’s annual report reminds us,

“The five largest West European suppliers – France, Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy – together accounted for 23 per cent of global arms transfers in 2013-17. The combined arms exports by European Union (EU) member states accounted for 27 per cent of the global total in 2013–17.”

Specifically, France and the UK increased their exports by 27% and 34% respectively, while Germany had a decline of 14% over the last 5 years. It should be remembered that the data is only up to 2017, and many agreements have since been concluded, especially between European countries, with France and Germany leading in exports. The SIPRI report presents us with a fairly clear picture of imports from countries like Greece and Italy,even as the US dominates market share, with 20 out of 40 importing countries having the US as their main supplier.

France, the fourth country to have increased exports from 2008-2017, has gone from 5.8% of world exports to 6.7%, increasing exports by 27%. The United Kingdom, the 18th largest importer in the world, imports about 80% from the US. Italy is the 22nd largest importer in the world, importing 55% from the US and about 28% from Germany. Italy is the European country that imports most arms from another European country (Germany), about 28%, about 55% from the US, and the remaining 8.4% from Israel. In terms of imports, Greece is the 28th in the world, importing 68% from Germany, 17% from the US, and 10% from France. Of the top 40 importers, the US is the leading supplier for 20 of the 40, followed by Russia with seven countries, China with three, and seven for the UK, France and Germany combined.

In addition to the creation of a conglomerate that would combine mainly French and Germany industries, Merkel emphasized that such a European army would not be for the purposes of ensuring greater sovereignty for the EU, but rather complement NATO, thereby strengthening the imperialist and ultra-neoliberal positions that have devastated the world in recent decades. As the German chancellor has emphasized, “This is not an army against NATO, it can be a good complement to NATO”, also pointing out the logistical difficulties Europe faces to integration, with more than 150 different weapons systems as opposed to the 50 to 60 of the US.

Such veiled wording indicates the desire of Merkel and Macron to further decrease the importation of arms from American companies, even if overall Germany and France import less than 100 million euros a year from the US. France and Germany will face a critical need to modernize their armed forces in the coming decade, given Europe’s relative backwardness when compared to recent strides made in Russia, China and even the United States. Macron stated that it is crucial to devote 2% of GDP to military spending within four to five years. The new French defense budget, Macron said, would allow for the acquisition of:

“1,700 armored vehicles for the Army as well as five frigates, four nuclear-powered attack submarines and nine offshore patrol vessels for the Navy… The Air Force would receive 12 in-flight refueling tankers, 28 Rafale fighter jets and 55 upgraded Mirage 2000 fighters … This year will see a €1.8 billion increase (US $2.1 billion) in the annual defense budget to €34.2 billion, of which €650 million is earmarked for overseas deployment of combat troops… The modernization strategy will not be just about numbers, as performance should be pursued and the equipment should meet the requirement for ‘balanced’ cooperation between the services and the Direction Générale de l’Armement procurement office.”

The idea of ​​creating a European army also contributes towards budgetary planning, which will start mainly from 2022, as “a large part of the money would only be released in 2024 and 2025, after a budgetary review in 2021.”

This all represents the perfect excuse to increase defense budgets, aiming at a European army that will apparently establish some sort of independence from Donald Trump’s America while simultaneously warding off Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Both Trump and Putin are hated by the globalist elite, being seen as their absolute enemies, and are both used by Macron and Merkel as boogeymen threatening European security, as if Moscow were intent on invading the Baltic countries as NATO analysts constantly claim. Such analysts need to make such claims in order to justify the existence of NATO and their accompanying salaries, with the defense sector being among Europe’s main industries, accounting “for about half a million jobs directly (plus half that number indirectly), in more than 1,300 companies”. That pretty much sums up the reason behind an EU army.

The American and European military-industrial complexes are huge employers. This represents a pool of voters that Merkel and Macron need to keep onside, just as they need financial support from the CEOs of large arms manufacturers in exchange for billion-dollar contracts, something that would simply be called corruption if practiced in other parts of the world.

With the economic crisis of 2008, European spending on arms fell by 22%, But with the provocations in Ukraine in 2014, and then the aggression directed against the Donbass region, creating tensions between Russia and the EU, there was new justification for an increase in military spending, especially since 2017. For example, Poland, Romania and Sweden have each decided to acquire long-range air-defense systems from the US, and Lithuania ordered medium-range air-defense systems containing components coming from Norway and the US.

Thankfully the use of Trump and Putin as boogeymen to justify the creation of a European army is a bluff that will not lead to any concrete action. It all comes down to the money to be made in this multi-billion dollar market. Once again, SIPRI’s study reminds us that Washington is dominant in this field, especially in the private sector, with “[f]orty-four US-based companies accounted for over 60 percent of all arms sales listed by SIPRI. The 30 European companies on the list make up just under 30 percent. France and German lead the pack, followed by the United Kingdom.” This is while taking into account that EU member states “are not even legally obliged to declare what their companies sell. Their code has achieved neither transparency nor consistency.”

The question may arise as to how Europe is to be prevented from developing imperial ambitions. The simple if banal answer is that this is not possible so long as Europe remains dependent on the United States and her imperialist and ultra-capitalist ambitions. European countries would in the first instance need a sovereign central bank with their own currency, in addition to a national army that could defend European territory. European elites are in fact moving in the exact opposite direction, and this can be seen almost in the daily activities and statements by leaders like Merkel and Macron. The creation of a European army, instead of guaranteeing greater political freedom and distancing the EU from the US, would only actually serve to buttress the ideology of Washington as the only world superpower.

Contrary to what would in actual fact be needed – more military and economic sovereignty of EU member states – the EU leadership seems to be heading in the other direction. In a world that is becoming more multipolar, the abdication of any kind of political, economic and military sovereignty is a recipe for disaster. Macron and Merkel, instead of balancing Europe’s political weight with China, Russia and the US, are hoping and waiting for a new Obama after the 2020 presidential election, so as to subjugate the whole of Europe to Washington’s rule, with Paris and Berlin acting as local satraps, treating the remaining 25 states of the EU as provinces of the Franco-German sub-empire.

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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

This possibility was discussed in mid-November during the bilateral Investment Forum and signifies the natural outgrowth of India’s connectivity investments in Iran. Reaching the Russian marketplace is the prime reason why India’s investing in the Islamic Republic’s infrastructure, but it would be strategically irresponsible not to take advantage of the opportunity for advancing its “Connect Central Asia” policy too given that the country is New Delhi’s geographic gateway to the region. Apart from partaking in the race for natural resources there, India is interested in tapping into new export markets and correspondingly expanding its influence in this increasingly important part of the world.

As it stands, Russia and China treat Central Asia as a condominium of sorts whereby Moscow provides security while Beijing is gradually becoming its top trade partner, but an influx of Indian commercial activity there could shake up the state of affairs and proverbially given China a “run for its money”. Concurrent with this, Pakistan is also poised to play a greater role in this region too if China’s CPEC+ initiatives succeed in connecting Beijing’s top ally with the Central Asian states, interestingly opening up the possibility for the Indo-Pakistani rivalry to extend to this part of Eurasia and advance the concept of “Greater South Asia”.

It can be all but certain that this will result in geopolitical changes as locals’ livelihoods become more dependent on trade with China, India, and/or Pakistan, with their regional and national elites also profiting from these various arrangements but shifting their countries’ loyalties in the direction of their preferred and most profitable partner. Uzbekistan is literally right in the middle of these processes and borders each of the Central Asian states and Afghanistan, which could accordingly give the most populous nation in the region a shot at realizing its long-held leadership ambitions if it can deftly “multi-align” between these Great Powers.

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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.

We bring to the attention of our readers a Donbass report pertaining to the presence of British Special Forces in Ukraine. Yet to be verified these special forces are said to be experts in chemical weapons.  

British military personnel have been present in Ukraine since 2015 involved in training Ukraine military personnel 

On November 21, 2018,  a few days prior to the Kerch Strait Incident, the British Ministry of Defense confirmed that a new contingent of UK special forces were slated to be sent to Ukraine.

According to Deputy commander Eduard Basurin, a representative of  the Ministry of Defense of the DNR,

 “We’ve repeatedly said that an act of terror on a chemical enterprise is being prepared.”

The UK forces are in Ukraine advising Ukrainian forces. “The last of them arrived at Artyomovsk, or as Ukrainians call it, Bakhmut.

They’re British special forces. They’re experts in chemistry. They can cause accidents in this regard and then create media reports about it. Just like the Skripal case.”

The British media have dispelled the Donbass reports regarding the use of chemical weapons by UK special forces against Donbass

The Independent, November 21, 2018

Global Research, November 28, 2018

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Scroll down for VIDEO REPORT (English subtitles)

Unedited Transcript 

– The British Minister of Defence promised a ship. He also promised to support Ukraine in Donbass. Let’s fast forward to Donbass. Eduard Alexandrovich Basurin is live, The Deputy Commander of the Corps of the Ministry of Defense of the DNR. Do you see collective support from the West or just from the UK? How are they helping the Ukrainians? Does it have any effect on you? Are there advisors or something?

Eduard Basurin: Hello, everyone, hello, Olya.

If we are talking about an effect on me, there’s no such thing yet. But there is an effect on Ukraine. See, we’ve repeatedly said that an act of terror on a chemical enterprise is being prepared. The UK forces Ukraine to do this. That’s why there are advisors. The last of them arrived at Artyomovsk, or as Ukrainians call it, Bakhmut. They’re British special forces. They’re experts in chemistry. They can cause accidents in this regard and then make publications about it. Just like the Skripal case.

– But what’s it all about?

– If we proceed…

– Yes, go on.

– Zhenya, see, firstly, we’ve found out that there are British servicemen near Artyomovsk. They’re special forces units and they’re preparing operations with the use of chemicals. Secondly, the statement made by the British Minister of Defence. He said they would send specialists who gained their combat experience in Afganistan and Iraq. We know what kind of experience they gained. They can only teach how to kill civilians. That’s why the huge number of them here caused the hysteria they put around the Azov and the Black Sea. The scout ship that has arrived there is a way to create a hysteria that everyone wants to conquer Ukraine.

– How is it obvious and can you prevent this chemical provocation you’ve talked about? What can you do about the Stirol? Some extra security? It’s actually on the front line.

– Well, we have the means to secure the facility so that nothing will happen there. But we can’t guarantee anything on the side where the Ukrainian Army is. We can do it for our side.

– It’s unbelievable. You can see Donetsk at war behind Eduard’s back. Not long ago, there wasn’t a single place there which a Ukrainian projectile couldn’t hit. Nonetheless, it looks beautiful.

– Thank you, Eduard. He was live from Donetsk. Right after the commercial, we’ll give you all the information. This is the 60 Minutes program.

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Relevant to unfolding events in Ukraine, this article was first published on July 25, 2018

The uproar in the West, and in the United States in particular, that followed the summit meeting between presidents Trump and Putin in Helsinki on 16 July last, fits into the intense anti-Russian campaign that had been going on for many years. A key moment in that campaign was the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 on 17 July 2014. That tragic event, in which all 298 people on board perished, allows us a view of a far broader set of large-scale historical developments. 

These developments include the NATO advance into the former Soviet bloc and the actual USSR, with the EU in tow; the resurrection of a strong, directive state in Russia after a decade of economic plunder and social degradation; the energy connection between Russia’s Gazprom and EU countiries, and the slow coming together of resurgent Russia with China and other members of the loose blocs formed between them, such as the Eurasian Union and the BRICS countries. My book analyses this larger context; with respect to the actual downing it tries to come as close as possible on the basis of established facts, on which one can then meaningfully base further hypotheses and inquiry. 

The February 2014 regime change in Kiev placed state power in the hands of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and anti-Russian billionaires intent on removing the country from the post-Soviet orbit and reorienting it to the West. Like other successor states of the multi-national USSR,  Ukraine then began to fracture as a result of Western forward pressure. The US State Department through assistant secretary Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, played key roles in the coup d’état; after its successful completion, followed by the secession of Crimea and an armed uprising in the eastern Donbass area, the NATO command joined in. Hacked e-mails of NATO commander General Philip Breedlove reveal that the war party in the United States and NATO began to elaborate a strategy that would make Ukraine the testing ground for a trial of strength with Russia and China from late March onwards. The re-incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Federation was exploited to evoke the spectre of an expansionist Russia threatening invasion on several fronts. After all, the Russian Federation Council had authorized Putin to deploy troops abroad in response to threats, basically to protect Crimea from the new regime in Kiev (an authorization revoked again on 24 June, to facilitate a ceasefire). 

Breedlove, commander of US Eucom (European Command, one of nine regional US military commands spanning the globe) and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (Saceur), envisaged two fronts in the ‘Russian invasion’, the Baltic states with their large Russian minorities, and Ukraine. From the  correspondence of 5 and 6 April between Phillip Karber and General Wesley Clark, a former NATO Saceur, it emerges that they were already advising Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine before the Donbass had actually risen in revolt. Karber is the ex-CEO of the aerospace consultancy, BDM, and president of the Washington think tank founded by it, the Potomac Foundation. One major line of his activity was to assist former Soviet bloc countries in their quest for NATO membership and the coup regime in Kiev sought his advice too. A US Marines veteran himself, Karber in his e-mails to Breedlove reported positively on Ukrainian army units deployed on the ‘northeastern front’ (no fighting had erupted yet). 

On 6 April, government buildings in Donetsk and other cities were occupied by local  residents fearful of the forces unleashed by the ultra-nationalist coup in Kiev. For one of Karber’s and Clark’s correspondents the occupations were ‘the beginning of the second phase of the scenario for the Russian invasion in our country’ (after Crimea). Clark forwarded this information to Nuland and Pyatt an hour later. Thus, the narrative of the ‘Russian invasion’ reached the highest echelons of the Western war party early on and it remains the framework in which events in Ukraine are being interpreted.

Wesley Clark also wrote to Nuland that the US should make a statement supporting a military operation to regain control of the east, urging her to ignore possible German objections. Still on the 12th, he asked Breedlove whether NATO could arrange a statement blaming Moscow for the violence in the Donbass because ‘the Ukrainians [might otherwise] lose control of the narrative’. Clark then elaborated on the general geopolitical situation, giving further insights into why the war party in the US believed that Ukraine was to be ‘held’ and chosen as a battle ground to confront Russia and China. Claiming that ‘Putin has read US inaction in Georgia and Syria as US “weakness”,’ Clark went on to explain that ‘China is watching closely. China will have four aircraft carriers and airspace dominance in the Western Pacific within 5 years, if current trends continue. And if we let Ukraine slide away, it definitely raises the risks of conflict in the Pacific … If Russia takes Ukraine, Belarus will join the Eurasian Union, and, presto, the Soviet Union (in another name) will be back. … Far easier to [hold] the line now, in Ukraine than elsewhere, later.’

On the weekend of 13 to 14 April, CIA Director John Brennan was in the Ukrainian capital. The attack against the insurgency, the ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’, began right after Brennan’s visit; armed volunteers hurried to the east to join the fighting, as the regular army’s appetite and readiness were limited, in spite of $2 billion in credit guarantees granted to the Kiev regime by the Obama administration. 

In early May, massacres in Odessa and Mariupol worked to snuff out the beginnings of an uprising in the south. Later that month, Andrej Parubiy, appointed as secretary of the crucial National Security and Defence Council (NSDC), visited NATO headquarters for confidential talks. Parubiy was one of the founders of the fascist party of independent Ukraine, commander of its military wing, and responsible for the random killings at the Maidan central square in Kiev that preceded the coup; today he is the speaker of the Kiev parliament.  On the 25 th Petro Poroshenko was elected president in a pre-cooked election to give the coup a veneer of legitimacy. A few days before, US Vice President Biden’s Washington office announced that the US and NATO allies would hold naval exercises in the Black Sea in July, codenamed ‘Breeze’.

To the dismay of the Donbass rebels, the Russian government recognised the presidential election and on the margins of D-Day celebrations in Normandy in June, Poroshenko agreed with Putin to start talks on a ceasefire in the rebellious provinces.  However, later that month a threatening demonstration in Kiev by volunteer battalions demanded the immediate resumption of the civil war. On the 30th of June, following a four-hour NSDC meeting with Parubiy, Interior Minister Avakov, and others whose followers were demonstrating outside, Poroshenko was compelled to declare that the ceasefire would be lifted and a new offensive launched. In spite of a last-minute attempt by EU ministers to prevent a resumption of the fighting, a barrage of accusations from Washington, denouncing Moscow’s supposed interference in Ukraine, worked to encourage Kiev. 

For NATO, there was a lot at stake. With a summit in Wales coming up in September, the trope of a ‘Russian invasion’ had become vital to the survival of the alliance after the Afghanistan debacle. French and German hesitations (they did not join the NATO manoeuvres in the Black Sea in July, although there were two French ships in the area) were of little concern to Washington and London. According to Mike Whitney, writing in CounterPunch, Putin had to be demonized as a ‘dangerous aggressor’ and disqualified as a business partner, a reference to the energy links between Russia’s Gazprom and its clients in the EU. Indeed  Whitney wrote (seven days before the downing of MH17), the United States ‘has a very small window to draw Putin into the fray, which is why we should expect another false flag incident…  Washington is going to have to do something really big and make it look like it was Moscow’s doing.’ 

But did Washington indeed ‘do something really big’, or are we looking at a coincidental prediction? 

In my book I list all the possible types of weapons that may have been used; who had them, what was their operational status, and so on. Karber actually reported to Breedlove in detail about the state of the Kiev air force available for the Anti-Terrorist Operation. Yet ultimately I stick to an agnostic position, because there is no way to ascertain who actually pulled the trigger; even though all signs point to the Kiev regime and possibly Western, especially US and NATO advisers at hand. 

Nevertheless, by listing all the elements that have been established, one gets a factual foundation on which certain scenarios can be meaningfully based. Let me try out one here, leaving aside the broader context of the energy struggles and the determination, articulated by Wesley Clark, to militarily confront the Eurasian and BRICS blocs (and Russia and China in particular) and turn the Ukrainian civil war into a proxy contest. 

Ukraine ceded the direction of the official investigations to the Netherlands whilst retaining a veto on their outcomes. The investigations maintain that the pro-Russian Donbass rebels, or even the Russian military, shot down the plane by using a single Buk SA-11 medium-range surface-to-air missile. Now if one doubts this, and there are good reasons for it, the question arises why the plane broke up in mid-air. 

First: was it a Buk, as NATO and its echo chamber, the mainstream media, insist? Several military experts familiar with air defence from Soviet times have gone on record that a Buk hit would have made the Boeing explode into a fireball. They refer to the enormous kinetic energy of the impacting shrapnel (small metal pellets) and to examples such as Buk hits in the 2008 war to recapture its breakaway South Ossetia by Georgia. The Russian Ministry of Defence also questioned the Buk theory on the grounds of the impact damage and referred to certain types of air-to-air missiles used by supersonic fighter planes in the Ukrainian air force (I leave aside that Russia never developed a consistent narrative contesting the Western/NATO account). 

What if the cockpit, riddled with holes (the Dutch Safety Board’s final report of October 2015 estimates that some 800 shrapnel pieces hit it), was not struck by a Buk missile but by an air-to-air missile fired from an Ukrainian jet (the rebels had no planes), possibly also by cannon fire?  An air-to-air missile has a much smaller warhead and a shrapnel count more than ten times smaller than a Buk (which contains 7,800 pieces or more). In that case the question might arise why the cockpit broke off in mid-air; the main fuselage, with the wings and the engines intact, flew on for a few minutes, before breaking up into pieces too. This latter break-up can be explained from the amputation of the cockpit section from the hull, but why did that occur? 

One of the most knowledgeable bloggers on this issue has claimed that the cargo of almost one and a half tons of lithium ion batteries may have caused this fatal rupture. The DSB states in its final report that there was one battery on board and that it was properly packed—1,376 kilos! In fact the plane was a flying bomb, according to Victor Ettel, an expert on the science and manufacture of lithium ion batteries—and he was speaking on Flight MH370, on which there was a cargo of only a few hundred kilos of them, and which Malaysia Airlines mysteriously lost in the previous March. The batteries on board MH17, more than six times the load of MH370, were packed in seven large batches in three containers, most of it stowed in the front cargo section right behind the cockpit (a smaller batch in the rear), with the bill of lading marked ‘urgent’. Clearly, not ‘one battery’ of which the DSB speaks. 

In the picture below, the (much smaller) battery cargo of MH370 gives an indication of this location; in the DSB report one can see that the cockpit section broke off roughly where the bulk of the batteries were stowed. I stress that this is conjecture, but why did the DSB choose to lie about the lithium ion cargo? 

 In the Internet debate on this issue, the leading Dutch expert on the battery issue, who also advised me when I worked on the book, comments that the attack on the cockpit may have triggered a fire (lithium ion batteries are highly flammable) and such a fire produces high explosive hydrocarbon gases. He then writes,

‘Someone should ask logistics [at] Schiphol, this is one of the things the DSB should have been doing. The fact they didn’t is an unbelievable lack of competence (or deliberate ignorance) from their part. It was known from early 2013 on that these kind of batteries could pose a severe risk to airplanes when something unintended happens.’  

As I write in the book, the batteries had been flown to Schiphol by TNT from Grâce-Hollogne airport near Liège, where there is a distribution centre for them (a subsidiary of a UK company). The Ukrainian national airline, owned by the anti-Russian oligarch, Ihor Kolomoiskiy, flies three times per week to this airport, but I found no indication that there was something here to pursue further. What I did find, was that an Israeli-owned company, ICTS, headquartered at Schiphol, has developed the Advanced Passenger Screening with which the details of every flight are reported to the US authorities under existing anti-terror laws. ICTS International NV was established under Dutch law in 1982 by former members of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, and El Al security agents. Few companies are so directly involved with the terrorism/counter-terrorism complex as ICTS. Its subsidiary, Huntleigh USA, shared security duties at Boston’s Logan Airport, from where the two planes that were hijacked and later claimed to have hit the Twin Towers, took off on 11 September 2001. ICTS also permitted the Nigerian student, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallah, to slip past Schiphol’s normally stringent security with explosives sown in his underwear on Christmas Day 2009 and board a Northwest Airlines plane. Quite a record… and yet we don’t know, it may all be coincidence. 

Even so: why did the DSB not delve into these matters and instead chose to lie about the battery cargo? Why did Malaysia Airlines remove the cargo manifest in which the batteries are listed, from its website? There are many more such questions that can be raised. Again, my aim in the book was to list all the elements that we can be certain about, so that meaningful speculation beyond them becomes possible and pertinent hypotheses may be formulated. Then it may take only one more piece of evidence, one witness statement, one new, unbiased investigation, and we will have come much closer to establishing the real reasons why MH17 was shot down. 

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Prof. Kees van der Pijl is fellow of the Centre for Global Political Economy and Emeritus Professor in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex.

Title: Flight MH17, Ukraine and the New Cold War (Prism of disaster)

Author: Kees van der Pijl

ISBN: 978-1-5261-3109-6

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Pages: 208

Price: £18.99

Click here to order.

As serious problems emerge with the further development of China’s ultra-ambitious New Economic Silk Road, the formally named Belt, Road Initiative (BRI) the Russian Federation, especially in the wake of Washington’s mis-named trade war, is finding a positive role that could serve to change the entire dynamic of East Asian and Eurasian economic development. Depending on how it proceeds, it could help China to make necessary corrections to its current BRI development model and even benefit the development of the United States in a peaceful way. Here are some factors to consider.

Since Chinese President Xi Jinping formally proposed his BRI project in Kazakhstan in 2013 the project has undergone a huge advance across many countries from Pakistan to Malaysia to Africa. The original rather vague concept has been greatly expanded with creation of numerous state-tied think tanks in China proposing this or that new element. A major problem, however, has become evident in recent months in several BRI partner countries where China seems to have pursued its own project concepts such as in Malaysia, without due consideration for the needs of the partner country, sometimes leaving them with unpayable debts.

The BRI is one of the truly transforming ideas for rebuilding our debt-bloated world economy in a productive way. If that is to happen, it cannot be a mere repeat of the Anglo-American IMF model, “with Chinese characteristics.” Here is where recent initiatives of Russia’s Putin government could provide a major recalibration. The recent ASEAN meeting is instructive in this regard.

Putin Asia Pivot

Until the foolish John Brennan-Joe Biden-instigated CIA coup d’etat in Ukraine in early 2014–designed to split Russia from the EU, most especially from Germany, France and Italy–there was a dominant orientation in Russian policy circles to look West. With the Obama administration strong-arming of the EU to impose economic (self-destructive) sanctions in their trade with Russia, Russia understandably reviewed her options elsewhere. Initially, that has meant opening new economic and political and even military relations with the other giant Eurasian power, China. The results of the cooperation have been impressive in many areas. That said, the danger always lurks that the asymmetry of the relation will make Russia one day overly-dependent on China, and not a sovereign equal. The recent signs of a Putin Asia Pivot also beyond China could be beneficial to all sides.

Notably, while Russian Prime Minister Medvedev was sent to the simultaneous APEC meeting in Papua New Guinea where President Xi met with Vice President Pence, Putin chose to attend the ASEAN annual meeting in Singapore November 14 of the ASEAN-Russia Summit.

Source: The Epoch Times

ASEAN members include Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, The Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Brunei. On the agenda was discussion of how to deepen contacts and trade between Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and ASEAN as well as creating what they term a Greater Eurasian Partnership also in the context of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which includes China, India and Pakistan as well as Russia and Central Asian republics.

Russia, owing to its geography and its economy, despite not being the economic or financial colossus China is, is uniquely positioned to be the facilitator of deeper economic and political cooperation across Asia, especially in areas where historical distrust of China is strong. A look at the Eurasian map will show how intimately close Russia is to all these countries. Now Russia is well-situated to leverage that geographical, economic and even military advantage with other Asian partners.

Concretely, the Singapore summit agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Russia and its Eurasian Economic Union, to expand trade and investment. ASEAN formally designated their relation with Russia for the first time as a “strategic partnership.”

The MOU covers agreement on Customs procedures and trade facilitation; sanitary and phytosanitary measures; technical regulations; e-commerce; trade in services and investment; as well as business development. Among projects are agreement for Russia with its advanced IT industry to join with ASEAN in developing “smart cities” along the lines already in process between Moscow and Singapore. Putin also extended a personal invitation to the ASEAN members to be guests at the 2019 Russian St Petersburg Economic Forum and the Vladivostock Eastern Economic Forum.

Mutual trade between the ASEAN countries and the Russian-dominated Eurasian Economic Union grew in 2017 by 40% to some $36 billion, still a small fraction of the potential.

Negotiations with ASEAN member Vietnam are a significant example of the potentials. Russia has been involved with Vietnam since it discovered the first successful commercial oil offshore Vietnam during the Cold War. In 2015 the EAEU and Vietnam signed a Free Trade Agreement. Bilateral trade grew by 31% between Vietnam and the EAEU (90% Russia) in 2017 to almost $4 billion, and is on a similar further growth path in 2018.

Russia’s EAEU countries exported oil, steel, fertilizers, and machinery. Major Vietnamese exports included phone components, electronic devices, computers, apparel, and footwear. Food exports included fruits, vegetables, coffee, cashew nut, and seafood. The treaty calls for the gradual reduction to an average of between 1-2% for import tariffs on both sides by 2025. Now with the MOU between Russia’s EAEU and the ASEAN, Vietnam is positioned to become the supply chain gateway to the other ASEAN countries for Russia and the EAEU. For Vietnam the free trade agreement with the countries of the EAEU opens a market with a combined GDP of $2.2 trillion. They both have targeted US$10-12 billion bilateral trade by 2020, and US$30 billion by 2030.

During the ASEAN Summit Putin also held private talks with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir who recently scaled back his country’s engagement in the BRI, as well as with Japan’s Abe, Indonesia President Widodo, South Korea’s Moon Jae-in and the Chinese and Thai prime ministers.

Putin-Abe talks intensify

Notable were his talks with Japan’s Abe on settlement of the long-standing Kuril Islands dispute and with South Korean President Moon on a trilateral resolution with Pyongyang of the Korea issue. Japan, South Korea and Russia are members of ASEAN+8, the East Asia Summit.

Abe announced that he is ready to pursue a mutual resolution of the territory dispute that hinders a peace treaty between Russia and Japan since 1945. Several months ago Japan and Russia conducted joint tests to explore development of shipping of Japanese goods to Russia using a sea link and the Trans-Siberian Railway. Russia’s rail transport artery, which is 5,772 miles long, has great development potential for mutual trade between the two nations, according to Japan’s Deputy Minister of State Lands, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Toshihiro Matsumoto. Currently trade is done by sea or air between the two, taking up to 62 days for ocean freight to reach Russia via the Indian Ocean. Air freight is costly. The new corridor would cut transport time significantly and reduce shipping costs as much as 40%.

In 2017 Russia and Japan agreed to establish a joint infrastructure development fund, the Russia-Japan Investment Fund between the government-backed investment funds of the two countries to support mutual projects. A resolution of the islands dispute could see that fund expand significantly.

What gives Russia a unique window regarding expanding economic and other ties with ASEAN is the fact that now China is under enormous pressure from Washington on its “Made in China 2025” agenda. As well, Japan and South Korea and India seek a balance to over-dependence on either the USA or on China. Russia can represent a highly productive “third way” without forcing a break with China, as Russia uniquely is the bridge connecting all sides.

India-Russia

Russia’s recent trade initiatives towards ASEAN, South Korea and Japan assume even more significance in light of Putin’s relations with Indian Prime Minister Modi.

In his October meetings in New Delhi, Putin and Modi signed the official agreement for India to purchase Russia’s advanced S-400 Triumf, the world’s most effective surface-to-air missile system, despite threats of sanctions from the US. In their joint press conference Modi declared, “Russia has stood by India through time and has played a crucial role In India’s growth story. With time, the relations between our countries have gone from strength to strength.” The talks also resulted in several agreements in space, nuclear energy and railways. Then nuclear agreement with Russia, currently the world’s largest nuclear power constructor, will include manufacturing of nuclear fuel assemblies in India. And India will acquire 4 Krivak-class frigates from Russia, two of which will be built in India under a $2.5 billion deal.

The Putin-Modi meeting was the fifth time the two had met in the past year. They also reaffirmed a strategic partnership, reviving relations going back to the 1950’s between India and Russia. The recent Russian attention to India represents a significant change over the past four years to counter a decline in Russia-India relations and trade as Washington tried to draw India into its sphere.

When we look at the recent Asian Pivot of Russia towards not only China, but more recently also ASEAN, both Koreas, Japan and India it is clear that Russia has realized it has a unique potential to emerge as the key to future Asian economic development. It is clear that Putin is making it a state priority to pursue what he announced a year ago at APEC as Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership. There he cited Russia’s intention to create an “Energy Super Ring” that unites Russia, China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, and the Sakhalin-Hokkaido transport link, a proposed road-rail bridge-tunnel that would connect Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido with Russia’s Sakhalin. This could only be the beginning of a mutually beneficial regional cooperation.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

G20 leaders will meet on Friday and Saturday in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Kiev’s staged Black Sea provocation and Trump’s trade war with China hang over the summit, along with US hostility toward Russia, endless war in Syria, and other major geopolitical issues.

Major Sino/US differences highlighted the mid-November APEC summit – notably America first protectionism v. fair trade.

For the first time, APEC leaders failed to agree on a joint communique, largely over major unresolved Sino/US disagreements.

Will the G20 summit end the same or a similar way – major differences between the Trump regime v. Russia and China highlighting it?

On Tuesday, John Bolton said Trump meet with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Angela Merkel, Japan’s Shinzo Abe, South Korea’s Moon Jae-in, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, India’s Narendra Modi, and Argentina’s Mauricio Macri in Buenos Aires.

No meeting with Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman is scheduled. According to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, he hasn’t “ruled out any interaction” with MBS.

It may or may not happen. Being together in the same venue, they’ll certainly cross paths, perhaps to hold an unscheduled meeting – despite Bolton saying his schedule is “full to overflowing.”

There’s always time for what anyone wishes to do, no time for what someone wants avoided. According to Bolton, Putin and Trump will discuss “security issues, arms control, and regional issues, including the Middle East” – along with Kiev’s Black Sea/Kerch Strait provocation and aftermath so far, if a meeting occurs. With one scheduled, it’s hard imagining not having it with much to discuss.

On Tuesday, Trump threatened to cancel his meeting with Putin over the incident, saying

“I am getting a report on that tonight and that will determine what happens at the meeting,”

adding:

“That will be very determinative. Maybe I won’t have the meeting…We’re going to see, depending on what comes out tonight.”

He blamed Russia for Kiev’s provocation, saying

“I don’t like that aggression. I don’t want that aggression at all. Absolutely. And by the way, Europe shouldn’t like that aggression. And Germany shouldn’t like that aggression.”

Was Kiev’s November 25 Black Sea/Kerch Strait provocation strategically timed ahead of Ukraine’s March 2019 presidential election and this week’s G20 summit?

The likely US/UK orchestrated incident was all about escalating East/West tensions, further undermining prospects for Putin/Trump agreement on key bilateral issues, along with whatever the US-installed Poroshenko regime hopes to gain from what happened.

Much rides on Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping. DLT threatened to increase tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 – 25% in January 1 if Beijing doesn’t subordinate its economic interests to Washington’s.

It clearly won’t happen, but it remains to be seen if both leaders can find accommodation middle ground with each other – or at least delay the January 1 action and Trump’s added threat to impose duties on all Chinese imports in the new year.

Ahead of Trump’s meeting with Xi, Chinese envoy to Washington Cui Tiankai warned of “dire consequences” if both leaders fail to find accommodation with each other, adding:

“The lessons of history are (clear). In the last century, we had two world wars. And in between them, the Great Depression. I don’t think anybody should really try to have a repetition of history. These things should never happen again, so people have to act in a responsible way.”

Given Washington’s rage for confrontation over diplomacy and permanent war agenda, he didn’t rule out “all-out conflict” with the US if things deteriorate beyond resolution.

China didn’t initiate trade war. It’s largely Trump’s call on how far to push it or be willing to step back from the brink.

Cui was clear saying

“(w)e cannot accept that one side would put forward a number of demands and the other side just has to satisfy all these things.”

According to hardline Trump regime chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow, DLT intends increasing tariffs on Chinese goods if there’s no breakthrough in talks with Xi, adding discussions so far failed to yield what the White House demands.

If nothing comes from talks this weekend, Trump said he’ll order additional tariffs on another $267 billion worth of Chinese imports, along with increasing tariffs to 25% – harming both countries and the world economy if he goes this far and sticks with it.

On Monday, he said

“(t)he only deal that would be really acceptable to me – other than obviously we have to do something on the theft of intellectual property, right – but the only deal would be China has to open up their country to competition from the United States.”

“They have to open up China to the United States. Otherwise, I don’t see a deal being made.”

America’s huge and growing trade deficit with China is all about US corporations offshoring their production and other operations, along with millions of jobs, to low-wage countries.

Trump consistently fails to lay blame where it belongs – on corporate America, not China or other countries.

It’s unclear if talks between him and Xi can achieve (or at least appear to achieve) what numerous previous Sino/US rounds failed to accomplish.

Perhaps agreeing on a reprieve is the best to hope for – so talks on major unresolved issues can continue in the new year.

A Final Comment

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said things are “settled” about Putin/Trump talks on the sidelines of this week’s G20 summit – adding “(w)e have no…information otherwise.”

It’s hard imagining both leaders won’t meet. Being in the same place at the same time, it seems virtually certain they’ll meet with much to discuss.

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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.

Steve Bannon.  The Oxford Union.  A university that has been the breeding, sculpting and minting ground for British prime ministers for centuries and the Establishment.  Here, Bannon, strategist of the Trump campaign in 2016, was in full swing, spearing his enemies and mocking the elite with an approach he has come to master.  The audience was hushed, bewildered, even stunned.   

The thrust of his anti-elite argument was something that sat strikingly well with a figure he failed mention: John Ralston Saul.  Saul was himself an investment manager and oil executive turned pure; he has reflected upon the failings of the system occasioned by an elite that has duped, gulled and hoodwinked entire nations, citing the value of rationalism filled by an “obsession with expertise”.   They are, as Bannon reminded his audience, the party of Davos; they are the ones who prospered as bailouts were being dished out after the financial crisis of 2008-9, socialising privately made losses. They are, as Saul claimed, Voltaire’s bastards, the ones who hijacked reason to despoil societies in the name of an estranged technocracy.

Perversely, the weapon to initiate this upending and bruising of these laboratory technocrats was Donald Trump, a person very much part of a system riven by decay.  Trump had himself been beneficiary of its fracturing, one that left former employees without work and a string of bankruptcies.  He fed the world of reality television with viral dedication.  But instead of seeking a professional campaign manager, Trump struck electoral gold, appointing, in Ken Stern’s words, “a media bomb-thrower with no experience on the trail.”   

Trump, in turn, served a useful purpose (in Bannon’s own description, a “blunt instrument for us”): he could slay sacred cows, mock members of the establishment and foul the temples.  Bannon gave a taste of this sentiment, a true politics of aggression.  “I said I wanna unchain the dogs on Megyn Kelly and I’m proud of it – politics is war by other methods.” 

There were those who felt Bannon had no place at the Union.  The Oxford Students Stand Up To Racism took issue with the body for “giving credibility to racism and fascism”, a view as childish as it was ill-thought.  In a press release, the group claimed that Bannon was “attempting to build an Islamophobic international of far-right groups and is looking to fascist Tommy Robinson here in Britain as a key figure for his movement.”    Anneliese Dodds, MP for Oxford East, thanked the demonstrators for not welcoming “white supremacists like Bannon.”

A rough estimate of 1,000 protestors had gathered; Bannon was himself smuggled into the talk “in the back of a police van” according to the Daily Mail.  There were chants. 

“The police protect the Nazis!”; “Say it loud, say it clear, Bannon is not welcome here!” 

Two men happily goaded the protests in St. Michael’s Street, mimicking Nazi-style salutes and causing, according to the police, “alarm and distress to those who were present”. 

The address was peppered with the observations of a man who is now speaking to a political orthodoxy that has taken root in numerous states. 

“I did the original travel ban, it made our citizens safer.  Zero-tolerance at the border is a humanitarian policy.” 

The view has been endorsed by both conservative and Labor governments in Australia since the late 1990s.

Bannon betrays a certain ideological inconsistency, suspicious of cults and followings of protest he sees as equivalent (naturally, he exempts his own):

“Nazis and the KKK have no place in our society, they should have never been allowed to march in Charlottesville.” 

But the blade cuts all ways:

“The same can be said about Antifa and Black Lives Matter – they shouldn’t be allowed to be doing what they are doing.” 

The problem here is that both Bannon and the protestors sport the very same defective positions they wish to promote.  Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, for instance, boasted about her belief in free speech but refused to appear at an Edinburgh conference attended by Bannon for fear that she risked “legitimizing or normalizing far-right, racist views.” 

Both sides want to ban each other in fits of self-conviction, ideologically convinced they have found the appropriate way. Both feel they have found some unassailable truth in their Manichean struggle.  Consider the student at Oxford who was reported to say that he was “here to protest against the Student Union events being used for right wing personalities.”  (Keep them vanilla, safe, or left, whatever that might entail.)  To be right is to be wrong and worthy of silencing. 

“I am Australian and we already have a fascist government so it’s important to fight right-wing politics while we still can.” 

Tossing about vague labels serves more to restrict discussion and confuse social symptoms rather than advance argument which is, ultimately, the aim of most regimes of censorship.  Tagging alt-right and fascist to the Bannon show is handily reassuring for the ideologically closeted, but it betrays a convenient ignorance. For one, it resists an inquiry into the causes for the rise of Trumpism, and the broader Bannon agenda of a neo-nationalist international. 

A set of brief contributions to the Times Literary Supplement this month from a range of thinkers on the subject merely served to illustrate how unsure the field of comparative studies on fascism is.

“We could no more define [fascism],” argued classics titan Mary Beard, “than most of the mid-twentieth century fascists themselves could.” To use the word “fascist” in the Trump debate “has become a sloppy, and even dangerous, alibi for failing properly to analyse conduct.”  

Bannon is not in any conventional, let alone unconventional sense, fascist, but a sharpened reactionary attuned to the impulses of a malcontent. He is the perfect condottiere’s type, having become an advisor for the European, and generally global right, on those populist disruptions that now find shape inside and outside numerous governments. Some of these have an undeniable encrustation of neo-fascism.  But the essential point here is hardly to shut them up and ignore them but rally with appropriate antidotes.  Censorship, notably at such forums as the Oxford Union, would be a poor, and ultimately weak form, of combat.

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

Featured image is from SocialistWorker.org

“The displacement from south to north is inevitable; fences, walls and deportations will not curtail it: they will come in millions. They come looking for what we stole from them. There is no return for them because they come from a famine of centuries and they come tracking the smell of the everyday food…” Jose Saramago, Nobel Prize in Literature 1998

The photograph of a migrant mother and her diapered and shoeless infants running in fear from teargas fired by the US border patrol — supported by 5000 US troops with shoot-to-kill orders — is not going to disappear easily from the collective memory. Even the mainstream media cannot spin it away.  This image captures the inhumanity of the situation; it is becoming viral and travelling around the world. It is one of those iconic, indelible images like the Vietnamese girl running covered in napalm after an aerial attack incinerated her village in 1972.

They are both running from US terror and its continuum of a policy of war. Hundreds of thousands of people from Central America — facing unimaginable dangerous obstacles — have fled their homes and communities to reach the North where the profit-mad system of exploitation and violent repression that created their condition in the first place also despises them. They have no place else to go.

Ironically the tear gas attack at the border took place on the last day of the Thanksgiving holiday when many in the US were enjoying and sharing time with family members.

Compliant U.S. corporate and government support of Central America elites and political despots have created unlivable conditions that force people to flee their homes and countries.

No matter how much impoverished Central American asylum seekers have been characterized as dangerous criminals and disposables in the rants of the xenophobic president and ignored by the congress of the rich for the rich, we will not allow the truth of that image to be erased from our minds. It is a mirror of the inhumanity that festers in the government buildings in Washington and the stock peddling floors of Wall Street. And fair-minded U.S. citizens must act to create and enforce a just, humane immigration policy.

The Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity demands the U.S. government respect the human rights of Central American immigrants and grant asylum to those who request it. We also demand the demilitarization of the border with Mexico and the cessation of violence against innocent people whose only crime is to flee conditions of poverty in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

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When the Ukrainian navy sent a tugboat and two small gunboats on Sunday to force their way through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov, it knew in advance the Russian response would be swift and merciless. 

After all, Kiev was entering waters claimed by Russia with military vessels without clarifying their intent.

The intent, though, was clear; to raise the stakes in the militarization of the Sea of Azov.

The Kerch Strait connects the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea. To reach Mariupol, a key city in the Sea of Azov very close to the dangerous dividing line between Ukraine’s army and the pro-Russian militias in Donbass, the Ukrainian navy needs to go through the Kerch.

Yet since Russia retook control of Crimea via a 2014 referendum, the waters around Kerch are de facto Russian territorial waters.

Kiev announced this past summer it would build a naval base in the Sea of Azov by the end of 2018. That’s an absolute red line for Moscow. Kiev may have to trade access to Mariupol, which, incidentally, also trades closely with the People’s Republic of Donetsk. But forget about military access.

And most of all, forget about supplying a Ukrainian military fleet in the port of Berdyansk capable of sabotaging the immensely successful, Russian-built Crimean bridge.

Predictably, Western media has been complaining again about “Russian aggression”, a gift that keeps on giving. Or blaming Russia for its over-reaction, overlooking the fact that Ukraine’s incursion was with military vessels, not fishing boats. Russian resolve was quite visible, as powerful Ka-52 “Alligator” assault helicopters were promptly on the scene.

Washington and Brussels uncritically bought Kiev’s “Russian aggression” hysteria, as well as the UN Security Council, which, instead of focusing on the facts in the Kerch Strait incident, preferring to accuse Moscow once again of annexing Crimea in 2014.

The key point, overlooked by the UNSC, is that the Kerch incident configures Kiev’s flagrant violation of articles 7, 19 and 21 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. 

Russian lakes

I happened to be right in the middle of deep research in Istanbul over the geopolitics of the Black Sea when the Kerch incident happened. 

For the moment, it’s crucial to stress what top Russian analysts have been pointing out in detail. My interlocutors in Istanbul may disagree, but for all practical purposes, the Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, in military terms, are de facto Russian lakes.

At best, the Black Sea as a whole might evolve into a Russia-Turkey condominium, assuming President Erdogan plays his cards right.  Everyone else is as relevant, militarily, as a bunch of sardines. 

Russia is able to handle anything – naval or aerial – intruding in the Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea in a matter ranging from seconds to just a few minutes. Every vessel moving in every corner of the Black Sea is tracked 24/7. Moscow knows it. Kiev knows it. NATO knows it. And crucially, the Pentagon knows it.

Still, Kiev – “encouraged” by Washington – insists on militarizing the Sea of Azov. Misinformed American hawks emerging from the US Army War College even advocate that NATO should enter the Sea of Azov – a provocative act as far as Moscow is concerned. The Atlantic Council, which is essentially a mouthpiece of the powerful US weapons industry, is also pro-militarization.

Any attempt to alter the current, already wobbly status quo could lead Moscow to install a naval blockade in a flash and see the annexation of Mariupol to the People’s Republic of Donetsk, to which it is industrially linked anyway.

This would be regarded by the Kremlin as a move of last resort. Moscow certainly does not want it. Yet it’s wise not to provoke the Bear.

Cheap provocation

Rostislav Ischchenko, arguably the sharpest observer of Russia-Ukraine relations, in a piece written before the Kerch incident, said: 

“Ukraine itself recognized the right of Russia to introduce restrictions on the passage of ships and vessels through the Kerch Strait, having obeyed these rules in the summer.”

Yet, after the US Deep State’s massive investment even before the protests on the Maidan in Kiev in 2014 that wrested Ukraine away from Russian influence a possible entente cordiale between the Trump administration and the Kremlin, with Russia in control of Crimea and a pro-Russian Donbass, could only be seen as a red line for the Americans.

Thus a Kerch Strait incident designed as a cheap provocation, bearing all the hallmarks of a US think-tank ploy, is automatically interpreted as “Russian aggression”, regardless of the facts. Indeed, any such tactics are good when it comes to derailing the Trump-Putin meeting at the G20 in Buenos Aires this coming weekend.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, chaos is the norm. President Petro Poroshenko is bleeding. The hryvnia is a hopeless currency. Kiev’s borrowing costs are at their highest level since a bond sale in 2018. This failed state has been under IMF “reform” since 2015 – with no end in sight.  

Poroshenko’s approval rate barely touches 8%. His chances of being re-elected, assuming polls are credible, are virtually zero. Little wonder he used the Kerch to declare martial law, effective this Wednesday, lasting for 30 days and bound to be extended. Poroshenko will be able to control the media and increase his chances of rigging the election. 

But the US would lose no sleep if they had to throw Poroshenko under the (Soviet) bus. Ukrainians will not die for his survival. One of the captains at the Kerch incident surrendered his boat voluntarily to the Russians. When Russian Su-25s and Ka-52s started to patrol the skies over the Kerch Strait, Ukrainian reinforcements instantly fled.

Poroshenko, wallowing in despair, may still ratchet up provocations. But the best he can aim at is NATO attempting to modernize the collapsing Ukrainian navy – an endeavor that would last years, with no guarantee of success.

For the moment, forget all the rhetoric, and any suggestion of a NATO incursion into the Black Sea. Call it the calm before the inevitable future storm.

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Donald Trump is attempting to do something that no previous recent president of the United States has attempted. Trump is trying to abrogate longstanding legal international treaties signed by some of his predecessors with sovereign Native American tribes. The Trump administration is using a requirement that Medicaid recipients work in return for health benefits to deny Native American tribes the right to govern themselves as sovereign entities. The Trump administration is denying an exemption for the work requirement for tribal nations by reclassifying Native Americans as a racial group subject to federal law, not as separate sovereign nations bound by distinct tribal laws.

Trump’s move against tribal sovereignty is part of the overall transformation of the Republican Party into a far-right Trump cult that advances racist policies. Trump has provided impetus to the marginalization of tribal sovereignty by repeatedly calling Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who hails from Oklahoma, formerly known as the Indian Territory, by the racist pejorative, “Pocahontas.” The Republicans also engaged in voter suppression of Native American tribal members in North Dakota by requiring new anti-tribal identification cards in order to register to vote. The decision played a part in the defeat of Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp in her race for re-election in North Dakota.

Treaties signed between the United States government and sovereign Native tribes are protected in the US Constitution, a document that the Trump administration has relegated to the waste bin. The Constitution’s “supremacy clause” in Article VI states:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

It is the supremacy clause which establishes the US treaties with the tribal nations as sacrosanct and inviolable, even by a fascist-oriented demagogue like Trump. Mr. Trump’s antipathy toward tribal sovereignty stems from his belief that it was the opening of casinos on sovereign tribal reservations throughout the United States that helped drive his casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey out of business. In fact, Trump’s casinos were plagued by mismanagement at the top – meaning Mr. Trump and his top executives – and close ties to organized crime syndicates in Atlantic City and Philadelphia. These factors were as much responsible for Trump’s casino failures as was the competition from Native American gaming complexes. Nevertheless, Trump railed against Indian gaming, telling radio host Don Imus in 1993,

“I might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians that are trying to open up reservations. It’s a joke.”

Two senators condemned Trump’s remarks about Native Americans. One was Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. The other was Senator John McCain, a man who would later clash with President Trump on several issues.

However, Trump had no intention of competing with Indian casinos. He bought off a New Jersey Democratic Senator, Robert Torricelli, who introduced a bill in Congress that would forbid tribes from opening casinos in New Jersey unless they were in Atlantic City. Torricelli’s bill was nicknamed the “Donald Trump Protection Act.”

Mr. Trump has long disparaged Native Americans. In 1993, when plans were afoot to build a Native American casino in Connecticut, Trump told the Imus program,

“I think if you’ve ever been up there [Connecticut], you would truly say that these are not Indians. One of them was telling me his name is Chief Running Water Sitting Bull, and I said, ‘That’s a long name.’ He said, ‘Well, just call me Ricky Sanders.’ So, this is one of the Indians.”

Trump’s use of the pejorative “Pocahontas” in referring to Elizabeth Warren did not start with her. His racism has been on full display for decades.

Map of National Historic trails (Source: Public Domain)

Mr. Trump’s vindictiveness against Native Americans is on full display with his attempt to whittle away tribal sovereignty rights by refusing to grant the Medicaid work exemption. This is only a first step toward his final goal of trashing the tribal treaties, thus opening up sovereign territory to exploitation by oil companies, mining operations, and real estate developers. It is not coincidental that Trump’s favorite president is Andrew Jackson, the man responsible for genocidal war crimes against Native Americans and the forced relocation of tribes to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma during the infamous “Trail of Tears.”

Trump, trying to emulate Jackson, recently grabbed 85 percent of the Bears Ears and 50 percent of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah, both sacred to Native American peoples. Trump hand over the seized land to uranium mining companies and natural gas fracking firms. Trump’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline ran counter to protests from Native American tribes in Montana and South Dakota that were impacted by the project. Trump’s ethics-conflicted Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, wants to eliminate trust provisions for Native American lands.

A hallmark of a fascist regime is the elimination of sub-national centers of sovereignty. The Trump administration, while paying lip service to states’ rights, especially when it comes to voter disenfranchisement, institutionalized racism, and gun rights, is less inclined to support the rights of states to legalize marijuana, abortion, and euthanasia. The Trump administration has also sharply curtailed self-government in American territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Marianas. This grab for unitary executive power is also being felt by tribal governments.

Native Americans, many rejecting US citizenship, are being forced to assimilate into Trump’s “America First” nationalist state. Rather than assimilate into the United States, and thus lose what remains of their cultural and linguistic identities, Native Americans have, over the past several decades, attempted to break from dictates from Washington and its proto-colonialist Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Native Americans, refusing to accept American citizenship, have traveled abroad on tribal passports. The Onondaga Nation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederation and the Hopi Nation have issued passports that have been recognized by the US State Department, the United Nations, and immigration authorities in Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Australia, Libya, and Japan. The Kickapoo Nation, the Cherokee Nation, and the Tohono O’Odham Nation have also implemented passport/international travel card systems. In addition, diplomatic passports used by native Hawaiians representing the Kingdom of Hawaii (and who reject American citizenship) have been recognized by Switzerland, other European countries, and Central American states.

In 2009, the Lakota Sioux Nation declared its independence from Washington and its leader, Russell Means, was received at the embassies of Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, and South Africa in Washington. The Lakota Sioux also requested diplomatic recognition and announced plans to issue passports.

The Trump administration has run roughshod over the Tohono O’Odham nation, which lies astride the US-Mexican border. Their nation now stands to have a Trump-initiated border wall bisect it, which will prevent the tribe unfettered access within the sovereign reservation. Trump and his cronies are treating the Tohono O’Odham in the same ruthless fashion as Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians, with the Israeli “Separation Wall” dividing Palestinian villages from one another.

Mr. Trump’s billionaire financial supporters like casino moguls Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn, have little time for Indian casinos eating into their profit shares. Florida’s incoming racist governor, Ron DeSantis, a Trump supporter, may make a move against the Seminole Nation’s and other tribal casinos in the state. This showdown will not come without a fight. The Seminoles and allied tribes never signed peace treaties with the United States. The Miccosukee Nation, a Seminole sub-nation, continues to exist on a reservation bordering Everglades National Park in southern Florida. The unofficial capital is the Tamiami Trail Reservation. One thing that makes the Miccosukee Nation stand out from other tribal nations is the rightful absence of the US flag anywhere on the reservation. The Miccosukee flag of horizontal bands of white, black, red, and yellow is ubiquitous and a welcome sight in place of that “other flag” of red, white, and blue, the one that represents to Native Americans, the genocide of native peoples.

Mr. Trump’s days of making jokes about Native Americans and threatening their tribal sovereignty may be coming to an end. That is, if New Mexico’s newly-elected Native American Democratic Representative Deb Haaland has anything to say about it. She is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe and a 35^th-generation New Mexican and has no time for Trump’s racal stereotyping of Native Americans. She will be joined in Congress by newly-elected Democratic Representative Sharice Davids of Kansas, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, and a third Native American, Xochitl Torres Small, another newly-elected Democrat from New Mexico. These Native American congresswomen will be in no mood for Mr. Trump’s jokes or slurs.

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Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club.

Featured image is from SCF