Global Research

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

The prohibition on torture is one of the few absolute rights. Its use can never be justified, regardless of the circumstances.

After 9/11, the USA engaged in an appalling programme of torture and rendition – all in the name of the so-called ‘war on terror’.

From 2002, UK intelligence and security agencies – hoping to prevent a similar attack on our soil – participated in an estimated 2 to 3,000 detainee interviews conducted by US authorities in locations including Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

It’s long been known that the UK got its hands dirty in the process. But – 16 years on – the extent to which the UK was involved in US torture and rendition remains unknown.

Successive governments have repeatedly committed to holding a robust, independent inquiry – including former Prime Minister David Cameron who, in 2010, rightly said:

“The longer these questions remain unanswered, the bigger the stain on our reputation as a country”.

Cameron set up an inquiry, chaired by Sir Peter Gibson. But it was flawed – a secret internal inquiry with the Government in control – and barely got off its feet before being shelved due to ongoing criminal investigations.

In June this year, unjustified Government restrictions also stymied the most recent attempt to uncover the truth – by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).

Liberty has always been clear in its position. Only an independent judicial inquiry can expose the truth and clear the stain on the UK’s reputation as an upholder of the rule of law and respecter of human rights.

Willful complicity

In June 2018, the ISC published a pair of damning reports documenting UK complicity in US torture and mistreatment. Their findings are shocking.

The committee found that, in 232 cases, UK personnel assisted with interrogations when they should have known that torture or inhuman treatment was taking place.

On 326 occasions, UK officers received intelligence from prisoners who they knew were being mistreated. In almost 40 cases, UK officials either witnessed or were told of mistreatment by foreign partners or detainees themselves.

As the ISC concluded, the UK’s involvement amounted to a “simple outsourcing of action which they were not allowed to undertake themselves”.

But this willful complicity in horrifying abuse amounts to a direct and inexcusable rights violation in itself.

The ISC’s findings go some way to revealing the extent of UK complicity – but restrictions placed on the committee by the Government prevented its members from carrying out a truly comprehensive investigation.

Crucially, they were prevented from interviewing key witnesses and including evidence about specific incidences.

Those restrictions led the ISC to reluctantly conclude that it couldn’t progress any further with its inquiry.

But its revelations show UK agencies were far more deeply and systematically involved in US torture and rendition than previously known.

No compromise

On 2 July, the Government announced it would respond to renewed calls for an independent judge-led inquiry into UK involvement in torture and rendition within 60 days – which means any day now.

Liberty has repeatedly called for such an inquiry since 2005 – and we’re far from alone. Following the publication of the ISC reports, politicians and public figures on all sides have called for the same.

Along with a coalition of partner organisations, we’ve set out five key tests any proposed inquiry must meet in order to meet baseline standards of independence and effectiveness.

It must:

1. Be established under the 2005 Inquiries Act and headed by a judge.
2. Have an independent, judicial mechanism for open proceedings and publication.
3. Have adequate legal powers to hold a full and effective investigation.
4. Be empowered to examine all relevant evidence and cases, including those which have yet to be properly examined – such as Abdulhakin Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar.
5. Ensure the meaningful involvement of torture survivors.

There can be no compromise when it comes to torture. Only by dragging this shameful episode out of the shadows and into the light will the UK be able to move forward – and make sure crucial lessons are learnt.

With every day the Government fails to launch a proper investigation, cover-up and official impunity persist.

Let’s hope they finally do the right thing this week.

*

Gracie came to Liberty in July 2017 and leads our work to oppose the Government’s “hostile environment” policies on immigration. Before joining Liberty, Gracie worked in casework, research and policy across several NGOs to support survivors of torture and working migrants to navigate the UK’s immigration system. She also trained public officials and third sector workers to use the Human Rights Act in their day-to-day work. She holds a Masters in Human Rights from the LSE and a degree in Philosophy & French from Oxford University.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Featured image: Nir Barkat, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Israel’s Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat has threatened to end the work of the UN Refuge Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the holy city, Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post reported yesterday.

The paper said that it was

“the first public statement by an Israeli official that called on the [Israeli] government to use its power to shut down the agency that services Palestinian refugees.”

Barakat said:

UNRWA is a foreign and unnecessary organisation that has failed miserably. I intend to expel it from Jerusalem.

He was speaking at a conference sponsored by Channel 2 held in Jerusalem. He said he had already instructed his municipal staff to come up with a plan to replace UNRWA.

UNRWA spokesman Sami Mshasha stressing that the organsiation’s work is still continuing in Jerusalem.

He said that the UNRWA offers services to thousands of Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem, running schools, health centres and aid distribution programmes.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Last week, several Turkish news sites published an article called “Washington Exploiting Christianity against Turkey” written by Adnan Cavusoglu. The author’s attention was drawn by the site christianpersecution.com, which covers the facts of Christian persecution all over the world.

The site was launched by the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle, an Orthodox organization defending the rights of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Order members, Archons, are civilians who “have been honored for their outstanding service to the Orthodox Church.” Archons hold conferences, have meetings with various politicians and lobby bills on religious freedom.

Cavusoglu claims that the only purpose of christianpersecution.com is to blacken Ankara’s image and that it is just a part of the Order’s information campaign against Turkey. Mostly, the pieces on the site are republished from other media with short remarks added. The posts are edited and approved by high ranked hierarchs of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the author writes.

According to Cavusoglu, one of the “editors” is Metropolitan Elpidophoros Lambriniadis of Bursa. In particular, the Al-Monitor article republished by christianpersecution.com on August 13, focused on the plight of Christians on the island of Heybeliada where the theological school headed by the Metropolitan is situated.

The actual situation, however, differs from the one depicted on the website.

“The government doesn’t impede the development of all religious minorities,” Cuvusoglu writes. “In May, talks began on the re-opening of the Heybeliada Theological School. In July, the Metropolitan of Ankara was appointed for the first time since 1922. There are no obstacles for Patriarch Bartholomew to develop an inter-faith dialogue, meet with international politicians. Orthodox churches and monuments in Turkey are being restored. That’s why the patriarch himself never criticized the state for the so-called Christian persecution.”

The Order of St. Andrew carries out an anti-Turkish policy. That’s why the organization’s National Commander Anthony Limberakis is said to constantly slam Turkey and president Erdogan.

The author also highlights the ties between the Order, the Greek American Archdiocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (GOArch) and the US Department of State.

“One of the Archons is Michael Karloutsos, a top State Department official, son of an influential GOArch hierarch Alexander Karloutsos. It’s no wonder then why the site publishes articles criticizing Ankara,” Cavusoglu states.

As noticed in the article, most posts of the website are about Pastor Andrew Brunson, who is under house arrest on terrorism and spying charges in Izmir. His detention became the pretext for Washington to impose sanctions against Turkey.

So, christianpersecution.com seems to be another tool of the United States to attack Ankara, concludes the author.

*

Gizem Akbash is currently taking up MA in International Relations at Cleveland State University.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Featured image: A group of Romani prisoners in the Belzec concentration camp.

More then 50 people of all ages joined in Toronto August 2, 2018, in an international day of remembrance and recognition of the Romani Holocaust (Porajmos) in Europe. They heard Arif Virani, federal member of parliament for Toronto Parkdale-High Park, read a statement issued that day by Justin Trudeau’s government which said, in part:

“On Romani Genocide Remembrance Day, we honour the memory of over 500,000 Romani who were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators in Europe. This genocide and the unspeakable violence inflicted on the Romani people are not widely known by the public, making them the ignored victims of WWII.”

The statement is “the result of three years of work by the Roma (Gypsies) and their friends” according to Michael Butch, president of the Toronto Roma Community Centre and founder of the Gypsy Rebels band. It is a welcome shift, even if only implicit, from the pattern of discriminatory and defamatory actions by the federal government over the last two decades, particularly under the government of Stephen Harper (2006-15).

A Montreal-based group defending Roma human rights, “Romanipe,” laid out the statement’s deeper implication:

“At a time when acts of racism, hatred and violence against Romani continue to be normalized, preserving the memory of past atrocities and raising awareness about the dangers of impunity becomes not only a right but a duty… The lessons of this tragedy serve to advance the human rights situation of Romani communities at home and abroad.”

Porajmos Remembered

The Toronto event highlighted the 74th anniversary of Roma resistance in Auschwitz, when thousands of Roma prisoners fought back courageously against Nazi guards.

Roma shared a common fate with Jews in countries under Nazi rule. In A People Uncounted, a video on the Roma Holocaust (or Porajmos) a Jewish survivor recalls how Jews and Roma shared ties of mutual aid and respect. “Our ashes are mixed with theirs in the ovens.”

In Auschwitz the majority of Jewish arrivals were sent straight to their death. The Roma, by contrast, were confined at Auschwitz in a separate camp, the Zigeunerlager, marked down to die of starvation, disease, brutal treatment, and sinister medical experimentation.

On May 16, 1944, heavily armed guards assaulted the Roma camp under orders to deliver the 6,000 Roma prisoners to the gas chambers. Forewarned, the Roma put up a fierce resistance with improvised weapons. At the cost of many casualties, the Roma beat off the attack and lived to fight another day – a triumph with few parallels in the history of Nazi death camps.

On the morning of August 2, the Nazis tried again. First, they removed able-bodied men and dispersed them to other camps, where some survived. That evening, emboldened by this cowardly move, the guards attacked the 3,000 who remained – women, children, and the sick. “The inmates fought a fierce battle with sticks and rocks” before ultimately being herded to the gas chambers, recounts Lizzie Isaacs. “Witness accounts say that the Romanies fought to the very end…. That night over 3,000 were murdered and the bodies burnt in the pits.”

In all, Cynthia Levine-Rasky writes:

“Estimates of the total number of Roma killed between 1933 and 1945 range from 500,000 to 1.5 million. The variance is due not only to the lack of records for the geographically dispersed camps in which the Roma were detained but also to the way in which so many were killed in the fields, villages, and remote areas where they lived.”¹

The Nazis did not bother to catalogue the names and birth-places of the Roma as they often did for other “Untermenschen” (subhumans), including my Jewish mother. The Roma victims thus, remain “a people uncounted.”

Origins of the Roma

Erroneously called “Gypsies” in the English-speaking world by those who thought they came from Egypt, the Roma actually originated in North-Central India early in the 11th century.

About 400 years later, they moved into and across Europe, where they often faced persecution. Ronald Lee, a co-founder of the Toronto Romani Community Centre and historian, explains that the Roma’s strategy for survival was to “become part of the feudal system in Central/Eastern Europe and to become totally nomadic in Western Europe, able to move from one country to another as persecution waxed and waned.”²

Although scattered across Europe and divided into many communities, the Roma retained a common culture and a common language, based on speech in their original home in the north-west India sub-continent. Today Romani is spoken worldwide in many dialects.

Lee tracks the relentless mass killings (samudaripen) of Roma dating back to 15th century Europe.

“The Christian Popes and their clergy accused the Roma of having made the nails for the cross of Christ…. Because the majority of their people are dark-skinned, they were also accused of devil worship as ‘imps of Satan’…. The Protestant religions were equally hostile to the Roma and condemned them as work-shy parasites and immoral hedonists, the antithesis of Martin Luther’s hymn-singing, hard-working, joy-denying, witch-burning Puritans…”³

But the Roma Holocaust arose not from Mediaeval witch-hunts but from twentieth century social conflicts in Europe. Even before 1938, when Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler proclaimed the goal of subjecting the Roma to a “final solution” – that is, to extermination, a number of governments were taking steps against the Roma.

At the August 2 commemoration in Toronto, a Roma high-school student and recently arrived refugee recalled that in his country, Hungary, “anti-Romani laws were enacted beginning in 1928, making it very hard for Roma to get jobs and subjecting them to police discrimination and surveillance.”

“During the Second World War,” the student continued, “the Czechs rounded up the Roma and handed them over to the German occupiers.”

This procedure was similar to the situation in France, where I then lived; the French Vichy government took the initiative in rounding up the Jews and handing them to the Nazis.

“In Hungary,” he continued, “in the summer of 1944 the Romani were confined in ghettos and subjected to forced labour. Two of our young refugee’s family was sent to Auschwitz to die.”

The documentary A People Uncounted explains that in Austria, during the depression of the 1930s, mass unemployment hit the Roma the hardest, forcing them out of their traditional trades and onto the municipal social assistance rolls. Many local communities petitioned the Nazi government to ease their burden by removing the Roma, sometimes even paying for this service. But this did not happen in every case. “If a local community does not permit persecution,” the film tells us repeatedly, “it does not happen.”

Romani civilians in Asperg, Germany are rounded up for deportation by German authorities on 22 May 1940. (Source: CC BY-SA 3.0 de)

After the overthrow of Nazi rule, the surviving Roma in Eastern Europe came under Communist rule, which freed them from organized racism and discrimination while providing employment and economic security. Lee notes that Roma in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union enjoyed a measure of cultural autonomy, but government policies across Eastern Europe as a whole aimed at assimilation of the Roma, which they strongly resented. Communist rule “was a two-edged sword,” Lee says.

Restored Capitalism Brings Racist Revival

Since the end of Communist rule in 1989-90, the Roma in Eastern Europe have again faced murderous persecution at the hands of racist groups.

When Communist rule ended, a shock-therapy transition to capitalism deprived many Roma of employment, while fueling a revival in several countries of the old racist and Nazi-era hatreds. Increasingly, rightist regimes encouraged resentment against the “other” – the Roma – who were victimized by heightened violence and xenophobia.

A video documenting such violent attacks against Roma in the Czech Republic was shown to the August 2 Toronto commemoration. In it, an anti-Roma activist declares, “We all hate the Roma together here.”

Ronald Lee told the Toronto meeting of a June 23 attack on a Roma camp near Lviv, Ukraine, by a gang of masked attackers suspected of membership in a far-right nationalist gang. David Popp, 23, was stabbed to death in his sleep, and several other Roma were wounded. Eight attackers were arrested. Three days later, a pro-Roma solidarity action in Lviv chanted, “Nazis are around and the state is protecting them.” ⁴

Lee echoed this thought, noting that Canada backs the Ukraine regime with soldiers and military aid.

“I have a photo of Ukrainian soldiers, armed by Canada, waiving Nazi flags,” he told the August 2 meeting.

There is a pattern of government complicity with these crimes in several countries, writes British anthropologist Michael Stewart:

“There are now elected official, parties and civic movements for whom “problems with the Gypsies” lie at the heart of their grievances. This is something wholly new on the European political scene. Traditional European anti-Gypsy politics talked of Roma as nuisance, as a “public scandal,” even as a plague descended on the hardworking citizens. But never, not even in the 1930s, as a fundamental source of national woe. Parties have now emerged in Bulgaria and Hungaria with significant public support [which] place “the Gypsy menace” at the absolute centre of their politics.”⁵

Conditions faced by Roma in several East European states now resemble what they experienced in the run-up to Nazi rule. A People Uncounted calls these conditions “pre-genocidal,” in the sense that they create conditions in which genocidal attack could take place.

In this context, it is not surprising that many thousands of Roma over the past three decades have sought to enter Canada as refugees.

Roma Seek Refuge in Canada

Roma have lived in Canada for more than 100 years, as what Ronald Lee terms an “unrecognized patch in the national quilt.” They now number about 100,000.

Between 1998 and 2015, Canada received roughly 20,000 refugee claims from Roma in Europe. The Roma made up only about 5% of the total refugee claimants – a barely perceptible bump in the flow of applicants that has was generally declining in those years. (Source: www.canada.ca). Nonetheless, this flow was sufficient to elicit the Canadian government’s first-ever response to Roma immigration. It was unfavourable. Ottawa erected legislative and policy barriers to Roma settlement.

“Our Centre was born in 1997, mostly to provide services to a large number of Roma refugees fleeing from persecution and tyranny in Czechoslovakia,” Michael Butch explained. “At present, most Roma refugees flee from Romania, Hungary and the Ukraine.”⁶

Between 2010 and 2012, 8,605 asylum seekers arrived in Canada from Hungary – most of them were Roma impelled to leave by a wave of violence and intimidation. The Harper government responded with measures that drove the “success rate” — acceptance of Hungarian refugee claimants during those years — below 10%.

As part of this program, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney took exceptional measures to deter Roma from seeking safety in Canada. During a diplomatic visit to Hungary on October 9, 2012, in an unmistakable reference to the Roma, Kenney declared that he would stop “the abuse of our system and generosity by bogus asylum claimants.” The minister backed up this gross insult with a $13,000 billboard and media campaign to let to Roma know that Canada’s refugee determination system had changed and was now unfriendly to Roma refugee claims.⁷

Jason Kenny’s approach, in Ronald Lee’s opinion, is reminiscent of the notorious statement of a Canadian immigration official in 1939 regarding potential Jewish immigration, “none is too many.”

Since Justin Trudeau replaced Harper as prime minister, “the refugee situation is much improved,” according to Michael Butch, but many barriers that obstruct Roma refugees remain in place, and the number of Roma claimants is much reduced.

Resilience and Optimism

As for those Roma refugees who managed to win acceptance in Canada, how have they fared? Levine-Rasky reports her findings, based on extensive interviews with Roma refugees in Toronto. in an article, “Determined Nation,” and her book, Writing the Roma.

Levine-Rasky’s interview subjects that have run into their share of obstacles, setbacks, and – especially from landlords – outright anti-Roma discrimination. Yet her Roma informants often stress that despite the challenges, Canada offers them freedom, possibilities to enjoy life, and a future for their children. Among their responses:

• “Here they treat you as a human being. They don’t treat you like an idiot, or someone who doesn’t know any thing. You can use your brain. They treat you like a normal person… They didn’t treat me like a Gipsy.” (Frank, arrived 2000) (“Determined Nation,” p. 58)
• “[A]t university … I just saw, Cynthia, oh my God the people. Every kind of people just working with each other and I have the same opportunity what they doing.” (Lylugyi, arrived 2000) (Writing the Roma, 156.)
• “[My children] they’re so happy, because the whole class loves them, they love them. But it’s not love, it’s just a normal treatment…. When I go outside, for walking and they [are] always asking … It’s like normal fashion. ‘Where is your baby ? How is your kid? How is your life?’ … Those kind of questions normal here in Canada.” (Katalin, arrived 2011), “Determined Nation,” p. 58.

In their own words, the refugees explain that it is hard to leave their past behind, and they are still wary of people who hated, abused, and physically hurt them. In Toronto, they learn that they “don’t have to be ready to fight” to defend themselves against the skinheads; there are no guards, no police, no harassment.” They begin to feel that they are “living in a free country.” (Writing the Roma, p. 155.)

Women think about broadening their scope with education. “I can do everything I want to do and I can be anybody.” They modify their traditional role as wife and mother: “Women should study … Cultural things are okay at home, but if they want to integrate, they have to let go of some things.” (Writing the Roma, p. 156.)

In reading these testimonies, I was reminded of an emphatic statement in A People Uncounted: “If a local community does not permit persecution, it does not happen.” The contrary is also true. When the local community reacts with simple human decency, a great deal can be achieved.

I owe my life to that concept: as a Jew I survived the Nazi holocaust thanks to the courageous humanity of a welcoming community in rural France.

We have much to learn from the Roma and other immigrants that make up patches in the quilt of Canadian life today. They help us decide whether we are going to do the humane thing for people who seek refuge. We will soon be facing many more needing a helping hand. Even within our own borders, the fires and floods of climate change will disrupt the lives of thousands.

Will the community mindset in Canada be to protect only our belongings and ourselves? Or will we reach out for an inclusive, loving, peaceful and better future for the entire planet? That is the ultimate challenge symbolized by our response to our new Roma neighbours.

*

Suzanne Weiss is a Holocaust survivor based in Toronto, Canada. She is a member of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) and Not In Our Name: Jewish Voices Opposing Zionism. She blogs at suzanneberlinerweiss.wordpress.com.

Sources

Aaron Yeger (director) and Mark Swenker (producer), A People Uncounted: The Untold Story of the Roma, NFB, 2011.

Cynthia Levine-Rasky, Writing the Roma: Histories, Policies, and Communities in Canada, Toronto: Fernwood, 2016.

Cynthia Levine-Rasky, “‘They Didn’t Treat Me as a Gypsy’:Romani Refugees in Toronto,” Refuge, Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 32:3 (2016).

Cynthia Levine-Rasky, “Determined Nation,” Canada’s History, June-July 1918.

Ronald Lee, “Post-Communism Romani Migration in Canada,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 13:2 (2000).

Ronald Lee, “A New Look at Our Romani Origins and Diaspora,” Kopachi.

Lizzie Isaacs, “Remembering Zigeunernacht – The Night of the Gypsies, August 2, 1944,” Travellers Times, August 2018.

Michael Stewart, The Gypsy “Menace”: Populism and the New Anti-Gypsy Politics, London: Hurst, 2012.

1. Writing the Roma, p.71.

2. Interview with the author and John Riddell.

3. Ronald Lee, “Roma up to and during the Holocaust,” unpublished paper.

4. Al-Jazeera.

5. The Gypsy Menace xix.

6. Interview with author and John Riddell.

7. Levine-Rasky, “They Didn’t Treat Me as a Gypsy,” p. 6.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

As executives from Facebook and Twitter prepare to testify Wednesday on Capitol Hill, the social media monopolies are scrambling to demonstrate how far they have gone to implement censorship measures demanded by the intelligence agencies and dominant sections of the political establishment.

These actions are inevitably couched in the language of combatting “foreign interference” and “meddling” in “American democracy” via the promotion of “fake news.” However, the real target is the growth of social opposition among millions of workers and young people.

Throughout the United States, hundreds of thousands of workers are entering into struggle against low wages, the attack on social programs and the decay of social infrastructure. As the school year begins, teachers in the state of Washington have launched strike action, as the unions seek desperately to contain the anger of educators. There is overwhelming opposition among 370,000 US-based UPS workers to a new concessions contract demanded by their employers and the Teamsters union. The ruling class knows that any eruption of class struggle, in any sector, could set off a social explosion.

At the same time, popular support for socialism is growing. A recent Gallup poll showed that, for the first time, fewer than half of young people aged 18-29 have a positive view of capitalism, while more than half have a positive view of socialism.

To combat what they call “extreme” political views, the major technology companies have massively accelerated their efforts to monitor, police and control the flow of information online.

Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s product manager of Civic Engagement, told NBC News Monday that the company is building a “war room” to monitor its users’ statements on the 2018 US elections, allowing the social media monopoly to “take quick and decisive action.”

“We’ve been building this war room, a physical war room,” Chakrabarti said. Continuing the military metaphor, Chakrabarti told NBC, “Every single corner of this company has mobilized” to remove what he called “fake accounts” and to stop the “spread of misinformation and fake news.”

What the company means by “fake news’ and “misinformation” is shown in practice. Among the pages removed by Facebook was the official event page for last month’s anniversary protest against a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, South Carolina. The most recent batch of “fake” pages taken down by the company all expressed left-wing political views, including opposition to US and Israeli foreign policy and police violence.

The scope of the company’s enforcement actions is vast. The executive boasted that, over a six-month period, Facebook “detected, blocked and removed, over a billion fake accounts before they could do anything like spread fake news or misinformation.”

The company has doubled its security and enforcement team, from 10,000 people a year ago to 20,000 today, meaning that the majority of the company’s employees work to “police” its users’ statements. These include thousands of individuals with police and intelligence backgrounds.

“We basically have some of the best intelligence analysts from around the world,” Chakrabarti said.

Facebook is far from the only organization to use the analogy of “war” to describe the future of the internet. The cover story of this month’s edition of Foreign Affairs, the influential foreign policy magazine, is entitled “World War Web.” Its lead editorial argues that the “Internet open to all” is being transformed into something “different from, and in many ways worse than, what we have now.” The internet, as one article argues, “has turned into an active battlefield.”

By allowing “propagandists and extremists” to “push misleading or outright false content,” the internet is “robbing citizens of a basic understanding of reality,” claims Karen Kornbluh, a Senior Fellow for Digital Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It is hard to escape the conclusion that the technology that promised to give power to the powerless has ended up also hurting the very people it was supposed to help,” she writes.

The conclusion is clear. If the internet is “robbing citizens of a basic understanding of reality,” and “hurting the very people it was supposed to help,” wouldn’t they be better without it? Or, at the very least, aggressive measures must be taken by the state to enforce its own “basic understanding of reality”—that is, censorship.

The fundamental concern of the American ruling elite is not supposed campaigns originating in St. Petersburg or Tehran, but the growing political opposition by the working class, which is increasingly hungry for socialist politics.

And it is precisely left-wing, anti-war, and socialist organizations that have been the central targets of censorship by the technology giants.

In April of last year, Google announced measures to promote “authoritative content” over “alternative viewpoints,” leading to a massive drop in search traffic to left-wing websites. Search traffic to the World Socialist Web Site dropped 75 percent in the months following the changes, and has continued to trend downwards.

The US media has maintained almost total silence on Google’s censorship of left-wing political viewpoints. However, US President Trump’s claims last month that conservative news outlets were being silenced by Google has been met with a series of denials by Google, the print and broadcast media, and large sections of the US political establishment.

In responding to Trump’s claims, however, Senator Mark Warner, the leading figure in the Democrats’ drive to censor the internet, gave a Wired reporter a revealing response regarding how Google treats “extreme periodicals.”

“There are genuine concerns about some of the algorithms that almost create addiction tendencies, but those are generally about if you have a personal profile of searches, and you search a left-leaning story, they’re going to give you another, usually more extreme story, to keep feeding the beast.”

In other words, if people search for “social inequality” and “strike” on Google, they just might stumble onto “socialism” and the “extreme periodicals” on the left that advocate it.

What Warner is describing, in other words, is the exact method by which Google has targeted the World Socialist Web Site: by down-ranking its pages in searches on the topics it principally covers.

The growth of working class struggle also provides the way forward to defend the freedom of expression on the internet. As workers throughout the United States and internationally enter into struggle against the employers and their union lackeys they must take up the fight against internet censorship as a central political demand.

Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.

We thank all the readers who have contributed to our work by making donations or becoming members.

If you have the means to make a small or substantial donation to contribute to our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture would be much appreciated.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

The Turkish military has boosted its naval group in the Eastern Mediterranean as the battle of Idlib is looming in Syria, Turkey’s pro-government daily Yeni Safak reported on September 2. According to the daily, “Turkey, which previously had 10 warships in the region, dispatched several more naval vessels to the region, the exact number of which is unknown.”

The daily also recalled multiple remarks by the Turkish authorities claiming that the Idlib offensive by the Syrian Army will be disaster and lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.

The report comes amid the ongoing Russian naval drills in the same area, which started on September 1 and will continue until September 8.

It should be noted that on August 31 Turkey finally designated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a new brand of Jabhat al-Nusra – the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, as a terrorist group. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is the most powerful group in the militant stronghold of Idlib in northwestern Syria.

Ankara’s move followed a similar decision by the US State Department made on May 31. The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham brand was created by Jabhat al-Nusra in the framework of a series of efforts to hide the terrorist group’s essence, on February 8, 2017. So, both the US and Turkey needed more than a year to admit an open secret of the Syrian war. Most likely, this took such significant amount of time because these moves are an open admission that the so-called Idlib opposition is terrorists or allied with them.

On September 4, US President Donald Trump warned the Syrian government against combating terrorists in Idlib.

“President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!” Trump wrote on his Twitter page.

This as well as previous threats by the US-led bloc to punish Syria for active actions against terrorist groups in west of the country are described by the Damascus government as rough efforts to prolong the war, to overthrow the country’s government and to defend Israeli interests.

“The Syrian people and the Syrian government want the crisis to end today. However, it is impossible because of external interference led by the US,” Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem recently said in an interview with the Russian state media adding that “this interference satisfies the interests of Israel and runs counter to those of the Syrian people.” He added that the US goal “is to prolong the crisis.”

The militant held areas in western Syria and the heavy influence of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other terrorist group in the area have become the main point of the attention in the conflict since liberation of southern Syria from militants by government forces this summer. The defeat of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib will mark a de-facto victory of the Damascus government over al-Qaeda-like terrorist groups often described by the mainstream media and Western diplomats as opposition and will open way to a peaceful solution of the crisis. However, far from all foreign powers involved in the standoff are interested in this.

*

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront, 

Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.

We thank all the readers who have contributed to our work by making donations or becoming members.

If you have the means to make a small or substantial donation to contribute to our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture would be much appreciated.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Newspapers around the globe are telling us that contactless payments are thriving, cash is rapidly disappearing and cashless society is practically around the corner. 

You don’t need cash to pay for your groceries anymore, and don’t be afraid if you forgot to take your wallet with you – just use your smartphone. Carl Scheible, Managing Director of PayPal UK, summarizes [1] the current situation:

“We’ll see a huge change over the next few years in the way we shop and pay for things … you’ll be able to leave your wallet at home and use your mobile as the 21st century digital wallet.”

Some are dissatisfied with this state of affairs. In this case, the classical tactic of intimidation becomes the main argument of champions of cashless society. Cash is used by criminals; our children can buy drugs with cash; cash supports the shadow economy and encourages tax evasion – these are just some of these loud statements.

Ability to present control as protection is based on constant calls to think about an external enemy, that is terrorists or mafia. This element of moral panic is contrasted with friendly and unobtrusive advertising of digital payments. The newborn cashless society is emerging like the sunrise, washing away these dangerous dirty banknotes with the rays of hygienic and convenient digital salvation.

This rosy picture is completed by speeches of academicians, economists and futurists that live in green suburbs, fly business class and demonize bills and coins.

“Without cash, we would live in a much safer, less violent world with enhanced social cohesion, since the major incentive fueling all illegal activity [i.e. cash]… would disappear,” believes [2] Guillermo de la Dehesa, a Spanish economist and current international advisor to Banco Santander and Goldman Sachs.

And the trick is working. Cash is being excluded from the official economy, and tellers are watching with suspicion while you are fumbling for coins in your wallet. There is a sign on every other store: “No cash accepted“.

However, the same system that facilitates the unhampered flow of information and its use for commercial purposes, also provides technically dexterous criminals with almost limitless opportunities to capitalize on their neighbor. How is it possible? Let’s see.

Why it’s wise to be a little bit paranoid

It won’t take long to figure out why we have become vulnerable to cyber crooks: 

• In 2017, 2.73 billion people worldwide will use [3] a mobile phone to connect to the internet
• Among people under the age of 24, four in ten internet users were using [4] online banking, while over one in two internet users between the age of 65 and 74 were engaging in internet banking across the EU in 2016.
• Nearly two thirds of internet users in the European Union made [5] online purchases in 2015.

The online world is penetrating into all aspects of our everyday life, from paying taxes to hiring and changing the mailing address. And as commerce is turning digital, we are becoming increasingly defenseless against intruders. Steve Morgan, the founder and CEO at Cybersecurity Ventures, published [6] some figures regarding the issue:

• Cybercrime damage costs will hit $6 trillion annually by 2021
• About 6 billion people will become victims of cyber-attacks by 2022
• Global ransomware damage costs are predicted to exceed $5 billion in 2017

These are impressive figures – which is not surprising, because it’s profitable to be a cybercriminal. Trustwave claims spammers can earn [7] up to 90,000 euros a month. Price for various malicious software starts from 120 euros while the profit can grow ten times bigger.

It doesn’t get any easier with the fact that cybercriminals are incredibly difficult to catch. The world industry of cyber security is still not completely sure who stole the money from the bank of Bangladesh – and it’s been more than a year since then! 

Leo Taddeo, a former New York FBI special agent in charge of fighting cybercrime, explains [8]:

“Hackers use tools to disguise their IP address. Other technologies like Tor and encryption add other layers to make it difficult to identify them. These tools are widely available. They make it a resource-intensive and time-consuming task to find hackers.”

Worst of all, users remain unprotected, being subject to risks of theft. Fair and square, the bank should be held responsible regardless of guilt, since it carries out risk-based activities. However, this rarely happens in reality – the only exception is that the money will be returned in full when the creditor’s fault is proven. Yet, it is incredibly difficult to prove the guilt, because banks always provide themselves with a backdoor for cases like that. Simply put, nothing depends on you with non-cash payments, and there’s no adequate protection.

To be the sole owner of your money

Is it possible to avoid these risks? Perhaps it’s worth going back a bit and regaining responsibility for your own money – with help of cash.

Keeping a part of money in cash as a war chest allows us to rely on ourselves. If there is no public confidence in non-cash settlements, then no measures, even punitive ones, will help.

Partly for this reason, cash payments are still very popular. We need cash not only because of the lack of necessary infrastructure and logistics in remote geographic areas, but also due to growing crises in the politics and economy of many countries, distrust of banking and payment systems, cyber risks of cyber-attacks and cyber-fraud. Despite the ecstatic claims that cash is dead, the demand for cash is still climbing up [9] across the United States and Europe.

After all, if the cash is really “dying”, then why does its share in money turnover is growing, and why investments in improving cash circulation are so large? No one would waste huge sums on initially unpromising projects.

Source: techjury

*

William Davis is a PhD student in Economics.

Notes

1. www.cgap.org/blog/allure-cashless-society
2. wolfstreet.com/2015/04/25/don-quijones-war-on-cash-quotes-to-cashless-society/
3. www.emarketer.com/content/emarketer-updates-worldwide-internet-and-mobile-user-figures
4. www.independent.ie/business/irish-above-eu-average-for-online-banking-but-lowest-for-news-35991299.html
5. ecommercenews.eu/65-internet-users-eu-shopped-online-2015/
6. www.csoonline.com/article/3153707/security/top-5-cybersecurity-facts-figures-and-statistics.html
7. www.sentryo.net/the-new-professional-cybercrime-industry-ever-more-lucrative-and-threatening/
8. www.raconteur.net/technology/catching-hackers-is-not-getting-easier
9. www.cashrepository.com/2017/03/myth-cash-demand-is-declining/ 

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

This article was originally published in April 2013.

Considering the possibility of a truly proletarian art, the great English literary critic William Empson once wrote, “the reason an English audience can enjoy Russian propagandist films is that the propaganda is too remote to be annoying.” Perhaps this is why American artists and bohemians have so often taken to the political iconography of far-flung regimes, in ways both romantic and ironic. One nation’s tedious socialist realism is another’s radical exotica.

But do U.S. cultural exports have the same effect? One need only look at the success of our most banal branding overseas to answer in the affirmative. Yet no one would think to add Abstract Expressionist painting to a list that includes fast food and Walt Disney products. Nevertheless, the work of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning wound up as part of a secret CIA program during the height of the Cold War, aimed at promoting American ideals abroad.

The artists themselves were completely unaware that their work was being used as propaganda. On what agents called a “long leash,” they participated in several exhibitions secretly organized by the CIA, such as “The New American Painting” (see catalog cover at top), which visited major European cities in 1958-59 and included such modern primitive works as surrealist William Baziotes’ 1947 Dwarf (below) and 1951’s Tournament by Adolph Gottlieb above.

Of course what seems most bizarre about this turn of events is that avant-garde art in America has never been much appreciated by the average citizen, to put it mildly. American Main Streets harbor undercurrents of distrust or outright hatred for out-there, art-world experimentation, a trend that filters upward and periodically erupts in controversies over Congressional funding for the arts. A 1995 Independent article on the CIA’s role in promoting Abstract Expressionism describes these attitudes during the Cold War period:

In the 1950s and 1960s… the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art—President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: “If that’s art, then I’m a Hottentot.” As for the artists themselves, many were ex-communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.

Why, then, did they receive such backing? One short answer:

This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy’s hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy.

The one-way relationship between modernist painters and the CIA—only recently confirmed by former case officer Donald Jameson—supposedly enabled the agency to make the work of Soviet Socialist Realists appear, in Jameson’s words, “even more stylized and more rigid and confined than it was.” (See Evdokiya Usikova’s 1959 Lenin with Villagers below, for example). For a longer explanation, read the full article at The Independent. It’s the kind of story Don DeLillo would cook up.

William Empson goes on to say that “a Tory audience subjected to Tory propaganda of the same intensity” as Russian imports, “would be extremely bored.” If he is correct, it’s likely that the average true believer socialist in Europe was already bored silly by Soviet-approved art. What surprises in these revelations is that the avant-garde works that so radically altered the American art world and enraged the average congressman and taxpayer were co-opted and collected by suave U.S. intelligence officers like so many Shepard Fairey posters.

*

All images in this article are from the author.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission alleged that Beijing is running a massive influence operation inside of America’s institutions.

The recently released report raises the alarm about what its authors claim are China’s clandestine efforts “to outsource its messaging in part because it believes foreigners are more likely to accept propaganda if it appears to come from non-Chinese sources”, which has supposedly taken the form of an extensive campaign to, as Josh Rogin from the Washington Post puts in the passage that he’s cited in, “influence the influencers” and “get Americans to carry [China’s] message to other Americans”. Some of the mentioned examples include its purported financing of various Beltway think tanks and also the creation of socio-cultural NGOs that are accused of being intelligence fronts.

Although not openly stated, it’s strongly alluded that China is partaking in a so-called “long march through the institutions” in order to change American policies and perceptions from within. This notion was infamously abused during the McCarthyite witch hunts when the US “deep state” publicly purged a rival faction and its suspected civil society supporters on the basis that they were treasonously plotting to undermine the country. Something similar might be happening nowadays as well if the Trump Administration uses the commission’s findings to take action against its institutional foes and simultaneously send a signal to Beijing during the ongoing so-called “trade war”.

Even in the event that the accusations levelled against the People’s Republic are true, whether in whole or in part, it wouldn’t really be anything groundbreaking because the US has been practicing these sorts of influence operations against other countries for decades now. That’s not to dismiss the potential significance of this through “whatabouttism”, but just to make the point that the US might be experiencing blowback after opening up Pandora’s Box and losing its erstwhile monopoly over these perception management tactics. In fact, the proactive desire to safeguard itself from this scenario might even explain why the country secretly started turning into a “national security state” years ago.

Today’s interconnected society provides fertile ground for influencing foreign audiences through the indirect means described in the report and previously mastered by the US, and the only way for the American “deep state” to protect its interests and retain control of the domestic narrative is to paradoxically go against its publicly stated values of openness, free speech, and the marketplace of ideas. Most countries such as Russia acknowledge taking preventative measures against these tactics, but the US is in a dilemma because one of the foundations of its soft power is that it would never do such a thing that it previously attacked others for.

Snowden exposed its double standards in this respect and the irreparable harm that his factual revelations inflicted on America’s reputational standing abroad is one of the reasons why he could be executed by his government if he was ever captured. Now, however, the US can attempt to “justify” the extensive surveillance that it carries out against its citizens on the grounds that it’s necessary for protecting them from shadowy influence operations. Should it opportunistically go forward with that narrative, then the stunning reversal on this issue could signal that the country is also prepared to shift its position on other soft power topics as Trump continues to lastingly redefine America’s global image.

*

This article was originally published on Oriental Review.

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

Featured image is from the author.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

One of the biggest open questions of the 21st century is whether 144,000 different chemicals swirling throughout the world are properly tested and analyzed for toxicity. By almost all accounts, the scale of toxic risk is unknown. This may be the biggest tragedy of all time, a black eye of enormous proportions.

Correspondingly and very likely, not yet 100% proven but probably 99%, as a result of ubiquitous chemical presence, one hundred fifty million (150,000,000) Americans have chronic disease, including high cholesterol, high blood pressure, arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, fibromyalgia, cancer, stroke, asthma, cystic fibrosis, obesity, and osteoporosis.¹  Why?

According to Dr. Paul Winchester, who discovered the link between chemicals, like pesticides atrazine and glyphosate aka Roundup and epigenetic human alteration, the findings are:

The most important next discovery in all of medicine.²

Dr. Winchester was one of the researchers/authors of “Atrazine Induced Epigenetic Transgenerational Inheritance of Disease, Lean Phenotype and Sperm Epimutation Pathology Biomarkers,” PLOS, published September 20, 2017.

The grisly underlying message of that study is as clear as a bell: Chemicals found far and wide throughout America alter human hormones as well as human DNA, which passes along generation-to-generation known as transgenerational inheritance.

Frankly, nothing more should need to be said to spur outrage and pissed-off people all across the land because, if that seminal study is correct in its analysis that chemicals mess up/distort/disrupt human hormones and alter human DNA in a destructive manner, then the streets of America should be filled with people wielding pots and pans, probably pitchforks, and ready for the fight of a lifetime because, by any account, there has been massive failure of ethical standards and regulations of chemicals for decades and decades. Who’s to blame?

The primary targets are (1) the EPA and (2) FDA and (3) pesticide/chemical manufacturers, like Monsanto, and ultimately the U.S. Congress.

The chemicals in the aforementioned study include the herbicide atrazine, one of the most widely used herbicides in the country and commonly detected in drinking water. The study demonstrated that atrazine is an endocrine disruptor that negatively alters human hormonal systems, as chronic diseases overwhelm American society.

The European Union (EU) banned atrazine in 2003 because of persistent groundwater contamination. However, as for the EPA in America, it’s okay, no problem. But, doubtlessly one of those jurisdictions is dead wrong because it’s a black and white matter. Either toxic chemicals horribly messes up DNA and cause chronic diseases or not, no middle ground. As for America, chronic disease is at epidemic levels at 60% of the population. Where, why, and how if not from environmental sources?

Yet, the most disturbing issue is the epigenetic impact, meaning that environmental factors impact the health of people and also their descendants. It stays with and passes along the human genome generation-by-generation-by-generation.

According to Dr. Winchester:

This is a really important concept that is difficult to teach the public, and when I say the public, I include my clinical colleagues.³

Still, atrazine is not the only human hormone-altering chemical in the environment. Dr. Winchester tested nearly 20 different chemicals and all demonstrated epigenetic effects, for example, all of the chemicals reduced fertility, even in the 3rd generation.

Still, why do 150,000,000 Americans have chronic diseases?

Researchers believe that every adult disease extant is linked to epigenetic origins. If confirmed over time with additional research, the study is a blockbuster that goes to the heart of public health and attendant government regulations.

According to Dr. Winchester:

This is a huge thing that is going to change how we understand the origin of disease. But a big part of that is that it will change our interpretation of what chemicals are safe. In medicine I can’t give a drug to somebody unless it has gone through a huge amount of testing. But all these chemicals haven’t gone through anything like that. We’ve been experimented on for the last 70 years, and there’s not one study on multigenerational effects.⁴

The U.S. Congress passed a new chemical safety law for the first time in 40 years with the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act in 2016, but the provisions for regulation are totally overwhelmed by the tasks at hand.  For starters, more than 60,000 chemicals came to the market without safety testing, and the burden of proof for regulators previously was so burdensome that the EPA wasn’t able to ban asbestos when necessary.

As for the effectiveness of the new law, consider this statement in the following article, “It Could Take Centuries for EPA to Test all the Unregulated Chemicals Under a New Landmark Bill,” PBS SoCal, June 22, 2016:

The new law requires EPA to test tens of thousands of unregulated chemicals currently on the market, and the roughly 2,000 new chemicals introduced each year, but quite slowly. The EPA will review a minimum of 20 chemicals at a time, and each has a seven-year deadline. Industry may then have five years to comply after the new rule is made. At that pace it could take centuries for the agency to finish its review.

If that’s the best Congress can do to protect its citizens from toxic chemicals, they should be run out of town tarred and feathered on a rail. One more reason to abandon America’s socio-economic-politico scenario; maybe socialism would work better at protecting citizens.

Meantime, children are caught up smack dab in the middle of this 70-year experiment of untested and poorly/ill-tested chemicals.

Roundup (glyphosate) for breakfast? Yes, independent lab tests by Eurofins Analytical Laboratories found hefty doses of the weed-killer Roundup in oat cereals, oatmeal, granola, and snack bars:

EWG tested more than a dozen brands of oat-based foods to give Americans information about dietary exposures that government regulators are keeping secret. In April, internal emails obtained by the nonprofit US Right to Know revealed that the Food and Drug Administration has been testing food for glyphosate for two years and has found ‘a fair amount,’ but the FDA has not released the findings.⁵

California state scientists and the World Health Organization have linked glyphosate to cancer. Yet, the chemical is pervasively found in products. Yes, on regular ole grocery store shelves.

EWG found the chemical in several cereals such as Back to Nature Classic Granola, Quaker Simply Granola Oats, Honey, Raisins & Almonds, Great Value Original Instant Oatmeal, Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Barbara’s Multigrain Spoonfuls Original, Quaker Old Fashioned Oats, etc.

Ironically, they all sound so very very healthy.

Postscript:

Earth, and all life on it, are being saturated with man-made chemicals…For the first time in the Earth’s history a single species – ourselves – is poisoning the entire planet… It is arguably the most under-rated, under-investigated and poorly understood of all the existential threats that humans face in the twenty-first century.⁶

*

Notes

1. Rand Corporation Review 2017. 
2. EcoWatch, August 16, 2018. 
3. EcoWatch. 
4. EcoWatch.
5. Alexis Temkin, Ph.D. Toxicologist, “Breakfast With a Dose of Roundup?” Environmental Working Group (EWG), August 15, 2018.
6. Julian Cribb, Surviving the 21st Century, Springer Publishing/Switzerland, p. 106. 

Featured image is from CounterPunch.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above 

The ferocious sense of enmity that existed between John McCain, the late US Senator, and Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, was quite palpable. While McCain was never an occupant of the White House, he was nonetheless a very prominent and permanent feature in the Cold War which developed during the 2000s.  He was always an influential figure operating openly as well as covertly during the defining events which have shaped relations between both countries: Georgia, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, as well as the machinations involved in first prising Montenegro from Serbia and then removing it from the Russian orbit of influence. Where some saw McCain as a key advocate for the export of American liberty to areas of the world afflicted by tyranny, others see Putin as the central figure in trying to arrest the destructive attempts by the United States to impose a global imperium after the fall of the Soviet Union. An exploration of the rivalry between both men, one an avowed America patriot and the other a Russian nationalist, provides a key thread in charting, as well as understanding why the United States and Russia have become dangerously at loggerheads in recent times.

The deep-seated mutual loathing between John McCain and Vladimir Putin was a well known and played out over many years. It is perhaps correct to state that McCain’s malice often came out in a more forthright manner. For instance, soon after it was announced in 2011 that Putin would again be running for the office of President of the Russian Federation, McCain issued a tweet saying that Russia faced its own Arab Spring”. While many implied that McCain was forecasting that Putin would perish in a similar way to the former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, Putin opined that McCain’s comment had been directed at Russia in general. But he could not resist retorting that McCain had evidently “lost his mind” while being held captive by the North Vietnamese. To that barb, McCain mockingly responded:

“Dear Vlad, is it something I said?”

By all accounts, both men only met once at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. But they often appeared to be at each other’s throats. And this was not limited to intermittent threats and diatribes issued on social media, in speeches or at news conferences. Their hostility was an almost permanent feature in the discourse associated with the series of geopolitical confrontations that have occured over the past decade between the United States and the Russian Federation. The conflicts in Georgia, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, as well as the accession of Montenegro to NATO, all reflected the fundamental ideological division between them.

McCain’s consistent support for American interventionism, predicated on a belief in its exceptionalism, had the objective of maintaining US global leadership, while Putin’s nationalism was consistent with his objective of reestablishing multi-polarity. While McCain’s stance is characterised in positive terms as an insistence that ‘freedom’ should prevail over ‘tyranny’, Putin’s position is often portrayed by his supporters as one that is boldly resisting the imposition of American hegemony and even what is referred to as a ‘globalist agenda’.

Both men accused each other of fomenting a new ‘Cold War’. To McCain, Putin was the leader of a revanchist Russian state intent on reclaiming the territories lost after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. In 2008, during his acceptance speech after being nominated as presidential candidate at the Republican Party Convention, McCain lashed out at Putin and the Russian oligarchs who, “rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power … (are) reassembling the old Russian Empire.”

Putin had, after all, in a speech three years earlier, bemoaned the collapse of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” As John Bolton put it in the aftermath of the crisis sparked by the removal of Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014:

“It’s clear (Putin) wants to re-establish Russian hegemony within the space of the former Soviet Union. Ukraine is the biggest prize, that’s what he’s after. The occupation of the Crimea is a step in that direction.”

Putin, on the other hand, considered McCain to be the promoter-in-chief of the American militarism that had germinated in the post-Cold War era. Those who support this view posit that American policy has, since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, being informed by two specific geopolitical doctrines inspired respectively by Paul Wolfowitz and Zbigniew Brzeziński. The Wolfowitz Doctrine holds that in the aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States must prevent the rise of another power capable of competing with it globally in the military and economic spheres, while the Brzeziński Doctrine provides that Russia should be intimidated while the US works towards its dismantling; the objective being to reduce Russia to a state of vassalage, with its role being restricted to that of supplying the energy needs of the West.

When McCain sneered at Russia for being, in his words, “a gas station masquerading as a country”, he was not merely referring to Russia’s dependence on its oil and gas revenues for most of its national revenue. He was also hinting at the outcome prescribed by Brzeziński: Russia’s has no valid role in the world other than to pliantly provide its energy resources. It had no business opposing the United States in its god-given right to dominate the world.

During an interview in which McCain’s anti-Russian animus was discussed, Putin acknowledged that Russia’s possession of nuclear weapons was the decisive factor which enabled it to “practise independent politics”. In other words, having a nuclear capability, unlike those countries that have been destroyed by American intervention, gave Russia the ability to resist what he believed to be the aggressive foreign policy championed by the likes of McCain.

From the Russian perspective, Western animosity towards Russia and the incessant campaign by the Western media to demonise Putin is not based on heartfelt concerns about human rights and democracy, but is predicated on the fact that he brought to an end the wholesale plunder of Russia’s resources by Western interests during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. Putin is also reviled for having the temerity to obstruct the American programme of effecting regime change in Syria as it did in Iraq and Libya and hopes to finish off by with Iran. The conduct of John McCain, and his attitude towards Putin, has been emblematic of this animosity.

When war broke out between Russia and Georgia in 2008. Putin accused McCain of having instigated the conflict in order to bolster his chances during his presidential run against Barack Obama.

“The suspicion arises”, Putin said, “that someone in the United States especially created this conflict to make the situation tenser and create a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US president.”

McCain’s comment that the conflict had been mistakenly instigated by Georgia’s then president, Mikheil Saakashvili, did not impress Putin whose reading of events was that Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia had been encouraged by NATO.

In other conflicts where Russian interests were at stake, McCain was at the forefront. While NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya had been permitted by UNited Nations Resolution 1973, a decision based on the ‘Right to Protect’ doctrine, Putin, who at the time was serving as prime minister, bitterly regretted President Dmitri Medvedev’s decision to support the resolution. Referring to it as “a medieval call for a crusade”, Putin correctly sensed what would transpire because the resolution permitted the use of air strikes. Gaddafi was overthrown and in the process lynched by Islamist forces that had been trained and supported by NATO countries.

John McCain had been a key voice in calling for US-intervention. He had gone to the city of Benghazi, a stronghold of the anti-Gaddafi insurgents where he walked around the streets and referred to the rebels as “heroic”. A disgusted Putin complained that

“When the so-called civilised community, with all its might pounces on a small country, and ruins infrastructure that has been built over generations – well, I don’t know, is this good or bad? I do not like it.”

He was also mindful that Russia stood to lose $4 billion in arms contracts with the Gaddafi government, and would doubtless have concurred with the protest issued by the then serving ambassador in Tripoli that Medvedev’s inaction by not blocking the resolution and thereby endangering the military contracts had amounted to a “betrayal of Russia’s interests.”

A few years later, while Libya functioned as a failed state, McCain would make another visit during which he gave an honour to Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a prominent Islamist leader of the insurgency. [“former” Libya Islamic Fighting Group linked to Al Qaeda]

McCain was also a visible presence in Ukraine during the Maidan protests that led to the overthrow of the government of Viktor Yanukovytch in February 2014. As in Libya, he walked the streets of Kiev. He addressed crowds and declared that Ukraine’s destiny lay with Europe. It was of course a plea to Ukraine to jettison itself outside the orbit of Russia. And while McCain’s actions in Kiev were viewed by his supporters as being in keeping with his resolve to expand the frontiers of liberty, others offered a different interpretation. According to George Friedman, the founder and CEO of Strafor, an American geopolitical intelligence platform and publisher which has been referred to as “The Shadow CIA”, the removal of Yanukovych “was the most blatant coup in history.”

Using neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist groups such as Pravy Sektor as ‘street muscle’, the American intelligence and the State Department facilitated a change of government, an enterprise that was captured in part by phone taps which revealed Victoria Nuland, the Under Secretary of State for Eastern European and Eurasian Affairs, naming those who would hold key offices of state after Yanukovych’s ouster.

McCain, like Nuland, had met with a range of anti-Russian Ukrainian figures including Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the far right Svoboda Party, with whom he was photographed.

Meanwhile in Moscow, Putin calculated that the installation, by the Americans, of an ultra-nationalist and Russophobic regime on Russia’s doorstep imperilled Russia’s national security. So in order to secure its continued access to the Mediterranean Sea through one of its only warm water parts where its Black Sea Fleet resided, Putin set in motion the train of events which would lead to a referendum and the re-absorption of Crimea in Russia.

McCain denounced Putin’s action as illegal, and which was part of Putin’s objective of restoring Russia on the borders of the Soviet Union. In a BBC interview, he even compared Putin’s policy towards Crimea to those taken by Adolf Hitler.

He also led the calls for sanctions to be imposed on Russia. One of Putin’s responses was impose sanctions on McCain, an action to which he responded by tweeting:

“I’m proud to be sanctioned by Putin – I’ll never cease in my efforts (and) dedication to freedom (and) independence of Ukraine, which includes Crimea.”

McCain was active in another theatre where American and Russian interests collided. In Syria, he did not stop at calling for a more direct course of action from the United States aimed at overthrowing Bashar al-Assad. In December 2013, he visited insurgents -announced as belonging to the “Free Syrian Army”- who he described as “brave fighters who are risking their lives for freedom”. Both designations were untrue. The “freedom fighters”, more accurately defined by the Syrian government as “terrorists”, were like the rebels who McCain met in Benghazi: insurgents with an Islamist agenda.

The ‘Free Syrian Army’ was a largely non-existent militia formed by the Western powers which failed to grow into the large army that was envisaged. Moreover, many groups which met Western representatives such as McCain often announced themselves as being part of the ‘Free Syrian Army’, but reverted back to their true identities which more often than not were jihadist militias bearing an allegiance to al-Qaeda.

This modus operandi was alluded to by Putin in his speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2015 when announcing a more direct form of intervention in the Syrian conflict:

“First, they are armed and trained and then they defect to the so-called Islamic State. Besides, the Islamic State itself did not just come from nowhere. It was also initially forged as a tool against undesirable secular regimes.”

The destruction of Syria sought by McCain was predicated on the neoconservative policy of removing the leaders of those Arab states, most of them secular, who were resistant to Israel’s regional hegemony. The refusal of Assad to participate in building a gas pipeline supplying energy from pro-Western states in the Gulf also played a part in the decision of the United States to arm Islamist proxies.

But Russian intervention, in concert with the efforts of Iran and Hezbollah, has enabled the Syrian Army to reclaim most of the Syrian territory that had been taken by groups such as the ‘al Nusra Front’ and the ‘Islamic State’. It was a turn of events which angered and frustrated McCain who referred to President Barack Obama’s policy as “toothless”. He advocated a strategy of creating “safe zones”, ostensibly to protect Syrian civilians from what he termed “violations by Mr. Assad, Mr. Putin and extremist forces”. The strategy of ‘safe zones’, a technique used by NATO when confronting and destroying the Libyan army in 2011, was acknowledged by a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document as a technique through which the creation of independent territorial entities could be created, in the case of Syria, a Salafist emirate in its eastern region.

But if the goal of regime change in Syria, so vigorously encouraged by McCain, was frustrated by Putin, his efforts in enabling the state of Montenegro to be first prised from Serbia and then granted NATO membership status doubtlessly succeeded in doing the same to Putin.

McCain’s actions in helping to enable the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to buy up Montenegro’s aluminium industry, perplexed observers who accused him of hypocrisy in allowing a man, who at the time was dubbed ‘Putin’s Oligarch’, to control the aluminum-dependent Montenigrin economy. Deripaska’s supposed closeness to Putin at the time convinced some that McCain was actually working for his arch-enemy.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Montenegro was being bought up en masse by Western financiers such as Nathaniel Rothschild and many of its leaders were being paid off to seek independence from Serbia as a prelude to it joining the Atlantic Alliance. When Senator Rand Paul blocked the initial Senate conferment on ratification of Montenigrin accession, McCain took the floor and furiously accused Paul of being an agent of Vladimir Putin.

Repeatedly invoking the name of Putin, McCain warned:

“If there is objection, you are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin… I have no idea why anyone would object to this, except that I will say, if they object: they are now carrying out the desires and ambitions of Vladimir Putin.”

McCain had played his part in an elaborate plot aimed at checking Russian interests. Placing Montenegro into the Western sphere succeeded in denting Russian influence in an area which is traditionally linked to Russia because of the Christian Orthodox faith of its Slav inhabitants. The subsequent drilling for oil off the pristine Adriatic coast is calculated to nullify Russian designs on a South Stream pipeline.

McCain revelled in the news that a coup, allegedly planned to occur on the day of parliamentary elections in October 2016, had been foiled. Its participants were claimed to have been Kremlin-backed Serbian and Russian nationalists who were acting in a last ditch attempt to prevent the country’s accession to NATO. McCain took to the senate floor to make a speech (which he later converted into a newspaper column) to denounce Putin.

Claiming that “Vladimir Putin’s Russia is on the offensive against Western democracy”, McCain linked the Montenigrin plot to the alleged Russian interference in the last American presidential elections and others by writing that it was “just one phase of Putin’s long-term campaign to weaken the United States, to destabilise Europe, to break the NATO alliance, to undermine confidence in Western values, and to erode any and all resistance to his dangerous view of the world.”

While doubts have been raised concerning the existence of a serious plot because the alleged ring appeared to be composed of a motley band emanating from disparate and innocuous trades and professions -some of whom were elderly and others who reneged on their confessions- Montenegrin accession remains a blow to Russian interests.

McCain often placed the blame of a US-Russian Cold War squarely on Putin’s shoulders. When in 2007, Putin complained that the US was seeking to establish a “uni-polar” world, it was McCain who led the Western retort by accusing Putin of presiding over an autocratic regime whose “actions at home and abroad conflict so fundamentally with the core values of Euro-Atlantic democracies.” After the conference, the BBC reported that “in the corridors there were dark mutterings by some about a new Cold War”.

If there is any truth to John McCain’s assertion that Vladimir Putin was treating global politics as a “Cold War Chessboard”, then his involvement in the Montenigrin intrigue demonstrated that he was a willing player in this ‘Great Game’ of international brinkmanship. Further, McCain’s repeated accusation of Putin being the initiator of the disharmonious state of relations between Russia and the United States is disputed by experts such as Stephen Cohen, a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton. Cohen convincingly argues that Putin’s actions on the world stage in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria have been reactive and not proactive.

We have the word of McCain himself to confirm this about the Russo-Georgian conflict which he claimed had been “a mistake” initiated by Mikheil Saakashvili. And Putin’s withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgian territory, which had long been a province of both Russian and Soviet empires, presents evidence that he is not working towards a ‘Tanaka Memorial’-style plan of territorial expansion.

The same may be said of Ukraine, in regard to which Putin refused the pleas of Russian ultranationalists to invade and annexe the Russian-speaking eastern part of the country. His refusal led to allegations of ‘weakness’ from hardliners. The Russian armed forces, of course, had the capability of invading and conquering the whole of Ukraine. Putin’s measured response in limiting his response to American actions such as reabsorbing Crimea also applies to Syria where Russian intervention came after much prevarication by a chief of state who unsurprisingly worried about sending the Russian military into a quagmire of the sort which the Soviet Union became embroiled in the 1980s.

McCain, on the other hand, supported the idea of US military intervention across the globe. He is on record as supporting virtually every US-led or US-backed overt or covert military action before and after the events of September 11th 2001. His support for American militarism and his prominence as a high-ranking US senator intimately involved in national security affairs made his rivalry with Vladimir Putin something of an inevitability. In many ways, McCain embodies the American half of the new Cold War because his longevity as a senator provided the basis for his continuous presence in the realm of national security and foreign policy. Presidents came and contended with Vladimir Putin, but McCain remained an ever present figure until his death.

McCain appeared to be as convinced about the ineluctable force of evil Vladimir Putin represented as he was of the sanctity of the wars he made in the cause of spreading American liberty. When Donald Trump responded to an interviewer’s allegation that Putin murdered his political adversaries by inquiring whether the interviewer thought “our country’s so innocent”, McCain exploded on the senate floor and insisted that there was no moral equivalence between the United States and “Putin’s Russia”. Loudly tapping on the lectern he boomed:

“I repeat, there is no moral equivalence between that butcher and thug and KGB colonel and the United States of America.”

Putin’s feelings about McCain are no less gentle. He once specifically alluded to McCain having “civilian blood on his hands” during his time of service in the Vietnam War. And he made clear that he held McCain, alongside other American political leaders, responsible for the murder of Muammar Gaddafi, once asking whether McCain was unable “to live without such horrible and disgusting sights as the butchering of Gaddafi”. It is clear that Putin, like many of McCain’s critics who accused him of being a perpetual warmonger, hold him jointly culpable for the millions of deaths that have flowed from American backed military interventions.

Indeed, when during his 2015 UN speech, Putin criticised “policies based on self-conceit and belief in one’s exceptionality”, he might have had McCain in mind. Far from pushing the frontiers of liberty and order, the wars that McCain supported in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria were marked by failure. As Putin put it,

“Rather than bringing about reforms, an aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself. Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.”

While Putin would concede to ‘liking’ McCain “to a certain extent..because of his patriotism…and…his consistency in fighting for the interests of his own country”, McCain never put on record any qualities that he felt Putin possessed. He died taking his anti-Putin animus to the grave. First he arranged for a Russian dissident named Vladimir Kara-Murza to serve as one of the dignitaries to carry his coffin to the front of the Washington National Cathedral at a memorial service. Then in another parting shot at his nemesis, McCain specifically requested for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to be seated beside each other during the ceremony.

These gestures were the last of what must surely rank as one of the bitterest international political rivalries of recent times.

*

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Adeyinka Makinde.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Il polverone politico-mediatico sollevato dallo scontro tra «europeisti» e «sovranisti» nasconde quella che invece è la realtà: un europeismo senza Europa e un sovranismo senza sovranità.

A innalzare strumentalmente la bandiera dell’europeismo è in questo momento il presidente Macron, per far avanzare la potenza francese non solo in Europa ma in Africa.

La Francia, promotrice con gli USA della guerra NATO che nel 2011 demolì lo Stato libico (nella quale l’Italia svolse un ruolo di primo piano), cerca con tutti i mezzi di controllare la Libia:

·         le sue ricche risorse – enormi riserve di petrolio, gas naturale, acqua fossile
·         lo stesso territorio libico di grande importanza geostrategica.

A tal fine Macron appoggia le milizie che combattono il «governo» di Fayez al-Serraj, sostenuto dall’Italia che con l’ENI mantiene grossi interessi nel paese. Questo è solo uno degli esempi di come l’Unione europea, fondata sugli interessi delle oligarchie economiche e finanziarie delle maggiori potenze, si stia sgretolando per contrasti di natura economica e politica, di cui la questione dei migranti è solo la punta dell’iceberg.

Di fronte al predominio di Francia e Germania, il governo 5 Stelle-Lega ha fatto una precisa scelta: accrescere il peso dell’Italia legandola ancora più strettamente agli Stati uniti. Da qui l’incontro del presidente Conte col presidente Trump, a cui i media italiani hanno dato scarso rilievo. Eppure in quell’incontro sono state prese decisioni che influiscono notevolmente sulla collocazione internazionale dell’Italia.

È stato anzitutto deciso di creare «una cabina di regia permanente Italia-USA nel Mediterraneo allargato», ossia nell’area che, nella strategia USA/NATO, si estende dall’Atlantico al Mar Nero e, a sud, fino al Golfo Persico e all’Oceano Indiano.

La regia in realtà è in mano agli USA, in specifico al Pentagono, mentre all’Italia spetta qualche compito secondario di assistente alla regia e genericamente il ruolo di comparsa.

Secondo Conte, invece, «è una cooperazione strategica, quasi un gemellaggio, in virtù del quale l’Italia diventa punto di riferimento in Europa e interlocutore privilegiato degli Stati uniti per le principali sfide da affrontare». Si annuncia così un ulteriore rafforzamento della «cooperazione strategica» con gli Stati uniti, ossia del ruolo «privilegiato» dell’Italia quale ponte di lancio delle forze statunitensi, anche nucleari, sia verso Sud che verso Est.

«All’Italia l’amministrazione americana riconosce un ruolo di leadership come paese promotore della stabilizzazione della Libia», dichiara Conte, annunciando implicitamente che l’Italia, e non la Francia (meno affidabile agli occhi di Washington), ha avuto dalla Casa Bianca l’incarico di «stabilizzare» la Libia. Si tratta di vedere come.

Non basterà la Conferenza internazionale sulla Libia, che dovrebbe svolgersi in autunno in Italia, prima delle «elezioni» libiche sponsorizzate dalla Francia che dovrebbero tenersi in dicembre. Occorrerà da parte italiana un impegno militare direttamente sul campo, dai costi umani e materiali e dagli esiti imprevedibili.

La scelta «sovranista» del governo Conte riduce quindi ulteriormente la sovranità nazionale, rendendo l’Italia ancora più dipendente da ciò che decidono a Washington, non solo alla Casa Bianca, ma al Pentagono e alla Comunità di intelligence, composta da 17 agenzie federali specializzate in spionaggio e operazioni segrete.

La vera scelta sovranista è l’attuazione reale del principio costituzionale che l’Italia ripudia la guerra come strumento di offesa alla liberta degli altri popoli e come mezzo di risoluzione delle controversie internazionali.

Manlio Dinucci

VIDEO pandoraTV :

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Just after September 11^th 2001, many governments began investigations into possible insider trading related to the terrorist attacks of that day.  Such investigations were initiated by the governments of Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Monte Carlo, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United States, and others.  Although the investigators were clearly concerned about insider trading, and considerable evidence did exist, none of the investigations resulted in a single indictment.  That’s because the people identified as having been involved in the suspicious trades were seen as unlikely to have been associated with those alleged to have committed the 9/11 crimes.

That’s basically what the 9/11 Commission told us.  The Commission concluded that “exhaustive investigations” by the SEC and the FBI “uncovered no evidence that anyone with advance knowledge of the attacks profited through securities transactions.”  What they meant was that someone did profit through securities transactions but, based on the Commission’s assumptions of guilt, those who profited were not associated with those who were guilty of conducting the attacks.  In a footnote, the Commission report acknowledged “highly suspicious trading on its face,” but said that this trading on United Airlines was traced back to “A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda.”[1]

With respect to insider trading, or what is more technically called informed trading, the Commission report was itself suspect for several reasons.  First, the informed trades relating to 9/11 covered far more than just airline company stock.  The stocks of financial and reinsurance companies, as well as other financial vehicles, were identified as being associated with suspicious trades.  Huge credit card transactions, completed just before the attacks, were also involved.  The Commission ultimately tried to frame all of this highly suspicious trading in terms of a series of misunderstandings.  However, the possibility that so many leading financial experts were so completely wrong is doubtful at best and, if true, would constitute another unbelievable scenario in the already highly improbable sequence of events represented by the official story of 9/11.

In the last few years, new evidence has come to light on these matters.  In 2006 and 2010, financial experts at a number of universities have established new evidence, through statistical analyses, that informed trades did occur with respect to the 9/11 attacks.  Additionally, in 2007, the 911 Commission released a memorandum summary of the FBI investigations on which its report was based.[2] A careful review of this memorandum indicates that some of the people who were briefly investigated by the FBI, and then acquitted without due diligence, had links to al Qaeda and to US intelligence agencies.  Although the elapsed time between the informed trades and these new confirmations might prevent legal action against the guilty, the facts of the matter can help lead us to the truth about 9/11.

Early signs

Within a week of the attacks, Germany’s stock market regulator, BAWe, began looking into claims of suspicious trading.[3] That same week, Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Martino, made it clear that he had concerns by issuing this public statement:

“I think that there are terrorist states and organisations behind speculation on the international markets.”[4]

Within two weeks of the attacks, CNN reported that regulators were seeing “ever-clearer signs” that someone “manipulated financial markets ahead of the terror attack in the hope of profiting from it.”  Belgian Finance Minister, Didier Reynders, said that there were strong suspicions that British markets were used for transactions.[5] The CIA was reported to have asked the British regulators to investigate some of the trades.[6] Unfortunately, the British regulator, The Financial Services Authority, wrote off its investigation by simply clearing “bin Laden and his henchmen of insider trading.”[7]

The extent of the 9/11-related informed trading was unprecedented.  An ABC News Consultant, Jonathan Winer, said,

“it’s absolutely unprecedented to see cases of insider trading covering the entire world from Japan to the US to North America to Europe.”[10]

By October 2001, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and the four other options exchanges in the US had joined forces with the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate a list of 38 stocks, as well as multiple options  and Treasury bonds, that were flagged in relation to potential informed trades.  SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt gave testimony to the House Financial Services Committee at the time, saying,

“We will do everything in our power to track those people down and bring them to justice.”[11]

Mary Bender, chief regulatory officer at the CBOE, stated

“We’ve never really had anything like this, [the option exchanges are] using the same investigative tools as we would in an insider-trading case. The point is to find people who are connected to these heinous crimes.”

The people ultimately found included an unnamed customer of Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown (DBAB).  This involved a trade on United Airlines (UAL) stock consisting of a 2,500-contract order that was, for some reason, split into chunks of 500 contracts each and then directed to multiple exchanges around the country simultaneously.[12] When the 9/11 Commission report pointed to a “single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda,” it was referring to either DBAB or its customer in that questionable trade.

The late Michael Ruppert had written about DBAB, noting that the company had previously been a financier of The Carlyle Group and also of Brown Brothers Harriman, both of which are companies closely related to the Bush family.  Ruppert also noted that Alex. Brown, the company purchased by Deutsche Bank to become DBAB, was managed by A.B. (Buzzy) Krongard, who left the firm in 1998 to join the CIA as counsel to director George Tenet.[13] Krongard had been a consultant to CIA director James Woolsey in the mid 1990s and, on September 11^th, he was the Executive Director of the CIA, the third highest position in the agency.

Stock and Treasury bonds traded

In 2002, investigator Kyle Hence wrote about the stocks involved in the SEC’s target list.  Those that had the highest examples of trade volume over the average were UAL [285 times over average], Marsh & McLennan (Marsh) [93 times over average], American Airlines (AMR) [60 times over average], and Citigroup [45 times over average].[14] Other stocks flagged included financial firms, defense-related companies, and the reinsurance firms Munich Re, Swiss Re and the AXA Group.  Put options for these reinsurance firms, or bets that the stock would drop, were placed at double the normal levels in the few days before the attacks.  Regulators were concerned about “large block trades” on these stocks because the three firms were liable for billions in insurance payouts due to the damage inflicted on 9/11.[15]

The four highest-volume suspect stocks — UAL, Marsh, AMR and Citigroup — were closely linked to the attacks of 9/11.  The two airline companies each had two planes hijacked and destroyed.  Marsh was located in the exact 8 floors out of 110 in the north tower of the WTC where Flight 11 impacted and the fires occurred.  Citigroup was the parent of Travelers Insurance, which was expected to see $500 million in claims, and also Salomon Smith Barney, which occupied all but ten floors in World Trade Center (WTC) building 7.  Oddly enough, Salomon Smith Barney had both Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney on its advisory board until January 2001.

Marsh occupied a number of floors in the south tower as well.  This is where the office of Marsh executive, L. Paul Bremer, was located.  Bremer was a former managing director at Kissinger Associates and had just completed leading a national terrorism commission in 2000.  The San Francisco Chronicle noted that Bremer was a source of early claims that rich Arabs were financing Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.  In an article on the 9/11 informed trades, the Chronicle reported that

“The former chairman of the State Department’s National Commission on Terrorism, L. Paul Bremer, said he obtained classified government analyses early last year of bin Laden’s finances confirming the assistance of affluent Middle Easterners.”[16]

On the day of 9/11, Bremer was interviewed by NBC News and stated that he believed Osama bin Laden was responsible and that possibly Iraq and Iran were involved too, and he called for the most severe military response possible.  For unknown reasons, Google removed the interview video from its servers three times, and blocked it once.[17]

The trading of Treasury bonds just before 9/11 was also flagged as being suspicious.  Reporters from The Wall street Journal wrote that the

“U.S. Secret Service contacted a number of bond traders regarding large purchases of five-year Treasury notes before the attacks, according to people familiar with the probe. The investigators, acting on a tip from traders, are examining whether terrorists, or people affiliated with terrorist organizations, bought five-year notes, including a single $5 billion trade.”[18]

Some reports claimed that the 9/11 informed trades were such that millions of dollars were made, and some of that went unclaimed. [19] Others suggested that the trades resulted in the winning of billions of dollars in profits.  One such suggestion was made by the former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Buelow, who said that the value of the informed trades was on the order of $15 billion.[20]

The FBI Investigations

In May 2007, a 9/11 Commission document that summarized the FBI investigations into potential 9/11-related informed trading was declassified. [21] This document was redacted to remove the names of two FBI agents from the New York office, and to remove the names of select suspects in the informed trading investigations.  The names of other FBI agents and suspects were left in.  Regardless, some information can be gleaned from the document to help reveal the trades and traders investigated.

On September 21, 2001, the SEC referred two specific transactions to the FBI for criminal investigation as potential informed trades.  One of those trades was a September 6, 2001 purchase of 56,000 shares of a company called Stratesec, which in the few years before 9/11 was a security contractor for several of the facilities that were compromised on 9/11.  These facilities included the WTC buildings, Dulles airport, where American Airlines Flight 77 took off, and also United Airlines, which owned two of the other three ill-fated planes.

The affected 56,000 shares of Stratesec stock were purchased by a director of the company, Wirt D. Walker III, and his wife Sally Walker.  This is clear from the memorandum generated to record the FBI summary of the trades investigated.[22] The Stratesec stock that the Walkers purchased doubled in value in the one trading day between September 11th and when the stock market reopened on September 17th.  The Commission memorandum suggests that the trade generated a profit of $50,000 for the Walkers.  Unfortunately, the FBI did not interview either of the Walkers and they were both cleared of any wrongdoing because they were said to have “no ties to terrorism or other negative information.” [23]

However, Wirt Walker was connected to people who had connections to al Qaeda.  For example, Stratesec director James Abrahamson was the business partner of Mansoor Ijaz, who claimed on several occasions to be able to contact Osama bin Laden.[24] Additionally, Walker hired a number of Stratesec employees away from a subsidiary of The Carlyle Group called BDM International, which ran secret (black) projects for government agencies.  The Carlyle Group was partly financed by members of the bin Laden family.[25] Mr. Walker ran a number of suspicious companies that went bankrupt, including Stratesec, some of which were underwritten by a company run by a first cousin of former CIA director (and President) George H.W. Bush.  Additionally, Walker was the child of a CIA employee and his first job was at an investment firm run by former US intelligence guru, James “Russ” Forgan, where he worked with another former CIA director, William Casey.[26] Of course, Osama bin Laden had links to the CIA as well.[27]

Another trade investigated by the FBI, on request from the SEC, focused on Amir Ibrahim Elgindy, an Egyptian-born, San Diego stock advisor who on the day before 9/11 had allegedly attempted to liquidate $300,000 in assets through his broker at Salomon Smith Barney.  During the attempted liquidation, Elgindy was said to have “predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average, which at the time stood at about 9,600, would soon crash to below 3,000.”[28]

The 9/11 Commission memorandum suggests that the FBI never interviewed Mr. Elgindy either, and had planned to exonerate him because there was “no evidence he was seeking to establish a position whereby he would profit from the terrorist attacks.”  Apparently, the prediction of a precipitous drop in the stock market, centered on the events of 9/11, was not sufficient cause for the FBI to interview the suspect.

In late May 2002, Elgindy was arrested along with four others, including an FBI agent and a former FBI agent, and charged with conspiracy to manipulate stock prices and extort money from companies.  The FBI agents, Jeffrey A Royer and Lynn Wingate, were said to have “used their access to F.B.I. databases to monitor the progress of the criminal investigation against Mr. Elgindy.”[29] A federal prosecutor later accused Elgindy, who also went by several aliases, of having prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.  Although the judge in that case did not agree with the prosecutor on the 9/11 informed trading accusation, Mr. Elgindy was eventually convicted, in 2005, of multiple crimes including racketeering, securities fraud, and making false statements.

The Boston office of the FBI investigated stock trades related to two companies.  The first was Viisage Technologies, a facial recognition company that stood to benefit from an increase in terrorism legislation.  The Viisage purchase, made by a former employee of the Saudi American Bank, “revealed no connection with 9/11.”  However, the Saudi American Bank was named in a lawsuit brought by the 9/11 victims’ families due to the bank having — “financed development projects in Sudan benefiting bin Laden in the early 1990s.”[30]

The second company investigated by the Boston FBI office was Wellington Management, a company that allegedly held a large account for Osama bin Laden.  The FBI found that Wellington Management maintained an account for “members of the bin Laden family” but dropped the investigation because it could not link this to “Osama, al Qaeda, or terrorism.”[31]

Although the connections to al Qaeda in three of these cases (Walker, the Viisage trader, and Wellington Management) can be seen as circumstantial, the amount of such evidence is considerable.  The quality of the FBI investigations, considering the suspects were not even interviewed, was therefore much less than “exhaustive”, as the 9/11 Commission characterized it.

The summary of FBI investigations released by the 9/11 Commission also described how the Commission questioned the FBI about damaged computer hard drives that might have been recovered from the WTC.  This questioning was the result of “press reports [contending] that large volumes of suspicious transactions flowed through the computers housed in the WTC on the morning of 9/11 as part of some illicit but ill-defined effort to profit from the attacks.”[32] The Commission came to the conclusion that no such activity occurred because “the assembled agents expressed no knowledge of the reported hard-drive recovery effort” and “everything at the WTC was pulverized to near powder, making it extremely unlikely that any hard-drives survived.”

The truth, however, is that many such hard-drives were recovered from the WTC and were sent to specialist companies to be cleaned and have data recovered.  A German company named Convar did a good deal of the recovery work.

In December 2001, Reuters reported that

“Convar has recovered information from 32 computers that support assumptions of dirty doomsday dealings.”

Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert at Convar, testified that

“There is a suspicion that some people had advance knowledge of the approximate time of the plane crashes in order to move out amounts exceeding $100 million.  They thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the main frames were destroyed.”

Director of Convar, Peter Henschel, said that it was “not only the volume, but the size of the transactions [that] was far higher than usual for a day like that.”[33]

By late December 2001, Convar had completed processing 39 out of 81 drives, and expected to receive 20 more WTC hard drives the next month.  Obviously, the 911 Commission memorandum drafted in August 2003 was not particularly reliable considering it reported that the FBI and the 911 Commission had no knowledge of any of this.

Statistical confirmations

Considering that the FBI and 9/11 Commission overlooked the suspicious connections of informed trading suspects like Wirt Walker, and also claimed in 2003 to have no knowledge of hard drive recoveries publicly reported in 2001, we must assume that they did a poor job of investigating.  Today, however, we know that several peer-reviewed academic papers have reported solid evidence that informed trades did occur.  That is, the conclusions reached by the official investigations have now been shown, through scientific analysis, to be quite wrong.

In 2006, a professor of Finance from the University of Illinois named Allen Poteshman published an analysis of the airline stock option trades preceding the attacks.  This study came to the conclusion that an indicator of long put volume was “unusually high which is consistent with informed investors having traded in the option market in advance of the attacks.”[34] Long puts are bets that a stock or option will fall in price.

The unusually high volume of long puts, purchased on UAL and AMR stock before these stocks declined dramatically due to the 9/11 attacks, are evidence that the traders knew that the stocks would decline.  Using statistical techniques to evaluate conditional and unconditional distributions of historical stock option activity, Professor Poteshman showed that the data indicate that informed trading did occur.

In January 2010, a team of financial experts from Switzerland published evidence for at least thirteen informed trades in which the investors appeared to have had foreknowledge of the attacks.  This study focused again on a limited number of companies but, of those, the informed trades centered on five airline companies and four financial companies.  The airline companies were American Airlines, United Airlines and Boeing.  Three of the financial companies involved were located in the WTC towers and the fourth was Citigroup, which stood to lose doubly as the parent of both Travelers Insurance and the WTC 7 tenant, Salomon Smith Barney.[35]

More recently, in April 2010, an international team of experts examined trading activities of options on the Standard & Poors 500 index, as well as a volatility index of the CBOE called VIX.  These researchers showed that there was a significant abnormal increase in trading volume in the option market just before the 9/11 attacks, and they demonstrated that this was in contrast to the absence of abnormal trading volume over periods long before the attacks.  The study also showed that the relevant abnormal increase in trading volume was not simply due to a declining market.[36] Their findings were “consistent with insiders anticipating the 9-11 attacks.”

Conclusion

In the early days just after 9/11, financial regulators around the world gave testimony to unprecedented evidence for informed trading related to the terrorist attacks of that day.  One central bank president (Welteke) said there was irrefutable proof of such trading.  This evidence led US regulators to vow, in Congressional testimony, to bring those responsible to justice.  Those vows were not fulfilled, as the people in charge of the investigations let the suspects off the hook by conducting weak inquiries and concluding that informed trading could not have occurred if it was not done directly by Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda.

The “exhaustive investigations” conducted by the FBI, on which the 9/11 Commission report was based, were clearly bogus.  The FBI did not interview the suspects and did not appear to compare notes with the 9/11 Commission to help make a determination if any of the people being investigated might have had ties to al Qaeda.  The Commission’s memorandum summary suggests that the FBI simply made decisions on its own regarding the possible connections of the suspects and the alleged terrorist organizations.  Those unilateral decisions were not appropriate, as at least three of the suspected informed trades (those of Walker, the Viisage trader, and Wellington Management) involved reasonably suspicious links to Osama bin Laden or his family.  Another suspect (Elgindy) was a soon-to-be convicted criminal who had direct links to FBI employees who were later arrested for securities-related crimes.

The FBI also claimed in August 2003 that it had no knowledge of hard drives recovered from the WTC, which were publicly reported in 2001.  According to the people who retrieved the associated data, the hard drives gave evidence for “dirty doomsday dealings.”

The evidence for informed trading on 9/11 includes many financial vehicles, from stock options to Treasury bonds to credit card transactions made at the WTC just before it was destroyed.  Today we know that financial experts from around the world have provided strong evidence, through established and reliable statistical techniques, that the early expert suspicions were correct, and that 9/11 informed trading did occur.

People knew in advance about the crimes of 9/11, and they profited from that knowledge.  Those people are among us today, and our families and communities are at risk of future terrorist attacks and further criminal profiteering if we do not respond to the evidence.  It is time for an independent, international investigation into the informed trades and the traders who benefited from the terrorist acts of September 11^th.

*

Kevin Ryan is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

This article was originally published on Foreign Policy Journal.

Notes

[1] National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, July 2004, p 172, and Chapter 5, footnote 130, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report.pdf

[2] 9/11 Commission memorandum entitled “FBI Briefing on Trading”, prepared by Doug Greenburg, 18 August 2003, http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00269.pdf

[3] Dave Carpenter, Exchange examines odd jump: Before attack: Many put options of hijacked planes’ parent companies purchased , The Associated Press, 18 September 2001, http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/cjonline_oddjump.html

[4] BBC News, Bin Laden ‘share gains’ probe, 18 September 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1548118.stm

[5] Tom Bogdanowicz and Brooks Jackson, Probes into ‘suspicious’ trading, CNN, 24 September 2001, http://web.archive.org/web/20011114023845/http://fyi.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/09/24/gen.europe.shortselling/

[6] James Doran, Insider Trading Apparently Based on Foreknowledge of 9/11 Attacks, The London Times, 18 September 2001, http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/londontimes_insidertrading.html

[7] David Brancaccio, Marketplace Public Radio: News Archives, 17 October 2001, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2001/10/17_mpp.html

[8] Paul Thompson and The Center for Cooperative Research, Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute:  A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11 – and America’s Response, Harper Collins, 2004.  Also found at History Commons, Complete 9/11 Timeline, Insider Trading and Other Foreknowledge http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=insidertrading

[9] Associated Press, EU Searches for Suspicious Trading , 22 September 2001, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34910,00.html

[10] World News Tonight, 20 September 2001

[11] Erin E. Arvedlund, Follow The Money: Terrorist Conspirators Could Have Profited More From Fall Of Entire Market Than Single Stocks, Barron’s (Dow Jones and Company), 6 October 2001

[12] Ibid

[13] Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon: the decline of the American empire at the end of the age of oil, New Society Publishers, 2004

[14] Kyle F. Hence, Massive pre-attack ‘insider trading’ offer authorities hottest trail to accomplices, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), 21 April 2002, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/HEN204B.html

[15] Grant Ringshaw, Profits of doom, The London Telegraph, 23 September 2001, http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/telegraph_profitsofdoom.html

[16] Christian Berthelsen and Scott Winokur,  Suspicious profits sit uncollected:  Airline investors seem to be lying low, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 September 2001, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=%2Fchronicle%2Farchive%2F2001%2F09%2F29%2FMN186128.DTL#ixzz14XPGwh6e

[17] Lewis Paul Bremer III on Washington, DC, NBC4 TV, 11 September 2001, Vehmgericht http://vehme.blogspot.com/2007/08/lewis-paul-bremer-iii-on-washington-dc.html

[18] Charles Gasparino and Gregory Zuckerman, Treasury Bonds Enter Purview of U.S. Inquiry Into Attack Gains, The Wall Street Journal, 2 October 2001, http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/wallstreetjournal100201.html

[19] Christian Berthelsen and Scott Winokur

[20] Tagesspiegel, Former German Cabinet Minister Attacks Official Brainwashing On September 11 Issue Points at “Mad Dog” Zbig and Huntington, 13 January 2002, http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/VonBuelow.html

[21] 9/11 Commission memorandum

[22] The 9/11 Commission memorandum that summarized the FBI investigations refers to the traders involved in the Stratesec purchase.  From the references in the document, we can make out that the two people had the same last name and were related.  This fits the description of Wirt and Sally Walker, who are known to be stock holders in Stratesec.  Additionally, one (Wirt) was a director at the company, a director at a publicly traded company in Oklahoma (Aviation General), and chairman of an investment firm in Washington, DC (Kuwam Corp).

[23] 9/11 Commission memorandum

[24] Sourcewatch, Mansoor Ijaz/Sudan, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mansoor_Ijaz/Sudan

[25] History Commons, Complete 911 Timeline, Bin Laden Family, http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?financing_of_al-qaeda:_a_more_detailed_look=binladenFamily&timeline=complete_911_timeline

[26] Kevin R. Ryan, The History of Wirt Dexter Walker: Russell & Co, the CIA and 9/11, 911blogger.com, 3 September 2010, http://911blogger.com/news/2010-09-03/history-wirt-dexter-walker-russell-company-cia-and-911

[27] Michael Moran, Bin Laden comes home to roost : His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story, MSNBC, 24 August 1998, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3340101

[28] Alex Berenson, U.S. Suggests, Without Proof, Stock Adviser Knew of 9/11, The New York Times, 25 May 2002, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E4DB143BF936A15756C0A9649C8B63

[29] Alex Berenson, Five, Including F.B.I. Agents, Are Named In a Conspiracy, The New York Times, 23 May 2002

[30] History Commons, Complete 911 Timeline, Saudi American Bank,http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=saudi_american_bank

[31] 9/11 Commission memorandum

[32] 9/11 Commission memorandum

[33] Erik Kirschbaum, German Firm Probes Final World Trade Center Deals, Reuters, 16 December 2001, http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/reuters_wtc_drives.html

[34] Allen M. Poteshman, Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, The Journal of Business, 2006, vol. 79, no. 4, http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/503645

[35] Marc Chesney, et al, Detecting Informed Trading Activities in the Options Markets, Social Sciences Research Network, 13 January 2010, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1522157

[36] Wing-Keung Wong, et al, Was there Abnormal Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks?, Social Sciences Research Network, April 2010, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1588523

A confusão político-mediática originada pelo choque entre “europeístas” e “soberanistas” esconde aquela que, pelo contrário, é a realidade: um europeísmo sem Europa e um soberanismo sem soberania.

A erguer prontamente a bandeira do europeísmo está, neste momento, o Presidente Macron, para fazer avançar o poder francês não somente na Europa, mas também em África.

A França, juntamente com os EUA, promotora da guerra NATO que, em 2011, destruiu o Estado líbio (na qual a Itália desempenhou um papel de primeiro plano), procura por todos os meios, controlar a Líbia:

• os seus ricos recursos – enormes reservas de petróleo, gás natural, água fóssil
•    o próprio território líbio, de grande importância geoestratégica.

Para este fim, Macron colabora com as milícias que combatem o “governo” de Fayez al-Serraj, apoiado pela Itália, que, juntamente com a ENI, mantém grandes interesses no país. Este é só um dos exemplos de como a União Europeia, construída sobre os interesses das oligarquias económicas e financeiras das grandes potências, está a desmoronar-se devido a contradições de natureza económica e política, dos quais a questão dos migrantes é apenas a ponta do iceberg.

Perante o predomínio da França e da Alemanha, o Governo 5 Stelle-Lega fez uma escolha vital: aumentar o peso da Itália, ligando-a ainda mais estreitamente aos Estados Unidos. Daí a reunião do Presidente Conte com o Presidente Trump, ao qual os media italianos deram pouca importância. No entanto, nesse encontro foram tomadas decisões que influem notavelmente no posicionamento internacional da Itália.

Em primeiro lugar, decidiu criar-se “um lugar permanente onde se concentram os poderes de comando Itália-USA, no Mediterrâneo Alargado”, ou seja, na área que, na estratégia USA/NATO,  se estende do Atlântico ao Mar Negro e, a sul, até ao Golfo Pérsico e ao Oceano Índico.

O comando está realmente nas mãos dos USA, especificamente do Pentágono, enquanto a Itália tem algumas funções secundárias como assistente de gestão e, genericamente, o papel de comparsa.

Segundo Conte, “é uma cooperação estratégica, quase uma geminação, em virtude da qual a Itália se torna um ponto de referência na Europa e um interlocutor privilegiado dos Estados Unidos para os principais desafios a enfrentar”. Anuncia-se, assim, mais um reforço de “cooperação estratégica” com os Estados Unidos, ou seja, o papel “privilegiado” da Itália como ponte de lançamento das forças USA, incluindo as forças nucleares, tanto para Sul como para Leste.

“A Administração americana reconhece à Itália, uma função de liderança como país promotor da estabilização da Líbia», declara Conte, anunciando, implicitamente, que a Itália, e não a França (menos confiável aos olhos de Washington), foi incumbida pela Casa Branca da tarefa de “estabilizar” a Líbia.  É necessário investigar de que maneira.

Não bastará a Conferência Internacional sobre a Líbia, que deverá ocorrer no Outono, em Itália, antes das “eleições” líbias patrocinadas pela França, que devem ser realizadas em Dezembro. Acontecerá do lado italiano um compromisso militar directamente no terreno, de custos humanos, materiais e resultados imprevisíveis.

A escolha “soberanista” do Governo Conte reduz ainda mais a soberania nacional, tornando a Itália ainda mais dependente do que decidem em Washington, não apenas na Casa Branca, mas no Pentágono e na Comunidade dos Serviços Secretos/Inteligência(br.), composta por 17 agências federais especializadas em espionagem e operações secretas.

A verdadeira escolha soberana é a concretização real do princípio constitucional de que a Itália repudia a guerra como instrumento de ataque à liberdade de outros povos e como meio de resolver disputas internacionais.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 4 de Setembro de 2018

VIDEO POR PANDORATV :

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Referring to Israel during an interview in August 1983, U.S. Navy Admiral and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer said: 

“I’ve never seen a President — I don’t care who he is — stand up to them. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn’t writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don’t have any idea what goes on.”

Moorer was speaking generally but he had something specific in mind, namely the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the American intelligence ship, U.S.S. Liberty, which killed 34 American crewmen and wounded 173 more. The ship was operating in international waters and was displaying a huge stars and stripes but Israeli warplanes, which had identified the vessel as American, even strafed the life rafts to kill those who were fleeing the sinking ship. It was the bloodiest attack on a U.S. Naval vessel ever outside of wartime and the crew deservedly received the most medals every awarded to a single ship based on one action. Yes, it is one hell of a story of courage under fire, but don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood to make a movie out of it.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, had ordered the recall of U.S. carrier planes sent to aid the stricken vessel, saying that he would prefer the ship go to the bottom rather than embarrass his good friend Israel.

Then came the cover-up from inside the U.S. government. A hastily convened and summarily executed board of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain, father of the senator, deliberately interviewed only a handful of crewmen before determining that it was all an accident. The sailors who had survived the attack as well as crewmen from Navy ships that arrived eventually to provide assistance were held incommunicado in Malta before being threatened and sworn to secrecy. Since that time, repeated attempts to convene another genuine inquiry have been rebuffed by congress, the White House and the Pentagon. Recently deceased Senator John McCain was particularly active in rejecting overtures from the Liberty survivors.

The U.S. Navy electronic reconnaissance gathering ship USS Liberty (AGTR-5) receives assistance from units of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, after she was attacked and seriously damaged by Israeli forces off the Sinai Peninsula on 8 June 1967. (Source: Public Domain)

The Liberty story demonstrates how Israel’s ability to make the United States government act against its own interests has been around for a long time. Grant Smith of IRMEP, cites how Israeli spying carried out by AIPAC in Washington back in the mid-1980s resulted in a lopsided trade agreement that currently benefits Israel by more than $10 billion per year on the top of direct grants from the U.S. Treasury and billions in tax exempt “charitable” donations by American Jews.

If Admiral Moorer were still alive, I would have to tell him that the situation vis-à-vis Israeli power is much worse now than it was in 1983. He would be very interested in reading a remarkable bit of research recently completed by Smith demonstrating exactly how Israel and its friends work from inside the system to corrupt our political process and make the American government work in support of Jewish state interests. He describes in some detail how the Israel Lobby has been able to manipulate the law enforcement community to protect and promote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s agenda.

A key component in the Israeli penetration of the U. S. government has been President George W. Bush’s 2004 signing off on the creation of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI) within the Department of the Treasury. The group’s website proclaims that it is responsible for “safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats,” but it has from its founding been really all about safeguarding Israel’s perceived interests. Grant Smith notes however, how “the secretive office has a special blind spot for major terrorism generators, such as tax-exempt money laundering from the United States into illegal Israeli settlements and proliferation financing and weapons technology smuggling into Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons complex.”

The first head of the office was Undersecretary of Treasury Stuart Levey, who operated secretly within the Treasury itself while also coordinating regularly both with the Israeli government as well as with pro-Israel organizations like AIPAC, WINEP and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). Levey also traveled regularly to Israel on the taxpayer’s dime, as did his three successors in office.

Levey left OTFI in 2011 and was replaced by David Cohen. It was reported then and subsequently that counterterrorism position at OTFI were all filled by individuals who were both Jewish and Zionist. Cohen continued the Levey tradition of resisting any transparency regarding what the office was up to. Smith reports how, on September 12, 2012, he refused to answer reporter questions “about Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, and whether sanctioning Iran, a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, over its internationally-inspected civilian nuclear program was an example of endemic double standards at OTFI.”

Cohen was in turn succeeded in 2015 by Adam Szubin who was then replaced in 2017 by Sigal Pearl Mandelker, a former and possibly current Israeli citizen. All of the heads of OTFI have therefore been Jewish and Zionist. All work closely with the Israeli government, all travel to Israel frequently on “official business” and they all are in close liaison with the Jewish groups most often described as part of the Israel Lobby. And the result has been that many of the victims of OTFI have been generally enemies of Israel, as defined by Israel and America’s Jewish lobbyists. OTFI’s Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List (SDN), which includes sanctions and enforcement options, features many Middle Eastern Muslim and Christian names and companies but nothing in any way comparable relating to Israel and Israelis, many of whom are well known to law enforcement otherwise as weapons traffickers and money launderers. And once placed on the SDN there is no transparent way to be removed, even if the entry was clearly in error.

Here in the United States, action by OTFI has meant that Islamic charities have been shut down and individuals exercising their right to free speech through criticism of the Jewish state have been imprisoned. If the Israel Anti-Boycott Act succeeds in making its way through congress the OTFI model will presumably become the law of the land when it comes to curtailing free speech whenever Israel is involved.

The OTFI story is outrageous, but it is far from unique. There is a history of American Jews closely attached to Israel being promoted by powerful and cash rich domestic lobbies to act on behalf of the Jewish state. To be sure, Jews who are Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with the Middle East and one can reasonably argue that the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pockets of Jewish billionaires named Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban.

Neoconservatives, most of whom are Jewish, infiltrated the Pentagon under the Reagan Administration and they and their heirs in government and media (Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol) were major players in the catastrophic war with Iraq, which, one of the architects of that war, Philip Zelikow, described in 2004 as being all about Israel. The same people are now in the forefront of urging war with Iran.

American policy towards the Middle East is largely being managed by a small circle of Orthodox Jews working for presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. One of them, David Friedman, is currently U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who has no diplomatic or foreign policy credentials, is a Zionist Jew who is also a supporter of the illegal settlements on the West Bank and a harsh critic of other Jews who in any way disagree with the Israeli government. He has contributed money to settlement construction, which would be illegal if OTFI were doing its job, and has consistently defended the settlers while condemning the Palestinians in speeches in Israel. He endlessly and ignorantly repeats Israeli government talking points and has tried to change the wording of State Department communications, seeking to delete the word “occupied” when describing Israel’s control of the West Bank. His humanity does not extend beyond his Jewishness, defending the Israeli shooting thousands of unarmed Gazan protesters and the bombing of schools, hospitals and cultural centers. How he represents the United States and its citizens who are not dual nationals must be considered a mystery.

Friedman’s top adviser is Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, who is described by the Embassy as an expert in “Jewish education and pro-Israel advocacy.” Once upon a time, in an apparently more enlightened mood, Lightstone described Donald Trump as posing “an existential danger both to the Republican Party and to the U.S.” and even accused him of pandering to Jewish audiences. Apparently when opportunity knocked he changed his mind about his new boss. Pre-government in 2014, Lightstone founded and headed Silent City, a Jewish advocacy group supported by extreme right-wing money that opposed the Iran nuclear agreement and also worked to combat the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He is reportedly still connected financially with anti BDS groups, which might be construed as a conflict of interest. As the Senior Adviser to Friedman he is paid in excess of $200,000 plus free housing, additional cash benefits to include a 25% cost of living allowance and a 10% hardship differential, medical insurance and eligibility for a pension.

So, what’s in it all for Joe and Jill American Citizens? Not much. And for Israel? Anything, it wants, apparently. Sink a U.S. warship? Okay. Tap the U.S. Treasury? Sure, just wait a minute and we’ll draft some legislation that will give you even more money. Create a treasury department agency run exclusively by Jews that operates secretly to punish critics of the Jewish state? No brainer. Meanwhile a bunch of dudes at the Pentagon are dreaming of new wars for Israel and the White House sends an ignorant ambassador and top aide overseas to represent the interests of the foreign government in the country where they are posted. Which just happens to be Israel. Will it ever end?

*

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

Featured image is from the author.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Something is brewing after a relatively quiet period. According to a Kiev military source named Karapinka on Ukrainian television last month, the country’s forces are planning to attack Donbass at an unspecified time ahead, saying:

“I think that in the near future there will be an assault. Because the army is rebuilding. It is being reformed. The tactics and strategy of fighting are changing. In the near future, the assault is more than likely,” adding:

“But this will not be so simple. Everyone must understand that this is not an easy thing. It is not at all easy to take fortifications, which for four years only strengthened.”

“Without a confident military and good operation and…a tactical operation, it is very difficult.”

Was assassinating Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) President Aleksandr Zakharchenko in late August prelude for what may be coming?

According to DPR Deputy Commander-In-Chief Eduard Basurin

, “(o)ur intelligence (indicates) that subdivisions of (Kiev’s) 128th Brigade are on full alert. Main attack force was deployed on the Mariupol direction” near Donbass. An offensive could start any time.

On Sunday, DPR spokesman Daniil Bezsonov said large numbers of US and Canadian military personnel arrived in Ukraine ahead of what may be a major offensive in Donbass, saying:

“Our intelligence noticed the arrival of a large number of foreign servicemen to the 56th motorized infantry and 406th artillery brigades near Urzuf.”

“The arrival of a group of high-ranking military officials from the US and Canadian armed forces to the headquarters of (Kiev’s) Operational Command East was also noticed.”

“We think it is possible that those who arrived may take part in planning and carrying out an offensive operation.”

Bezsonov said Ukrainian forces include the infamous Nazi-infested Azov battalion, notorious for espousing racist, anti-Semitic extremism, along with openly displaying swastikas, Nazi flags, SS insignias, and other extremist symbols.

They’re mobilizing for a likely attack on Donbass – led by (US and other) foreign elements, he stressed.

The Donetsk News Agency quoted Bezsonov explaining the following:

“(I)t seems that the command of Ukraine’s ‘unified forces operation’ allocates the central role in an offensive to the 36th marines brigade, 56th mechanized infantry and 79th assault airborne brigades.”

“Nazis from the Azov group will be tasked to back the offensive in the rear. All these operations will be commanded by the military from the United States and Canada, or, in other words, by NATO military.”

“We don’t rule out that foreign servicemen will take part in the planned offensive,” he added.

Kiev’s aggression in Donbass began in April 2014, supported and encouraged by Washington. Conflict continued on-and-off, now in its fifth year with no prospect for resolution.

Pentagon and CIA arms and munitions to Washington’s puppet Kiev regime began straightaway after the Obama’s February 2014 coup.

US and UK special forces began training Ukraine’s military after Donetsk and Lugansk broke away, wanting democratic governance, refusing to accept illegitimate Nazi-infested putschist rule.

The State Department admitted that US special forces are training Ukrainian troops – despite  Kiev having no enemies except invented ones.

Last March, Trump regime officials told Congress that Ukraine will be supplied with heavy weapons, including portable anti-tank missiles – on the phony pretext of helping the country defend its territory from (nonexistent) “Russian aggression.”

US weapons and munitions have been supplied to the country since 2014, much of it covertly without congressional authorization – all of it for naked aggression on Donbass.

Escalating war on Donetsk and Lugansk may be imminent, likely coming when ordered by Trump regime hardliners.

Washington and Kiev undermined Minsk I and II conflict resolution agreements, effectively rendering them dead-on-arrival.

Both regimes want endless conflict to eliminate democratic governance in Donbass, wanting it replaced with illegitimate fascist rule.

Kiev never observed Minsk ceasefire terms. Heavy weapons were repositioned, not withdrawn from the 500 km contact/disengagement line, separating Ukrainian and Donbass forces. Intermittent shelling never ended, civilians left in harm’s way.

Washington bears full responsibility for what’s gone on since late 2013 – replacing democratic governance in Ukraine with illegitimate putschist rule, Kiev forces used to wage naked aggression on Donbass, its people wanting freedom from fascism.

Conflict escalation may be imminent. Along with Syria, Donbass is a hugely dangerous  flashpoint, risking East/West confrontation – unthinkable US belligerence on Russia by accident or design.

*

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

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 Crisis Group.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

The NDP hierarchy’s response to noted war hawk John McCain’s death is shameful. Even worse, it reflects a general hostility towards the victims of Western imperialism.

After the U.S. Senator died over the weekend federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh tweeted:

John McCain had the courage not to stoop to divisive politics. He showed us that we can disagree in a way that creates dialogue and discussion, not fear and division. Rest In peace.

Rachel Notley also praised a US politician who never met a war he didn’t like.

“As @BarackObama wrote today”, the leader of Alberta’s NDP Government noted, “all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means.”

In a follow-up tweet Notley called McCain “a true public servant.”

Even purportedly progressive Saskatchewan NDP leader Ryan Meili praised McCain on Twitter, saying

“sad to hear of the passing of Sen. John McCain – a principled man who served his country with honour in difficult times.” (Meili at least had the sense to delete his tweet.)

Anyone who has any doubt about celebrating McCain should watch Rania Khalek’s video and, as Ben Saucier noted in a succinct rejoinder to Singh:

McCain heavily promoted the lies that led to the Iraq war. He championed the NATO bombing of Libya. He supported and armed the jihadists destroying Syria. He played a role in bringing neo-Nazis to power in Ukraine and backed Saudi Arabia’s genocide in Yemen. He was no hero.

But, praising a man who rose to public attention by dropping bombs on civilian targets (a war crime) in North Vietnam is only part of the leadership’s whitewash of Western militarism. At the end of last month Singh published a statement on Korean War Veterans Day “honouring the brave veterans of the Canadian army who fought valiantly during the Korean War, so that today, South Koreans can live in peace and prosperity.”

It’s absurd to imply the 1950–53 Korean War was designed to secure “peace and prosperity” for South Koreans. About 27,000 Canadian troops and numerous warships expanded and internationalized a civil war that left as many as four million dead. They fought in support of Syngman Rhee’s brutal regime, which had killed tens of thousands in what Canadian diplomats in Washington described, in an internal cable to External Affairs at the time, as “a fair amountof repression by the Military Government of left-wing groups.” The understated diplomats added, “liberal social legislation had been definitely resisted.”

At the end of World War II the Soviets occupied the northern part of Korea, which borders Russia. US troops controlled the southern part of the country. According to Noam Chomsky:

When US forces entered Korea in 1945, they dispersed the local popular government, consisting primarily of antifascists who resisted the Japanese, and inaugurated a brutal repression, using Japanese fascist police and Koreans who had collaborated with them during the Japanese occupation. About 100,000 people were murdered in South Korea prior to what we call the Korean War, including 30-40,000 killed during the suppression of a peasant revolt in one small region, Cheju Island.

Singh’s Korean War Veterans Day statement concluded with a flourish of martial patriotism.

On this Korean War Veterans Day, let us also remember our current military personnel, and their families, who continue to fight every day to ensure that the values of peace, freedom, and democracy are defended around the world.

Were 385 Canadians sent to Sudan in 1884 to defend “peace, freedom, and democracy” or to beat back indigenous forces seeking to wrest control of Khartoum from famed English General Charles Gordon? Or how about the 7,000 Canadians who fought in southern Africa between 1899 and 1902? Was that war about advancing Cecil Rhodes’ mining interests and strengthening Britain’s position in the region or “peace, freedom and democracy”?

World War I had no clear and compelling purpose other than rivalry between up-and-coming Germany and the lead imperial powers of the day, Britain and France. And 20,000 Iraqi troops and tens of thousands of civilians were killed during the 1990–91 Gulf War to deepen the US foothold in the region.

The 18 Canadian fighter jets that participated in NATO’s illegal bombing of Serbia in 1999 didn’t bring “peace, freedom, and democracy” there. Nor did the 40,000 Canadians who fought in Afghanistan, which remains wracked by violence. Seven years after Canada participated in NATO’s war in Libya that country remains divided into various warring factions and hundreds of militias operate in the country of six million. (Canadian “peacekeepers” also helped overthrow Jean Bertrand Aristide’s elected government in Haiti and Congolese independence leader Patricia Lumumba.)

Canadian soldiers have only fought in one morally justifiable war: World War II. But, the historical record shows that Nazi expansionism’s threat to British interests, not opposition to fascism or anti-Semitism, led Ottawa to join WWII. (Only two years before the war Prime Minister Mackenzie King visited Hitler and in his diary King repeatedly expressed sympathy towards the Nazis.) As Jack Granatstein and Desmond Morton explain, “Canada went to war in September 1939 for the same reason as in 1914: because Britain went to war.”

Somebody should buy Jagmeet Singh a T-shirt that says:

“I pissed on the world’s downtrodden to ingratiate myself with the mainstream establishment but all I got was this lousy shirt.”

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above 

Human rights advocates and health officials estimate that 17,000 to 18,000 residents of Basra province have been poisoned by heavily polluted and salty drinking water. On Aug. 26, hundreds of residents stormed the Basra Health Directorate to protest the poor health services provided to those made ill, but relief is not in sight.

Basra hospitals have been struggling since Aug. 12 to treat patients suffering from intestinal and skin diseases. Some hospitals have been so overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients and lack of medicines that were unable to provide assistance in thousands of cases.

The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights documented 7,000 cases in just two days, Aug. 25-26. In an Aug. 25 report, the organization said, “The health services provided by the Basra hospitals can hardly cater to the needs of 15% of the cases. Some patients were left to lie on the floor as they failed to receive any treatment.”

The number of people sickened continues to increase, with Abu Al-Khasib General Hospital alone receiving 400 patients a day. Statistics compiled by the provincial health directorate for Aug. 12-28 revealed close to 2,000 cases each day throughout the province. Those affected are presenting with colic, diarrhea and poisoning due to water contamination.

According to statistics from the health directorate, Basra’s water pollution is staggering. Chemical contamination stands at 100% and the bacterial pollution at 50%, including in water from household taps. The High Commission for Human Rights noted,

“[Residents] are drinking water from tank cars, most of which transport sewage waste.”

In a video posted to YouTube on Aug. 23, a man in Basra can be heard laughing about the foul water running from a hose. The black liquid is obviously unsuitable for human consumption or use. “How can Iraqis survive when this is the water they drink?” one person says.

When shown the video, one local man, Ruaa al-Furaiji, asked Al-Monitor,

“Is this the water we were drinking?”

Basra gets its water from the Shatt al-Arab, the waterway formed by the juncture of the Euphrates and Tigris. In an Aug. 28 statement, the High Commission for Human Rights said it has found high levels of salinity in the water feeding the Shatt al-Arab, a decline in water levels in the rivers feeding residential areas and an increase in chemical and biological contaminants in the Shatt al-Arab from sewage and industrial waste.

The commission has also noted the lack of water treatment plants capable of helping resolve the problem.

“Most of the small stations are not operational due to their low capacity and lack of maintenance,” the commission reported.

Basra’s water has long been known to be high in salinity and heavily polluted.

On Aug. 28, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said at his weekly press conference,

“We have tasked a high-level government team with examining Basra’s water needs and pollution levels, and we have made important decisions in this regard.”

He offered no details, but his statement made it clear that whatever actions the government has in mind, they will not end Basra’s suffering anytime soon. There are apparently no emergency plans for responding effectively to such circumstances.

Basra Governor Asaad al-Eidani asserted in an Aug. 25 statement to the press,

“Basra’s water is not suitable for human use, and the services and funds that Abadi promised … have yet to be provided.”

He added,

“The water network in Basra province hasn’t been upgraded in 30 years, and it overlaps with the sewage networks, which are also old and whose water flows into the Shatt al-Arab.”

On Aug. 17, activists from the province posted a video on YouTube of water from a residential water pipe containing unidentified insects. Some residents have also used their cell phones to record examples of polluted water. For the moment, bottled water appears to be the only truly safe drinking water in Basra, but even when it is available it is often unaffordable.

Fatima al-Zarkani, a former parliament member who represented Basra province, told Al-Monitor,

“There are [thousands of] cases of poisoning, and people are suffering from very difficult conditions due to water pollution. The government should carry out its responsibilities as soon as possible.”

She added,

“People have been drinking water containing toxins due to government neglect and a lack of solutions to their suffering, which has been ongoing for years now, and [the conditions are] degenerating. … The situation in Basra is tragic.”

Iraqi Health Minister Adila Hammoud has tried to downplay the severity of the situation, claiming that only 1,500 people have been affected, ignoring the much higher figures issued by the Basra Health Directorate and the High Commission for Human Rights.

Education officials have voiced concerns about the possible spread of disease among students at the start of the new school year. Meanwhile, the widespread illness in Basra has led to a lull in one of the largest protest movements in Iraq in years over public services, but the dire situation might ultimately be the catalyst for mobilizing an even bigger movement.

*

Mustafa Saadoun is an Iraqi journalist covering human rights and also the founder and director of the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights. He formerly worked as a reporter for the Iraqi Council of Representatives. On Twitter: @SaadoonMustafa

Featured image is from GuideStar.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

I am one of very few journalists on the left to have covered the Labour Party’s supposed “anti-Semitism crisis” from its beginning three years ago, if not the the only one. I am also one of a handful of people who have even questioned the dominant media narrative of a “crisis”.

In my extensive reporting for The Electronic intifada, and in some of my MEMO columns, I have shown how the story is almost entirely a media fabrication. What we are witnessing from the British press right now is a form of collective hysteria; a McCarthyite witch hunt, in which black is white and up is down. This represents a sustained attempt to gaslight the entire left into believing that the Labour leader – a life-long opponent of racism in all its ugly forms, with a strong track record of combatting anti-Semitism — is actually some sort of closet racist.

As I have stated repeatedly, neither the left nor Labour are immune from the reality of anti-Semitism. However, all available statistical evidence shows that the level of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is far less than such racism on the right. Anti-Jewish hatred extends across society, but is most prevalent amongst right-wingers, and especially so on the far-right.

Why, then, has there been nearly daily headlines over the summer about an “anti-Semitism crisis” in the Labour Party and nowhere else? The answer is clear for anyone who has eyes to see: this is an attempt to assassinate Jeremy Corbyn politically and break up the popular political movement that is close to taking him through that famous door in Downing Street.

Moreover — and let’s be clear about this — the state of Israel is at the forefront of this smear campaign. Corbyn is a lifelong supporter of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, and so a concerted effort is on to smear him and the popular movements that he represents.

One of the pro-Israel Lobby’s most important bodies was quite frank about that fact this week. In a long, boring and arrogant letter to Labour’s General Secretary Jennie Formby (another strong supporter of Palestinian rights), the Jewish Leadership Council stated quite openly that it will continue with its campaign to smear Labour as “anti-Semitic” until the party commits to a “deep cultural change” towards “Zionism and Israel”. That is the reality of the situation.

This is what it is all about and what it has been about all along: protecting Israel and its war crimes from any loss of political support in the West. The prospect of a veteran Palestine solidarity campaigner entering Number 10 as Prime Minister represents the pro-Israel Lobby’s worst nightmare. It would confirm the thinking of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs that “Europe is lost” and that there is no hope of regaining its support.

The people are increasingly against Israel, so all that remains is to translate that loss of popular support into a loss of top-level political support. Jeremy Corbyn represents hope for that to happen.

The “Labour anti-Semitism” story started in earnest in February 2016 as a complete and total fabrication invented out of thin air by Alex Chalmers, a former intern with the pro-Israel Lobby group BICOM (Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre). He claimed that almost the entire student Labour left in Oxford University was anti-Semitic. There was no real evidence for this, but the mainstream media ran with the story anyway.

Aside from some unspecific slurs (which tellingly named no culprits), Chalmers’ only “evidence” was the fact that the student Labour Society had endorsed Israeli Apartheid Week. This is an annual global initiative by pro-Palestinian activists to educate and inform about the realities of Israel’s racist apartheid regime in Palestine.

Chalmers, in fact, was part of Progress, the Blairite desiccated corporate faction of Labour. He and his co-conspirator exited the Labour Party soon after quitting the club, and joined the Liberal Democrats, but the damage was done in the minds of the hysterical and deluded mainstream media; Corbyn’s Labour has been “anti-Semitic” ever since.

The sad reality, though, is that Corbyn and his team have indeed made mistakes, in that they have indulged this media fantasy far too much. Instead of hitting back strongly and calling out his accusers as the bad-faith smear merchants that they are, Corbyn has instead apologised, backed down and pandered to them, even when he has absolutely nothing to apologise for.

One of the worst mistakes in this regard was to apologise for appearing on a platform with Hajo Meyer, a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. Meyer had compared the situation of Palestinians trapped under Israeli occupation and bombardment with Jews caged by the Nazis in places like the infamous Warsaw ghetto.

Perhaps it was not a comparison that everybody would feel able to make, but Meyer lived under the brutal reality of the genocidal anti-Semitism of the Nazis. He was perfectly within his rights to make it, and those smearing him as anti-Semitic should be ashamed of themselves, but I doubt that they ever will.

Thankfully, in more recent weeks, Corbyn’s office has shown some tentative signs of fighting back, and getting up off their knees. When Benjamin Netanyahu intervened directly via Twitter two weeks ago, for example, Corbyn hit back by insisting that the Israeli Prime Minister’s claims were false, and slammed him for his army’s killing of more than 160 unarmed protesters in the Gaza Strip since the end of March.

This week, Corbyn’s spokespeople put out a good response to the media after former Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue in Britain, Lord Jonathan Sacks, made a disgusting claim that the Labour leader is a racist. They stated that his “comparison with the race-baiting Enoch Powell is absurd and offensive.”

The more Corbyn sticks up for himself, the more his supporters will rally around him. The more he concedes to the pro-Israel Lobby, the more his critics will sense weakness, and will continue the smears, character assassinations and even open incitement to murder him.

Appeasement is a doomed strategy, as the last three years have proven decisively. The Labour “anti-Semitism crisis” smear campaign will only end in one of two ways: either it will have Corbyn deposed, or it will be defeated. The latter is only possible if Corbyn fights back strongly enough.

*

Featured image is from Chatham House/Flickr.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

When Michael Crick embarrassed Theresa May by quizzing her on her non-existent opposition to apartheid as she visited Mandela’s old cell, the response of New Labour was to defend May by claiming the Tories had opposed apartheid all along. Progress and Labour Friends of Israel rushed immediately to the defence of the person they truly adore, who sits higher still in their Pantheon than Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They rushed to defend the memory of Margaret Thatcher.

Ex-Labour MP Tom Harris and Blair’s former Political Director John McTernan (who now write for the Tory Spectator and Telegraph) led the suicide charge of the Labour Thatcherites.

The person here quoted with approval is Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes, far right blogger who has stated that he never wore a “Hang Nelson Mandela” badge personally, but used to hang out with people who did.

Blair-loving ex-MP Tom Harris went one further by claiming that Jeremy Corbyn’s own anti-apartheid opposition was connected to a “rape-cult”, a stupefying bit of “guilt by association” propaganda.

Here we have Liz Kendall supporter and occasional Guardian columnist Sarah Hayward – possibly the most obscure individual to get themselves a blue tick on Twitter, as though she were worth impersonating – making the absolutely ludicrous claim that when arrested, Corbyn was supporting Thatcher’s anti-apartheid policy.

I could go on, but for a last example here is Blairite house journal the New Statesman, pretending to wrap a scholarly respectability around the Thatcher revisionism. It is worth noting that the Blairites repeatedly call in evidence the claims by another right-wing Blairite and former Ambassador in Pretoria, Lord Renwick (who resigned from the Labour Whip when Blair ceased to be Prime Minister). Renwick wrote an entirely tendentious and self-serving book on his and Thatcher’s “role in ending apartheid”.

The truth is not hard to find. Professor Patrick Salmon, the FCO’s official historian, last year published the monumental volume of official documents “The Challenge of Apartheid”. It details with mounds of evidence Thatcher’s stern resistance to any sanctions against apartheid and, repeatedly, her insistence that the ANC was “a terrorist organisation”. Here is a quote from Salmon’s synthesis of Thatcher’s views from the official history (I can’t give a page number as I received the final draft, as standard FCO practice as I feature in the book, and I quote from the draft):

“Mrs Thatcher was relentlessly hostile to all those who sought to overthrow the apartheid regime by force or undermine it through economic sanctions. The ANC was unacceptable not only because of its association with communism… but above all because of its refusal to renounce the use of violence… which inevitably meant that she regarded it as a terrorist organisation of the same stamp as the PLO or the IRA. Mrs Thatcher adamantly opposed the imposition of further economic sanctions…

South Africa’s role as a bulwark of the West against Soviet expansion was not just a rhetorical ploy but was believed implicitly by Ronald Reagan as well as by Mrs Thatcher.”

I was, to my intense frustration, banned from communicating with the ANC. Professor Salmon details at great length the sharp disagreement between Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe, Malcolm Rifkind and Lynda Chalker over South Africa. There were indeed genuinely anti-apartheid Tories. But Thatcher was not one of them. All of her instincts on this were with the pro-Apartheid right of the party, as Salmon notes explicitly.

In real life, Thatcher was not a dictator. She had to carry her Cabinet with her. Her relationship with Howe in particular was crucial to her political base, as illustrated by the fact that he more than anybody precipitated her ultimate political downfall. It is true that Thatcher did in private meetings tell P W Botha to release Mandela – but that was at Howe’s insistence, not of her own volition.

Thatcher’s 1984 meeting with P W Botha at Chequers is worth noting. There was a massive demonstration against it, on which I took part just before joining the FCO, as did Jeremy Corbyn, Peter Hain and children of both Geoffrey Howe and our then Ambassador to South Africa. At this meeting Thatcher’s briefing provided by the FCO was to call for Mandela’s release. But she did not do so in the official meetings. A minute from her Private Secretary Charles Powell (brother of Blair’s Chief of Staff) claimed that Thatcher had pressed Botha to release Mandela in a private conversation over canapes with no witnesses. It is fair to say the nature of this “pressing”, if it happened, was ever after a subject of some scepticism in the FCO. If anyone knows what the South African records say…

For two years I, among other responsibilities, wrote briefings, speeches and parliamentary answers on South Africa, cleared them through FCO ministers before being sent over to No. 10, where they would get “toned down” by Charles Powell to reflect Thatcher’s views. I cherish my first ever conversation with Powell. I called Number 10 to discuss a draft, and asked;

“Hello, is that Charles Powell?”.
“Actually, it’s Pole”, he replied.
“Oh I am sorry”, I said in genuine innocence, “It’s spelt Powell in my directory”.

I had not yet got used to posh twats.

The truth is very easy to discover, and it is not what the Blairites now claim in their deluded Thatcher worship. Sir Patrick Wright, former Head of the Diplomatic Service, was absolutely correct in observing that Thatcher supported a “Whites-only” state:

It should be noted this comes from Patrick Wright’s diary written at the time, and not a subsequent self-serving account. I can confirm it is absolutely true, from my position as the South Africa (Political) desk officer 1984-6.

What Thatcher favoured was P W Botha’s “Bantustans” or “Homelands policy”, under which an ethnically defined, whites only state possessing all of South Africa’s wealthy cities and ports and the best mineral and agricultural resources, would exist alongside a number of impoverished “independent states” housing different tribes, from which a low paid workforce could commute daily to white areas (or live there temporarily under passes). That was the planned endgame of apartheid, and a number of such “states” were created – South Africa actually declared four “Bantustans” as independent countries. Thatcher hankered after their recognition, particularly Boputhatswana.

The “Homelands policy” is of course identical to the “two state solution” which the neo-cons propose for Palestine, with an apartheid ethnically defined Israel holding all the main resources next to impoverished pockets of Palestinians in an “independent state” commuting in to provide a cheap labour force.

Not only does Patrick Wright affirm in his diaries Thatcher’s support for the “Homelands Policy”, Professor Salmon confirms it too “Mrs Thatcher was talking about a return to pre-1910 South Africa, with a white mini-state partitioned from their neighbouring black states”.

Last year I published more on my recollections of my own role at that period.

As a final rebuke to Thatcher’s New Labour acolytes, I quote Peter Hain:

[Hain] criticised Norman Tebbit, a minister under Margaret Thatcher, and Charles Moore, her biographer, for trying to rewrite history.

“If Nelson Mandela can forgive his oppressors without forgetting their crimes, who am I not to do the same to our opponents in the long decades of the anti-apartheid struggle,” he added.

“But it really does stick in the craw when Lord Tebbit, Charles Moore and others similar tried over recent days to claim that their complicity with apartheid – and that’s what I think it was – somehow brought about its end. Even, to my utter incredulity, when Lord Tebbit told BBC World, in a debate with me, that they had brought about Mandela’s freedom. I know for a fact that Nelson Mandela did not think so.”

But there is a question here of great urgency today. Why do New Labour leap in to deny what Hain called the Tories “craven indulgence of apartheid”, to defend Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, and to criticise Jeremy Corbyn for his anti-apartheid activity?

Together with reaction to the quitting the party of Frank Field, an open Thatcher and Enoch Powell reminder, I conclude that the Blairite MPs would prefer to be led by Margaret Thatcher or Theresa May than Jeremy Corbyn. Their psychology is deeply troubling:

I support Scottish Independence, so I am in a different position to voters in England. But, despite the fact large numbers of my friends have joined the Labour Party to support Jeremy Corbyn, I could not vote Labour in most of England. Could I advise somebody to vote for Wes Streeting, John Mann, Jess Phillips, Stephen Kinnock or their ilk? No, under no circumstances.

Labour party members need to bite the bullet on reselection. Being a Labour MP cannot be a sinecure granted for life irrespective of behaviour. The party is plainly dysfunctional, and it is so because the large majority of MPs are totally removed from the views of the membership. There are only two ways to resolve this. Either the MPs will have to leave parliament or the members will have to leave the party. There is no coherent party at present.

The Blairite Labour MPs have painted themselves into a corner by their decision to brand Jeremy Corbyn as personally a racist and an anti-semite. If I was in a party led by a racist and anti-semite, I would leave the party. The idea that they can continue as members of parliament for the party while expressing such views about the leader is a nonsense. But they do not wish to leave, because they would lose their comfy jobs. All of the right wing Labour MPs realise they would never win an election on their own account, without Labour Party support. It would be hilarious if not so serious, that they claim Frank Field can resign the Labour whip but this does not mean leave the party, and that he must still be the Labour Party candidate at the next election!

Their hope is twofold. Firstly, that the charges of anti-semitism against Corbyn will be widely believed and lead to a drastic drop in public support which will force Corbyn out. This is not happening. The public realise that the charges of anti-semitism are false and based on a definition of the word which simply means critic of Israel. Other than the normal polling malaise which follows any split in a party, there is no drastic plunge in support for Labour of the kind which would definitely follow if the public thought the party were led by an anti-semite.

To put it another way, either 40% of the public are anti-semites, or the public do not take these accusations seriously.

The Blairites other hope is that, by the Labour Party adopting the IHRA’s malicious definition of anti-semitism as embracing criticism of Israel, they will manage through legal action to force Jeremy Corbyn’s expulsion from the Labour Party. This attempt to use the British Establishment to circumvent party democracy is extraordinary.

By bringing things to this pitch, the Blairites have made compromise impossible. Either Corbyn and most of the members will have to go, or the Blairite MPs will.

Something must give. That is why I urge everybody who is in the Labour Party to take action today to push for mandatory reselection of MPs. The matter is urgent, and no party can resist the united force of its members for long.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

The past is not dead; it is people who are sleeping.  The current night and daymares that we are having arise out of murders lodged deep in our past that have continued into the present.  No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history, the cheap grace we bestow upon ourselves.  We have, as Harold Pinter said in his Nobel address, been feeding on “a vast tapestry of lies” that surrounds us, lies uttered by nihilistic leaders and their media mouthpieces for a very long time.  We have, or should have, bad consciences for not acknowledging being active or silent accomplices in the suppression of truth and the vicious murdering of millions at home and abroad.

But, as Pinter said,

“I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.”

No one is more emblematic of this noble effort than David Ray Griffin, who, in book after book since the attacks of 11 September 2001, has meticulously exposed the underside of the American empire and its evil masters.  His persistence in trying to reach people and to warn them of the horrors that have resulted is extraordinary.  Excluding his philosophical and theological works, this is his fifteenth book since 2004 on these grave issues of life and death and the future of the world.

In this masterful book, he provides a powerful historical argument that right from the start with the arrival of the first European settlers, this country, despite all the rhetoric about it having been divinely founded and guided, has been “more malign that benign, more demonic than divine.”  He chronologically presents this history, supported by meticulous documentation, to prove his thesis.  In his previous book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World, Griffin cataloged the evil actions that flowed from the inside job/false flag attacks of September 11^th, while in this one – a prequel – he offers a lesson in American history going back centuries, and he shows that one would be correct in calling the United States a “false flag empire.”  

The attacks of 11 September 2001 are the false flag fulcrum upon which his two books pivot. Their importance cannot be overestimated, not just for their inherent cruelty that resulted in thousands of innocent American deaths, but since they became the justification for the United States’ ongoing murderous campaigns termed “the war on terror” that have brought death to millions of people around the world.  An international array of expendable people.  Terrifying as they were, and were meant to be, they have many precedents, although much of this history is hidden in the shadows.  Griffin shines a bright light on them, with most of his analysis focused on the years 1850-2018.  

As a theological and philosophical scholar, he is well aware of the great importance of society’s need for religious legitimation for its secular authority, a way to offer its people a shield against terror and life’s myriad fears through a protective myth that has been used successfully by the United States to terrorize others.  He shows how the terms by which the U.S. has been legitimated as God’s “chosen nation” and Americans as God’s “chosen people” have changed over the years as secularization and pluralism have made inroads.  The names have changed, but the meaning has not. God is on our side, and when that is so, the other side is cursed and can be killed by God’s people, who are always battling el diabalo.   

He exemplifies this by opening with a quote from George Washington’s first Inaugural Address where Washington speaks of “the Invisible Hand” and “Providential agency” guiding the country, and by ending with Obama saying “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.”  In between we hear Andrew Jackson say that “Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number” and Henry Cabot Lodge in 1900 characterize America’s divine mission as “manifest destiny.”  The American religion today is American Exceptionalism, an updated euphemism for the old-fashioned “God’s New Israel” or the “Redeemer Nation.” 

At the core of this verbiage lies the delusion that the United States, as a blessed and good country, has a divine mission to spread “democracy” and “freedom” throughout the world, as Hilary Clinton declared during the 2016 presidential campaign when she said that “we are great because we are good,” and in 2004 when George W. Bush said, “Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom.”   Such sentiments could only be received with sardonic laughter by the countless victims made “free” by America’s violent leaders, now and then, as Griffin documents.

Having established the fact of America’s claim to divine status, he then walks the reader through various thinkers who have taken sides on the issue of the United States being benign or malign.  This is all preliminary to the heart of the book, which is a history lesson documenting the malignancy at the core of the American trajectory.

“American imperialism is often said to have begun in 1898, when Cuba and the Philippines were the main prizes,” he begins.  “What was new at this time, however, was only that America took control of countries beyond the North American continent.” 

The “divine right” to seize others’ lands and kill them started long before, and although no seas were crossed in the usual understanding of imperialism, the genocide of Native Americans long preceded 1898.  So too did the “manifest destiny” that impelled war with Mexico and the seizure of its land and the expansion west to the Pacific.  This period of empire building depended heavily on the “other great crime against humanity” that was the slave trade, wherein it is estimated that 10 million Africans died, in addition to the sick brutality of slavery itself.  “No matter how brutal the methods, Americans were instruments of divine purposes,” writes Griffin.  And, he correctly adds, it is not even true that America’s overseas imperialistic ventures only started in 1898, for in the 1850s Commodore Perry forced “the haughty Japanese” to open their ports to American commerce through gunboat diplomacy.  

Then in 1898 the pace of overseas imperial expansion picked up dramatically with what has been called “The Spanish-American War” that resulted in the seizure of Cuba and the Philippines and the annexing of Hawaii.  Griffin says these wars could more accurately be termed “the wars to take Spanish colonies.”  His analysis of the brutality and arrogance of these actions makes the reader realize that My Lai and other more recent atrocities have a long pedigree that is part of an institutional structure, and while Filipinos and Cubans and so many others were being slaughtered, Griffin writes, “Anticipating Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s declaration that ‘we don’t do empire,’ [President] McKinley said that imperialism is ‘foreign to the temper and genius of this free and generous people.’”  

Then as now, perhaps mad laughter is the only response to such unadulterated bullshit, as Griffin quotes Mark Twain saying that it would be easy creating a flag for the Philippines: 

We can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones. 

That would have also worked for Columbia, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, and other countries subjugated under the ideology of the Monroe Doctrine; wherever freedom  and national independence raised its ugly head, the United States was quick to intervene with its powerful anti-revolutionary military and its financial bullying.  In the Far East the “Open Door” policy was used to loot China, Japan, and other countries.

But all this was just the beginning.  Griffin shows how Woodrow Wilson, the quintessentially devious and treacherous liberal Democrat, who claimed he wanted to keep America out of WW I, did  just the opposite to make sure the U.S. would come to dominate the foreign markets his capitalist masters demanded.  Thus Griffin explores how Wilson conspired with Winston Churchill to use the sinking of the Lusitania as a casus belli and how the Treaty of Versailles’s harsh treatment of Germany set the stage for WW II.

He tells us how in the intervening years between the world wars the demonization of Russia and the new Soviet Union was started. This deprecation of Russia, which is roaring at full-throttle today, is a theme that recurs throughout The American Trajectory.  Its importance cannot be overemphasized.  Wilson called the Bolshevik government “a government by terror,” and in 1918 “sent thousands of troops into northern and eastern Russia, leaving them there until 1920.”  

That the U. S. invaded Russia is a fact rarely mentioned and even barely known to Americans.  Perhaps awareness of it and the century-long demonizing of the U.S.S.R./Russia would enlighten those who buy the current anti-Russia propaganda called “Russiagate.” 

To match that “divine” act of imperial intervention abroad, Wilson fomented the Red Scare at home, which, as Griffin says, had lasting and incalculable importance because it created the American fear of radical thought and revolution that exists to this very day and serves as a justification for supporting brutal dictators around the world and crackdowns on freedom at home (as is happening today).  

He gives us brief summaries of some dictators the U.S has supported, and reminds us of the saying of that other liberal Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, who famously said of the brutal Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, that “he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”  And thus Somoza would terrorize his own people for 43 years.  The same took place in Cuba, Chile, Iran, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, etc.  The U.S. also supported Mussolini, did nothing to prevent Franco’s fascist toppling of the Spanish Republic, and supported the right-wing government of Chiang-Kai Shek in its efforts to dominate China.

It is a very dark and ugly history that confirms the demonic nature of American actions around the world.

Then Griffin explodes the many myths about the so-called “Good War” – WW II.  He explains the lies told about the Japanese “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor; how Roosevelt wished to get the U.S. into the war, both in the Pacific and in Europe; and how much American economic self-interest lay behind it.  He critiques the myth that America selflessly wished to defend freedom loving people in their battles with brutal, fascist regimes.  That, he tells us, is but a small part of the story:

This, however, is not an accurate picture of American policies during the Second World War.  Many people were, to be sure, liberated from terrible tyrannies by the Allied victories.  But the fact that these people benefited was an incidental outcome, not a motive of American policies.  These policies, as [Andrew] Bacevich discovered, were based on ‘unflagging self-interest.’

Then there are the conventional and atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Nothing could be more demonic, as Griffin shows.  If these cold-blooded mass massacres of civilians and the lies told to justify them don’t convince a reader that there has long been something radically evil at the heart of American history, nothing will.  Griffin shows how Truman and his advisers and top generals, including Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff, knew the dropping of the atomic bombs were unnecessary to end the war, but they did so anyway.  

He reminds us of Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s response to the question whether she thought the deaths of more than 500, 000 Iraqi children as a result of Clinton’s crippling economic sanctions were worth it: “But, yes, we think the price is worth it.”  (Notice the “is,” the ongoing nature of these war crimes, as she spoke.)  But this is the woman who also said, “We are the indispensable nation.  We stand tall…”

Griffin devotes other chapters to the creation of the Cold War, American imperialism during the Cold War, Post-Cold War interventions, the Vietnam War, the drive for global dominance, and false flag operations, among other topics.  

As for false flag operations, he says, “Indeed, the trajectory of the American Empire has relied so heavily on these types of attacks that one could describe it as a false flag empire.”  In the false flag chapter and throughout the book, he discusses many of the false flags the U.S. has engaged in, including Operation Gladio, the U.S./NATO terrorist operation throughout Europe that Swiss historian Daniele Ganser has extensively documented, an operation meant to discredit communists and socialists.  Such operations were directly connected to the OSS, the CIA and its director Allen Dulles, his henchman James Jesus Angleton, and their Nazi accomplices, such as General Reinhard Gehlen.  In one such attack in 1980 at the Bologna, Italy railway station, these U.S. terrorists killed 85 people and wounded 20 others.  As with the bombs dropped by Saudi Arabia today on Yemeni school children, the explosive used was made for the U.S. military.  About these documented U.S. atrocities, Griffin says:

These revelations show the falsity of an assumption widely held by Americans.  While recognizing that the US military sometimes does terrible things to their enemies, most Americans have assumed that US military leaders would not order the killing of innocent civilians in allied countries for political purposes.  Operation Gladio showed this assumption to be false.

He is right, but I would add that the leaders behind this were civilian, as much as, or more than military.  

In the case of “Operation Northwoods,” it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who presented to President Kennedy this false flag proposal that would provide justification for a U.S. invasion of Cuba.  It would have involved the killing of American citizens on American soil, bombings, plane hijacking, etc.  President Kennedy considered such people and such plans insane, and he rejected it as such.  His doing so tells us much, for many other presidents would have approved it.  And again, how many Americans are aware of this depraved proposal that is documented and easily available?  How many even want to contemplate it?  For the need to remain in denial of the facts of history and believe in the essential goodness of America’s rulers is a very hard nut to crack.  Griffin has written a dozen books about 11 September 2001, trying to do exactly that.

If one is willing to embrace historical facts, however, then this outstanding book will open one’s eyes to the long-standing demonic nature of the actions of America’s rulers.  A reader cannot come away from its lucidly presented history unaffected, unless one lives in a self-imposed fantasy world.  The record is clear, and Griffin lays it out in all its graphic horror. Which is not to say that the U.S. has not “done both good and bad things, so it could not sensibly be called purely divine or purely demonic.” Questions of purity are meant to obfuscate basic truths. And the question he asks in his subtitle – Divine or Demonic? – is really a rhetorical question, and when it comes to the “trajectory” of American history, the demonic wins hands down.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out one place where Griffin fails the reader.  In his long chapter on Vietnam, which is replete with excellent facts and analyses, he makes a crucial mistake, which is unusual for him.  This mistake appears in a four page section on President Kennedy’s policies on Vietnam.  In those pages, Griffin relies on Noam Chomsky’s terrible book – Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture (1993), a book wherein Chomsky shows no regard for evidence or facts – to paint Kennedy as being in accord with his advisers, the CIA, and the military regarding Vietnam.  This is factually false. Griffin should have been more careful and have understood this.  The truth is that Kennedy was besieged and surrounded by these demonic people, who were intent on isolating him, disregarding his instructions, and murdering him to achieve their goals in Vietnam.  In the last year of his life, JFK had taken a radical turn toward peace-making, not only in Vietnam, but with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and around the globe.  Such a turn was anathema to the war lovers. Thus he had to die.  Contrary to Chomsky’s deceptions, motivated by his hatred of Kennedy and perhaps something more sinister (he also backs the Warren Commission, thinks JFK’s assassination was no big deal, and accepts the patently false official version of the attacks of 11 September 2001), Griffin should have emphatically asserted that Kennedy had issued NSAM 263 on October 11, 1963 calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam, and that after he was assassinated a month later, Lyndon Johnson reversed that withdrawal order with NSAM 273.  Chomsky notwithstanding, all the best scholarship and documentary evidence proves this.  And for Griffin, a wonderful scholar, to write that with the change from Kennedy to Johnson that “this change of presidents would bring no basic change in policy” is so shockingly wrong that I imagine Griffin, a man passionate about truth, simply slipped up and got sloppy here.  For nothing could be further from the truth.  

Ironically, Griffin makes a masterful case for his thesis, while forgetting the one pivotal man, President John Kennedy, who sacrificed his life in an effort to change the trajectory of American history from its demonic course.

It is one mistake in an otherwise very important and excellent book that should be required reading for anyone who doubts the evil nature of this country’s continuing foreign policy.  Those who are already convinced should also read it, for it provides a needed historical resource and impetus to help change the trajectory that is transporting the world toward nuclear oblivion, if continued. 

 If – a fantastic wish! – The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic? were required reading in American schools and colleges, perhaps a new generation would arise to change our devils into angels, the arc of America’s future moral universe toward justice, and away from being the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, as it has been for so very long.

* 

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Assad was supposed to be gone already. President Obama thought it would be just another “regime change” operation and perhaps Assad would end up like Saddam Hussein or Yanukovych. Or maybe even Gaddafi. But he was supposed to be gone. The US spent billions to get rid of him and even provided weapons and training to the kinds of radicals that attacked the United States on 9/11.

But with the help of his allies, Assad has nearly defeated this foreign-sponsored insurgency.

The US fought him every step of the way. Each time the Syrian military approached another occupied city or province, Washington and its obedient allies issued the usual warnings that Assad was not liberating territory but was actually seeking to kill more of his own people.

Remember Aleppo, where the US claimed Assad was planning mass slaughter once he regained control? As usual the neocons and the media were completely wrong. Even the UN has admitted that with Aleppo back in the hands of the Syrian government hundreds of thousands of Syrians have actually moved back. We are supposed to believe they willingly returned so that Assad could kill them?

The truth is Aleppo is being rebuilt. Christians celebrated Easter there this spring for the first time in years. There has been no slaughter once al-Qaeda and ISIS’ hold was broken. Believe me, if there was a slaughter we would have heard about it in the media!

So now, with the Syrian military and its allies prepare to liberate the final Syrian province of Idlib, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo again warns the Syrian government against re-taking its own territory. He Tweeted on Friday that: “The three million Syrians, who have already been forced out of their homes and are now in Idlib, will suffer from this aggression. Not good. The world is watching.”

President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has also warned the Syrian government that the US will attack if it uses gas in Idlib. Of course, that warning serves as an open invitation to rebels currently holding Idlib to set off another false flag and enjoy US air support.

Bolton and Pompeo are painting Idlib as a peaceful province resisting the violence of an Assad who they claim just enjoys killing his own people. But who controls Idlib province? President Trump’s own Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, Brett McGurk, said in Washington just last year that, “Idlib province is the largest al-Qaeda safe-haven since 9/11, tied to directly to Ayman al Zawahiri, this is a huge problem.”

Could someone please remind Pompeo and Bolton that al-Qaeda are the bad guys?

After six years of a foreign-backed regime-change operation in Syria, where hundreds of thousands have been killed and the country nearly fell into the hands of ISIS and al-Qaeda, the Syrian government is on the verge of victory. Assad is hardly a saint, but does anyone really think al-Qaeda and ISIS are preferable? After all, how many Syrians fled the country when Assad was in charge versus when the US-backed “rebels” started taking over?

Americans should be outraged that Pompeo and Bolton are defending al-Qaeda in Idlib. It’s time for the neocons to admit they lost. It is time to give Syria back to the Syrians. It is time to pull the US troops from Syria. It is time to just leave Syria alone!

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Background

UNRWA is confronted with an increased demand for services resulting from a growth in the number of registered Palestine refugees, the extent of their vulnerability and their deepening poverty. UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions and financial support has been outpaced by the growth in needs. As a result, the UNRWA programme budget, which supports the delivery of core essential services, operates with a large shortfall. UNRWA encourages all Member States to work collectively to exert all possible efforts to fully fund the Agency’s programme budget. UNRWA emergency programmes and key projects, also operating with large shortfalls, are funded through separate funding portals.

UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and mandated to provide assistance and protection to some 5.4 million Palestine refugees registered with UNRWA across its five fields of operation. Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip achieve their full human development potential, pending a just and lasting solution to their plight. UNRWA services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, protection and microfinance.

*

On 31 August, the United States announced that it will provide no additional funding to UNRWA. I express deep regret and disappointment at the nature of the US decision – which affects one of the most robust and rewarding partnerships in the humanitarian and development fields – and unreservedly reject its accompanying narrative.

At the outset, I wish to convey – with confidence and steadfast determination – to Palestine refugees in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, that our operations will continue and our Agency prevail. At the heart of our mission lie the dignity and rights of a very anguished and profoundly unsettled community. The funding decision of an individual member state – albeit our historically most generous and consistent donor – will not modify or impact the energy and passion with which we approach our role and responsibility towards Palestine refugees. It will only strengthen our resolve.

To my colleagues – both Palestinian and international – I confirm that we will apply ourselves with every shred of energy and creativity to continue meeting the needs of the community and preserve our vital services. All staff will be at their duty stations, and will keep our installations open and safe. It is crucial to project the strongest sense of unity and purpose.

UNRWA’s remarkable history is made up of millions of acts of selflessness and courage in one the world’s most polarized and emotionally charged regions of the planet. I am proud and honored to lead this dynamic agency and wish to pay tribute to the dozens of colleagues whose lives were lost in recent years, in particular in Gaza, Syria and the West Bank.

We were created in 1949 to provide assistance and protection of rights of Palestine refugees, pending a just and lasting solution to their plight. This was – and firmly remains – the expression of the collective will of the international community and the General Assembly of the United Nations has consistently praised the human development results achieved by the Agency and extended its mandate. The World Bank has called our education system a “global public good”.

The need for humanitarian action arises from the extreme violence, pain, suffering and injustice caused by war. In the case of Palestine refugees, this was caused by forced displacement, dispossession, loss of homes and livelihoods, as well as by statelessness and occupation. No matter how often attempts are made to minimize or delegitimize the individual and collective experiences of Palestine refugees, the undeniable fact remains that they have rights under international law and represent a community of 5.4 Million men, women and children who cannot simply be wished away.

The responsibility for the protracted nature of the Palestine refugee-hood, the growing number of refugees and the growth in needs, lies squarely with the parties and in the international community’s lack of will or utter inability to bring about a negotiated and peaceful resolution of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The attempt to make UNRWA somehow responsible for perpetuating the crisis is disingenuous at best.

There is sadly nothing unique in the protracted nature of the Palestine refugee crisis. Refugees in places like Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Congo and beyond have also experienced decades of displacement and lack of resolution. Their children and grand-children are similarly recognized as refugees and assisted by UNHCR. Enshrined in the principle of humanity and the international law norm of family unity is the commitment to continue serving communities affected by war until a political solution has been found. It is the failure to end conflicts that prolongs refugee situations and denies refugees the choice to define a dignified future of their own.

In January 2018, the US announced that its annual contribution to UNRWA would be $60 M. We acknowledged this important funding at the time but also highlighted the fact that it represented a $300 M reduction in income, which confronted our organization with an existential crisis. At no time over the past eight months were we notified of the specific reasons for the dramatic cut.

It appeared clearly related however to the tensions between the United States and the Palestinian leadership following the US announcement on Jerusalem and not to UNRWA’s performance. It therefore represented an evident politicization of humanitarian aid. The announcement made yesterday further challenges the notion that humanitarian funding should be depoliticized. It risks undermining the foundations of the international multi-lateral and humanitarian systems.

It is a radical departure from almost 7 decades of genuine – if at times critical – US support to our Agency and is inconsistent with the cooperation agreement signed in early December 2017 between the United States and UNRWA, in which the US recognized the robustness and integrity of our management of the organization and its resources and how we address our multiple operational, security and financial challenges.

Our commitment to accountability, strict and sound financial discipline, to setting priorities and acting decisively when the Agency’s neutrality is challenged, are matters of public record. In 2018, UNRWA introduced stringent management measures as its own necessary contribution to overcoming the financial crisis.

We have also achieved remarkable results in terms of diversification and expanding partnerships. I want here to acknowledge with deep appreciation the over 25 countries that advanced their expected annual contributions to earlier in the year to help us sustain operations. I wish also to express immense gratitude to the 30 donors who have provided additional contributions to UNRWA’s core and emergency activities this year and those who have signed new multi-year agreements with us.

I wish to highlight with particular emphasis the generous donations made by Gulf countries, specifically the State of Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, as well as the historic support from the State of Kuwait.

We are still in critical need of over $200 M to survive this year’s crisis and call on donors to sustain the collective mobilization to succeed in this crucial endeavor.

I am indebted to the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, for his trust and leadership in mobilizing support for our Agency. I wish to sincerely thank all host countries for their tireless efforts, as illustrated with particular vigor and dedication by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and by Palestine. The commitment shown respectively by Egypt and by Turkey as successive chairs of UNRWA’s Advisory Commission is also recognized.

When we opened the school year on time this week – with the admirable support of our partners – and 526’000 girls and boys returned to classrooms in our 711 schools in the region, it was a moment of celebration, pride and hope.

UNRWA does not pay lip service when it comes to the right to education, to empowering young girls, to developing critical thinking and teaching tolerance and human rights. There is nothing artificial in our commitment to the preservation of opportunities and rights. We act concretely on these difficult front-lines, committed to upholding the integrity of our mandate and striving for high standards in our education, health, relief and social services and emergency response.

I say again to all Palestine refugees: we will not fail you. Our partnership with you is stronger than ever. Your Dignity is Priceless.

With my sincere regards,

Pierre Krähenbühl

Commissioner-General

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Featured image: Bridge along Afghan- Tajik border (Source: TruePublica)

Russia, the United States and Tajikistan have all denied that they were behind a series of mystery airstrikes that took place along the Tajik-Afghan border on Sunday, while the identity of the targets also remains unknown. The 800-mile border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan consists of mountainous terrain. Unlike the Afghan-Pakistani border, which is rife with skirmishes and firefights, the Afghan-Tajik border is usually peaceful and sparsely guarded. But on Sunday, August 26, local officials from both sides of the Afghan-Tajik border reported that fighter jets conducted a series of airstrikes. News media in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe said that Tajik border guards exchanged fire with Taliban fighters, killing as many as eight, but losing two officers in the process. However, on Monday a Tajik border police official denied media reports and said that the border incident involved Tajik lumberjacks who were attacked by unknown assailants from Afghanistan.

Adding to the mystery, Afghan officials said on Sunday that fighter jets bombed Afghan territory adjacent to the Tajik border. They added that they did not know if the fighter jets were Russian or Tajik. However, Tajikistan has a nominal air force consisting of no more than four Czech-made light-attack aircraft, which have not been used in over a decade. That leaves Russia, which maintains an air base in the suburbs of Dushanbe, 100 miles from the Afghan border. But on Monday, Moscow denied any involvement in the incident, as did Tajikistan. Russian officials placed the blame on the US, saying that the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) force in Afghanistan is known to regularly launch airstrikes throughout Afghanistan. But US Pentagon officials said that they were not involved. When asked by reporters in Kabul, Afghan government representatives said that Afghanistan lacked the ability to monitor its airspace due to a lack of radar equipment. They called on the US-led NATO force to investigate Sunday’s incident.

Meanwhile, the identity of the persons targeted in the alleged airstrikes is also in doubt. On Monday, the Taliban denied that they had engaged with either Afghan or Tajik government forces along Afghanistan’s northern borderlands, saying that they had not authorized their fighters to operate in the area. Additionally, the Taliban have not been known to engage Tajik government troops in the past. Some observers have opined that the border skirmish may have been caused by drug smugglers who regularly transport drugs from Afghanistan to Russia or the Caspian Sea region through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. However, there are no prior reported incidents of Russian, American or Tajik fighter jets having been deployed along the Afghan-Tajik border to combat drug traffickers.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Idlib province, Syria is controlled by US-supported Al-Nusra and other Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists.

So-called “rebels” or “opposition forces” are mercenary hired guns – used by Washington, NATO, Israel and regional regimes hostile to Syrian sovereign independence.

Sergey Lavrov called terrorists infesting Idlib an “abscess” essential to eliminate. Iran called for “clean(ing) (them) out” of the province, their last major stronghold in the country.

Secretary of State Pompeo and other Trump regime officials called the upcoming Syrian offensive to liberate Idlib an escalation of war. It’s just the opposite!

Meeting with his Syrian counterpart in Damascus Walid al-Muallem on Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif minced no words, saying:

“All of Syrian territory must be preserved, and all the sects and groups should start the round of reconstruction as one collective and the displaced should return to their families,” adding:

“And the remaining terrorists in the remaining parts of Idlib must be cleaned out, and the region should be placed back under the control of the Syrian people.”

A statement from Assad’s office said Syria’s government and its allies “asserted that the pressures from some Western states on Syria and Tehran will not deter the two countries from continuing to defend their principles.”

Ahead of the offensive by Syrian forces to liberate Idlib from US-supported terrorists, Sergey Lavrov said these elements in Idlib and elsewhere in Syria “suffer no shortage of weapons and munitions.”

“(T)hey use state-of-the-art weapons, such as unmanned aerial vehicles. Evidently, it would be impossible without foreign sponsors.”

“The counter-terrorist operation in Syria has exposed numerous evidence of supplies of various weapons and hardware to terrorists by bogus companies via third countries” – indicating Washington, NATO, and Israel as key suppliers.

Lavrov called for ending the bogus practice of dividing terrorists into “good” and “bad” ones. They’re all cutthroat killers recruited by Washington and its imperial partners from scores of countries – deployed to Syria as mercenary foot soldiers, aiding the US aim to forcefully topple Assad.

On Monday, Trump warned Assad “not (to) recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!”

They’re threatened by US/NATO/Israeli/Saudi-supported terrorists, holding many Idlib civilians hostage as human shields – not by Syrian forces, intending to liberate them from brutal US-supported bondage.

Separately, Nikki Haley tweeted:

“All eyes on the actions of Assad, Russia, and Iran in Idlib #chemicalweapons.”

Russia has hard evidence of a planned CW incident coming in Idlib to be falsely blamed on Damascus – to be followed by US, UK, French terror-bombing of Syrian sites like last April, escalating conflict more than already, a scheme the Kremlin is going all-out trying to stop by exposing it.

Over the weekend, Trump regime officials James Jeffrey (US special representative for Syria engagement) and Joel Rayburn (US special envoy for Syria) met with Israeli officials in Jerusalem on the upcoming Syrian offensive to liberate Idlib, plotting their counter-strategy.

On Monday, Israeli war minister Avigdor Lieberman warned Tehran, saying:

“We will handle any Iranian threat, no matter where. As for the threat from Iran, we are not limiting ourselves to Syria. That should be clear.”

“I’m saying we will handle any Iranian threat, no matter where it comes from. We are maintaining the right to act…and any threat or anything else that comes up is dealt with.”

Lieberman warned that Israeli warplanes will continue striking Iran’s presence in Syria, along with alleged missiles installed in Iraq, the claim denied by Tehran.

“The lie disseminated by some media on shipment of Iran-made missiles to Iraq is totally irrelevant and unfounded,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi stressed, adding:

“Such news comes merely to cause panic among countries in the region and is in line with their policy to spread Iranophobia.”

Iran only has military advisors in Syria, posing no threat to Israel or any other countries. The Netanyahu regime’s phony claim otherwise risks escalating conflict more than already.

So do Trump regime threats against Damascus. In the upcoming battle to liberate Idlib from US-supported terrorists, if US/NATO/Israeli intervention kills or otherwise harms Russian personnel in Syria, Moscow will surely go all-out to protect them, including by retaliating against hostile forces.

It’s unclear how far the Trump regime, NATO, and Israel will go to counter Syria’s upcoming offensive to liberate Idlib.

If they intervene directly against government forces, threatening or harming Russian personnel aiding them, a US/Russian clash could follow.

Will Idlib prove a flashpoint, igniting greater conflict in Syria than already? Is US/Russian confrontation inevitable in the country?

Moscow supports Syrian sovereign independence, its territorial integrity, and right of its people to choose their own leadership and governance – free from foreign interference. It wants terrorists in the country eliminated.

Washington wants Syria transformed into another US vassal state, the country partitioned, its resources looted, its people exploited, and Iran isolated – ahead of a similar scheme to topple its legitimate government.

It’s using terrorists to advance its imperium. Will opposing US/Russian aims in Syria result in direct confrontation between the world’s dominant nuclear powers?

Is unthinkable WW III possible with nuclear weapons, risking humanity’s survival?

*

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

This Labor Day 2018 marks yet another year of declining living standards for American workers. If one were to believe the media and press, rising wages belie that statement.  The Wall St. Journal, August 1, 2018 trumpeted ‘US Workers Get Biggest Pay Raise in Nearly Ten Years’.

But here’s why that media spin is a misrepresentation of reality.

Labor’s Falling Income Share  

If wages were rising, why is it that labor’s share of total national income has continued to fall for nearly 20 years, including this past year?  At about 64% of total national income in 2000, it has steadily plummeted to around 56% of today’s roughly $16 trillion national income. That decline has not just been a result of the 2008-09 great recession; half of it occurred between 2000 and 2008. So it is a long term secular trend, rooted in today’s 21^st century US capitalist system and not a recent phenomenon.

A drop of 8% in income share for Labor might not seem much in simple percent terms. But 8% of $16 trillion is just short of $1.5 trillion a year. In other words, workers have come up short $1.5 trillion in 2017-18; if their share had remained at 64% they would have $1.5 trillion more in their pockets today than they actually have.  That $1.5 trillion of Labor Share decline represents a loss, at minimum, of $8,000 a year or more per worker. But the $1.5 is also an underestimation.

‘Labor’s Share’ as defined by the government (Labor Dept. and Congressional Budget Office) includes the salaries of managers and senior executives, year-end bonuses of bankers, lump sum payments to executives, and other forms of non-wage income.  True wages income—i.e. of non-management, non-supervisory worker—is a subset of this expanded official definition of Labor’s Share. But if executives, managers and bankers’ forms of salary and pay categories of Labor’s Share have been rising rapidly—which they have—in net terms then true wage incomes have fallen even more than the $1.5 trillion.  Take out the executives’ and managers’ share of the Labor Share of national income, and the lost per year per worker likely exceeds $10,000.

But that’s not all.  Even when considering true wage incomes of non-management, non-supervisory workers (about 82% of the total labor force), wage gains that have occurred have been skewed strongly to the top 10% of the remaining working class households—i.e. professionals in tech, health care and finance, those with advanced college degrees, etc.  By averaging in the wage gains of the top 10% of the working class with the rest, the wage gains of the 10% offset the wage stagnation of the rest. The true negative wage stagnation and decline for the ‘bottom’ 90% wage earners is thus even greater. That’s about 133 million of the 162 million labor force. In other words, the wage incomes of the 133 million have lost even more than the $1.5 trillion of Labor’s Share decline, when excluding the net wage gains of the top 10% of the working class. That means the 133 million have lost even more than $10,000 a year per worker.

Weekly Earnings v. Wages 

Actual wages of the 133 million have therefore fared worse than the Labor Share decline suggests—and even after adjusting for executives-managers and for the top 10% tier (professionals, higher educated, etc.) of the working class. Wages are far less than Labor’s Share data.

Nor are wages the same as ‘workers weekly earnings’, which the media often refers to as wages in order to overstate wage gains.  Official government sources indicate weekly earnings have been rising at 2.7% annual rate.  But weekly earnings are volatile and upswing widely with the business cycle, reflecting hours worked and second jobs. And business cycle upswings since 2001 have been short and shallow. Nevertheless, the press and media often, and purposely, confuse wages with weekly earnings (or with household personal income) in order to make it appear that gains for America’s working class are greater than they are in fact. US Labor Dept. data as of mid-year estimated wage gains at 2.5% over the preceding 17 months to July 2018, according to the Wall St. Journal, and therefore less than the 2.7% figure for weekly earnings.

Wages: The Real Numbers 

Even when properly considering just wages for non-management and non-supervisory workers, official government stats still distort to the upside the true picture with regard wages as well. This upside overestimation is due largely to five causes

1) reporting wages for full time employed workers only;

2) reporting nominal wages instead of real wages;

3) ignoring the claims on future wage payments due to rising worker household debt in the present and therefore future interest payments;

4) not considering the decline in ‘deferred wages’ which are represented in pension and retirement benefit payments decline;

5) disregarding declines in ‘social wages’ represented in falling real social security benefits payments;

1) While official government data report that wages are now rising at a 2.5% annual rate, what that stat fails to mention is that the 2.5% is for full time permanent workers only.  It thus leaves out the lower, if any, wage increases for the current 40-50 million workers who are not full time and are employed in what is sometimes called ‘contingent’ or ‘precarious’ work.

Their lower wage gains would reduce the 2.5% for the total wage earning labor force to less than 2.5%. A similar adjustment should be made for the 8 million or full time workers who have become unemployed and whose “wages”, in the form of unemployment benefits and food stamps, are certainly not rising or being cut.  Add the millions more of undocumented workers, and still millions more youth and others working in the ‘underground’ economy (estimated now at 12% of US GDP)—neither of whom whose wages are estimated accurately by official government wage stats—and the wage gains are still further reduced from the official 2.5%.  When adjustments are made to include these latter categories of wage earners, and consider contingent workers’ wages, it is this writer’s estimate that the true net rise in nominal wages the past year is no more than 1.7% to 2.0% overall and closer to 1% for the 133 million and the ‘bottom’ 90% of the wage earning labor force.

To sum up thus far, when excluding salaries of executives and managers, exempting the top 10% of the wage earning labor force, adding in the wage-less unemployed, and correcting for undocumented and underground economy labor force—the net result for even nominal wages is far less than the official 2.5%.

Nominal wage gains for 133 million are thus no more than 1.5%; that is, or one percent less than the official 2.5%.

2) The 2.5% official wage gain stat reported by the government is what’s called the nominal wage, not the real wage. The real wage—or what workers have actually to spend—is the nominal wage adjusted for the rate of inflation. So what has been the inflation rate? And how accurate is it?

There are various price indices against which wage gains may be adjusted: the consumer price index (CPI), the personal consumption expenditures index (PCE), GDP deflator index, and others. However, most often reported by the media is the CPI. The CPI at mid-year had officially risen 2.9% over the previous year.  So if one applied the CPI to the official hourly wage gain of 2.5%, it would mean that workers’ real wages declined by- 0.4% over the past year. (Or fell by    -1.4% if the above adjustments to the nominal wage are considered).

But both the -0.4% and -1.4% are also underestimations. Here’s why:  The CPI purposely underestimates the true rate of inflation. (And the higher the rate of inflation, the lower the real wage).  First, it smooths out year to year inflation by averaging annual inflation rates by means of what is called ‘chained indexing’.  Furthermore, the CPI does not look at all prices, but at a ‘basket’ of the most likely purchases of goods and services by households.  It then assigns ‘weights’ to the items in this basket.  For working class households, the weights should be greater for housing, healthcare, education, insurance and other basics but they’re not. The weights therefore do not reflect the true impact of inflation on reducing real wages.  There’s another problem. The Labor Dept. arbitrarily assumes increases in quality of a particular good or service in the basket reduces the price for that product. The price for the product in the CPI is often far lower than what a household actually pays for it in the market place. For example, a student may pay $800 for a computer laptop for back to school use, but the Labor Dept. reports it in the CPI as only $500 since it assumes the quality of that laptop is greater than an $800 laptop three years ago.  But this is a distortion of the actual price paid in the market by the working class household. Inflation is under-estimated. Another problem in the CPI is the government’s bias toward underestimating prices for online ecommerce goods purchases by households.

These arbitrary assumptions baked into the CPI serve to reduce the actual rate of CPI inflation. And if the CPI is underestimated, the real wage gain is estimated higher than it actually is. The true inflation rate is therefore undoubtedly well above the official 2.9% and real wages consequently even lower than officially reported.

While mainstream economists typically argue households don’t really know how much inflation is really rising, the truth is they know far better than the economists who rely on faulty, arbitrary government statistical estimations of consumer inflation.  Ask any median working class worker if their household costs have been increasing by only 2.9% the past year—when rent costs are escalating rapidly (often at double digit rates), health insurance premiums and doctor-hospital deductible and copay costs rising 20%-50%, auto insurance, gasoline costs per gallon up sharply over the past year, education & utility and transport costs, etc.  And in the last six months, prices have begun to rise even more broadly, as a large array of goods prices are being hiked by US businesses in anticipation of Trump’s tariff wars starting to bite.

With official CPI inflation at 2.9% and official nominal wages at 2.5%, the government real wage adjustment is only -0.4%.  But if the real CPI were around 3.5%, and nominal wages still assumed at the official 2.5%, then the real wage gain would be only 1.5%.

But that 1.5% real wage still does not factor in the corrections to the nominal wage noted in 1) above—i.e. for excluding executive-managers’ salaries as wages, for including contingent part time and temp workers’ wages, including the lost wages of the unemployed, and correcting for the undocumented and underground economy labor force, etc. Those adjustments reduced the nominal wage from 2.5% to 1.5%.

When these downward adjustments are made to the official 2.5% nominal wage (reducing it to 1.5%), combined with an upward adjustment of the CPI inflation rate to 3.5% (from 2.9%), what results is a real wage decline of -2.0% for the 133 million wage earners in the labor force. 

The media and the press consistently report that real wages have stagnated this past year. The nominal wage gains have been roughly equal to the rate of inflation. But by properly estimating nominal wages (with the adjustments) and properly estimating a somewhat higher CPI rate, real wages have not been stagnating but have continued to decline—at least for the 133 million.

But the ‘wage story’ is still not complete, even when properly defining and adjusting for nominal wages, inflation, and real wages. Neither the media or government give any consideration in their calculations of wage changes to deferred wages or social wages or to the impact of interest and debt on future wages.

3) Future Wages represent a category never considered by official government statistics. What’s ‘future wages’?  They represent nominal and real wages adjusted downward to reflect the cost of credit, and thus interest payments on debt, incurred in the present but due to impact wages in the future as the interest on debt is repaid.  It is no secret that US working class households are increasingly in debt since 2000, as they take on credit in order to finance household consumption as their real wages and incomes have steadily stagnated or declined. Credit, and therefore debt, has been a primary way they have tried to maintain their standard of living the past two decades. (Before that it was adding more hours of work to the family income by having spouses enter the workforce. But this leveled off by 1999). Adding second and third jobs has been another way to add wage income to the household, as wages for  primary worker in the household have declined.

But interest on debt is a claim on wages to be paid in the future. It is spending future wage income in the present. And US capital is more than glad to finance household consumption by extending more and more credit and debt to households in lieu of paying more wages. Another method by which wage decline has been ‘offset’ is to provide cheap imports of basic goods like clothing, household items, even some food categories. But the cheap imports come at the cost of lost high paying manufacturing jobs.  So lack of wage gains is in part offset by cheap imports and a massive increase in available credit to households.  US household debt is now at historic levels, higher than in 2007.  More than $13 trillion in debt, including $1.5 trillion in student debt, more than $1 trillion in credit cards, $1.2 trillion in auto debt, and the rest in mortgage debt. The average household credit card debt interest payments alone are estimated at no less than $1,300 per year. Debt costs, moreover, are rising rapidly as the US central bank continues to steadily hikes its rates.

The debt-interest to wage change relationship has become a vicious cycle, moreover. Employers give little in the way of wage hikes and households resort to more credit-debt and in turn demand less wage increases.  This cycle appears in some areas to be breaking down, however, as teachers, minimum wage service workers, and others agitate for higher wages. But he overall problem will likely continue, as the vehicle for achieving wage gains in good economic times—i.e. Unions—decline further and no longer play their historic role. Knowing this, and burying households in credit card offers and other credit, businesses refuse to grant wage hikes except in isolated cases.

4) and 5): Another area that should be considered ‘wage’ but is not by government agencies reporting on wage changes is pensions and social security benefits.  These too are in effect ‘wages’.  Pensions are deferred wage payments. Workers forego actual wage increases in order to have employers provide contributions, in lieu of actual wages, into their pension plans. Upon retirement, they are then paid these ‘deferred wages’ from their pension plans.

But true pension plans, called defined benefit pensions, have been steadily destroyed—with the assistance of the government run by both Republican and Democrat parties—by employers since the 1980s. The destruction has accelerated since 2001 and continues in its final stages. Defined benefit pensions have been progressively replaced with privatized, ‘401k’ and ‘IRA’ plans—reducing employer costs and liabilities dramatically.  401k plan substitutes have proven a disaster and grossly insufficient for providing ‘deferred wages’ for retirees. Workers within 10 years of retirement on average have barely $50k in 401ks with which to retire on. The average 401k balance for all households is less than $18k. Not surprising, the fastest segment of US labor force growth is workers over age 67 having to re-enter the work force in order to survive. And retiree bankruptcy filing rates are at record levels and rising rapidly. Before 2000, only 2.1% of the over 65 age group filed for bankruptcy; today the rate is 12.2%, a more than fivefold increase even as their population share has risen by only 2.3%. Median household indebtedness for retirees is now $101,000.

Much of the rising debt for retirees is due to the collapse of the ‘wage’ in the form of monthly pension benefit payments, as defined benefit plans have been destroyed by employers and government in collusion and replaced by lower benefit 401k privatized pensions.  Bankruptcies, rise of part time contingent work by retirees, and senior citizen poverty rate escalation have been the consequences.  None of this deferred wage decline has been accounted for in the general wage statistics by US government agencies, however.

A similar retirement household wage decline is associated with monthly social security benefit payments—i.e. what might be called a ‘social wage’ similar to private pension deferred wage. It is ‘financed’ by employer (and worker) payroll tax payments into the social security trust fund from which monthly money benefits upon retirement are paid. Also deferred, like private pension benefit payments, the social wage represents employer payroll tax contributions to social security that are made in lieu of direct wages that might be paid to workers were there no payroll tax. The payroll tax represents workers’ deductions from wages they do not otherwise receive and instead have redirected to the social security trust fund. Both employer and worker wages are thus deferred and deposited to the trust fund, to be paid out in the future in wages in the form of social security benefit payments. Social security benefits are thus  a form of ‘social wage’. And to the extent social security benefits are reduced, the social (deferred) wage is reduced.  The wage reduction has been implemented by the government raising the retirement age to 67 at which to receive social security retirement benefits. Suspending or failing to enact cost of living adjustments to monthly payments. Cuts to SSDI benefits, i.e. social security disability insurance—all represent de facto cuts to the social wage. Rising annual deductibles and copays for Medicare are another form of social wage cut. Moreover, Trump plans to reduce Medicare in his latest budget represents yet another pending social wage cut.

Like defined benefit pension deferred wages, reductions in the social wage in the form of social security payments also represent appropriate wage categories affecting 50 million retired workers that US government agencies responsible for estimating wage changes do not include in their calculations of wage changes.

Summary Comments 

Contrary to media ‘spin’, business press misrepresentations, and US government agencies’ ‘statistical legerdemain’, real wages for the vast majority of the US labor force—i.e. the 133 million— are not even close to rising in the US under Trump. Nor did they under Obama, Bush, or Clinton.  Since 1980 and the advent of neoliberal capitalist restructuring of the US and global economy, a key element of neoliberal policies has been to compress wages—for all but the roughly 10% that US Capital considers essential to its further expansion and for, of course, the salaries of executives and managers. The rest of the US workforce has undergone constant wage stagnation and decline over the long term. The pace has accelerated or abated at different times, but the long term direction of decline and stagnation has not.

When wage change is not limited to considering only permanent, full time employees or averaged out, when conveniently excluded categories of workers are considered, when wages are adjusted for true inflation rates, when interest and debt effects are accounted for, and when ‘deferred’ and ‘social’ wage payments are factored into wage totals in general—it is overwhelmingly the case that US wages have been declining for some time and that decline continues in 2018 despite the media-government spin that wages are rising in America.

*

Dr. Rasmus is author of the most recently published book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017, and the forthcoming ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, 2019. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Central Bankers at the End of Their Rope?: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression

Author: Dr. Jack Rasmus

Publisher: Clarity Press (August 1, 2017)

ISBN-10: 0986085391

ISBN-13: 978-0986085390

Click here to order.

.

.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

On August 15, 2018, the U.S. State Department announced yet another measure toward reducing its Havana embassy staff and its effectiveness by limiting the diplomats’ stays to one year. This extremely limited affectation category is normally applied to countries at war, such as Afghanistan and Iraq. The change in U.S. policy initiated last fall is based on a supposed sonic health issue detected by Washington affecting its Havana diplomats. Along with a travel warning for Americans with regard to visiting Cuba and limited consular services that impact both U.S. citizens and Cubans on the island, the Trump Administration has significantly rolled back the Obama-initiated diplomatic relations and consular services thaw. 

However, on August 23, 2018, the U.S. State Department revised its travel advisory on Cuba to “exercise increased caution,” from “reconsider travel.” While maintaining the same accusatory “sonic attack” terminology, it is the same the status alert applied to Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, Italy, and England. Is Washington feeling the heat of the debate among scientists in many countries (including the U.S. itself) which is balanced against the Trump Havana embassy policy?

During a May–June 2018 speaking tour in the U.K., it came to my attention that TheGuardian (Britain) published a scientific article on May 29 that quoted, among other sources, two University of Edinburgh neuroscientists, Dr. Sergio Della Sala and Dr. Robert McIntosh. Their main joint and fully researched scientific finding, as an argument against the U.S. claim of “sonic attacks,” was fascinating. It seemed, even to a layperson, to get to the heart of the American claims used as a pretext for restoring hostile relations.

Thus, since my tour plans included Scotland, I requested an interview with them at the University of Edinburgh. They kindly accepted with the only caveat being that, as Dr. Della Sala was out of town and could not participate, Dr. McIntosh would represent both academics.

 “I am not at all politically motivated” is how Dr. McIntosh initiated the discussion. In fact, his purely scientific motivations are based on vast experience and work: BSc, Psychology and Neurosurgery, University of Manchester, England; PhD, Neuropsychology, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, Scotland; Head of Psychology (2013–2016) and Senior Lecturer Psychology (2010 to present), University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Dr. Della Sala is a professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Taking into account only the most recent years, he has authored or co-authored seven books and innumerable articles, has held important posts in Europe and has received awards in his field.

It was confirmed in the discussion that the University of Pennsylvania was commissioned by the U.S. State Department to test members of the Havana-stationed American diplomatic corps who showed health issues. The American university’s formal report was published in March 2018 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This prompted the two Edinburgh-based scientists to challenge the veracity of the report as “lacking in scientific rigour,” “unreliable” and “unsound”: strong words for non-politically motivated academics.

Indeed, there was a sound scientific foundation for this reaction. What was the main feature of the American university’s procedure and results that provoked a clear rejection on the other side of the Atlantic?

The exchange at the University in Scotland centred mostly on the McIntosh/Della Sala letter published on May 29, 2018 in the European-based Journal of Neurology. However, my goal was to make the analysis accessible to the layperson, so that what has become, as a result of the ongoing controversy, almost science fiction can be converted into a more comprehensive appreciation. This approach was facilitated by the very angle taken by the two scientists. The title of their peer-reviewed article “Cognitive Impairments That Everybody Has” prompted me, during the discussion, to ultimately reflect on an experience that some of us may have had.

The Pennsylvania study recruited six diplomats from among all those affected. Each of them was subjected to 37 cognitive tests. The tests evaluated working memory, language, reasoning, visual, concentration on hearing, movement and other cognitive abilities for a total of 10 categories of cognitive abilities.

The normal practice with cognitive tests is to measure individual performance compared with others in the population. And what is the standard measure accepted by the profession? A person must score in the bottom 5% to be considered impaired. The threshold needs to be low to take into account a variety of factors. A very small proportion of the population is deemed to be impaired.

Many of the tests described by McIntosh that had been given to the diplomats looked very familiar. I myself recently experienced, while undergoing a routine cognitive test in Montreal for aging, difficulty in concentrating. Face-to-face with a doctor for more than an hour with no let-up while having my “intelligence” probed, I found it difficult to avoid analyzing the doctor and the elaborate tests themselves. My mind inevitably wandered to such matters as the tasks awaiting my return to the office after my visit to the doctor and so on.

The motivation here is not to generalize or oversimplify. What is clear, however, it that in these tests, a maximum amount of leeway must be given to avoid diagnosing a characteristic that could in theory be considered a “cognitive impairment,” but is not one at all. Thus, a 5% threshold is the typical standard throughout the profession.

Yet, the University of Pennsylvania defined the threshold at 40%, meaning that ipsofacto four in 10 who take the test will be “impaired.” Thus, the Edinburgh scientists concluded that “the 40% threshold is hardly a detail. On the contrary, it is not even recognized in our science or clinical testing.”

If readers still have doubts about this assertion, let me assure you that McIntosh and his colleague did not leave any stone unturned. They actually replicated the Pennsylvania model that looked at the probability of passing all the tests when the threshold for failure was set at 40%. Furthermore, the two scientists reproduced the tests 1,000 times! The subjects were all classified as impaired.

In their report, the U.S. doctors revealed that all six diplomats who had the full battery of tests had some brain impairment or another. However, McIntosh said that anybody who took the tests would have been classified as impaired.

The University of Pennsylvania to date has never responded to the very specific issue of the 40% criterion, even though a very important portion of the U.S. State Department’s retaliatory measures against Cuba is based on the 40% baseline.

Readers can perhaps reach their own conclusions.

Today we received  a PRESS RELEASE from We the World, announcing a Worldwide campaign “calling for Unity, Peace and Justice in Response to Global Tensions”.

“We, The World and organizations worldwide are taking part in programs and calls to action in September in observance of, and in alignment with, 11 Days of Global Unity September 11-21 and the UN International Day of Peace  September 21.

“The 11 Days of Global Unity aims at strengthening the ideals of unity and equality, diversity and oneness, harmony and compassion and, above all, at advancing the culture of peace.”

It is a vast and expensive project.

The campaign consists of  700 associated events taking place simultaneously in over sixty countries. involving some 3,500 civil society organizations.

The campaign promotes  11 themes of change 11 days of action 

At first glance, I was supportive of this endeavor.

But there is something missing in the way the Global Crisis is portrayed. What are the causes? Who are the Architects of War and Destruction?

“Unity, Peace and Justice in Response to Global Tensions”. What are the underlying forces which create “Global Tensions”?

In the present context, “Global Tensions” is a gross understatement.

What we are facing is US-led  “Long war” against humanity coupled with a Worldwide process of economic and social destruction.  The “Long War” is a Pentagon concept.

The criminalization of politics and the system of justice, including international law has contributed to the remoulding of State institutions. The tendency is towards a globalized Police State apparatus.

And of course media propaganda is used to justify wars of aggression, which constitute a criminal act under international law.

In the various texts and themes of the We the World campaign, Peace is mentioned but the Word WAR never appears.

Nor is there is any mention as to who is actually undertaking these wars (see below). Celebrating the UN International Day of Peace is symbolic. But should we not underscore the fact that the UN is violating its own charter by paying lip service to US led wars.

What is at stake is the failure of the UN multilateral system and the fact amply documented that the US is involved in a process of political manipulation and co-optation within the UN system.

“Sentiment” and “feelings” alone will not reverse the tide of global warfare, poverty, social inequality and racism.

What the broader public has to understand are the geopolitical and economic mechanisms behind this so-called “New World Order” as well as the imminent danger of military escalation in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, not to mention the dangers of nuclear war.

The broader public is led to believe that there is no war: The “Global War on Terrorism” constitutes a peace-making endeavor. America is said to be waging “counter-terrorism operations” under the R2P doctrine (Responsibility to Protect).

The 11 days of We the World starts on September 11, 2018, yet not a word is mentioned as to how the 9/11 attacks, were used as a justification to wage war on both Afghanistan (October 2001) and Iraq (March 2003).

The “We the World” campaign fails to identify the powerful actors behind the War agenda. US, NATO are not mentioned, nor are the powerful corporate interests which support war and destruction.

The complicity of the United Nations is not mentioned. The Secretary General of the UN will be one of the speakers, yet the UN is now tacitly supportive of US  “humanitarian wars”.

The We the World Campaign talks about the “Culture of Peace”. Yet it fails to mention that key political decisions are taken by war criminals in high office. Nor does the Initiative acknowledge that wars of aggression are criminal undertakings under international law (Nuremberg).

Instating  a “Culture of Peace” requires fundamental structural changes, not to mention the unseating of the political and economic architects of America’s “long war” against humanity.

The countries where war is occurring (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine) are not mentioned. Who is behind these wars?

Moreover, according to media reports, there are no wars of aggression against these countries. US-NATO is allegedly coming to the rescue of Syria and Iraq to instil peace and democracy under a “counter-terrorism mandate”.

There is No “Caring World” (concept put forth by the initiative), because in the West there are no “caring governments”.

Money is allocated to the war machine. The question is: Who has destroyed the “Caring World”.

The initiative narrowly calls for “Truth and Reconciliation” without acknowledging the sources of media disinformation and war propaganda. There is no Truth when extensive war crimes against humanity as in the case of Yemen are simply not reported.

The “We the World” “Culture of Peace” campaign is in marked contrast with the Worldwide anti-war campaign which occurred in 2002-2003 against the invasion of Iraq.

What we need is to rehabilitate a Worldwide anti-war movement.

In annex are the underlying generalities of We the World Program of Activities

Annex  

This emerging international movement consists of more than 3,500 civil society organizations in nearly every country that are presenting concerts, conferences, festivals, forums, marches, broadcasts and other programs in September to address local and global social, political, economic and environmental challenges to humanity and all life on Earth.

The mission of We, The World is to maximize social change – globally. We are working to awaken a spirit of caring and involvement in the public so that millions of people begin to see themselves as part of one global interdependent community – and actively take part in creating a world that works for all!

Working with an extraordinarily accomplished team, we have begun the process of building an unprecedented critical mass of individuals, organizations and coalitions whose efforts to create a caring world will be highly visible and accessible.

The Motto is 11 Days of Global Unity.

• The series, called “Our Voices, Our World”, will have a strong focus on youth participation. Proposed themes include:

• Climate Change – What We Can Do, What We Can Expect
• Our Money, Our World – You and the Global Economy
• Ending the Mass Extinction of Species – We’re All Endangered
• Peace in the 21st Century – An Imperative for Survival
• The Wisdom of Partnership Culture – Ending the Era of Winners and Losers
• Water – the Source of Life
• Media in the Public Interest – for a World that Works for All
• Women and the Future of Humanity
• Transforming Government so it is Of, By, and For the People
• Green Energy For All
• Truth and Reconciliation – Healing the Wounds that Divide Us

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

The multisided security crisis unfolding in Cameroon is intended to preemptively destabilize the West-Central African CPEC well in advance of its construction and might even catalyze another Migrant Crisis to Europe if the Hybrid War isn’t resolved soon enough.

Cameroon is a country mostly known for its national football team but which is increasingly gaining a reputation for instability, particularly as it relates to Boko Haram in the north and Anglophone separatists in the west (referred to as “Southern Cameroons”). These terrorist campaigns are being waged at a very vulnerable time in the country’s history as it goes to the polls next month in a vote that’s widely expected to result in President Biya’s reelection, who’s ruled Cameroon since 1982, and which could possibly serve as a pretext for unleashing preplanned Color Revolution unrest. The multisided security crisis that’s unfolding in the country has all the hallmarks of Hybrid War, though what’s previously been missing from most analyses about it is an explanation for why the West would turn on its loyal ally after all these years.

Silk Road Strategizing

The author not only answered that last summer, but even foresaw it before the Anglophone separatists ramped up their terrorist campaign, in an extensive strategic risk analysis published as part of his book-length Hybrid War series on the Eastern Hemisphere. The US recognizes that China’s $1.3 billion deep-sea port project in the southern village of Kribi has the potential to serve as the “West-Central African CPEC”  one day being the anchor terminal of a prospective Cameroon-Chad-Sudan (CCS) Silk Road that connects the continent’s Atlantic coast with its Red Sea one and forms the eastern component of a larger Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road (SSSR) stretching all the way to Senegal. All of this is described more in depth in the author’s aforementioned strategic risk analysis on Cameroon, but the summarized concept is best conveyed through the map below as taken from the previous hyperlink:

As can be seen, the red line running right through Cameroon is that country’s portion (the “West-Central African CPEC”) of the prospective Chinese-led tri-state connectivity project (CCS Silk Road) that’s more functionally viable under the present regional conditions than directly linking up with slowly collapsing Nigeria. About that, the author also wrote last summer about how “Cameroon Is The Catalyst For A Nigerian Collapse” in the sense that the cross-border expansion of its Hybrid Wars – especially the one in the Anglophone region – into Nigeria could accelerate that country’s collapse and therefore catalyze another Migrant Crisis to Europe, as was explained in the author’s piece earlier this year drawing attention to the African “domino effect” caused by various conflicts in order to warn about how “Migrant Crisis 2.0 Might Come From Africa”. All of this sets the backdrop for explaining the US’ forward-looking strategic planning against Cameroon.

Hybrid War Incentives

Although very different from Pakistan in many ways, the West-Central African country also similarly functions as a “zipper” of transregional integration because of its geography, which therefore incentivizes the US to exploit its preexisting identity diversity and attendant fault lines for Hybrid War purposes in order to disrupt, control, or influence this prospective connectivity corridor. “Ambazonia”, which is the name of the political entity that the Anglophone separatists plan to establish, would be located right between Nigeria and Cameroon, thereby allowing it to function as a wedge between the two and also as the mainland analogue of pro-American Equatorial Guinea’s island of Bioko in the energy-rich Gulf of Guinea, which would thus make it the ultimate bastion of influence over the CCS Silk Road and correspondingly over the geographic center of the SSSR.

The fact that long-serving and elderly 85-year-old President Biya is up for reelection next month is “politically convenient” because the “publicly plausible” narrative is being created in the Western-controlled international media that he might be about to “rig the elections” because he’s a “power-hungry dictator”, which would reversely “justify” the Anglophone terrorist war as a “democratic struggle for freedom” if the US or any of its allies such as Canada or the UK accused him of doing so. Furthermore, judging by President Biya’s age alone, a leadership transition is inevitable in Cameroon sooner or later, and the US might want to get a “head start” on shaping the outcome through the weaponization of chaos theory just as it did in Egypt after betraying Mubarak in 2011. The difference this time around is that there might be a Silk Road knock-on effect, too.

China needs reliable access to African markets in order to maintain its growth across this century, which explains the zeal with which it’s building modern infrastructure all across the continent as it seeks to improve its people’s living standards and consequent capacity to purchase Chinese goods. The CCS Silk Road is therefore a vital future corridor for connecting West Africa with the Red Sea because it cuts off thousands of miles of travel around the Cape of Good Hope and thus facilitates quicker shipment to CPEC’s terminal port of Gwadar, after which products can transit to and from the People’s Republic with ease. As for the security component of this vision, Sudan recently requested Russian support for foiling the US’ scheme to “Balkanize” the country into five separate states, while neighboring Chad is regarded as an African military superpower and doesn’t have much to worry about.

Following The Pakistani Path

Cameroon is naturally the weak link in this construction for the previously described reasons, and its security environment is especially challenging for both its contemporary context (Boko Haram, the Anglophone separatists, and a credible Color Revolution threat) and also simple geography of having to contend with a variety of physical domains such as deserts, jungles, and savannahs. Moreover, Cameroon is the international pillar on which Nigeria’s domestic security most solidly rests, and its descent into a more intensified Hybrid War will certainly destabilize the African giant with uncertain but presumably very negative results. What Cameroon needs to immediately do is craft a comprehensive “Democratic Security” (counter-Hybrid War) strategy for weathering the coming storm, which should include military, political, economic, and informational dimensions that also involve as many partnered stakeholders as possible.

Just like with Pakistan, Cameroon’s geo-economic potential as a transregional zipper makes it the target of American Hybrid War, but interestingly enough and in spite of their many differences, these two countries could cooperate in sharing experiences with one another as part of the solution for protecting the “West-Central African CPEC”. Pakistan’s extensive and very successful anti-terrorist experience, coupled with its decades-long participation in UN peacekeeping missions in Africa, endow it with the unique ability to most effectively assist Cameroon at this crucial crossroads, though provided that Yaoundé takes the initiative to explore the avenues through which it and Islamabad could cooperate in this regard. Possible suggestions include urgently hosting joint Hybrid War conferences and considering military training arrangements such as the sort that Russia and Pakistan recently clinched. If there’s the political will, then it would help to open up embassies in each other’s countries, too.

Cameroon is undoubtedly going through one of the roughest moments of its post-independence history, and there’s close to no optimism about its future stability unless it proves that it’s capable of handling the Hybrid War threats of Boko Haram, the Anglophone separatists, and the high likelihood of some kind of Color Revolution unrest next month. While seemingly caught totally off guard by the terrorist-driven anarchy in parts of “Ambazonia”, the Cameroonian officials appear to have finally understood that the threat there is much more deeply rooted than they thought and had been planned for far longer than they assumed. This has given way to the worrying realization that foreign state actors might also behind (or at the very least, politically supporting) this terrorist campaign, though for reasons that had hitherto evaded Yaoundé because the idea of the West betraying its loyal partner was previously unthinkable.

The answer to the apparently mind-boggling question of what could be driving the Western-backed destabilization of Cameroon is the US’ forward-thinking strategic planning in regards to China, particularly as it relates to the CCS Silk Road and the in-country component of the “West-Central African CPEC”. The US is always gaming out scenarios decades in advance, and while they don’t always succeed and sometimes end up backfiring (such as the expansion of Iranian influence in the Mideast after the 2011 theater-wide “Arab Spring” Color Revolutions or the possible sparking of a Migrant Crisis 2.0 if Cameroon collapses), that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s trying to shape future events in the direction of its own interests. As it stands, Cameroon is fast approaching a very serious crisis of regional – and perhaps even continental – significance, and it’ll need all the help that it can get if it’s to survive.

*

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.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has repelled an attack by the Lions of the East Army militant group on the ancient city of Palmyra from the direction of the US-occupied area of al-Tanf, the Russian Centre for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria said on September 1. According to the Center, two militants were killed and two others were detained.

“The militants’ objective was to conduct a series of terrorist attacks in the vicinity of the city of Palmyra and to ensure the passage of the main forces of about 300 militants to capture the city within the next week,” the Center said.

On September 2, pro-US sources claimed that US-backed forces had repelled an SAA attack on al-Tanf. However, no further details were provided.

On the same day, explosions rocked the Mezzeh airbase northwest of the Syrian capital of Damascus.

Several ammo depots and facilities inside the airbase were destroyed. Following first reports on the incident, some sources rushed to claim that the explosions had been caused by Israeli strikes. However, according to the Syrian state media, the explosions were caused by a technical failure. A source in the SAA told SouthFront that these depots had contained weapons and IEDs seized from militants in during the last few months.

Iran has provided the Popular Mobilization Units in Iraq with ballistic missiles in order to increase its capabilities “to deter attacks on its interests in the Middle East and to give it the means to hit regional foes”, according to a report released by Reuters on August 31 and citing “Iranian, Iraqi and Western sources”.

“The Zelzal, Fateh-110 and Zolfaqar missiles in question have ranges of about 200 km to 700 km, putting Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh or the Israeli city of Tel Aviv within striking distance if the weapons were deployed in southern or western Iraq,” Reuters said in the article meaning that Iranian statements saying its ballistic missile program is defensive are untrue.

On September 1, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi commented on this report saying that these claims are “fabricated and nonsense.”

“Such news merely is to cause panic among countries in the region and are in line with their policy to spread Iranophobia … They seem to target Iran’s foreign relations mainly with its neighbors,” Qasemi said adding that “Such reports are not precise.”

The diplomat added that the PMU’s missiles are produced by the group itself and “they were unveiled during ceremonies” to celebrate the victory against ISIS.

On August 30, the Israeli Image Satellite Intelligence (ISI) company released a report dedicated to the alleged Iranian surface-to-surface missile production in Syria. The US and Saudi Arabia have also repeatedly accused Iran of supplying ballistic missiles to the Houthis in Yemen.

The growing Iranian influence in Syria, Iraq and in the Middle East in general are the source of the constantly growing concern of the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Thus, they are actively conducting media, diplomatic and even limited military, like Israeli strikes on Syria, efforts to limit the Iranian influence. The ongoing media campaign on the aggressive intensions behind the Iranian ballistic missile program is designed to create another pretext to increase pressure and possibly to impose new sanctions on Iran by the US-led bloc.

*

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront, 

BTC: 3Gbs4rjcVUtQd8p3CiFUCxPLZwRqurezRZ,

BCH:qpf2cphc5dkuclkqur7lhj2yuqq9pk3hmukle77vhq,

ETH: 0x9f4cda013e354b8fc285bf4b9a60460cee7f7ea9

« Das Bild ist wirklich apokalyptisch. Es sieht so aus, als sei eine Bombe auf diesen Straßenabschnitt gefallen, der eine Hauptschlagader ist” – so beschrieb ein Journalist die Morandi-Brücke in Genua kurz nach ihrem Einsturz, der das Leben von Dutzenden Menschen zerstörte [1].

Diese Worte erinnern an andere Bilder, die von etwa 40 serbischen Brücken, die 1999 durch NATO-Bombenangriffe zerstört wurden – darunter die Brücke über die Morava in Südserbien, wo zwei Raketen einen Zug trafen und die Passagiere massakrierten. 78 Tage lang starteten 1.100 Flugzeuge, hauptsächlich von italienischen Stützpunkten, die von der Regierung D’Alema geliefert wurden, 38.000 Einsätze und zündeten 23.000 Bomben und Raketen. Sie zerstörten systematisch serbische Strukturen und Infrastrukturen und forderten Tausende von zivilen Opfern. 54 italienische Flugzeuge nahmen an den Angriffen teil, wobei 1.378 Einsätze und Angriffsziele vom US-Kommando angegeben wurden.

“In Anbetracht der Anzahl der beteiligten Flugzeuge waren wir nach den Vereinigten Staaten an zweiter Stelle. Italien ist ein bedeutendes Land, und es sollte keine Überraschung sein, dass wir uns in diesem Krieg engagieren”, erklärte D’Alema.

Im selben Jahr, in dem sie an der endgültigen Zerstörung des jugoslawischen Staates beteiligt war, hat die Regierung D’Alema das öffentliche Eigentum der Società Autostrade (auch Manager der Morandi-Brücke) abgebaut, indem sie einen Teil davon an eine Gruppe von Aktionären übergab und den Rest an der Börse notierte. Die Morandi-Brücke ist unter der Verantwortung eines auf Profit ausgerichteten Systems zusammengebrochen, dasselbe System, das im Zentrum der mächtigen Interessen der NATO steht.

Der Vergleich zwischen den Bildern der eingestürzten Morandi-Brücke und den bombardierten serbischen Brücken, der auf den ersten Blick erzwungen erscheinen mag, ist im Gegenteil sehr begründet.

Erstens sollte die schreckliche Szene der Opfer, die durch den Zusammenbruch unter den Trümmern begraben wurden, uns über die schreckliche Realität des Krieges nachdenken lassen, die uns die großen Medien als eine Art “Kriegsspiel” präsentieren, wobei der Pilot auf die Brücke zielt und die ferngesteuerte Bombe sie in Stücke reißt.

Zweitens sollten wir uns daran erinnern, dass die Europäische Kommission am 28. März einen Aktionsplan vorgelegt hat, der die Instandsetzung und Instandhaltung der EU-Strukturen, einschließlich der Brücken, vorwegnimmt, aber nicht, um sie für die zivile Mobilität sicherer, sondern für die militärische Mobilität effizienter zu machen [2].

In Wirklichkeit wurde dieser Plan vom Pentagon und von der NATO beschlossen, die die EU aufforderten, “die zivilen Infrastrukturen zu verbessern, damit sie besser an die militärischen Erfordernisse angepasst werden können” – mit anderen Worten, Panzer, selbstfahrende Kanonen und andere schwere Militärfahrzeuge so schnell wie möglich von einem europäischen Land in ein anderes zu verlegen, um gegen die “russische Aggression” vorzugehen. Zum Beispiel – wenn eine Brücke das Gewicht einer Panzerkolonne nicht tragen kann, muss sie verstärkt oder umgebaut werden.

Wir könnten glauben, dass die Brücke in diesem Fall, wenn sie verstärkt wird, auch für zivile Fahrzeuge sicherer wird. Aber die Frage ist nicht so einfach.

Diese Änderungen werden nur für die militärische Mobilität auf den wichtigsten Landverbindungen vorgenommen, und die enormen Ausgaben werden vom jeweiligen Land übernommen, das genötigt sein wird, die Kosten von seinen Ressourcen für die allgemeine Verbesserung seiner Infrastrukturen abzuziehen.

Ein finanzieller Beitrag der EU ist in Höhe von 6,5 Milliarden Euro vorgesehen, aber – laut Federica Mogherini, die für die “Sicherheitspolitik” der EU zuständig ist – nur, um “sicherzustellen, dass Infrastrukturen von strategischer Bedeutung den militärischen Erfordernissen angepasst werden”.

Aber die Zeit vergeht schnell – bis September muss der Europäische Rat (im Auftrag der NATO) die Liste der Infrastrukturen festlegen, die für die militärische Mobilität in Frage kommen. Wird die Morandi-Brücke aufgelistet und wieder aufgebaut werden, damit die Panzer der USA und der NATO sicher über die Köpfe der Bevölkerung von Genua fahren können?

Manlio Dinucci

Übersetzung
K. R.
Quelle
Il Manifesto (Italien)

Ponti crollati e ponti bombardati

VIDEO – L’Arte della Guerra – Ponti crollati e ponti bombardati

[1] Die Morandi-Brücke, ein wichtiger Autobahnviadukt in Genua, der von einem privaten Unternehmen verwaltet wird, brach am 14. August zusammen und forderte mehr als 40 Opfer. Die wahrscheinliche Ursache ist ein struktureller Zusammenbruch, dessen Anzeichen jedoch jahrelang ignoriert wurden. (Anmerkung der Redaktion).

[2] “UE, Area Schengen per le forze NATO” (Die Militarisierung der Europäischen Union: Schengen-Raum an US-NATO-Streitkräfte übergeben), di Manlio Dinucci, Il Manifesto (Italia) , Rete Voltaire, 6 aprile 2018.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

As a transplanted New Yorker living in what I call ‘Death Valley USA’ or Daytona Beach, Florida, I like to keep up with my old sports town. The only NYC paper that is easy to obtain and does have an extensive sports section is the New York Post, sold at my local Publix Supermarket. On Thursday August 30th I finished the sports section and decided to scroll through the rest of this rag paper. I came upon page 35 to something called the HOME section.

The headline was ‘Where to Live Cheap: New York City’s Top Affordable Neighborhoods’. I noticed the little box advertising the Windsor Terrace neighborhood in my old borough of Brooklyn. Now, Windsor Terrace, back in the day, at least up until I left the NYC area in the early 90s, was a working class neighborhood made up of a mix of mostly Irish, some Italian, some Black and Puerto Rican folks. You know, many city workers and blue and white collar folks who rode the subway into the city each morning to work. Well, read this from page 35:

“Tucked away at the southwestern end of Prospect Park, this tranquil spot feels more like a sleepy Hudson River village than the middle of Brooklyn…. Prices remain relatively low compared to prime Brooklyn ‘hoods… Townhomes run from around $1.5 million to $3 million, while in Park Slope they typically start in the $2 million to $3 million range and can run to $20 million… It’s a wonderful quaint, beautifully charming neighborhood.”

Let’s see. Even if a blue collar or white collar working stiff from Brooklyn was able to sell a home they have had for a generation, and it wasn’t for $ 1.5 to $ 3 million…maybe even if it was now worth one million dollars… how in the hell could he or she afford a $500k to $1.5 million dollar mortgage? You know the answer. They couldn’t!

With Labor Day Weekend upon us the audacity of the super wealthy is amplified. Channel surfing this morning I came across the old ’empire reliable’ C-Span morning journal show, or whatever in the hell they named it. Guess who was the guest on this Sunday of the Labor Day weekend? They had this attorney representing some ‘Right to Work’ defense organization. He was on the air to trumpet the fact, in his organization’s mind, that we don’t really need unions. He claimed that the government, local and federal, has plenty of laws on the books to protect workers. Imagine the utter gall to suggest that workers shouldn’t worry about how the boss treats them… the government has laws to protect them! Just like working stiffs should not be worried or offended that the super wealthy among us now earn so much that townhomes which sold for $50k in the 1960s in working stiff neighborhoods like Windsor Park, Brooklyn now go for millions! So tell me, where can a city or state worker reside on the $40K to $80K a year they earn? Where do any working stiffs who punch in the time clock go to live in Brooklyn? Oh, duh, if they don ‘t already own a home or condo, bought years ago, then they rent. And we know how  high rents are if properties like those mentioned above go for that much? Been there, done that most of my life renting from the almighty Land Lord. The Land Lord (a term right out of Feudalism) will do as little in repairs and improvements as they can get away with. Sad but true.

To this writer the strength (or weakness)  of a union movement is correlated with the obscene super wealth of those among us. Back in the 1960s for instance, when unions were much stronger, the owners and bosses representing capital made out pretty damn good, but not anything like now. Today we have Fortune 500 company CEOs earning over 300 times what their average employee earns. In those days these super wealthy earned maybe 15 or 20 times that of their average employee. And, the super wealthy were taxed at a top rate of … ready for this… 90%! Now, they did not pay taxes at 90%, maybe 40 or 50 percent. Today, as Mitt Romney admitted, super wealthy Americans are taxed at less than 39%, and usually pay anywhere from 15 to 20 percent. That is why $1.5 to $5 million homes in Brooklyn are no problem. Get it? When will more of our working stiffs out there realize the correlation between weak or no unions and the uptick of personal wealth? Go to Windsor Park in Brooklyn and see how real affordable neighborhoods are becoming a thing of the past.

*

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].

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above

For almost seventeen years, Global Research, together with partner independent media organizations, has sought Truth in Media with a view to eventually “disarming” the corporate media’s disinformation crusade.

To reverse the tide, we call upon our readers to participate in an important endeavor.

Global Research has over 50,000 subscribers to our Newsletter.

Our objective is to recruit one thousand committed “volunteers” among our 50,000 Newsletter subscribers to support the distribution of Global Research articles (email lists, social media, crossposts). 

Do not send us money. Under Plan A, we call upon our readers to donate 5 minutes a day to Global Research.

Global Research Volunteer Members can contact us at [email protected] for consultations and guidelines.

If, however, you are pressed for time in the course of a busy day, consider Plan B, Consider Making a Donation and/or becoming a Global Research Member. 

*     *     *

Mr. Trump, You Cannot Erase the Palestinian Right to Return

By James J. Zogby, September 03, 2018

First, the Trump Administration “took Jerusalem off the table.” Now, in an especially dangerous display of recklessness, they have announced their intention to do the same for the Palestinian “right of return.”

EU Vows to Keep Backing UNRWA After Trump Scraps US Financial Aid for Palestine Refugees

By Middle East Eye, September 03, 2018

he 28-nation European Union, the biggest collective contributor to UNWRA, said on Saturday it will continue its support after the Trump administration’s decision to cut its funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

US Cuts to UNRWA Point to the Dark Future Being Readied for the Palestinians

By Jonathan Cook, September 03, 2018

The Trump administration’s decision to scrap all future aid payments to the main agency helping Palestinian refugees marks a new – and most likely disastrous – chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump’s Position on Palestinian Refugees Is Dead Wrong

By Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, September 03, 2018

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) opposes US President Donald Trump’s decision to cease all funding to the UN aid agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). The Trump administration declared Friday that it was cutting all funding to UNRWA, calling the organization an “irredeemably flawed operation,” and seeking to reduce the number of Palestinians recognized as “refugees” under the UN system.

Freezing Humanitarian Support to Palestine: Trump Administration Pressuring Nations to Stop Funding The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)

By Stephen Lendman, September 02, 2018

They want their fundamental rights denied, including continued occupation and land theft, self-determination in name only, along with East Jerusalem as their exclusive capital and right of return for diaspora Palestinians denied.

Israel’s Criminal Blockade of Gaza: Day 30 – Israeli Military Has Still Not Released 114 Boxes of Medical Supplies for Gaza

By Freedom Flotilla Coalition, August 31, 2018

t is 30 days since the Israeli military stopped the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s ship Al Awda and took control of the medical supplies for Gaza… For one month the Freedom Flotilla Coalition has demanded the immediate release of the 114 boxes and thousands of people from around the world have called Israeli embassies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in their countries demanding the release.

US Envoy Haley: Palestinian Right of Return Should be ‘Off the Table’

By Middle East Monitor, August 31, 2018

Commenting at an appearance at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, a pro-Israel think tank based in Washington DC, Haley suggested on Tuesday that the Trump administration would consider an official rejection of the Palestinian demand that all refugees who were displaced as a result of the Nakba (Catastrophe) and their descendants, be allowed to return to their ancestral homeland following a peace deal with Israel.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above 

Over 200 drones have been sent from Turkey to two regions controlled by Tahrir al-Sham Hay’at (the Levant Liberation Board or the Al-Nusra Front) terrorists in preparation for the upcoming war against the Syrian Army in Idlib, a Russian media outlet reported on Saturday.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

First, the Trump Administration “took Jerusalem off the table.” Now, in an especially dangerous display of recklessness, they have announced their intention to do the same for the Palestinian “right of return.”  

The first indication that this was in the works came  with the administration’s announcement that they would be suspending all US assistance to UNWRA, the UN agency created to address the humanitarian needs of the Palestinians who were forced to flee from their homes in 1948 and again in 1967. More recently, the administration supported by some Republican members of Congress, launched an effort to limit “refugee” status to only those Palestinians who were victims of the 1948 expulsions. [In a future article I will address the devastating humanitarian and political consequences that will result from crippling the work of UNWRA.]

Because Israel has always rejected its culpability for the Palestinian refugee crisis and has consistently refused to acknowledge that those who fled in 1948 had any rights to repatriation, the US intent to take the refugee issue “off the table” was described by one Israeli writer as a “dream come true.” And a minister in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government celebrated the US move as “finally speaking the truth to the Arab lie that has been marketed all over the world for decades…There is no reason for [Palestinians] to dream of returning.”

Israel claims that they have no responsibility for Palestinian refugees. As is their practice, the Israelis have attempted to exonerate themselves by creating “alternate facts”—that Palestinians voluntarily left their homes or that they were ordered to leave by advancing Arab armies. However, an examination of the historical record establishes that the Zionist political leadership executed a deliberate plan to “cleanse” entire areas of their Arab inhabitants in order to create a state that would be larger than what was provided by the UN partition, with fewer Arabs.

They are indicted by their own words:

Yigal Allon (leader of the Palmach – the official Zionist military):

“We saw the need to clean the upper Galilee and to create…Jewish continuity in the entire area of the upper Galilee…We, therefore, tried a tactic…which worked miraculously well. I gathered all of the Jewish Mukhtars, who have contact with the Arabs in  the different villages, and asked them to whisper in the ears of the Arabs that a large Jewish reinforcement has arrived in Galilee and that it is going to burn all the villages in the Huleh. They should suggest to these Arabs, as their friends, to escape while they had time to flee. The flight numbered in the myriads. The tactic reached its goal completely.”

David Ben Gurion (speaking of “Plan D,” the operation designed to expand the size of the “Jewish State” and to reduce the number of Arabs within it):

“These operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting them on fire, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their rubble), and especially those population centers that are difficult to control permanently; or by mounting combing and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside of them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the border of the state.”

Yigal Allon:

“There is a need for strong and brutal reaction. We need to be accurate about timing, place, and those we hit. If we accuse a family – we need to harm them without mercy, women and children included. Otherwise, this is not an effective operation. During the operation there is no need to distinguish between the guilty and the not guilty.”

Menachem Begin (leader of the Irgun):

“Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of ‘Irgun butchery’, were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. The mass flight soon developed into a maddened uncontrolled stampede. Of the almost 800,000 who lived in the present territory of the State of Israel, only 165,000 remain. The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be overestimated.”

In the aftermath of the war, during which thousands of Palestinians were murdered and another 700,000 were forced into exile, Ben Gurion celebrated what he termed “a double miracle”—an Israel with more land and less Arabs.

After its establishment, Israel compounded its crimes against the Palestinians by passing a series of Orwellian laws which enabled the new state to seize Arab-owned land (over 2 million acres were taken—including businesses, homes, orchards, and farmland) and demolish 385 Arab villages—all done in the effort to physically erase any evidence of the prior Palestinian presence.

I spent time in Palestinian camps in 1971 collecting the nightmarish personal stories of those who were expelled, perusing their family photo albums of the homes they had left behind, and being shown the keys they still carried -which had become a sacred symbol representing what they had lost and hoped to regain. One said to me “the Jews said they remembered for 2,000 years. For me, it has only been 23 years, how can I forget?”

In the face of this, the actions of the Trump Administration are not only dangerous and reckless, they are cruel and insensitive, and violations of international law and covenants.

While some conservatives love to cherry pick the celebrated 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights—citing their favorite, Article 18, which guarantees freedom of religion and belief—they willfully ignore other relevant articles:

Article 9: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.”

Article 13/2: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”

Article 17/2: “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.”

In addition, there is the 1948 UN resolution declaring “the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes”—a  resolution which has been regularly and overwhelmingly passed by the UN General Assembly.

When in the face of this incontrovertible history of Israeli “ethnic cleansing” and international conventions on the rights of refugees, I cringe when I hear of the Trump Administration’s intention to take the refugee issue “off the table.” What they are, in fact, taking off the table is so much more. At stake is: the lives and fortunes of innocent Palestinians and their families; the rule of law; simple human justice; and the possibility of peace. The more than 5 million Palestinians living under occupation and in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria cannot be erased and in their attempt to do so, it is not only the Israelis who are guilty of the war crime of ethnic cleansing. The Trump Administration is making itself complicit in this crime.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

On Friday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement ahead of the imminent Syrian government and Russian campaign to liberate Idlib from jihadist control.

Pompeo said via Twitter:

“The 3 million Syrians, who have already been forced out of their homes and are now in Idlib, will suffer from this aggression. Not good. The world is watching.”

Both Washington and the mainstream networks are gearing up for a possible final US-Damascus-Russia confrontation in response to Assad’s military action in Idlib, representing the northwest province as “the last rebel stronghold” where Damascus simply seeks to “massacre civilians”.

But Washington officials often contradict their own past positions, and this is glaringly clear in the case of Idlib, where Brett McGurk — the White House appointed anti-ISIS envoy who essentially acts as the president’s personal diplomat in Iraq and Syria — previously described the true situation on the ground in unusually frank comments:

IMPORTANT message from The #US Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL- Brett McGurk- on the situation in #Idlib #Syria:

''Idlib Province is the largest ALQaeda safe haven since 9/11, tied directly to Ayman al Zawahri (current #ALQaeda leader) & this is a HUGE problem'' pic.twitter.com/99ulOLpZwi

— Brasco_Aad (@Brasco_Aad) August 22, 2018

Special US envoy McGurk accurately described:

“Idlib provice is the largest al-Qaeda safe-have since 9/11, tied to directly to Ayman al Zawahiri, this is a huge problem.”

The rare, honest assessment was spoken a little over a year ago on July 27, 2017 at a Washington D.C. event in which McGurk was a panelist hosted by the Middle East Institute.

During the panel discussion, McGurk posed: 

“But we have to ask a question; why and how is Ayman al-Zawahiri’s deputy finding his way to Idlib Province. Why is this happening? How are they getting there? They are not paratroopers…”

Yes, we’ve long wondered the same thing, especially when it was US intelligence directly assisting the al-Qaeda coalition Army of Islam (now morphed into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) from an “operations room” in Turkey.

At the time, McGurk’s comments were aimed at NATO ally Turkey, which he accused of facilitating jihadist entry into northern Syria to displace the US-backed Syrian Kurdish SDF.

“The approach by some of our partners to send in tens of thousands of tons of weapons, and look the other way as these foreign fighters come into Syria may not have been the best approach,” McGurk continued during his 2017 comments.

He added that al-Qaeda has taken “full advantage” of Turkey allowing for the free flow of arms and jihadists across its lengthy border with Syria.

Of course McGurk neglected to mention that the United States was a willing partner in all of this throughout most of the entirety of the Syrian war, which sought regime change in Damascus. The Turkish foreign ministry condemned his statements at the time.

The State Department would of course hope that the American public forgets these words were ever spoken.

Meanwhile Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned the West not to interfere in Syrian and Russian forces engaged in anti-terror actions in Idlib:

 “I hope our Western partners will not give in to [rebel] provocations and will not obstruct an antiterror operation,” he said.

It appears that the State Department circa 2017 actually agreed with Lavrov’s calling the Idlib militants terrorists even in the State Department in 2018 does not. Or it’s also just Washington contradicting itself as usual for the sake of yet more nefarious foreign policy goals in the Middle East.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

This week another damning report from UNHCR on the atrocious conditions and treatment of refugees on the Greek islands. A few days earlier another about Lesvos. My computer is full of reports about refugees in Greece and on Samos. There seems no end to the flow.

We have some simple questions to ask of all those organisations and individuals who write and research these reports.

Firstly, why do you bother?

From where we are on Samos I can tell you that not one report has made any difference to the lives and well being of refugees here. Of course over the past decade there have been changes but these have been influenced mainly by the refugee flows to the island. Every month is bad it is just that some are worse than others.

We now wait for the reports that will tell us again, as they do year in and year out that winter preparations are virtually non existent and refugees are once more going to face even more intolerable conditions due to the winter weather. Be assured nothing much will happen. Just like last year and all preceding years.

Are those involved in these reports ignorant? Do they seriously believe that their work is going to make a difference when all before them have failed utterly to change things for the refugees? Surely they ought to know that their reports make no difference.

And just how much money is spent in these efforts? Money which we would argue could be much better used to improve the lives of those who are the subjects of their reports.

Secondly Why do so many reports fail to ask why nothing changes?

The failure to ask this question suggests a combination of factors all of which point to deeply rooted flaws in many of the sponsoring bodies. Is it the case that some of the organisations involved have as part of their funding agreements an obligation to churn out reports? Is this churning connected to their sense that this is what they do. Turn out reports? They may feel that this looks good and justifies their existence. That so few of the reports seem to have any follow up to assess their impact would suggest that they are not interested in whether they make any difference.

Not often, but occasionally I look into some of these organisations behind the Reports. Delusional is the word that most commonly comes to my mind. They tell us without shame that they seek to influence key policy makers and their organisations to bring about positive change. Do they seriously expect us to accept that such people don’t know what is going on in places such as Samos? As one organisation told me “ we aim to bring the lived experiences of refugees and displaced people in Europe directly to policy makers themselves.” Who no doubt are all ears and all too ready to act on the evidence! They also tell me of the seminars and conferences they attend to speak about their findings. And few fail to mention their intent to shape public opinion and media coverage. There is invariably a void when it comes to reporting on how their work has made life better for refugees. It is a void which speaks volumes about their ineffectiveness.

In many ways the vast majority of this activity seem to be no more than another dimension to the ‘refugee business’ – ”there’s gold in them hills”. Gold which pays for their wages, flies them into Samos or Lesvos …….. pays for their rental car and hotel and gets them back home again at the end. To stay in this business it does not pay to ask the most important questions nor even to consider that the way in which they have conceived their inquiries might be incorrect.

A Crime Against Humanity

This is what is occurring on Greece’s frontier islands and beyond. It is a crime. If the refugees were horses or dogs there would be prosecutions. Key perpetrators would be at least named and identified and some punished. But when it comes to refugees, nobody ever seems to be held to account whether it is the social worker who demands sexual favours in return for a positive asylum report; the police officers who are violent and attack refugees; the doctors who give nothing more than a paracetamol tablet for every condition they confront; the hotspot manager who does nothing about the swarms of rats in the camps; the police chief responsible for the outrageously cruel detention facilities in police stations; the people responsible for arming police with tear gas and authorising its use against refugees. The list is endless. Yes, it is a system but it is not faceless. To treat it as such creates the perfect environment for the cruel and vicious to flourish with impunity. And this is what the refugees face and have faced for years now on places like Samos and elsewhere.

I was told by one organisation that they could understand my frustration that nothing has changed despite the many reports over the past decade. But it is anger not frustration that I and many on Samos feel. It is common knowledge that the situation is shit upon shit. The case has been made. We don’t need or want more reports telling us.

Instead we need and demand reports that ask the right questions about why nothing changes. Where does the money go? Who makes key decisions? What are their names? We need to see people held to account for their unlawful behaviours.

Enough of this madness.

*

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Samos Chronicles. 

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above 

This August 30th marks the International Day of the Disappeared, initiated by the Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared, FEDEFAM, an organization founded in 1981 at the height of US-backed state terrorism throughout Latin America. On this day, SOA Watch salutes the thousands of families who continue their unwavering search for their disappeared and celebrates the trials that continue to take place in spite of a legacy of terror and impunity that seeks to silence the demands for justice. Today is a day we are reminded to confront silence, complicity and impunity with memory as resistance.

Disappearances as a systematic practice occured throughout all of Latin America under the National Security Doctrine implemented during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. We uplift the voices of the people of Latin America and the Caribbean and echo their clamor for justice, and we continue to denounce the role of the School of the Americas for its responsibility in the disappearance of thousands of people between 1960 and today.We also echo the call for the appearance, alive, of the disappeared and remember that disappearances as a systematic practice continue to this day, and this crime against humanity is perpetuated every day a person does not appear.

Source: School of Americas Watch

In Guatemala, relatives continue to demand justice for their more than 45,000 disappeared, both in the streets and in the courts; in Argentina, after 41 years, Grandmothers and Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo keep marching, wearing their white handkerchiefs, demanding the right to truth and justice; in Uruguay and Chile, the demands for truth and justice continue, and the people of Chile now fight for the end of jail privileges for the few military officers serving time in the Punta Peuco prison; in Mexico, where one person is disappeared every two hours, the historic demand “they were taken alive, we want them back alive” continues, and the people who continue to walk alongside the families of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, also demand the appearance of the more than 37,000 people disappeared since the beginning of the US-backed War on Drugs in 2007, and maintain the memory of the more than 70 thousand migrants and refugees disappeared since 2005 as a consequence of US-Border Imperialism strategies; and in Honduras, the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared, COFADEH, as they carry out work in promotion and defense of human rights, also continues the struggle for theirs detained and disappeared.

Let us commemorate the love and courage with which our brothers and sisters searched for their loved ones – and the struggle of women in particular – even during the worst moments of the dictatorships and state terrorism, held up photographs of their disappeared and resisted – and continue to resist – oblivion. We uplift these memories of struggle and resistance of the various collectives and movements of relatives of our disappeared throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above 

The 28-nation European Union, the biggest collective contributor to UNWRA, said on Saturday it will continue its support after the Trump administration’s decision to cut its funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

This implied the EU may increase funding to the agency if deemed necessary, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Deutsche Welle said Germany plans to significantly increase its funding for UNRWA, citing a letter from Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to other EU foreign ministers.

The EU said in a statement it will discuss with its international partners “how to ensure sustainable, continued and effective assistance to the Palestinians, including through UNRWA,” in the run-up to the UN General Assembly later this month.

The statement stressed the importance of continued international support for UNWRA, which runs schools for hundreds of Palestinian children across the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

“The EU will continue to engage with the US and its other regional and international partners to work towards that common goal.”

#Germany pledges to significantly increase its funding for the #UN agency @UNRWA supporting Palestinian refugees, following US cuts.https://t.co/RwNxFotGcy

— Lotte Leicht (@LotteLeicht1) August 31, 2018

It also urged the US to reconsider the decision to halt funding for the United Nations relief and works agency for Palestinian refugees.

“The regrettable decision of the US to no longer be part of this international and multilateral effort leaves a substantial gap,” the EU said, adding: “We hope that the US can reconsider their decision.”

Washington has long been UNRWA’s biggest single donor but is “no longer willing to shoulder the very disproportionate share of the burden,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement on Friday.

Nauert said there would be no additional contributions beyond a $60m dollar payment made in January, drawing condemnation from both the Palestinians and UNRWA but a welcome from Israel.

Nauert called UNWRA an “irredeemably flawed operation”. She said the agency’s “endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years”.

UNRWA provides services to about five million Palestinian refugees.

More than 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their land in the events leading to the establishment of the state of Israel. Surviving refugees and their descendants still live in camps in neighbouring Arab countries, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

As part of its decision, the US is also calling for a sharp decrease in the number of Palestinians who are recognised as refugees, reducing the current five million figure to fewer than a tenth of that number, an official familiar with the decision told the Washington Post.

An anonymous official in the office of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told the AFP news agency on Saturday that Israel supported the US decision to cut funding from UNWRA.

“Consolidating the refugee status of Palestinians is one of the problems that perpetuate the conflict,” the official said.

Palestinian Ambassador to the US Husam Zomlot said Washington does not have the authority to define the status of Palestinian refugees.

“By endorsing the most extreme Israeli narrative on all issues including the rights of more than 5 million Palestinian refugees, the US administration has lost its status as peacemaker and is damaging not only an already volatile situation but the prospects for future peace in the Middle East,” Zomlot said in a statement.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

On Thursday, the U.S.-led coalition targeting Daesh (ISIS) published a casualty report that has drawn criticism and consternation from independent watchdogs and human-rights groups for severely underestimating the number of civilians killed by coalition airstrikes in Syria and Iraq since operations began in 2014.

According to the “official” figures made public by the coalition – officially known as the Combined Joint Task Force of Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) — “at least 1,061 civilians have been unintentionally killed by coalition strike since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve” four years ago.

The recently released figures count only reports of civilian deaths deemed “credible” by the coalition. The coalition has often been accused of rejecting the vast majority of reports in order to make the civilian death toll appear lower. Indeed, 15 of the last 18 reports reviewed by the coalition were deemed “not credible,” as only three were accepted.

Notably, the three accepted reports had the lowest civilian death tolls – one dead civilian each – of the 18 recently reviewed reports. In addition, 216 reports of civilian casualties are currently pending and thus were not included in the official figures.

However, the civilian casualty figures released by the coalition are significantly lower than estimates made by independent groups, such as the U.K.-based watchdog AirWars, which has estimated that a minimum of between 6,575 and 9,968 civilians have died as a result of civilian airstrikes. AirWars has also noted that the overall total of alleged civilian deaths resulting from coalition strikes ranges between 17,674 and 26,224.

The stark differences in calculated death tolls are particularly clear in last month’s figures, where AirWars reported that between 75 and 119 civilians were likely killed by the coalition strikes while the coalition has claimed that only three were likely killed.

Thousands of bodies still in Raqqa rubble

The clear disparity between estimates is nothing new, as prominent human-rights groups like Amnesty International had recently rejected the coalition’s reported figures on civilian deaths, stating that the coalition is “deeply in denial” about the “large number of civilians killed and injured by [coalition] strikes.” Amnesty International has also previously claimed that the coalition’s “monthly reports on civilian casualties across Iraq and Syria rely on vague descriptions and dismiss the vast majority of allegations as ‘non-credible’.”

Back in June, the human-rights group had impugned the coalition’s claims of using “precision” air strikes with minimal civilian casualties in its campaign to “liberate” Raqqa in Syria as inaccurate, stating that this narrative did “not stand up to scrutiny.” A year after the coalition “liberated” Raqqa from Daesh, human remains are still being exhumed on a daily basis and thousands of bodies are still believed to be lying in the rubble that saw 90 percent of the city’s buildings obliterated by coalition strikes.

From August 2014 to the end of this past July, the U.S.-led coalition has conducted a total of 29,920 “precision” strikes against alleged Daesh targets in Syria and Iraq. While strikes in Iraq are coordinated with the Iraqi military, the coalition’s actions in Syria are considered illegal by the Syrian government and have not been authorized by the UN Security Council. Coalition strikes have also targeted Syrian military and allied forces engaged in fighting Daesh on several occasions, including earlier this year in the Syria-Iraq border city of Abu Kamal.

*

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Marco Rubio reminds us that he is a reflexive military interventionist with appalling judgment:

“I believe that the Armed Forces of the United States are only used in the event of a threat to national security. I believe that there is a very strong argument that can be made at this time that Venezuela and the Maduro regime has become a threat to the region and even to the United States.”

Conditions in Venezuela are very serious, and the country is experiencing a man-made humanitarian catastrophe. Over a million and half people have fled the country in the last few years. The crisis there has the potential to destabilize Venezuela’s neighbors, but that is no reason to contemplate military intervention. It is ludicrous to describe Venezuela as a threat to the United States. None of Venezuela’s neighbors wants U.S. intervention, no regional government would support it if the U.S. attacked, and attacking Venezuela would only exacerbate the country’s severe economic and political problems. The U.S. would be condemned by most of our neighbors for waging an unnecessary war, and our military would find itself bogged down in another thankless mission of policing a country where the presence of our soldiers would be deeply resented. As usual, Rubio is completely wrong.

Unfortunately, Rubio’s views on this could have significant influence on U.S. policy. As we know, the president was entertaining the idea of invading Venezuela last year, and it took the concerted opposition of regional governments and his Cabinet to make him drop it. Politico reported last week on several Rubio allies working on U.S. policy in Latin America at the National Security Council:

All have close ties to Rubio, who’s playing a central role in setting U.S. policy in Latin America as chair of the Senate’s Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. Rubio has a close relationship with Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who successfully pushed for tougher Venezuela sanctions Rubio had been calling for — including penalties that target a Venezuelan official implicated in an assassination plot against the senator.

The Trump White House is likely to be receptive to Rubio’s horrible ideas, and we know that the president’s first instinct was to consider military intervention. Congress and the public need to make it known now that they reject an attack on Venezuela, and Congress needs to make clear that the president has no authority to start a war against the Venezuelan government on his own.

*

Featured image is from Gage Skidmore/Flickr.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Hawks inside and outside the Trump administration have not been afraid to threaten the nuclear option when it comes to the re-imposition of sanctions on Iran. From threats to sanction European central banks and SWIFT’s board of directors to threats against foreign government officials facilitating trade with Iran, U.S. hawks have adopted the madman theory to undermine international adherence to the Iran nuclear accord (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) and to deflate the confidence of those resisting the U.S.’s withdrawal from the agreement and its re-imposition of sanctions.

But now U.S. hawks are signaling their intent to attack more directly the very foundations of the nuclear accord, including in ways that undermine core U.S. nuclear non-proliferation objectives. Their willingness to do so is ultimately illustrative of their intent, which—contrary to their feigned concern over Iran’s nuclear program—is to create the conditions for war with Iran.

Few items have better crystallized U.S. hawks’ ultimate objectives vis-à-vis Iran than a Foreign Policy article published this week by Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) Senior Advisor Richard Goldberg and FDD Visiting Fellow Jacob Nagel. Goldberg and Nagel argue that the Trump administration should use its sanctions authorities to target foreign governments, as well as their agencies and officials, engaged in activities authorized under the JCPOA. This includes, in particular, those very activities that seek to reduce the proliferation capabilities of Iran’s nuclear program. For instance, Goldberg and Nagel state that foreign governments involved in the re-design and re-build of Iran’s Arak nuclear reactor—which, nuclear experts agree, would ultimately reduce the plutonium-producing capabilities of that reactor ten-fold—should be targeted for U.S. sanctions.

Moreover, Goldberg and Nagel argue that those parties establishing research or business ties with U.S.-designated entities—which, come November, will include the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran—should be subject to U.S. secondary sanctions. Since the JCPOA required Iran to convert its Fordo uranium enrichment facility into a nuclear, physics, and technology center at which “international collaboration, including in the form of scientific joint partnerships, [would] be established in agreed areas of research,” foreign parties—including foreign governments, agencies, and officials—engaged in such international collaboration consistent with the express terms of the JCPOA would nonetheless be subject to U.S. secondary sanctions for engaging in transactions with a U.S.-designated entity—i.e., the AEOI.

Current U.S. sanctions authorities would indeed permit the Trump administration to target foreign governments for their scientific collaboration with Iran to reduce latent proliferation risks. In the upside-down world of U.S. hawks, the Trump administration could determine that foreign parties, including foreign governments, engaged in activities to reduce nuclear proliferation risks in Iran consistent with the JCPOA—such as the reconfiguration of the Arak nuclear reactor—are instead engaged in activities that materially contribute to or pose a risk of contributing to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and are thus engaged in sanctionable activities pursuant to Executive Order 13382. Similarly, upon the re-listing of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran on OFAC’s SDN List, foreign parties that provide any financial, material, technological, or other support to the AEOI would meet the criteria for designation under E.O. 13382, even if such support takes the form of efforts to reduce the proliferation capabilities of Iran’s nuclear reactor. Parties designated under E.O. 13382 would have all property that is or comes within U.S. jurisdiction frozen and would likely be subject to U.S. secondary sanctions.

Not satisfied with targeting foreign governments engaged in non-proliferation work with Iran, Goldberg and Nagel further argue that the Trump administration should threaten to cut funding to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if the agency continues to provide technical assistance to Iran and to host seminars and conferences in Iran. Further, Goldberg and Nagel claim that U.S. funding to the IAEA should be predicated on its removal of all Iranian employees.

The JCPOA provides that the IAEA will engage in all kinds of technical cooperation projects with and technical assistance to Iran. For instance, the nuclear accord requires the Joint Commission to “support assistance to Iran, including through IAEA technical cooperation projects” and notes that the Arak modernization project, described above, would involve significant IAEA support. Annex III of the JCPOA describes a long list of civil nuclear cooperation between Iran and the other JCPOA participants—all of which is ultimately reliant on the IAEA’s technical assistance.

Goldberg and Nagel’s proposal seeks to entirely sever the IAEA from engaging in this work. But perhaps the most obvious and distressing consequence of Goldberg and Nagel’s scheme is that if the IAEA were to terminate all technical assistance projects with Iran and to discriminate against Iranian national employees at the agency, Iran would have little choice but to kick the IAEA out of the country and withdraw entirely from the agency’s oversight. The world would thus lose the unprecedented oversight of Iran’s nuclear program that the JCPOA had provided.

That may be a feature, rather than a bug, of Goldberg and Nagel’s proposal. If the ultimate objective of U.S. hawks is not to restrain Iran’s nuclear program and reduce its latent proliferation risks but instead is to create the conditions for war with Iran, then undermining the nuclear accord and ensuring the re-constitution and re-invigoration of Iran’s nuclear program—absent international oversight—may prove the means to doing so.

U.S. hawks have choreographed a well-developed scheme for undermining the JCPOA—first, successfully targeting the JCPOA’s promised economic dividend to Iran and now the JCPOA’s civil nuclear cooperation with Iran. Sanctioning foreign governments and international agencies engaged in the tough but fruitful work of reducing the proliferation risks inherent in Iran’s nuclear program appears a price that U.S. hawks are willing to pay to achieve their malign objectives.

*

Tyler Cullis is a recent graduate of the Boston University School of Law, where he specialized in international law. His writings focus on U.S. foreign policy, the politics of the Middle East, and developments in international law. His work has been featured at CNN’s Global Public Square, Muftah, Opinio Juris, and his personal blog, News From The Gutter. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from Wall Street International Magazine.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Pope Francis’ two-day visit to Ireland on the 25^th and 26^th of August 2018 comes at a time when people need hope. The Irish Church has been devastated by the abuse scandals, which have never been properly dealt with. The victims and survivors of church abuse have told their stories and knocked on doors trying to get a hearing, and meet those who would listen to the terrible injustices perpetrated on them by some Catholic clergy and religious institutions.  It is only in the last few years that it has been recognized by the Catholic hierarchy that clerical abuse has taken place. The pain, frustration and anger of so many victims have been allowed to fester and perpetrators of these abuses in the past often protected for fear of damage to the institution. As with all corruption, unless we go to the root of the problem and take positive action to root it out completely,   we can never have a true healing. It was into such a situation of pain and suffering of victims of clerical sexual abuse that Pope Francis arrived in Ireland.   The Pope’s plea for forgiveness for the abuse scandals was long overdue.

The Pope’s call for forgiveness and firm and decisive action will be followed closely by many.  I would support the victims call for a tribunal to be set up by the Pope to judge the bishops action and make and hold the perpetrators of the abuse to full account, so demonstrating and a commitment to full transparency and accountability.

So too on the question of reform in the church.  Renewal and Reform of the Catholic Church is necessary and can no longer be delayed. The renewal of the church will not be easy, but it can begin immediately with a holding of the Vatican Council III in which, through respectful listening and deep dialogue, solutions to the urgent issues of today can be found and put into place.  The abuse scandal in Ireland is only the tip of the iceberg, as indeed in many countries human dignity is being destroyed with the abuse of children, women and men, as they are deprived of the basic needs to enable them to live fully human and dignified lives (and know what it is to be poor and live in an unjust world where the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer). The basic right of freedom of conscience for people – to be allowed to choose how to live their lives – must be upheld. It was very symbolic that Pope Francis spoke from the Marion Shrine at Knock where the message of peace and nonviolence needs to be proclaimed   strongly.   In Ireland, and indeed the world’s people, are looking for moral and spiritual Leadership, and Pope Francis, gives hope when he speaks out against war, nuclear weapons and for peace and disarmament.

In 1978, Betty Williams and I had the privilege of a 30-minute private conversation with Pope John Paul II in the Vatican. Coming out of a violent conflict in N. Ireland, we appealed to the Pope to reject the “Just War” theory and to bring forward a theology of nonviolence and peace for the Catholic Church. When Pope John Paul visited Ireland the following year he appealed to people to reject violence and build peace. However, we still await from the Vatican an encyclical on Christian nonviolence and a rejection of “Just War” theology.  Pope Francis in his papacy has given spiritual leadership and called for the total abolition of nuclear weapons and peace making. His visit to Knock, whilst rightly focusing on church’s abuse scandals, was a missed opportunity to call for nonviolence, and the abolition of militarism and war.

I believe Christ’s message of nonviolence,  has been betrayed and  perverted by the theology of ‘Just war’ which has led to the blessing of armies, armaments, militarism and wars in which Christians  feel they can justifiably play a  leading role.  The ‘Just war’ theology has also been used by those waging ‘armed struggles’ invasions, and military occupations.  However, if we have not as a Christian community taught nonviolence in our education systems, in our theological colleges, in our homes, in our churches, how are we to make the choice between violence and nonviolence? How are we to prevent abuse, violence, or politically driven deprivation when their root, the concept of a ‘Just War’ retains any credibility? I believe that when the church chooses to reject “Just War” theology and replaces it with a theology of nonviolence,  then other things  in the church will change.

I am grateful for the visit of Pope Francis as I believe  his humility and love in speaking to the suffering of the victims and survivors, has begun a healing process, and  raised  hope for a new beginning for many people.

I am also grateful for the Pope’s call this August to continue working for peace and in support of the Peace Process. In his speeches Pope Francis reminded us of our duty to protect the children from abuse and teach peace.  I believe the greatest abuse to millions of children is that of guns, militarism and wars, and that we are challenged to work for complete disarmament and end to violence and war.

In my opinion an Encyclical on Nonviolence and Disarmament from Pope Francis would give hope and encourage us all to take up our responsibility–which is and always has been–to build peace in Ireland and Peace in the World.

*

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com. Mairead Corrigan Maguire is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Featured image: An aerial shot of the Pantex Plant, where US nuclear weapons are assembled and taken apart. Government photo, undated.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board—which oversees and reports on safety practices in the US nuclear weapons complex—is under siege. Congress created the board almost 30 years ago to address years of lax safety practices. Now, the Energy Department is seeking to block the board’s access to safety information, excluding the board from overseeing worker protection at dozens of facilities and blocking board staff from interacting with contractors that operate the department’s nuclear sites. At the same time, the board is undergoing an internal crisis that affects staff morale and, ultimately, its critical role in ensuring the safety of the government’s largest high-hazard research and industrial enterprise.

Largely unknown to the general public, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is a small organization, but it has played a critical role in dragging the US nuclear weapons complex away from decades of operating outside the mainstream of nuclear safety practice. With an annual budget of $31 million, the board oversees safety at 10 Energy Department sites that employ 110,000 people and occupy a land base larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. These sites store and handle some of the world largest and potentially most dangerous inventories of nuclear materials. Since its inception the board has been largely responsible, among other things, for:

• Removing and safely packaging large amounts of unsafe nuclear explosive materials from several sites.
• Reducing explosion and fire hazards, a dominant concern.
• Increasing emergency planning and response to major nuclear accidents.
• Upgrading antiquated safety systems at nuclear facilities.

Despite this record of achievement, the board now faces difficulties that include the actions of some if its own members, who either don’t want or can’t seem to execute its mission. Last year, Sean Sullivan, the acting chairman installed at the request of Senate Republicans, tried to secretly convince the Trump White House to get rid of the board entirely, claiming it was “a relic of the Cold-War era defense-establishment.” Sullivan failed and was compelled to resign after his effort was revealed to the public.

As he attempted to eliminate the safety board, Sullivan also created a “secondary proposal” that would impose deep staffing cuts; outlined in a letter to the Office of Management and Budget, this fallback proposal was meant to go into effect if efforts to terminate the board went nowhere. The new acting chair of the safety board, Bruce Hamilton (also selected by Senate Republicans), unveiled the secondary proposal on August 15. The plan would “restructure by reducing the size of the workforce and relocating most of the technical staff to defense nuclear sites. This restructuring would reduce agency employees by at least 32 percent, down to 82 from the current 120.”

In a 3-1 vote, the Board endorsed Hamilton’s restructuring plan, but board member Joyce Connery, in a strongly-worded dissent, wrote:

“the board was established to be a collegial body. I find it neither collegial nor in keeping with the spirit of the statute for the acting chairman to propose sweeping changes to the organization without so much as a discussion with his fellow board members nor a justification for the move and in contradiction to several board votes.”

Although the restructuring plan has some positive elements—notably an addition of inspectors in the field—the deep budget and staff cut could disrupt and cripple the safety board’s effectiveness. Contention among board members is a symptom of crisis that has led to a loss of staff morale and high turnover. More than 60 percent of its technical staffers have left in less than the last four years. In May, the inspector general who oversees the safety board reported that it was ranked last by employees of 28 small federal agencies in terms a being a desirable place to work. According to the inspector general, more than a third of the safety staff surveyed in 2017 planned to leave, largely because of a “stark disagreement among board members, on how and when [safety] reporting requirements should be issued.” According to the inspector general,

“two board members [Sullivan and Hamilton] routinely disapproved staff reports that included reporting requirements and instead proposed amendments to remove the reporting requirements.”

The restructuring plan cannot be considered in isolation from the Trump administration’s aggressive dismantlement of oversight across the government, especially in light of the Energy Department’s constantly stumbling efforts to build new nuclear weapons at its antiquated facilities. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that US nuclear weapons laboratories and supporting activities will cost $261 billion over the next three decades. The board’s restructuring plan is expected to begin by October 18 of this year and follows the Trump administration’s playbook of slashing safety oversight in federal agencies, as has happened with the Chemical Safety Board, responsible for investigating industrial chemical accidents. Unless Congress intervenes, the restructuring of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board will proceed.

Safety and conflict in the nuclear weapons complex. Unlike the commercial nuclear power industry, which consists of a relatively small number of reactor designs, the nuclear weapons complex includes a host of one-of-a-kind facilities, many built 50 to 70-plus years ago. Over the decades, each Energy Department site in the complex has created its own unique culture, shaped by secrecy, isolation, and demands of the Cold War nuclear arms race. Since making the most dangerous weapons in the world involves working with some of the world’s most dangerous materials, the employees in the nuclear weapons complex need a high degree of protection against workplace exposure to radiation and toxic materials. The United States is already paying a stiff price for the harm caused to the workers who made nuclear weapons through the 1980s. To date, 120,599 deceased and sick nuclear weapons workers have been paid $15.37 billion in compensation and medical care.

Via a semi-autonomous subunit known as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Energy Department manages the US nuclear weapons complex in an unusual manner. In the complex, private contractors control at least 10 times more employees than federal managers. And unlike the rest of the government, the Energy Department self-regulates its workplace safety performance, primarily through a system of “orders” that are not on their own legally binding, but rather are enforced as requirements in contracts with private companies. With its origins in what the US Governmental Accountability Office has described as an “undocumented policy of blind faith in its contractor’s performance,” this regime is largely dependent on an honor system, in which contractors are expected to self-report their safety problems.

Because the sites in the weapons complex operate under cost-plus contracts, the Energy Department must pay the additional costs of compliance with safety orders, a troubling recipe for conflicting interests. Energy Department orders can be changed, reducing safety requirements at individual sites, without public or even (as I learned while working in the Energy Department) headquarters knowing of the change. So orders for safety practices involving highly radioactive and/or toxic materials can be watered down for any number of financial reasons—if schedules slip, if costs are exceeded, or, sometimes, if a contractor simply stands to lose out on a bonus. (By contrast, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates the safety of US commercial nuclear reactor fleet, has a well-developed system of formal regulations that have the force of law, are subject to the transparency requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act, and are issued to licensees as mandatory obligations.)

The acrimony that now roils the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is fairly recent in genesis and does not reflect decades of board members’ consensus in favor of higher safety standards in the nuclear weapons complex, going back to the safety board’s beginnings. Led in large part by Sen. John Glenn, an Ohio Democrat, Congress created the safety board in the aftermath of the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Even before Chernobyl, there were serious safety concerns about the US nuclear weapons industry, which operated antiquated facilities immune for decades from independent safety regulation. But shortly after the Chernobyl catastrophe, a House subcommittee revealed that the Energy Department had instructed its nuclear safety experts to avoid comparing US weapons production reactors with those at Chernobyl—even though the US reactors also lacked the kind of containments required of modern commercial power reactors to limit the escape of radioactivity, should a major accident occur. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board was established in legislation signed in September 1988, as the Energy Department launched its first candid safety assessments, which were followed by the National Academy of Sciences, as requested by Congress.

Although the board does not have the power of a regulator, its recommendations do legally require the energy secretary and, if necessary, the president, to respond, subject to congressional oversight. Most important, the board’s reports have opened a window for the public to see what the nuclear weapons program, is, or is not, doing to protect the safety of the public and workers.

Reporting that causes a stir. Unhappy with public access to the board’s weekly staff reports, Frank Klotz, then administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, proposed making them secret last year, with board member Hamilton’s active support, claiming the reports interfered with the agency’s mission. The proposal was withdrawn in the wake of news reports on safety problems in the nuclear complex.

The board’s recommendations have sometimes been controversial, and the Energy Department has been known to respond to them at a glacial pace. For instance, after the board flagged several disturbing safety violations in 1994, the Energy Department was compelled to stand down its main highly enriched uranium processing plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn.—for 12 years. The plant required a $500 million upgrade before it could restart.

In recent years, the board has been at odds with the NNSA over potential nuclear explosion dangers at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, where nuclear weapons are taken apart and assembled. An accidental nuclear explosion is, obviously, the most devastating threat the weapons complex poses; even so, NNSA management spurned numerous safety assessments by the site’s own Nuclear Explosive Safety group.

The NNSA and its contractor managers reacted with such hostility to requests to fix longstanding deficiencies that eight of 10 members of the Nuclear Explosive Safety group told the safety board that they felt their careers were threatened. After the board aired these problems in 2013, senior NNSA officials were forced to concede that nuclear explosive safety at Pantex was being compromised. Pantex remains a safety outlier in the weapons complex; it has yet to adopt the Energy Department’s legally binding occupational radiation protection standard—more the 20 years after its adoption by the rest of the complex.

Recently, the board’s staff has raised concerns that involve tens of tons of plutonium from dismantled weapons stored on an “interim basis” in facilities at Pantex. The storage magazines that hold the plutonium were built more than 50 years ago and were never intended to indefinitely store one of the largest (and growing) nuclear explosive inventories in the world. In 2010 and 2017, heavy rains, predicted to occur only once every 2000 years, flooded a major plutonium storage area with several inches of water, which shut down the plant and affected about 1,000 containers of plutonium. Now, some containers affected by the flood are showing signs of corrosion. Given the NNSA’s reluctance to build a state-of-the art nuclear explosive facility, tens of tons of plutonium are likely to remain in these antiquated structures, awaiting further floods and posing a continuing danger.

A problem at Los Alamos and beyond. One of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s biggest challenges involves the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the Trump Administration hopes to make dozens of plutonium weapons components, known as “pits,” necessary to ignite a nuclear explosion. Despite repeated recommendations by the board, Los Alamos refuses to reduce the approximately five tons of plutonium stored onsite, in facilities that could release it to the environment.

By 2012, in a decisive act of no confidence, nearly all the safety experts responsible for preventing nuclear criticality accidents at Los Alamos resigned in protest over what has been described as the “cowboy culture” at the lab. The NNSA couldn’t ignore the mass protest, which led to a four-year closure of the lab’s plutonium processing facility, known as “PF-4.” Now, however, the Trump administration is aggressively pushing to restart nuclear weapons production on an industrial scale, giving Los Alamos a green light to make plutonium pits in much greater numbers at an antiquated facility that is unable to demonstrate it can meet safety requirements.

Currently, about half of the contractor employees with skills critical to maintaining the US nuclear weapons stockpile are close to retirement. The safety board needs to make sure that staff cuts and loss of staff morale do not similarly diminish its institutional expertise. At the same time, Congress should step in and strengthen the board’s presence at and access to nuclear weapons complex sites and its powers of access. Congress also needs to provide adequate funding and to prevent the Energy Department from curtailing safety board activities that have been so critical to protecting workers and the public alike.

Though the Cold War is long over, the Energy Department’s antiquated, contractor-dominated management system—in which safety goal posts are easily moved behind closed doors—continues to endure and, in some cases, thrive. Without the meaningful oversight of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the nuclear weapons complex will predictably march back to a time, in the not-so-distant past, when public and worker safety was an afterthought—with serious consequences.

*

A senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Robert Alvarez served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

California’s net neutrality bill, S.B. 822 has received a majority of votes in the Senate and is heading to the governor’s desk. In this fight, ISPs with millions of dollars to spend lost to the voice of the majority of Americans who support net neutrality. This is a victory that can be replicated.

ISPs like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast hated this bill. S.B. 822 bans blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, classic ways that companies have violated net neutrality principles. It also incorporates much of what the FCC learned and incorporated into the 2015 Open Internet Order, preventing new assaults on the free and open Internet. This includes making sure companies can’t circumvent net neutrality at the point of interconnection within the state of California. It also prevents companies from using zero rating—the practice of not counting certain apps or services against a data limit—in a discriminatory way. That is to say that, say, there could be a plan where all media streaming services were zero-rated, but not one where just one was. One that had either paid for the privilege or one owned by the service provider. In that respect, it’s a practice much like discriminatory paid prioritization, where ISPs create fast lanes for those who can pay or for other companies they own.

ISPs and their surrogates waged a war of misinformation on this bill. They argued that net neutrality made it impossible to invest in expanding and upgrading their service, even though they make plenty of money. Lobbying groups sent out robocalls that didn’t mention net neutrality—which remains overwhelmingly popular—merely mentioned the bill’s number and claimed, with no evidence, that it would force ISPs to raise their prices by $30. And they argued against the zero-rating provision when we know those practices disproportionately affect lower-income consumers [pdf].

There was a brief moment in this fight when it looked like the ISPs had won. Amendments offered in the Assembly Committee on Communication and Conveyance after the bill had passed the California Senate mostly intact gutted the bill. But you made your voices heardagain and again until the bill’s strength was restored and we turned opponents into supporters in the legislature.

In the middle of all of this, the story broke that Verizon had throttled the service of a fire department in California during a wildfire. During the largest wildfire in California history, the Santa Clara fire department found that its “unlimited” data plan was being throttled by Verizon and, when contacted, the ISP told the fire department they needed to pay more for a better plan. Under the 2015 Open Internet Order, the FCC would have been able to investigate Verizon’s actions. But since that order’s been repealed, Verizon might escape meaningful punishment for its actions.

The story underscored the importance of FCC oversight and its public safety implications. On August 30, S.B. 822 passed the California Assembly and then, on August 31, it received enough Senate votes to continue to the governor. With the governor’s signature, California will have passed a model net neutrality bill.

California’s fight is a microcosm of the nation’s. Net neutrality is popular across the country. The same large ISPs that led the fight against it in California are the ones that serve the rest of the country, a majority of which don’t have a choice of provider. The arguments that they made in California are the same ones they made to the FCC to get the Open Internet Order repealed. The only thing preventing what happened to California’s firefighters from happening elsewhere is Verizon saying it won’t.

We need to net neutrality protections on as many levels as we can get them. And Congress can still vote to restore the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order. In fact, the Senate already did. So contact your member of the House of Representatives and tell them to vote for the Congressional Review Act and save national net neutrality protections.

*

Featured image is from the author.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Three-and-a-half years of US orchestrated, Saudi/UAE aggression in Yemen were punctuated by repeated massacres of defenseless civilians, along with other horrendous human rights abuses.

Both sides committed war crimes. Ones by Houthi fighters pale in comparison to genocidal criminality by the Saudis and UAE -supported by the US, UK and France.

They include mass slaughter of civilians and vast destruction, torture at secret black sites,  suffocating blockade, and naked aggression. They’re responsible for killing a nation, creating the world’s severest humanitarian crisis.

Most often the Saudis and UAE deny their horrific high crimes, at times later admitting involvement in incidents causing scores of casualties – calling premeditated mass murder “mistakes.”

On August 2, Saudi/UAE terror-bombing massacred over 55 civilians in Hodeidah, Yemen’s port city, over 100 others injured.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, president of the Houthis-led Revolutionary Committee, tweeted:

This incident “confirms for the thousand(th) time that the leaders of the aggression reject peace.”

After initially denying responsibility for terror-bombing a funeral on October 15, 2016, massacring at least 140 civilians, injuring over 500 others, Riyadh turned truth on its head, blaming the incident on “wrong information” – supplied by an unnamed source (likely US or UK intelligence), claiming the funeral was a legitimate target, a bald-faced lie.

The incident was a horrific war crime.

The war is a bonanza for the Western arms and munitions producers including US, France, Britain and Canada.

The US, UK and France are complicit in years of mass slaughter and destruction throughout the Middle East, supplying the most arms – the Saudis, Egypt and UAE the leading buyers.

Nearly half of US arms exports go to the region, supplying about one-third of all arms worldwide, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

America, Britain, France, and other EU nations supply 98% of weapons sold to the Saudis. Other regional countries buy most of their arms from the same sources.

Arms to the region are mostly for warmaking, not defense. The Middle East is by far the largest regional market for weapons – oil rich states buying huge amounts.

Billions of dollars Washington gives Israel annually almost entirely go for arms and related technology purchases – used for state-terror and aggression on Palestinians, along with terror-bombing Syrian targets.

In early August, Saudi warplanes terror-bombed a school bus in Houthi-controlled northern Saada province’s Dahyan city, killing dozens, including at least 29 young children under age-10, injuring a reported 77 others, according to the ICRC.

Sanaa-based Yemeni journalist Hussain al-Bukhaiti blasted Saudi/UAE terror-bombing saying:

“Since the beginning of this war, they have committed many crimes, and they only regret or release…a statement…if that crime has been covered widely (i)n the media.”

Initially the Saudis claimed Houthi officials were on the school bus – a bald-faced lie.  In response to the school bus massacre, a pathetic Saudi state news agency statement said:

“The Joint Forces Command of the Coalition expresses regret over the mistakes, extends its sympathies, condolences and solidarity to the families of the victims.”

In response to the premeditated massacre, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pathetically called for an independent investigation – certain to whitewash the high crime if conducted.

He was silent about US orchestrated/Saudi-led naked aggression in Yemen, supporting Washington’s imperial agenda by failing to condemn it.

On Thursday, another Saudi-led terror-bombing incident massacred nearly two dozen children and four women in Ad Durayhimi, around 12 miles from Hodeidah.

Ad Durayhimi head of security Col. Omar al-Hashibari said Saudi-led warplanes continued flying over the attack site, preventing Yemeni Red Crescent paramedics from evacuating injured civilians.

A UAE statement falsely blamed Houthis for the atrocity. They continue repeatedly in Yemen – a genocidal war getting scant media attention.

*

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above 

Today, a U.S. District Court judge granted wildlife advocates’ motion for a temporary restraining order to block planned grizzly bear trophy hunts in Idaho and Wyoming for at least 14 days. This came after a hearing regarding a high-profile case over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services’ 2017 decision to strip grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of vital Endangered Species Act protections, and provides the court time to deliberate on the merits of the case.

“We’re profoundly relieved the grizzly bears got a stay of execution today,” said Bethany Cotton with WildEarth Guardians. “We look forward to the judge’s thorough findings on all of the myriad flaws in the government’s approach to grizzly bear management in Greater Yellowstone.”

In the order, the court wrote that the plaintiffs’ arguments raise “serious questions going to the merits.” At minimum, the current issue is extremely similar to that recently presented in Humane Society of the United States v. Zinke, 865 F.3d 585 (D.C. Cir. 2017), in which the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Endangered Species Act when it isolated and delisted a distinct population segment without considering the legal and functional impact on the remainder of the species.

“We applaud Judge Christensen’s decision to hit the pause button,” said Matthew Bishop, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. “There is simply no need to rush into a grizzly bear hunt, with potentially devastating consequences for this iconic species, when the merits of that hunt are being reviewed in federal court.”

Grizzlies in the Yellowstone region remain threatened by dwindling food sources, climate change, small population size, isolation, habitat loss and fragmentation, and high levels of human-caused mortality. The Yellowstone population is isolated and has yet to connect to bears elsewhere in the U.S., including to bears in and around Glacier National Park. Grizzlies also have yet to reclaim key historic habitats, including the Bitterroot Range along the Montana-Idaho border.

Hunted, trapped, and poisoned to near extinction, grizzly bear populations in the contiguous U.S. declined drastically from nearly 50,000 bears to only a few hundred by the 1930s. In response to the decline, the Service designated the species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, a move that likely saved them from extinction. The species has since struggled to hang on, with only roughly 1,800 currently surviving in the lower 48 states. Grizzlies remain absent from nearly 98 percent of their historic range. Last year (2017) marked the highest mortality for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s grizzlies since their ESA listing.

Grizzly bear mortality in 2018 is proceeding at a record pace, even without the added mortalities from trophy hunting which would have claimed up to 22 more. At last count, approximately 690 grizzly bears resided in the Greater Yellowstone region, down from 2015’s count of 717 bears. The last three years had near record-breaking grizzly mortality, with at least 41 bears killed in 2017, and an additional 15 listed as probable mortalities. Of this, at least 32 were killed by humans, and humans were responsible for at least 9 of the 15 probable deaths. As of this writing, 34 grizzlies are on the 2018 known and probable mortalities list for the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, far outpacing previous years’ rates.

Bomb attacks, ambushes, mysterious illnesses — militant leaders in eastern Ukraine often die in violent and dramatic ways, even far away from the frontline. And now, Alexander Zakharchenko has died in a bomb blast.

Rebels in Ukraine are still reeling from the assassination of the head of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic,” Alexander Zakharchenko, who was killed by a bomb blast on August 31 while sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Donetsk. The entity’s “finance minister” and a youth leader were injured in the attack. The rebels say they captured “Ukrainian operatives” after the bombing.

However, 42-year-old Zakharchenko is only the latest in a line of rebel commanders who have died in dramatic ways. Another Donetsk leader, Vladimir Makovich, briefly served as the “vice speaker” of the rebel assembly in 2014 before fading into the background of the rebel administration. He died in 2017, with the official cause of death being a brain tumor. He was 54-years-old.

Shot during an ambush

Just a few months before Makovich’s passing, battalion commander Mikhail Tolstykh was killed when someone fired an incendiary rocket at his office outside Donetsk. Tolstykh, better known by his nom de guerre “Givi,” was 36 at the time.

In 2016, top militant leader Arsen Pavlov, also know as “Motorola,” was killed when a bomb was placed in an elevator of his apartment building. The Russian-born warlord was 33, and the commander of the so-called “Sparta” battalion. Rebel officials blamed both of the commanders’ deaths on “Ukrainian operatives.” Kyiv denied any involvement and pointed the finger at Moscow, describing such attacks as Russia-sponsored “purges.”

Heart attack at 46

All in all, nearly a dozen high-ranking militants were killed in the last three years. Others faced unexpected diseases.

To read complete article by Deutsche Welle, click here

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) opposes US President Donald Trump’s decision to cease all funding to the UN aid agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). The Trump administration declared Friday that it was cutting all funding to UNRWA, calling the organization an “irredeemably flawed operation,” and seeking to reduce the number of Palestinians recognized as “refugees” under the UN system. Nevertheless, CJPME points out that it is the UN which defines which individuals are considered refugees, and that UNRWA adheres to international norms in defining the population of Palestinian refugees that it serves. “This is a sad ploy by Trump to further disempower Palestinians, to the political advantage of the US’ ally Israel,” declared Thomas Woodley, president of CJPME.

It is extremely unlikely that the UN would suddenly revamp its definition of what constitutes a refugee just to suit the Trump administration’s agenda on Israel-Palestine. CJPME notes that the world has addressed refugee crises for decades according to fair and humanitarian principles, and has successfully resolved dozens of refugee crises. “Canada must follow the example of Germany and Japan, and commit to greater funding to UNRWA to offset the US decision,” asserts Woodley. Canada’s current funding constitutes less than 2% of UNWRA’s overall funds. Canada, as gavel-holder for the Refugee Working Group, should also step in to fill the gap left by the US’ dearth of legitimate leadership on the issue.

The question of Palestinian refugees has long been considered a “final status” issue, to be determined only as part of a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Just like the situation with Jerusalem, the Trump administration has sought to predefine a solution to the conflict, without bringing the two sides to any mutual compromise. In response to accusations that the existence of UNWRA impedes a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness said,

“It is not UNRWA that perpetuates the conflict, it is the conflict that perpetuates UNRWA; it is the failure of the political parties through negotiations to produce an overall peace agreement and thereby resolve the refugee crisis.”

UNRWA serves around 5 million Palestinian refugees living mostly in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza. The bulk of its funds support education and health care to the Palestinian refugees under its care. It is supported by dozens of different international donor organizations, who view it as a key to the stability and development of the Palestine refugee population. UNRWA began operations in 1950 to serve the 700,000 Palestinians displaced through the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel. If UNWRA were to cease operations, the refugees under its care would fall under the care of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR.)

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above 

US President Donald Trump has joined a Chief Rabbi and a mendacious media in condemning 5 million Palestinians to starvation in their own land as allegations of antisemitism are used as a weapon in UK politics to try to prevent a Labour government taking power under Jeremy Corbyn.

The Trump White House has now acceded to Israeli demands by Binyamin Netanyahu to end nearly $300m of US funding for a UN relief program to Palestinian refugees already denied electricity and essential supplies for over 10 years in a classic attempt at ethnic cleansing.

The BBC and Channel 4 stand out as two UK media outlets to report honestly to the British public when 90% of Conservative-owned newspapers print daily misinformation in order to try to ensure Labour is kept out of government in order to avoid new legislation governing press behaviour and the re-nationalisation of public utilities, and the national rail network.

Allegations of antisemitism, rife in Conservative circles, are used as a daily weapon to delegitimise the British Labour Party. Print media is used to sway public opinion by publishing damaging pictures and inflammatory stories every day against the Labour Party executive in attempt to keep Tories in power for another 20 years.

The British media is allowed to print fake news without any penalty in a blatant attempt to sway public opinion against Labour with outrageous lies and ever increasing misinformation.

Britain now follows America in ditching democracy in favour of big money, powerful lobbyists paid by foreign embassies and political propaganda driven by unlimited funds from both Christian and Jewish Zionists in Washington and hard-Right Tory, pro-Israel evangelists in the United Kingdom.

*

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

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above 

The United States has reportedly drawn up a preliminary list of facilities in Syria that could be targeted in case of a false flag chemical weapons attack in the war-torn country.

Several US officials told CNN on Friday that American intelligence and military targeting experts had already compiled the list, but a decision to launch the strike has not been made.

One of the officials said that the US military “could respond very quickly” to an alleged gas attack in Syria and that the initial targeting data would give the Pentagon a head start if President Donald Trump orders assault.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States views the Syrian government military assault on terrorist-held Idlib as an escalation of the Syrian conflict.

The Syrian province of Idlib and surrounding areas are the last major enclave held by terrorists.

“The US sees this as an escalation of an already dangerous conflict,” Pompeo said in a post on Twitter in which he also blasted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for defending the operation.

Damascus and Moscow have warned that the US, along with Britain and France, is gearing up for a new military attack against Syria as the army prepares for a liberation operation in Idlib.

Syria and Russia also obtained evidence revealing yet another plot by Takfiri terrorists to carry out a chemical attack in Idlib and pin the blame on Damascus with the aim of justifying an ensuing Western act of aggression.

On April 14, the US, Britain and France launched a coordinated missile strike against sites and research facilities near Damascus and Homs with the purported goal of paralyzing the Syrian government’s capability to produce chemicals.

The strike came one week after an alleged gas attack hit the Damascus suburb town of Douma, just as the Syrian army was about to win the battle against the militants there.

Western states blamed the Syrian government for the incident, but Damascus firmly rejected the accusation.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Western states not to “play with fire” in Idlib.

“It’s well known that the progress of Syrian resolution, humanitarian solutions and fight against terrorism is not to everyone’s liking,” he said.

The Pentagon claimed in response that Moscow “is seeking to plant false lies about the use of chemical weapons” in Syria.

Elsewhere in their remarks, American officials told CNN that the Russians may have engaged in the buildup of naval warships ahead of a possible US strike.

“By having so many ships there, the Russians can attempt to use their shipborne radars to blanket that area and ‘see’ any potential US Tomahawk missiles coming,” an official said, warning that Russian shipborne radars could cue S-400 missile systems in Syria and try to shoot US missiles down.

‘Syria resolved to liberate Idlib’

Syria’s deputy foreign minister on Friday stressed that his country is determined to end the presence of terror outfits in Idlib, noting that certain Western countries continue to support militants through circulating “lies” on the use of chemical weapons.

In an interview with the Syrian TV, Faisal Mekdad censured a media misleading campaign regarding Syria’s planned counter-terrorism operation in Idlib.

“If the Western forces take any reckless step, Syria will retaliate and will be not be subjugated and it will practice its self-defense right which is guaranteed by all the international laws,” he said.

Mikdad further reiterated that terrorists are the ones who use chemical weapons in Syria.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

The Iranian rial: crash. The Turkish lira: crash. The Argentine peso: crash. The Brazilian real: crash. There are multiple, complex, parallel vectors at play in this wilderness of crashing currencies. Turkey’s case is heavily influenced by the bubble of easy credit created by European banks.

Argentina’s problem is mostly to do with the neoliberal austerity of President Mauricio Macri’s government admitting it won’t be able to fulfill payment targets agreed with the IMF less than three months ago.

Iran’s has to do with harsh United States sanctions imposed after the Trump administration’s unilateral pullout from the Iran nuclear deal.

Brazil’s has to do with what the Goddess of the Market considers anathema: a victory by the imprisoned Lula (former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) or his appointed candidate in the presidential election next October.

This is a serious currency crisis affecting key emerging markets. Three of these – Brazil, Argentina and Turkey – are G20 members, and Iran, absent external pressure, would have everything to qualify as a member. Two – Iran and Turkey – are under US sanctions while the other two, at least for the moment, are firmly within Washington’s orbit.

Now, compare it with currencies that are gaining against the US dollar: the Ukrainian hryvnia, the Georgian lari and the Colombian peso. Not exactly G20 heavyweights – and all of them also inside Washington’s influence.

Behold the axis of gold

Independent analysts from Russia and Turkey to Brazil and Iran largely agree that the overwhelming factor in the current currency crisis is a reversing of the US Federal Reserve quantitative easing (QE) policy.

As investment banker and risk manager Jim Rickards noted, QE for all practical purposes represented the Fed declaring a currency war against the whole planet – printing US dollars at will on a trillion-dollar scale. That meant mounting US debt was devalued so foreign creditors were paid back with cheaper US dollars.

Now, the Fed has dramatically reversed course and is all-out invested in quantitative tightening (QT).

No more liquid dollars flooding emerging markets such as Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia or India. US interest rates are up. The Fed stopped buying new bonds. The US Treasury is issuing new bond debt. Thus QT, combined with a global, targeted trade war against major emerging markets, spells out the new normal: the weaponization of the US dollar.

It’s no wonder that Russia, China, Turkey, Iran – nearly every major regional player invested in Eurasia integration – is buying gold with the aim of progressively getting out of US dollar hegemony. As JP Morgan himself coined it over a century ago, “Gold is money. All else is credit.”

Every currency war though is not about gold; it’s about the US dollar. Yet the US dollar now is like an inscrutable visitor from outer space, dependent on massive leverage; a galaxy of dodgy derivatives; the QE printing scheme; and gold not being awarded its true importance.

That is about to change. Russia and China are heavily invested in buying gold. Russia has dumped US Treasuries en masse. And what the BRICS had been discussing since the mid-2000s is now in motion; the drive to build alternative payment systems to the US dollar-subordinated SWIFT.

Germany appears to be coming around to the idea. If that does happen, it could possibly lead the way towards Europe redefining itself geopolitically in terms of its military and strategic independence.

When and if that happens, arguably at some point in the next decade, US foreign policy configured as an avalanche of sanctions may be effectively neutralized.

It will be a long, protracted affair – but some elements are already visible, as in China using US trading markets to help the emergence of a wider platform transference. After all key emerging markets cannot wiggle out of the US dollar system without full yuan convertibility.

And then there are nations contemplating the creation of their own cryptocurrencies. Digital finance is the way to go.

Some nations, for instance, could use a cryptocurrency denominated in SDRs (special drawing rights) – which is, in practice, the world money as designated by the IMF. They could back their new digital coins with gold.

Mired-in-crisis Venezuela is at least showing the way. The “sovereign bolivar” started circulating last week – pegged to a new cryptocurrency, the petro, which is worth 3,600 sovereign bolivars.

The new cryptocurrency is already posing a fascinating question: “Is the petro a forward sale of oil or an external debt backed by oil?” After all, BRICS members are buying a large chunk of the 100 million petros – confident that they are backed by a surefire reserve, the Ayacucho block of the Orinoco Oil Belt.

Venezuelan economist Tony Boza nailed it when he stressed the peg between the petro and international oil prices: “We are not going to be subject to the value of our currency being determined by a website, the oil market will determine it.”

A Persian cryptocurrency?

And that brings us to the key question of the US economic war on Iran. Persian Gulf traders are virtually unanimous: the global oil market is tightening, fast, and it will run short in the next two months.

Iran oil exports will likely drop to just over 2 million barrels a day in August. Compare it to a peak of 3.1 million barrels a day in April.

It looks like a lot of players are folding even before Trump’s oil sanctions kick in.

It also looks like the mood in Tehran is “we will survive,” but it’s not exactly clear the Iranian leadership is really aware of the nature of the incoming tempest.

The latest Oxford Economics report seems pretty realistic:

“We expect the sanctions to tip the economy back into recession, with GDP now seen contracting by 3.7% in 2019, the worst economic performance in six years. For 2020, we see growth of 0.5%, driven by a modest recovery in private consumption and net exports.”

The authors of the report, Mohamed Bardastani and Maya Senussi, say

“the other signatories to the original deal [the JCPOA, especially the EU-3] have yet to spell out a clear strategy that would allow them to circumvent US sanctions and continue importing Iranian oil.”

The report also admits the obvious: there will be no internal push in Iran for regime change (that’s a thing only happening in warped US neocon minds) while “both reformers and conservatives are united in defying the sanctions.”

But defying how? Tehran has not come up with a win-win roadmap capable of being sold to anyone – from JCPOA members to energy importers such as Japan, South Korea and Turkey. That would represent true Eurasia integration. Just having Ayatollah Khamenei saying Iran is ready to pull out of the JCPOA is not good enough.

What about a Persian cryptocurrency?

*

Featured image is from iStock.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Today we’re joined by Mick Harrison (and David Meiswinkle) of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry to discuss their recent petition to the U. S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York to convene a special grand jury into the unprosecuted federal crimes relating to the destruction of three World Trade Center Towers on September 11, 2001. We talk about the committee and its formation, the nature and powers of a special grand jury, and what legal options remain for those seeking justice for 9/11.

.

.

*

Featured image is from the author.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Ten years ago, there was panic in Washington, DC, New York City and financial centers around the world as the United States was in the midst of an economic collapse. The crash became the focus of the presidential campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain and was followed by protests that created a popular movement, which continues to this day.

Banks: Bailed Out; The People: Sold Out

On the campaign trail, in March 2008, Obama blamed mismanagement of the economy on both Democrats and Republicans for rewarding financial manipulation rather than economic productivity. He called for funds to protect homeowners from foreclosure and to stabilize local governments and urged a 21st Century regulation of the financial system. John McCain opposed federal intervention, saying the country should not bail out banks or homeowners who knowingly took financial risks.

By September 2008, McCain and Obama met with President George W. Bush and together they called for a $700 billion bailout of the banks, not the people. Obama and McCain issued a joint statement that called the bank bailout plan “flawed,” but said, “the effort to protect the American economy must not fail.” Obama expressed “outrage” at the “crisis,” which was “a direct result of the greed and irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall Street for years.”

By October 2008, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), or bank bailout, had recapitalized the banks, the Treasury had stabilized money market mutual funds and the FDIC had guaranteed the bank debts. The Federal Reserve began flowing money to banks, which would ultimately total almost twice the $16 trillion claimed in a federal audit. Researchers at the University of Missouri found that the Federal Reserve gave over $29 trillion to the banks.

This did not stop the loss of nine million jobs, more than four million foreclosures and the deep reduction in wealth among the poor, working and middle classes. A complete banking collapse was averted, but a deep recession for most people was not.

The New Yorker described the 2008 crash as years in the making, writing:

“…the crisis took years to emerge. It was caused by reckless lending practices, Wall Street greed, outright fraud, lax government oversight in the George W. Bush years, and deregulation of the financial sector in the Bill Clinton years. The deepest source, going back decades, was rising inequality. In good times and bad, no matter which party held power, the squeezed middle class sank ever further into debt.”

Before his inauguration, Obama proposed an economic stimulus plan, but, as Paul Krugman wrote,

“Obama’s prescription doesn’t live up to his diagnosis. The economic plan he’s offering isn’t as strong as his language about the economic threat.”

In the end, the stimulus was even smaller than what Obama proposed. Economist Dean Baker explained that it may have created 2 million jobs, but we needed 12 million. It was $300 billion in 2009, about the same in 2010, and the remaining $100 billion followed over several years — too small to offset the $1.4 trillion in annual lost spending.

New York Magazine reports the stimulus was “a spending stimulus bigger, by some measures than the entire New Deal.” But unlike the New Deal, which benefited people at the bottom and built a foundation for a long-term economy, the bi-partisan post-2008 stimulus bailed out Wall Street and left Main Street behind.

Wall Street executives were not prosecuted even though the financial crisis was in large part caused by their fraud. Bankers were given fines costing dimes on the dollar without being required to admit guilt or having their cases referred for prosecution. The fines were paid by shareholders, not the perpetrators.

Protest near Union Square in New York, April, 2010. Popular Resistance.

Still at Risk

Many of the root causes of the crisis remain today, making another economic downturn or collapse possible. The New Yorker reports that little has changed since 2008, with Wall Street banks returning to risky behavior and the inadequate regulation of Dodd-Frank being weakened. Big finance is more concentrated and dominant than it was before the crash. Inequality and debt have expanded, and despite the capital class getting wealthier in a record stock market with corporate profits soaring, real wages are stuck at pre-crisis levels.

People are economically insecure in the US and live with growing despair, as measured by reports on well-being. The Federal Reserve reported in 2017 that “two in five Americans don’t have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency expense.” Further, “more than one in five said they weren’t able to pay the current month’s bills in full, and more than one in four said they skipped necessary medical care last year because they couldn’t afford it.”

Positive Money writes:

 “Ten years on, big banks are still behaving in reckless, unfair and neglectful ways. The structural problems with our money and banking system still haven’t been fixed. And many experts fear that if we don’t change things soon, we’re going to sleepwalk into another crash.”

William Cohen, a former mergers and acquisitions banker on Wall Street, writes that the fundamentals of US economy are still flawed. The Economist describes the current situation: “The patient is in remission, not cured.”

From Occupy Washington DC at Freedom Plaza.

The Response Of the Popular Movement

Larry Eliott wrote in the Guardian,

“Capitalism’s near-death experience with the banking crisis was a golden opportunity for progressives.”

But the movement in the United States was not yet in a position to take advantage of it.

There were immediate protests. Democratic Party-aligned groups such as USAction, True Majority and others organized nationwide actions. Over 1,000 people demonstrated on Wall Street and phones in Congress were ringing wildly. While there was opposition to the bailout, there was a lack of national consensus over what to do.

Protests continued to grow. In late 2009, a “Move Your Money” campaign was started that urged people to take their money out of the big banks and put it in community banks and credit unions. The most visible anti-establishment rage in response to the bailout arose later in the Tea Party and Occupy movements. Both groups shared a consensus that we live in a rigged economy created by a corrupt political establishment. It was evident that the US is an oligarchy, which serves the interests of the wealthy while ignoring the necessities of the people.

The anti-establishment consensus continues to grow and showed itself in the 2016 presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. They were two sides of the same coin of populist anger that defeated Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Across the political spectrum, there is a political crisis with both mainstream, Wall Street-funded political parties being unpopular but staying in power due to a calcified political system that protects the duopoly of Democrats and Republicans.

Occupy Wall Street 2011.

Preparing for the Next Collapse

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Featured image: A girl child taking extra class in the summer in Damascus

My friend, a senior UN official based in Amman, Jordan, recently received a newsletter from an Israeli institution – “IMPACT-se”. Their report was called, ‘modestly’, “Reformulating School Textbooks During the Civil War”.

It is full of analyses of the Syrian curriculum. 

Interesting stuff, without any doubt: Manipulative, negative, but interesting. It made it to many other places in the Middle East; to Lebanon, for instance, where even the word “Israel” is hardly ever pronounced.

Predictably, being compiled in Israel, the report trashes Syria, its ideology, and the determined anti-imperialist stand of President al-Assad. 

However, that may backfire. Excerpts that are quoted from the Syrian curriculum would impress both education experts, as well as the general public, if they were to get their hands and eyes on them. And I am trying to facilitate precisely that, in this essay.

What the report found outrageous and deplorable, others could find very reasonable and positive. Let’s read, here is what the “IMPACT-se” is quoting, while ringing alarm bells:

“Saddam Hussein took power, and his period witnessed a number of wars in the Arab Gulf area. The first was with Iran, called the First Gulf War (1980–88), which occurred through incitement by the US, in order to weaken both countries. History, Grade 12, 2017–18, p. 105.”

Well put, isn’t it? But it gets much better, philosophically. Imagine, this brilliant intellectual stuff is actually served to all Syrian children in their public schools, while in Europe and North America; kids are fed with neo-colonialist mainstream propaganda. No wonder that Syrian children are much better versed in what is happening in the world. No wonder that millions of Syrian refugees are now ready to return home, after the abuse they received abroad, and after realizing how indoctrinated and brainwashed by Western propaganda, the people all over the world are. 

“IMPACT-se” continues quoting the Syrian curriculum, naively thinking that the words engraved there, will terrify the entire world:

“This competition and struggle worsened as the capitalist system developed and new occupying forces such as the US, took control over international politics. It exploited its scientific, technological, economic and military supremacy in order to expand its influence and [gain] control over the capabilities of the peoples of the world. This was done in cooperation with its allies, to increase its presence in the international arena as the only undisputed superpower. National Education, Grade 8, 2017–18, p. 81.(The US) strives to maintain its supremacy by monopolizing developing technology, controlling wealth and energy sources in the world, most importantly oil, and forcing its hegemony on the international community. National Education, Grade 8, 2017–18, p. 82.

This could be easily written by the progressive economist Peter Koenig, by the international lawyer Christopher Black, or, why not, by myself. 

Children in Damascus taking summer programme

The people, who worked on the Syrian curriculum, combined two things brilliantly: 1) indisputable facts, 2) elegant simplicity! Actually, this curriculum should be offered not only to the Middle East kids, but all over the world.

Look how skillfully and honestly it summarizes modern history:

“After the disappearance of international balance and unipolar hegemony took control of the world, the US began searching for excuses to justify its intervention in other countries. It occupied Afghanistan in 2002, under the pretext of fighting against “terrorism” in order to realize its political and economic goals. One of the goals was to build an advanced military base close to countries which the US considers to be dangerous (Russia, China, India, Iran and North Korea). In addition, Afghanistan had many assets (such as iron ore and gas). In 2003, the US—helped by a group of countries—declared war on Iraq under the pretext that Iraq was holding weapons of mass destruction and aiding terrorism. The occupation came after an unjust siege and air strikes over Iraqi cities and institutions, without authorization from the UN general assembly and the Security Council. National Education, Grade 8, 2017–18, p. 82

Making the world become one form, one structure and one model, which is the most powerful model now controlling the world, economically and militarily—the American model. The hegemony of the capitalist system . . . turning the world into a consumer market for Western products and ideas, while stripping the nation of its principles, customs and traditions, abolishing its personality and identity, first diluting and then gradually eliminating nations and cultures. National Education, Grade 12, 2017–18, p. 31.”

According to “IMPACT-se”, this is supposed to scare random readers, providing proof how evil the ‘regime in Damascus’ is!

The opposite is true.

An international (non-Western) educator, who is presently based in the Middle East, explained to me over a cup of coffee. I think that this statement is actually a good summary of what many others that are studying the Syrian curriculum really feel:

“Education reflects the vision of a given society.  The heart of what a society expects from its citizens is in the curriculum.  Having carefully read the analysis of the new Syrian curriculum and textbooks reinforces my strong conviction of how great a society Syria really is.”

*

Let us see the ‘other side’; those who are critical of Syrian education, those who are making a living from such criticism and from antagonizing the system.

ESCWA (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia), based in Beirut, Lebanon, has an initiative defined as ‘the future of Syria for the peace-building phase’. This ‘process’ involves Syrian experts from all walks of life.

But who are these experts? In 2018, during the expert’s meeting on education, the list included these specialists:

– Former professors (education and law) of Aleppo University

– Former professor of Damascus University

– Head of an education NGO in Lebanon

– Academics and researchers now based in Turkey and Germany

– Independent consultants

Clearly, if at this meeting any participants were Syrians, they were ‘former some things’. Meaning exiles, anti-government cadres, and mostly pegged to some Western organization (predominantly the organizations based in France or Germany). Not one person from the legitimate government of Syria was invited! A typical Western approach: “about them, without them”.

With or without textbooks children flock to school in newly liberated Aleppo, January 2017

And these people who are serving Western interests, are supposed to help to define a component on education which is considered vital to “reconciliation and social cohesion in post-war Syria”.

Predictably, instead of promoting reconciliation, the speeches were full of hate, bitter and aggressive, anti-Syrian and pro-Western. ‘Experts’ used terminology such as: ‘Hegemony of the Syrian regime’, ‘The Ba’ath Party is only concerned about ideology, never giving Syrians an identity’ (they were actually demanding that religions would serve as ‘identity’, replacing the presently secular Syrian state), ‘We need to talk about the truth of what happened in 2011, what led to the war in 2011. Without that nothing makes sense’ (but the ‘truth about 2011’ in their minds has definitely nothing to do with the fact that the West encouraged the anti-government rebellion, injected jihadi cadres and triggered the brutal civil war aimed at overthrowing a social state).

Their main point seems to be: ‘The war has strengthened the culture of hatred’.

Correct, but not because of the Syrian state, but, because of people like those ‘experts’!

What do they really want? Religion instead of secularism, capitalism instead of socialism, and of course, the Western perception of ‘democracy’, instead of a patriotic and pan-Arab independent vision of the state.

*

No matter how one turns it, the Syrian education system, including its curriculum, appears to be greatly superior to those in the neighboring countries. Perhaps that is why it is being placed under scrutiny and under attack.

After all, wasn’t the main goal of the West, in 2011 and after, to destroy yet another socialist, internationalist state that was primarily serving its people?

And the state of Israel? What is “IMPACT-se” mainly complaining about? What is irking it most, in the Syrian curriculum? Perhaps this, in its own words and analyses:

“The Syrian curriculum bases Syrian national identity on the principles of a continued struggle to realize one Arab Nation that includes all Arab states, constituting one country, the “Arab Homeland.” The textbooks present the borders dividing the Arab states as artificial, having been imposed by European colonialism.”

For most of us, this is actually, not bad, is it?

Or possibly this:

“The current borders are political ones, drawn through the policy of the colonial powers that had controlled the region, especially France and Britain. They do not overlap the natural borders that used to separate the Arab Homeland from the neighboring countries. So, important changes took place in these borders to the benefit of those countries and to the detriment of the Arab land. Geography of the Arab Homeland and the World, Grade 12, 2017–2018, p. 13.”

What is incredibly impressive, is, how the Syrian curriculum addresses the Soviet period of its close ally – Russia:

“We shall become acquainted with the reality of Russia prior to the Communist Revolution, and the causes which led to its political, economic, social and intellectual renaissance, from World War I until the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Russian Federation in 1991. History, Grade 8, 2017–18, p. 98. 

The Socialist Revolution in Russia broke out in order to confront the imperial regime. It declared the establishment of the first socialist country in 1917. [The Revolution] was based on the rule of the workers and the peasants, and it had a global impact, as it supported national liberation movements. History of the Modern and Contemporary World, Grade 11, 2017–18, p. 168.

Gorbachev took over the leadership of the state and party in 1988, and aspired to implement a plan of economic, social and ideological reconstruction. However, the imperialistic countries conspired against the destiny of the Soviet Union and took advantage of the administrative corruption and the circumstances of multiple nationalities, leading to its dissolution in 1991 and the establishment of the Russian Federation in its place. History, Grade 8, 2017–18, pp. 99–100”

Actually, if I could, if I were to be allowed to, I’d love my publishing house (Badak Merah) to publish the Syrian curriculum, or at least its part on history and politics, for everyone outside Syria to read.

What the Israeli “IMPACT-se” sees as alarming or negative, most people all over the world and particularly in the Arab region, would definitely perceive as truthful, optimistic and worth fighting for.

Are the experts from “IMPACT-se” so naïve that they do not realize it? Or is there something else going on? Perhaps we will never find out. 

No matter what: thank you for reminding us of the great Syrian curriculum! It clearly shows how great a nation Syria is!

*

This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. 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.

All images in this article are from Yayoi Segi.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

“Every notion of progress is refuted by the existence of the Iliad.” – Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

“The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.” – Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

It’s still the same old story.  The best propaganda places individual stories within a larger framework.  The individual is extolled or damned in the service of the controlling myth.

Senator John McCain is a case in point.  As an individual, he is not important, except as the glorified stories about him and his own confabulations about himself can be used to enhance the controlling myth.  American history is replete with such bloodthirsty, war-mongering individuals, whose lives and stories serve to enhance the American myth of being “God’s New Israel” and Americans being God’s chosen people whose mission is to spread “freedom” and “democracy” around the world with our “terrible swift swords.”  

As Bob Dylan put it,

“But I learned to accept it/Accept it with pride/For you don’t count the dead/When God’s on your side.”

Myths are the invisible narrative skeletons of our outward lives. They are limited in number and keep getting reused in different forms.   All we do hangs upon their bones.  This is true for nations and for individuals.  Myths are what people take for granted and do not question.  Our lives are telling stories, and myth means story.  

We tell our lives by living stories.  Then others tell those stories about us when we are dead.  

Of course, some control freaks try to manage their myths from the grave, as did McCain, who knew how the game is played, and who got his brothers-in-arms, George W. Bush and Barack Obama to polish his myth as he lay silent before them.  

“We Lost a Good One,” blared the New York Times, as McCain was lying in state, and liars of state, Bush and Obama, were preparing to shill for him as they shilled for war and the overthrow of foreign governments for their masters.  Another member of the Club, Joseph Biden, had done his part in the mythologizing a few days earlier when he shed his famous “regular guy” tears as he spoke of his dear friend.  For those outside such a small circle of friends – the millions of passive TV spectators in the society of the spectacle – tears seal the deal, set the myth into an emotional space that just feels right. In mythmaking, feeling is all; facts don’t matter. And the military and religious symbolism, the pageantry and the majesty of the setting, make the eulogies resound more loudly.  

It is through symbols, not just words, that the “people” are brought together to celebrate their mythic uniqueness, for the word symbol comes from the Greek, meaning to throw together, and for the in-crowd that is what they do.  We are in this together, one nation under God….while outside, as McCain, Bush, Obama, et al. never failed to remind us “folks,” there lurks the diabolic (to throw apart) devils from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Russia, etc. ready to divide us from within and attack us from without.  We are the good “insiders,” they are the evil “outsiders.”  Such verbiage constitutes the essence of cultural myth creation and the core of American Exceptionalism.  It is practiced by the politicians and mainstream corporate media every day.

In speaking about McCain, Bush and Obama did so from within the frame of this great American Myth of Exceptionalism and God’s Chosen People.  McCain, who is a small piece of a much larger myth, was just another name added to the Pantheon.  Bush once said, “Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom.”  And Obama once confessed, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.”  One can easily understand why McCain chose them.

Bush eulogized McCain thus:

“In one epic life was written the courage and greatness of our country.”

Wasn’t it great to kill millions of Vietnamese and Iraqis?  Only the courageous from the home of the brave can perform such honorable duties, especially from the air. 

“He respected the dignity inherent in every life, a dignity that does not stop at borders and cannot be erased by dictators,” said Bush, adding: 

Whatever the cause, it was this combination of courage and decency that defined John’s calling, and so closely paralleled the calling of his country. It’s this combination of courage and decency that makes the American military something new in history, an unrivaled power for good.”

Moreover, Obama intoned with such eloquence:

And finally while John and I disagreed on all kinds of foreign policy issues, we stood together on America’s role as the one nation, believing that with great power and great blessings comes great responsibility…But John understood that our security and our influence was won not just by our military might, not just by our wealth, not just by our ability to bend others to our will, but from our capacity to inspire others with our adherence to a set of universal values. Like rule of law and human rights and insistence on the God-given dignity of every human being.

Now I wonder what John’s and Barack’s dead victims in Libya and Syria would have to say about their “universal values” and respect for the “rule of law”?  Can the dead laugh sardonically?

The recent spectacle over John McCain’s death is a perfect example of myth creation.  McCain is, however, a metaphor for the larger ongoing narrative that has been going on for centuries and seems to have no end.  

McCain’s apotheosis is a made for TV American hero movie, one that he first helped create and one that John Wayne would envy, as blatantly jingoistic and racist as Wayne was in “The Green Berets,” a movie released in 1968, the year after our hero McCain’s dubious involvement in the tragedy of the USS Forrestal aircraft carrier that killed 137 sailors, his being shot down while bombing North Viet Nam, and his subsequent years in captivity.  No doubt Sydney Schanberg’s devastating expose of McCain’s explanation of his years as a POW will play no part in today’s mythologizing.

If only Wilfred Owen’s words could have been piped into the National Cathedral during the funeral ceremony, maybe the mythmaking would have ceased and truth revealed.  

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

But that is wishful thinking in this land of make-believe, where such poetic obscenities are not allowed in the Cathedral of God’s People.  

*

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

The Ontario labour movement is in deep crisis. Some impressive struggles aside, it has been staggering since the end of the great mobilizations of the 1990s. Given the labour movement’s historic role in leading and supporting progressive change, its current disorientation should be a matter of alarm to its members of course, but also to anyone concerned with countering the insatiable greed and social destructiveness of capitalism.

There is a tendency within the Canadian labour movement – reinforced as we head into Labour Day – to reduce this crisis to a lack of unity. But the content of ‘unity’ matters and is inseparable from the question of direction. Battles over jurisdictional claims are certainly destructive. However, in the absence of political struggle, calls for unity can also be used to silence criticism and block difficult debates over vision and strategy. It is the lack of such crucial debates – which inevitably come with some divisions along the way – that is perhaps most disturbing about the state of today’s labour movement.

Consider. In the 1930s, the great breakthrough in the American labour movement, which also shaped the Canadian movement, was the birth of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and its principle of unionization across skills. But it only came alongside a difficult but necessary exit from the craft-based AFL (American Federation of Labor), a tectonic break that represented profound ideological and strategic differences. When the AFL and CIO came together again in the mid-1950s the ‘harmony’ it brought didn’t bring a stronger, more solidaristic movement. Rather, the newly unified federation, the AFL-CIO, oversaw four decades of stagnation and decline in U.S. unions accompanied by some of the most shameful undermining of working class struggles abroad.

Conservatives on the Attack

With the election of the Progressive Conservatives led by Doug Ford, the threat of further, more damaging defeats as austerity gains traction is clear enough. Low-wage workers have already seen a freeze on the planned increases in minimum wages even as top executive compensation has increased by 50 per cent over the past decade. Very modest proposed increases in welfare benefits are also being cut, though income support benefits are lower today than a quarter of a century ago. And the already thin democracy in the administration of Toronto is about to get thinner with the radical unilateral trimming of the size of city council.

Coming soon are deep cuts to public spending in Ontario, which may well be much larger than anything attempted by the Conservative government of Mike Harris in the late 1990s. A combination of 4 per cent planned spending cuts, $7.5-billion in revenue cuts and $6-billion lost in accounting changes leaves a minimum of $22-billion to be hacked from public services by year three of the Conservative’s mandate.

Detailed reviews underway of government spending will set the stage for a massive attack on Ontario’s public sector. CUPE anticipates that in the hospital sector alone, 3,500 hospital beds and 16,500 staff would have to be cut to meet the target of eliminating $22-billion. In announcing a ‘line by line’ review of provincial spending the Conservatives referred to a commitment, not mentioned during the election, to reduce the province’s $315-billion debt. To significantly reduce Ontario’s debt, even over 20 years, would mean amputating public services.

Yet – and this is the most immediate sign of the crisis in labour – as the Conservatives prepare an onslaught of cutbacks, labour has been all but silent about how, beyond lamentations of another government turning to austerity, it will respond as a class. If that passivity continues, Ford’s Conservative government can be expected to read that as an invitation to go further and faster.

The challenge posed by the Conservative’s class agenda – tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, funded by cuts to public spending for working people – is to mobilize the working class in its own defense and in defense of the unemployed, the poor, the disabled, the young and the elderly, all of whom will be victims of the Conservative’s attack. Right-wing populism can only be defeated by exposing it and winning the support of the broadly defined working class, thereby deconstructing the Conservative base and forcing the Conservatives to retreat.

An obvious reference point here is the ‘Days of Action’, the dramatic class response that emerged in Ontario in the mid-90s to the radical neoliberal policies of Harris, when labour faced a comparable threat to the Ford cuts of today. Many young activists have little knowledge of the remarkable mobilizations undertaken by labour and its allies in that period. This makes it important to recall, by way of a brief overview, this suppressed historical memory.

Days of Action, Days of Possibilities

The Days of Action were a series of one-day city-wide protests, including one-day general strikes (by their very nature political strikes) that began in late 1995 and ultimately came to eleven Ontario communities over a two-and-a-half-year time span. The Toronto protest alone involved an estimated crowd of over 250,000.

In the 1990s, popular reaction against the ‘neoliberal’ undermining of social programs and attacks on the labour movement intensified across the core capitalist countries. In response, many European countries elected social democratic governments. The election of the NDP in Ontario, in 1990, preceded all of them. As elsewhere, this didn’t turn out as hoped. With the economy in recession, the NDP retreated from promises like socialized auto insurance and used state power to open and roll back public sector union contracts. The demoralization in the labour movement over this betrayal contributed to the election in 1995 of the hard-right Conservative government led by Mike Harris.

Harris acted quickly to implement his so-called ‘Common Sense Revolution’. One wing of the labour movement argued that there was no choice but to wait for the next election. This wasn’t convincing. The next election was far off and a good deal of damage, much of it seeming irreversible, would occur in the interim. In any case, the NDP’s performance in office had left it discredited even among former strong supporters – its’ vote had fallen by over 40% in 1995 and there was little enthusiasm for placing all of labour’s trust in the NDP again.

Against this, some labour and community militants called for a ‘general strike’. This had even less traction across the movement. The labour leadership’s strong aversion to this especially uncertain terrain was reinforced by an awareness that the kind of unity such a strategy demanded was simply absent. More important, since a good number of union members had for various reasons supported Harris, the labour movement could hardly claim a mandate for such a radical step.

In that sense, the strategy behind the Days of Action reflected the weakness of the labour movement as much as its strength. Nevertheless, the response brokered by the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) among its often-fractious unions demonstrated the kinds of organizing capacities the labour movement still retained.

The OFL assigned key staff to work on the Days of Action full-time and to coordinate bringing both paid and voluntary organizers into each community well in advance of their actual day of action. Committed unions put their own staff and local activists to work reaching their members, some of whom grasped the threat and were quite ready to protest, but many who were unconvinced about either the issues or the tactics. Efforts to get members on side ranged from leafletting plants to training activists for one-on-one conversations, and in some cases carrying out mini-protests on specific issues to generate momentum. The preparations culminated in mass membership meetings in every workplace or local to get clear mandates for one-day strikes.

At the same time, OFL organizers and local union leaders began discussions at the community level with social movements, NGOs, and church groups around the core issues, with special concern to overcome long-standing suspicions of the union movement. This led to the formation of local coalitions, co-chaired by a trade unionist and someone from the movements (at least one of whom was to be a woman). The coalitions spoke to local groups and the media, wrote op-eds, bought radio ads, and also leafletted door-door (130,000 such leaflets were distributed in London, where the first Day of Action occurred).

Workplaces were shut down by workers, reinforced by cross-picketing (i.e. workers left their own work-sites to picket other workplaces, in part because shutting down your own workplace was illegal – though such legalities were in any case largely ignored). Schools were generally closed, not so much because of the teacher unions – whose attitudes were mixed – but by parents keeping their kids out, and by high school students themselves generally organizing the closing of their schools. At Oakwood Collegiate, for example, students went from classroom to classroom and got permission from each teacher to have some time to explain what the issues were and why a dramatic response was necessary. Thousands of workers were bussed in from nearby, and often distant, communities and mass marches took place, lined by hundreds of marshals to keep the march peaceful (and in Toronto by dozens of bands and singers along the route). The marches led into packed meetings in the largest spaces in the community, brimming with collective confidence and a newfound sense of social power.

To a degree not fully grasped at the time, even by those advocating the approach, the plan that labour had more or less stumbled into was strategically impressive and, given the defeat of the NDP and the absence of their support for extra-parliamentary political actions, politically bold.

• It allowed the unions supporting the action to focus their limited but solid core of organizers on one community at a time (something a general strike could not do).
• The announcements of the shutdowns a few months in advance resulted in a media frenzy warning of coming chaos in the community; this led workers to spontaneously and widely discuss the merits of the strategy.
• Because workers lost a day’s pay, they would only join the protest if won over to its necessity. That forced unions to convince their members to participate.
• Spreading the protests over an extended period of time kept the issue of the Harris cuts alive over a long stretch of time. This was something that waiting for the next election or pushing for a general strike (which at the time was likely to be short-lived) could not.
• The emphasis on shutting down workplaces for a day served the educational function of linking the Harris program to the corporate sector’s backing of the Harris assault on the poor, public services and union rights. It was also hoped that, fearing further workplace disruption, the corporations might push Harris to soften his agenda.
• Because the Days of Action were illegal walkouts any worker picketing her workplace could be fired. Unions therefore cross-picketed with, for example, postal workers shutting down auto plants and vice-versa. This created new worker solidarities at the very base of the working class movement.
• It brought community organizations, which had been very active at that time, into the mobilizations. This added significantly to the legitimacy of the protests and undermined charges that the Days were a self-serving union protest. As a gesture towards inclusiveness, the co-chairs of the broad coalitions in each community included one person from labour and one from the movements, with at least one co-chair having to be a woman. The mobilizations brought labour and social movements together, and within the social movements, provided a measure of coherence and strategic focus to its array of otherwise energetic but dispersed activities.
• The strategy could be effective even if not all unions participated. With municipal services interrupted, bus drivers shutting down transit, post offices and other government offices closed, and the most important manufacturing industry in the province, automotive, committed to the shutdowns, the message of broad and growing militant opposition within the labour movement was powerfully delivered. (That schools were also closed in spite of the vacillation of the teachers’ unions added to the sense of general community paralysis).

Three aspects of the Days of Action were especially noteworthy. First, though the protests against Harris had begun among the social movements, the centrality of the labour movement to social protest was confirmed. Only labour could effectively interrupt the daily functioning of workplaces and cities and the OFL proved especially adept at organizing these shutdowns. Second, this didn’t mean that the labour leadership could simply dictate the workplace shutdowns. Workers would only follow if they could be convinced that there were solid reasons to protest, that there was a credible plan of action with some possibility of success, and if they knew they wouldn’t be alone. Third, the Days were a reminder of the radical potentials of rank and file workers.

In this regard, the politicization of workers through the protests and strikes was repeatedly demonstrated. Workers moved organically toward larger more ambitious political perspectives: posing what kind of society they wanted to live in; consolidating a sense of solidarity across the working class; and recognizing that class is expressed in the community not just at the workplace. Workers were, often tentatively, sometimes with greater confidence, moving to a practice that might fit the label ‘class struggle unionism’.

But Was it Successful?

In measuring the outcome of the Days of Action, it’s useful to step back and look closer at the nature of unionized labour. Unions are organizations structured – ideologically and practically – around representing particular groups of workers within capitalism as they bargain with their employer or lobby the state. Though the boundaries of how unions do this get stretched from time to time this primary function has, over time, decisively shaped union cultures and practices.

To the extent that unions basically see themselves as ‘transactional’ – mediating a deal between workers and employers or the state – this has profound implications. For one, the fact that labour is not inherently a commodity but an expression of human creativity gets lost. For another, the focus is primarily on improvements in individual bargaining units, not the larger society and so the working class remains fragmented. And it is the immediate which dominates, not a seemingly remote vision. In good times, unions have proven able to make gains for their members through such a narrow unionism. But in bad times, this orientation leaves workers vulnerable as unions turn defensively inward. Neoliberalism has reinforced such inclinations within labour, as the drive to individualize and marketize tends to turn workers into consumers and unions into business-like institutions competing in labour markets.

Without a social vision, larger class perspective, or strategy for addressing the power of the state and not just the power of their particular employer, the reach and potential power of workers is restricted. Hence the defeats the union movement has experienced across a few generations now. This is the basis for American union organizer Jane McAlevey’s call for the fundamental importance of re-establishing a commitment among unions to ‘deep organizing’.

It was of course always naïve to expect that this kind of labour movement could suddenly burst through its structures and accumulated baggage and suddenly prove capable of defeating a recently elected anti-labour, anti-social government. The key issues in assessing the Days of Action and drawing future lessons therefore revolve around whether the Days gave workers confidence that fighting back – as opposed to passive acceptance – makes a difference, and whether they opened the door to building a stronger movement.

The answer is yes, they did. The Days of Action didn’t force the Harris government to fully reverse course but they did blunt his agenda. The threat to remove the right to strike in the public sector was stopped; likewise the attack on the interest arbitration system was halted, in the face of an illegal strike threatened by hospital workers; and social expenditures, which saw severe cuts at the beginning of the government’s term, were stabilized and in some cases reversed. In health care, for example, by 1997 expenditures in Ontario were growing significantly faster than they had been historically and far faster than they were in the final two years of the preceding NDP government. All this was significant and seen by the working class as victories.

Even more important, the Days introduced a new generation of workers and activists to organizing and politics. Suddenly, the union movement was a place to be, introducing young workers to the thrill of solidarity and exciting them with engagement in the larger questions of society. Slowly and unevenly and with varying degrees of clarity and confidence, this raised expectations and generated probing questions about what a different kind of labour movement might be.

But as the Days of Action ran out of steam, so did the other possible trajectories come to an end. Ultimately, the intimations of a revolution in trade union structures, culture, and strategies didn’t materialize. This was highlighted in two particular ways.

One was that after the demands of the labour movement were largely satisfied (for the time being at least) with respect to public sector spending and collective bargaining, the tents were folded up, even though the attack on other sections of society, like the poor and the disabled continued. The other was that no consideration was given to a plan that looked beyond the shutdowns. To take just one example: as the organizers left one community and moved to another, no organizational presence was sustained in the communities evacuated and typically no creative attempt was made to build new structures to carry on the battle in new ways.

This wasn’t just a failure of the labour leadership, though they certainly carry a good share of the responsibility. The members, on their own, didn’t grasp the importance of – or simply lacked the confidence and capacities to pursue – addressing the longer-term direction of their own and other unions.

Nor was the socialist left, in spite of its constant emphasis on transforming unions, able to do so. Once the labour leadership unilaterally decided to end the shutdowns, the left criticized the lack of democracy and broad consultation in how this decision was made and pressed for a step-up in militancy. But the left was itself far too disorganized and wedded to unproductive formulas to be able to use the opening created by the Days of Action to establish new connections to the working class, recruit activists to a larger vision, and effectively pose the transformation of unions as a condition for effecting and sustaining a more radical movement.

The sense in which the Days of Action ‘failed’ didn’t therefore lie in the fact that the Harris regime’s reforms laid the basis for the neoliberal politics that the Liberals sustained – defeating it totally was not possible – but that openings had occurred and the labour movement and its allies failed to build on them.

What has Changed in the Union Movement as we Face the Ford Regime’s Assaults?

History is a good teacher but former blueprints can’t simply be repeated. In drawing on the lessons of earlier experiences, sensitivity to what has changed is imperative. Four such changes seem especially significant with respect to the Ontario labour movement.

The first and most obvious is that even if the labour movement was not as strong then as often recalled, the defeats since have left unions in Ontario even more demoralized and disoriented and, moreover, more divided than ever. It will take some time and much effort to get the labour movement into active collective struggle.

A second difference lies in the pivotal role of the CAW (Canadian Auto Workers – the predecessor of Unifor). This involved the union’s presence in the key auto sector and its readiness and capacity to shut the industry down in the 1990s, and especially its role then in easing tensions between public and private sector unions. This critical union division revolved around the NDP’s intervention in public sector collective agreements. The CAW’s decision to maintain solidarity with the public sector ameliorated that split (though it made for sharp antagonisms between the CAW and some of the private sector unions who staunchly defended the NDP), and kept the public sector unions from being dangerously isolated by the rest of the labour movement.

Today, however, the leadership of Unifor is as distant from the public sector leaders as from those in the private sector, a division highlighted by, but extending beyond, Unifor’s departure from the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), Canada’s central labour body. Moreover, its economic clout and militancy has been eroded alongside the decline of Ontario’s manufacturing base as well as the union’s own response to that economic reality. This matters a great deal as there seems today to be no union ready and able to fill the strategic role the CAW played earlier. Reflecting the more general malaise in the labour movement today, where the OFL earlier rose to the occasion and became a place for debate and movement building, it seems to have drifted into operating more like a space where strategic discussion is laid to rest.

A third difference is that through the 1990s there was still an active growing complex of social movements leading a range of creative struggles. Today, however, with a few significant exceptions, this is no longer the case. But the popular frustrations that currently exist, especially among young people, are profound and potentially bursting into new political movements. As we’ve seen with regards to Sanders in the U.S. and Corbyn in the UK, in the right mix of circumstances and struggles, the energy and creativity of alienated young people can become a major political force even with barely developed institutional bases.

A fourth change is that the NDP, largely discredited when the Days of Action were initiated, has more momentum today. In their alignment with ‘third way’ politics in the 1990s, NDP leaders and functionaries looked with suspicion on the protests, seeing them as encouraging an alternative to electoral politics and also expecting that, if the party were to identify with and support the Days, this would hurt them electorally. Today, in contrast, sections of the party – having observed developments elsewhere – are less closed to positive engagement with any new round of protests. Indeed, given the fortunes of European social democracy, such alignments are seen by some (within limits of course) as necessary to survive electorally.

The point here, given the state of the Ontario labour movement, is to avoid framing the coming debate in the movement simply in electoral versus non-electoral terms. Electoral politics are clearly essential to struggles over the direction and ultimate transformation of the state. The issue is the vital importance of the labour movement not limiting itself to expressing its politics through the NDP and insisting on the need to include, in its overall strategy, the independent organizing and mobilizing of the working class.

As with the Days of Action, a strategy of waiting for the next election can simply encourage the government to hit harder and bring changes that may be extremely difficult to turn back. As experience in Ontario has shown, leaving politics to the politicians not only hurts electoral outcomes – elections depend on organizing informed grassroots activism well before any election campaign proper starts – but also removes a crucial check on what social democratic parties will do when elected.

What Now?

Socialist parties were once seen as distinct from other parties not just in their policies, but especially in their commitment to developing the capacities of the working class. Their emphasis was on education and cultivating among workers the ability to analyze, organize, debate, strategize and act collectively. In the absence of such a party, the weight for addressing this now falls on the unions. Whether they can take up this challenge is a central question to address in any sustained effort to take on the Ford government.

The reality of the current moment is that solidarity pacts or joint strategic discussions between unions are all too rare in Ontario and Canada today. In the context of the current divisions in the labour movement, with unified working class action a number of steps away, a starting point would be for unions to start addressing their own members. Internal plans should be developed – now – to disseminate information on the Ford government cuts and employer attacks and to, establish fight-back committees and train cadre to lead multiple discussions at every level of the union. Such discussions would include how to address what might be done to win workers over in our own workplaces (since not all are with us) much as is done in traditional unionization drives. This process could be extended to the community and begin to raise what kind of larger strategies seem necessary.

It is only out of such worker engagement within each union, and the ferment stimulated by trying to figure out how to overcome individual and workplace isolation and build effective resistance, that there is any chance for the inklings of solidarity across unions to start emerging and coalescing into something larger that might revitalize the overall labour movement.

Moving beyond such essential initial steps demands a strategic orientation that is now largely absent in each union. In the public sector, that orientation is clear. Public sector unions need to meaningfully re-establish their credibility in the general fight for social services. Public sector workers know what the impact of the cuts on services will be, and know how services can be improved and expanded. Public sector unions must back this by fully committing – whether in terms of resources, bargaining, campaigning or industrial action (work slowdowns, stoppages, work-ins, and the like) – to the defense, improvement, and expansion of public services and supporting any social groups joining that struggle. Only out of such creative and bold struggles will it become clear how vital it is for the public sector unions to go beyond their own struggles and come together in a common fight for public services and greater democratic control.

In the private sector, the issues are more complicated, since influencing individual jobs, levels of employment and security requires having some direct control over investment, capital flows and trade – issues that extend well beyond provincial jurisdiction (though this should not preclude workers acting more aggressively to block workplace closures or to argue for their socialization and conversion). An initial focus for forming the basis for such anti-neoliberal reforms might begin by taking advantage of new opportunities for major breakthroughs in unionization.

As the province reduces the number of inspectors and the regulation of workplace standards, and as corporations respond to legislated increases – like the substantial gains in minimum wages so inspiringly won through the Workers’ Action Center – by trying to recoup their costs through reducing worker benefits, forcing even greater speed-up, or manipulating the existing rules, the necessity of unionization increasingly surfaces. The message to the workers is straightforward: if you want higher standards, even ones you’re supposed to legally have, the only way to get and protect those standards is to unionize. The message to the labour movement itself is that – particularly in organizing the growing marginalized and precarious workforce – unionization must be understood as building the working class as a whole, not as an exclusive competition among unions for dues-paying members.

This implies not just a commitment of more resources, but a solidaristic strategy and must be insisted on as the only orientation to organizing that can meet the class attack that is coming from the Ford government. For example, in organizing franchise workers such as those at Tim Horton’s, where popular sympathies generally stand with the workers after the craven corporate counter-response to the increase in minimum wages, why wouldn’t every community with such a franchise should set up a community-based committee with organizers from every local union, gather contacts from union members with relatives or friends in the sector and move toward a province-wide unionization of the workers?

Other responses will depend on the pattern of Ford’s program of cuts and the government’s response to specific bargaining rounds. As that unfolds and particular unions act to challenge Ford’s attacks, it will be essential to recognize the strategic importance of these struggles to all coming struggles and organize solidaristic picket lines and whatever else might be demanded to advance the struggle.

All this is crucial in itself and also because it sets the stage for a strategy which, if not identical to the Days of Action, is based on the same systematic, gradually escalating, and comprehensive spirit of organizing political strikes that build momentum community by community.

Building for the Future

Building for the future can’t be postponed to ‘the future’. If people had, during the hectic and exciting Days of Action, raised the need for transforming our unions and creating new forms of permanent working class organizations in the community, this would no doubt have been treated as an abstract diversion. Too many more pressing issues were at hand. Yet it is that stubborn insistence on what is immediate – even if understandable at any particular moment – that has condemned the working class in Ontario (and Canada) to the exhausting treadmill of defensive battles. That legacy of repeatedly ignoring larger issues now sees workers and communities facing yet another round of assaults, this time even less prepared to respond.

Workers and unions desperately need to think larger and more long-term. This cannot be reduced to calls for ‘more militancy’, as important as that is. It begs the question: Militancy for what? What kind of society do we want, and what is our strategy for getting there? What kind of collective capacities and institutions do we need to build? And what does this all mean for transforming our unions?

The stakes couldn’t be higher. The wave of harsh austerity we will soon face may be more punitive than even the Harris government’s cutbacks. What was so important in resisting Harris and will now again be central is to recognize that we are under attack as a class and must think, strategize and fight back as a class. To be effective this must include preparing, organizing and mobilizing for political strikes – the attack is that significant.

Without the Ontario labour movement asserting a leadership role in fighting for dignity, equality, and social solidarity, it will continue to fade as a relevant social force. Without a vibrant labour movement, it is hard to imagine sustaining any mass, disciplined, and strategic fight-back; and without that, not only the distant future, but also tomorrow, looks grim. Unless the trade union movement rises to this challenge – not just in rhetoric, not just to defend its particular interests, but as a social force with a vision of a future that escapes the crippling mean-ness and inequality of capitalism, all working people will suffer.

Only the most serious commitment to organizing and mobilizing the working class in response brings the possibility of union revival (attend meeting in Toronto). And only that kind of ambition, with the class consciousness it brings and the grounded unity and class struggle it rests on, carries the antidote to the neoliberalism which has yoked us for decades.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

It’s called diplomatic give-and-take for a reason.

The United States cannot get some of what it wants without giving North Korea some of what it wants. Yet that is precisely what Washington has been trying to do—and predictably getting nowhere, as President Trump acknowledged by postponing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s latest mission to Pyongyang. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis tried to increase pressure on the North by announcing, “We have no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises.” While he clarified that no decision had yet been made, he also noted, “We are going to see how the negotiations go, and then we will calculate the future, how we go forward.”

Washington is insisting that Pyongyang fulfill its commitment at the Singapore Summit to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” without addressing its own commitments at that summit “to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations,” and “to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean peninsula.” Policymakers opposed to negotiations have disclosed intelligence that North Korea is continuing to produce fissile material and missiles, as if it is obliged to stop without any deal.

While the Trump administration demanded that the North move first, reportedly by providing a complete inventory of its nuclear material and production facilities, the North countered with the demand that Washington join South Korea in declaring an end to the Korean War. The declaration would commit to initiating a peace process that would include military confidence building measures to reduce the risk of deadly clashes in the contested waters of the West (Yellow) Sea and the Demilitarized Zone and culminate in a formal peace treaty.

The administration contends that the North wants the peace declaration before taking steps to denuclearize, but as North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told ASEAN foreign ministers in early August,

“We believe that a method involving the balanced, simultaneous, step-by-step implementation of all terms in the Joint Statement, preceded by the establishment of trust, is the only realistic means of achieving success.”

He emphasized the North’s “unswerving resolution and commitment to responsible, good-faith implementation of the Joint Statement,” and the “unacceptability of a situation in which we alone are the first to move unilaterally.”

His statement is just the latest indication that a deal is possible if the United States is prepared to accept a peace declaration. Seeking a nuclear inventory in return will only initiate a long period of uncertainty, however, with little benefit to the US and allied security while Washington tries to verify that inventory and while North Korean manufacture of fissile material and missiles runs free. A better starting point for Washington to seek is a suspension of the production of plutonium, highly enriched uranium, and intercontinental- and intermediate-range missiles, along with a declaration of the locations of related production sites.

Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula depends less on maintaining maximum pressure than on addressing what Kim Jong Un wants in negotiations. Contrary to the conventional wisdom about the end of the US alliance with South Korea, the abandonment of the nuclear umbrella, the withdrawal of US forces, a Marshall Plan, or even written security assurances, what Kim wants is an end to US enmity—what the North Koreans call the US “hostile policy”—and reconciliation. Based on what North Korean diplomats have been telling US officials and ex-officials for years, this entails the normalization of political and economic relations, a “peace regime” on the Korean Peninsula, and ultimately, an alliance like the one the United States has with the ROK, one that would be backed by a continuing US troop presence on the peninsula.

Most experts assume that the North has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons. That is mere speculation. There is no way to know for sure whether or not Kim is willing to keep his pledge to disarm and what he will want in return. Diplomatic give-and-take with concrete proposals for reciprocal steps is the only way to find out. Dismantling production facilities and verifying disarmament will take years. So will convincing steps toward reconciliation. Only then will Kim reveal his willingness to give up his weapons.